German press manufacturing giants Heidelberg and KBA both achieved strong figures in their final and first quarters respectively, bouncing back from years of pain.
Heidelberg’s sales for the final quarter were €845m, an increase of 20 per cent from last year’s figure of €710m. Australian sales played a role, with the local branch selling five presses in the period. Heidelberg Group sales after 12 months were slightly up at €2.524bn (previous year: €2.512bn).
KBA increased its order intake for the first quarter by 21 per cent from the prior corresponding period (PCP) up to €321.5m, including a rise in backlogged orders to €620m. EBIT came to €5m, more than doubling the previous year’s figure of €2.1m. This was a result of double-digit growth in order intake across its Sheetfed, Digital & Web, and Special segments, says KBA.
For Heidelberg, the €85m operating profit (EBITDA before special items) for the fourth quarter was more than 20 percent higher from the prior corresponding period. Special items in the reporting period amounted to some €–18m (previous year: €–21m). Lower interest costs resulted in a further significant improvement in the financial result to €–56m (previous year: €–65m). This led to a net result after taxes of €36m (previous year: €28m). For the final quarter, net profit after taxes climbed from €35m to €46m.
“Heidelberg has achieved its targets for 2016/2017 thanks to an excellent final quarter. The net profit after taxes improved once again and we have created a solid basis for the company’s further development,” says CEO Rainer Hundsdörfer. “We now need to gear our strategy towards becoming a digital company focused on customer needs. This will also bring the expected growth in sales and a further substantial improvement in profitability in the future,” he added.
KBA’s net profit of €4.7m (2016: €1.6m) is equivalent to earnings per share of €0.30 (2016: €0.11). In the Sheetfed segment, more service business and a substantial increase in orders for medium-format presses caused order intake to rise by 12 per cent to €152m. For Digital & Web, order intake is up 18.5 per cent to €57.7m, and while revenue declined slightly to €30.4m, the order backlog rose from €95.5m to €103.5m. The company says the optimisation of KBA-Flexotecnica (–€1.8m), high R&D expenses and the revenue shortfall left traces on the segment earnings of –€2.3m (2016: –€2.6m).
Dr Mathias Dähn, CFO, KBA says, “The clear focus on the growth markets of packaging, industrial and digital printing as well as the group-wide service initiative launched at the beginning of 2016 are increasingly paying off. We were able to widen the share of service business in group revenue from 24 per cent in the previous year to 26 per cent in the first quarter of 2017.
Claus Bolza-Schünemann, CEO, KBA says, “We also made good headway in the packaging markets. Our youngest subsidiary KBA-Iberica Die Cutters, which specialises in flatbed die-cutters, posted growth in order intake, revenue and EBIT.
“At the beginning of May, we presented two product innovations in our packaging printing business with a high-performance printing solution for two-part beverage cans, a market which had previously not been addressed, and the world’s first digital printing press for migration-free metal decorating.”
Both companies say they have met their growth targets, and the results reflect these statements.
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