Economic Value Creation

We provide a wide range of services at interfaces between producers, retailers and consumers. This includes production supply and goods distribution or vehicle transport by road, rail and water. As logistics tasks become increasingly complex, the demands on our portfolio and individual services also grow. These ever more rapid changes are driven above all by ongoing globalization coupled with shorter product life cycles, increasing urbanization and digitalization. The logistics industry continues to benefit from rising demand, which is still being driven in particular by the growth of e-commerce models. At the same time, the unrelenting pressure on margins remains a challenge, as does the growing shortage of skilled workers and labor, which in light of the demographic trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Additional factors include the growing dominance of online retailing, ever-higher customer expectations in terms of speed, flexibility and the quality of supply, as well as growing environmental awareness throughout society. The economic environment remained challenging for us in the reporting year and was characterized by great uncertainty. The reasons for this were the ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, accompanied by persistently high inflation and an overall decline in transport volumes.

Financial corporate management

Within the scope of our mission and vision, as well as the sharper definition of our strategic guiding principles, we have designed our management system with maximum clarity and transparency. Revenue, earnings before taxes (EBT) and the EBT margin derived from both of these, as well as earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) are the key performance indicators. In the future, RoCE will also be included in monthly reporting. Since 2021, the remuneration system for the Board of Management has also included non-financial target indicators: CO₂ emissions, the trainee ratio and the 1,000 employee rate used as a basis for measuring work-related accidents. In the reporting year, these were applied incrementally for the first time also for all non-tariff employees. For more information, see the Fundamental Information about the Combined Group – Combined Group management section of the Financial Report.

Despite the above-mentioned difficult geopolitical and economic conditions, we nevertheless closed the 2023 financial year considerably better than initially projected. This once again underscored the value of our diversified and hence robust corporate structure. In particular, the situation in the AUTOMOBILE Division improved significantly compared to the previous year, partly due to good capacity utilization in vehicle handling at the domestic terminals and the increased outsourcing of activities by car manufacturers, including to logistics service providers. The CONTRACT Division was in line with expectations, while in the CONTAINER Division the slack economy had a comparatively significant impact, as manifested in lower handling volumes.

Overall, combined Group revenue increased quite significantly year on year by EUR 91.1 million to EUR 1,210.0 million, a plus of around 8.1 percent. Earnings (EBT) in the AUTOMOBILE Division improved substantially overall, while at Group level EBT decreased by EUR 19,627 thousand year on year. This is attributable mainly to the decline in net investment income from the CONTAINER Division. The significant deviation from the previous year is also due to the fact that the previous year’s result included a reversal of a write-down of non-current financial assets of (proportionately) EUR 35.4 million, which related to the reversal of an impairment loss on the equity-method carrying amount of EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven GmbH & Co. KG. EBIT declined accordingly year on year by EUR 18,390 thousand to EUR 46,192 thousand. The EBT margin was therefore 3.0 percent in the 2023 financial year (previous year: 5.0 percent). The financial management of BLG LOGISTICS is detailed in depth in our Financial Report 2023. Even though we were able to take advantage of opportunities that arose in the past year and once again held our ground even under difficult conditions, we expect the market environment to remain volatile in the near future. We will counter this by resolutely tackling important topics such as digitalization and artificial intelligence, automation and also sustainability, and are working intensively to constantly improve BLG LOGISTICS’ economic position.

Value added statement

The information on economic value creation and distribution discloses how we generated and deployed the company’s assets for our stakeholders. Net value creation is used as the key indicator for the economic value creation of our business operations. It is calculated as the gross operating revenue less expenses, depreciation and amortization (excluding personnel expenses). In the reporting year, it totaled EUR 573.7 million. The largest portion of the value added, at EUR 492.2 million, was used to cover costs for the employees of BLG LOGISTICS. In addition to wages and salaries, these include expenses such as statutory social security and post-employment benefit costs. Personnel costs increased significantly on the previous year, although the number of employees remained relatively constant. This was primarily due to new collective wage agreements and the resulting higher basic remuneration.

In addition to covering personnel expenses, the value added also provides a return to the capital providers. Of this, an amount of EUR 8.8 million was attributable to distributions and dividends to the main shareholder of BLG LOGISTICS, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (municipality). In addition, profit distributions were made to the partners of fully-consolidated joint ventures and the shareholders of BLG AG, as well as interest payments for bank loans. Payments to the public purse consisted mainly of taxes and ground rent.

Value added statement of BLG LOGISTICS 2023