LENZING, Austria, August 5, 2020-

In the first half of 2020, the Lenzing Group faced a historically difficult market environment with increased pressure on prices and volumes resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. To counteract that, Lenzing intensified its cooperation with partners along the value chains and adjusted its production volumes and sales prices to market reality. The disciplined implementation of the sCore TEN corporate strategy and the focus on specialty fibers continued to have a positive impact.

The immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis further increased price pressure on textile fibers across the entire product range. As a result, revenue declined by 25.6 percent from EUR 1.09 bn to EUR 810.2 mn in the first half of 2020. In addition to price effects, Lenzing also felt the decline in demand for textile fibers in all regions. The slightly higher demand for fibers in the medical and hygiene segments reduced the losses, but could not offset them. The earnings development essentially reflects the decline in revenue. The implementation of measures for structural earnings improvements in all regions and making use of the short-time work model, which was temporarily introduced by the Austrian Federal Government, mitigated this negative effect. EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) fell by 46.6 percent to EUR 96.7 mn in the first half of 2020. The EBITDA margin decreased from 16.6 percent to 11.9 percent. Net profit for the period1 amounted to EUR 1.5 mn (compared to EUR 78.8 mn in the first half-year of 2019) and earnings per share to EUR 0.06 (compared to EUR 2.97 in the first half-year of 2019).

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