Covestro Informs 2017 Financial Results: Sales Up 18 %, EBITDA Up 70%

Covestro released 2017 financial results report , which shows a sales growth of 18.8% to EUR 14.1 billion. EBITDA increased 70.6% to EUR 3.4 billion  and net income more than doubled to EUR 2.0 billion . The company also  announced a record in free operating cash flow  of EUR 5.0 billion now until 2019. The  dividend proposal is  EUR 2.20 per share  and the company informed a positive forecast for 2018.

"We have achieved an impressive result in 2017 and significantly exceeded our overall targets," said CEO Patrick Thomas. "Compared with our first year as an independent company, we have once again clearly improved and demonstrated that our success is sustainable. There is one simple reason for that: We have managed to successfully unlock Covestro’s potential even further. We are now in a strong position from which we will accelerate further value creation."

In fiscal year 2017, Covestro also achieved very strong results in other key figures: The Group’s core volumes rose by 3.4% over the prior-year period amidst continually high capacity utilization. Covestro’s free operating cash flow (FOCF) reached a new record high increasing to EUR 1.8 billion, equivalent to a rise of 34.8% compared with 2016. Return on capital employed (ROCE) stood at 33.4% and was thus also much higher than in the previous year (14.2%).

Given the strong development, Covestro now expects to deliver a cumulative free operating cash flow of EUR 5 billion within three years. The estimation announced in 2017 was five years. Due to high cash inflows, Covestro’s Board of Management decided in October 2017 to buy back their own shares up to EUR 1.5 billion, or up to 10% of the capital stock. The buy-back began in November 2017 as planned. In addition, net financial debt decreased by EUR 1,216 million to EUR 283 million in 2017 (previous year: EUR 1,499 million).

For more information, please visit www.covestro.com.