DGAP-News

​​​​​​​HÖRMANN Industries publishes financial results for the first nine months of 2021 - Seite 2

Development of the business divisions

In the Automotive division, sales increased by EUR 62.9 million year-on-year from EUR 189.9 million to EUR 252.8 million due to a higher demand in the truck and agricultural machinery product segments and as a result of increased material costs in the reporting period. Since the third quarter of 2021, however, the business division has been affected by temporary production stops and continued cutbacks in production on the customer side due to the semiconductor crisis. In addition, difficulties in the procurement of raw materials for the company's own production, high prices for metal raw materials as well as volatile changes in production capacity requirements have a negative impact on the earnings situation.

In the first nine months of 2021, the Communication division benefited from government stimulus programmes and additional investments in the expansion of European control and safety technology for the railways as well as the more efficient design of the network infrastructure for digitization in railway transport ("Digitale Schiene Deutschland"). With sales of EUR 120.0 million (previous year: EUR 100.0 million), it reported year-on-year sales growth of 20%.

At EUR 45.6 million, sales in the Engineering division were, as expected, significantly lower than in the comparative prior-year period (EUR 64.3 million). This was due to severe delays in the order placement as a result of the great uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, despite a high level of incoming orders and orders on hand in logistics construction, the division is suffering from postponed project realisation due to delays in upstream work and material shortages, with the result that longer-running projects cannot be invoiced until the end of 2021 or into 2022.

The Services division was also affected by the pandemic-related economic uncertainties in the automotive industry, causing sales to decline to EUR 12.0 million (previous year: EUR 13.5 million). In the medium term, the focus is on acquiring customers from the non-automotive sector with its expertise in automation and maintenance. To this end, the Automation division of SAV GmbH in Mittweida was acquired at the beginning of January 2021 and the operations of SOLution-TEC GmbH, Wolfenbüttel, was taken over effective 1 November 2021.