The company also revealed that 7,000 people have left the business in 2020, the majority of who took voluntary redundancy, and it is aiming to shed 2,000 more jobs by the end of 2022 as part of a restructuring programme, as it looks to save a further £1.3billion in costs. Around two-thirds of the job cuts are expected to affect British-based workers.
The group has raised £7.3billion to survive the pandemic by tapping shareholders and borrowing from the Bank of England, and said it has plans to generate a further £2billion by selling off certain parts of its business.
Chief executive Warren East 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."
