Financial performance

Overall assessment of the economic situation

The KION Group can look back on a strong performance in the first nine months of 2015. Supported by the implementation of the Strategy 2020 as planned and the positive situation in the core European markets, the Group generated higher growth in its new truck business than the overall global market and continued to expand its service business in all three quarters.

Each operating segment increased not only its order intake but also its revenue and, even adjusted for favourable currency effects, achieved year-on-year improvements.

Adjusted EBIT advanced by 7.2 per cent compared with the corresponding period of 2014, while revenue rose by 8.4 per cent. Earnings per share climbed to €1.44, up from €1.19 in the first three quarters of 2014. Nine months into the year, the KION Group is well on course to achieve the targets that it has set for its KPIs for 2015 as a whole.

Level of orders

In the third quarter, the KION Group’s new truck business maintained the dynamism of the first six months of the year. Order intake rose by 9.5 per cent or €330.8 million to €3,818.5 million in the first three quarters of 2015. Both operating segments contributed to this rise, with LMH registering the stronger increase of the two. There were also positive currency effects of €99.0 million.

The number of trucks ordered increased to 122.4 thousand, which was 6.2 per cent higher than in the first nine months of 2014. The KION Group’s growth thus significantly outstripped that of the global market as a whole. Overall, the KION Group slightly improved its market position in its home market of Europe. In China, too, demand was up for products from KION brand companies in the first nine months of the year, whereas the market as a whole continued to decline. This increase was due, above all, to successful sales of warehouse trucks. The order book amounted to €968.6 million, a rise of 26.8 per cent on the value at the end of last year (31 December 2014: €764.1 million).