Saturday 11 April 2015

K+S annual report 2014


K+S, annual report, 2014, front page

The market applauded the report and the share price directly increased with 4%. On a more personal note I just found out that I passed also the second exam in the economy course so I am now a little bit relaxed even though the schedule continues and the two final courses have already started. I find it a bit silly that also here they have hand in assignments in the beginning that must be done otherwise one gets kicked out... so that I will have to sort both of them out this weekend as well as changing tires on the car spring is indeed here! I am also so far behind schedule with publications that I consider to make two per day especially now with the annual reports. So report in morning and then I try to publish the analysis in the afternoon. The problem is that the Q1 reports soon starts to drop in and I need to analyse all the DAX companies also... anyway... we take it as it comes. What was then so exiting in the K+S report I wonder?

For the report in full please click here and to see the previous K+S report Q3 2014 or the K+S annual report 2013 or why not the analysis of K+S 2014 then please just click on the links.

A happy (and slightly work overloaded) Fredrik means short reports so below we see the only table that I found of importance to bring into this summary. The revenue is down by around -4% which is of course not good but considering that prices are still low I find it impressive by K+S to still have a similar revenue as in 2013. Because it can really go either way. Revenue drops dramatically and one builds up the storage of product hoping that the price will soon increase again OR one start dumping also what is in storage with increased revenue but a significant drop in margin. I therefore like that K+S seems to have found a good balance. They also tightened up their organization so selling expenses and cost of sales also decreased which is good. The earnings were in the end 367 million euro which comes out as 1.92 € per share and they decided to increase the dividend from 0.25 € to 0.90 € (traditionally they have paid out 50-60% of their earnings) which they can afford to pay out especially since they paid so little in 2013.


K+S, annual report, 2014, income statement


Conclusion: K+S is doing better and better again and they have been helped by several factors such as hard winters in the US, that Uralkali got a water leak in one of their mines that stood for 30% of their production etc. They have also used this opportunity to improve their organization so they will come out of this leaner and meaner as it always should be when trouble comes knocking on the door. I will remain as a shareholder in K+S

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