The news on lifting restrictions and returning to work is gathering pace.
In the UK, housebuilders are reopening sites and Aston Martin is restarting operations next week. Elsewhere, Spain, Vietnam, Dubai and Uruguay are all tentatively easing their lockdowns and social distancing regulations. The desire to return to work is pressing with governments stepping up funding and losing tax revenues. The UK deficit has risen to £49bn ytd and is expected to reach £260bn in 2020. With governments under pressure worldwide there is growing concern that the impact will result in greater deaths from poverty than from the virus itself.
Headlines
• UK deficit hits £48.7bn to April;
• 15% of the US workforce is now registered unemployed;
• 2.8 million in UK government's furlough scheme;
• Volkswagen has restarted a plant in Germany;
• China reports no new deaths for eight consecutive days;
• Vistry to recommenced work on 90% of sites on 27 April;
• Aston Martin to restart manufacturing on 5 May;
• Taylor Wimpey to begin phased remobilisation on 4 May;
• B&Q has reopened 155 store since a 14 store trial last weekend.
Company news
Buildings & Construction
• Epwin Group – “Group traded well in the early part of 2020 pre Covid-19 and following a successful 2019: • Until the middle of March trading was slightly ahead of the Board's expectations
• Group operations paused with effect from 25 March in response to Covid-19:
• Focus on cost reduction and cash management measures, including the deferral of capital expenditure and tax payments, with the agreement of HMRC
• The Group is also making use of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme ("CJRS") in order to help to retain our valuable and skilled staff through this period of inactivity
• The impact of Covid-19 and our decision to temporarily cease activity on 25 March 2020 will inevitably have a material impact on trading for the year ending 31 December 2020
Strong balance sheet; Group financial modelling suggests we can remain within existing bank facilities:
• Net debt at the start of the year was 0.6x EBITDA at £16.4 million
• At 31 March 2020, the Group has c.£45 million of headroom from its £75 million of banking facilities, including cash on the balance sheet
• Whilst the Board believes that the Group is well positioned to withstand a period of uncertainty, such as is associated with this pandemic, it believes that it would be imprudent to recommend the payment of a final dividend for the year ended 31 December 2019.”
• Keller Group – “As announced on 25 March 2020, trading for January and February was marginally above our expectations, but as anticipated, we saw a swift deterioration in activity during the second half of March due to national and regional restrictions on travel and work. Notwithstanding this, the March result was less impacted than expected and the performance for the quarter as a whole was better than our expectations, and materially better than the prior year.
The Covid-19 situation continues to evolve and, whilst the position across our geographic markets remains broadly as described in our announcement on 25 March 2020, the short term trading outlook remains uncertain. Accordingly, we have put in place a broad range of measures to reduce costs and manage our liquidity through this period. Measures include operating cost reductions, cancellation of discretionary projects, reduced capital expenditure, and an even greater focus on working capital management. We continue to seek to maximise the group's resilience and to minimise the potential financial and other risks arising from the current crisis. We are availing ourselves of relevant Governmental support schemes across all of our markets, such as furlough and tax deferrals, where appropriate. Additionally, the Board and senior management have taken a voluntary 20% reduction in fees and salary during the second quarter.
Trading in April remains mixed, with APAC and EMEA currently impacted more than North America, which varies significantly by state. Once current national and regional restrictions on travel and work are lifted, we would expect to return to work on the majority of those contracts currently being affected and our order book in the near term remains largely unaffected.
In terms of financing and liquidity, as reported at our full year results on 3 March 2020, at 31 December 2019, our net debt was £213m, on a bank covenant IAS 17 basis, equating to a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.2x compared to our covenant limit of 3.0x. The group has substantial borrowing facilities available to it. As at the end of March 2020, the group had undrawn committed and uncommitted borrowing facilities totalling £238m, comprising £167m of the unutilised portion of the group's £375m revolving credit facility (which expires in November 2024 and has an option to extend by one further year), £29m of other undrawn committed borrowing facilities and undrawn uncommitted borrowing facilities of £42m - as well as cash and cash equivalents of £87m. At the end of March 2020, our net debt was £251m, on a bank covenant IAS 17 basis, equating to a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.3x. Our liquidity position remains under constant review.
It remains too early to provide earnings guidance in relation to the remainder of the current financial year. We will continue to monitor external events, manage the situation closely and update the market as appropriate.”
• Taylor Wimpey – “Today we are setting out our strategy for a phased return to site construction and operating, with strict social distancing protocols. This is based on current Government and medical guidelines and will allow us to operate a sensible and well managed, slow but steady return to activity. Our own site management teams will use the week commencing 4 May to prepare sites for a new method of operating with the first subcontractors returning on the week commencing 11 May.
On 24 March we announced the orderly closing of our sites, show homes and sales centres to protect the health and safety of our customers, employees and subcontractors across the UK. While construction was deemed a permitted activity by the UK Government, we believed that it was essential to be confident that we could modify our working practices to adhere to strict social distancing guidance and this required time and careful planning. We received strong support for this early decision from all stakeholder groups, particularly our customers, employees and subcontractors.
Revised protocols and guidelines - Since then, we have worked closely with our partners, reviewing guidance issued by the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) and taken advice from the Health and Safety Executive, to assess each and every aspect of our site activities and address the changes that need to be made to fully comply with the restrictions imposed by social distancing requirements.
We are now confident that we have a clear set of detailed protocols and revised guidelines which we can operate safely, and on a sustainable basis for as long as is necessary. These protocols include a fully revised set of working practices and additional precautionary measures including modified site operational practices, revised Risk Assessments, inductions, and changes to site format, including bespoke PPE for two person tasks which we have designed in-house.
In addition, we have created the Taylor Wimpey Covid-19 Code of Conduct setting out our commitment to deliver a safe working environment for our employees and subcontractors working on site, while stating our very clear expectations of behaviours of all those visiting our sites to work. We will be regularly monitoring and enforcing these behaviours on our sites and will require all staff, subcontractors and suppliers to sign up to this Code of Conduct in advance of starting on site. This has been based on the CLC guidance document which we have positively adapted and enhanced for a housebuilding setting. We welcome the news that, going forward, the Health and Safety Executive will be monitoring safe processes in response to Covid-19 on site.
Phased remobilisation - From the week commencing 4 May 2020 we will start the process of remobilisation of construction, with the support of our site management team, in a controlled and managed way, on the majority of our sites in England and Wales. This decision is based on current Government guidance and medical advice and, if this was to tighten further, we would conduct a further review. At this stage we do not expect to start work in Scotland, until a return to construction receives the Scottish Government's support. In order to ensure that the correct behaviours are embedded, we have planned a managed and gradual site start, and as a result, we do not expect to deliver meaningful build progress until mid-May. We will assess build output on each site based on meeting the new social distancing protocols. The phased nature of our remobilisation is key to making the necessary adjustments to site safety and to properly train our employees, suppliers and subcontractors in the new requirements and ways of working. We will also make our new working practices available to others if requested free of charge, which we believe will be useful for smaller housebuilders with limited resources.
Sales centres, show homes and customer support - We do not plan to reopen sales centres, show homes or regional offices at this time. It is likely that the decision to reopen sales centres will be closely linked to a general relaxation of conditions for non-essential retail, and will not happen until we feel able to assure the safety of our employees, subcontractors and customers.
We continue to perform urgent and critical customer care tasks and are looking to increase the number of these that we can complete under current restrictions, particularly focusing on emergency and outdoor items. This will always be subject to the ability to carry out the work safely and our customers being happy that the arrangements are right for them.
Learnings from Spanish business - Spain is now moving into the early stages of relaxation of the lockdown rules and our small Spanish business will help to provide us with an early understanding of the potential issues that may arise as we carefully recommence activities there.
Positive net sales and trading - Total Group completions (including joint ventures) in the 16 weeks to 19 April 2020 were 2,271 (2019 week 16: 2,644), reflecting the impact of our site closures. While our sales centres and show homes have remained closed, throughout the period of the lockdown we have continued to sell homes, support existing customers and progress purchases on a remote basis. Whilst new homes sales have been at lower levels, we are encouraged by the continued demand for our homes, at a time when customers have been unable to visit our sites or show homes. Since closing our sites and sales offices, cancellations have represented only 0.8% of the total order book and new sales have exceeded the number of cancellations, meaning that we have grown our order book during shutdown by more than 200 units. These sales are at prices comparable to those achieved in the first quarter of 2020, and do not contain any bulk sales.
As part of the orderly closedown of sites after 24 March, where it was deemed safe to do so, and being mindful of customers individual circumstances, we offered customers whose homes were build complete and had passed our Home Quality Inspection process the option to complete their move in the days that followed, which a number chose to do.
As a result of our new digital reservation process, our order book has continued to increase and at week ending 19 April 2020, its total value stood at approximately £2,677 million (2019 week 16: £2,399 million). This represents 10,880 homes (2019 week 16: 10,291 homes), excluding legal completions to date, of which well over half are exchanged (including affordable).
Strong balance sheet and cash position - As previously announced, we have fully drawn down our £550 million Revolving Credit Facility and as at 22 April, we had cash balances of c.£836 million. This strong liquidity position means that our focus is very much on future opportunities rather than solely short term cash generation.
As previously announced, in light of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the Board took the decision to cancel the 2019 final dividend of 3.80 pence per share (c.£125 million) that was due to be paid on 15 May and the planned 2020 special dividend payment of 10.99 pence per share (c.£360 million) that was due to be paid on 10 July.
Her Majesty's Treasury has confirmed that we are eligible in principle, subject to documentation, as an issuer of the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF).”
• Vistry Group – “In accordance with strict guidance and protocol from the Government, Public Heath England and the HSE, we have taken the decision to recommence work on c.90% of our Partnership sites and a significant number of our housing sites from 27th April 2020. We have been in close dialogue with our supply chain partners who are supportive of our plans.
Our sales teams remain in close communication with existing and prospective customers remotely, with the business open to taking virtual tours, new reservations, progressing exchanges and handing over completed homes.
Since the lock down commenced (four weeks ago) we are encouraged to have taken 212 gross private reservations, resulting in 132 reservations net of cancellations. In addition, we have exchanged on 170 homes and legally completed a total of 193 private sales. Our levels of website traffic and prospects remain strong, an indication of the continued underlying demand.
Our office-based employees will continue to work from home where possible.
Partnerships - We have maintained a low level of activity on a number of our Partnership sites since our previous announcement on the 25th March, and with the support of our clients, expect to be active on c.90% of sites next week. The high level of contracted forward sales within this business provides certainty of the cash realisation from these sites.
The level of new activity remains strong and Partnerships continues to progress a significant number of opportunities, including the recently announced portfolio of transactions with Homes England.
Housing - Our initial focus will be on homes which are watertight and where we have clear visibility of completion and hence cash realisation. Activity levels will commence in a measured way, increasing steadily, and maintaining a tight control on work in progress.
Further actions - The Board has and continues to take prudent decisions to support the business through this period of uncertainty, including measures to protect the Group's cash position and maintain a robust balance sheet. These include the suspension of all discretionary land spend.
We have furloughed the majority of our staff during the period of site closure, and expect this level of furloughed staff to reduce as activity on sites increases. Furloughed employees are receiving 100% of their regular pay until at least the end of May 2020. These staff have been encouraged to support the broader community and many are involved in a wide range of initiatives including sourcing and transporting PPE and other equipment to the front line, joining the NHS National Army and working as on-call firefighters.
In March, all Executive Directors, the wider senior leadership team, the Chairman and the Non-Executive Directors volunteered a 20% reduction in base salary and fees, effective from 1 April 2020.
The Group is utilising this period to accelerate the integration of IT systems across the combined business, to align processes and to progress the delivery of synergies through our commercial and technical teams, which is going well.
Funding and liquidity - The Group remains financially strong. As at 21 April the Group's net debt was below our expectations at £440m (24 March 2020: £435m) with a balance of c. £40m of revenues from work already completed at the end of March expected to be received in the next two weeks.
The Group has committed banking facilities totalling £770m with well spread maturities out to 2027.”
Financial
• AJ Bell – “This quarter was without doubt one of the most dramatic we've witnessed. We had to move quickly to keep our people safe from Covid-19 and comply with the Government lockdown. I'm pleased that we were able to do that effectively whilst remaining open for business as usual during a very busy tax year end period. I'd like to thank our staff for the flexibility and dedication they have shown to ensure our customers have been able to access and manage their investments as usual during the lockdown.
Total customer numbers increased to 262,179, up 22% over the last 12 months and 9% in the quarter, with total net inflows up 30% compared to prior year at £1.3 billion (2019: £1.0 billion).
Total assets under administration (AUA) increased by 1% over the last year, closing at £48.3 billion. AUA fell by 12% in the quarter due to adverse market and other movements. The FTSE All-share was down 26% over the same period.”
• Blackstone – “Further to the announcement made by the Company on 23 March 2020, GSO has conducted a detailed, bottom-up review of all c. 970 companies within its portfolios to determine the potential impact of Covid-19 on the performance of these businesses. GSO focused not only on those sectors that have been directly impacted by Covid-19, including hotels, gaming and leisure, transportation, retail, automotive, and energy, but the entire universe of industries within its portfolios. The results of this exercise have allowed GSO to consider the likely impact on cashflows generated by the Company's investments in directly held CLOs and those held indirectly through
Blackstone / GSO Corporate Funding DAC ("BGCF"). This impact assessment has enabled the Board and GSO to assess the sustainability of the Company's dividend in the short-term. The medium- and long-term impacts of the global pandemic remain uncertain. However, in the short-term, rating agency downgrades and corporate defaults of companies within GSO's portfolios may lead to temporary cash flow diversions away from subordinate note distributions as a result of breaches in interest diversion and/or over-collateralisation ratios within a number of CLOs to which the Company has exposure (through BGCF).
GSO has already taken numerous steps to seek to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on the performance of its portfolios and will continue to monitor the rapidly evolving economic environment to identify risks and opportunities. Despite the near-term economic disruption and resulting dislocation in the global credit markets, GSO believes that these events create good investment opportunities and provide further prospects for BGLF to enhance shareholder value.
Dividend Policy - Taking all of these factors into account, the Board recognises the importance of dividends to its shareholders and seeks to generate attractive and predictable dividend payments. Concurrently, the Board believes it is prudent to adjust its Dividend Policy for the calendar year 2020 pursuant to the comprehensive discussions between the Board and GSO regarding the portfolio review and uncertain near-term outlook.”
• Mortgage Advice Bureau – “The Government imposed lockdown has had the effect of calling a halt on most house purchase transactions, with key elements such as physical viewings and valuations ruled out for the period of the lockdown. Consequently, after the strong start to the year, we have seen a significant reduction in purchase related activity. This has already impacted both Adviser numbers and productivity.
MAB's growth in Adviser numbers started to slow down from early March 2020, as Appointed Representative ("AR") firms temporarily put their recruitment plans on hold. As at 17 April 2020, Adviser numbers were 1,473, including 196 Advisers currently furloughed. The furloughed Advisers relate mostly to ARs that have strong links to estate agencies or the new build sector. Some adviser attrition has also occurred among the lower performing Advisers and it is unlikely any of those advisers will be replaced until the purchase market fully recovers.
As expected, focus and demand has increased in the re-mortgage and product transfer markets, which together represented around 65% of the value of all UK mortgage transactions last year. The MAB team and our ARs have prioritised resources to optimising opportunities in this sector and early results are very encouraging. Re-mortgage opportunities cannot be fully optimised at present due to loan to value restrictions that are currently in place as a result of many lenders experiencing processing capacity issues and the limitations of automated valuations in higher loan to value mortgages, but product transfers have significantly increased in recent weeks. By the time Government restrictions are lifted, our typically purchase focused AR firms will have improved their procedures for servicing existing clients in this sector, and we expect that increased efficiency to be maintained once purchase activity starts to return.
Although we expect protection sales to reduce in line with purchase activity, the escalation of the Coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a heightened awareness of the importance of such products amongst customers. Alongside our realignment of resources to re-mortgage and product transfer transactions, is our immediate opportunity to have a meaningful impact on the lower protection attachment rates seen on non-purchase mortgages. Plans are already in place to ensure the improvements we are seeing are maintained and built upon when advisers become busier again.
All elements of the mortgage and protection advice process can be transacted by telephone. Over the last month or so this has become the only option for our customers. Telephone advice was already a fast-growing area of our business, both through strong growth in specialist telephone advisers, as well as an increasing number of telephone appointments being conducted by traditionally face-to-face advisers. MAB has been providing new guidance and tools to support a seamless transition to telephone advice across our distribution network, ensuring business continuity for advisers and customers across all purchase, product transfer and re-mortgage transactions.”
• Non Standard Finance – “Over the past four weeks, lending volumes have been limited to smaller sized loans to key workers only. Whilst the highly uncertain environment means that we must remain cautious about lending to new customers, we are developing new scorecards and procedures for all three businesses and have already launched a remote lending solution for our home credit business, Loans at Home.
Despite the challenging circumstances, our collections performance has been robust. Collections so far in April at Everyday Loans, our branch-based lending division, are running at above 90% of the comparative pre-lockdown levels in March while at our Guarantor Loans Division, collections are running at slightly below 90%. However, given a large proportion of collections occur nearer to the end of the month, we are continuing to monitor this closely and will be able to update more meaningfully at the time of the 2019 full year results announcement. Both businesses shifted to a remote-working model in late March 2020. At Loans at Home, where, prior to the restrictions the vast majority of collections were made face-to-face, the widespread adoption of a series of remote payment options has meant that collections are currently running at approximately 75% of the expected level.”
Food, Drinks & Household
• Compass Group – “In the last two weeks of March, the business performed in line with the expectations set out in our Coronavirus Trading Update of 17 March 2020. Organic revenue growth for Half Year 2020 was c.1.6%, within the 0%-2% expected range.
Currently around 55% of our business is closed due to country lock downs. The impact of government containment measures varies significantly by sector.
We are proactively mitigating our cost base by around £450m per month by taking a wide range of actions such as:
• Limited use of variable forms of in-unit labour (MAP 4) such as over-time, contractors, and temporary workers
• Redeployed or furloughed much of the fixed element of our in-unit labour (MAP 4)
• Reduced salary, hours or furloughed above-unit overhead (MAP 5) employees
• The Chief Executive has temporarily reduced his salary by 30%, whilst the Group Board and Executive Committee have temporarily reduced their fees and salaries by 25%
The drop through impact of lost revenues on HY operating profit was between 28%-29%, within the anticipated range of 25%-30%.
HY 2020 Cash and net debt - We are working hard to protect our cash flow:
• Net capital expenditure in half year 2020 was around £400m and we expect capex to be lower in the second half of the year
• Mergers & Acquisition activity has been paused
• At 31 March 2020 net debt was around £4.9bn, including a drawdown of c.£200m from our Revolving Credit Facility (RCF), and net debt/ EBITDA was between 1.6x-1.7x.
Liquidity - Since our previous announcement we have taken significant measures to strengthen our liquidity:
• We have put in place an additional RCF3 of £800m with existing relationship banks and now have total committed credit facilities of £2.8bn
• We qualified for the Bank of England's Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF) and drew down £600m in March
• As a precautionary measure, we are in constructive discussions with our US Private Placement investors to obtain a waiver of the covenant tests[5]
• Standard & Poor's reaffirmed our long term (A) and short term (A-1) credit ratings on 24 March and Moody's A3/P-2 long and short term credit ratings remain unchanged
Dividend - We recognise the importance of a dividend to our shareholders. However, we need to balance this with the exceptional circumstances that the Covid-19 pandemic represents. As a result, the Board has decided not to recommend an interim or a final dividend for the year ending 30 September 2020. The Board will keep future dividends under review and will restart payments when it is appropriate to do so.”
• Devro – “Q1 2020 edible collagen volumes increased by c. 2% compared to the prior year, driven by continued execution of growth initiatives and elevated short-term demand relating to Covid-19.
Emerging markets were up 13% led by strong growth in Latin America, Russia and East and South East Asia. Mature markets declined 3% mainly due to ongoing distributor destocking in Continental EU & West and a weaker demand environment during January and February in the UK & Ireland. North America continued to grow.
Our people are working hard to service customers in the food supply chain and all sites are currently operating. We continue to closely monitor Covid-19 developments with the key risks being preserving supply chain continuity and employee well-being, together with the potential for the nature and duration of global containment measures to affect demand. In recent weeks some suppliers have experienced disruption in their end markets. We acted decisively to secure supply, but this has resulted in some raw material inflation, which we are working to mitigate through targeted cost savings.
The Group has also instigated cash mitigation actions in response to Covid-19, including cutting all discretionary capital and operating expenditure. The company is currently not taking advantage of any Covid-19 UK government support schemes.
Financial position - Devro has a strong financial position with substantial liquidity and long-term banking facilities. The Group's debt facilities consist of a committed £105 million Revolving Credit Facility (RCF), which expires in 2023, and US$100 million of private placements expiring in 2021 (US$25 million), 2024 (US$50 million) and 2026 (US$25 million). As of Friday 17 April 2020, the Group had net debt of £130 million, comprising gross debt of £156 million and cash of £26 million. As at the date of this announcement the Group has available liquidity of c. £59 million comprising of cash and undrawn committed facilities.
Dividend - The Board is mindful of the uncertainty as to the potential for future disruption as a result of Covid-19. As a precautionary measure the Board has therefore decided to delay payment of its 2019 final dividend by withdrawing the proposed recommendation to pay a final 2019 dividend of 6.3 pence per share (c.£10.5 million cash cost) from the resolutions being put at the AGM on 30 April. Based on the Board's current knowledge, it intends to pay an additional interim dividend of the same amount in the second half of 2020. The Board will keep this under review as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds.”
• Unilever – “We have been able to maintain the supply of product and we are keeping our factories running through the many unpredictable challenges in local operating environments across our value chain. We are also opening up new capacity where it is most needed, such as in hand hygiene and food.
Demand patterns are changing. As the crisis hits countries around the world, we see upswings in sales of hygiene and in-home food products, combined with some household stocking, and near cessation of out of home consumption which is particularly affecting our food service and ice cream business. We are adapting to new demand patterns and are preparing for lasting changes in consumer behaviour, in each country, as we move out of the crisis and into recovery.”
Healthcare
• Collagen Solutions – “Although the demand and our order book for collagen supply remains strong, the Company faced, and continues to face, challenges from the Covid-19 impact to production, logistics and customer disruption, and capacity constraints and production challenges in the Company's Glasgow plant. Together, these factors contributed to a 34% decline in collagen supply sales in the full financial year.
All three Company sites in Glasgow, Minnesota, and New Zealand remain operational subject to certain reduced on-site staffing and other health and safety restrictions. The Glasgow manufacturing capacity issues have been addressed with an investment of £0.5m for a recently completed expansion of production cleanroom space and equipment, providing an almost doubling of collagen and contract manufacturing capacity once the Company is back up to full staffing after relaxation of current health and safety restrictions and completion of validations.
In addition, several late-stage agreements that the Company reasonably expected to close in March were postponed by customers due to the uncertain business environment or other priorities related to the effects of the pandemic. The Company plans to reengage with these potential customer opportunities as and when business uncertainty reduces.”
• Open Orphan – “Announce[s] that its London-based subsidiary hVIVO has commenced the testing of an anti-viral for treating Covid-19 on behalf of its client Nearmedic International Ltd.”
Industrials
• Aston Martin Lagonda – “Further to the 24 March update on operations, over the past weeks Aston Martin Lagonda has been working closely with employees and trade unions to develop and implement protocols to protect employee health and safety in its production facilities so that they are able to return to work. The Company is now pleased to announce that it intends to reopen its St Athan manufacturing facility on May 5 following Public Health Wales and England guidelines which protect the safety of its people. The Company has also been working closely with its suppliers to secure supply aligned to this timing. Taking the learnings, in terms of health and safety, from reopening St Athan, Gaydon manufacturing operations are planned to resume later.
As part of previously announced mitigation measures in response to Covid-19, Aston Martin Lagonda commenced the process of furloughing employees and has applied for the financial support offered by the Government's 'Job Retention Scheme'. The majority of the Company's workforce is currently furloughed. Those employees who continue to be furloughed from 1 May will receive 80% of their base salaries from then, with the Company topping up the Government's funding for those whose salaries exceed the maximum support level provided by the Scheme.
The Company continues to monitor and regularly review the situation whilst working closely with all its stakeholders including employees, trade unions, the Government, public health authorities and local communities to protect the safety of its people, protect jobs, and protect the business.
Further, senior leadership has agreed to a voluntary reduction in pay. Non-Executive Directors are waiving 35% of their fees and the Chief Executive Officer is waiving 35% of his base salary and, as communicated in the 2019 Annual Report, will not participate in the FY 2020 annual bonus plan. Vice Presidents are waiving 20% of their base salaries. Other members of senior management have also been asked to voluntarily waive 5%-10% of base salary depending on salary level. These changes will be applied retrospectively for a three-month period from 1 April and will be kept under monthly review. In his role as Executive Chairman, Lawrence Stroll has elected to receive a nominal salary only, of £1 per annum.”
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