Johann Schmid-Davis, CFO of HÖRMANN Industries GmbH: "Despite the challenging economic environment and a sharp rise in material, personnel and energy costs, we continued our positive performance in the first half of 2023. We are cautiously optimistic for the remaining six months and expect a positive result at around the previous year's level."

All four divisions contribute to improved earnings; Automotive achieves turnaround

In the Automotive division, sales increased by 31.6% year-on-year from € 189.0 million to € 248.8 million, in particular due to the aforementioned production interruptions by major OEM customers in the same period of the previous year. In addition, the positive forecasts of key customers in truck production in the first half of 2023 materialized. With this high increase in sales, the turnaround was achieved and an EBIT of € 2.2 million was generated in the first half of the year (previous year: € -5.6 million).

The Communication division also performed well in the first half of 2023 and, with sales of € 73.7 million (previous year: € 75.3 million), was largely on par with the previous year and ahead of plan. In the previous year, the division benefited greatly from the government economic stimulus measures, among other things, which have now expired as planned. Nevertheless, the division was also able to maintain earnings at almost the same level as in the same period of the previous year and generated EBIT of € 8.5 million (previous year: € 9.8 million).

The Intralogistics division, which was impacted by supply bottlenecks and market uncertainties, recorded an increase in sales to € 36.6 million in the first six months of 2023 (previous year: € 22.7 million, as-ob). In the 2023 financial year, the focus of the division, which was newly established in May 2022, will be on organizational development and the execution of multi-year project orders. Thanks to the increase in turnover, the division improved its earnings by € 2.6 million in the reporting period. However, due to the ongoing project delays, earnings remained in the red in the first half of 2023 with EBIT of € -0.9 million (previous year: € -3.5 million, as-if).

With sales revenue of € 13.2 million, the Engineering division was up € 2.6 million or 24.5% on the first half of 2022 (€ 10.6 million, as-if). Due to a change in the product and service mix compared to the previous year, earnings before interest and taxes remained at the previous year's level of € 2.5 million (€ 2.4 million, as-if).

The HÖRMANN Group's order backlog also developed positively and increased by € 58.3 million to € 519.6 million in the first half of 2023 compared to December 31, 2022 (€ 461.3 million). Of this, € 202.3 million is attributable to the Communication division, € 133.5 million to the Intralogistics division, € 133.9 million to the Automotive division and € 49.9 million to the Engineering division. This means that the project-oriented Communication, Intralogistics and Engineering divisions have an order backlog of more than one year's sales. In the Automotive division, the existing multi-year framework agreements with OEM customers will only be included in the order backlog with the announced call-off orders of ten weeks on average.

Forecast for 2023 as a whole confirmed

HÖRMANN Industries GmbH confirms its forecast published in the 2022 annual report and, after assessing the current order situation and confidently estimating the business development of the individual divisions, continues to expect total revenue of between € 730 million and € 760 million in 2023 (2022: € 685.7 million). Taking into account the significant increase in the cost base due to inflation, positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization at the previous year's level of between € 34 million and € 36 million (2022: € 35.3 million) are expected for the operating business. The HÖRMANN Group is forecasting earnings before interest and taxes (operating EBIT) at the previous year's level of between € 23 million and € 25 million (2022: € 23.7 million).

The consolidated interim report of HÖRMANN Industries GmbH for the period from January 1 to June 30, 2023 is available at http://www.hoermann-gruppe.de/investor-relations/finanzpublikationen.