Von Roll tack­les weak mar­ket envi­ron­ment in the first half of 2019

Brei­ten­bach, August 21, 2019 — In the first half of 2019, the Von Roll Group achie­ved a posi­tive ope­ra­ting result (EBIT) of CHF 3.7 mil­lion with net sales of around CHF 155 million.

Des­pite of a weak mar­ket envi­ron­ment, the Von Roll Group achie­ved a net pro­fit of around CHF 0.9 mil­lion, at the same level as the pre­vious year. The high use of resour­ces to enter new mar­kets and the con­ti­nuing slow­down in the eco­nomy were the rea­sons for the gene­rally wea­ker finan­cial figu­res for the first half of the year com­pa­red with the pre­vious year. Group sales in the first half of the year were around 8.8 % below the pre­vious year. Adjus­ted for the busi­ness units dive­s­ted in the first half of 2018, the decline amoun­ted to 6.9 %. Ear­nings before inte­rest, taxes, depre­cia­tion and amor­tiz­a­tion (EBITDA) amoun­ted to CHF 11.4 million.

The cur­rent weak eco­no­mic fore­casts con­ti­nue to be a chal­lenge for the Group in the second half of the year. Irre­spec­tive of this, the Von Roll Group will con­ti­nue reso­lutely to expand its busi­ness acti­vi­ties into new mar­kets such as auto­mo­tive and aero­space, even if doing so requi­res incre­a­sed invest­ments and expen­ses to the detri­ment of the ear­nings situation.

Change to Swiss GAAP FER

The Board of Direc­tors has deci­ded to change the accoun­ting method for the finan­cial state­ments from IFRS to Swiss GAAP FER as of Decem­ber 31, 2019. This change will enable the Von Roll Group to orga­nize its finan­cial repor­ting more effi­ci­ently from a cost-bene­fit per­spec­tive. In addi­tion, this step will enable the tar­ge­ted growth to be bet­ter reflec­ted, for example through through  joint ventures.

With the change to Swiss GAAP FER, the accoun­ting princi­ples cur­r­ently app­lied remain unch­an­ged. The main adjus­t­ments relate to the balan­cing of pen­sion obli­ga­ti­ons, the tre­at­ment of good­will and defer­red taxes. As of Decem­ber 31, 2018, the balance sheet is expec­ted to shrink to appro­xi­mately CHF 312 mil­lion and the equity ratio to appro­xi­mately 64 %, a reduc­tion of appro­xi­mately 3 %-points. The change will have a signi­fi­cant impact on the pre­sen­ta­tion of the income state­ment, alt­hough posi­tive and nega­tive effects on the result will be par­ti­ally offset.

Trans­pa­rent repor­ting in line with the true-and-fair principle con­ti­nues to be gua­ran­teed even after the tran­si­tion from IFRS to Swiss GAAP FER.

Key figu­res

About Von Roll Hol­ding AG: As a Swiss indus­trial com­pany, Von Roll Hol­ding AG focu­ses on pro­ducts and sys­tems for power genera­tion, trans­mis­sion, sto­rage and dis­tri­bu­tion. Von Roll is a glo­bal mar­ket lea­der for electri­cal insu­la­tion pro­ducts, sys­tems and ser­vices and has a world­wide pre­sence in 14 pro­duc­tion sites with around 1,250 employees. The com­pany sup­plies cus­to­mers in over 80 countries.

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/.