Essanelle Hair Group presents the Annual Report 2010

• Sales figures at EUR 127.2 million after EUR 128.0 million
• Earnings before taxes slightly above projection with EUR 5.1 million
• Dividend recommendation at last year’s level

Düsseldorf, 31 March 2011 – In the past financial year 2010, Essanelle Hair Group AG has produced sales of EUR 127.2 million after EUR 128.0 million (-0.6%). The primary reason for this is the lack of net growth of salons in the previous year. Overall the Company was able to significantly stabilise the sales trend over the course of the year – after a sales decrease of 2.2% in the first half of the year compared to the previous year.

Achim Mansen, Chief Executive Officer (CEO): "Basically we have to be content with the development of 2010 in view of the underlying circumstances and the weak department store environment. The pleasing sales development in the second half of 2010 is continuing now, in early 2011. Because we opened approximately 50 new salons in the previous year, we again expect a sales growth for the current financial year.”

The salon concept HairExpress, which is targeted at price-conscious customers, produced EUR 35.7 million in the past financial year and therefore a growth of 11.1%. With EUR 21.2 million, the trend concept Super Cut recorded an increase of 3.5% compared to previous year’s level of EUR 20.5 million. The concept TOP TEN produced declining sales with EUR 5.1 million after EUR 5.4 million, as did the concept “essanelle Ihr Friseur” with EUR 58.4 million after EUR 63.3 million. This concept especially, was affected very strongly by closings, with a salon stock of 296 salons at the end of the year compared to 308 in the previous year. The Beauty Hair Shops, which specialise in the sale of exclusive hair dressing products, produced sales of EUR 6.8 million after EUR 6.7 million.

Earnings figures within the range, dividend of EUR 0.50

The sales performance of the Company is partly mirrored by the earnings figures. Thus the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) decreased by 4.8% from EUR 11.3 million to EUR 10.8 million. The earnings before taxes (EBT) declined from EUR 5.5 million to EUR 5.1 million –but this still lies above the range of EUR 4.5 million to EUR 5.0 million projected past autumn. Because of significantly reduced tax expenses, the consolidated net income increased from EUR 3.2 million to EUR 3.4 million and the earnings per share increased correspondingly to EUR 0.75 after EUR 0.71 in the previous year. Against this backdrop, Management Board and Supervisory Board are going to propose a dividend equal to the previous year of EUR 0.50 at the Annual General Meeting.

Achim Mansen: “The rising sales performance in the second half of 2010 also led to an earnings result which exceeded expectations. Regardless of this, we will be entirely focused on producing increased earnings again in the current financial year. Therefore we expect an improvement of earnings before taxes of at least 5%, apart from a sales growth of 2% to 3%. This way, we also want to continue the ongoing payment of dividends.”

Kontakt:
Haubrok Investor Relations
Michael Müller
+49-21 56-49 65 195
M.Mueller@haubrok.de