At € 309 million, the Group’s operating earnings before taxes (EBIT) also declined in line with sales and fell by 11.5 % compared to the fiscal year 2018/19 (€ 349 million). However, thanks to the consistent implementation of its “Koyer” earnings improvement program, Trumpf was able to significantly dampen the decline in the EBIT margin. Due to the scaling back of capital expenditure and non-personnel costs as well as efficiency improvements, the company achieved a good overall return of 8.9 % (previous year: 9.2 %).
Trumpf also responded to the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020 through further cost-cutting measures, such as the utilisation of excess balances on working time accounts and accumulated vacation days, and from April onwards, the introduction of short-time working and an additional cutback in non-personnel costs and expenditure on fixed assets. As a result, the decline in the Group’s return was further cushioned.
Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, Chair of the Group Management Board: “We have been experiencing a slowdown in the global economy since fall 2018. Coronavirus has further intensified the decline – as a crisis within a crisis. However, our sales revenues fell much less than in the mechanical engineering sector as a whole. In addition, consistent cost management allowed us to keep the return almost at the previous year’s level.”
Commenting on the outlook for fiscal 2020/21, which started on 1 July 2020, Mrs. Leibinger-Kammüller continued: “The decline in sales revenues and new orders was halted in the first three months. We see cautious signs that the economic downturn is coming to an end, although there is still no upturn.”

Trumpf’s largest single markets

Trumpf’s three largest single markets worldwide were Germany with sales revenues of 610 million euros, followed by the US with 490 million euros and the Netherlands with € 480 million, due to the EUV business with ASML. In fourth place was China with € 350 million. In many European core markets such as Italy and Spain, but also in Eastern Europe, sales revenues fell – in some cases by double digits – as a result of the weak global economy and the Coronavirus shutdown.

EUV and Electronics strong again

Once again, the Ditzingen-based EUV business field was the driving force behind this positive result. Trumpf supplies its Dutch customer ASML with special lasers for systems that use extreme ultraviolet radiation to expose surfaces of chips for the computer industry. Here, Trumpf once again increased sales revenues by 19 % from € 388 million in the previous year to € 460 million. As a result, EUV contributed almost as much to Group sales as Trumpf’s entire US subsidiary.
Electronics, which is located in Freiburg at Trumpf Hüttinger and in Warsaw, again exceeded expectations with sales revenues of € 230 million. This represents an increase of 15 % over the previous year (€ 199 million). The main reasons for this were the increasing demand for the solar industry in China and the semiconductor industry in the US and Japan.

Development of employee numbers and short-time working

Measured against the previous year, the number of Trumpf employees remained roughly the same at 14,325. In Germany, 7,437 people were employed as of the reporting date of 30 June 2020, 4,353 of them at the Group’s headquarters in Ditzingen. In the year under review, 513 young people completed a training course or co-op work-study program, meaning that the training ratio of 3.6 % was even higher than in the previous year (3.4 %).
Between April and June 2020, 30 % of employees, with the exception of EUV, were on short-time working. The proportion of employees on short-time working at Trumpf was 27 % in October 2020, compared with 30 % in the two previous quarters. Trumpf currently has a working ratio of 80 % again.

Investments and acquisitions, high R&D ratio

As a result of the Koyer savings program, investments were cut back by 33 percent to 194 million euros (previous year: € 288 million). Trumpf also strengthened its technological competence through acquisitions in the period before March 2020: Effective 1 July 2019, the Group took over Aixtooling through its subsidiary Ingeneric. On 31 October 2019, Trumpf Photonics in the US acquired a 100 % stake in Stellar Industries. In December 2019, Trumpf acquired a minority stake in French laser technology start-up GLOphotonics; in January 2020, it finally acquired HBH Microwave.
Trumpf remained a research-intensive company in the fiscal year 2019/20, with R&D costs amounting to € 377 million, compared with € 396 million in the fiscal year 2018/19. In relation to the decline in sales revenues, the R&D ratio increased to 10.8 % (previous year: 10.5 %).

New smart factory at Ditzingen

In October 2020, a new smart factory, in which € 6 million have been invested, will be opened at the Group’s headquarters in Ditzingen. There are now 30 networked machines on an area of 5,000 square meters. The new smart factory is open to customers so that they can see for themselves the efficiency improvements in production and new networking solutions. Together with the smart factory in Chicago in the US and in Taicang in China, Trumpf is now represented in all major markets with state-of-the-art factories.

Strategic partnership with Munich Re for sheet metal production

Trumpf is also breaking new ground in business models. Together with the reinsurance company Munich Re Group, Trumpf has signed a strategic partnership for the first time in the history of both companies for a new type of laser cutting machine distribution. It enables customers to use full-service laser machines such as the commercially superior TruLaser Center 7030, for sheet metal processing without having to buy or lease them. Instead, customers pay a previously agreed price for each cut sheet metal part – also known as the pay-per-part model. The Munich Re Group will finance the machine, and its subsidiary Relayr will facilitate the financing model using data analyses. Trumpf will supply the machines, software and services for manufacturing the sheet metal components. The operational headquarters of the project will be at the Trumpf site in Neukirch, Saxony. From there, access to the machines will be coordinated.
_{(Source: TRUMPF GmbH & Co. KG)}