Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) has announced that it has recorded its best sales and result in the final quarter of their financial year (January1, 2017 to March 31, 2017) since 2008.
The Group has stated an improvement in the net profit after taxes to €36 million from a previous year’s €28 million – based on preliminary figures – thus obtaining the stated objective for the year as a whole of a sustained return to profitability.
“Heidelberg has achieved its targets for 2016/2017 thanks to an excellent final quarter. The net profit after taxes improved once again and we’ve created a solid basis for the company’s further development,” said CEO Rainer Hundsdörfer. “We now need to gear our strategy towards becoming a digital company focused on customer needs. This will also bring the expected growth in sales and a further substantial improvement in profitability in the future,” he added.
Sales after 12 months were slightly up at €2.524 billion from a previous year’s €2.512 billion with the final quarter alone recording a nearly 20 percent increase. The shortfall in the originally planned sales growth for the year due to postponed acquisitions was made up in the final quarter as incoming orders of €2.593 billion bucked the industry trend by being significantly up on the previous year’s level (€2.492 billion).
The free cash flow at the end of the financial year reached a clearly positive value of €24 million from €–32 million in the pervious year. “We’ve significantly increased the free cash flow and further improved our balance sheet quality in reporting year 2016/2017. This lays a firm foundation for the Group to independently finance our transition into the digital world and step up our pursuit of attractive takeover targets. We’ll be announcing some successes in this regard in the near future,” Heidelberg CFO Dirk Kaliebe commented on the developments.