Double-digit growth in its jubilee year - Lenze on its way to one billion

• Lenze SE’s revenue grew by 21 percent to reach 832.6m euros in the 2021/2022 financial year. The operating result almost doubled compared with the previous year, coming to 91.8m euros. The already very strong equity ratio improved again, to 63.1 percent (prior year: 61.6 percent).
• CEO Wendler: Industry must speed up its CO₂ reductions. Automation and digitization are the biggest levers. This sector will therefore continue to be among the winners in the future.     

Aerzen, 13 October 2022. In the financial year 2021/2022 (01.05.2021 – 30.04.2022), Lenze SE successfully positioned itself in the market with new developments and collaborations, and in its 75th anniversary achieved record results. The Group’s revenue in the previous financial year grew by 21 percent to 832.6m euros. The automation specialist’s volume of orders grew by 50 percent to more than 1.1 billion euros. The operating result came to 91.8m euros and was also well over the previous year’s result (47.1m euros). The EBIT margin likewise improved, from 6.8 percent in the previous year to 11 percent. The divestment of the Mobile Drives division by Lenze Swiss AG contributed to the positive operating result.

Automation will remain a winning sector

“Even in a turbulent market environment, automation will remain a winning sector in the coming years,” promises Lenze CEO Christian Wendler. He therefore sees the sector and the company staying on track for growth, despite continuing challenges through COVID-19 and downstream supply-chain problems. “Industry must quickly boost its reduction of CO₂ emissions. We are helping our customers to develop sustainable, energy-efficient production processes – with automation and digitization. In particular, because of increasing cost pressures and ever stricter environmental regulations, we are providing our partners in the small and medium-sized business sector with value-adding solutions, helped by smart data: using our many years of expertise and our domain knowledge, we analyze and interpret their machine data and gain relevant insights for our customers. In this way we can precisely map out a machine’s energy needs and reduce energy consumption on average by up to 30 percent. Automation is the key to sustained success.”  

The markets in the USA and China are developing in a similar direction. “In addition to the growing pressure on industry worldwide with regard to emissions obligations, one of the biggest challenges for Lenze’s customers is the shortage of skilled personnel,” says Wendler. “The shortage of trained personnel is a push-factor for automation projects, for example in the field of intralogistics. This is why companies all over the world are automating their storage and material-flow processes – and not only in commerce. The intralogistics sector is therefore a dynamic and strategically important field for Lenze.” 

Digitization only succeeds in collaboration

Lenze also supports machine and plant manufacturers in their search for new, digital business models, and we rely on a triad consisting of electrical engineering, software, and a platform strategy. “Today it is no longer enough just to sell hardware. Together with our customers, we must work more closely with the operators to be able to reach a better understanding of processes and needs, and to develop business models based on that. Many smaller machine manufacturers cannot develop digital services themselves. Lenze helps them with the development and the implementation,” explains Wendler.

Strategic investment in new forms of collaboration

To achieve this goal of developing business models and solutions in collaboration, Lenze is intensifying its cooperation with start-ups, suppliers, scientific institutes and customers. “We have to work together more closely and more agilely,” believes Wendler.  In the 2021/2022 financial year, Lenze created forward-looking places for collaboration. One example is the Mechatronic Competence Campus (MCC) at the company’s Extertal site. “The MCC opens officially on 15 October 2022 and will be the heart of Lenze mechatronics. The aim is to bring all our expertise together in one place so as to speed up our development of drive solutions consisting of mechanics, electronics and software, which our customers need in order to succeed against the competition,” says Wendler.

The Digital Hub Industry in Bremen also has also been facilitating innovative forms of collaboration since summer 2022. Working there in close cooperation with the University of Bremen, Lenze offers small and medium-sized businesses an ecosystem for the open exchange of experiences and ideas and for experiments and collaborations. It is only in collaboration that beneficial digital services and business models can be created. “We believe that this requires courage and the readiness to change. It is no coincidence that ‘The Courage of Change’ is Lenze’s jubilee motto in 2022,” says Wendler finally.