GEA Reports Solid Performance in a Challenging Environment

It should be noted that GEA posted a record operating profit margin, not least thanks to various measures to enhance efficiency that have been initiated or are already in place.

At EUR 4,590 million, order intake was above the level of the previous year, while revenue also increased slightly to EUR 4,599 million. The Group posted operating EBITDA (including effects from currency translation and acquisitions) of EUR 621 million, surpassing the previous year s level, while the corresponding margin rose to 13.5 percent. At 10.3 percent of revenue, the cash-flow driver before non-recurring items in 2015 also eclipsed the prior-year figure.

"Thanks to the outstanding commitment of all our employees, we not only managed to extensively restructure the group as a whole in the course of 2015, but also acquitted ourselves well in an increasingly demanding market environment. In addition, we also closed four bolt-on acquisitions with aggregate annual revenue of more than EUR 120 million," explained Jürg Oleas, CEO of GEA. "Striving to make GEA fit for the future, we launched a great many measures with our program Fit for 2020 whose implementation runs according to plan. The transfer of administrative processes to shared service centers in Eastern Europe and East Asia has begun. Furthermore, we ve reached agreements with the employee representative bodies in all important countries, including Germany and France. This allows us to complete the targeted adjustment of staff capacities in these countries. As a consequence, over half of the staff reductions targeted until 2017 was accomplished by the end of 2015."

In the absence of any further weakening of global economic growth, provided that there are no significant exchange-rate fluctuations, and before new 2016 acquisitions as well as one-offs, GEA is aiming in 2016 for moderate revenue growth, an operating EBITDA of between EUR 645 and EUR 715 million and an operating cash-flow driver margin between 10.0 and 11.0 percent. This forecast includes any realized savings from group restructuring.

All figures for financial year 2015 are preliminary and, as such, have yet to be audited. The consolidated financial statements for GEA and the annual financial statements for GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft are being prepared by the Executive Board and have to be approved by the Supervisory Board at the beginning of March. The annual report with the audited consolidated financial statement will be published on the GEA website on March 10, 2016.