The retail segment also reported double-digit sales revenue growth, with net sales climbing 11 % to € 716 million (previous year: € 646 million). This significant rise is primarily the result of the expansion of our solutions and services business. In addition, we grew our business with retail-related industries such as lottery companies, the hospitality sector (including restaurant and hotel chains) and service stations.

The retail segment’s operating profit (EBITA) increased 28 % to € 32 million (previous year: € 25 million). This favorable performance was also reflected in the improvement of the EBITA margin to 4.5 % (previous year: 3.8 %).

On the product side, the uniform system platform of the BEETLE systems proved to be a great competitive advantage for the Company. This platform forms the basic foundation for all our point-of-sale, self-checkout, kiosk and lottery systems and is also used in our automatic reverse vending machines (used for returning bottles and other containers). It helps achieve much lower TCO by enabling systems to be integrated more easily with uniform application platforms at customer premises, and by making them cheaper and easier to run and maintain. BEETLE systems can also be adapted easily to meet specific customer requirements.

A “unique selling proposition” is our own application software, which is based on international standards. The software can be deployed worldwide, thanks to an architecture that enables country-specific and customer-specific enhancements.