Metal Forming Division

This report is a translation of the original report in German, which is solely valid.

Market environment and business development

In the first quarter of the business year 2023/24, the Metal Forming Division was confronted with declining order intake in the Tubes & Sections and Precision Strip business segments. The Automotive Components business segment recorded an upward trend at a low starting level. Warehouse & Rack Solutions continued to perform very well.

The Automotive Components business segment showed a slight improvement in Europe at the beginning of the business year 2023/24. The supply bottlenecks that automotive manufacturers had been facing for more than two years increasingly dissipated. However, rising prices and high interest rates had a dampening effect on automotive sales. As a result, the high order backlogs of the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) decreased and with them the delivery times for new cars. New registrations in the European market continue to be significantly below the level before COVID-19 broke out, but were up year-on-year in 2023. This resulted in an increasing utilization of the European plants in the first quarter of business year 2023/24 for the Automotive Components business segment. In China and Mexico, Automotive Components was confronted with declining order call-ups at the beginning of the business year, while the USA showed an upward tendency.

In the Tubes & Sections business segment, orders for individual customer segments weakened. In particular, demand fell significantly in the construction industry and in trade business. The order intake in the solar industry and storage technology remained satisfactory. Overall, the slowdown in business for tubes & sections in the first quarter of the business year 2023/24 is not least due to the reduction of inventories on the customer side. From a regional perspective, the momentum in the European core markets and in China slowed down considerably, while the market environment in North America developed quite favorably. In Brazil, the high demand in the solar industry had a supporting effect in an otherwise challenging economic environment.

Market demand in the Precision Strip business segment declined significantly in the first quarter of the business year 2023/24 and was characterized by a trend towards shorter-term orders. In addition to the economic slowdown, this was due to inventory reductions by customers and declining exports by the business unit’s customers outside Europe. Demand for band saw steel and steel rules and cutting lines fell particularly sharply. In regional terms, sales weakened markedly, especially in the  U.S..

At the beginning of the business year 2023/24, the Warehouse & Rack Solutions business segment continued to benefit from the favorable market conditions. In addition, the business segment has benefited from a downward trend in input material costs. The existing, solid order backlog ensures high capacity utilization throughout the business year 2023/24.

Development of the key figures

Increasingly unfavorable market conditions in individual customer segments had a negative impact on the development of the Metal Forming Division’s key financial figures in the first quarter of 2023/24. Revenue decreased by 14.9% to EUR 884.0 million (Q1 2022/23: EUR 1,038.5 million). With the exception of Automotive Components, which showed a stable trend, all business segments recorded declines in business volume. The Metal Forming Division’s earnings categories also showed a decline year on year in the first business quarter: EBITDA of EUR 81.4 million was 28.6% below the corresponding figure for the previous year of EUR 114.0 million. As a result, the EBITDA margin fell from 11.0% to 9.2%. Among the business units, only Warehouse & Rack Solutions was able to confirm the solid trend of the last quarters. Tubes & Sections, Automotive Components, and Precision Strip reported EBITDA below the previous year’s figures in the reporting period. The division’s EBIT for the first quarter of 2023/24 flattened by 41.1% year on year to EUR 45.9 million with a margin of 5.2% (Q1 2022/23: EUR 77.9 million; margin of 7.5%).

As of June 30, 2023, the number of employees (FTE, full time equivalent) in the Metal Forming Division was 11,782 and thus the same as in the previous year (11,750).