Berlin, 17 March 2004 – Despite poor economic conditions, PSI attained a balanced EBIT of 17,000 euros ( (2002:–12.4 million euros). This contains 2.4 million euros in value adjustments, restructuring and reorganization costs. The group result improved by 12.3 million euros to -2.5 million euros (2002: –14.8 million euros). This was primarily the result of optimized business processes and new product offers. Group sales decreased by 9% to 137.7 million euros (2002: 150.7 million euros), which for the most part is attributable to the decrease in sales of hardware and external software.
Sales in the segment Network Management decreased by 4% to 74.8 million euros (2002: 78.2 million euros). The operative result in this segment decreased due to a temporary slump in the Telecommunication business compared to the record result of the previous year to 3.8 million euros (2002: 4.5 million euros). In the segment Production Management sales of 47.8 million euros were almost the same as in the previous year (2002: 48,3 million euros). The operating result improved by 13.1 million euros to –1.9 million euros (2002: –15.0 million euros). Production Management had a positive result in both the third and fourth quarters. In Information Management sales decreased by 38% to 15.0 million euros (2002: 24.2 million euros). The operative result was unchanged at
–1.9 million euros. Here, the weakness of the government business and PSI UBIS had a negative impact on the result.
The group structures have been further streamlined by means of increasing the shares in PSI Logistics GmbH, GSI mbH, PK Software Engineering GmbH and the front2back AG to 100% as well as the integration of the operative business of front2back in the PSI UBIS. Liquidity on 31 December 2003 was 17 million euros (31 December 2002: 21.5 million euros).
New orders in 2003 were, at 119 million euros, below the level of the previous year (2002: 136 Mio. Euro), which resulted from the slow awarding of contracts in the second and third quarter as well as in the altered customer behavior in awarding major projects.
The focus of investments in 2003 was on development and market launches of the new manufacturing control systems for serial production and steel production and a new system for the integrated management of GSM and UMTS mobile networks. In 2004 PSI will invest in control systems for information management and complete the simplification of group structures. The internationalization of the group should be driven by means of additional export partnerships with plant construction groups.
For 2004, the management board expects a slow development following another weak quarter and a continued consolidation of the IT market. For the current financial year it is therefore planned that sales remain unchanged and the EBIT improves to 3 to 6 million euros.
PSI AG develops and integrates individual solutions, on the basis of its own software, for the management of large networks (electricity, gas, oil, telecommunications, transport), cross-company production management (steel, chemicals, machinery, automotive, logistics) and information management for government and service providers. PSI was founded in 1969 and currently employs 1,200 persons in the group. www.psi.de