With "well-filled" order books, KBA says it is getting closer to achieving positive financial results in all its business segments.

Preseting results for the second quarter of 2015, it said the 607.5 million Euros order intake was up by almost a third on last year, although the 426.9 million Euros sales were still behind the one billion Euros annual target.

President and CEO Claus Bolza-Schünemann said that although its cost base has been substantially reduced by the Fit@All programme, the lag in sales impacted on earnings" "Group profit before taxes of 6.9 million Euros in the second quarter led to an improvement in our EBT from -17.7 million Euros after three months to -10.8 million Euros mid-year.

"We are particularly pleased with the major improvements in earnings in sheetfed and digital & web (divisions). Despite this half-time shortfall, with catching-up in mind we continue to target an EBT margin of up to two per cent of sales for 2015."

After tax deductions, group results were -9.3 million Euros (2014: -3.4 million Euros). This corresponds to earnings per share of -0.55 Euros compared to -0.20 Euros in 2014.

The Sheetfed Solutions segment was particularly successful in the first half of 2015 with order intake up 40.3 per cent on the previous, predominantly a result of strong demand from the packaging sector.

New contracts for digital and newspaper presses drove order intake in the Digital & Web Solutions segment up from 45.6 million Euros in 2014 to 69.2 million Euros. Given low order backlog at the start of the year, at 36.7 million Euros revenue remained significantly below the previous year's figure of 71.3m. In contrast, order backlog of €83.4 million Euros at the end of the second quarter stood well above the corresponding figure from 2014 (69.1 million Euros). The segment posted a loss of €8.9m for the first half-year (2014: -11.5 million Euros). With a segment loss of 0.2 million Euros in the second quarter the turnaround was almost achieved due to the improved order situation and capacity utilisation. Earnings are expected to improve gradually in the following quarters triggered by higher sales and more effective savings.

Along with growing success in the relatively young field of flexible packaging, more orders for metal-decorating, security printing and coding systems boosted the total volume of incoming orders in the Special Solutions segment by 21% to 199 million Euros.

Exports grew as a proportion of total sales, thanks to US sheetfed offset and flexo press sales, and an increase from 24.3 per cent to 29.3 per cent in Asia and the Pacific

Bolza-Schünemann says the economic and political environment for the export-driven engineering industry remains volatile. "Nevertheless, the KBA group kicks off the second half-year with considerably fuller order books and capacities than in 2014. Completing the raft of existing orders on time poses a substantial challenge. This is especially true of KBA's Sheetfed Solutions business unit which is operating at a very high level of capacity utilisation and contributes to around half of group sales. As demand remains strong in this segment special measures have been introduced to increase production output.

"In the first half-year capacities at KBA-Digital & Web in Würzburg have been sustainably adjusted to the severely shrunken web offset market. Higher order intake for digital and conventional web presses currently contributes to the segment's sound level of capacity utilisation. KBA expects the turnaround in quarterly results also for this segment in the course of the year."

The product mix to be delivered in the second half-year will be more profitable than in the first. Overall, the management board continues to target an EBT margin of up to two per cent of sales. The implementation of the Fit@All restructuring programme will be completed by the end of 2015. KBA management currently does not expect any impacts on earnings from upcoming measures beyond the provisions made.

Pictured: Digital decorative printing with the up to 2.25m-wide RotaJET VL press, the first of which is in operation at decor manufacturer Interprint in Arnsberg, Germany