Krones, the world’s market leader for beverage filling and packaging technology, achieved its targets for key financial performance indicators and continued to grow profitably in 2013.
Revenue rose 5.7% year-on-year, from €2,664.2 million to €2,815.7 million, thus exceeding the company's growth target of +4%. Krones benefited from its strong market position, broad range of products and services, and an economic environment that was satisfactory overall last year.
The company's strong competitive position in the emerging markets had an especially positive impact. Krones generated around 58.2% of consolidated revenue in the emerging markets in 2013.
New orders improved by 3.2% year-on-year to €2,808.8 million in 2013. Customers' capital spending was at a good level overall.
Krones posted the highest percentage growth in new orders in the Africa/Middle East and Asia-Pacific sales regions.
Despite continued price pressures, Krones improved earnings in 2013. Measures taken under the Value strategy programme to streamline cost structures companywide had a positive impact. Earnings before taxes (EBT) rose from €99.1 million in the previous year to €169.7 million.
It should be noted that the year-earlier figure was affected by a one-time expense of €37.8 million (Le-Nature's settlement). Krones generated an EBT margin (the ratio of EBT to revenue) of 6.0% in 2013.
While the EBT margin for the company's core segment, "machines and lines for product filling and decoration", developed very favourably and reached 7.5%, the two smaller segments fell short of the prediction that they would break even in 2013.
In the process technology segment, a one-time write-down of approximately €5 million pushed earnings down to -€2.5 million. At -€2.3 million, earnings at Kosme were also lower than expected in 2013 after a weak fourth quarter.
After taxes, Krones earned consolidated net income of €119.4 million for the reporting period (previous year: €68.3 million). That corresponds to earnings per share of €3.84 (previous year: €2.26).
