Voestalpine : profit before and after tax for the third quarter of 2017/18 already bests its results for all of 2016/17

Year over year, the voestalpine Group's revenue rose in the first three quarters of the business year 2017/18 by 16.8% from EUR 8.1 billion to EUR 9.5 billion. The increase in the individual earnings categories-together with the corresponding margin increases-was even more dramatic. Hence the operating result (EBITDA) rose by almost one third, from just under EUR 1.1 billion in the previous year to EUR 1.41 billion in the current year. The increase in the profit from operations (EBIT) was even more impressive: it jumped 53.1% from EUR 545 million to EUR 835 million.

While the profit before tax soared by 59.8% from EUR 461 million to EUR 737 million, the profit after tax was even higher, skyrocketing by 61.6% from EUR 344 million to EUR 556 million. As of the third quarter of the business year 2017/18, both key performance indicators thus have already surpassed those for the entire business year 2016/17 (EUR 700 million and EUR 527 million, respectively).

At EUR 6.3 billion, equity as of December 31, 2017, reached a new all-time high. In addition, the gearing ratio (net financial debt as a percentage of equity) fell year over year from 61.2% as of the end of December 2016 to 53.5% as of the end of December 2017. The completion of numerous large-scale projects in the past 18 months lowered the Group's investment expenditure by 25.9% from EUR 711 million the previous year to EUR 527 million this year. At 50,658, the number of employees (FTE) as of December 31, 2017, denotes an increase of 3.9% that was driven not least by the expansion of the Group's automotive activities at its sites outside of Europe.