Financial structure

Solid fi­nan­cial foun­da­tion

Once again, the sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion from free cash­flow al­lowed the at­trac­tive div­i­dend pol­icy and the share buy­back pro­gramme to be con­tin­ued while also main­tain­ing the very healthy fi­nan­cial foun­da­tion of the Group.

Total as­sets in­creased from CHF 3,553.8 mil­lion to CHF 3,601.1 mil­lion. Liq­uid funds in­creased from CHF 459.6 mil­lion to CHF 509.7 mil­lion. In ad­di­tion, the Group had ac­cess to un­drawn op­er­at­ing credit lines for the op­er­at­ing busi­ness of CHF 340.6 mil­lion. Debts were re­duced to CHF 970.9 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year CHF 1,139.2 mil­lion). This re­sulted in a re­duc­tion in net debt by CHF 218.4 mil­lion to CHF 461.2 mil­lion at the end of 2016. This de­vel­op­ment re­sulted from the strong free cash­flow, the div­i­dend pay­ment to the share­hold­ers, share buy­backs and the re­pay­ment of debts (see also In­crease in free cash­flow).

At CHF 147.3 mil­lion, net work­ing cap­i­tal was on a par with the pre­vi­ous year (pre­vi­ous year CHF 146.6 mil­lion). Prop­erty, plant and equip­ment in­creased from CHF 715.4 mil­lion to CHF 726.5 mil­lion, while good­will and in­tan­gi­ble as­sets dropped from CHF 1,757.1 mil­lion to CHF 1,681.1 mil­lion.

The ratio of net debt to eq­uity (gear­ing) im­proved from 45.9% in the pre­vi­ous year to 28.2%. The eq­uity ratio reached a very solid 45.4% (pre­vi­ous year 41.7%). Based on av­er­age eq­uity, the ad­justed re­turn on eq­uity (ROE) was 38.3% (pre­vi­ous year 32.2%); the non-ad­justed value of this ratio was 35.9% (pre­vi­ous year 27.6%). Av­er­age in­vested op­er­at­ing cap­i­tal, com­pris­ing net work­ing cap­i­tal, prop­erty, plant and equip­ment, and good­will and in­tan­gi­ble as­sets amounted to CHF 2,704.6 mil­lion at the end of 2016 (pre­vi­ous year CHF 2,504.9 mil­lion). The ad­justed re­turn on in­vested cap­i­tal (ROIC) was 21.5% (pre­vi­ous year 20.1%); the non-ad­justed value of this ratio was 20.2% (pre­vi­ous year 17.0%). For de­tails on the non-ad­justed gear­ing, ROE and ROIC cal­cu­la­tions, please refer to the Fi­nan­cial State­ments of the Geberit Group, Notes to the Con­sol­i­dated Fi­nan­cial State­ments, 5. Man­age­ment of Cap­i­tal.

The Geberit Group held 239,869 trea­sury shares on 31 De­cem­ber 2016, which equals 0.6% of the shares en­tered in the Com­mer­cial Reg­is­ter. These shares are mostly ear­marked for par­tic­i­pa­tion plans. The total num­ber of shares en­tered in the Com­mer­cial Reg­is­ter stands at 37,041,427 shares. The share buy­back pro­gramme, which began on 30 April 2014, ended on 29 Feb­ru­ary 2016. A total of 757,000 reg­is­tered shares were bought back for CHF 247.8 mil­lion. When the pro­gramme ended, this rep­re­sented 2.0% of the share cap­i­tal recorded in the Com­mer­cial Reg­is­ter. The share buy­back was con­ducted via a sec­ond trad­ing line set up es­pe­cially for this pur­pose. The av­er­age pur­chase price per share was CHF 327.40. The or­di­nary Gen­eral Meet­ing of 6 April 2016 ap­proved the pro­posal to can­cel the shares that were bought back by means of cap­i­tal re­duc­tion. This took place on 20 June 2016.