The Carbon Company –continued its excellent performance of the first half-year in the third quarter of 2007. The high demand in all three business units resulted in a 17 % increase in sales to more than €1.0 billion in the nine months period 2007 (9M 2006: €858.6 million). Excluding currency effects, sales grew by 21 %.
Positive selling price and sales volume effects, continuing strong capacity utilization and further cost savings of €22 million compensated for the increases in key raw material prices. As selling, administrative, research and other income/expense also rose at a lower rate than sales, EBIT increased by 50 % to a new 9M record level of €185.1 million. Including the antitrust expense impact in the prior-year period, EBIT increased by 85 %.
New financing successfully implemented As announced in the first half-year report, SGL Group successfully refinanced the syndicated loan and high yield bond from 2004 at significantly better conditions in May 2007. In this context, the early repayment of the high yield bond resulted in a €20.1 million cash charge and around €10.7 million non-cash charges for the 2004 refinancing in the second quarter of 2007.
Net financing costs reached -€59.0 million in 9M/2007 compared to -€50.7 million in 9M/2006. Adjusted for one-off effects in both reporting periods the net financial costs of -€28.2 million for 9M/2007 were significantly better than the -€37.9 million in 9M/2006. Based on the existing financial debt, the new finance package will halve cash interest costs as of the fiscal year 2008 onwards. This will result in net financing costs of approximately -€40 million per year from fiscal 2008 onwards (excluding valuation effects of interest and currency hedging instruments).
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