Sales growth for Schweizer despite challenging market conditions
The Schweizer Group managed to record some growth during the first half of 2024, despite a difficult market environment. The group is reporting sales growth of 8.1% to EUR 74.3 million, compared with EUR 68.7 million during the same period last year.
At the end of the second quarter of 2024, the Schweizer Group had an order backlog of EUR 213.0 million, compared to EUR 251.3 million at the end of 2023. Of this amount, EUR 82.6 million is due for delivery in the following two quarters of 2024. Schweizer says that incoming orders were affected by project-specific postponements and cancellations. Incoming orders for sales of products from the group's strategic partners developed positively, whereas the order intake for own production declined. The order backlog for 2025 and subsequent years amounts to EUR 130.4 million.
In the first half of 2024, sales increased by 8.1% to EUR 74.3 million, compared with EUR 68.7 million the previous year. Sales from own production amounted to EUR 44.7 million, which corresponds to a decrease of 1.3%. In contrast, sales of products via the Asian partner network rose by 26.2% to EUR 29.6 million. According to Schweizer, this was due to the start of series production of embedding technology for automotive customers and the success of the fab-light partnerships.
Sales to automotive customers totalled EUR 59.4 million, an increase of 28.9% compared to the previous year. The share of sales from industrial and other customers totalled EUR 14.9 million, well below the previous year's level of EUR 22.7 million. Germany, the main market, recorded a drop in sales of 7.7% to EUR 30.9 million. By contrast, the other European markets increased by 50.4% to EUR 23.5 million. While adjusted sales in Asia rose by 14%, exports to America fell by 8.5%.
EBITDA for the first half of 2024 amounted to EUR 0.1 million, compared to EUR 5.7 million the previous year. Profitability was negatively impacted by a falling capacity utilisation at the Schramberg site, cost increases and shifts in the product mix.
Looking forward Schweizer believes that the global economy will only grow moderately in 2024, with demand for electric vehicles in particular weaker than expected. Despite these challenges, Schweizer is convinced that its growth trend will remain intact, supported by the series ramp-up of embedding technology and market share gains with key customers. Sales of between EUR 140 and 150 million are expected for the full year 2024, although the Executive Board currently expects to close the year at the lower end of the forecast range.
As capacity utilisation at the Schramberg production plant is not expected to improve in the second half of the year and the measures introduced are not sufficient to achieve the original EBITDA expectation, Schweizer expects EBITDA of EUR 2 to 5 million (previously EUR 10 to 11 million) for the full year 2024.
