Welcome to our Parliamentary Newsletter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ministry of Defence funding for innovative technology for naval autonomy

 

The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded funding to a Rolls-Royce-led project to further develop and demonstrate Artificial Chief Engineer® technology, which is an autonomous machinery control system which allows naval vessels to undertake long endurance missions with less human interaction.

The technology will be a critical enabler for autonomous missions by acting as the equivalent of the engineering department responsible for the health and the operation of an unmanned vessel’s machinery, in turn reducing operating and procurement costs.

 

The programme is part of a wider Ministry of Defence initiative to de-risk and evaluate technologies to enable revolutionary future concepts that in turn will enhance UK military advantage.

 

Rolls-Royce Full Year financial results for 2020: Decisive and effective actions to address challenging market conditions

 

This morning we published our 2020 Annual Results. 

 

• Severe impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Group performance and near-term outlook
• More than £1bn saved in 2020 from in-year cash mitigations, compared to pre-COVID plans
• Strengthened liquidity to £9bn and protected financial position with £7.3bn of new debt and equity and launched programme to raise at least £2.0bn from disposals
• Strong progress on fundamental restructuring programme; around 7,000 roles removed in 2020
• Targeting free cash flow to turn positive during second half 2021 and at least £750m as early as 2022, dependent on the pace of the recovery in engine flying hours and underpinned by the restructuring programme

 

Warren East, Chief Executive said:

 

“2020 was an unprecedented year and I would like to thank everyone at Rolls-Royce for their hard work, dedication and sacrifice to help secure the Group’s future. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Group was felt most acutely by our Civil Aerospace business. In response, we took immediate actions to address our cost base, launching the largest restructuring in our recent history, consolidating our global manufacturing footprint and delivering significant cost reduction measures. We have taken decisive actions to enhance our financial resilience and permanently improve our operational efficiency, resulting in a regrettable, but unfortunately very necessary, reduction in the size of our workforce. With the support of our stakeholders we successfully secured additional liquidity with a rights issue, bond issuance and further credit facilities put in place during the year. We have made a good start on our programme of disposals and will continue with this in 2021. We continue to invest in developing market-leading technology and low carbon opportunities in all our end markets, to create value for our stakeholders and ensure we are well positioned to take advantage of the transition to a lower carbon economy and growing demand for more sustainable power solutions.”