At the end of the 2019/20 financial year on June 30, 2020, the Trumpf Group recorded a decline in sales of 8% to € 3.5 billion (2018/19: € 3.8 billion). Incoming orders fell from EUR 3.7 billion to EUR 3.3 billion. This corresponds to a drop of 11 percent. Trumpf benefited from the high order backlog, meaning that sales were EUR 210 million higher than incoming orders.

At EUR 309 million, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) also declined, depending on sales, and fell by 11.5% compared to the 2018/19 financial year (EUR 349 million). The company achieved a good return on sales of 8.9% overall (previous year: 9.2%) thanks to a reduction in investments and material costs as well as efficiency improvements.

In addition, Trumpf responded to the consequences of coronavirus in spring 2020 with further cost-cutting measures such as the reduction of working time accounts and vacation days, followed by the introduction of short-time work from April and additional cuts in material costs and investments. This also helped to further cushion the decline in returns.

Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, Chairwoman of the Group Management Board of Trumpf: "We have been feeling a slowdown in the global economy since fall 2018. Corona has exacerbated the decline - as a crisis within a crisis. However, our turnover has fallen significantly less than in the mechanical engineering sector as a whole. In addition, we have managed to keep our return on sales almost at the previous year's level thanks to consistent cost management."

Commenting on the outlook for the 2020/21 financial year, which started on July 1, 2020, she says: "In the first three months, the decline in sales and new orders was halted. We are seeing cautious signs of an end to the economic downturn, although not yet an upturn."

After Germany with EUR 610 million in sales, the USA with EUR 490 million and the Netherlands with EUR 480 million, due to the EUV business with ASML, were Trumpf's three largest individual markets worldwide, followed by China with EUR 350 million. In many European core markets such as Italy and Spain, but also in Eastern Europe, sales fell, in some cases by double digits, as a result of the weak global economy and the coronavirus shutdown.

New Smart Factory in Ditzingen

A new smart factory was opened at the headquarters in Ditzingen in October 2020, in which €6 million was invested. There are now 30 networked machines in an area of 5,000^m2. The new Smart Factory is open to customers so that they can get an idea of the efficiency gains in production and new networking solutions. Together with the Smart Factory in Chicago in the USA and in Taicang in China, Trumpf is now represented in all major markets with state-of-the-art factories.