Austrian construction and development group Strabag SE’s CEO Hans Peter Haselsteiner will leave the company’s board next month but will continue to advise it.
Deputy CEO Thomas Birtel (pictured) will replace Haselsteiner. Birtel started his career at Klöckner & Co and has also worked for Swedish Frigoscandia Group as head of the central European region before he joined Strabag in 1996. He became a member of Strabag group’s management board in 2006.
Strabag SE reported EBIT of €207m in the 2012 financial year, a fall compared with €334.8m in 2011. The firm said it expected its EBIT to grow by at least 25% to around €260m in the financial year 2013. The company’s net income fell by two-thirds to €61m in 2012 compared with the same period in 2012.
Strabag’s output was €14bn in 2012, a decrease of 12% compared to the previous year. The biggest decline was recorded in Poland and was caused by the end of the country’s construction boom. However, the decline of construction in some eastern Europe regions could be balanced out with increasing activity in Germany and Romania, said Strabag.
“An output volume of €14bn in 2012 – that’s nothing to complain about. With €13.2bn, the end-of-the-year order backlog is also nearly exactly at the pre-crisis level of 2008, suggesting steady and stable business development in 2013.
“Certainly, our earnings are disappointing. Most of the factors contributing to these disappointing results are one-offs as well as construction site losses, which therefore won’t have a significant carryover into the current year. Therefore, we reiterate our goal to achieve double-digit growth in earnings during 2013,” said Haselsteiner.
