Development of the key figures

In the business year 2012/13, the figures achieved by the Special Steel Division were somewhat weaker than in the previous year. It was not lower prices that were responsible for this, as they even rose slightly, but the main factor was a decline in production and delivery volumes that had an adverse impact on revenue and operating result. While revenue fell by 6.7% from EUR 2,945.0 million in the business year 2011/12 to EUR 2,748.4 million, the drop in the reporting categories was more significant. At EUR 368.7 million (EBITDA margin: 13.4%), the operating result (EBITDA) was 14.2% lower than the previous year’s figure of EUR 429.7 million (EBITDA margin: 14.6%). Profit from operations (EBIT) declined accordingly by 18.1% from EUR 272.9 million (EBIT margin: 9.3%) in the business year 2011/12 to EUR 223.6 million (EBIT margin: 8.1%) in the year under review.

After the downward trend that settled in from the summer of 2012 on, a comparison of the fourth quarter of 2012/13 with the immediately preceding quarter shows a modest upswing. Quarterly revenue rose by 6.4% from EUR 642.7 million to EUR 683.6 million. EBITDA went up by 17.3% from EUR 79.7 million to EUR 93.5 million, and EBIT rose substantially by 29.7% from EUR 43.8 million to EUR 56.8 million. The main factor behind this improvement was the higher capacity utilization of steel production facilities both at European locations in Austria, Germany, and Sweden and at the Brazilian subsidiary Villares Metals, resulting in an attendant increase in global delivery volumes. Concurrently, the EBITDA margin improved from 12.4% to 13.7%, and the EBIT margin rose from 6.8% to 8.3%.

As of March 31, 2013, the Special Steel Division had 12,721 employees (FTE/full-time equivalent); compared to the figure on the same reporting date in the previous year (12,363 employees); this corresponds to a slight increase of 2.9% mainly due to the acquisitions made by the division.