EVS Broadcast Equipment reports first half 2020 results - Seite 2

Serge Van Herck, CEO comments the business development: “These special times are of course impacting our business.  After a good start of the year, we saw a slowdown in revenues and order intake in the second part of the semester. Still, we manage to have a strong total order book (for 2020 and beyond) increasing by 15% (excl. big event rentals) compared to the same period last year with orders covering large multi-year modernization projects.
The sanitary situation also provides the opportunity to accelerate some existing development plans serving new customers’ needs in terms of distant operations. The LSM-VIA, successfully launched at the end of May, will be a key enabler for remote production. We assist to a very positive adoption of the next generation of replay solution. While, during the crisis, we are continuing to offer the most demanding solutions for our LAB customers, with the live sports competition resuming, some of our LSP customers need additional equipment.”

Concerning the COVID-19 situation, Serge Van Herck added: “Our R&D teams are not structurally impacted in their productivity after a few weeks of adjustment of homeworking. Almost the entire company has been homeworking for 3.5 months, coming gradually back to the office by respecting the measures in place concerning health recommendations ”.

Commenting on the results and the outlook, Yvan Absil, CFO, said: “Despite lower revenues and COVID-19 situation, we maintained our profitability at a similar level as last year, thanks to lower operational expenses. The COVID-19 crisis impacted negatively our working capital with high levels of inventory due to securitization of supplies planned before the crisis as well as high open receivables which we are discussing with some of our customers who have seen their revenues and cash income dropping to 95% at the height of the crisis. We maintain a strong cash position to weather these difficult times.

EVS Market Dynamics and customer wins

The current market conditions remain challenging for the broadcast and media industry. Broadcasters and media companies benefit from strong audiences, but these can hardly be monetized due to the significant decrease of advertising revenues. LSP’s are strongly affected by the current crisis even if there is a certain recovery with the restart of live sporting events.