As you may know, Heckler & Koch is under new ownership. The Luxembourg-based financial holding company, Compagnie de Développement de l’Eau (CDE), took a majority stake in the company earlier this year. Today they release their first official press release and it’s a very optimistic one, including the promise for “new innovative products“.

Heckler & Koch HK433

Unfortunately, the press release is only available in German, and since it’s been more than one decade since I studied German, I took the liberty of using some machine translation:

PRESS RELEASE Oberndorf, August 26, 2020.

Annual General Meeting: Heckler & Koch successful and profitable again.

– After returning to profit in the previous year, the first half of 2020 is now very positive despite the Corona.
– H&K announces new innovative products.
– The share of the “green countries” in total sales in 2019 is almost 100 percent.

“Heckler & Koch is again a successful and profitable company.” With this core message
the CEO Dr.-Ing. Jens Bodo Koch the general meeting of the H&K AG (virtual) will open on Thursday, August 27th. Despite that, Koch’s outlook falls Corona-related difficult circumstances overall optimistic: “I am very confident that that we can continue the positive trend in 2020 and the following years. “

The result for the first half of the year gives everyone cause for optimism. That’s how H&K could do it EBITDA compared to the first half of 2019 from 12.3 million euros to 24.5 million Almost double the euro. The profit after taxes increased from 0.4 million euros in the first half of 2019 to 7.6 million euros in the first half of 2020.

Sales of 139.5 million euros (126.7 million euros in the first half of 2019) and incoming orders (117.3 million euros) Euros) confirm the positive trend.

Manufacturing modernization and new products

This development is the result of the successful consolidation course taken by the Management Board followed by H&K for a good two years. It is essentially characterized by four aspects.

Firstly, H&K has put together an investment package worth more than 25 million euros, to further modernize and expand production. There will be 17 new machines procured by mid-2021, which will lead to a significant increase in productivity.

“We expect an increase in the number of pistol by 22 percent, in the case of parts for long guns by 30 percent and in the number of items for security forces coveted MP-5 family worldwide by 50 percent, ” says CEO Koch.

Second, in addition to the actual production of weapons, Heckler & Koch has the business around its products. So the share of service offers, the spare parts business
and of services in framework agreements significantly increases in total sales
become. “We expect more growth in this business area in the coming years “, says Jens Bodo Koch.

Thirdly, Heckler & Koch invests in innovative new products to enhance its technological
To maintain and expand leadership among weapons manufacturers worldwide.

Currently is the proportion of items sold by H&K that have not developed more than three years reaches back at around 30 percent. Achieved in an overall comparison with the German economy With this rate, H&K is in the top third. In the future, the proportion of new products should increase in the overall portfolio.

The original press release looks like this:

Heckler & Koch SFP9 Pistol

The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense just announced that they are going to field the Heckler & Koch SFP9, more about this in an upcoming article.

The homepage of Heckler & Koch (Europe) can be found here: https://www.heckler-koch.com/en.html

What kind of products do you think H&K have around the corner?