SGS 2020 Full Year Results - Seite 2

The acquisition of SYNLAB Analytics & Services (A&S) further aligns SGS to the Health, Nutrition and Environment TIC megatrends and enhances our market position in Europe. It also adds a range of complex services and accelerates the adoption of our hub and spoke model, offering greater scope for automation and digitalization and generating strong operating synergies.

Throughout 2020, SGS has successfully developed our Next Normal solutions and leveraged our remote service delivery solutions to better serve our customers and society with higher value-added services. To provide improved supply chain visibility, we leveraged our market-leading technical capabilities and adapted our delivery models using our digital tools and sensor-based technology. Remote inspection, audit, consulting and other digital delivery solutions all gained customer traction and acceptance in 2020.

Additional innovation of our service portfolio included our global Life Sciences network delivering Covid-19 vaccine testing and new innovative therapeutics for several global clients. We continue to be TIC market leader in PPE testing and inspection. In addition, we have seen strong progress on contract signings across our TIC services on disinfection and business recovery.

We have defined our 2030 sustainability ambition which encompasses a holistic and global approach to sustainability both in terms of how we behave as a company and the value we provide to our customers through our services. We will launch our 2030 sustainability plan in Q2 2021.

Financial Discipline and Continued Investment in Strategic Priority Areas

We have continued to invest in high growth potential markets, reinforced our pricing initiatives, cost control and working capital management and successfully refinanced part of our debt in a challenging year.

• We successfully issued two bonds with a total value of CHF 500 million.
• We achieved over CHF 90 million of structural cost savings, coupled with strong cost management and EVA-driven performance management.
• Supported by our focused capital allocation strategy, we have continued to invest heavily in our strategic priority areas including wireless, 5G, semiconductors, food testing and investment into IT systems to continue to drive productivity increases.

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