EQS-News: KSB remains on track

 KSB remains on track

• Year-on-year increase in order intake and sales revenue
• Market uncertainty noticeable
• Forecast for 2025 confirmed

FRANKENTHAL: The Frankenthal-based pump and valve manufacturer KSB continued the positive trend of the 2024 financial year in the first six months of 2025, despite facing challenging conditions. Order intake and sales revenue as well as earnings before finance income / expense and income tax (EBIT), adjusted for the costs of introducing SAP S/4HANA, were up on the comparative half of the previous year.

The company faces market uncertainty, caused by erratic tariff policies, geopolitical unpredictability and military conflicts. Dr. Stephan Timmermann, CEO, comments: “We need to compensate for the investment reticence, which goes hand in hand with changed trading alliances and negative currency effects. Bearing in mind the difficult macroeconomic environment, we are very pleased with KSB’s order intake in the first six months of 2025.”

In the first half of the 2025 financial year, KSB increased order intake by 3.3 % to € 1,698 million (of which € 820 million in the second quarter). Adjusted for the currency effect of € 23 million, order intake would have been up 4.7 %. The Pumps Segment achieved the strongest increase of 8.2 % to € 941 million, while order intake of around € 225 million in the Valves Segment was almost unchanged from the previous year’s level. In contrast, order intake in the KSB SupremeServ Segment declined by 3.1 %, due to temporarily lower demand for spare parts from the Mining and Energy Market Areas. In the Pumps Segment, which includes exclusively new pumps, the Standard Markets operating segment realised growth of 13.3 %. Major orders in the Water and Petrochemicals / Chemicals Market Areas contributed to this growth. The Mining Market Area was able to increase order intake by 4.9 %. Compared with the first half of 2024, which benefited from major individual orders, the Energy Market Area reported a 14.3 % decline in order intake. While order intake in the Region Middle East / Africa rose by 15.9 %, in the Region Asia / Pacific by 5.9 % and in the Region Europe by 3.2 %, it decreased by 3.5 % in the Region Americas due to the weaker US dollar.

KSB increased its sales revenue in the first half of the year by 1.8 % to € 1,465 million (of which € 756 million in the second quarter). Adjusted for currency effects of € 18 million, sales revenue would have been up 3.1 %. The Valves Segment achieved the strongest increase, with growth of 3.8 % to € 201 million. The Pumps Segment posted a 2.9 % increase in sales revenue to € 776 million. In this segment, sales revenue in the Mining and Energy Market Areas was more or less stable at +8.6 % and
-1.7 % respectively; the Standard Markets operating segment increased by 3.9 % to € 634 million. Sales revenue of € 488 million (-0.6 %) generated by KSB SupremeServ was almost constant year on year. This was due to the fact that the prior-year period benefited from major spare parts orders in the Energy and Petrochemicals / Chemicals Market Areas, and to negative currency effects in the first half of 2025. While sales revenue increased by 8.1 % in the Region Middle East / Africa, by 5.8 % in the Region Asia / Pacific and by a slight 1.0 % in the Region Europe, the Region Americas was down by 2.8 % on the previous year.

In the first six months of 2025, KSB achieved EBIT of € 108 million or € 62.5 million in the second quarter (previous year: € 116.3 million or € 67.9 million in the second quarter). This EBIT was burdened by external costs of € 13.5 million for the SAP S/4HANA transformation compared with € 2.3 million in the prior-year period and by a currency translation effect of € 3.0 million in 2025. Adjusted for the SAP S/4HANA effect, KSB increased EBIT in the first half of the year to € 121.5 million and the EBIT margin to 8.3 % compared with 8.2 % in the same period of the previous year. The Pumps Segment achieved EBIT of € 27.3 million (previous year: € 17.6 million), due in particular to higher earnings generated in the Standard Markets operating segment. EBIT in the Valves Segment of
€ -3.5 million was down slightly on the previous year. In the KSB SupremeServ Segment, EBIT declined by € 14.8 million to € 84.2 million, due to lower spare parts sales in the Mining and Energy Market Areas.

Stephan Timmermann explains: “We have kept KSB on track, thanks to our global positioning in sales, production and service. This ensures proximity to our customers, short delivery times and pricing that is ideally not influenced by tariffs. Our broad product portfolio reinforces this resilience. We are confident that we will continue to steer the company within the target corridors for order intake, sales revenue and earnings in 2025.”

KSB is a leading international manufacturer of pumps and valves. The Frankenthal-based Group has a presence on five continents with its own sales and marketing organisations, manufacturing facilities and service operations. With a workforce of around 16,400, the KSB Group generated sales revenue of approximately € 3 billion in the 2024 financial year.