KBA has reported its figures for the third quarter of this year, which show revenues of €252.8m with a net profit of €2.4m for the first nine months of this year. This despite an overall drop in revenue of some 14.2 percent down to €679.7m.
At the end of September group order intake of €859.6m was up 28.5% and order backlog of €597.3m was up 36.6% year-on-year despite the slowdown in the Chinese and other emerging market economies. But exports remained steady at around 85 percent, but with lower sales in Europe and increased sales in North America, as well as Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and Africa.
The Sheetfed Solutions division saw orders of €148.3m for the third quarter, 18.2% than the same period in the previous year, mainly due to new orders from packaging printers.
There’s a mixed picture at the digital and web offset division, with an increase in orders but a drop in actual revenue, down to €63m for the three quarters from €93.8m for the first three quarters of last year. This division posted a loss of €12.2m for the full nine months, though this was a slight improvement on last year’s loss of €12.8m. KBA has blamed this on higher than expected development costs for new digital printing markets. The company expects this to improve in the fourth quarter due to higher revenues and the sizeable reduction in costs resulting from the restructuring and capacity adjustment.
Meanwhile there was a significant increase in the orders for security presses but again the actual revenue was lower than the previous year. According to KBA: “Earnings were dampened by lower sales and the product mix delivered.” Overall the profits in this division fell to €15.6m compared to the prior-year figure of €51.8m which was boosted by high-margin security press projects.
The management reiterated its belief that the company will achieve final year group revenues of over €1bn. The restructuring program should be completed by the end of 2015, with Claus Bolza-Schünemann, president and CEO, commenting: “The optimisation of our product spectrum and the organisation at our sites remain ongoing. Sustainable profitability in all business fields is our highest priority for 2016, also in order to reduce the influence of cyclical and market-driven special effects in security printing on profitability further.”
Leave a Reply