S&T AG: Strong rise in earnings in second quarter of 2018

Friday, 3rd August 2018

Austria

Net income nearly doubled from first half of 2017's EUR 9.2 million to EUR 17.2 million (H1/2018)
Revenues up 11% to EUR 422.7 million (H1/2017: EUR 381.4 million)
EBITDA up 35% to EUR 36.7 million (H1/2017: EUR 27.2 million)

Linz. August 3, 2018. S&T AG (www.snt.at) has continued its success in the first half of the current fiscal year. The year's second quarter was characterized by a great upswing in revenues, and, especially, in earnings. The first half of 2018's revenues were up some 11%, rising from EUR 381.4 million in 2017 to EUR 422.7 million. The second quarter's revenues increased from EUR 198.6 million in 2017 to EUR 219.0 million in 2018.

Due to the good business development, joined with the reduction of operating costs over the comparable period of the previous year the EBITDA for the first six months rose some 35%, increasing significantly from EUR 27.2 million to EUR 36.7 million. The second quarter of 2018 saw an EBITDA improvement of some 31%, rising from 2017's EUR 15.0 million to 2018's EUR 19.6 million. Net income for the first six months of the year increased from EUR 9.2 million in 2017 to EUR 17.2 million. The second quarter brought a near doubling of net income, which increased from EUR 5.3 million in 2017 to EUR 9.7 million. Developing gratifyingly well due to this were once more the earnings per share (undiluted), which rose during the last six months period to 26 cents (PY: 10 cents).

The company's assets and liquidity continued to develop positively in the second quarter. Cash and cash equivalents were influenced by seasonal effects, the repayment of the EUR 15 million bond loan in May 2018, and by the paying out of the dividends in June 2018, resulting to EUR 140.0 million (December 31, 2017: EUR 216.9 million) as of June 30, 2018. The equity rate increased to 45.4% (December 31, 2017: 41.2%) as of June 30, 2018 and demonstrates the solidity of the financing of the S&T Group.

Purposefully pursued in the first half of 2018 was the strategy of combining proprietary technologies - with these especially being in the IoT Solutions area - with high-quality IT services. This strategy yielded the period's significant increases in key earnings, assets and liquidity indicators. These improvements manifested themselves especially in the profitability-driving “IoT Solutions” segment. The segment's EBITDA for the first half of 2018 came to EUR 21.8 million, up some 96% over the period of comparison in 2017. Also continuing to rise were the order backlog and projects pipeline. As of the end of the second quarter of 2018, the order backlog amounted to EUR 516 million (December 31, 2017: EUR 474 million). The project pipeline came to EUR 1,433 million (as of December 31, 2017: EUR 1,104 million).

“During the first half of 2018, we continued to set forth the implementation of our strategy of achieving profitable revenue and profit growth. We are highly satisfied with the results of this,” states Hannes Niederhauser, CEO of S&T AG. “The recent significant rise in earnings enabled us to achieve for the first half of 2018 an EBITDA margin of 8.7%. That is close to the 10% mark set by our long-term planning. The strong rise in projects in our pipeline is causing us to plan to double our revenues to EUR 2 billion by 2023. We are confirming our forecast for 2018 of our achieving some EUR 1 billion in revenues, and an EBITDA of at least EUR 80 million.”