Revenue growth in difficult market environment

Weaker economic development, particularly in the emerging markets, adversely affected demand for pumps and valves across several sectors. This had an impact on the Frankenthal-based KSB Group in the first nine months of the current financial year, in which order intake of € 1,692.2 million was 3.3 % below the previous year's level.

In contrast, the Group's consolidated sales revenue improved by 6.2 % to € 1,686.2 million in the first three quarters of 2015. Consolidated earnings before taxes for the first nine months were significantly up on the previous year. This increase can be attributed to the rise in sales revenue and to positive currency translation effects.

For the full year, KSB continues to expect an order intake above the previous year's figure (€ 2,321.2 million). This growth will, however, depend on the award of some large-scale orders from Asia that are currently pending. Sales revenue for 2015 will be considerably higher than the prior-year figure (€ 2,181.7 million). From today's perspective, the Group's earnings before taxes for 2015 will significantly exceed those of the previous year (€ 72.6 million). However, it is likely that earnings will not move as close to the three-digit million target as previously anticipated.

Structural improvement measures are in place throughout the Group to cut costs and to ensure that earnings can be further improved over the coming years. These include cutting the number of small Group companies, reducing type-series diversity and a more efficient division of labour in global production.

The full report can be viewed at http://www.ksb.com/ksb-en/ Investor-relations/Financial-Reports/Half-year_financial_reports.

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