BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct.25
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Net working capital of ABB amounted to $2,920 million in Q3 2021, declining both year-on-year from $3,236 million and sequentially from $3,251 million, Trend reports with reference to the company.
“The sequential decline was primarily driven by receivables, partially offset by a slight increase in inventories and lower other accrued liabilities. Net working capital as a percentage of revenues1 was 10.2 percent. Purchases of property, plant and equipment and intangible assets amounted to $166 million. Net debt Net debt1 totalled $1,898 million, representing an increase from last year’s net cash position of $935 million which reflected the timing of the divestment of Power Grids. Sequentially, net debt was reduced from $2,259 million. The sequential decrease primarily reflects the impacts of strong cash flow in the third quarter. The net debt to EBITDA ratio1 increased year-on-year to 0.5 from -0.4, and declined sequentially from 0.7,” the company said in its recent report.
Cash flow from operating activities in continuing operations was $1,119 million, a significant improvement of $721 million compared with the corresponding period last year. “Three out of four business areas increased cash flow primarily from improved earnings. However, the largest year-on-year effect came from Corporate and Other, reflecting the payments in 2020 related to certain pension plan restructurings in connection with the optimization of our capital structure.”
The previously announced follow-up share buyback program of up to $4.3 billion was launched in early April. This follow-up program is part of the plan to return $7.8 billion of cash proceeds from the Power Grids divestment to shareholders. Under the initial program a total of 128,620,589 shares were repurchased for an amount of approximately $3.5 billion. Since the launch of the follow-up program on April 9 and through the end of the quarter a total of 25,842,600 shares were repurchased, including 10,908,500 shares in the third quarter. Shares were repurchased on the second trading line. The total number of ABB Ltd’s issued shares is 2,053,148,264.
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