FRAISA Annual Report 20/21

Dear Customers and Colleagues, Dear Readers As with all other companies, our financial year 2020/21 will go down in history as the corona year. In December 2019, when it all started in China, hardly anybody was able to imagine that the topic would catch up with the remaining world in no time at all. After the virus reached Europe in 2020, it quickly became clear how poorly all countries were prepared for such a pandemic case. Businesswise the first wave was the worst of all, espe- cially since many automotive companies were closed down, at least temporarily, due to the harsh measures leading to a crit- ical retroactive effect within the entire supply chain. However, it also showed that the industry is good and fast in the devel- opment of protection concepts for its employees and in quickly adapting to the situation. However, the financial year 2020/21 was by far not just a coro- na year for us – on the contrary: We hardly ever seized so many opportunities as during this financial year. On the one side, in summer 2020, after an approximate construction phase of 14 months, we were able to put a very ergonomic new building into operation for our employees at the Swiss location. In that respect, we now have ideal conditions for production of our precision tools thanks to state-of-the-art technologies. At the same time, we also made great progress with regard to digitalization. In addition, the new products of last year’s cata- log have been met with great acceptance on the market, first and foremost our new and very successful E-Cut line as well as the new HX product line for hard machining. The additional expansion of the company in China, which is still young, ad- vanced systematically. Since the Chinese economy was able to recuperate quickly from the corona crisis, FRAISA China was already able to contribute considerably to the stabilization of the turnover within the current year. Furthermore, for the first time we have prepared a compre- hensive life cycle assessment for the entire Group, from which we can draw important conclusions for the future. These will enable us to contribute systematically to the reduction of the ecological footprint of the FRAISA Group within the years to come, in order to achieve the goal “net zero” regarding the CO 2 emissions. We present to you these and other projects within this year’s annual report. After we started into the financial year with significant revenue shortfalls, the situation constantly improved in time. Finally, with a turnover of CHF 88.5 million we fell short of our bud- get value by just about 11.5%. Furthermore, the EBITDA (cash flow) and the profit could be maintained on a pleasing level in view of the pandemic. We are also optimistic about the outlook. We expect that we are able to increase the turnover during the new financial year by 6 % and plan investments of CHF 10 million, whereby a considerable part of the more than CHF 2 million will flow into the further expansion of digitalization. Thank you everybody in the FRAISA team for your incredible effort, especially during this special year. And I thank you, dear customers, that also this year you remained faithful to us and therefore, laid the essential foundation that the FRAISA Group and its employees overcame this challenging year. I wish you all a successful financial year and most of all good health! Editorial Josef Maushart Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer ANNUAL REPORT 2020/2021 I EDITORIAL Yours sincerely, [ 5 ]