Significant growth in 2017
Schopfloch, March 1, 2018. The HOMAG Group can look back at 2017 as a successful financial year. The world's leading supplier of integrated solutions for production in the woodworking industry and woodworking shops substantially increased its incoming orders and sales, and further boosted its earnings.
Preliminary figures show that the HOMAG Group's incoming orders rose by 17 percent to € 1,366 million (previous year: € 1,165 million). The order backlog was worth € 541 million as at December 31, 2017 (December 31, 2016: € 414 million), while sales were up 13 percent, reaching € 1,224 million (previous year: € 1,082 million). Operating EBIT rose by 46 percent to € 94.4 million (previous year: € 64.7 million). As at December 31, 2017, the HOMAG Group had 6,371 employees (December 31, 2016: 6,126).
"In 2017, we were successful in all regions around the world", explains CEO Pekka Paasivaara. "We achieved the strongest growth in China, once again pushing the rate well into the double-digits. In the German market as well as in Northern and Eastern Europe and North America, we also recorded high rates of increase."
The HOMAG Group saw strong demand in its project business in networked systems for the production of furniture, flooring and doors. "Our end-to-end solutions with systems and software from a single source are unique in this industry", emphasizes Paasivaara. "Our customers appreciate how we can offer them innovative and sustainable products to support them on their journey into the digital age. One milestone is our open IoT platform tapio, which we established on the market in 2017."
Despite the increased investments in innovation and digitization, we were able to achieve the pleasing improvement in earnings," explains CFO Franz Peter Matheis. "By standardizing our processes and systems, we have further increased our productivity. For this reason, the number of our employees increased only slightly, despite the significant increase in sales."
Disclaimer
This press release contains certain statements relating to the future. Futureoriented statements are all those statements that do not pertain to historical facts and events or expressions pertaining to the future such as "believes", "estimates", "assumes", "forecasts", "intend", "may", "will", "should" or similar expressions. Such future-oriented statements are subject to risks and uncertainty since they relate to future events and are based on current assumptions of the Company, which may not occur in the future or may not occur in the anticipated form. The Company points out that such future-oriented statements do not guarantee the future; actual results including the financial position and the profitability of the HOMAG Group as well as the development of economic and regulatory framework conditions may deviate significantly (and prove unfavorable) from what is expressly or implicitly assumed or described in these statements. Even if the actual results of the HOMAG Group including the financial position and profitability as well as the economic and regulatory framework conditions should coincide with the future-oriented statements in this press release, it cannot be guaranteed that the same will hold true in the future.