In the fourth quarter 2023, weak order intake of the last few quarters clearly hit sales. The turnover of FBDi’s registered distributors fell by 20.1 per cent to 1.08 billion Euros. As a result of continued very weak bookings situation (-56 per cent to 507 million Euros), the book-to-bill ratio ended at 0.47, indicating a difficult market situation for coming quarters. Nevertheless, the full year 2023 remained positive despite the weak second half, with total revenues closing with an increase of 4.4 per cent to 5.37 billion Euros.
FBDi’s CEO, Georg Steinberger, said: “The figures are not surprising, neither for the fourth quarter nor for the year as a whole. 2023 can be summarized by saying that it already includes a lot of business brought forward from 2024 and was therefore unrealistically high, which is exactly what will be missing in 2024. The next few quarters are likely to
see a low level of new orders in the existing business, so the focus should clearly be on developing new designs and projects.”