Denmark: Rockwool’s insulation sales declined by 0.6% year-on-year to Euro483m in the first quarter of 2020 from Euro486m due to slowdowns in Asia, in technical insulation sales and in its sandwich panel business. Despite this its earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) rose slightly to Euro56m. Overall the group’s net sales and EBIT rose slightly to Euro649m and Euro80m respectively.
“Despite turbulence from the COVID-19 pandemic whose impact we began to feel late in the quarter, we achieved solid first quarter results. Climate change isn’t going away, however. Energy renovation is a high-impact economic recovery measure that creates local jobs, a more resilient and healthy society while at the same time contributing to reaching long-term global climate ambitions,” said chief executive (CEO) officer Jens Birgersson.
The group reported that, due to coronavirus, its sales were affected in Asia and started to decrease during the last weeks of March 2020 in southern Europe. In China, production lines were temporarily closed early in the quarter and re-opened four weeks later. Factories in Malaysia, India, France and Spain were closed at different times in March 2020. It said that all these factories had now partly resumed production. The company is planning to adjust operations based on reduced demand and a decline in construction spending in future quarters. It also intends to seek, “market opportunities resulting from political and fiscal responses to drive economic recovery.”
