Technologies · Systems · Solutions - Dürr

Amounts in €m
2004 2003
Total incoming
orders 158.6 146.5
Total sales 158.6 146.5
EBITDA1 10.8 11.8
EBT1 8.1 9.1
Capital 2.5 2.4
expenditures 2
Employees (Dec. 31) 5,455 4,499
2 On property, plant and equipment and
intangible assets
Consolidated management report
Business units: Discontinued operations
Services
59
The Services business unit, which is heavily represented in the US market, managed
to increase total incoming orders and sales by 8.3% despite the weakness of the dollar.
Calculated at the previous year’s exchange rates, the increase would have amounted
to 14.5%. The largest contribution to growth came from the newly developed business
line of transportation equipment management. However, other new services such as
wheel pre-assembly also achieved sales increases. At € 8.1 million, earnings before
taxes 1 were below the previous year’s figure of € 9.1 million. Besides exchange rate
effects, the drop in 2004 is largely due to advance outlays associated with entering into
transportation equipment management. Based on earnings before taxes, we achieved
a return on sales of 5.1% (previous year: 6.2%). Our capital expenditures on property,
plant and equipment and intangible assets amounted to € 2.5 million and were incurred
primarily to expand our range of services. We increased our personnel capacity
in correlation with the higher sales, so the number of employees rose by 956 to 5,455
as of December 31, 2004. The increase occurred largely in Brazil, Poland, Great Britain,
and the United States, where we acquired new customer and service contracts.
Development Test Systems product line (DTS)
Total incoming orders in the DTS product line rose to € 98.4 million in 2004 (previous
year: € 83.5 million). By contrast, total sales fell from € 81.3 million to € 74.8 million.
Earnings before taxes declined to € –14.9 million (previous year: € –14.0 million).
Amortization on intangible assets amounting to € 6.6 million was a burden on earnings.
That resulted from the valuation of DTS and is connected with our intention either
to put the product line into a minority shareholding or to sell it. On the other hand, DTS
managed to improve earnings performance in operating business as a result of the
restructuring completed at the end of 2004.
Earnings enhancement program consistently implemented
With the adjustment of our Group structure as of March 1, 2005, we have taken an
important step toward increasing our competitiveness. Bundling our activities into two
divisions allows us to reduce costs, improve business processes, and have a more
unified presence on the market.
We continued to implement consistently all the measures of the Group-wide
earnings enhancement program in 2004. has four primary areas of focus:
Cutting costs, reducing risks, decreasing net working capital, and consolidating our
locations and portfolio. We intend to achieve savings of around € 170 million through
by the end of 2005. Since the beginning of the program in spring 2003, we
have taken some 270 measures, most of which are now complete – and successful.
1 Since the Services business unit is reported under discontinued operations, its earnings figure does not include expenses
for received intragroup goods and services. For this reason, the EBT figure for 2003 here differs from the value published
in the 2003 Annual Report (€ 7.1 million). EBITDA was shown at € 10.3 million in the 2003 Annual Report.