Bureau Veritas posts Q3 2019 results

October 24, 2019

IIOA member Bureau Veritas has posted its 2019 Q3 results. Headline turnover sees revenue increase at constant currency by 4.7% to 1.271 billion EUR.

Bureau Veritas reports on the Certification business specifically as follows:

‘As expected, the Certification business recorded negative organic growth of (4.8)% in the third quarter of 2019, after the exceptionally high level of activity in 2018 with the end of the three-year standards revision period.

QHSE and Transportation Certification markets declined significantly as a result of the absence of transition man-days. This mainly impacted the countries which are highly dependent on QHSE and Transportation standards, namely Germany, the US, Canada and Japan.

Growth was achieved elsewhere driven by an overall rising customer demand for brand protection and traceability. This results from the need to manage the risks all along the operations in the areas of quality, safety, social responsibility and environment. In particular, high double-digit growth was delivered in Social & Customized audits, Sustainability & CSR and in the Enterprise Risk Management offering (including anti-Bribery, Business Continuity, Cybersecurity and GDPR Data Privacy certification).

New services launched continued to be a contributor to growth. At the end of Q2 2019, the Group launched Circular+, a new approach to Sustainability, built on a comprehensive suite of training, auditing and certification services to help companies transition to a circular business model (increasing focus on reducing energy use, resource consumption and waste generation along the product or service life-cycle). This offering is already getting traction amongst the Group’s customer base.

Lastly, Food certification schemes also continued to grow strongly, mostly driven by organic food products (up high double-digit during the quarter).

Outlook: In 2019, the Certification business is expected to deliver negative organic revenue growth, including a positive organic revenue growth in the last quarter. This reflects: (i) the impact of the QHSE and Transportation transition which ended in September 2018 creating challenging comparables for the first nine months of the year; (ii) solid growth elsewhere primarily driven by Food schemes, Sustainability, Training and Customized audits.’

Full details can be viewed here