Koenig & Bauer says it has beaten forecasts for profit margins in 2021 thanks to a combination of returning sales and to the impact of its P24X efficiency programme. This was set up to yield savings of €100 million a year by 2024. In 2021 the company attributes savings of €46 million to the strategy of making better use of its people and production facilities.
In releasing its unaudited figures for the full year, the company says that a target margin of 2.0% was exceeded and that margin was €2.6%. This resulted in a big swing in Ebit earnings, from a loss of €67.9 million in 2020 to a positive €29 million this year. An Ebit contribution of €24 million from the sheetfed division was not matched by the digital and webfed division where the company is still incurring start up and development costs with its inkjet for corrugated packaging machines and the P24X programme continues to carry costs. There is “continued noticeable interest in the innovate solutions for corrugated board and digital printing” it says.
The special products category, including its security presses, showed a better result in the final quarter the company says. It returned an Ebit of €35 million compared to a loss of €31.8 million the year before. A restructuring gain of €18 million helped.
It amounted to incoming revenue of €1,116 million, within the target range of €1,100 – €1,135 million. And with orders amounting to €1,291 million the company is confident of achieving a target turnover of €1.3 billion. The order intake is 19% higher than at the same point in 2020.
The sheetfed operation which is more sensitive to the wider economy than the more project driven sales in packaging and security printing, showed the biggest gain, but was also slowed be wave of omicron infections and the uncertainty this caused. There were also supply chain issues and costs associated with the introduction of the X series press design.
CEO Andreas Pleßke says: “This demonstrates that we have made good progress with our efficiency programme despite the ongoing pandemic situation and a challenging procurement environment. This is our road back to the planned group growth in the medium term.
“To this end, we are focusing on packaging and a portfolio strategy in attractive markets, on synergistic effects in production and on the further development of our service business to improve our customers’ total cost of ownership,
“We are deliberately focusing on the three strategic fields of action in order to become even more sustainable, more digital and more modular.”
Within sheetfed printing, the three sectors of focus are packaging, high volume industrialised print and labels.
