Koenig & Bauer has confirmed that, on the basis of its preliminary and as yet unaudited figures, it has fulfilled its own forecast for 2023.
Despite the ongoing challenging global economic environment, which is additionally being exacerbated by a number of factors such as higher energy, material and personnel costs, Group earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) reached €29.9m. This places EBIT within the forecast range of €25m to €35m, which was adjusted on 8 November 2023.
At €1,326.8m, Group revenue is at the upper end of the guidance of €1,300m. In the previous year, revenue amounted to €1,185.7m and EBIT to €22.0m.
Consequently, revenue improved by 11.9% compared to the previous year, while EBIT increased by €7.9m, translating into an increase of 35.9%. The EBIT margin reached 2.3%, compared with 1.9% in the previous year.
The heightened profitability despite the start-up and trailing costs in the Digital & Webfed segment is mainly due to the more efficient handling of inflation-induced additional costs (material, energy and personnel) as well as improved cost management in the third quarter as a result of the absence of any recovery in demand. At the same time, it was possible to largely pass on the higher energy, material and personnel costs, while the temporary increase in the costs of materials subsided again.
In the fourth quarter, Koenig & Bauer was able to remain on the growth trajectory that it had adopted in the first half of 2023, despite a weaker third quarter. In this regard, the final quarter showed its usual strength again, with revenues coming to €435.7m (previous year: €380.0m) and EBIT to €32.0m (previous year: €25.0m). This marked a significant improvement over the same period in the previous year.
Order intake amounted to €1,287.9m at the end of the year, thus falling slightly short of the previous year’s historically high figure of €1,329.3m, as expected. The book-to-bill ratio stood at 1.0 in the fourth quarter, up from the previous year’s figure of 0.8. As planned, the order backlog contracted from €950.4m to €911.5m at the end of the year as a result of the completed deliveries.
