Germany's GEA Group AG (GEAGY.PK, GEAGF.PK) Wednesday reported a decline in profit for full year 2012 amid an 'increasingly difficult' economic environment. However, the company sees higher earnings and moderate revenue growth in the current year. GEA also said its board will propose an unchanged dividend of 0.55 euros.
For the current 2013 fiscal year, the provider of systems for food and energy industries, targets earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization or EBITDA to be about 700 million euros, higher than around 600 million euros in the year 2012. The company believes that demand in its sales markets will match 2012 levels and sees moderate revenue growth.
Announcing its preliminary results, the company said its earnings before tax or EBT for the full year 2012 declined to 366.9 million euros from 398.6 million euros in the previous year.
EBITDA decreased to 597.8 million euros from 610.2 million euros a year ago.
Operating EBIT or earnings before effect of purchase price allocation and one-offs in the GEA Food Solutions segment increased 7.1 percent to 561.6 million euros. Operating EBIT margin improved around 10 basis points to 9.8 percent. Excluding the GEA Food Solutions segment, operating EBIT margin was 10.7 percent, compared to 10 percent last year.
Meanwhile, EBIT decreased 4.2 percent from last year to 454.8 million euros.
Group revenue for the full year grew 5.6 percent to 5.72 billion euros.
Order intake in the year increased 5.2 percent to 5.90 billion euros. In the fourth quarter, order intake was 1.48 billion euros, unchanged from the third-quarter level.
At the end of the year, order backlog was 2.75 billion euros, up 2.8 percent from the preceding year.
Jürg Oleas, CEO of the company stated, "...In light of these encouraging figures, the Executive Board and Supervisory Board will propose an unchanged dividend of EUR 0.55 to the Annual General Meeting for the increased number of shares, which now total 192.5 million."
On Frankfurt's Xetra, the shares are currently trading at 25.84 euros, down 3.69 percent.
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