BUSINESS FIGURES FOR THE FIRST HALF AND THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2015
- Operating earnings up 41% in the first half
- Sales revenues and order intake ahead of budget
New orders rose by 52% to € 419.1 million in China, doubling to € 456.3 million in America. Says Ralf W. Dieter: “Looking further down the road, China will remain the largest market for the automotive industry and for Dürr. Given the market volume achieved, the slower growth rates in vehicles sales do not come as any surprise especially in view of the large absolute figures. Our pipeline is still amply filled with new capex projects in the automotive industry.”
The HOMAG acquisition generated extraordinary effects of € 18.2 million at the EBIT level and € 24.3 million after tax. They largely arose in the first quarter and are mostly related to purchase price allocation and the domination and profit transfer agreement, which came into effect with HOMAG Group AG in March.
At € 2,828.0 million, Dürr had a large mid-year order backlog. Service revenues grew by 65% in the first half of 2015, accounting for 24% of total sales revenues. R&D expense and capital spending came to € 46.2 million and € 36.2 million, respectively, and were up roughly double on the first half of 2014. Net finance expense widened from € 9.1 million to € 17.2 million. It included extraordinary expense in connection with the domination and profit transfer agreement and the integration of HOMAG in Dürr’s less expensive funding structure in the first quarter in particular. At € 5.6 million, net finance expense was substantially lower in the second quarter than in the first three months (€ 11.5 million).
Despite a higher net working capital, cash flow was a positive € 10.9 million in the first half of the year. The net financial status was solid at € 88.7 million. The equity ratio temporarily fell to 20.5% as a result of the domination and profit transfer agreement but should rise again in the second half of the year.
The Group headcount rose by 2.1% over the end of 2014 to 14,448 employees, with new recruiting primarily concentrated in China and the United States. In Germany, Dürr has 7,841 employees, including 3,910 at HOMAG.
The HOMAG Group increased its order receipts by 10.6% to € 557.4 million in the first half of the year, with sales revenues climbing by 17% to € 504.1 million. EBIT rose from € 14.4 million to € 21.0 million – also as a result of weaker extraordinary effects. “The HOMAG Group is growing profitably. Sales revenues and earnings are to continue to rise over the next few years due to the successful commencement of the FOCUS optimization program. The target for 2020 is an EBIT margin of between 8 and 10% on sales revenues of € 1.25 billion,” says Ralph Heuwing, CFO of Dürr AG and Co-CEO of HOMAG Group AG.
Outlook
Dürr confirms its outlook for 2015, expecting order intake of € 3.2 to 3.5 billion and sales revenues of € 3.4 to 3.5 billion. The HOMAG Group projects sales revenues of just under € 1 billion. Dürr anticipates an increase in EBIT in the double-digit millions, accompanied by an EBIT margin after extraordinary effects of 7.0 to 7.5%. This reflects the fact that the HOMAG Group’s operating margin currently falls short of the Group average. The extraordinary effects caused by the acquisition of HOMAG will continue to recede in the second half of the year. In the long term, Dürr’s EBIT margin should return to 8 to 10%, driven by operational optimization efforts within the HOMAG Group as well as the rest of the Dürr Group.
