EQS-News

R. STAHL sales and order intake at a high level in the first quarter of 2024 - Seite 2

(-6.2%) and Asia/Pacific (-7.3%) fell. Order intake from the chemical industry in particular slowed compared to the previous year. There was positive momentum from all other customer sectors, however. As a result of the overall good demand in the first three months of 2024, order backlog increased to € 122.0 million as of 31 March (31 December 2023: € 115.1 million).

International regions push 8.5% growth in sales to € 84.7 million

Easing bottlenecks in supply chains led to higher utilization of production capacities in the first quarter of 2024. The key sales drivers included orders from the nuclear sector, shipbuilding and the oil industry. Overall, R. STAHL increased its sales by 8.5% to € 84.7 million from January to March 2024. The main contributors to this increase were the Americas region with growth of 26.4% and the Central region (Africa, Europe not including Germany) with growth of 18.2%. Sales in Germany, on the other hand, declined slightly (-8.1%), while sales in Asia/Pacific remained virtually unchanged (+1.2%).

At € 8.4 million, EBITDA pre exceptionals was below the previous year’s strong figure of € 10.4 million due to high one-time items

Despite an increase in the company's total operating performance, EBITDA pre exceptionals decreased from € 10.4 million in the previous year to € 8.4 million in the period from January to March 2024. This was mainly due to one-time items resulting from the implementation of the EXcelerate strategy program and higher personnel costs, mainly due to collective bargaining agreements. Profitability as measured by the EBITDA margin pre exceptionals decreased from the extraordinarily strong figure of 13.3% in the previous year to 9.9%. Net profit decreased from € 3.9 million to € 2.1 million. This corresponds to earnings per share of € 0.33 (previous year: € 0.60).

The increased volume of business from January to March led to an increase in inventories and thus to an increase in working capital of € -7.4 million. This was, however, below the previous year’s figure of € -15.3 million. This had a positive impact on free cash flow, which at € -4.3 million was € 4.4 million higher than in the previous year (Q1 2023: