Hello everyone
I decided to take a quick look at Märklin's annual reports and compile a summary. I could only find reliable reports as far back as 2004, so sadly I cannot look further back than that at the moment, if anyone knows where I can find reliable information on this, please do enlighten me.
Anyways, I decided to look at revenue, annual results, as well as the amount of permanent employees they have.
We can start with revenue, for those who don't know, revenue is the total amount of money a company earns from the sale of its products and services. It is, however, important to understand that big revenue does not necessarily equal big profit.

At first glance, it may look like Märklin has been in a decline since 2004, with a growth starting again in 2018, however one must remember that Märklin has become a smaller, more streamlined company since the insolvency, decreasing their amount of products and their staff, meaning that the lower revenue was expected and planned for as the company shrunk in size. If one considers revenue in relation to the number of employees, the results become quite impressive in my opinion.

As you look at the annual results, the path that the company has chosen since the insolvency does indeed seem like a good one:

Note that, even though the revenues were very high in 2004, the company lost almost 15 million euros that year.
Another note regarding the annual results chart: there was a spike in income in 2011, the extraordinary income mainly resulted from derecognition of the Goldman Sachs/Hardt Group loans, the derecognition of the waiver of receivables by suppliers and employees, the derecognition of interest and receivables of the Pension Protection Association.It is clear that Märklin has changed a lot as a company following the 2008 insolvency. Measures such as focusing on a smaller range of products, model and product policy re-examined, cancellation of products with too-low levels of profit margin, workforce reduction, uneconomical contracts terminated, limiting number of start-up sets to mitigate their lower profit margins, and closing of the Nuremberg site.
Other points as of the latest report:
- The German market is responsible for approximately 61% of Märklin's revenue, with the rest of Europe being slightly above 26% and the rest of the world being 12-13%.
- In the Märklin Group, Märklin itself makes up more than 70% of the group's revenue, with Trix and LGB being about 14-15% each.
- Compared to 2010, LGB has almost trippled its revenue, going from only 5% of the Märklin Group's revenue to 14%
- While the pandemic reignited interest in model railroading for a lot of people, the increase in prices of products to counter the increasing cost of material and logistics can lead to alienation of younger customers, which will have long-term negative effects
I wish I could find information on the market share for C-track vs K-track, but it's not clear in any of the reports I've read.
For those of you who knew Märklin and its products before the 2008 insolvency, how has the company changed since then, in your experience?