‘BNSx’ Strives to Achieve Excellence at Koenig & Bauer

Koenig & Bauer, in its report on its first quarter results, gave further details of its Spotlight programme, launched earlier this year to prioritise initiatives and business models that boost earnings and financial strength, deprioritise initiatives that do not directly impact earnings and optimise the group and segment organisation as well as the indirect cost structure to make processes even leaner and more customer-friendly.

The company reported revenues of €253.2 million, 9.9% lower than in the first quarter of the previous year, and EBIT fell by €7 million to €-10.2 million. Contributing to this was the Special segment, which includes Banknotes Solutions, and which saw revenue fall by 17% year-on-year to €80.6 million and EBIT from €900,000 to a loss of €5.6 million, primarily due to the lower percentage of completion (POC) achieved in production for customer orders.

As previously reported, the Banknote Solutions business had a very strong 4th quarter last year in terms of order intake due to a major order from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, but for the first quarter of this year, this fell back by 41.8% to €54.1 million. Even so, as the year continues, the segment will benefit from the high order backlog of €352 million (versus €249.3 million the previous year).