With its share price "more than tripled" and risen further, KBA is reaping the rewards of the the Fit@All realignment programme it completed last year.

And at the German press maker's annual meeting this week, shareholders were apparently pleased with ongoing results including the first quarter of 2016.

The event also saw the discharge of management and supervisory boards, the creation of authorised capital and election of supervisory board members. President and chief executive Claus Bolza-Schünemann emphasised positive results of the restructuring: "We have turned over many stones... and are therefore all the more pleased that KBA has remained stable during this transition phase."

Last year's forecasted EBT margin of two per cent had been exceeded by almost 50 per cent, and implementation of the extensive programme "without seriously weakening our financial power" had created strategic scope for the future, he said.

With extensive personnel adjustments "largely complete", Bolza-Schünemann says a high workload in production and assembly was resulting in staff shortages, and a number of apprentices were now being offered permanent positions, justifying the "relatively high" proportion of more than seven per cent trainees.

The stock market had rewarded implementation of the restructuring and the resulting positive earnings, and Bolza-Schünemann told shareholders, "This is also of benefit to you."

However, with losses from previous years still to be recoued, no dividend is being recommended from the "decent" 2015 profit. He said the group "looks ahead to the next few months with confidence" given a continued solid order backlog: "We hope the global economic conditions for our business remain relatively stable and we are targeting an increase in group revenue to around 1.1 billion Euros with an EBT margin between 3-4 per cent for 2016." In the mid-term, the aim is to increase EBT to 4-6 per cent of revenue.

Management will now focus strongly on generating growth, but it is likely to come from growing digital and packaging markets, the latter making up about 70 per cent of revenue, with only about ten per cent coming from media-related fields including book, magazine and newspaper printing.

After 29 years as shareholder representative professor Horst Peter Wölfel has retried from the supervisory board, and shareholders elected Dr Andreas Pleßke - one of the architects of the restructuring programme - as his replacement. A large majority of the shareholders approved all agenda items with the exception of creating new authorised capital.

Pictured: Claus Bolza-Schünemann emphasised the growth markets in digital and packaging printing