It's fourth quarter results were better than expected with total revenues falling by 8% to 515.7m (E746.9m) compared to the same period last year. Operating income dropped to 32m, a fall of 34% on the same period last year.

The Dutch printing equipment manufacturing group said the decline in revenues was mainly due to the exchange rates, which had a negative impact of 7%.

Its wide format printing systems (WFPS) business booked revenues of 596m, a decrease of 15% from last year, of which 7.5% was autonomous and 8% was due to the effect of exchange rates.

Investor relations manager Pierre Vincent said although there were signs of an improvement in the economy, it was not being reflected in the sectors Oc were in.

We will keep investing in research and development in WFPS, and in the black and white sector, he said, although it was not a significant growth sector.

Vincent said he hoped new machines such as the TCS 400 wide format colour printer would help bring new growth.

Improvements had been seen in the fourth quarter he said, but due to the economy it was hard to say how long any improvements would continue for.

Due to the companys flexibility there would be no need to cut back on production if market conditions persisted, and the company was well positioned to take advantage of any market upturn.

Net income also fell to 18.6m, down 29% on the fourth quarter period last year.

Despite this, sales of the groups printing systems
increased by 3.1% on an autonomous basis. Revenues for the year 2003 totalled 1.9bn, a fall of 12.8% on the figures for 2002.

Operating income for the year was also down to 86.1m, a fall of 45% on 2002.

The digital document systems business reported revenues of 1.3bn. Although this was down 12% on the previous year, a substantial recovery had been seen in its revenues for the fourth quarter period.

by Andy Scott