Group turnover increases by 14% to €215 million
Operating result increases by more than 12% to €45 million
Forecast for entire fiscal year confirmed
Gosheim, 30 August 2018 – Maschinenfabrik Berthold Hermle AG was able to continue to expand its business in the first half of 2018. The incoming orders of the Swabian machine tool manufacturer saw a group-wide growths by 22.4% to €248.7 million compared to the same period of the previous year (2017: 203.2). Hermle was not only able to benefit from the extraordinarily good economic circumstances, but especially from its successful product innovations in the fields of automation and digitalisation as well as the new C 650 machining centre. During the first six months the company received by 41.1% more new domestic orders amounting to €112.6 million (2017: 79.8); orders from other countries increased by 10.3% to €136.1 million (2017: 123.4). The order backlog went up to €158.8 million by the end of June 2018 compared to €108.9 million at the same reporting date in 2017, and €125.0 million at the end of 2017.
The turnover of Hermle Group increased by 14.3% from January to the end of June to €214.9 million (2017: 188.0). The company's domestic volume rose by 2.2% to €83.6 million (2017: €81.8 mil-lion) and international sales rose by 23.6% to €131.3 million (2017: €106.2 million). The EBIT saw a group-wide growth by 12.6% to €45.2 million compared to the same period of the previous year (2017: 40.2) due to the additional turnover and excellent capacity utilisation. The increase in EBIT was slightly lower than the one in turnover due to the unexpected sharp rise in prices of some raw materials, tariff increases, and the weak US-Dollar exchange rate. A positive non-sustainable one-time effect of €4.9 million resulted from the revaluation required for IFRS accounting purposes of the shares in subsidiary Hermle Leibinger Systemtechnik GmbH (HLS) specialising in automation systems. As reported, Hermle AG in-creased its shares at the beginning of 2018 from 49% to 100%. This caused the result from ordinary business activities to rise to €50.2 million (2017: €40.3 million) and net profit after taxes for half of the year to €37.9 million (2017: €29.7 million).
Hermle Group's financial and assets position also continued to be very sound as per the first half of 2018: The equity capital on the Group's balance sheet was 70.0% on the reporting date (Dec. 31, 2017: 71.8) with the liquid funds amounting to €140.9 million (Dec. 31, 2017: 103.4).
The investment in Hermle Group's property, plant and equipment as well as intangible assets slightly normalised compared with the prior half year at €5.2 million (2017: €9.5 million) after completion of the two large-scale projects at the head office and at the new location in Zimmern ob Rottweil. The focuses were on sheet metal production and acquisition of a Hermle machining centre for the training workshop in addition to some subsequent measures such as installation of a new pallet station for the machining workshop. The acquisition of the remaining shares of HLS resulted in financial investments amounting to €2.8 million (2017: 0).
On 30 June 2018 Hermle employed 1,212 employees all over the group including 93 employees of HLS (2017: 1,035). The formerly 82 employees of HLS had not been included in the figure at the prior-year balance sheet date. Amongst others there were new hires at the Zimmern location, in the service department, and at the US subsidiary. Also and especially in the assembly workshop train-ees were awarded an employment contract on successful comple-tion of their training. This caused the number of trainees to go down from 84 to 70 young people on balance sheet date.
In the first six months Hermle's business as a whole was at the up-per end of expectations with the company assuming that the ma-chine tool sector was in a cyclical economic high which is about to decrease later in the year. Based on its high order backlog, Hermle is still expecting continued growth in sales and operating result (EBIT) in the middle to upper percentage range during the entire fiscal year 2018. The increase in EBIT is expected to be slightly lower than the one of turnover due to price increases on the pro-curement markets, tariff increases and the US-Dollar exchange rate which continued to be weak in the first six months at least. If the currently very strong demand continues, the upper end of the expected results or a slightly better progress could be achieved.
Press contact: Redaktionsbüro tik GmbH, Gabriele Rechinger,
T 0911 95 97 870, E-Mail: info@tik-online.de
Image material: Maschinenfabrik Berthold Hermle AG, Udo Hipp,
T 07426 95 6238, E-Mail: udo.hipp@hermle.de
