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- Group net income almost doubled to €19.8 million
- Sales up 6.0 percent to €1.333 billion
- Net financial debts down by €51.4 million
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| The Lübeck-based Dräger Group virtually doubled its net income for 2002 to €19.8 million (up from €10.2 million). Net sales were raised by 6.0 percent to €1.333 billion (up from €1.257 billion). Order intake by Dräger climbed, too, up 4.1 percent from €1.292 billion to €1.345 billion. As communicated by this Medical and Safety Technology Group, the profit-ability targets were not only achieved but even topped for 2002. Also due to the further re-finement of business processes and work flows, EBIT hiked up 30.3 percent to €64.5 million (from €49.5 million), the EBIT margin improving from 3.9 to 4.8 percent, after accounting for nonrecurring expenses of around €15 million. With EBIT rising and capital employed shrinking, ROCE delivered a creditable performance, as well, climbing from 9.2 percent in 2001 to 13.2 percent in 2002. The higher earnings and lower capital employed, in turn, increased the free cash flow that has been applied to downsize the Group’s net financial debts from €240 million a year ago to €189 million in 2002. Both subgroups, Dräger Medical and Dräger Safety, contributed to these historical highs in earnings and sales and thus made a decisive input to the uptrend in 2002.
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| Dräger Medical CEO Dr. Wolfgang Reim has identified three key factors behind the doubled earnings in year 2 of the turnaround: (1) the consistent realignment of the subgroup with global processes; (2) the market success with new products in the wake of the innovation drive, which strongly rejuvenated Dräger Medical’s product portfolio (about one-half of the products are meantime younger than 3 years); and (3) the rewarding implementation of the growth initiatives, boosting sales in the US and the Asia-Pacific region by 25 and 11 percent, respectively. Dräger Medical doubled its EBIT to €75 million (up from €39 million), equivalent to an EBIT margin of 8.9 percent (up from 4.8 percent). Net sales were stepped up by 5.3 percent to €848 million (from €805 million) amid a market that grew only 2 to 4 percent. Moreover, the global process management rolled out doubled ROCE from 12.3 to 25.1 per-cent.
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| With net sales up 10.8 percent to €471 million (from €425 million), Dräger Safety generated an EBIT of €40.1 million (up from €30.3 million), another all-time high reached in 2002. The EBIT margin was ratcheted up from 7.1 a year ago to 8.5 percent in 2002. ROCE, too, was significantly upgraded from an already high prior-year level (19.4 percent) to 27.1 percent in the period. The success ingredients this subgroup used were, according to Dräger Safety CEO Prof. Albert Jugel, the innovative product portfolio with holistic solutions, repeated effi-ciency boosts in work flows and processes in 2002, and Dräger Safety’s global marketing and service structure.
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| Drägerwerk AG’s Executive Board is confident that earnings for the current year can again be improved. Positive contributions in 2003 are again expected from the innovation drive, portfolio additions, efficiency boosts through refined business processes and an even sharper focus on Dräger’s mainstream operations after the successful divestment of Aero-space and Electronics (PBA). Favorable momentum will certainly also come from the new joint venture whose inception is scheduled for mid-2003 and which unites Dräger Medical with the Electromedicine unit of Siemens Medical Solutions. |
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| For fiscal 2002, Drägerwerk AG’s Executive Board will propose to the Supervisory Board and the annual stockholders’ meeting to distribute from the net income for 2002 a cash dividend of €0.35 (up from €0.13 + €0.13 in arrears) per share to preferred stockholders and one of €0.29 per share to common stockholders. In line with the tenfold par value, holders of partici-pation certificates will then receive €3.50 (10 times the preferred dividend, which governs the distribution to participation certificate holders).
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| The present financial data is still subject to the statutory auditors’ final review.Final figures and the Q1/2003 report will be published at the annual accounts press conference on May 15 in Lübeck. Financial analysts and investors will be briefed the same day at the special meeting in Frankfurt/Main. The annual stockholders’ meeting will be held on June 20, 2003, in Lübeck.
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| Estimates: This press release contains a number of forecasts and estimates which are based on present expectations, anticipations and predictions on the part of the Executive Board and the information it currently has. Such estimates should not be construed as a warranty that the future developments and results therein stated will in fact materialize since these hinge on a host of factors, and encompass a variety of risks and imponderables while resting on assumptions that might be inappropriate. We therefore incur no obligation to update any forecasts or estimates herein made.
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(c) Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA, 2007 |
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