secunet financial statements 2007: <br>Growth continues

In fiscal year 2007, the secunet Group generated sales of Euro 41.3m – a 13% increase compared to the previous year. The largest percentage of this amount (43.7%) was generated by the business unit High Security, which supplies the high-security architecture SINA. Furthermore, group-wide sales are broken down as follows:  25.2% for the business unit Government; 27.4% for the business unit Business Security; and 5% for the business unit Automotive. With that, those units which serve public-sector customers continue to play the dominant role. A strong increase resulted in abroad sales: from Euro 2.4m in the year 2006 to Euro 9.1m in the elapsed fiscal year.
Also, secunet was able to increase its earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) from Euro 2.2m to Euro 3.5m. The material cause for this development was the – in comparison to the increase in sales – merely under-proportional increase of cost items. In total, costs within the secunet Group increased, in comparison to the previous year, by 8%: from Euro 35.8m to Euro 38.6m. The total cost quota still amounts to 93% for the reporting year, with the previous rate at 98%. The individual rates of increase for the cost items are: material expenses with an increase of 7% (here, the driving force is sales of secunet products; that is to say, the supply of hardware for SINA), depreciation increased by 5%, miscellaneous operative expenses increased by 15% (higher infrastructure costs due to the additional personnel, additional expenses caused by process optimisation). Personnel expenses increased by merely 4%, primarily due to increases in the variable remuneration components – a result of the company's positive earnings picture. The number of employees increased from 228 to 236; the reinforcement took place primarily in the productive unit (consulting and development).
Especially due to the higher group-wide earnings, the tax burden increased strongly: from Euro 0.2m to Euro 1.0m. With that, the group-wide net profit increased by 24%, from Euro 2.2m to Euro 2.7m. The earnings per share amounted to Euro 0.41 (an increase from Euro 0.33 in the previous year).
With a nearly unchanged rate of investment in business equipment, the cash flow from operational activities has significantly improved: from Euro  3.3m to +3.3m. In total, the group-wide liquid funds increased by 2.5m.
The outlook towards the current fiscal year is optimistic. For the IT market, stable growth is predicted; IT security remains a core issue among official agencies and companies alike. The favourable position which secunet holds in the core market Germany, along with the anticipated impulses generated from larger-scale infrastructure projects and the increasing transactions abroad are only a few aspects which create a positive mood.
"secunet remains on a long-term path in the direction of growth“, as Dr Rainer Baumgart, CEO of the secunet Security Networks AG commented on these results. "We are in a favourable position in a growth market, pursuing a consistent strategy and looking full of confidence towards the future.“This optimistic projection is underlined by the company's high volume of orders on hand, which not only reached (with Euro 16.8m) a record level, but in 2007, was also higher, on average, than in the previous years.