Financial key performance indicators

Despite increasingly fierce competition, the Steel Division boosted its earnings-based key performance indicators in the business year 2015/16 in a year-over-year comparison. In contrast, revenue fell slightly, as both the price level and the delivery volumes in 2015/16 were under the previous year’s figures. In a year-to-year comparison, revenue went down by 3.1% from EUR 3,873.9 million to EUR 3,753.7 million. While the decline in sales revenue was more than fully compensated by lower input costs for raw materials, the four-and-one-half-month, scheduled major repair of blast furnace 5 resulted in smaller delivery volumes and thus a lower result as well. The fact that in the business year just ended the previous year’s operating result (EBITDA) and profit from operations (EBIT) have been surpassed is due to the positive effects of the ongoing efficiency and cost optimization program. Consequently, the operating result (EBITDA) rose by 6.2% from EUR 450.3 million in the business year 2014/15 to EUR 478.3 million in 2015/16, with the EBITDA margin increasing from 11.6% to 12.7%. EBIT improved by 5.8% from EUR 208.0 million (margin: 5.4%) to EUR 220.0 million (margin: 5.9%).

In a direct quarter-to-quarter comparison between the third and the fourth quarter of 2015/16, the figures were also positive. Due to a significant increase in delivery volume, revenue showed a gain of 8.8% from EUR 844.3 million to EUR 918.6 million. Greater volumes also resulted in a boost of the operating result (EBITDA) by 11.2% from EUR 106.6 million in the third quarter to EUR 118.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2015/16. The EBITDA margin rose slightly from 12.6% to 12.9%. EBIT improved in the same period by 10.9% from EUR 41.4 million (margin: 4.9%) to EUR 45.9 million (margin: 5.0%).

As of March 31, 2016, the Steel Division had 10,891 employees (FTE); in comparison to the figure on the reporting date in the previous year (11,103 employees), this corresponds to a slight decrease of 1.9%.