KBA Reports 46% Q1 Revenue Increase

This year started well for the Koenig & Bauer Group (KBA). At €258.8m group revenue in the first quarter was up 46% on the prior-year figure of €177.3 million. All three segments posted considerable gains in sales, with new presses for growth market packaging printing climbing to over 70% of the total.
 
Incoming orders of €266.3 million were slightly higher than revenue this quarter. Accordingly, 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.
Continuing solid capacity utilization at the group’s sites, cost savings from the group realignment, price adjustments and structural changes to the product portfolio have a positive impact on earnings.
 
“Numerous optimization measures are taking effect as planned,” noted KBA president and CEO Claus Bolza-Schünemann. “This quarter we thus improved earnings by over €18 million to +€2.1 million (EBIT) or +€0.6 million (EBT) year-on-year.”
 
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.
 
Cash flows from operating activities in the first quarter were clearly positive at €15.4 million (2015: –€29.3 million) as was the free cash flow at €11.3 million compared to –€31.1 million the year before.
 
The KBA Group’s 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.
 
The volume of new orders in the Digital & Web segment rose by 23% year-on-year and revenue more than doubled to €27.9 million. The segment loss of –€1.8 million improved greatly compared to twelve months ago (2015: –€8.7 million).
 
 
At €115.1 million (2015: €117.4 million) the volume of incoming orders in the 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.
 
“Despite economic problems in key sales markets I remain confident that group revenue will rise to around €1.1bn in 2016 and that we will achieve the EBT margin of 3 to 4% announced,” said Bolza-Schünemann.
 
After the realignment is complete, the KBA management board will focus again on generating growth in existing and new packaging markets, on industrial applications in digital web printing and expanding the service business.