The German manufacturer reached all the targets it defined in November 2024 that were required to meet its updated full-year forecast, the company said in a statement yesterday evening (26 February).

Its operating EBIT of €46.5m (£38.5m) – previous year: €32m – and a strong positive free cashflow were achieved in the fourth quarter.

This resulted in a positive free cashflow for the year as a whole, although it remained negative at -€35.8m in the first nine months, Koenig & Bauer said.

As forecasted, operating EBIT of €25.8m adjusted for extraordinary items for the ‘Spotlight’ focus programme and costs for Drupa was achieved for 2024, with revenue of €1.274bn.

Order intake in the company’s Sheetfed segment rose by 20.8% to €732.5m in the Drupa year. After Drupa, the segment did not see any decline in demand, posting an order intake of €220.8m, up 45.5% year-on-year, in the final quarter, which was also the strongest quarter of the year.

This also resulted in a high group order intake of €1.402bn, up 8.9% year-on-year, in 2024 and increased the group order backlog to €1.04bn, up 14.1% year-on-year, with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10.

Koenig & Bauer said this marked the highest year-end figure in its recent history and provided a strong basis for 2025 and beyond.

In addition to the costs of €10.5m for Drupa, the company said the extraordinary items for its Spotlight programme amounting to €50.4m placed a burden on group EBIT in 2024, “while simultaneously laying the foundations for profitable growth in the coming years”.

This exceeded the forecast maximum of €45m for the Spotlight extraordinary items, as the management board decided to discontinue the CS-MetalCan project for two-piece beverage can printing with an additional earnings effect of around €5.4m.

In the course of the final implementation of all measures under the Spotlight programme, further expenses in the low single-digit million-euro range are expected in the first half of 2025 to complete the project and underpin the group’s sustainable earnings growth.

The business also reported that in 2024, the Digital & Webfed segment was not yet able to fully recover from the temporary weakness of the corrugated board market.

Thanks to a strong final quarter, a further sequential improvement was achieved, with the order intake of €160.6m falling short of the previous year’s figure by 10.7%.

Meanwhile, after a high figure achieved in the previous year, the Special segment was able to increase its order intake by 0.6% to €541.9m.

CEO Dr Andreas Pleßke said: “The achievement of our targets testifies to our company’s performance and flexibility and highlights our operational resilience as well as the success of our ‘Spotlight’ measures.

“We used Drupa to demonstrate our innovative strength and to intensify relations with our customers. However, spending restraint, geopolitical tensions and trade conflicts continue to pose challenges.

“The fact that we are operating in the less volatile packaging markets is paying off. Packaging of all kinds is always needed, especially in the food, pharmaceutical, beverage and consumer goods markets.”

Despite difficult and uncertain global economic and geopolitical conditions, Koenig & Bauer said it saw itself as being well positioned for 2025 and that, with the historically high order backlog and additional savings from Spotlight, the management board anticipated a slight increase in revenue to €1.3bn, accompanied by higher operating EBIT in a corridor of between €35m and €50m.

Within this corridor, target achievement is highly dependent on actual global economic and geopolitical developments over the next few months, it added.

The business continued to project group revenue of roughly €1.5bn in 2026, accompanied by an operating EBIT margin of around 6%.

Due to the global economic and geopolitical uncertainties and, resulting from this, the limited forward planning visibility, the group said revenue was currently expected to come to between €1.4bn and €1.5bn, with the operating EBIT margin reaching 5-6%.

Koenig & Bauer’s share price was down by 0.76% in early trading today (27 February), to €15.72. (52-week high: €17.76, low: €6.92).