BADEN-BADEN (dpa-AFX) - The leasing specialist Grenke generated slightly less new business last year than recently forecast. New leasing business increased by 12.3 percent to 2.58 billion euros, as the company announced in Baden-Baden on Thursday. Most recently, CEO Sebastian Hirsch had expected the lower half of the forecast corridor of 2.6 to 2.8 billion euros. According to the press release, Hirsch spoke of a successful year, "even if we only just achieved our forecast for new business". Hirsch intends to use the momentum from the last quarter "to realize our ambitions for new leasing business of at least three billion euros in the new year as well."

Grenke increased the margin of the so-called contribution margin 2 by 0.4 percentage points to 16.5 percent. The margin is a measure of the profitability of new business. Contribution margin 2 measures how much a product contributes to covering structural costs. Strong profitability is "even more important than pure volume growth", said Hirsch in view of the rise in interest rates. According to previous statements, Grenke can only pass on rising interest rates to its mostly small and medium-sized customers with a time lag./men/zb