Lonza delivers better than expected half year CORE EBIT
In the first half of 2013, Lonza successfully executed several previously announced strategic tasks and initiated activities to deliver long-term sustainable growth. From a results perspective, the two market segments, Specialty Ingredients and Pharma&Biotech, performed better than expected on a CORE EBIT basis in the first half of 2013.
Specialty Ingredients delivered a good performance, with substantially increased profitability in nearly all subsegments and in total. Positive developments such as the very strong demand for the agrochemical offerings, the good demand for high-performance products as well as the successful conclusion of the Arch integration balanced the significantly lower revenues in the recreational water business where the cold and rainy weather led to a record low in the first six months, after a record high for the same period in the prior year.
In Pharma&Biotech new long-term custom manufacturing contracts were signed in the first half of the year and as a result production at the large-scale facility for mammalian cell culture in Singapore was adjusted to accommodate customer requirements. At the large-scale antibody drug conjugates (ADC) plant in Visp, there was a scheduled production shutdown in the first quarter to facilitate the planned expansion of capacity which is required to serve growing customer demand. In Hopkinton we focused on operational improvements and less on acquiring new projects. These unusual items resulted in lower revenues in the first half of 2013.
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