Sales in the six months to 30 September grew 22% year on year to €983m (£840m) from €805m. EBITDA rose slightly from €67m to €75m, although the business highlighted that last year’s figure was massaged by a restructuring of the pension scheme, which delivered a €73m uplift and the €8m sale of MIS subsidiary CERM and short-time work as a result of the pandemic.
In Q2 the business benefited from the €20m sale of Docufy in September.
Incoming order growth in Q1 jumped 89% year on year, and although it slowed slightly in Q2, the business still notched up a respectable 44% increase on last year at the halfway mark, logging €1.2bn.
Pre-tax profit for Q2 was €31.1m compared with a loss of €6.2m in Q2 2019/20, with profits at the halfway point standing at €20m compared with breakeven last year.
“The highly positive developments in our growth areas and our improved cost-efficiency underline that Heidelberg is doing very well. We also see great potential for the future thanks to our leading position in China and in the areas of digital business models, e-mobility and packaging printing," said Heidelberg CEO Rainer Hundsdörfer, who is stepping down next April.
He is being replaced by Ludwin Monz, who is joining from Zeiss Group.
In a video address, CFO Marcus Wassenberg said: “We have successfully completed the first half of this year and the positive trend of the first quarter continues, we achieved significant improvement on our key financial figures.”
He added that the group remained on track to achieve sales of €2bn in the full year with an EBITDA of 7%-7.5% “the tense situation in material costs and supply chains continues to play a role in the second half of the year, nevertheless we are on the right track".
Heidelberg’s share price dipped by 1.7% to €2.37 on the release of the results.
Separately, Heidelberg is looking to extend its ‘equipment as a service’ subscription business after securing a “strategic partnership” with insurance group Munich RE, which will finance subscription deals from early next year.
