PRELIMINARY FIGURES FOR 2013
- Sales and order intake targets achieved
- EBIT above € 200 million for the first time
- Strong cash flow permitting investments in future growth
Under a comprehensive capital spending program, Dürr has built or extended 13 facilities. With additional production capacities, the Group has been able to increase the proportion of internally sourced content, thus enhancing reliability and quality. Since 2012, Dürr has opened two new plants in China, where it has more than 1,800 employees. Further facilities have gone into operation in Mexico, South Africa, Thailand and elsewhere. At its headquarters in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Dürr has invested in a further robot assembly hall and new buildings for its Clean Technology Systems division. In addition, several new testing centers around the world have been built and existing ones modernized. This has resulted in substantially greater capacity for customers for optimizing painting processes prior to major series launches and for testing new processes.
Research and development expense rose by 15.6%, hitting a new high of € 43.0 million. Ralf W. Dieter: “Our innovation strategy has a clear goal - to boost the efficiency of our customers’ production processes, for example through greater automation and flexibility and reduced consumption of energy and materials.”
Net finance expense contracted by € 10.8 million to € -18.4 million mainly as a result of the absence of a number of non-recurring items. With the tax rate standing at 23.7%, net profit rose from € 111.4 million to € 140.9 million. Currency-translation effects exerted a relatively small influence, causing losses of around 2% on order intake.
Reflecting the high net profit, equity rose by 18.4% to € 511.4 million as of the end of 2013, with the equity ratio widening from 23.9% to 25.7%. At € 458.5 million, Dürr has copious liquidity, with the net financial status rising to € 280.5 million. The return on capital employed (ROCE) came to 66%, while the cash flow from operating activities climbed to € 329.1 million. CFO Ralph Heuwing: “The return on capital and cash flow have reached excellent levels. However, it should also be borne in mind that we received extraordinarily high prepayments towards the end of the year and that this reporting-date effect will level off in the current year.”
In 2013, the Group workforce increased by 6.4% to 8,142, including 110 employees who joined the Group following the acquisition of environmental technology specialist LTB. Dürr has 3,749 (previous year: 3,412) employees in Germany, accounting for 46% of the Group headcount. The proportion of employees in the emerging markets widened from 33% to 34% (2,771 employees).
OUTLOOK
Dürr remains upbeat about its business outlook. According to forecasts, global automotive production is set to grow by an annual average of just under 5% through 2018. Against this backdrop, Dürr assumes that further additional production capacity will be established in the emerging markets. Rising modernization spending on existing automotive plants can be expected in North America and Western Europe. Assuming that macroeconomic conditions remain stable, the Group projects order intake of between € 2.3 and 2.5 billion and sales of between € 2.4 and 2.5 billion in 2014, accompanied by an EBIT margin of 8.0 to 8.5% once more. This will be underpinned by high capacity utilization and the good quality of the order backlog (December 31, 2013: € 2,150.1 million); at the same time, the proportion of service business in sales is to be widened.
All the above figures are preliminary and unaudited. They have not yet been approved by the Supervisory Board. The annual report for 2013 setting out the final figures and the dividend proposal will be published on March 18, 2014.
