Abbey Logistics returns to profit and looking for growth

15 Dec 2020

Business

Abbey Logistics reports a resurgent performance following strategic progress and investment across the business over the last two years – this momentum has been maintained during 2020 and the Group states it is back to ‘strong profitability’ in the current financial year.

Specialist road tanker company Abbey Logistics said that its focus on a ‘back to basics’ approach, recent management restructuring, improved financial controls and vehicle utilisation, together with several new contract wins and fleet investment, have brought the company back to “strong profitability”.

Abbey reports significantly increased underlying EBITDA in FY20 to £4.6m, a 37% increase over the prior year and a 68% reduction in net loss to £1.2m.  Financial performance was much stronger in the second half of the period and the business has maintained this positive momentum into FY21 resulting in £1.6m of net profit in the first four months. The company also reported improved levels of cash flow and lower levels of net debt.

Matthew Male, Finance Director said: “Improved financial performance has continued into the new financial year (FY21) and trading for the first four months to October 2020 showed an EBITDA of £3.4m, more than double the profitability delivered in the comparable four months to October 2019, maintaining the month on month momentum that we saw in FY20.”

Mike Ellis, Business Development Director said: “Whilst we have been successful in securing new customers in the past couple of years, we are now in a position both operationally and financially to increase the pace of our growth in the food, construction and polymers sectors, and are well positioned to secure opportunities already identified in our pipeline with both new and existing customers.

“The business has matured over a 10 year period, growing revenues from £18m to £65m, establishing itself as the market leader in its core market whilst successfully expanding into new sectors, led by strong customer demand and a reputation for high quality service.”

Steve Granite, CEO said: “Having set out our long-term strategy to the Board and our investors in 2017, we knew that we would take some pressure financially in the short-term to effectively restructure and refocus the business for sustainable and commercially responsible growth – this has given us a fantastic platform on which to grow the business whilst improving our service and delivery performance to existing customers.

“We can clearly see that the actions we took in every aspect of the business have created a company that is now operating in line with our historic levels of profitability but based on much higher levels of revenue and with significant growth potential ahead of it.

“Our performance during the second half of last year was a clear indication that changes we have made across the business have taken effect and showed month on month improvements in profitability, which has continued into this year.

“Our performance has shown the strength of our unique business model and management team, which has enabled us to grow existing customer relationships, win new business, position us for growth and return Abbey Logistics to profitability, all despite the challenges of Covid-19.”