Bekaert: 2025 Half Year Results
Focus on managing volumes, cash flow and costs
Bekaert delivered a resilient financial performance in H1 2025. Profit margins were robust and cash flows were strong (EBITu1 margin at 8.8%; Free Cash Flow1 of € 123 million), as the business continues to benefit from the successful execution of Bekaert’s long-term strategy of portfolio rationalization, pricing discipline, improving the mix of higher margin products, and driving further cost efficiencies.
Yves Kerstens, CEO of Bekaert, commented: “We have continued to focus on what we can control best – cash flow and costs - and have significantly reduced overheads and working capital in H1 2025. Equally, I am very pleased with the hard work of our teams fighting for volumes in the current challenging markets. We are also taking further steps to make our business units more autonomous and agile. Therefore, I am very confident that we will come out of the current business environment stronger and more cost competitive than ever before.”
Financial highlights
- Consolidated sales of € 1.9 billion (-5.2%)
- Volumes were -2.6% or € -54 million down
- Impacts from pass-through of lower input costs and price-mix was -2.2% or € -46 million
- Currency impact of -1.1% or € -24 million
- Sales from acquisitions +0.8% or € +16 million
- Underlying gross profit margin was 16.6% (vs 18.4% in H1 2024), with underlying gross profit at € 325 million (vs € 379 million in H1 2024)
- Robust margin performance in difficult markets
- EBITDAu1 of € 259 million (-10.2%), delivering a margin on sales of 13.3% (vs 14.0% in H1 2024)
- EBITu1 of € 171 million (-16.2%), resulting in a margin of 8.8% (vs 9.9% in H1 2024)
- Further delivery in the non-consolidated Brazilian joint ventures with sales of € 415 million, higher margins, and a share of net results of € 24 million (vs € 20 million in H1 2024)
- Ongoing efficiency improvements and structural cost reduction
- € 21 million overhead reduction reached in first half of 2025
- Continued focus on working capital reducing by € 135 million year-on-year, with improved inventory management, collections of overdue receivables and optimization of payment terms
- Reduced capital expenditure in H1 2025 and continued strict capital expenditure discipline in H2 2025
- Strong cash generation, despite lower volumes, benefiting from proactive working capital management
- Free Cash Flow (FCF1) of € 123 million, compared to € 43 million in H1 2024
- Net debt of € 327 million (vs € 399 million H1 2024) after share buyback and an increased dividend, resulting in net debt to EBITDAu2 of 0.67x (vs 0.75x in H1 2024)
- $ 33 million cash proceeds received in June for Steel Wire Solutions disposal in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Venezuela
- Ongoing €200 million share buyback, € 74 million purchased to date
Operational and strategic highlights
- Managing the impact of tariffs
- Benefiting from local sourcing and production within a global business
- Passed on significant proportion of the tariff impact to date
- Rubber Reinforcement
- Strong sales in China offsetting lower volumes in Europe and North America
- Steel Wire Solutions
- Like-for-like3 volume growth and double-digit margins
- Strong performance in US and China despite market headwinds in Europe and Latin America
- BBRG
- Sustained production reliability in UK and US
- Weakening end-markets particularly with delays in investment-related project businesses
- Specialty Businesses
- Very challenging end markets, especially in Sustainable Construction in the US facing continued delays in the flooring market, partially offset with growth in Middle East and strong order intake in tunneling
- Slow down in Hydrogen but long-term commitments with key partners
- Continued strategic transformation
- Disposal of Steel Wire Solutions businesses in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Venezuela completed
Outlook
The introduction of tariffs and escalating trade tensions have created increasing uncertainty for Bekaert, its suppliers and customers. Since the first quarter results, there has been a further increase in the US steel tariffs, from 25% to 50%, which has been increasingly more difficult to pass on through the value chain and has triggered delays in some orders. There has also been a significant deterioration of the US dollar and Chinese renminbi which have had an impact on euro-denominated consolidated sales and profits.
Consequently, following a period of resilience in Q2, the tariff uncertainty and weakening economic outlook has started to have an impact on demand. The Group is now anticipating a weakening in demand across many of its end markets in H2 2025.
At these lower volume levels, and with higher tariffs and current foreign exchange rates, the group expects slightly reduced sales for FY 2025 versus FY 2024 (on a like-for-like basis excluding the impacts of disposals, acquisitions, plant closures and foreign exchange) and underlying EBIT margin in FY 2025 of 8.0-8.5%. Cash flows remain robust thanks to the focus on working capital management and reduction in capital expenditure.
Conference call for analysts and investors
Yves Kerstens, CEO of Bekaert and Seppo Parvi, CFO, will present the H1 2025 results to analysts and investors at 11:00 a.m. CET on Thursday 31st July. This presentation can be accessed live upon registration () and will be available on after the event.
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