Record sales
Manz achieves highest sales volume in the company's history
Manz AG, a global high-tech equipment manufacturer, has published its preliminary key financial figures for the 2017 fiscal year. In a year of transition in which numerous measures were introduced and implemented to lead Manz to sustainable profitability, both revenues and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) improved significantly compared to the previous year. Revenue increased by 40.7 % to a record level of 325.0 million euros (previous year: 231.0 million euros), while EBIT improved by 37.5 million euros to 1.6 million euros (previous year: -35.9 million euros), including a special solar effect from the sale of Manz CIGS Technology GmbH. The fourth quarter of 2017 in particular, with a revenue contribution of 132.3 million euros and positive EBIT, reflected the company's positive performance.
Eckhard Hörner-Marass, CEO of Manz AG, comments: "2017 was a challenging year in which we set a number of things in motion to return to sustainable profitability. Through targeted organizational, process and workflow improvements, we were able to continuously increase our competitiveness and profitability. Our 'Manz 2.0' optimization program, which includes various measures to increase productivity - for example by optimizing costs or streamlining the organization - made an important contribution to this. In addition, we have been significantly expanding our product portfolio with standardized individual machines and modules since mid-2017. This will help to expand our customer base and further stabilize our business model. The associated investments have already had an impact in recent weeks in the form of a steady order intake." The standardized individual machines and modules can be intelligently linked to form complete, individual system solutions. This significantly reduces development costs and time and allows varying customer requirements to be met flexibly.
CFO Gunnar Voss von Dahlen adds: "With the developments in 2017, we believe we are on the right path to solid business development in many areas. However, such a far-reaching optimization process is not a sure-fire success. We still have a number of tasks ahead of us that we will solve in 2018 in order to further increase our profitability as planned."
Looking at the segments, operating performance varied in 2017. The Solar segment was largely characterized by the realization of the major CIGS orders. Since the go-ahead was given in mid-2017, the company has been on schedule and the agreed milestones have all been reached. However, as the realization could only start later than expected due to official formalities, sales and earnings contributions were partially postponed to the 2018 financial year, contrary to the original planning. The traditional display business in the Electronics segment developed stably and according to plan. By contrast, the market for systems for the production of end devices such as smartphones and tablet computers fell short of original expectations. In the Energy Storage segment, sales performance did not meet the forecast. This was due to specific projects that, contrary to original planning, were not won or not realized by customers. The Contract Manufacturing segment developed very dynamically. With high demand on the market, the business activities of Talus Manufacturing in particular were expanded as planned. The service business also developed in line with the Executive Board's expectations, although sales were down on the previous year due to shifts in the project mix.
CFO Voss von Dahlen is confident about the future: "Our Group-wide measures to sustainably increase our competitiveness and profitability are taking effect. This is demonstrated by our corporate development: after two loss-making years in 2015 and 2016, we achieved a turnaround in 2017 - we are reporting a positive operating result including the one-off solar effects."
The company will publish the final figures for the 2017 financial year and a detailed forecast for the current financial year with the full 2017 Annual Report on March 29, 2018. kp
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