Business News
Océ: Results third quarter 2008
Wednesday 01. October 2008 - Océ: normalized operating income third quarter 16.8 million
Highlights third quarter:
Total revenues 700.1 million [-1.5% organically, excluding fax]
Normalized operating income 16.8 million [2007: 21.2 million]
One-off items of 28.0 million lead to operating income of – 11.2 million
Cost reduction program on track
Color increases to 26% of revenues [2007: 20%]
Comments by Rokus van Iperen, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors:
The current turmoil in the world economy continues to put pressure on our revenues and margins. We are meeting this challenge by providing new, value adding products and services for our customers, enhancing operational excellence and continuously cutting costs aggressively. Our cost reduction program will achieve 80 million savings in 2008 and an additional 50 million savings in 2009. Year to date we reduced costs by 59 million.
In the third quarter we continued to grow our revenues in the office, print room, display graphics and business services segments. This is a result of our consistent strategy to strengthen our product portfolio and cooperate with partners.
The financial services and construction markets are experiencing well publicized challenges. These developments are significantly impacting revenues from our continuous feed printers and technical document systems, the main cause of our decline in profitability.
Over the quarter, we have achieved rapid growth in color. We sold several multi-million euro Océ JetStream printers and many other color systems, including the recently launched Océ ColorWave 600.
The normalized operating income in the third quarter is positive. Due to one-off items the reported operating income is negative [- 11.2 million].
In the current economic turmoil we refrain from giving an outlook for our full year income. We did however start the fourth quarter of 2008 with an order backlog comparable with last year. Continued cost savings are expected to amount to 21 million in the fourth quarter. Supported by a strong focus on improving all working capital elements and by the anticipated sale of finance lease receivables, we expect a positive free cash flow for the 2008 full year.