The RHI Supervisory Board approved the financial statements 2006 of RHI AG and the consolidated financial statements 2006 at its meeting on 24 April 2007. The group’s preliminary results, which were published on 21 March 2006, have thus been confirmed.
At the Annual General Meeting on 1 June 2007, the Management Board will propose to carry forward the accumulated profit of RHI AG in its entirety in order to strengthen equity and with a view to the ambitious growth targets. RHI’s objective is to increase revenue to EUR 2.0 billion by 2010 through organic growth and targeted acquisitions and to raise its world market share to over 15%. There are good opportunities worldwide to expand market position and earnings power further in the coming years. Against this background, the new core shareholder, the MS Private Foundation, has clearly indicated that a dividend proposal will not be supported at the RHI Annual General Meeting.
RHI’s consolidated revenue (continued operations) rose by 11.4% to EUR 1,335.8 million in 2006 (previous year: EUR 1,199.4 million). With this increase in revenue, RHI outperformed the growth rates of its client industries and the refractories market, and expanded its position as the world market leader further. EBITDA in the RHI Group amounted to EUR 179.5 million (previous year: EUR 156.4 million); EBIT was EUR 133.8 million in 2006 (previous year: EUR 115.5 million), in increase by 15.8%. The EBIT margin increased to 10.0% (previous year: 9.6%) although energy and raw material costs continued to rise.
RHI reported a group profit amounting to EUR 157.9 million in 2006 (previous year: EUR 97.3 million). EUR 97.1 million of the RHI Group’s profit (previous year: 82.8 million) were accounted for by continued operations with RHI’s core business, Refractories, up 17,3%. The discontinued Insulating operations (Heraklith) contributed a book profit of EUR 60.8 million (previous year: EUR 14.5 million). Undiluted earnings per share amounted to EUR 5.81 in 2006 (previous year: EUR 4.07), fully diluted earnings per share to EUR 4.01 (previous year: EUR 2.55), up 57.3%.
The Annual Report 2006 will be available from RHI’s website on 25 April 2007 under www.rhi-ag.com for downloading and also as an online report. RHI will publish the quarterly result I/2007 on 3 May 2007.