The technotrans Group's total revenue reached €90.7m for the past financial year, a drop of 6.8 per cent on the previous year’s €97.3m.
As expected, profitability improved in the second half along with the increased volume of business. Overall, EBIT for the 2012 financial year reached €5.4m, compared with €4.8m in the previous year, up by 11.9 per cent.
Henry Brickenkamp, spokesperson of the Board of Management of technotrans AG says, “The printing industry’s return to normal in the second half was slightly below par compared with what would be expected in a drupa year, in addition the weak economic data for the final quarter contributed here. Nevertheless, technotrans had a generally much better second half, which was sufficient to compensate at least in part for the first half’s fall in business.”
The company’s net profit for the 2012 financial year is €3.1m, equivalent to a rate of return of 3.4 per cent (previous year 3.1 per cent). Board of Management and the Supervisory Board will propose to the Shareholders' Meeting in May 2013 that a dividend of €0.12 per share outstanding be distributed. After a break of four years, technotrans thus resumes its common practice of enabling the shareholders to participate in the company’s success.
Dirk Engel, financial director of technotrans AG says, “Our goal is to return to the pattern of distributing 50 percent of the consolidated net profit, provided no current investment requirements or major acquisitions stand in the way of using financial resources in this way.“
The company has appointed a serial supplier to Sauer GmbH, part of the Gildemeister Group, for cooling lubricant preparation in the shape of the toolsmart at the start of the year; and this success was followed up by securing a leading supplier of machinery and systems for the manufacture and processing of flexible packaging as a development partner. At the Euroblech, technotrans also gave its self-developed spray lubrication process for forming technology applications its first public showing. A number of installations in the metal processing industry have already impressively demonstrated the system’s superiority to conventional solutions. Last but not least, we have gained a foothold in the area of e-mobility in securing the development contract from Siemens for a cooling system for advanced tram systems. All these highly promising projects will contribute to the company’s growth over the next years and provide sound reasons to believe that technotrans will become less dependent on both the business cycle and on the structural problems being experienced by the printing industry.
The fall in revenue for the 2012 financial year affected the Technology segment. Revenue for the segment was €53.7m (previous year €61.7m), a decrease of 12.9 per cent. Orders from printing press manufacturers generated by the drupa were sufficient to restore its business volume to almost normal levels in the second half of the year.
The fall in revenue naturally had an impact on the segment’s profitability. Despite appropriate measures such as the introduction of short-time, earnings were negative by around €1.1m mid-way through the year.
The Services segment again made good progress in the 2012 financial year. Revenue rose by 3.8 per cent to €36.9m (previous year €35.6m). The subsidiary gds AG, which provides services and software in the sphere of technical documentation, was a major contributor to this positive development. As well as realising its plans for organic growth, it acquired a majority interest in Sprachenwelt GmbH with effect from September 1, 2012, through which it has now added translations to its portfolio of services.
The company says activities outside the printing industry will again deliver substantial growth in 2013, both from organic effects and as a result of acquisitions. The main contributor will be KLH Kältetechnik. KLH generated revenue of more than €15m in the past financial year and is expect at least to maintain that level in 2013, even amid an uncertain economic environment. KLH is a supplier of industrial cooling systems for use mainly in the laser industry, but also in the machine tool industry and in medical technology. Now that the various different performance categories have been brought together under one roof (low cooling performance from Termotek, medium cooling performance from technotrans, high cooling performance from KLH) the technotrans Group is a full-liner able to offer its customers the right product for every application.
The number of employees in the technotrans Group increased from 637 to 662 in the course of 2012.
