Activities outside printing are contributing to technotrans' profits, which rose by almost two-thirds at the beginning of this year.
The company says an increase in operating profit of 63.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2015 over the same period last year has come primarily from growth segments outside the printing industry. technotrans now earns 35 percent of its revenue away from the printing industry, with activities in mechanical and plant engineering, battery cooling as well as medical and scanner technology especially successful in the period.
Revenue reached 30.6 million Euros, representing growth of 12.9 per cent.
Chief executive of technotrans AG Henry Brickenkamp says the group of companies made a very successful start to the 2015 financial year: "The substantial growth in the operating result pushed the EBIT margin up to 7.5 per cent (previous year: 5.2 per cent). The consolidated result after tax grew by 72.9 per cent to 1.5 million Euros. This represents a rate of return of 4.8 per cent (previous year: 3.3 per cent).
Total revenue reached 30.6 million Euros, up 12.9 percent on the figure for the prior-year period. The performance of the very strong closing quarter of 2014 (30.2 million Euros) was also bettered. Revenue streams from outside the printing industry them achieved organic revenue growth of around 30 per cent. "This development again underlines just how successful the group's strategic direction is proving to be," Brickenkamp says.
Along with Asia and Europe, the American economic region provided growth impetus. "We have also acquired more new customers, over and above increasing the volume of business with established customers," he added.
Revenue streams from the printing industry were up on the first quarter of 2014, the result of both successfully expanding the market shares in offset printing and of growing demand in the area of digital and flexographic printing. The segment achieved earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 600,000 Euros in a turnaround from a slight loss of 100,000 Euros in the prior-year period.
The services segment achieved revenue growth of 5.2 per cent to 9.9 million in the first quarter of 2015 compared with the same period of the previous year (9.4 million Euros). This rise stems substantially from the billing of a number of installation projects in the print business area and from successfully expanded service activities in the new market segments. The operating profit climbed by 9.5 per cent to 1.7 million Euros.
"We are very satisfied with the first quarter's progress, which all things considered surpassed our expectations," Brickenkamp says. As matters stand the board of management expects full-year revenue to achieve the forecast level of 116 to 120 million Euros. Based on the improvement in operating profit over the past few quarters, the target EBIT margin should be between 6.8-7.3 per cent, equivalent to EBIT of 7.8-8.8 million Euros.