SLM Solutions Reports Good Half Year Results

The German manufacturer SLM Solutions reports a great first half for 2016 with a 85% rise in sales.

The company sold 56 machines, with more than 60% to new customers. The growth lead to a revenue of 33,5€ million. In comparison last year the company made 18,1€ million in the first half.

Here is the complete press release:

SLM SOLUTIONS AGAIN OUTGROWS MARKET IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2016

Sales up by 85 % in the first half of 2016 and by 105 % in the sec­ond quar­ter
Or­ders re­ceived for 56 ma­chines, around two thirds from new cus­tomers
Ad­justed EBITDA of EUR -1.0 mil­lion thanks to one-off sale of old mod­els
Joint ven­ture com­pany 3D Metal Pow­der GmbH es­tab­lished on 14 July 2016
Lübeck, Au­gust 11, 2016 – SLM So­lu­tions Group AG, a lead­ing sup­plier of metal-based ad­di­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy, has suc­ceeded in lift­ing sales in the first six months of 2016 to EUR 33.5 mil­lion (H1/2015: EUR 18.1 mil­lion), with the bulk of this growth con­tin­u­ing to come from ma­chin­ery sales. The man­age­ment has con­firmed its full-year tar­gets.
Man­age­ment Board chair­man Dr. Markus Rech­lin is de­lighted: “In just six months we have achieved the same vol­ume of busi­ness as in the full year 2014 and after nine months in 2015. In fact we upped the pace once again in the sec­ond quar­ter and dou­bled our con­sol­i­dated rev­enue to 19.7 mil­lion euro com­pared with 9.6 mil­lion euro last year. Once again we man­aged to grow at a faster rate than the over­all world mar­ket, which ac­cord­ing to Wohlers As­so­ci­ates put on an av­er­age of 32 % be­tween 2013 and 2015. Fol­low­ing on from our strong growth in the first half, we con­tinue to ex­pect full-year sales in 2016 to lay within a band of 85 to 90 mil­lion euro, and we an­tic­i­pate a slight in­crease in ad­justed EBITDA rel­a­tive to the year be­fore. The ma­chines busi­ness in the fourth quar­ter in par­tic­u­lar will be de­ci­sive in achiev­ing our full-year tar­gets.”

Order in­take in the first half of 2016 rose by 40 % to 56 ma­chines (H1/2015: 40 ma­chines). This also in­cludes used ma­chines, some of which were pre­vi­ously used for demon­stra­tion pur­poses. The value of the ma­chin­ery or­dered ac­cord­ingly rose at a lower rate of 7 %. Uwe Böger­shausen, CFO of SLM So­lu­tions, ex­plains: “Viewed on an in­tra-year basis, our laser melt­ing sys­tems busi­ness reg­u­larly shows a dis­tinct sea­sonal pat­tern. Also when as­sess­ing our cur­rent half-year fig­ures, it should be borne in mind that in sell­ing some older demon­stra­tion ma­chines to an es­tab­lished cus­tomer, we al­lowed some dis­counts that had a one-off im­pact on prof­itabil­ity. With our new, even more user-friendly ver­sion of the SLM 500HL, we are very well po­si­tioned in the mar­ket.”
Total op­er­at­ing rev­enue, com­pris­ing sales rev­enues, in­creases in in­ven­tory and cap­i­tal­ized in­ter­nal ex­pen­di­ture amounted to EUR 41.7 mil­lion for the first half of 2016, up by 66 % over the year be­fore. Ma­te­r­ial costs in the re­port­ing pe­riod rose some­what ahead of ag­gre­gate per­for­mance, climb­ing to EUR 24.6 mil­lion (H1/2015: EUR 14.1 mil­lion). Ac­cord­ingly the ma­te­r­ial cost ratio (rel­a­tive to ag­gre­gate per­for­mance) came in at 59 %, slightly above the year be­fore (H1/2015: 56 %). In view of the strong growth in the work­force, after an ad­just­ment of EUR 0.3 mil­lion (H1/2015: EUR 1.3 mil­lion), per­son­nel costs at EUR 11.5 mil­lion were up by 95 % over the year be­fore (H1/2015: EUR 5.9 mil­lion). The ad­justed per­son­nel cost ratio ac­cord­ingly in­creased to 28 % of ag­gre­gate per­for­mance (H1/2015: 24 %). The fig­ures for both pe­ri­ods have been ad­justed to allow for the three-year re­ten­tion bonus pro­gram in­tro­duced when the com­pany was floated in 2014.
Ad­justed EBITDA, al­low­ing for the ef­fects of the re­ten­tion bonus, amounted to EUR -1.0 mil­lion for the first half of 2016 (H1/2015: EUR -0.4 mil­lion), with an ad­justed mar­gin (based on con­sol­i­dated sales) of -3 % (H1/2015: -2 %). Ad­justed EBITDA for the last twelve months to June 30, 2016 amounted to EUR 7.5 mil­lion, equat­ing to an ad­justed mar­gin of 9 % (based on cu­mu­la­tive sales of EUR 81.5 mil­lion over the past twelve months prior to the clos­ing date).
After taxes the con­sol­i­dated net loss for the pe­riod came in at EUR -2.3 mil­lion for the first half of 2016 (H1/2015: EUR -2.2 mil­lion), equat­ing to di­luted and undi­luted earn­ings per share of EUR -0.13 (H1/2015: EUR -0.12). As of June 30, 2016, the eq­uity ratio stood at 84 % (De­cem­ber 31, 2015: 76 %).
Dr. Markus Rech­lin adds: “The con­tin­u­ing im­prove­ment in prof­itabil­ity will de­pend on the con­tin­u­a­tion of growth. As a met­als spe­cial­ist we find our­selves in the most dy­namic seg­ment of the ad­di­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing mar­ket, and we are play­ing our part in break­ing down the bar­ri­ers that cur­rently ob­struct wide-rang­ing ap­pli­ca­tion. With our joint ven­tures in soft­ware and con­sum­ables, we are also tak­ing the next steps to­wards be­com­ing an in­te­grated sys­tems sup­plier.
The H1 re­port for SLM So­lu­tions is avail­able from today at www.slm-solutions.com under the head­ing of “In­vestor Re­la­tions” in Ger­man and Eng­lish.
ABOUT THE COM­PANY
Lübeck-based SLM So­lu­tions Group AG is a lead­ing provider of metal-based ad­di­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy. The com­pany’s shares are traded in the Prime Stan­dard of the Frank­furt Stock Ex­change. The stock has been listed in the Tec­DAX index since 21 March 2016. SLM So­lu­tions fo­cuses on the de­vel­op­ment, as­sem­bly and sales of ma­chines and in­te­grated sys­tem so­lu­tions in the field of se­lec­tive laser melt­ing. SLM So­lu­tions cur­rently em­ploys over 280 mem­bers of staff in Ger­many, the USA, Sin­ga­pore, Rus­sia and China. The prod­ucts are utilised world­wide by cus­tomers in par­tic­u­lar from the aero­space, en­ergy, health­care and au­to­mo­tive in­dus­tries. SLM So­lu­tions stands for tech­no­log­i­cally ad­vanced, in­no­v­a­tive and highly ef­fi­cient in­te­grated sys­tem so­lu­tions.