Operative loss considerably reduced in the third quarter

Tübingen, November 6th 2001.
By introducing an immediate cost-cutting strategy within the transtec Group, the company has managed to considerably reduce the operative loss in the third quarter. The operative result for this quarter amounted to -0.8 million EUR. This is approx. 69 per-cent below last year's figure of -2.6 million EUR. -0.7 Mio. EUR retraced to one-time particular effects in Sweden. That matters, that operative Result of transtec is -0.1 Mio. EUR.

Turnover figures of 38.0 million EUR were recorded for the third quarter. These figures signify that the decline in sales, which has been clearly visible this year, has slightly improved.

Besides enforcing restructuring and cost-cutting measures, transtec is constantly devising other cost reduction strategies to prepare the company for a return to profitability despite the current stagnation in the market development. The financial effects of these initiated measures will be visible in the results for the fourth quarter and especially for 2002. The operative merger of the subsidiaries ITP and tec2b is also another cost-beneficial strategy planned for 2002. At the end of this year, the company will have 265 employees (previous year:331).

The closure of the Scandinavian subsidiaries in Sweden and Denmark at the end of 2001 will relieve some of the pressure on the transtec Group in 2002. The inability to improve the profit situation in these countries in 2001 provoked transtec into retreating from these adverse business areas. The short-term strains on the operating result caused by restructuring work and depreciation in 2001 will help, in the long term, to improve the activities in 2002.

As a result of certain measures introduced last year, the subsidiary in Switzerland produced a considerably low turnover but did manage to record a positive result in comparison to the previous year. Despite a slight decline in turnovers, France and England also managed to record positive results. Netherlands, Austria (+52%) and Belgium (+74%) were able to considerably increase their turnover in some areas.

The contract volume of tec2b AG is already over 1 million EUR but under expectations. The key business of the ITP InfoTech Projekt GmbH is showing positive signs of development and the turnover at the end of the third quarter was far more than expected.