Jungheinrich has increased sales by 66 per cent over the past five years. Dr. Volker Hues, CFO of Jungheinrich, elaborated on the "another good year". The world market for material handling equipment grew by ten per cent to 1.5 million units, and there was a clear trend towards warehouse trucks in Europe and China (which are Jungheinrich's main segments alongside battery-powered counterbalanced trucks and IC engine-powered trucks). Incoming orders for logistics systems increased by 20 per cent, with sales reaching 617 million euros. In 2016 it was still 441 million euros, in 2017 it was already 581 million euros - Jungheinrich is growing strongly in this area. According to Hans-Georg Frey, the order size in this segment for automated solutions is between one and 20 million euros, which indicates a heterogeneous customer structure.

Personnel costs, raw material prices and the costs for the industry's leading trade fair CeMAT, among other things, had a negative impact on earnings, while earnings after tax amounted to 176 million euros. The Group's equity ratio was 29 percent, in the Intralogistics segment 46 percent; "we are very well financed," said Hues. And the shareholders also benefit: 25 to 30 percent of the profit after tax is distributed to shareholders in the form of a dividend.

Expenditure on research and development rose by nine percent to 84 million euros, while investments increased by 20 percent to 106 million euros. The workforce grew by 1,600 employees to 17,877 (+ 10 percent). As Volker Hues went on to explain, incoming orders in January and February were 14 percent higher than in the same period last year. Frey also confirmed the good start to the new year. Market drivers are e-commerce, electromobility and growth in purchasing power. "The market and Jungheinrich will grow. If something is turning or moving, Jungheinrich will be there with forklift trucks and system solutions," explained Frey. The target set years ago of achieving four billion euros in sales in 2020 with annual organic growth of seven per cent will be maintained. In addition, there is no cluster risk, as Jungheinrich's ten largest individual customers only account for around 10 per cent of Group sales.

The Li-ion vehicle sector is also a source of joy. While 6,000 units were sold in 2017, this figure rose to around 12,000 in 2018, which corresponds to ten percent of total production. "We will also be presenting a new machine with a permanently installed lithium-ion battery in 2019, and this will continue," added Hans-Georg Frey. According to the CEO, the current year should continue positively: Expected turnover should be between 3.85 and 4.05 billion euros, with EBIT between 275 and 295 million euros.