Gurit says that its net sales for Q1 were CHF 127.7 million, a decline of 4.8% at constant exchange rates or 5.2% in reported CHF versus prior year.
According to the company, sales in its lightweighting business declined mainly due to the Aerospace business while Marine and Industrial recovered to pre-Covid-19 levels. The Wind business was overall flat and benefitted from strong results in Tooling. Net sales were also impacted by a temporarily reduced demand for wind blades in China in 2021 as a result of the expiry of the Chinese wind feed-in tariffs by year-end 2020, and by decreasing Balsa raw material costs and corresponding lower sales prices.
Aerospace net sales in Q1 2021 were worse affected at CHF 6.6 million – a decline of 51.5 compared to Q1 2020. Composite Materials achieved net sales of CHF 59.8 million for Q1 2021, a decrease of 9.8% compared to Q1 2020. The decrease is mainly due to Wind volumes in China and reduced prices in Balsa while Marine and Industrial markets are back to pre-pandemic levels, Gurit said. Kitting recorded net sales of CHF 43.0 million, a decrease of 9.5%.
However, Tooling saw an increase in Q1 2021 net sales by 57.7% at constant exchange rates compared to Q1 2020 to CHF 30.6 million. According to Gurit, this growth is mainly due to the timing of orders of western wind turbine OEMs and blade manufacturers.
For 2021, Gurit expects a revenue of around CHF 530–580 million and an operating profit margin between 9–11%.
This story uses material from Gurit, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
