German press maker Koenig & Bauer Group (KBA) announced its Q1 financial results ended with 46% more revenue and EBT was up €18 million, reaching €0.6 million, relative to the same quarter last year.
The company also explains its order intake of €266.3 million was higher than its quarterly revenue of €258.8 million, while “an order backlog of €582.4 million secures utilization well into autumn.”
At €258.8 million, group revenue in the first quarter was up 46% on the prior-year figure of €177.3 million. All three KBA segments posted gains in sales, with new presses for packaging printing climbing to over 70% of the total. The press maker’s order backlog at the end of March stood at €582.4 million, an increase on the figure from the start of the year of €574.9 million.
“Numerous optimisation measures are taking effect as planned. This quarter we thus improved earnings by over €18 million to +€2.1 million EBIT or +€0.6 million EBT year-on-year,” said KBA President and CEO Claus Bolza-Schünemann.
The group’s gross profit margin rose from 20.6% to 29.8%. EBIT this quarter came to +€2.1 million. In the first quarter of 2015, there was still a loss of €16.2 million. A slightly negative interest result of –€1.5 million led to a group pre-tax profit this quarter of €0.6 million compared to –€17.7 million the previous year. After deducting income tax expenses, group net profit at March 31 was €1.6 million (2015: –€16.9 million). This corresponds to earnings per share of €0.11 (2015: –€1.01).
KBA states its largest segment, Sheetfed, is still on the right track with a 41% rise in revenue, a quarterly profit of €5.7 million (2015: –€2.7 million) and a high order backlog of €264 million. In the run-up to the industry’s leading trade show, drupa, beginning at the end of May and given longer lead times, KBA explains incoming orders of €135.7 million in this segment were below the unusually high order intake of €174.7 million in the first quarter of 2015 as expected.
The volume of new orders in KBA’s Digital & Web segment rose by 23% year-on-year and revenue more than doubled to €27.9 million. KBA explains the segment loss of –€1.8 million improved compared to 12 months ago (2015: –€8.7 million). The KBA management board expects positive earnings for the entire year given the growth in order backlog to €77 million.
At €115.1 million (2015: €117.4 million) the volume of incoming orders in KBA’s Special segment was roughly the same as the previous year’s figure (2015: €117.4 million). Revenue grew by some 40% to €88.6 million. At €0.2 million, the quarterly profit was below the prior year (€1.2 million), whereby KBA explains the project execution of a security press order led to delays impacting on profit. KBA states earnings are expected to improve further over the coming quarters as planned given the strong order backlog.
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