Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG: Preliminary figures for FY’08

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Save & Share Article

What’s this?

Digg	My Yahoo	Fark
del.icio.us	Newsvine	Reddit

Rate This Article

Rating:  0

fourth quarter in particular due to the effects on the world economy of the financial crisis in the U.S. and customers' reluctance to make investments in the run-up to the all-important drupa trade show.

Preliminary incoming orders in the financial year just closed amounted to EUR 3.649 billion, around 5 percent down on the previous year's figure (previous year: EUR 3.853 billion). Whereas the high volume of orders achieved in the previous year was exceeded in Germany, fears of a recession and further effects of the credit crunch made U.S. customers less ready to invest. Business was also less than satisfactory in the United Kingdom and Japan. On a more positive note, orders were boosted by the recovery in the Chinese market.

The preliminary order backlog at March 31, 2008 was EUR 874 million (previous year: EUR 1.018 billion).

In the period under review, the Heidelberg Group recorded an operating result of EUR 268 million (previous year, adjusted for positive one-time effects: EUR 302 million). This represents an operating return on sales of 7.3 percent (adjusted value for the previous year: 7.9 percent). The previous year's figure was boosted by the sale of Linotype GmbH and the R&D Center in Heidelberg ("sale and lease back").

The preliminary net profit amounted to EUR 142 million (previous year, adjusted for positive one-time effects: EUR 144 million). At EUR 215 million, the free cash flow remains at a high level (previous year: EUR 229 million). Based on sales, Heidelberg was able to reduce the working capital by 1.1 percentage points to 32.5 percent.

"We have once again achieved a good free cash flow in a difficult economic situation. Based on the preliminary figures of financial year 2007/2008 the Management Board intends to propose the Supervisory Board and subsequently the Annual General Meeting a dividend of EUR 0.95, which matches last year's dividend," said Heidelberg CFO Dirk Kaliebe.

Performance in the divisions and regions

In the Press Division (offset printing), preliminary sales were slightly down on the previous year at EUR 3.213 billion (previous year: EUR 3.321 billion). Preliminary incoming orders fell by 5 percent to EUR 3.2 billion (previous year: EUR 3.367 billion). At EUR 239 million, the preliminary operating result for this division was below the previous year's adjusted figure of EUR 254 million.