Business News

Océ: Results 2nd quarter

Friday 04. July 2008 - Revenues down due to economic developments and exchange rate effects Gross margin, excluding one-off items, increases to 40.2% [2007: 39.7%] Operating income, excluding one-off items, € 20.2 million [2007: € 29.6 million] Savings program further expanded

Comments by Rokus van Iperen, chairman of the Board of Executive Directors:
‘The adverse economic conditions again impacted our markets in the second quarter and therefore affected our results. Sales of continuous feed systems decreased, due in part to developments in the financial sector. The slowdown in the construction sector in the United States is continuing and is now also making itself felt more in Europe. In this segment we sold fewer wide format printers than in the same period of last year.

A positive factor is that we were able in the second quarter to continue to grow in the office and printroom market, the wide format graphics market and in Business Services. This growth results from our strategy of continuously investing in strengthening our distribution power and in an innovative and competitive product portfolio.

The improvement of our business processes and the resultant reduction in our costs is the third main thrust of our strategy. The savings program announced in April will reduce the costs in 2008 by € 80 million. In the first half of 2008 savings of € 20 million were achieved. Of the reduction of 350 jobs that was announced in April, 80% has meanwhile been completed.
In response to the economic situation and elaborating on the program of 2008, we have identified in the past period further possibilities for cost savings, which will lead to an additional decrease in costs of € 50 million in 2009. As part of these savings about 600 extra jobs will be discontinued. We have started on the implementation of this.’