Day: April 6, 2023

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AKWEL: 2022 RESULTS

        Wednesday 5 April 2023

2022 RESULTS

AKWEL (FR0000053027, AKW, PEA-eligible), the automotive and HGV equipment and systems manufacturer specialising in fluid management, mechanisms and structural parts for electric vehicles, announces its 2022 annual results.

in € millions 2022 2021 Var. in %
Revenue 990.5 922.6 +7.4%
EBITDA 81.3 117.1 -30.6%
Current operating income 38.6 75.2 -48.7%
Current operating margin 3.9% 8.2% -4.3 pts
Operating income 37.7 70.4 -46.4%
Financial income (11.4) (2.2) –
Net result (group share) 11.1 51.2 -78.3%
Net margin 1.1 % 5.5% -4.4 pts

In an automotive production market that is still subject to strong tensions, the AKWEL Group ends 2022 with a +7.4% annual increase and +11.3% on a like-for-like basis.

The delay in the impacts of increases in purchase prices on sale prices weighed heavily on the Group’s results in 2022. EBITDA was therefore down by -30.6% to €81.3m. About 55% of these price increases were passed on over the course of the year.

Current operating income amounted to €38.6m, representing a margin of 3.9%, down 4.3 points compared to 2021. Net income Group share stands at €11.1m.

The business generated cash-flow of €48.9m for an investment flow of €33.2m leading to a positive net cash position of €113.7m compared with €98.2m at the end of 2021. The distribution of a dividend of €0.30 per share for 2022 will be proposed at the Annual General Meeting on Thursday 25 May 2023.

For 2023, AKWEL remains cautious with regard to the sector’s recovery forecasts and anticipates a slight increase in turnover and continued tension over production costs.

The Group has set itself ambitious objectives for 2028, whether environmental, social as well as in terms of customer satisfaction and responsible purchasing, thanks to the intensification of the Corporate Social Responsabily actions undertaken this year.

An independent, family-owned group listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange, AKWEL is an automotive and HGV equipment and systems manufacturer specialising in fluid management, mechanisms, and structural components for electric vehicles. The Group achieves this by relying on state-of-the-art industrial and technological expertise in applying and processing materials (plastics, rubber, metal) and mechatronic integration.

Operating in 20 countries across every continent, AKWEL employs 9,500 people worldwide.

Euronext Paris – Compartment B – ISIN: FR0000053027 – Reuters: AKW.PA – Bloomberg: AKW:FP

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Global trade growth to slow to 1.7 percent in 2023 : WTO report

Global trade growth in 2023 will slow to 1.7 percent, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in its annual trade statistics and outlook report, published on Wednesday.

The volume of world merchandise trade has been weighed down by the effects of the conflict in Ukraine, high inflation, tighter monetary policy and financial market uncertainty, the report said.

However, the forecast for trade growth in 2023 is up from the previous estimate of 1.0 percent from last October. China’s adjustment of its COVID-19 measures is a “key factor” in this increase, the report said. The reopening of China is expected to boost international trade, the report said.

Dragged down by a sharp slump in the fourth quarter, world trade volume grew by 2.7 percent, “a smaller-than-expected increase”.

According to WTO economists, the global GDP at market exchange rates will grow by 2.4 percent in 2023. Meanwhile, projections for trade and GDP growth in 2023 are below the averages for the past 12 years, of 2.6 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.

“The lingering effects of COVID-19 and the rising geopolitical tensions were the main factors impacting trade and output in 2022, and this is likely to be the case in 2023 as well,” said Ralph Ossa, WTO Chief Economist.

Interest rate hikes in advanced economies have also revealed weaknesses in banking systems that could lead to wider financial instability if left unchecked, he said.

“Governments and regulators need to be alert to these and other financial risks in the coming months,” he added.

“Trade continues to be a force for resilience in the global economy, but it will remain under pressure from external factors in 2023. This makes it even more important for governments to avoid trade fragmentation and refrain from introducing obstacles to trade,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.

“Investing in multilateral cooperation on trade, as WTO members did at our Twelfth Ministerial Conference last June, would bolster economic growth and people’s living standards over the long term,” she stressed.

According to the report, global trade growth should rebound to 3.2 percent in 2024, as global GDP growth picks up to 2.6 percent.

The estimate is more uncertain than usual due to the presence of substantial downside risks, including geopolitical tensions, food supply shocks, and the possibility of unforeseen fallout from monetary tightening, the report added.

Ralph Ossa, the World Trade Organization (WTO) Chief Economist, speaks during a WTO press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 5, 2023. Global trade growth in 2023 will slow to 1.7 percent, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in its annual trade statistics and outlook report, published on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Lian Yi)

Source: Lao News Agency

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China’s sustained afforestation efforts green the world

Spring is the season for new life. In China, the peak time for spring plowing and sowing is around the Qingming Festival, which falls on Wednesday this year, when people from all walks of life go out and plant trees to make the land greener.

From top leaders to ordinary citizens, planting trees has been a prevalent practice for the Chinese, who voluntarily take part in the country’s massive greening efforts every year to clearly show just how much the world’s second-largest economy values greenness and ecological conservation.

China designated March 12 as National Tree Planting Day in 1979 and launched a nationwide voluntary tree-planting campaign in 1981. From 1982 to 2021, Chinese citizens voluntarily planted approximately 78.1 billion trees across the vast country.

Citizens are also encouraged to adopt or nurture trees, donate money, and conduct volunteer work related to trees.

The country’s internet-based greening campaign “Ant Forest,” allows people to adopt trees by paying due contributions online or by garnering enough credits by performing low-carbon activities like taking public transportation, in exchange for a real tree to be nurtured in their names.

By the end of May last year, more than 550 million people had participated in the project to plant over 200 million trees, reducing exhaust equivalent to 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

After decades of afforestation, China has created the world’s largest planted forests, with its forest coverage rate more than doubling from 12 percent in the early 1980s to 24.02 percent last year.

The country’s afforestation area reached 960 million mu (64 million hectares) over the past decade. In 2022 alone, the Chinese people planted a total of 3.83 million hectares of new forests, official data showed.

As a result of sustained forest conservation and tree planting efforts, a 2019 finding published in Nature Sustainability showed that at least 25 percent of the foliage expansion since the early 2000s globally came from China, based on data from NASA satellites.

Thick forests have also become a substantial source of revenue for locals. Last year, the output value of China’s forestry and grassland industry reached 8.37 trillion yuan (about 1.22 trillion U.S. dollars), while the foreign trade volume of forest products was 191 billion dollars.

“Green development with both ecological and economic benefits is a highlight and distinctive feature of Chinese modernization,” said Qu Jianjun, a researcher with the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China has moved to facilitate its afforestation efforts with legislative improvements. The country’s law on forest protection was revised in 2019 and went into effect in 2020, in a bid to better protect the country’s forests and facilitate green development.

Behind China’s remarkable green achievements are advances in afforestation and sand control technologies. In Minqin, a county in the middle of two deserts in the northwestern province of Gansu, methods like drip irrigation and sand barriers have helped increase local forest coverage from 11.52 percent in 2010 to 18.28 percent currently.

“China has become a world leader in sand control technologies,” said Liu Hujun, director of the International Cooperation Center of Gansu Desert Control Research Institute. Since the 1990s, Liu’s institute has helped train nearly a thousand technicians and government officials from 87 countries.

Yang Zhusong, an associate professor at Tsinghua University, said China’s sustained afforestation efforts have contributed to addressing global climate change and promoting green and low-carbon development, thus creating greater development dividends for the world.

“The scientific and effective prevention and control methods of the Chinese government have greatly changed the county, and made me see the hope of improving the ecology in my hometown,” said Rezaali Pakzad, an Iranian PhD student who carried out field surveys and research in Minqin for soil desertification control studies.

Under a long-term plan, China expects to increase its forest coverage rate to 26 percent by 2035. By then, China’s forest stock will rise to 21 billion cubic meters, and the area of natural forests will be kept at about 200 million hectares.

Source: Lao News Agency