Grupo Antolin has improved its business during the third quarter of the year, after withstanding the biggest crisis experienced by the automotive industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company’s activity has recovered progressively between July and September, thanks to the improvement of the markets since the historic crash in April. Grupo Antolin’s sales in the third quarter were 1,060 million euros, a reduction of 9.6% compared to the same period of the previous year, but a clear improvement compared to the 65% drop in revenue in the second quarter.
Sales between January and September were 2,612 million euros, compared to 3,850 million euros in the same period of the previous year.
The recovery of sales and the action plan against COVID-19, as well as the efficiency measures put in place by the company, have allowed it to improve margins at the operational level. Gross operating profit (EBITDA) rose by 12.7% in the third quarter to 91,4 million euros. In the year as a whole, EBITDA stands at 144 million euros, from 307 million euros in the same period in 2019.
Grupo Antolin has shown that it has a strong, resilient and flexible business that is managing to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. During these months, the company’s priority has been to protect the health of all employees, ensure business continuity and protect liquidity, despite the considerable disruption of the market.
The company is optimistic about future developments in the sector, although analysts estimate that the industry will take some time to reach 2019 production levels.
Organisational changes
As part of the process of transforming its business and to be more agile in implementing the future strategy, the company has adopted in recent months some relevant organisational changes, as outlined below:
-Creation of the Industrial Corporate Department, which will centralise the management of all industrial operations to achieve the maximum possible synergies. In this way, the Business Units will focus their resources on engineering, quality, projects and commercial activities.
-The Business Units of Doors and Instrument Panels are unified under the same department, which will be called Cockpits&Doors, with the aim of seeking operational synergies.
-The Lighting Business Unit has been renamed as the Lighting&HMI Business Unit (Human Machine Interface). This name reflects the new strategy that turns the interior components into an interface that allows the passenger to interact with the vehicle thanks to systems that combine lighting, electronics and decorative surfaces.
-Creation of the Sustainability Department with the aim of strengthening the work that the areas of Corporate Social Responsibility and Environment have been doing. The new Sustainability Department will continue to work to ensure that Grupo Antolin remains a benchmark in sustainability within the industry. In this sense, the actions and projects of this Department will have a cross-divisional character with the aim of integrating all areas and business units and helping them to install a sustainability component into their operations, so that they are able to generate greater added value in terms of wealth generation, employment and social welfare in the local communities in which they operate and in society as a whole.
These organisational changes have a dual objective. On the one hand, to better adapt to the needs and the technical and commercial organisation of customers. While on the other hand, to advance the strategy of increasing the competitiveness of the product portfolio by adding value to traditional components and developing a new generation of systems that optimally and efficiently integrate innovative lighting, decorative and electronic technologies. From the Electronics Business Unit, 62 projects with electronic content are already being developed, in collaboration with Lighting&HMI and Innovation. In addition, work is being made, technically and commercially, to submit bids for up to 60 electronic projects from automakers.
Growth in China
Some of these new projects are being developed in China with the aim of expanding the company’s presence and impact in this market. In addition, Grupo Antolin increases its client portfolio in the country by becoming a priority partner of Evergrande Auto, the new automaker that plans to develop six models of electric vehicles for the Chinese market.
The company has been chosen to exclusively develop several projects of headliners, window regulators, instrument panels, consoles and pillars for the three vehicle platforms that Evergrande is developing. The manufacturer’s goal is to produce one million electric vehicles by 2025.
Sales by geographic area
Sales in the different geographic areas in which the company operates also experienced significant improvement in the first nine months of the year. Europe entered 1,270 million euros, from 1,931 million euros the previous year, while the NAFTA region contributed 965 million euros (1,484 million euros in 2019). Asia-Pacific, for its part, recorded a slight decline in sales of 7% to 316 million euros, although it evolved better than initially expected due to the recovery of the Chinese market.