Esko's Strong Performance - Revenues Up 17%

Esko has continued its strong business performance during the second quarter of 2006, with consolidated net revenues increasing by 17 per cent over the first quarter.

Esko has continued its strong business performance during the second quarter of 2006, with consolidated net revenues increasing by 17 per cent over the first quarter and by 7.5 per cent compared to the second quarter of last year.

For the total first half of 2006, Esko's consolidated packaging business increased by 15 per cent over the same period in 2005, whereas EBIT has more than quadrupled.

In addition to the EBIT increase, the net working capital at the end of the second quarter further decreased compared to the first quarter and to last year, contributing to healthy cash flow, added the company.

The company said that the first half of 2006 saw all regions and product lines continue their solid performance above expectations and above last years' results.

Revenues from the European, North American and Asian markets all grew by around 15 per cent year-over-year.

Sales for Esko's Cyrel Digital Imager (CDI) product line in the second quarter doubled compared to an already strong first quarter, indicating a further strengthening of Esko's global market share, added the company.

Compared to the first half of 2005, flexo CTP business increased by 40 per cent and sales of pre-production software and CAM tables both grew by 20 per cent, added Esko.

Carsten Knudsen, Esko's president and chief executive officer, said: "We are very pleased to see our business growth confirmed again in the second quarter of 2006.

It is clear that buyers, designers and providers of packaging products and services are embracing our approach to offer integrated systems to the packaging supply chain." He added: "The new systems and products we have introduced earlier this year, at Ipex and many other industry events, have been welcomed with great enthusiasm and have further fuelled sales and selling cycles." Esko's portfolio of graphic and structural design tools, workflow automation software and asset and project management tools, combined with flexo plate making and digital sample making, sign making and short-run converting devices, enables its customers to obtain efficiency improvements and cost savings, he explained.

They can also strengthen their integration and collaboration initiatives towards their business partners.

He added that amongst Esko's recent achievements, FEFCO, the European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers, has teamed up with Esko to introduce a new, updated version of its standards library for the corrugated and solid board packaging industries.

The new all-electronic edition has been entirely developed using Esko's ArtiosCAD software and comes with a visualisation tool for 2D and 3D representations, including a folding sequence.

Esko also received the 2006 PIA/GATF Intertech Technology Award for Webcenter, part of the Scope suite of packaging pre-press software.

Webcenter is a communication and collaboration platform that is said to allow packaging supply chain partners - from brand owners to retailers - to share files, discuss jobs, track projects, perform approvals and view animated 3D models of products with their packaging.

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