Germany's SGL Carbon's sales up 10.7% to €549.8 million in H1FY22

The increase in sales was driven in particular by customers in the semiconductor industry and growth in the industrial applications market segment. Demand from the automotive and chemical industries was also encouraging.

EBITDApre, as one of the group's key performance indicators, improved by €16.2 million (+22.6 per cent) to €87.9 million (H1 2021: €71.7 million). Consequently, the EBITDApre margin increased from 14.4 per cent to 16 per cent. In addition to the higher utilisation of production capacities due to higher sales, the improvement in earnings was also driven by the largely successful passing-on of higher raw material and energy costs to customers as well as savings from the transformation programme.

With an increase in sales of €22.2 million (+10.0 per cent) to €243.4 million, the Graphite Solutions (GS) business unit made a major contribution to SGL Carbon’s sales growth. In particular, continued high demand from customers in the semiconductor sector, which represents approximately one third of the segment's sales, led to the positive business development in GS. As a result of the predominantly high-margin business, EBITDApre at GS improved by 22.7 per cent to €54.0 million.

The Process Technology (PT) business unit benefited from the good order situation in the chemical industry in H1 2022 and consequently increased sales to €49.2 million (H1 2021: € 40.8 million). EBITDApre also improved from €0.1 million in the prior year’s first half to €4.1 million in H1 2022.

The Carbon Fibres (CF) business unit benefited in the first half of 2022 from final deliveries to a major automotive manufacturer whose contract expired as scheduled on June 30, 2022. Segment sales increased by 5.8 per cent year-on-year to €176.0 million. In contrast, EBITDApre at CF decreased by €4.2 million to €28.2 million despite the good order situation and successful price increases. It should be noted that CF was impacted by a special effect from energy derivatives for price hedging in the amount of €9.2 million in the first quarter of 2022.

With an increase in sales of 15.6 per cent to €69.6 million, the Composite Solutions (CS) business unit continued its upward trend. The specialist for customised component solutions for the automotive industry improved its EBITDApre from €5.7 million in the first half of 2021 to the current €9.7 million, based in particular on price and volume effects.

On June 7, 2022, SGL Carbon raised its sales and earnings guidance for fiscal year 2022. The company now expects sales of €1.1 billion (previously: around €1.0 billion) and EBITDApre of €130-150 million (previously: €110 - 130 million). Based on the pleasing business development, realised price increases, a stringent cost management, and taking into account the currently known risks, SGL’s management expects to achieve the earnings forecast for 2022 at the upper end of the stated range.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)