EANS-News: The Salzgitter Group masters the challenges of the financial crisis with assuredness
Salzgitter (euro adhoc) -
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Financial Figures/Balance Sheet/Key data
2009 will go down as one of the most difficult financial years in the 150-year history of the Salzgitter Group. During the first nine months the Group had to absorb a dramatic slump in demand for rolled steel products, among other occurrences. Thanks, on the one hand, to the sound and broad business base and the healthy financial position of the company and, on the other, to a program of swiftly implemented urgent measures to stabilize performance, all the challenges posed by the crisis were mastered with aplomb. With the onset of economic recovery, the Group was again generating a positive operating profit in the fourth quarter.
External sales by Division (EUR million):
FY 2009 (FY 2008) Steel 1,673.6 (3,001.7) Trading 3,038.7 (5,621.7) Tubes 2,044.6 (2,172.5) Services 302.9 (519.3) Technology 717.6 (1.037.9) Other 40.6 (146.0) Group 7,818.0 (12,499.2)
Earnings before tax by Division (EUR million):
FY 2009 (FY 2008) Steel -373.5 (545.6) Trading -128.0 (150.8) Tubes 104.0 (311.8) Services 8.2 (23.9) Technology -210.4 (3.8) Other/Consolidation 103.3 (-32.5) Group -496.5 (1,003.4)
As the tail-end effects of the financial crisis are still being felt in the current year and cause jitteriness in the relevant sales and procurement markets, providing a reliable, quantified outlook for sales and the result of the Salzgitter Group is naturally not possible. It is, however, foreseeable that there will be an improvement in the economic situation of most of the Group companies. The recovery of these steel companies, which depends on capacity utilization, should be able to partly compensate for a selling price-induced lower result in the Tubes Division. We therefore expect our Group to generate a positive pre-tax result in the double-digit million Euro range. There are nonetheless considerable risks, as before: alongside the foreseeable increase in the cost of raw materials, the recovery of the steel and mechanical engineering markets is still subject to uncertainties.
As in recent years, we make reference to the fact that opportunities and risks from currently unforeseeable trends in selling prices, input materials and capacity level developments, as well as changes in the currency parity, may considerably affect performance in the course of the financial year 2010. The resulting fluctuation in the consolidated pre-tax result may, as current events show, be within a considerable range, either to the positive or to the negative. The dimensions of this range become clear if one considers that, with around 10 million tons of steel products sold by the Steel, Trading and Tubes divisions, an average EUR 50 contraction in the margin per ton is sufficient to cause a variation in the annual result of more than EUR 500 million.
More information can be found in the full press release published today (see www.salzgitter-ag.de).
end of announcement euro adhoc
Further inquiry note:
Bernhard Kleinermann
Tel.: +49 (0) 5341 21-1852
e-mail: ir@salzgitter-ag.de
Branche: Iron & Steel
ISIN: DE0006202005
WKN: 620200
Index: DAX, Midcap Market Index, CDAX, Classic All Share, Prime All
Share
Börsen: Frankfurt / regulated dealing/prime standard
Berlin / free trade
Hamburg / free trade
Stuttgart / free trade
Düsseldorf / free trade
München / free trade
Hannover / regulated dealing