- Strong fourth quarter anticipated
- 2011: Sales revenues of EUR 93 million and balanced operating result anticipated
- Development of new ticketing systems
- Liquidity in Hoeft & Wessel stock rises
In the first three quarters of 2011, the Hoeft & Wessel Group increased its sales revenues by more than 4 per cent, to reach EUR 62.8 million (2010: EUR 60.1 million). While the volume of sales revenue growth in the field of mobile terminals exceeded 20 per cent and over 10 per cent for ticketing systems, sales of car park terminals declined by 16 per cent on account of temporarily lower revenues generated in the U.S.
In the first nine months of 2011, Hoeft & Wessel supplied ticketing systems e.g. to the Danish State Railway and to public transport operators in Switzerland and in Spain. In South Africa, within the scope of a pilot project a new ticketing system based on an RFID technology is being realised with contactless payments in the city of Durban. The British subsidiary Metric supplied car park terminals to a parking management company and to South-West- Trains, amongst other customers. Mobile terminals for data capture went to various retail chains in Germany as well as to the Swiss Post.
The trend in the direction of internationalisation also continued in the third quarter. Roughly 60 per cent of sales are meanwhile realised on an international scale. In the first three quarters of 2011, Germany only accounted for as little as 40 per cent of sales, followed by the U.S. and other countries with 23 per cent and the United Kingdom with 22 per cent. The other EU states had a share of 14 per cent.
Due to delays in expanding the international distribution partnership network, project postponements and earnings being impacted by rising project costs, the operating result (EBIT) as at 30 September 2011, amounting to -EUR 3.2 million, turned out clearly negative and, therefore, lower than in the previous year
(2010: -EUR 0.8 million).
In the first nine months of the year, orders with a total volume of EUR 54.4 million were added to the books (2010: EUR 66.3 million). Thanks to a large- scale order placed by the British FirstGroup, Hoeft & Wessel succeeded in underpinning its leading position in the field of ticketing systems in the United Kingdom and, in addition, enabled the company to present a completely new, path-breaking e-Ticketing system. The placement of a firmly expected large order has been delayed. The order portfolio as at 30 September 2011 stood at EUR 53.5 million (31/12/2010: EUR 61.9 million).
While Hoeft & Wessel assumes that business trends in the current fourth quarter will be similarly good as in the previous year, the Company will no longer be able to match the operating result (EBIT) and sales revenues of the previous year by the end of fiscal 2011. For the financial year 2011, a slight decline in sales revenues to approx. EUR 93 million is now anticipated, and on account of delays in extending the international distribution partnership network, project postponements to the following year and earnings being impacted by higher project costs, a balanced operating result (EBIT) is now forecast. Next year, a clearly positive result is anticipated once again for the Höft & Wessel Group.
The liquidity of Hoeft & Wessel's stock has continued to grow in 2011. The average daily volume of trading of Hoeft & Wessel shares on all stock exchanges in the first three quarters of 2011 came to more than 7,700 shares, substantially exceeding the previous year's figure of just under 4,400 shares.
The instability on the stock markets led to a very high trading volume of roughly 11,000 shares per day in the third quarter. Following the gratifying development of trading activities, Hoeft & Wessel stock is also attracting increased investor interest.
