SLM Solutions: Despite reticent market sentiment in H1 2017 value of new order intake up 17.9% compared to H1 2016

• Value of new order in­take up 17.9% year-on-year to EUR 35.3 mil­lion
• Rev­enue of EUR 29.0 mil­lion 13.5% below H1 2016
• First pos­i­tive cash flow from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties since IPO in 2014
• H1 2017 ad­justed EBITDA at EUR -4.5 mil­lion, amongst oth­ers due to higher per­son­nel-to-sales ratio
• Largest sin­gle order in the com­pany's his­tory re­ceived in June 2017

Lübeck, 10 Au­gust 2017 - SLM So­lu­tions Group AG ('SLM So­lu­tions'), a lead­ing provider of metal-based ad­di­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy, re­ports rev­enue down 13.5% in the first half of 2017 to EUR 29.0 mil­lion (H1 2016: EUR 33.5 mil­lion). New order in­take, which grew 17.9% to EUR 35.3 mil­lion (H1 2016: EUR 30.0 mil­lion) on a re­duc­tion in ma­chines or­dered to 47 (H1 2016: 56 units), shows a pos­i­tive trend to­wards growth in the level of sales of higher-per­for­mance, and con­se­quently higher-value, ma­chines.

Uwe Böger­shausen, Mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive Board of SLM So­lu­tions Group AG, com­ments: 'Ad­di­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing is be­com­ing in­creas­ingly ac­cepted and has mean­while achieved strate­gic im­por­tance for major in­dus­trial com­pa­nies. We are ben­e­fit­ing from this trend and booked our largest in­di­vid­ual order in the com­pany's his­tory in June 2017. We con­tinue to ex­pe­ri­ence major in­ter­est in our sys­tems. We aim to move for­ward in fur­ther de­vel­op­ing and adapt­ing our sys­tems to meet a wide va­ri­ety of pro­duc­tion re­quire­ments through the part­ner­ships we have en­tered into over the past months, amongst oth­ers with Di­ver­gent in the USA and BeamIT in Italy. Par­tially due to some cus­tomers' wait-and-see at­ti­tude, the in­ter­est in our ma­chines can­not be trans­lated im­me­di­ately into de­liv­er­ies. We as­sume, how­ever, that this trend is tem­po­rary and as we did in the past we will con­tinue to focus on pro­mot­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships with our cus­tomers.'

Total op­er­at­ing rev­enue (the sum of sales rev­enue, in­ven­tory changes and other own work cap­i­talised) of EUR 29.5 mil­lion in the first half of 2017 was down 29.4% year-on-year (H1 2016: EUR 41.7 mil­lion), mainly re­flect­ing a de­crease in new order in­take com­pared with the first half of the year. The cost of ma­te­ri­als di­min­ished sig­nif­i­cantly - faster than the rate of re­duc­tion in total op­er­at­ing rev­enue - and dropped 48.4% to EUR 12.7 mil­lion (H1 2016: EUR 24.6 mil­lion), mainly be­cause of the sale of fin­ished ma­chines from stock as well as a strin­gent pur­chas­ing man­age­ment. Ac­cord­ingly, the cost of ma­te­ri­als ratio (in re­la­tion to total op­er­at­ing rev­enue) of 43.05% was sig­nif­i­cantly below the pre­vi­ous year (H1 2016: 58.9%). The ad­justed per­son­nel cost ratio (in re­la­tion to total op­er­at­ing rev­enue) rose to 48.3% due to the hir­ing to a total of 346 full-time equiv­a­lents (FTEs) as of 30 June 2017 (30 June 2016: 287 FTEs; H1 2016 ad­justed per­son­nel ratio: 27.6%). Ad­justed EBITDA (earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est, tax, de­pre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­sa­tion) for the first half of 2017 amounted to EUR -4.5 mil­lion (H1 2016: EUR -1.0 mil­lion). The ad­justed EBITDA mar­gin (in re­la­tion to con­sol­i­dated rev­enue) stood at -15.6% (H1 2016: -2.9%). Un­ad­justed EBITDA de­creased year-on-year to EUR -4.6 mil­lion (H1 2016: EUR -1.3 mil­lion).

The con­sol­i­dated net re­sult for the period was recorded at EUR -5.9 mil­lion in the first half of 2017 (H1 2016: EUR -2.3 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to undi­luted (basic) and di­luted earn­ings per share of EUR -0.33 (H1 2016: EUR -0.13). SLM So­lu­tions con­tin­ues to re­port a high eq­uity ratio of 74.8% as of 30 June 2017 (30 June 2016: 83.6%).

Mainly thanks to con­se­quent and suc­cess­ful re­duc­tion of re­ceiv­ables of re­ceiv­ables, a pos­i­tive cash flow from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties was gen­er­ated for the first time since the IPO in 2014 of EUR 1.6 mil­lion in the first half of 2017 (H1 2016: EUR -12.8 mil­lion).

As tar­gets for the year, the Man­age­ment Board con­firms con­sol­i­dated rev­enue in a range be­tween TEUR 110,000 and TEUR 120,000, and an EBITDA mar­gin (on con­sol­i­dated rev­enue) be­tween 10% and 13%. These tar­gets are achiev­able, but as in the pre­vi­ous year de­pend to a par­tic­u­larly sig­nif­i­cant ex­tent on the course of the fourth quar­ter, which in­cludes, among other events, the im­por­tant sec­tor trade fair form­next in Frank­furt.

The SLM So­lu­tions Group AG re­port on the first half of 2017 is avail­able from today in both Ger­man and Eng­lish from www.​slm-​solutions.​com under the 'In­vestor Re­la­tions' menu op­tion.

Lübeck-based SLM So­lu­tions Group AG is a lead­ing provider of metal-based ad­di­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy. The com­pany's shares are traded in the Prime Stan­dard of the Frank­furt Stock Ex­change. The stock has been listed in the Tec­DAX index since March 21, 2016. SLM So­lu­tions fo­cuses on the de­vel­op­ment, as­sem­bly and sale of ma­chines and in­te­grated sys­tem so­lu­tions in the field of se­lec­tive laser melt­ing. SLM So­lu­tions cur­rently em­ploys over 340 mem­bers of staff in Ger­many, the USA, Sin­ga­pore, Rus­sia, India and China. The prod­ucts are utilised world­wide by cus­tomers in par­tic­u­lar from the aero­space, en­ergy, health­care and au­to­mo­tive in­dus­tries.