Communications

Report and Accounts 2020

Category
Publication
31 August, 2021
In this page we provide the report and accounts for the year 2020. In this report we present the activity, performance, and accounts of the company, presented in specific accounting maps, namely the Balance Sheet, the Statement of Results and the Cash Flow Map.

Consult the Report and Accounts 2020 in Portuguese

Consult the Report and Accounts 2020 in English

The year 2020 was defining in all of our lives. For the first time we are experiencing a true pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

This pandemic has had a significant impact on people and companies' lives. The restrictions on freedoms were immense, not just limitations on movement between countries, but several periods of mandatory confinement. At the company level, we verified lock-down periods, changes to security procedures, changes to logistics procedures or changes in the way tasks were performed. All with the purpose of keeping safe distances between people and preventing the spread of the virus.

Much of 2020 was spent discussing whether governments should privilege public health or the “health” of their economies. It is true that this was a very fine line, since alleviating the restrictions implied an increase in cases, it caused pressure on health systems, resulting in an increase in deaths and contraction, both in citizen confidence and in the economy. On the other hand, the option for confinement of people had the immediate consequence of a drop in consumption, with natural implications not only for the product but also for the need to adopt measures to mitigate the fall in the income of families and companies. All this with immediate effects on deficits and debts.

Since these options are so difficult to assess and implement, it was immediately possible to witness a proliferation of different measures between the different governments, aligning measures according to their agendas or programmes. This led to a backlog of measures, making it difficult to keep track of how they were published.

This context was particularly challenging for ConstruGomes. The Company is a Portuguese company dedicated to the execution of concrete works in the largest infrastructure projects worldwide. Being in the biggest projects, it means that large numbers of people are gathered, and since these are international projects, it also means that we have to carry out more complex logistics processes to allocate Portuguese resources to these large international projects.

In 2020, the Company carried out works in Portugal, Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, Slovakia, and Denmark. We also had several commercial / technical interventions in multiple countries such as Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Ireland, the Netherlands, or Norway.

In this context, the Company's activity suffered natural consequences. At the productive level, we had to adopt preventive measures for people distancing, we had to extend working hours, adopt telework and further reinforce hygiene and safety protocols. In terms of logistics, we had to avoid travel, we had to increase resources to reduce the number of users per vehicle and housing. These measures implied lower productivity and increased expenses. Fortunately, with a lot of effort and dedication on the part of all our employees, it was possible to avoid the lock-down. We were only forced to suspend the activity in the Belgian market, and it was derived from a government instruction. In other markets and projects, and despite their enormous technical complexities, as well as the enormous legislative challenges mentioned above, we managed to maintain the activity and overcome all the adversities caused by the pandemic.

During 2020, and despite the pandemic, we followed our business project structured on four fundamental vectors: activity growth; sustainability of the business; specialization and internationalization.

In terms of activity, the year 2020 was below the volume of business expected and the result was also lower than what we intended. We recorded a turnover of €25.3M compared with the €30.6M registered in 2019. We also registered a decrease in Net Results for the Financial Year, from €374,497.92 to €160,202.53. Both the increase in expenses and the decrease in productivity, resulting from the pandemic, contributed greatly to these results.

However, the plan remains valid and the pandemic itself has confirmed it. If we had not defended those fundamental vectors for our business plan, the consequences of the pandemic for the Company could have been more serious.

Effectively, our specialization in critical areas of activity for large infrastructure projects, mainly through our capacity to design, develop, manufacture, and use of modern production systems for formwork, the qualification of our human resources, the continued investment in the certification of our quality, safety and Health, people management and environmental management systems have allowed the Company to establish itself as a benchmark in the area it operates.

The continuous option to “embrace” the international markets also allows reducing the activity's risk, improving the business' sustainability, necessarily projecting the will to make the Company's global activity grow.

We cannot fail to mention the contracting of the project for the bridge over the Paraguay River between Asunción and Chacoí in Paraguay, which confirms and validates this entire strategy. As the Company was recognized as a benchmark, it ended up being included in the winning consortium as a designated subcontractor, to give it technical capacity, which otherwise could not be guaranteed.

This allows us to grow even further in the value chain and increase our activity and sustainability.

Therefore, having full confidence in the plan drawn up for this mandate, the Company's Management firmly believes that it should continue to build bridges around the world, implementing the slogan “Bridging the World” in an exhaustive way.

This will not be possible without the continuous contribution of employees, clients, suppliers and partners. We are counting on you all.

Thank you very much.

Carlos Gomes – Chairman of the Board of Directors