Singulus' operating loss widens in 9-mo 2016

Singulus Technologies AG (ETR:SNG) said today its loss before interest and tax has expanded to EUR 14.7 million (USD 15.8m) in January-September 2016 from EUR 13.9 million a year back.

The German engineering company, which makes solar equipment among other machinery, saw its sales for the first nine months of the year drop to EUR 36.7 million from EUR 57.7 million. Nevertheless, it turned to a net profit of EUR 23.5 million from a loss of EUR 17.7 million thanks to its restructuring efforts.

In the third quarter, Singulus registered a net loss of EUR 5.7 million, widening from EUR 5.4 million, on sales of EUR 12.1 million, down from EUR 28.5 million.

Order intake for the first nine months of 2016 jumped to EUR 144.1 million from EUR 84.4 million. Order backlog was at EUR 134 million as of September 30, 2016, which is more than triple the EUR 40.7 million from a year back.

In the course of the year, the company received an order from a unit of state-owned China National Building Materials Company (HKG:3323), or CNBM, for the supply of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) thin-film module equipment. Singulus noted that because of the delay in the order placement and the resulting delayed project start, the major part of revenues under the contract will only be realised next year.

In September, Singulus guided for 2016 sales of EUR 68 million to EUR 78 million. Now it notes that the assembly and commissioning of certain machines under contracts for two major solar projects is still pending due to delays on the customer side.

The company expects a continuing favourable trend of demand for solar cell production machinery for 2017 that could double the sales level achieved in 2016.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.074)

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