Annual General Meeting in Hamburg / Jungheinrich improves market position / Jungheinrich braced for significant shrinkage of market and business
HAMBURG, Germany, June 11 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- The Jungheinrich Group stood its ground in a difficult market environment and expanded its worldwide market position. Although the negative trend witnessed in the fourth quarter of 2008 persisted into the first four months of this year, causing the world market volume to be halved to 164 thousand trucks (prior year: 333 thousand units), the company stayed its course, thanks to its extensive crisis-management and earnings-improvement measures. At the Annual General Meeting on June 9, 2009, the company's shareholders were presented with a draft resolution to slightly decrease the dividend for fiscal 2008 by 3 euro cents to 0.49 euros per ordinary share (prior year: 0.52 euros) and 0.55 euros per preferred share (prior year: 0.58 euros).
The sustained contraction of the market and drop in demand are reflected in the Jungheinrich Group's business trend for the first four months of 2009. The value of incoming orders, including all business areas, decreased by 28 percent to 542 million euros (prior year: 750 million euros). By the end of April, net sales had cumulatively fallen by some 20 percent to 545 million euros (prior year: 680 million euros). New truck business was hit the hardest, recording a drop of 32 percent, followed by short-term hire and used equipment activities, which experienced a decline of 6 percent. Only the used equipment business posted a marginal gain. After-sales services were relatively stable. As of April 30, 2009, orders on hand totalled 234 million euros and were thus 40 percent lower year on year (prior year: 391 million euros). The decline compared with the 242 million euros in orders on hand at the end of 2008 was a marginal 8 million euros.
Against the backdrop of the negative economic setting, Jungheinrich is braced for a significant reduction in market and business volume this year. Keeping the uncertainty of market estimates in mind, the worldwide market for material handling equipment will probably decline by at least about 30 percent to roughly 600 thousand trucks (prior year: 872 thousand units). At present, demand is not anticipated to be revitalized before the second half of 2010. "Jungheinrich is well equipped to prevail in this difficult market environment. Our solid business refinancing, the various measures we have initiated -- including the adjustment of production to lower demand, intensified inventory and cost management -- as well as further strategic investments in products and markets show, that Jungheinrich maintains its course even on rough sea," declared Hans-Georg Frey, Chairman of the Board of Management.
Incisive structural projects are also among the measures that have already been defined. As announced in the spring, redundancies in certain Group units especially hard hit by the crisis will be unavoidable. Intense negotiations are presently being conducted with employee representatives.
The company confirms its forecast for incoming orders and net sales in the order of about 1.7 billion euros each (prior year: 2.1 billion euros). The extent of the expected earnings decrease in 2009 will depend on the economic trend in the next few months as well as the scope of structural measures to be taken and the ensuing one-off costs. At present, the company is working hard to avoid a negative operating result.
Jungheinrich ranks among the world's leading companies in the material handling equipment, warehousing and material flow engineering sectors. The company is a logistics service provider with manufacturing operations, which offers its customers a comprehensive range of forklift trucks, shelving systems, services and consulting covering the entire field of intralogistics. Jungheinrich shares are traded on all German stock exchanges.
