Analytik Jena AG Enjoying Solid Start to New Financial Year
“After a disappointing performance in the past calendar year 2014, in which we were unable to grow sales or generate a positive result, the tide is clearly turning in the first quarter of the 2015 financial year,” says Klaus Berka, CEO of Analytik Jena AG. “In the two core areas of the instrument business, Analytical Instrumentation and Life Science, we’ve managed to achieve double-digit increases in order entries and revenue compared to the previous year. Analytik Jena ended the period with both a positive operating profit and overall result at the Group level.”
Two major orders were notable in the first quarter with a total sales volume of EUR 2.5 m. These were acquired in China, the Company’s most important export market, for its two core areas – Analytical Instrumentation and Life Science. Analytik Jena expects revenue of approximately EUR 110.0 m in the instrument business (i.e. not including project business) as well as an operating profit of EUR 4.0 m to EUR 5.0 m for the 2015 financial year.
The situation in Optics and the project business, in the form of its 50-percent subsidiary AJZ Engineering, remains difficult. Despite solid order entries, which Analytik Jena acquired for its consumer business under the DOCTER ® brand at the industry’s leading trade fair IWA in February, the Company was unable to expand sales and profit. Similarly, sales were down compared to the first quarter of 2014 in the Project Business unit due to the continued tension in Russia, a key market. “As we continued work on our Wolshskij project, we achieved tangible successes in the first three months of the financial year. The ruble’s recovery also gives us hope that the project will stabilize. However, realizing Europe’s largest kidney transplant center in Wolshskij represents a major challenge,” continues Berka.
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