OLDENBURG (dpa-AFX) - Photo services provider Cewe further increased its sales in the past quarter. Above all, photofinishing and commercial online printing for corporate customers drove the business. However, in the second quarter of the year, which is regularly weak due to seasonal factors, the company from Lower Saxony slipped even deeper into the red this time. This was due to special effects, as the company announced in Oldenburg on Friday. Nevertheless, the management is sticking to its annual targets.

The share, which is listed in the SDax small cap index, was down 1.4 percent at 89.90 euros in the morning. With the exception of the weakness in June, when the share price hit an interim low of just over 82 euros, it has largely remained within a range of just under 90 to around 100 euros so far this year. Since the turn of the year, the share price has gained a good one percent.

The strong Borse times of the pandemic thus seem to be over for the time being. At the time, Cewe had benefited from the fact that many people used the time to create photo books because they could not see each other in person due to the lockdowns. In May 2021, the price of the Cewe share had reached its previous high of more than 138 euros - after that, it went down again.

Baader Bank analyst Volker Bosse meanwhile commented positively on the latest business performance. The photo service provider performed solidly in view of good sales momentum, he wrote in an initial reaction to the quarterly results. In addition, the development of the operating result shows that the company is able to cope well with the inflation-related increase in costs, the industry expert stated.

Traditionally, Cewe does most of its business in the Christmas quarter; the months April to June usually bring a loss. One of the reasons given by the Group is the seasonally weaker demand in photofinishing with relatively stable fixed costs. In this segment, Cewe offers classic photo prints as well as photo books, wall pictures and calendars.

This time, provisions for software licenses no longer required and write-downs on a production machine also burdened earnings by a total of around 1.3 million euros.

Sales climbed by just under 8 percent to 142.3 million Euro. However, the loss before interest and taxes (Ebit) of 5.2 million euros was even higher than the 4.4 million a year earlier.

Cewe also fell deeper into the red after taxes in the three months under review: Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the net loss widened by almost 31 percent to 3.7 million euros.

The Chairwoman of the Cewe Foundation, Yvonne Rostock, was nevertheless satisfied. In the important photofinishing business, the Group had reduced its operating loss. In commercial online printing for business customers, the operating result, which was already positive in the previous year's quarter, had even increased in the past quarter due to a sustainably optimized product and cost structure.

Rostock emphasized that Cewe had thus "achieved a good starting position for the second half of the year with the fourth quarter, which is particularly important for us".

According to the unchanged forecast for 2023, the management is targeting sales of 720 to 780 million euros. Erlos could thus both miss and exceed the 741 million from the previous year. Operating profit is expected to come out at 70 to 82 million euros this time, after just under 76 million euros last year./tav/stw/mis