Accell Group N.V. today announces at its General Meeting of Shareholders that it had a positive first quarter of 2004. Due to the good sales to dealers, the first quarter of this year showed an improvement compared with the same period last year. In addition, we can report that the acquisition of Juncker B.V. in Veenendaal has been completed yesterday.
In addition to good pre-sales to specialist bicycle shops in the Netherlands and France, Tunturi in Finland, acquired last year, showed good results and made a positive contribution to earnings per share. The results in Germany still lag the rest of the group. The production facility in Hungary is, as expected, running at full capacity. Also, sales of bicycle parts grew in the first quarter.
René Takens, Chairman of the Board of Management of Accell Group, about the first quarter: “We are very pleased to note that we succeeded in improving our results in the first quarter of 2004 compared to last year. Our new models are clearly popular with both retail specialists and consumers. This was underlined at the Bicycle of the Year awards last month, when no less than three of our models received awards: the Sparta ION Comfort, the Batavus Centennial Limited Edition and the Koga Miyata Full Pro Carbolite. Besides increased sales of bike components, fitness activities also performed well. The recently introduced new treadmills have been received by our European retail specialists with enthusiasm. We believe the combination of cycling and fitness will bring us many opportunities. The outlook for the full year is also positive and once again we expect to book further growth in turnover and earnings per share.”
At the General Meeting of Shareholders Accell Group proposes to pay a optional dividend of EUR 1.30 per share over the financial year 2003. This puts the pay-out ratio at 47.1% and the dividend return at 6.4% based on the closing share price of 2003. Shareholders who opt for a stock dividend can expect a discount of 2% to 4%.
