Koenig & Bauer AG Reports Good Start to the 2011 Business Year

Highlights:

• Order intake up 37.4 percent
• Group sales up 20.7 percent
• Order backlog 40 percent higher
• Huge improvement on the prior-year earnings
• Strong cash flow, high liquidity
• Sales and profit projections for 2011 reaffirmed

The group order intake climbed 37.4 percent to €432.1m (2010: €314.4m), with brisk demand for niche products driving up the volume of contracts awarded for KBA’s web and special presses by 42.8 percent to €290.6m. But orders for newspaper and commercial presses stagnated in the wake of structural changes wrought by the spread of e-media. Business was better in the sheetfed sector, where the internet has had less of an impact and packaging printing has helped to fuel growth. The influx of new orders for sheetfed offset presses swelled by 27.6 percent to €141.5m. The group order backlog of €619.6m was over 40 percent bigger than at the end of last year, with web and special presses contributing €441.4m and sheetfed presses €178.2m.