According to preliminary figures, the Homag Group recorded another slight increase in sales in 2023, which brings the total to €1.625 billion (2022: €1.602 billion) compared to the very high previous year’s figure. “We benefited from our high order backlog at the beginning of the year, which we have gradually worked through. There was also growth in the service division,” CEO Dr. Daniel Schmitt comments. As a result, the order backlog decreased to €841 million as of December 31, 2023 (December 31, 2022: €1.102 billion).
The slight increase in sales is also reflected in earnings before extraordinary effects, which rose by around 4% to €129.7 million.
Despite a major order from China at the end of the year, order intake decreased by around 18% compared to 2022 which was still characterized by the special economic situation in the furniture industry due to the pandemic. In 2023, order intake amounted to only €1.395 billion.
“We are dealing with a pronounced cyclical market weakness, which has resulted in a sharp decrease in orders,” Dr. Schmitt explains. “We were expecting a slowdown in the furniture sector, but we were hoping for a better trend in the timber house sector. The sharp rise in interest rates has led to a crisis in the construction industry, which has significantly slowed down investment in production technology for timber construction elements.”
“We do not anticipate a general market recovery before the end of 2024. From today’s perspective, we expect order intake in the current financial year to reach last year’s level at best,” Dr. Schmitt says. “As a result of the continuing weakness in orders, we expect sales and earnings to decrease substantially. With our measures to adjust capacities, we want to sustainably increase our flexibility so that future market fluctuations will have less of an impact on earnings,” he adds.
