• Core GK/Retail business grows by over 27%
• Breakthrough in US market

GK Software also made significant investments to strengthen its market position in the 2018 financial year, particularly in terms of expanding the cloud capabilities of the GK/Retail solutions and integrating its recently acquired expertise in artificial intelligence and mobile solutions into its product portfolio. Besides this higher level of product investment, the main causes of the earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) - at just EUR1.6 million - falling short of the board's expectations can be identified as the declining sales in the IT Services segment and a number of sales opportunities which were expected in 2018 but failed to materialize.

Overall, the board of directors regards the 2018 financial year as very successful. Therefore, the medium-term forecast for the 2020 financial year, which was made in the 2017 full-year results, remains unchanged: the 2020 revenue should be one and a half times that of the 2017 revenue and the profit in the core segment should be approximately 15% (EBIT margin on operational performance). The GK/Retail turnover is likely to grow further in 2019. This year is a key step in the company's journey towards achieving its profitability target for the 2020 financial year, so the board expects the company to exceed the 2018 results.

The financial statement was published earlier today at https://investor.gk-software.com/de/veroeffentlichungen/financial-reports?task=download&cid=661.