Good resilience in revenues and profitability in 2020
- Revenues of €111 million
- Current Operating Income at 4.1%.
- Solid and strengthened financial structure
Micropole, an international consulting and technology group specializing in Data & Digital, announces that it generated revenues of 111 million euros for the full year 2020, compared to 115.3 million euros for the same period the previous year. On a like-for-like basis, business was broadly stable despite the health crisis.
The company presents its 2020 audited financial statements, which were approved by the Board of Directors on April 26, 2021.
| In millions of euros - IFRS (audited figures) | 2020 | 2019* |
| Sales figures | 111,0 | 115,3 |
| Current operating income | 4,5 | 6,0 |
| As a % of sales | 4,1% | 5,2% |
| Non-operating income and expenses | (1,9) | (1,6) |
| Operating income | 2,6 | 4,4 |
| As a % of sales | 2,3% | 3,8% |
| Net income from continuing operations | 0,2 | 2,3 |
*Restated for the sale of MLS on February 17, 2020
Current operating income showed a strong resilience at 4.5 million euros compared to 6 million euros the previous year despite a decline in revenues (-3.7%) and a decrease in the employment rate (-8%) caused by the global crisis. This resilience is mainly due to:
- Continued improvement in ARPU (+3.7%) due to good recognition in its markets of the added value provided by the Group's offerings
- The use of partial activity in France and Switzerland, which has helped limit the consequences of under-activity
- Continued control of expenses.
Operating profit, for its part, reached 2.6 million euros, compared with 4.4 million euros in 2019. Non-current expenses amounted to 1.9 million, including 1.8 million in restructuring charges.
This strong resilience, in an unfavorable context, is therefore a reflection of :
- the good positioning of the Group, which offers high value-added digital and data transformation solutions, at the forefront of its markets.
- the industrialization of Cloud offerings set up in partnership with AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Salesforce, for Data-related projects. This strategic vision, both in terms of offerings and expertise, ensures that Micropole is a leader in these solutions, whose share of revenue has risen sharply. The GoCloud&Security offer, launched at the end of 2019, accompanies this industrialization of a security component, which is strategic on the market.
- the continuous innovation of the Group's R&D teams around technologies that anticipate future customer challenges.
- continuous improvement and optimization of internal processes, both in the commercial and operational areas.
Net income from continuing operations was positive at EUR 0.2 million, compared with EUR 2.3 million in the previous year.
The Group's financial position has strengthened
The Group's cash position is up sharply to 26.7 million euros compared to 16.3 million euros at December 31, 2019 with positive net cash of 2.2 million excluding rental debt (compared to net debt of 9.5 million at December 31, 2019) for equity of 50.4 million euros. The company benefited from PGEs for 5 million euros in 2020 and Urssaf deferrals of 7.9 million euros.
Progression of activities
The year 2020 saw a rebalancing of the Micropole Group's activities, mainly driven by :
- the business in Belgium, which is expected to grow by 21% in 2020 and which benefits from strong customer demand for Cloud offerings, and in particular for Advanced Analytics platforms, for which the Belgian teams are the Group's pioneers,
- the Swiss business, which declined by less than 1% and strengthened its position as market leader,
- the two business units in Paris, as well as the Regions, have seen a decline in business activity of around 8%.
Finally, China has become insignificant in the Group's figures (less than 0.5% of Group sales). The agency is focusing on maintaining its support activity for our European clients.
Human resources
In terms of our human resources, the year 2020 was marked by a stable headcount due to a significant drop in turnover, the result of numerous actions taken by the Human Resources department to improve the employer brand and retain talent, and to less volatility among employees due to the crisis. The Group also renewed its Happy At Work and Happy Trainees certifications in 2020, a strong signal of attractiveness and recognition of the actions taken by employees.
Change in scope of consolidation
Micropole is pursuing its strategy of deploying and accelerating its offerings around the Cloud and Data Intelligence services. As part of this strategy, in March 2021 the Group completed the accretive acquisition of the Luxembourg company Tomorrow Services (2 million euros in revenues) in order to increase its presence in the Benelux region and assert a physical presence in Luxembourg. This region, which has contributed strongly to the Group's growth over the past two years, is a real spearhead for its Cloud activities.
In addition, in March 2021, the Group sold its Lille office (2.8 million in revenues), as this agency had never reached critical size and was doubling up with our development strategy in the Benelux.
Perspectives and COVID-19 update
The COVID-19 pandemic and the confinement of Europe since March 2020 have affected the world economy and consequently the Group's activity. All employees have switched to telecommuting without difficulty and great care has been taken in managing human resources.
Despite a very good start, a decline in sales was noted as early as March compared to the 2020 objectives. The first signs of an upturn in activity are beginning to appear in the first quarter of 2021, but it remains difficult to make short-term projections.
In this still uncertain period, Micropole is maintaining its medium-term ambitions, particularly in terms of profitability, and remains confident about the future development of the markets in which the Group is positioned.
