High Performance Metals Division

Market environment and business development

The economic environment of the High Performance Metals Division improved significantly year over year during the first nine months of 2017/18. This positive change relative to the previous business year clearly stabilized, especially with respect to investments in the onshore oil and gas sector, but offshore activities remained at a low level. The automotive industry and the consumer goods industry—both major drivers of demand for tool and high-speed steel—continued to grow at a dynamic pace worldwide. Sales of special forging products for the aerospace industry were a bit more volatile in the business year to date than in the previous years, even though the fundamentals remained positive overall regardless. By contrast, there has been no recovery in conventional power plant and energy engineering.

Regionally speaking, the High Performance Metals Division benefitted first and foremost from Europe’s economic recovery. The automotive industry was the main driver of strong order levels yet again, followed by the recovering mechanical engineering industry as well as the oil and gas sector. Developments in the NAFTA region, too, were fueled largely by these industrial segments. The economic climate in Brazil exhibited slight signs of a recovery on the heels of a multi-year recession. In Asia, particularly China, the division benefitted chiefly from excellent developments in consumer goods, which triggers high demand for tool steel.

The acquisitions of the previous years as well as the opening of new business locations in the Value Added Services segment have further strengthened our global market position in the tool steel segment. The development of additive manufacturing processes for components in the challenging metals segment in Europe as well as in North America and Asia has enabled the High Performance Metals Division to push its strategy of becoming the market leader in cutting-edge technologies. Linking these local manufacturing centers with the powder production plants in both Kapfenberg, Austria, and Hagfors, Sweden, serves to ensure the division’s technology leadership across the entire process chain.

Financial key performance indicators

The key performance indicators (KPIs) reflect the pleasing performance of the High Performance Metals Division in the first three quarters of 2017/18. Revenue rose by 9.5% compared with the previous year, from EUR 1,949.5 million to EUR 2,134.9 million. The general increase in revenue, which helped to more than offset higher alloy prices; an improvement in the product mix especially with respect to tool steel; as well as an increase in sales volumes (particularly in Europe and Asia) were key to this expansion. These factors also led to a substantial improvement in results year over year. The operating result (EBITDA) rose in the first three quarters by 15.6%, from EUR 284.5 million in the previous year to EUR 329.0 in the current year. The profit from operations (EBIT) improved in the same period by 22.6%, from EUR 178.5 million to EUR 218.9 million. In turn, this caused the EBITDA margin to rise from 14.6% to 15.4%, and the EBIT margin from 9.2% to 10.3%.

As of the end of the third quarter of the business year 2017/18, the number of employees (FTE) in the High Performance Metals Division was 14,049 and thus 3.4% higher than the figure (13,587) in the same quarter of the previous business year, largely due to economic factors.