Rolls-Royce Pretax Loss Narrowed on Rising Revenue; Expects Cash Boost in 2020

By Adriano Marchese

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC said Friday that its pretax loss narrowed and underlying operating profit rose in 2019, benefiting from higher revenue in the year.

The engineering company said its pretax loss was 891 million pounds ($1.15 billion) in the year, compared with a loss of GBP2.95 billion in 2018.

Underlying operating profit--the company's preferred metric which excludes exceptional costs--was GBP808 million, up from GBP616 million. Revenue in the year was GBP16.59 billion, up from GBP15.73 billion.

The Trent 1000 program had an exceptional charge of GBP1.36 billion, driving a reported operating loss to GBP852 million, from a loss of GBP1.16 billion the prior year.

The company said the rollout of technical fixes for Trent 1000 is progressing well, with further measures under way to reduce customer disruption.

"The outbreak of coronavirus represents a macro risk and is likely to have an impact on air traffic growth in the near term; however long term growth trends remain intact," the company said.

Looking ahead to 2020, core operating profit growth is expected to be around 15%, with at least GBP1 billion of free cash in 2020. Underlying free cash flow was GBP873 million in 2019.

Write to Adriano Marchese at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 28, 2020 02:51 ET (07:51 GMT)

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