Essilor realized an increase in sales and profit in the first six months of this year. Sales increased with 15,8% to 1.926,8 million dollar and net profit with 19,3% to 238,8 million dollar. Net profit could have been about 40 million euro more but Essilor reserved this amount of money to pay a penalty imposed by the German anti-trust authorities. If this penalty will finally be paid is yet uncertain as the company gave notice of appeal against it. The growth is due to the successful introduction of new products, a better product mix and an aggressive expansion policy. This year alone Essilor acquired 13 other companies which together are responsible for 9% of the sales increase mentioned before. Growth in Europe was only 1,4% and in North-America even less with only 1%. Asia and Latin-America did much better with respectively 8 and 16,6% increase in sales.
