Deutsche Börse Shows Further Growth In First Quarter - Sales Rise To 204.9 Million Euros/EBIT At previous Year's Level

In the first quarter of business year 2002, Deutsche Börse AG showed a seven percent increase in sales to 204.9 million euros, following the first-time consolidation of entory AG, which Deutsche Börse took over at the end of 2001. The EBIT of 87.4 million euros fell short of the 90.2 million euros in EBIT for the first quarter last year, but the latter figure contained exceptional income of 4.4 million euros. Thus, de facto, the company matched its best quarterly performance to date from the first three months of business year 2001, and is on the charted growth course: "The strong first quarter results confirm our ambitious expectations of approximately 300 million euros in EBIT for the year 2002 before the expected effects of the integration of Clearstream into Deutsche Börse Group," said chief financial officer Mathias Hlubek.

The segmental report shows the effect of Deutsche Börse's diversified business model: With sales increasing from 61.3 to 73.7 million euros, Eurex generated the highest sales revenue for Deutsche Börse Group, balancing out the decline in sales in the Xetra segment from 66.3 to 55.0 million euros. Sales in the Information Products segment rose by about 20 percent to 29.5 million euros. Sales in the Information Technology segment grew by some 26 percent to 46.7 million euros, following the first time consolidation of entory.

With earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) increasing from 27.9 to 35.8 million euros, the Eurex segment alone more than compensates for the decline in Xetra EBIT from 13.4 to 11.1 million euros. Information Products more than doubled its EBIT, from 2.8 to 7.8 million euros. The Information Technology segment contributed 14.6 million euros to the first-quarter EBIT this year, after 34.2 million euros in the first quarter of 2001; whereby the results of an individual quarter can be volatile due to the project-driven nature of this division. In the Settlement segment, Deutsche Börse generated an EBIT of 19.2 million euros; last year, the figure was 16.9 million euros including an exceptional income of 4.4 million euros.