In the first half of 2011, Swiss public limited company SCHMOLZ BICKENBACH AG substantially improved its net income relative to the previous year to EUR 69.8 million (2010: EUR 4.4 million). Revenue rose to EUR 2 087.3 million (2010: EUR 1 477.4 million). Operating income before depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) doubled to almost EUR 199.0 million (2010: EUR 102.3 million), representing a margin of 9.5%. EBIT increased to EUR 142.9 million (2010: EUR 49.2 million) with a margin of 6.8%.

As in 2010, demand from all market segments progressively increased, resulting in higher order bookings, order backlogs and production volumes. Capacity utilization in the production and processing plants as well as in the distribution companies remains high. The efficiency improvement measures that were initiated in the previous years are having positive effects.

The impact of the global financial and economic crisis and the resulting uncertainty for our company is difficult to assess at present. Although the development of the Swiss franc relative to the euro is disadvantageous for our Swiss production plants, these form only a small part of the Group.

For the full year, we again expect to generate substantially higher revenue than in the previous year and to improve net income. The first half of 2011 was characterized by strong demand for special steel products. The automotive and automotive components industries were producing at particularly high levels. Our other important sales segments, such as machinery and apparatus construction and hydraulics, as well as energy exploitation and generation, also developed positively. This resulted in full capacity utilization at all of our production and processing plants. In individual cases supply could not keep pace with demand, which we solved by increasing capacity. Our distribution organizations also benefited from the good demand situation.