$1.7 Billion ($4.2B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 12,152

It was a year full of challenges for the Agfa-Gevaert Group. No sooner had 2008 begun when prices shot up for raw materials, cutting into revenue and hampering executives’ efforts to reduce corporate debt. Fluctuations in foreign exchange rates complicated the company’s plans to achieve significant growth, as the U.S. dollar and other currencies seesawed throughout the year due to the deteriorating economy.

Wall Street’s third-quarter meltdown nixed any hopes Agfa executives had to significantly reduce working capital and establish a strong foothold for future growth. Still, the year wasn’t a total loss.

The company reported “a number of major successes” within its business groups, such as an agreement to install an IT system serving 38 hospitals in Paris, France.

“2008 will go down in history as the year of the great economic turnabout,” Agfa Board Chairman Julien De Wilde and President and CEO Jo Cornu said in Agfa’s 2008 annual report. “At this moment, it is unpredictable how deep the crisis will go and how long it will last. The current situation demands a continuous adjustment of our cost structure. We wish to thank our customers and our dealers for their confidence in our company and assure them that—even in the current tough economic conditions—the Agfa trademark will continue to stand for new technologies, quality and reliability.”

Whether the company trademark also will stand for profitability remains to be seen. Agfa reported $4.27 billion in net sales last year, an 11.5 percent decrease compared with the $4.83 billion the Belgian firm posted in 2007. Gross profit plunged 18.8 percent, falling to $1.38 billion from $1.7 billion in 2007.

Europe was the largest revenue-generator last year, garnering $2.3 billion in sales for the company. That figure represented an 8 percent decrease compared with the $2.5 billion European customers generated for Agfa in 2007. North America was the second most lucrative region last year, but revenue fell 16.5 percent to $834.5 million. Latin American sales slid slightly, going from $302 million in 2007 to $297.4 million in 2008. Asia/Oceania/Africa contributed $807.7 million to the company’s bottom line, a 10.6 percent decrease compared with the $904.3 million the region generated in 2007.

Agfa is divided into three business groups: Graphics, HealthCare and Specialty Products. The Graphics group offers integrated prepress solutions to the printing industry, while the Specialty Product Group supplies motion picture film, microfilm and aerial photography film (among other items) to customers.

Agfa HealthCare supplies hospitals and other healthcare centers with systems to capture, process and manage diagnostic images. Its imaging and IT solutions include Clinical Information Systems, Hospital Information Systems, Radiology Information Systems (RIS), Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS), as well as systems for reporting, cardiology, business planning, decision support, classic X-ray film solutions, Computed Radiography (CR) and a direct radiography system. Though this division substantially reduced its selling and general administrative costs, weak sales and high silver prices drove down profits last year. Sales in the Agfa HealthCare business slid 15 percent to $1.72 billion.

Despite its weak performance last year, the HealthCare division negotiated several major business deals.

The company was awarded a new three-year contract with Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier Purchasing Partners L.P. to provide film and medical imaging equipment to 2,000 member hospitals and 53,000 other healthcare sites in the United States.
Two independent studies conducted last year by the University Clinical Center of Giessen and Marburg (in Germany) and the Friedrich Schiller University (Jena, Germany) boosted the marketability of Agfa’s CR digitizer DX-S in pediatrics. Both studies concluded that the system allows an X-ray dose reduction by up to 50 percent without reducing the diagnostic quality of the images.

Agfa HealthCare continued to roll out its IMPAX Data Center last year, which provides large-scale multimedia storage for all types of medical images and diagnostic results for hospital groups, regional healthcare organizations and national medical archives.
While the company’s products were most popular with European customers, they appealed to international customers as well. Agfa won a contract last year to deliver X-ray film and chemicals to all civilian hospitals in Iraq, and officials with the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University asked the firm to implement the second phase of its RIS/PACS program.

Agfa’s CR technology gained acceptance in developing markets last year—the company won a contract with Kazachstan officials to install more than 30 35-X CR digitizers in hospitals and sold 34 CR units and printers to a Saudi Arabian hospital network. By the end of 2008, Agfa had installed more than 19,000 CR systems worldwide.