May 19, 2009. /Lesprom Network/. HOMAG Group AG said that the order intake of Euro 75 million between January and March 2009 represented a substantial drop on what had admittedly been an extremely strong 1Q 2008 (Euro 232 million). Compared to the order intake in the 4Q 2008 of Euro 77 million, there was however no further decrease, which leads CEO Dr. Joachim Brenk to conclude that "the economy has presumably bottomed out”. The order backlog as of March 31, 2009 stood at Euro 144 million compared to Euro 312 million at the end of the first quarter of 2008 and Euro 164 million at year-end 2008. Due to the poor order intake, the sales revenue of the HOMAG Group fell to Euro 119 million (prior year: Euro 227 million) and total operating performance dropped to Euro 128 million (prior year: Euro 240 million). The company responded swiftly to the reduced business volume by implementing a package of measures and has already cut costs substantially. Besides savings on trade fairs and advertising and on variable costs, the headcount was reduced in the last two quarters from 5,404 as of September 30, 2008 to 5,152 employees at the end of the 1Q 2009. The number of contract workers was also reduced by 330. However, the 235 employees of BENZ GmbH Werkzeugsysteme, in which a majority shareholding was taken over at the beginning of the year, have to be added to the total. According to CFO Andreas Hermann, other measures to calibrate the headcount to capacity such as forced leave, the reduction of accrued overtime and of provisions for vacation and non-working shifts have already cut personnel costs including the cost of contract workers compared to the 1Q 2008 by around Euro 13 million. In addition, to the savings on other operating expenses, costs have been reduced by around Euro 24 million. "Even with these significant cost reductions, some of which will not take full effect until the next quarters, we were not able to offset the serious drop in sales revenue”, explains Hermann. Another reason is that as of the cut-off date March 31, 2009 considerably fewer large-scale machines were in production than at the end of the prior-year quarter; due to the use of the percentage-of-completion method, this has a negative effect on earnings of Euro 7 million. According to the management board, restructuring measures and non-recurring expenses caused an additional extraordinary expense in the personnel expenses and other operating expenses of Euro 0.7 million. Owing to these factors, EBITDA before the extraordinary expense and after employee participation income amounted to Euro –2.0 million (prior year: Euro 25.5 million), while it come to Euro –4.4 million (prior year: Euro 27.8 million) after extraordinary expense and before income from the employee participation. EBT before extraordinary expense and after employee participation amounts to Euro –10.9 million (prior year: Euro 19.4 million). The net profit for the period after minority interests came to Euro –11.1 million (prior year: Euro 11.3 million), and earnings per share of Euro –0.70 (prior year: Euro 0.72).