Revenue

The negative currency effects on revenue were comfortably outweighed by the growth in the volume of business. The consolidated revenue of the KION Group increased by 5.2 per cent to €7,995.7 million (2017: €7,598.1 million); if exchange rates had been the same as in 2017, the rise would have been 7.5 per cent. The rate of revenue growth picked up sharply in the second half of the year, predominantly due to the increase in production volume in the Industrial Trucks & Services segment once the bottlenecks at individual suppliers had largely been resolved. Overall, the Industrial Trucks & Services segment generated total revenue of €5,922.0 million, which equated to an increase of 6.3 per cent compared with 2017. In the Supply Chain Solutions segment, revenue amounted to €2,055.2 million following a strong fourth quarter. This year-on-year rise of 2.3 per cent was primarily attributable to the increase in revenue from the service business. Across the Group as a whole, the share of revenue attributable to the service business grew from 42.5 per cent to 43.1 per cent. > TABLE 010

Revenue by sales region

In the EMEA sales region (western Europe, eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa), revenue rose by 3.6 per cent year on year. Revenue was up by 4.4 per cent in western Europe, thanks in no small part to the Industrial Trucks & Services segment’s higher unit sales in the German, Italian and French markets. In eastern Europe, revenue increased by 8.0 per cent compared with the previous year. This growth was mainly driven by brisk new truck business in Poland and Russia. In the Americas region (North, Central and South America), the KION Group posted a substantial rise in revenue of 16.1 per cent – despite significant negative currency effects – and thus boosted its strong market position in North America, especially in the Supply Chain Solutions segment. The APAC region (Asia-Pacific) was affected by a decline in revenue in Australia, resulting in an overall decrease of 2.2 per cent in spite of the ongoing momentum in the region. Emerging markets accounted for 20.3 per cent of the KION Group’s revenue in the reporting year (2017: 20.9 per cent), while 80.8 per cent of consolidated revenue (2017: 81.6 per cent) was generated outside Germany. > TABLE 011