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Gross sales in the prior year CHF 325.1 million. – Demand situation continues to be significantly below prior year since Quarter 4 2008 despite a short rally Dornach, 10 February, 2009 In 2008 Swissmetal generated consolidated gross sales of CHF 325.1 million. This is equivalent to a fall in sales of 20%, which results from a series of different factors. By far the greatest impact on gross sales was from the fall in metal prices. The delivery bottlenecks caused by the transfer of production to the newly-installed extrusion press also depressed sales. In addition, in the fourth quarter Swissmetal experienced a drop in sales because of the deteriorating economic situation. Sales of metals in the course of the warehouse optimization, on the other hand, had a positive effect of CHF 7.7 million (prior year: CHF 4.0 million) on gross sales.
For the full year 2008, order entry (in BBU) was 6% below the prior year, whereas for the first nine months ending September 2008 it still exceeded the prior year level. The deteriorating economic situation also left its mark here.
The demand situation continues to be erratic and the order entry does not allow us to detect any clear trend. The order entry over the period from October to this day is 37% below the value of the comparable period in 2007/2008.
Since December last year has adjusted its production capacity on individual production lines to the current situation by means of short-time working to date, the sites have been affected by this but not however, in the near future there may also be short-time operation too in individual plant departments.
Despite the current global economic crisis, the subsidiary Swissmetal Design Solutions AG continues to progress according to plan with the development of the Atmova system, the energy-providing solution with high standards of aesthetics and design. Its presence at the Clean Energy Power (CEP) exhibition in Stuttgart at the end of January 2009 was extremely well received. |
