31.07.2009 | Serbia

S&T Serbia continues with profitable business operations

Despite difficulties, and obvious turnover fall on Serbian market, S&T Serbia continues to operate exquisitely, realizing both profit and revenue near planned, but somewhat below realized revenue in the same period the year before. The total turnover that S&T Serbia posted in the first half of the year slides 15% year-on-year, whereas profit showed more than 20% decrease in the same period of the prior year. Still, the fact that doubtlessly point out to the S&T’s success is the fact that Gartner, in its recent publication, ranked S&T as number one for consulting services in the CEE region, leaving behind names such as Accenture, IBM, SAP, Oracle and others.
The implementation of solutions and services, which together account for over 60% of S&T’s sales in Serbia, showed a slight increase in both revenue and profit. The sales of IT infrastructure (hardware) were in decline, reflecting an overall trend in the IT market.

„The ongoing crisis affects also our business, which can be perceived in diminished market demand, but also in financial indicators. Having in mind that IT market demand in first four months fell by more than 20%, revenue drop in these limits could be acceptable to some extent. Last year, we posted almost 10 million Euros revenue, and we can be satisfied if it approximately remains on that level” stated Mr. Predrag Vraneš, Managing Director of S&T Serbia.


Positive trends in several countries and numerous large orders



As an international company, S&T is present in 21 countries mostly Central and Eastern Europe with strong regional presence, but also in Japan and China. In Q2 2009 good performance showed especially Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Romania, as well as the German speaking region. Unfortunately, Japan, China, Hungary and the Ukraine were not able to avoid the effects of the crisis and many projects were cancelled or postponed. However, a positive note is that the Ukraine is reporting success stories once more: two large orders - with the telecoms supplier Kievstar and the Raiffeisen Bank Aval – were recently concluded. Other recent successes: the S&T client EVN signed contracts for capacious projects in Bulgaria and Macedonia. Orange Moldavia will be relying on the expertise of S&T in the future. In Romania, S&T will be responsible for implementing large projects for ANSVSA, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Romanian Bank for Development, a subsidiary of Société Générale Group. The Austrian clients AMAG and Styria Publishing have also entrusted S&T with new projects in Q2.
In Serbia, some important projects were recently finalized, such as software support for logistic services for Belgrade Univerziade 2009 in cooperation with Milsped Company, and ongoing projects are SAP upgrades in SBB, Serbian Post and Direct Trade.


Acquisitions and outlook



Christian Rosner, CEO of S&T, when asked about possible takeovers: "We are currently examining two interesting candidates for acquisition in our core regions that would support a significant increase in market share and core expertise." Regarding future development in 2009 the CEO of S&T replies "In comparison to the difficult first quarter, our business has stabilized in the second. A slight improvement is expected in Q3 and the positive trend should be even more apparent in the traditionally successful Q4, if the current investment plans of our clients remain unchanged. We will give our initial forecast for the full year 2009 in September."