Wincor Nixdorf will continue to focus on the established business with retail banks and retailers, and to pursue its successful business strategy. In order to exploit potential growth and achieve a stable level of business, we make use of four strategic levers: continued global expansion, innovation, high-end services and the expansion/transfer of our branch and self-service know-how to other applications.
Wincor Nixdorf has used the global crisis of the last fiscal year as an opportunity to thoroughly review the processes and structures, including those that have so far proven successful, and to improve them with an eye to the future. As part of the ProFuture program launched in summer 2009, we developed a series of improvement measures for the entire Group to help us respond to changes in the market situation.
These steps are intended to have both a permanent impact as well as produce more immediate results in terms of our market presence, strength, growth, speed and efficiency. At the same time, in addition to existing cost-reduction programs, we are improving our ability to counteract future pressure on prices and profit margins. The process of implementing the changes identified by the ProFuture program throughout the Group began at the start of fiscal 2009/2010.
Fiscal 2009/2010.
In late fall of 2009, it is not possible to say with complete certainty whether, and to what extent, the continuing economic crisis will ease in 2010. Overall, however, Wincor Nixdorf has begun the new fiscal 2009/2010 on a stable footing with reduced debt, a higher equity ratio and an undiminished capacity for innovation based on successful cost management. The first quarter is likely to produce a year-on-year decline in net sales given the excellent results we obtained in the first quarter of the preceding year, and an economic situation that remains very difficult. It is hard to say what lies further ahead, although a somewhat clearer view should emerge, albeit slowly, over subsequent quarters. With economists predicting a slow and unsteady recovery in the wider economy, we anticipate further declines in net sales and operating profit (EBITA (Glossary) ) in fiscal 2009/2010, although no greater than those of the last fiscal year.
