Looking back on the corporate performance in fiscal year 2022, business with the Internet of Things, electronic payment and cyber security developed particularly strongly. As a result, G+D's diversified portfolio demonstrated its resilience even in a year of numerous global crises: Despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, global logistics difficulties, a lack of chip availability, and energy shortages, G+D continued to expand its business activities.

In fiscal year 2022, G+D achieved sales of 2.53 billion euros, the highest in the Group's history. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) came to 168 million euros, enabling G+D to again improve on the previous year's strong result. At 81 million euros, net income is almost as high as in fiscal year 2021. The Group's order books are well filled across all areas – order intake rose by over 20 percent to 2.7 billion euros.

The company's successful digital transformation proved to be a strong driver of business success. The Group now claims to generate a significant proportion of its revenue from digital products and solutions. Whereas five years ago they contributed one-tenth of total output, by 2022 it was already around a quarter. This is due in particular to strategic investments and increased research and development spendings.

Addressing important future markets

With its four core areas of payment, connectivity, identities and digital infrastructures, G+D addresses important future markets. For example, the Internet of Things is becoming increasingly prevalent, which the group supports with its eSIM connectivity technology, among other things. In the consumer sector, G+D was able to announce an important milestone at the beginning of this year: More than 100 million eSIMs were activated via in-house systems, making the company the global market leader. G+D also sees great potential in central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Out of the G20 countries, 18 are already intensively evaluating government solutions in this area. G+D is also working with several central banks worldwide on pilot projects.

Expanding green portfolio

Sustainability has become an important driver of innovation. In fiscal year 2022, G+D continued to expand its green portfolio. For example, the Group expanded its range of green banknotes. By checking every single component, the result was a banknote with the smallest possible environmental footprint without compromising on durability or security. The company is taking a similar approach to introducing sustainable payment cards. As part of the "Pledge 2030" initiative, G+D committed to completely eliminate the use of virgin plastic in payment cards by 2030 at the latest. With eSIM, G+D also offers an environmentally friendly SIM solution. Compared to classic SIM cards, this technology requires less material and incurs lower distribution costs. As a result, it has lower CO2 emissions.

Strategic investments

G+D made broad M&A investments throughout the fiscal year to further strengthen its core and future business. For example, the Group acquired the US payment and identity solutions business of the Brazilian company Valid and acquired the German secure cloud infrastructure provider Syseleven. In addition, at the beginning of the year G+D acquired a majority stake in Swiss software company Netcetera, which develops digital payment solutions among its products, and in the Serbian company Netset, which specialises in the development of identity management systems. G+D financed all M&A investments from its free cash flow.

Due to the very well-filled order books, the robust portfolio and the increasing traction of future topics such as the Internet of Things, cloud security and digital central bank money, G+D is confident about the 2023 financial year. Despite continuing global crises, the company expects sales to increase compared to 2022.

"In a challenging environment, we have shown a strong team performance and completed a very successful fiscal year across the entire Group," said Ralf Wintergerst, Chairman of the Management Board and Group CEO of Giesecke+Devrient. "The figures show the resilience of our portfolio and demonstrate that we have developed our offering well in recent years. We are growing strongly in our digital business fields and are proud that the digital transformation is showing clear impact."