2024-07-26 16:25:24 ET
NV Bekaert SA (BEKSF)
Q2 2024 Results Conference Call
July 24, 2024 04:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Guy Marks - Investor Relations
Yves Kerstens - Chief Executive Officer
Taoufiq Boussaid - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Frank Claassen - Degroof Petercam
Martijn den Drijver - ABN Amro Oddo BHF
Wim Hoste - KBC Securities
Alexander Craeymeersch - Kepler Cheuvreux
Stijn Demeester - ING Financial Markets
Presentation
Guy Marks
Good morning, all, and welcome to Bekaert's H1 2024 Results and Trading Update. I'm delighted that you could all join us today.
As is usual, I will start with the safe harbor. And just to remind, this presentation may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the current views of the management regarding future events and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. This may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Bekaert is providing the information in this presentation as of its date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in it in light of new information, future events or otherwise.
Bekaert disclaims any liability for statements made or published by third-parties and does not undertake any obligation to correct inaccurate data information, conclusions or opinions published by third-parties [indiscernible] to this or any other publication issued by Bekaert. It's also worth reminding that this call is being recorded.
So with that out the way, I'm delighted to hand over to Yves, please.
Yves Kerstens
Thanks, Guy, and good morning, everybody. So let me start with the introduction, and then Taoufiq will take us through the different segments and overall financial performance, and I will wrap up with some updates on strategic review and operational review.
So first half of '24, another half of progress on our strategic direction, while demonstrating financial resilience in the current market context. So from a strategic direction on the M&A side, happy to have done the acquisition of BEXCO, we'll talk a little bit later about that. And further, the business is improving margins across the board with three of the business units above 10% EBIT level and a nice improvement in the margins and portfolio of SWS performance.
On the other side, we have some challenges in the -- or facing some challenges in the growth business areas, a mixed picture, I would say. First of all, in construction, nice growth in terms of volume, and we continued that in -- during the second half. We see some contract delays in hydrogen. I will talk a little bit later about the market environment, the policy evolution and how we look at it and how we navigate with that opportunity.
And then last, more an internal challenge where we have operational performance challenges in our Steel Ropes businesses in the U.K. and in the U.S., which has impacted, let's say the performance of BBRG in the first half of the year both on the top line as well as on the profitability, and we have a turnaround plan that we will give you some highlights of.
In that context, proud to have a resilient financial performance, another proof point of stable performance with the profitability underlying around 10%, slight improvement versus the first half of '23 despite the lower sales volumes and top-line. Stable earnings per share and a stable free cash flow on a comparable base year-on-year and keeping a good healthy balance sheet....
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NV Bekaert SA (BEKSF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript