Koenig & Bauer AG
Koenig & Bauer AG: Slow demand for big press lines mars fine performance
KOENIG & BAUER AG / AGM/EGM Release of an Ad hoc announcement according to § 15 WpHG, transmitted by DGAP - a company of EquityStory AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- At the 82nd AGM of German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA), group president and CEO Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann reaffirmed his March projections for 2007 of group sales totalling €1.7bn and a pre-tax profit on a similar scale to last year’s €47.4m. Although investment in big newspaper and gravure press lines has been slow for the past year, buoyant demand for sheetfed and special presses meant that the volume of orders for the first five months of 2007 was a good €70m up on the prior-year figure. Sales were also higher, and KBA projects a rise in sales and a profit in the first half-year, figures for which will be published on 14 August. While KBA’s sheetfed division has enough orders to keep it busy until well into the fourth quarter, a year-on-year drop in the order backlog for newspaper and gravure presses, due in part to higher shipments, will cause capacity fluctuations in the second half-year at the group’s web press production plants. Because of the long lead times for web presses, recent contracts for newspaper and commercial presses will have no immediate impact on manufacturing and assembly levels. Having reduced the volume of work outsourced, downsized the temporary labour force and rescheduled internal manufacturing jobs, KBA is planning to introduce short-time work in certain departments from 1 July. The costs associated with this cut in capacity utilisation have already been factored into the earnings forecast for 2007. Says Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann: 'Among newspaper publishers, investment in new kit has been hit by demographic trends in many developed economies and by the fact that daily titles in Europe and North America have now largely completed conversion to full colour. It is too soon to tell whether this is cyclic, like the downturn six years ago, a temporary phenomenon as the media industry absorbs ongoing changes in the market, or a permanent and irreversible trend. If the last hypothesis is correct we shall be obliged to trim our web press operations and focus on core components.' He was unwilling to be more specific. DGAP 19.06.2007 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Language: English Issuer: KOENIG & BAUER AG Friedrich-Koenig Straße 4 97080 Würzburg Deutschland Phone: +49 (0)931 909-4835 Fax: +49 (0)931 909-6015 E-mail: bernd.heusinger@kba-print.de www: www.kba-print.de ISIN: DE0007193500 WKN: 719350 Indices: SDAX Listed: Amtlicher Markt in Frankfurt (Prime Standard), München; Freiverkehr in Berlin-Bremen, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Stuttgart End of News DGAP News-Service ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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