Koenig & Bauer said it is on a growth trajectory despite the turbulent economic environment, reporting a revenue rise driven by a strong third quarter, but a net loss of €11 million.
The company said it has seen group revenue rise by 6.7 per cent year-on-year to €313.9 million between July and September 2022. Sequentially, it said its growth was even stronger, with revenue climbing by 31.7 per cent compared to Q1 and by 23.9 per cent compared to Q2.
In terms of earnings, Koenig & Bauer achieved an EBIT of €10.8 million in the third quarter (previous year: €10.3 million). It added that the sheetfed and digital and webfed segments, in particular, contributed to this performance with their product and solution offerings.
At €805.7 million, its cumulative group revenue exceeded the previous year’s figure by 2.3 per cent. The share of revenue attributable to service business widened to 32.2 per cent from 29.9 per cent the previous year.
However, after income taxes, the group posted a net loss of €11.0 million as of 30 September (previous year: net profit of €5.5 million) as a result of its operating earnings rising by €1.6 million.
“The improvement at the operating level over the first nine months of 2021 is mainly due to the P24x efficiency programme (roughly €24 million) despite the lower use of short-time work in the previous year, positive volume and mix effects (roughly €5 million) and other negative effects (roughly €13 million),” the company said.
“The effects of higher cost of materials and energy (around €24 million) were not fully offset by the announced price increases (roughly €18 million). This is primarily due to the time lag between price increases and price peaks in the third quarter, for example in energy costs and electronic components.”
In addition to remeasured receivables and currency-translation effects, they also include necessary additional or retro work on systems and presses due to supply chain disruptions and exert strain on productivity at the plants and on site at the customers.
Koenig & Bauer CEO Dr Andreas Pleßke said the company, like many manufacturing companies, it is still caught between high order backlogs on the one hand and many adverse factors mainly on the supply side on the other.
“Our flexibility and creativity – including in conjunction with our suppliers – are having an impact, as we have learned to deal more effectively with the exceptional situation over the past few months,” Pleßke said, commenting on the growth in revenue and earnings, adding that “following the strong order intake in the first half of 2022, customer demand is still very solid and we are pleased to be able to tap new areas of business with the latest digital and sustainable solutions, thus offering our customers added value”.
The company has also announced that it has opened new business areas with digital and sustainable solutions.
The new cross-group digital unit, headed by Sandra Wagner, vice-president of digitalisation at Koenig & Bauer, coordinates and supports the development, implementation and market launch of digital products and services – from the seed idea through to market launch.
“We are focusing on our customers, supporting them with digital solutions wherever they can become even more profitable,” Wagner said.
At the beginning of October, the digital unit launched an industry-specific solution for integrated energy management, a digital product that combines the two “sustainability” and “digital” components of the “Exceeding Print” corporate strategy.
The three components of the energy management product – the automated collection of measurement data, the visualisation of the results and the definition of measures on this basis, combined with professional energy consulting – enable more efficient production to be achieved, according to the company.
Koenig & Bauer said the VisuEnergy X solution allows sustainable energy savings of an average of seven to 10 per cent to be achieved from the very first year.
Koenig & Bauer sells energy management on a subscription basis as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. The market launch is commencing with immediate effect in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in a preliminary step and will be followed by a global roll-out in early 2023.
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