Interim Results for the Six Months Ended 31 January 2022

Early and decisive action on supply chain management and pricing delivers strong revenue and profit growth

Volution Group plc (“Volution” or “the Group” or “the Company”, LSE: FAN), a leading international designer and manufacturer of energy efficient indoor air quality solutions, today announces its unaudited interim financial results for the six months ended 31 January 2022.

RESULTS SUMMARY

The Group uses some alternative performance measures to manage and assess the underlying performance of the business. These measures include adjusted operating profit, adjusted profit before tax, adjusted EPS, adjusted operating cash flow and net debt. A definition of all the adjusted and non-GAAP measures is set out in the glossary of terms in note 18 to the condensed consolidated financial statements. A reconciliation to reported measures is set out in note 2 to the condensed consolidated financial statements. 

FINANCIAL AND OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Early and decisive action on supply chain management and price increases across all of our markets has helped deliver an adjusted operating profit margin of 21.3% (21.1% in H1 2021), with adjusted operating profit up 15.0% to £31.9 million (H1 2021:£27.7 million).
• Revenue growth of 13.6% (16.9% at constant currency “cc”) with organic revenue growth of 7.9% cc as all three geographic regions grew in the period, benefitting from both volume and price increases. Inorganic revenue growth was 8.5% reflecting the acquisitions of ClimaRad, Klimatfabriken and Energent in FY2021 and Energy Recovery Industries (“ERI”) in H1 2022.
• Good customer service maintained throughout the period due to management action to invest in inventory to ensure component and raw material availability for our production facilities.
• Strong organic revenue growth in Australasia of 10.9% (13.8% cc) assisted by the roll out of a significant new retail account in Australasia and share gains across the region.
• The integration of ERI, a leading manufacturer of heat recovery cells for the European market, is progressing well and performance has been in line with our expectations. We have commenced the previously announced investment plan to significantly increase the ERI manufacturing capacity.
• Reported profit before tax increased by 50.5% to £21.4 million (H1 2021: £14.2 million) due to adjusted operating profit expansion and lower acquisition related costs of £0.1 million (H1 2021: £3.5 million).
• Investment in working capital led to a lower than normal cash conversion at 50% (H1 2021: 105%), though leverage (excluding lease liabilities) remains lower than H1 2021 at 1.2x, (H1 2021: 1.4x)
• Interim dividend of 2.30 pence per share (H1 2021: 1.90 pence), demonstrating the Board’s continuing confidence in the performance of the Group.

SUSTAINABILITY HIGHLIGHTS 

Our products save energy, reduce carbon emissions and help to build healthy, sustainable homes and buildings. We made good progress with low carbon sustainability targets in the first half of the year and although we were held back by the sourcing of recycled plastics in the period, we have made several technical breakthroughs in applying new recycled materials in our production facilities which will help secure delivery of our long term targets.  

• 58.0% (H1 2021: 63.1%) of plastic used in our own manufacturing facilities was from recycled sources.
• 65.1% (H1 2021: 62.1%) of our revenue was from low-carbon, energy saving products.

Commenting on the Group’s performance, Ronnie George, Chief Executive Officer, said: 

“Our early and decisive action to invest in additional inventory as well as increase selling prices in response to the unprecedented levels of input cost inflation, has enabled us to deliver strong revenue and profit growth in the first half of the year with operating margins increasing to 21.3%. The agility and experience of our employees has underpinned good levels of customer service and product availability despite the well-publicised supply chain difficulties across the sector. 
Further tightening of regulatory drivers relating to carbon reduction in buildings, as well as heightened awareness of the importance of indoor air quality to health, continues to provide a supportive foundation to our strategy.” 

Outlook 

The macroeconomic and geo-political backdrop resulting from the devastating invasion of Ukraine by Russia has created substantial uncertainty, the full implications of which are difficult to predict at this moment. However, we continue to focus on customer service, underpinned by good availability in our inventory of key assembly components, and coupled with some slowing of input cost inflation, we are well positioned for the rest of this financial year. 

-Ends-

For further information:

A meeting for analysts will be held at 10am today, Thursday 10 March 2022, at the offices of Berenberg, 60 Threadneedle Street, London EC2R 8HP.
Please contact volutiongroup@tulchangroup.com to register to attend or for instructions on how to connect to the meeting via conference facility. 

A copy of this announcement and the presentation given to analysts will be available on our website www.volutiongroupplc.com from 7.00 am on Thursday 10 March 2022. 

Certain information contained in this announcement would have constituted inside information (as defined by Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 as amended by The Market Abuse (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019) prior to its release as part of this announcement. 

Volution Group plc Legal Entity Identifier: 213800EPT84EQCDHO768. 

Note to Editors: 

Volution Group plc (LSE: FAN) is a leading international designer and manufacturer of energy efficient indoor air quality solutions. Volution Group comprises 20 key brands across three regions: 

UK: Vent-Axia, Manrose, Diffusion, National Ventilation, Airtech, Breathing Buildings, Torin-Sifan.

Continental Europe: Fresh, PAX, VoltAir, Kair, Air Connection, inVENTer, Ventilair, ClimaRad, rtek, ERI

Australasia: Simx, Ventair, Manrose.

For more information, please go to: www.volutiongroupplc.com

Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements

This document may contain forward-looking statements which are made in good faith and are based on current expectations or beliefs, as well as assumptions about future events. You can sometimes, but not always, identify these statements by the use of a date in the future or such words as "will", "anticipate", "estimate", "expect", "project", "intend", "plan", "should", "may", "assume" and other similar words. By their nature, forward-looking statements are inherently predictive and speculative and involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this document, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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