Following a good third quarter, the Koeing & Bauer Group (KBA) came substantially closer to achieving its growth targets for revenue and earnings for 2016. At €869.8m at the end of the first nine months, the group order intake was 1.2% higher than in the strong previous year.
A release made available to Journalists quoted that new orders exceeded group revenue, which rose by 22.3% to €831.4m, by more than €38m. The order backlog was valued at €613.3m at the end of September, up 2.7% on the previous year, and is sufficient to ensure the capacity utilization of the group’s plants until spring 2017.
According to KBA President and CEO Claus Bolza-Schünemann, “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 €39.2m and earnings before taxes (EBT) of €34.9m, we were able to substantially outperform the first nine months of the previous year (EBIT of €6.1m and EBT of €2.1m). 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% in the previous year to 30.4%. Group net profit after tax came to €32.5m (2015: €2.4m), equivalent to earnings per share of €1.98 (2015: €0.16).
