Invacare Corp.’s March 8 announcement of its fourth-quarter financial results for 2021 included additional information on where the manufacturer goes from here.
Matt Monaghan — Invacare’s Chairman, President and CEO — said in the Q4 report that the company “ended the year sustaining strong new order intake and growing customer interest in our leading portfolio of products. We continue to manage this demand and to take actions to mitigate against higher input costs and longer supply lead times.”
Monaghan said Invacare anticipates “sustained customer demand and persistent supply chain challenges” for 2022 and said in response, “We are taking strategic actions which by the end of the year will position Invacare for durable, long-term success.”
He pointed out that in December, Invacare brought its European and Asia-Pacific businesses together under one leader. In 2022, he added, “We expect further actions to optimize our product portfolio, shift where and how products are made and distributed, align staff and how staff are organized, and implement working capital improvements to enhance free cash flow while strengthening the balance sheet. We anticipate these actions will drive sequential quarterly improvements for the final three quarters of the year with the majority of the restructuring benefits occurring in the second half of 2022.”
Monaghan said Invacare’s new enterprise resource planning system “drives cost savings and simplifies how we do business and support our customers.” The new system, he added, is “operating as expected, with more customers using online ordering and customer service functions than with the previous system, giving us great confidence that we and our customers will benefit from this strategic investment.”
Going forward, he noted that “narrowing our product offering and additional restructuring actions” would result in a “favorable product mix, improved profitability, and free cash flow in 2022 and build long-term shareholder value.”
As part of the meeting, Invacare reported a 1-percent increase in net sales (to $226.2 million) in the fourth quarter of 2021 versus the fourth quarter of 2020.
