|
Investors » Other Financial Informations » Interview with the Managing Director
Other Financial Informations
PCAS Group is building for the future, pursuing its globalisation policy, reinforcing its range of proprietary products and technologies and taking up positions in new growth sectors.
How would you sum up the past year?
Vincent Touraille.
2010 was a year of contrasts and could be described as disappointing overall. The first half of the year saw a significant upturn in activity (+11%) and net profitability (+€2.8 million), with specialty chemicals in particular enjoying a marked recovery in line with our forecast. Conversely, the second half saw these values tumble away, leading to an annual loss of €4 million and a 3.9% growth in net sales over the year.
This poor performance in the second half of the year was due to:
• Firstly, the after-effects of the financial crisis of 2009 which had a significant impact – albeit delayed – on the pharmaceutical fine chemistry activity, a sector that had held up well until the start of 2010, creating excess production capacities at our sites;
• Secondly, the excessively slow reaction of sales prices to the marked increases in raw materials prices that we had to absorb in mid-2010, with the inevitable repercussions on second half margins;
• Finally, the cancellation of some orders due to the refusal of FDA marketing authorisations and approvals for some of our customers.
What is the outlook for 2011?
V.T. We’re pursuing our objectives concerning the development of our proprietary product portfolio strategy, as well as our cooperation agreements with major international contractors. This strategy, aimed at improving the group’s profitability, is accompanied by vigorous costs-reduction measures drawn up and implemented during the last quarter of 2010:
• we’ve scaled down our pharmaceutical fine chemistry industrial facilities, just as we did in the Specialities sector in 2009. As part of this process, a redundancy programme was implemented in January 2011, affecting 25% of employees based at the Aramon plant;
• A detailed review of our margins and product portfolio has been carried out with a view to better incorporating changing raw materials and manufacturing costs;
• Finally, we’ve reduced all our indirect costs and reorganised our R&D teams.
We believe that the implementation of these measures will lead to a marked improvement in both business and profitability in 2011.
How do you see the future of the Group?
V.T. Our markets are open to global competition. Our future lies in the reinforcement of our international presence. We are already operating in Europe, North America and China, and now we're going to focus our development efforts on zones where there is significant growth in demand, particularly in the BRIC zone*. The future of PCAS is that of a globalised Group.
Our commercial offer will be re-balanced in favour of proprietary products and technologies. All the Group’s divisions are working to this end with a view to reinforcing repeat business. And their efforts are supported by our investments in new technologies, in particular with the recent integration of biotechnology but also via numerous collaborative projects with first-rate academic and industrial partners, both French and foreign.
This technological dynamism enables the PCAS Group to take up positions in sectors of the future, such as renewable energies – organic photovoltaics and bioenergies, for example – as well as new polymers and super-insulating materials.
Today, more than ever before, PCAS is playing a central role in numerous exciting projects, paving the way for some major development opportunities. Our teams have demonstrated their capacity to handle complex subjects for customers that demand exceptionally high standards and we would like to offer them our warmest thanks for their efforts. In order to build our future, we will continue to welcome new talents and new skills, which will help us speed up the development of our major strategic projects: (i) globalisation of our activities, (ii) reinforcement of our range of proprietary products and technologies as well as (iii) our positioning in new growth sectors. Our ultimate objective remains the same: to achieve excellence and make PCAS a first-class global player in the fine chemicals sector.
Vincent Touraille
Vice Chief Executive Officer PCAS Group
|
|||||||||
Back to Other Informations