DGAP-News

R. STAHL publishes the results for the first quarter 2016 - Seite 2

producing companies in the north of Canada. In region Asia/Pacific, order
intake declined to EUR 13.4 m (previous year: EUR 23.8 m). Major projects,
which were meant to be awarded during the first quarter, have been
postponed and are expected to be awarded in the course of the year. First
orders for our LED clean room luminaires gave some positive impulses. This
product has been developed especially for the pharmaceutical industry and
it shows that the initiatives to increasingly penetrate this market yield
results.

Many of the major projects that could be won in 2015 provided for an order
backlog of EUR 95.2 m at the beginning of 2016. This very high amount gives
us a good backing for a difficult year 2016. We could already produce and
deliver many orders during the first quarter, so order backlog declined to
EUR 91.8 m as at
31 March 2016.

Sales as planned
Due to the continuously weak demand, owing to the low oil price, sales
during the reporting period was lower than last year, at EUR 71.7 m
(previous year:
EUR 82.2 m). However, the development of sales revenues nevertheless meets
R. STAHL's expectations: sales in the first quarter is within the target
corridor.
In Germany, the year started positively: sales revenues increased by 3.6 %
to
EUR 15.9 m (previous year: EUR 15.4 m) from January to March. The many
orders for LED luminaires are evidence of the success of the marketing
campaign for this product segment. With a volume of EUR 31.8 m, the central
region (excl. Germany) had the largest share of the Group sales (previous
year: EUR 34.5 m). At EUR 8.4 m, sales in the Americas was below previous
year's value (previous year: EUR 14.5 m). Due to the high production costs,
the oil industry in North America is particularly hard hit by the
continuously low oil prices. In region Asia/Pacific, sales revenues
amounted to EUR 15.6 m during the first quarter of 2016 (previous year: EUR
17.8 m), mainly generated from follow-up orders which R. STAHL could win in
South Korea and in the UAE.

Thanks to the cost reduction measures, the EBIT is within the planned scope
As early as 2015, R. STAHL reacted to the market development and initiated
a comprehensive cost reduction programme. Thanks to these measures, the
decline in sales could be largely compensated in earnings. In the first
quarter 2016, EBIT reached EUR 3.3 m (previous year: EUR 4.1 m). These cost
reduction measures could in part already be felt in the first three months
of the current business year: compared to the total operating performance,