Following a good third quarter, the Koenig & Bauer Group (KBA) came substantially closer to achieving its growth targets for revenue and earnings for 2016. At €869.8 million at the end of the first nine months, the group order intake was 1.2 per cent higher than in the previous year. New orders exceeded group revenue, which rose by 22.3 per cent to €831.4 million, by more than €38 million. The order backlog was valued at €613.3 million at the end of September, up 2.7 per cent on the previous year and is sufficient to ensure the capacity utilisation of the group’s plants until spring 2017.
KBA President and CEO, Claus Bolza-Schünemann, said, “With underlying economic and political conditions still challenging, our heightened focus on the growth markets of packaging and digital printing as well as service business is paying off. Even more encouraging than the substantial revenue growth is the sizeable increase in earnings for the period under review underpinned by the high profit generated in the third quarter. With operating earnings (EBIT) of €39.2 million and earnings before taxes (EBT) of €34.9 million, we were able to substantially outperform the first nine months of the previous year (EBIT of €6.1 million and EBT of €2.1 million). All segments contributed to this performance with positive figures for the quarter and the first nine months.”
The increased profit generated by the Sheetfed segment particularly strengthened the group’s earnings. The Digital & Web segment also made a positive contribution to earnings in the first nine months. The group’s gross profit margin widened from 26.6 per cent in the previous year to 30.4 per cent. Group net profit after tax came to €32.5 million (2015: €2.4m), equivalent to earnings per share of €1.98 (2015: €0.16).
