Quarterly Statement Nine Months 2020

Frankfurt/Main, 22 October 2020. The Amadeus FiRe Group increased its consolidated revenue by 16.6 percent to EUR 202.3 million in the first nine months of the 2020 financial year primarily due to the acquisition of Comcave Holding GmbH on 19 December 2019. Sales of the individual services developed as follows:

All services initially made a good start to 2020. Starting in March, the coronavirus crisis then had a significant impact on operations. With demand collapsing in all services at the start of the coronavirus crisis, revenue and earnings performance in the second quarter remained at a level considered satisfactory by the Management Board, bottoming out at the mid-year mark. In the third quarter, a revival was achieved again, and a slight growth path was embarked upon. In the fourth quarter, the company will be very agile in its efforts to further strengthen its own market position.

In the Personnel Services segment, the further improvement in the market situation meant that short-time working for all internal employees was lifted at the end of September in order to create a good basis for 2021.

Temporary staffing revenue declined by around 11 percent in the first nine months of the 2020 financial year on account of the crisis. The number of current temporary staffing assignments reached an annual low at the beginning of July 2020. Since then, the number of orders has increased steadily in the third quarter. In a year-on-year comparison, the shortfall of over 25 percent at the beginning of the second half of the year has now been shortened by around 5 percentage points.

The consequences of the Corona crisis were also reflected in a decline in demand for personnel placement services. With a decrease in revenue of 17.8 percent, however, this was less than expected by the management board at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.

The interim and project management service recorded a pleasing 42.6 percent growth in revenue despite the more difficult business conditions and a slowdown in momentum.

In the Training segment, revenue in the period under review, including the Comcave revenue included for the first time, increased by 238.1 percent to EUR 61.4 million.

In organic terms, turnover in the Training segment fell by 11.9 percent. The first step was to respond to the cancellation of all attendance events as a result of the COVID-19 “lockdown”. This transformation was swift and successful. The decline in sales is mainly attributable to the cyclical seminar business with corporate customers, while training courses for end customers have proved to be very robust.

In the first nine months of the year, the Comcave Group achieved revenues of EUR 45.4 million, on a par with the previous year. The worsening situation on the labour market is already leading to an improvement in demand for the publicly funded training and retraining measures offered by Comcave. However, the Corona crisis also had a negative impact on Comcave’s business. The bottleneck in the production and release of education vouchers has still not been resolved. On the part of the authorities, the reason for this is understandably a particularly high volume of work with rising unemployment and the handling of short-time work.

On 15 September 2020, Amadeus FiRe AG successfully acquired 100 percent of the shares in the GFN Group for around EUR 6 million. With the acquisition of GFN GmbH, a further consistent step was taken to expand the Training segment. GFN GmbH is a specialised provider of subsidised adult education with a focus on IT qualifications. The consolidated income statement of the Amadeus FiRe Group for the first nine months of the 2020 financial year does not include GFN business figures due to the very late acquisition date.

The gross profit of the Amadeus FiRe Group increased in the first nine months of 2020 by 17.3 percent to EUR 97.9 million. The gross profit margin rose slightly by 0.3 percentage points from 48.1 percent to 48.4 percent.

Selling and administrative expenses amounted to EUR 77.3 million in the reporting period, compared to EUR 52.0 million in the previous year. Adjusted for Comcave, a decline of EUR 0.2 million or -0.5 percent was recorded. Coming out of a successful expansion phase with an increasing number of employees, personnel expenses were reduced by short-time working measures. Other costs in the first nine months of the year under review include one-off expenses of EUR 1.0 million in connection with the Comcave and GFN transactions.

EBITA fell by 34.4 percent to EUR 20.8 million (previous year: EUR 31.6 million). In addition to the economic effects of the pandemic, the main reason for this decline is the amortisation of intangible assets from the purchase price allocation amounting to EUR 7.4 million (previous year: TEUR 0). Adjusted for this amortisation, the comparable ‘operating EBITA’ amounted to EUR 28.2 million and was thus 10.9 percent below the previous year’s result.

After financial expenses of EUR 2.7 million as a result of the acquisition financing, the net profit for the period in the first nine months of 2020 was EUR 11.4 million, a decline of 45.6 percent. Earnings per share, based on the net profit for the period attributable to ordinary shareholders of the parent company, fell from EUR 4.00 to EUR 2.12 in the first nine months of 2020.

The equity ratio rose by 17.2 percentage points to 33.0 percent compared to 31 December 2019, as of 30 September 2020. The reason for this was the 10 percent capital increase excluding subscription rights successfully completed on 5 August with gross placement proceeds of EUR 52.0 million. The shares were placed at a price of EUR 100.00 per share with a multiple oversubscription. The proceeds were used to partially refinance the acquisition of Comcave Holding GmbH.

The economic situation in Germany will continue to be characterized by great uncertainty in the fourth quarter of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic is currently developing a high dynamic worldwide with consequences that are difficult to quantify. The Management Board’s forecast for the operating result 2020 is based on the assumption that the general conditions and demand situations in the markets relevant to the Amadeus FiRe Group will remain essentially stable compared to the third quarter of 2020. The reported first positive developments in the individual services should continue under these assumptions but remain at a lower level compared to the pre-crisis period. The Management Board expects operating EBITA (excluding depreciation on purchase price allocations), including the newly acquired companies, to almost reach the result of fiscal year 2019.