Against the backdrop of inconsistent market recovery and in view of the fact that planned net sales and earnings contributions from business with high-end systems are not yet achievable in full, Wincor Nixdorf AG has lowered its forecast for the current fiscal year 2010/2011.

The company now anticipates that it will achieve growth of 4 per cent in net sales in the current fiscal year 2010/2011, while operating profit is expected to match or slightly exceed last year's figure.

At the beginning of the fiscal year, the company had set itself a target of 6 per cent growth in net sales and 8 per cent in EBITA, stating that this would be dependent on the speed of recovery within its markets.

After two quarters of fiscal 2010/2011, Wincor Nixdorf achieved a 4 per cent growth in net sales and an EBITA on previous year’s level. Given the inconsistent nature of the market recovery, the company’s previous planned growth in the fiscal year is no longer considered realistic. With national economies developing, in part at least, at such widely different speeds, the picture in Wincor Nixdorf’s key markets is currently one of slow recovery only. Whereas both retail banks and retailers are now proceeding with system replacements that had previously been postponed, the scale of investment in larger streamlining and automation projects is still below anticipated levels.

Also the Americas region has been unable to match the performance of the same period in fiscal 2009/2010, during which it had supplied a large number of high-end systems. Alongside, the company’s new system generation CINEO, worldwide acclaimed as innovation, has not yet generated the volume of net sales initially anticipated following its market launch. So, net sales and earnings contributions from the business with high-end systems are not realised in full as planned.

With the consent of the Supervisory Board, the Board of Directors of Wincor Nixdorf AG, passed a resolution to repurchase up to 1,737,569 of the company’s shares on the stock market during the period from May 04 to September 30, 2011, thus making use of the authorization granted by the Annual General Meeting on January 24, 2011.

In the case of the approved repurchase of own shares, the purchase price per share (excluding ancillary costs of purchase) shall deviate by no more than 10 percent in either direction from the determined share price in the opening auction of XETRA trading on Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

The repurchased shares are to be used for all legitimate purposes and for those covered by the authorization granted by the Annual General Meeting, in particular, for the purpose of settling obligations arising from share options to be issued on basis of the authorization granted by the Annual General Meeting on January 25, 2010 to members of the Board of Directors, other managers or staff members of the company and/or subordinated affiliated entities.

Wincor Nixdorf AG currently owns 1,570,929 own shares. Including the agreed share repurchase own shares will reach 10% of the share capital.