After a good start to the year in which Koenig & Bauer celebrates its 200th anniversary, the group is able to report favourable business performance in the second quarter of 2017. “The successful trade shows Print China in Beijing, interpack in Düsseldorf and METPACK in Essen contributed to a substantial year-on-year increase in order intake in packaging solutions for board, metal decorating, marking and coding and glass and hollow container printing. Despite this growth and the expansion of service business, the order intake of €601.9m was slightly down on the previous year’s figure of €618.8m, which had been spurred by major security press orders,” explained CEO, Claus Bolza-Schünemann. With group revenue dropping slightly to €538.9m compared with the previous year due to more deliveries in H2, the order backlog remained high at €620.5m.
EBIT came to €16.3m. “The previous year’s figure of €20.7m had been influenced by a strong catch-up effect in Q2 (€4.9m) from the execution of a large security press project and higher revenue,” said CFO Dr Mathias Dähn. The group net profit of €15.2m (2016: €17.2m) is equivalent to proportionate earnings per share of €0.93 (2016: €1.05).
“In addition to the continued expansion of service business, profitable growth will be particularly driven by our existing and new solutions for printing, finishing and postpress processing of packaging as well as our industrial digital printing applications,” explained Dähn.
Read the full report here.
