Comprehensive cost reductions with Logwin AG
| Drastic decline in Logwin Road + Rail business As a response to the continuing difficult economic situation throughout the group Logwin AG (Grevenmacher) implements comprehensive measures aimed at capacity adjustments and cost cuttings, in particular the area of staff, such as the widespread termination of temporary work, the introduction of short-time work and staff reductions. In the first six months of 2009 the enterprise achieved sales of EUR 772.9 million (2008: EUR 1,04 million). Depending on market conditions earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) before restructuring costs and impairments amounted to minus EUR 5.3 million and was clearly below previous year’s figure (2008: EUR 15.4 million). “The management of the group according to liquidity-related indicators was further intensified in view of the operational challenges“, the Executive Committee announces in an interim report hot-off-the-press. In the first half year 2009 Logwin incurred restructuring costs of EUR 6.0 million. These are connected to the forwarding activities at the Karlsfeld location near Munich (Germany) at the end of 2009. The impairment test conducted against the background of the decided integration of some Road + Rail activities into the Solutions segment and in view of the reduction of business activities in land transportation, lead to an impairment of goodwill of EUR 27.3 million. In the fist half of 2009, the Logwin business segment “Solutions” achieved sales of EUR 280 million (2008: EUR 366.4 million). The business segment was only able to partly compensate for the sometimes drastic volume declines and achieved an EBIT of EUR 0.3 million (2008: EUR 6.9 million). The operating margin decreased accordingly to 0.1 per cent (2008: 1.9 %).Sales at the “Air + Ocean” business unit amounted to EUR 200.3 million (2008: EUR 269.0 million). This reduction is mainly due to the significantly lower air and ocean freightrates. EBIT amounted to EUR 6.9 million (2008: EUR 10.3 million); the operating margin was 3.4 per cent (2008: 3.8 %). Lower transport volumes and a drastic decline in freight rates put pressure on the business segment “Road + Rail”. With EUR 319.7 million, sales were significantly down on the previous year (2008: EUR 432.3 million). In spite of extensive measures aimed at lowering costs and reducing capacities in the transportation business, the business segment reported a significantly negative EBIT before restructuring costs and impairments of minus EUR 9.8 million (2008: EUR 1.2 million). Quelle: Österreichische Verkehrszeitung |