Rolls-Royce restructures
Following the announcement in January that we will simplify the Group into three customer-focused business units, this proposed restructuring will create smaller and more cost effective corporate and support functions and reduce management layers and complexity, including within engineering. It follows a comprehensive review of its structure, culture, processes and people with a view to creating a much simpler, healthier and dynamic organisation with clearer accountabilities, greater productivity and quicker decision-making.
Over the next 24 months, it expects the proposed restructuring will lead to the reduction of around 4,600 roles, predominantly in the UK where the majority of its corporate and support functions are based. Around a third of these roles are expected to leave by the end of 2018. The programme is expected to gain further momentum through 2019, with full implementation of headcount reductions and structural changes by mid-2020.
Chief Executive Warren East said: “Our world-leading technology gives Rolls-Royce the potential to generate significant profitable growth. The creation of a more streamlined organisation with pace and simplicity at its heart will enable us to deliver on that promise, generating higher returns while being able to invest for the future.
“We have made progress in improving our day-to-day operations and strengthening our leadership and are now turning to reduce the complexity that often slows us down and leads to duplication of effort. It is never an easy decision to reduce our workforce but we must create a commercial organisation that is as world-leading as our technologies. To do this we are fundamentally changing how we work.
“These changes will help us deliver over the mid and longer-term a level of free cash flow well beyond our near-term ambition of around £1bn by around 2020. After a decade of significant investment we are committed to delivering improved returns while continuing to invest in the innovation needed to realise our long-term aspiration to be the world’s leading industrial technology company.”
Rolls-Royce has traditionally operated with overlapping activities between individual business units and a large corporate centre. It states it will: 'shift our centre of gravity much closer to our customers and make our three customer-facing business units fully accountable for the delivery of their strategic and financial targets. In turn, the business units will be in control of the support they need. We will be significantly reducing the size of our corporate centre to remove the complexity and duplication. A traditionally heavily centralised control culture will be replaced by empowered businesses, in a simpler, leaner structure with much clearer accountabilities. This will foster quicker decision-making throughout the organisation'.
The company has invested significantly over the past decade to build a commanding position in its core growth market of civil aerospace. Since 2010, it's invested over £11 billion in cutting-edge research and development, world-class factories and modern facilities.
It launched six new civil engines including the world’s fastest-ever selling civil large engine, the Trent XWB and most recently the Pearl 15 for the business aviation market. It has amassed orders for over 2,700 aero engines for wide-body aircraft and business jets and is currently undertaking its biggest ever increase in large engine production, targeting over 600 wide-body engines a year by the end of this decade. As a result of innovation and investment, it is set to become the world-leader in large aircraft engines, powering over half of the world’s passenger wide-body fleet within the next few years, compared to 22% just 10 years ago.
We will create an organisation that will better enable us to maximise the economic value of these past investments, realise the growth potential embedded in our business and seize the opportunities we see across all our markets. We will continue to also pursue disciplined investment in our technologies, including in newer areas such as electrification and digitalisation.
During the restructuring process, it does not anticipate any reduction in the skills and capabilities required to support its current programmes. It says it will: 'continue to support our current ramp-up in Civil Aerospace engine production and will remain focused on our management of the current in-service issues with the Trent 1000. We will honour previous commitments for no compulsory redundancies of represented staff. This includes those commitments made in Derby, Hucknall and Annesley which enabled last year’s £150m investment in new and existing Civil Aerospace facilities'.
The total cash cost of the restructuring is expected to be £500m which includes the cost of redundancies and required systems investments to facilitate the programme. These cash costs will be incurred across 2018, 2019 and 2020 and, given the one-off nature of the restructuring programme, these will be reported below group underlying free cash flow (FCF). Full year net cost savings from this restructuring are expected to reach a run rate of £400m per annum by the end of 2020.
Current trading remains in-line with the full year expectations it set out at the time of its 2017 results in March. Despite the already announced incremental costs associated with further recent Trent 1000 in-service issues, the mitigating actions it continues to take across the group, means it's confident that its FY18 guidance for Group FCF of around £450m +/- £100m remains unchanged.
Rolls-Royce will hold a Capital Markets Event tomorrow for financial analysts and investors at which it will be providing further details of the restructuring, including how it intends to streamline support and management functions to create a more focused and leaner organisation. It will also provide details on Group KPIs, it capital allocation strategy and a detailed review of Power Systems and its outlook.
ADS Chief Executive Paul Everitt said: “Rolls Royce is an important part of the aerospace and defence sectors that employ hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and make a major contribution to prosperity in every part of the country.
"The proposed restructuring announced today will be unsettling for those affected and it is important for the company, unions and Government to work together to make sure that vital skills are not lost to UK industry as a result of any job losses.
“The global aerospace sector is growing to meet rising international demand and the UK has an opportunity to continue to grow and strengthen both its aerospace and defence sectors, if we maximise our competitiveness and productivity.
"Industry and Government are working closely together on aerospace and defence industry strategies and we look forward to continue developing our partnership to support the creation and retention of high value jobs in these sectors.”
