LÜBECK (dpa-AFX) – Persistent problems in the supply chain and high costs for the procurement of materials: After a weak quarter, the medical and safety technology group Drägerwerk can no longer meet the forecast for the current year. Although the Management Board assumes that the situation will at least improve somewhat in the coming weeks and that more sales can therefore be realized from the high order backlog, this is not enough to catch up on the backlog. “Due to the extent of the delay so far, however, Dräger no longer assumes that it will be able to achieve the annual forecast,” the company said on Friday evening after Xetra trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange had ended. The preference share, which is listed in the SDAX, fell significantly in value after the trading day.
As part of the annual forecast, the group had forecast a currency-adjusted decline in sales of between five and nine percent compared to the strong prior-year figures due to corona. The margin measured in terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) was expected to be between one and four percent. Because of the weaker first half of the year, the Management Board had already expected in the summer that it would only be able to reach the lower end of the range. However, the easing in the procurement of primary products was not as strong as hoped. The supply chains are still disrupted. Linked to this is the slow improvement in the availability of primary products that are necessary to manufacture end products and deliver them to customers.
As a result, sales in the third quarter fell, according to preliminary calculations, by around nine percent to 725 million euros, after falling by a little more than a fifth to 1.3 billion euros in the first six months. Since, in addition to the falling revenue, the procurement costs of electronic components that are difficult to obtain have risen sharply, the group was in the red. A loss of 37 million euros was incurred before interest and taxes (EBIT). In the same period of the previous year, Dräger had still achieved an operating profit of almost 48 million euros. Due to the increased costs and an unfavorable product mix due to the declining demand for the company’s corona-related offers, Dräger was already in deficit in the first half of the year.
On the other hand, slightly positive signals are coming from incoming orders. This picked up again in the third quarter, albeit not as strongly as in the past. In the third quarter, it increased by around two percent to around EUR 777 million. There was growth in the safety technology area, while the volume of orders in the medical technology area fell. “In the previous year, Dräger had received even larger corona-related orders for ventilators from Asia, which were not repeated to this extent,” the statement said. Dräger intends to publish the full results for the third quarter on October 27th.
On the Tradegate trading platform, the price fell by up to nine percent to EUR 37.80 in the first few minutes after the announcement of the key data and the canceled forecast. Recently, however, the share was able to limit the minus at least somewhat and lost around six percent to EUR 39.05 compared to the Xetra close. In Xetra trading, the paper had recovered somewhat in the past few days from the slide to a multi-year low of EUR 38.20 at the end of September and climbed back above the EUR 40 mark. At the beginning of the corona pandemic, the share was still benefiting from high demand and at the end of March 2020 was temporarily worth more than 100 euros. However, this rating was too high; In addition, there were a number of problems such as the disrupted supply chains, which then led to a price crash./zb/nas
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