For calendar year 2020 the business posted overall sales down 19.3% at €540.4m (£456m).

Net revenue (statutory sales less paper costs) was €328.9m (2019: €382.3m).

The group slashed €11.8m from its administration expenses, which helped operating profits increase from €3.8m to €7.86m.

Headcount reduced by 422 to 3,180. 

Adjusted EBITDA fell from €56.4m to just under €43m. The pre-tax profit was £758,000. 

Scanlon described it as “a year like no other” with the business exceeding budget in Q1 2020 before the pandemic resulted in many of Walstead’s customers halting or reducing their activity. 

He praised the group’s leadership team and employees for moving at speed to tackle the crisis. 

“Thanks to their insightful decision-making and commitment, together with the astounding efforts and understanding of our employees, we are emerging as a leaner and more adaptable business with the honed skills and capabilities needed to achieve our strategic aims, and, dare I say, to guide Walstead through similar macro-scale upheavals.”

Scanlon said the financial results, with adjusted EBITDA and net debt ending up at 79% and 78% of budget, were “a much better outcome than we had feared and underpinned by a robust balance sheet”.

Group chief executive Paul Utting explained that the fall in UK sales, from €138.6m to just over €93m, reflected the impact of the pandemic on magazine publishers.

“In the UK it’s largely a mix thing. Magazines were more badly affected than retail. There have been a number of magazine closures that will never reopen,” he said. 

“Retail tended to come back, the retail flyer is a very important marketing tool. Publishers and some advertisers definitely haven’t come back.”

Utting said the market remained “challenging”, with some recovery from a volume perspective but “nowhere near 2019 levels”.

“In addition, in the past couple of months we are seeing significant issues around paper, energy, and raw materials price increases.”

The group has been forced to implement a surcharge because of the situation.

“These are issues the whole industry is going to have to face – no one part of the supply chain can act in isolation,” he added.

“We want to mitigate as much as we can, but we can’t mitigate all of it.”

Utting said that while it faced the same pressures across its continental Europe operations, the issues were more acute in the UK. 

“Energy hasn’t gone up as much in Europe as it has done here,” he noted.

In his results commentary, Scanlon also said that Covid-related subsidies and government support had kept some competitors that he had been expecting to fail, afloat.

“Once that support is withdrawn, which is inevitable, we are expecting many of them to depart the market and, in turn, tilt the supply-and-demand balance in our favour.

“Others may become potential opportunities for acquisition. We are always happy to talk,” he stated.

He said that Walstead had used “reasonable and justifiable levels of state support in the countries we operate in”.

Regarding current trading, Scanlon said that Covid-19 was factored in to its 2021 budget, with net revenue up 3% to €161.1m for the first seven months of the year, and adjusted EBITDA up 29% at €26.3m.

“We have been more than usually mindful of our balance sheet at this critical moment, and I am pleased to note that as of 31 July we had cash of €18.8m and undrawn facilities of €52.7m.”