Pliezhausen, February 23, 2021. DATAGROUP SE (WKN A0JC8S) today publishes the results of the first quarter of FY 2020/2021. Strong order intake and additional business with existing customers lead to significant improvement in earnings figures.

In the first quarter of the fiscal year (01.10.-31.12.2020) revenue was up 31.1 % to EUR 108.6m (previous year EUR 82.8m). Fortunately, organic growth was roughly 10 %, while the remaining share was due to the first-time consolidation of Portavis. DATAGROUP’s business model as engine room of digitization thus has proven to be extremely robust in times of a pandemic as well. The proportion of service revenue declined slightly from 82.8 % to 79.7 %.

Operating earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) improved strongly by 57.1 % to EUR 14.8m (PY EUR 9.5m). At 13.7 %, the EBITDA margin was well above the 11.4 % reached in the prior period. It should be noted that the first quarter of FY 2019/2020 was adversely affected by special items. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) improved by 142.2 % to EUR 6.6m (PY EUR 2.7m), corresponding to an EBIT margin of 6.0 % (PY 3.3 %). Earnings per share were 41 cents compared to 17 cents in the previous year, corresponding to an increase of 141.2 %.

“We are looking to the further course of this fiscal year with great confidence”, Max H.-H. Schaber sums up. “The difficulties at DATAGROUP Financial IT Services GmbH, which had led to massive losses and risk provisions of EUR 12m in aggregate in the last fiscal year, are behind us for the most part. With a view to the customer situations in question, we managed to establish a stable business environment, greatly improve the cost structure – for instance by reducing expensive freelancer capacities – and to increase billable services. We expect to achieve operating profitability much earlier than expected so far”, Schaber continues.

“We have witnessed a strong growth in order intake and additional sales across all our market units”, Chief Sales Officer Dirk Peters comments the current order situation. “There is strong demand for IT services from public authorities, but also from companies, for instance in relation with an improvement of their employees’ home office situation, which is also due to Covid-19. We have also received pandemic-related special orders such as the provision and operation of the IT infrastructure of vaccination centers in Baden-Württemberg.”

Almato AG, which is specialized in services in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as automation and mobilization of business processes, has received several new orders and contract renewals. Innovative AI-based services continue to gain in importance, and there has also been a good order intake in the development of software robots, e.g., for the automation of back-office processes.

Acquisitions have also developed positively in the last fiscal year. Portavis, which was acquired in March 2020, has continued to increase its profitability, making positive contributions to the comprehensive income of DATAGROUP. The minority shareholding in Cloudeteer, which was acquired in June 2020, likewise has proven to be a stroke of luck: The newly acquired specialist expertise for complex migration situations in the cloud environment enabled DATAGROUP to win interesting projects for cloud shifts.

CORBOX Ensures Stable Order Intake

In the first quarter of FY 2020/2021, DATAGROUP has acquired four new customers and was able to upsell products to six existing customers on the basis of the CORBOX. CORBOX is a modular and combinable suite of IT services covering all areas of IT operations in companies. Thanks to standardization and highest quality standards, DATAGROUP makes IT simple for its customers. The CORBOX is extended by new services on a regular basis, e.g., SAP on Azure or Robots-as-a-Service. Overall, more than 80 % of the gross margin is generated by long-term contracts with terms of between three and seven years. This ensures planning certainty and sustainability for the business.

Traditionally, an outlook for the fiscal year will be provided at the Annual General Meeting which this year will be hosted on March 4. Shareholders can only participate virtually due to the pandemic. For comprehensive information on the Annual General Meeting please visit www.datagroup.de/hauptversammlung.

An overview of the key figures of Q1 2019/2020 is available on our website under datagroup.de/publications.

DATAGROUP will host a conference call on the quarterly result with the management. It is scheduled for February 23, 2020, at 3 pm (CET). You will find the login details for the conference call under (https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1604472651533554188). A recording of the webcast will be provided after the event.

23.02.2021

3 pm Conference Call on Q1 Results

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Hauck & Aufhäuser Digital Roadshow

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Annual General Meeting

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Berenberg DACH & Nordic Conference

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Pareto Securities German IT Service Conference

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Stifel German SMID Cap One-on-One Forum, Frankfurt

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Equity Forum Spring Conference

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Publication of Q3 Results

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Berenberg German Corporate Conference

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Publication of Preliminary Results for FY 2020/2021