Outlook

We are delivering towards our Winning together: 15 by 20 strategy and continue creating a fit-for-purpose organization for a focused paints and coatings company, contributing to the achievement of our 2020 guidance.

Demand trends differ per region and segment in an uncertain macro-economic environment. Raw material inflation is expected to have a favorable effect on the remainder of 2019. Continued pricing initiatives and cost-saving programs are in place to address the current challenges.

We continue executing our transformation to deliver the previously announced €200 million cost savings by 2020, incurring one-off costs in 2019 and 2020.

We target a leverage ratio of between 1.0-2.0 times net debt/ EBITDA by the end of 2020 and commit to retain a strong investment grade credit rating.

Amsterdam, October 23, 2019
The Board of Management

Thierry Vanlancker
Maarten de Vries

Gaining color confidence from four new digital color tools
We recently introduced four new digital tools to make precise color-matching easier for our customers. Three of them serve our industrial customers and work with the Salcomix system, an on-site facility which enables paint to be mixed on demand with superior color accuracy. They include Salcomix PaintFinder Cloud (with access to more than 600,000 color formulations); the high-end Automatchic Vision measuring device; and the ColorFinder, which works via a dedicated app. The fourth tool, the digital Color Sensor, helps professional painters who use our decorative paints to match their clients’ color choices in seconds. The small portable device scans the color on any object and links to the Color Sensor app to provide an exact paint match.