Schweizer Electronic AG:
• Annual General Meeting approves dividend of 0.30 Euro
• SCHWEIZER will develop towards a growth stock
• Record sales in 2017 – Annual result rose to 3.5 million Euro
Schramberg, June 29, 2018 – Shareholders present at Schweizer Electronic AG’s 29th Annual Shareholders‘ Meeting on June 29, 2018 followed the proposal submitted by the Executive and Supervisory Boards and agreed to pay a dividend of 0.30 Euro per share for the fiscal year 2017.
With this dividend, the company intends to let its shareholders participate in last year’s business success in spite of the forthcoming investments into the new high technology plant in China for further growth. In future, SCHWEIZER will increasingly develop towards a growth stock in order to consistently explore the excellent business potential deriving from the megatrends e-mobility and autonomous driving. With this strategic realignment, SCHWEIZER’s management expects a disproportionate increase of its company value in the medium term.
The Shareholders’ Meeting approved the actions of the Managing Board and the Supervisory Board for the year 2017. Beyond the proposal for paying a dividend, the plenum, which gathered on the premises of Schweizer Electronic in Schramberg, agreed to all other proposals with a vast majority. With about 140 shareholders joining the meeting, 73.35 percent of the share capital was represented. In addition, around 40 guests were present.
In their speeches, board members Nicolas Schweizer and Marc Bunz reported on a successful fiscal year 2017 which SCHWEIZER closed with a record turnover of 120.9 million euro. The growth of 4.2 percent was due to a record production volume of 109.6 million euro from the production site in Schramberg. Various measures to eliminate bottleneck areas, focussed investments into new production technologies, as well as further process optimisations had allowed for an output increase of 6.2 percent in Schramberg. In this context, the turnover share of high technology products from the fields of power electronics, embedding and system cost reduction, which are mainly used for applications of autonomous driving and electro mobility, increased again and now account for 58 percent of SCHWEIZER’s turnover.
The final group EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) amounted to 8.4 million euro (2016: 9.5 million euro), corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 7.0 percent against 8.2 percent the year before. The group EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) came up to 0.3 million euro (2016: 1.8 million euro) which corresponds to an EBIT margin of 0.3 percent (2016: 1.6 percent).
Different special effects had a negative as well a positive impact on the business figures respectively. On the one hand, the EBITDA was affected by legal cost provisions of 2.5 million euro and extraordinary expenses of 0.5 million euro for the preparation of the setup of the new production plant in China. Without these special effects of in total 3.0 million euro, the EBITDA would have amounted to 11.4 million euro, corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 9.4 percent. Since all special effects had a corresponding impact on the EBIT as well, the EBIT before special effects would have amounted to 3.3 million euro, which is equivalent to an EBIT margin of 2.8 percent.
On the other hand, proceeds from the partial sale of SCHWEIZER’s stake in Meiko Electronics had a positive impact on the financial income. In the fourth quarter of the year 2017 SCHWEIZER and Meiko Electronics had agreed on a reduction of their mutual shareholding. The partial sale of the shares has no impact on the continuing successful cooperation of the two companies. The final annual result 2017 amounted to 3.5 million euro (2016: 0.6 million euro).Considering all special effects, the annual result would have amounted to 2.5 million euro.
The company’s solid equity capital increased slightly to 62.3 million euro as of the balance sheet date. This corresponds to an equity ratio of 54.9 percent (December 31, 2016: 52.8 percent). Net gearing was -6.5 % compared to -1.5 percent in 2016.