Von Roll Hol­ding AG: First half-year results 2016

Au/Wädenswil, August 25, 2016 — There were no signi­fi­cant chan­ges in the rele­vant mar­ket seg­ments com­pa­red with the pre­vious year. Mar­ket reces­sions had a nega­tive impact, and weak sales led to an ope­ra­ting EBIT of CHF ‑5.4 mil­lion as against CHF ‑6.6 mil­lion in 2015. Alt­hough the loss was redu­ced year on year, the over­all result clearly does not meet expectations.

The actions taken wit­hin the trans­for­ma­tion stra­tegy, such as con­so­li­da­ting plants and laun­ching new pro­ducts, have already begun to bear fruit:

Gross pro­fit incre­a­sed by 11.1% year on year des­pite weak sales.

The gross mar­gin rose from 16.3% to 19.7%.

The cost-cut­ting pro­gram­mes that were laun­ched last year and that have already been imple­men­ted resul­ted in savings as intended.

In the lar­gest seg­ment, Insu­la­tion, the gross mar­gin incre­a­sed in all pro­duct areas, con­fir­ming the bene­fits of the transfor­mation pro­cess and sen­ding out a posi­tive signal for the fu­ture. In addi­tion, the power genera­tion mar­ket seg­ment sta­bi­li­sed. Sales were wea­ker in the high-vol­tage motors and fire-resistant cables sec­tors. Both mar­kets are hea­vily depen­dent on the crude oil price, which means a noti­ce­able decline in orders from the oil- and gas indus­try. In the Insu­la­tion seg­ment the operat­ing EBIT incre­a­sed from CHF ‑4.0 mil­lion to CHF 0.8 million.

By con­trast, the Com­po­si­tes seg­ment pos­ted disap­poin­ting results, with both sales and ope­ra­ting EBIT down on the previ­ous year. This was pri­ma­rily due to a lack of orders in the ballis­tics and alu­mi­nium smel­ter segments.

The results for the first half of the year show that there is still a long way to go in impro­ving the ope­ra­ting busi­ness. The trans­formation and focus on new growth seg­ments such as electro­mobility and wind power, as well as the adjus­t­ment of capa­city levels are not yet com­plete. As a con­se­quence of the site clo­sures towards the end of 2015, the num­ber of posi­ti­ons was redu­ced by 13.5% com­pa­red with the pre­vious year.

As announ­ced in early July 2016, fur­ther mea­su­res are plan­ned to save CHF 18 mil­lion in costs from 2017 on­wards. Savings of around CHF 4 mil­lion are already expec­ted for the second half of 2016, while rest­ruc­tu­ring costs will amount to some CHF 8 mil­lion. The refi­nan­cing of the bond to be re­deemed in Octo­ber 2016 has been secured.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be found in the Semi-Annual Report 2016. This is avail­able in digi­tal form at http://www.vonrollgroup.com/en/.

 

Key figu­res

in CHF 1,000	1H 2016	1H 2015	Change
Order intake	172,385	190,967	-9.7%
Net sales	174,098	189,097	-7.9%
the­reof Insulation	118,979	124,344	-4.3%
the­reof Composites	51,309	58,173	-11.8%
the­reof other activities	3,810	6,580	-42.1%
EBIT	-5,384	-6,557	17.9%
Net income for the period	-11,134	-15,939	30.1%
Cash flow from ope­ra­ting activities	-12,583	-16,822	25.2%
Equity ratio (%)	14%	22%	-8 ppt
Num­ber of employees (FTE)	1,856	2,146	-13.5%

 

About Von Roll Hol­ding AG: As a Swiss indus­trial com­pany Von Roll Hol­ding AG focu­ses on pro­ducts and sys­tems for power genera­tion, trans­mis­sion and sto­rage. Von Roll is a glo­bal mar­ket lea­der for electri­cal insu­la­tion pro­ducts, sys­tems and ser­vices and has a world­wide pre­sence in about 28 sites in 15 coun­tries with 1,856 employees.

 

Con­tact

Clau­dia Güntert
Head of Cor­po­rate Communications
& Inves­tor Relations
T +41 61 785 52 36
F +41 61 785 58 92
E press@vonroll.com

 

This press release is based on infor­ma­tion cur­r­ently avail­able. Unfo­re­see­able risks and influ­en­ces may lead to dis­crepan­cies with the state­ments made here. For more infor­ma­tion on the com­pany and its busi­ness per­for­mance, please refer to the Annual and Semi-Annual Report of Von Roll Hol­ding AG which is avail­able in digi­tal form at https://www.vonroll.com/en/.