Pankl Racing Systems AG: Full year figures for 2015

Kapfenberg (pta007/22.02.2016/07:25 UTC+1) 22 February 2016

- Further increase in revenues by another 5% to Eur173.6m
- Declines in racing and aerospace businesses
- Strong growth in high performance division
- Record earnings after tax of Eur7.9m

Eurk	2015	2014	CHG
Revenues	173,638	165,027	5%
EBITDA	23,641	24,316	-3%
EBIT	10,204	11,893	-14%
Earnings after tax	7,931	6,861	16%
EBITDA margin	14%	15%	-
EBIT margin	6%	7%	-
Earnings per share (Eur)	Feb 43	Jan 95	25%
Book value per share (Eur)	26.30	24.37	8%

The past fiscal year was mainly characterised by a generally difficult economic environment, which also affected the markets in which Pankl operates. This led to declining revenues in both the racing and aerospace businesses. The high performance division showed, however, as in the previous years, a double digit revenues growth. Hence, overall group revenues increased by 5% to Eur173.6m.

Despite the challenging environment, Pankl Group generated solid results. Due to the weak racing business EBIT did decline by 14% to Eur10.2m, but due to the absence of further exceptional expenses in connection with the 2014 refinancing we were able to improve the financial results by 44% to Eur-1.8m. In 2015, we faced significantly lower interest expenses and also substantially lower income taxes, which led to an increase in earnings after tax by 16% to a record Eur7.9m.

Racing/High Performance
F1 continues to be an important part of our business, but in 2015 uncertainty and instability of the F1 business was higher than ever. After last year's exceptional demand driven by the rule change introducing 1.6 litre V6 turbocharged engines with hybrid technology, we faced a significant decline in 2015. For the first time in our history, F1 revenues accounted for slightly less than 10% of group revenues (2014: 17% of revenues). A large portion of this decline was compensated by an increase in US motor racing series revenues. The overall motor racing revenues declined by a mere 0.9%.

The High Performance division grew by 21% in 2015 and accounted already for 34% of group revenues. The new forging press line of Pankl Forging Technology achieved the largest revenues growth (+62%). We are also very pleased that with increasing capacity utilisation productivity improved significantly and all individual divisions recorded positive results.

In the fiscal year 2015, Racing/High Performance Segment revenues increased by 8.4% from Eur137.2m to Eur148.7m. Operating earnings (EBIT) declined by Eur1.1m from Eur9.4m or 6.8% of revenues to Eur8.3m or 5.6% of revenues due to the shift from high margin racing revenues to lower margin high performance revenues.

Aerospace
The Aerospace Segment is still burdened by the weak demand for civil helicopters. This is due to ongoing low oil prices which led to a decline in the use of helicopters for offshore oil exploration and production. The new jet engine driveshaft business somewhat compensated for the decline in the helicopter business. In the fiscal year 2015, Aerospace Segment revenues decreased by 8.6% to Eur25.6m (2014: Eur28.0m).

The decline in revenues had an appropriate impact on earnings. Operating earnings (EBIT) declined from Eur2.5m or 8.9% of revenues to Eur1.3m or 5.1% of revenues.

Dividend Payment
At the AGM on 22 April 2016, the Management Board will propose the payment of a dividend of Eur0.60 per share. For 3,150,000 shares this would represent a dividend payment of Eur1,890k.

Outlook
CEO Wolfgang Plasser: "We aim to safeguard our know-how lead and high market shares in the highly volatile and stagnating motor racing business by ongoing intense R&D activities. Also in the coming years, we will continue to utilise this know how in the high performance series business generating revenues growth in this area. In the Aerospace Segment we will focus mainly on the jet engine business."

From 07/03/2016, the annual financial report will be available on our website www.pankl.com under the link http://www.pankl.com/en/header-navigation/investor-relations/publications/financial-statements/.

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