Full-year sales may exceed a November forecast of 140 million euros ($190.4 million), Chief Executive Officer Harald Schrimpf said in an interview in Berlin. PSI also aims to raise its prediction for earnings before interest and tax by as much as 20 percent to 9 million euros in coming weeks, he said. “We’re in merger talks with several companies,” Schrimpf said. “We also have a very good chance of winning big orders in Russia’s steel and energy industry that aren’t yet part of our forecasts.”
The software maker, whose biggest markets are in eastern Europe and China, spent 4.8 million euros on acquisitions last year. The takeovers targeted this year will be bigger, with annual sales of 5 million euros to 10 million euros, and involving companies in Eastern Europe and Asia, Schrimpf said.
PSI software is also used in steel production and carmaking, where customers include ArcelorMittal and Volkswagen AG, as well as in telecommunications and transport, with Vodafone Plc, world’s biggest mobile phone company, and Germany’s state-owned railway, Deutsche Bahn AG, as clients. ‘Bursting at the Seams’ “Our order books are bursting at the seams,” Schrimpf said. “The backlog alone will keep us busy for 11 months.” The company anticipates it will win orders in China’s mining industry, he said. PSI is gaining market share in the world’s most populous nation as German customers expand and take the company’s software with them, Schrimpf said. The company reported first-quarter sales growth of 12 percent to 30.6 million euros, and a 54 percent increase in profit to 1.3 million euros.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is in the deepest recession since World War II and companies from Volkswagen to software maker SAP AG have reduced output and cut jobs. PSI’s customers are investing in products that amortize quickly, Schrimpf said, such as programs that optimize inventories and shorten pass-through times.
Last month, the company won Kajo Neukirchen as an investor. The manager, who turned around German industrial companies including Kloeckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG and metals trader Metallgesellschaft before losing a corporate power struggle in 2003, purchased 18.71 percent of the company. “There’s been no contact with him yet,” Schrimpf said. “So far we’ve not had shareholders who limited our ability to manage. Our corporate culture could be in danger.” In the past, private-equity investors that met for talks with management had cited PSI employees’ combined stake of more than 20 percent as a reason for shying away, Schrimpf said. (…)