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[December 2005]
SGL Carbon Nine-Month Figures
Despite the seasonally weaker third quarter, consolidated sales of SGL Carbon (Wiesbaden, Germany) for the first nine months of 2005 increased by 13.1% to 778.1 million euro due to the strong development of demand in all three business areas.
Adjusted for foreign currency changes, sales grew by 14.4%. EBIT rose by a disproportionately higher rate than sales from comparable 60.4 million euro the previous year to 86.4 million euro, corresponding to an increase of 43%. The principal reasons for the strong growth in earnings were the ongoing favourable developments in Carbon & Graphite, the profit contributions from Graphite Specialties and PT as well as the positive results from SGL Technologies which benefitted from the earnings contribution out of the Audi cooperation agreement. In addition, cost savings of about 14 million euro supported the earnings growth in the first nine months.
Specialties sales increased by 6.8% to 188.1 million euro while SGL Technologies - with good demand in the fibre, composites and brakes sectors - saw sales rise by 22.8% to 120.2 million euro.
SGL said that group EBIT in Q4 2005 is expected to be lower than in Q3 2005 due to the shortfall of the profit contribution from the Audi cooperation agreement, as well as a traditionally weak December in Graphite Specialties. EBIT in Q4 is nevertheless likely to be more than four times as high as the result for Q4 2004 (5.2 million euro). For the full year 2005, SGL Carbon expects group sales to increase a little above 10% and group EBIT to rise more than proportionately to above 60% as well as a positive after-tax result.
ENDS