Krones shares good news

The Krones Group is reported to be in sound financial health despite adverse macro-economic conditions in 2003. This has boosted the price of Krones shares, and in order to ensure a sustained improvement, the executive and supervisory boards decided, at the supervisory board's meeting on 24 March, to propose to the AGM on 23 June 2004 a conversion of the hitherto non-voting preference shares - currently 34 per cent preference shares and 66 per cent ordinary shares - into Krones ordinary shares.

If the AGM approves the conversion, the company believes that the liquidity of the Krones stock and its weighting in the M-DAX will be enormously enhanced. This initiative will enable the company to increase the acceptance and attractiveness of the Krones stock, particularly for institutional investors abroad.

The announcement follows the publication of strong financial results. For the fourth time in succession, the world's market leader for beverage bottling, canning and packaging machinery achieved new bests in terms of order bookings, sales and net income.

In the 2003 business year, Krones​ achieved order bookings of €1,441 million euros , up 10.1 per cent up on the preceding year. Krones has benefited from a continuingly strong trend towards PET containers. For example, growing number of breweries are starting to sell beer in PET bottles, and aseptic filling technology for fruit juices and water is also becoming increasingly important.

The provisional consolidated result, with a net income for the year of €60.4 million after taxes, is also a new best for the company. Last year's figure was €57.3 million.

Orders on hand also rose to €619 million on the reporting date of 31 December 2003, corresponding to about five months of full production capacity utilisation. The order situation in the first quarter of 2004 showed a further improvement, and the group is predicting additional sales growth can for 2004.