The automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler continues to struggle with high costs. Despite the recovery in demand, consolidated profit fell by a good quarter to 557 million euros last year, as the SDax company announced in Herzogenaurach on Tuesday.
In addition to high material and energy prices and distortions in the global supply chains, which caused earnings before interest and taxes, adjusted for special effects, to drop by a good 14 percent to 1.05 billion euros, one-off costs for the savings program that was introduced and the job cuts also had a negative impact. Sales, on the other hand, climbed 14 percent to 15.8 billion euros. Preference shareholders are to receive a dividend of EUR 0.45 per share, reduced by 5 cents.
The industrial sector – Schaeffler manufactures, among other things, drive systems for wind turbines – grew faster than the automotive sector. In the automotive sector, e-mobility in particular increased. Orders worth five billion euros were received here.
CEO Klaus Rosenfeld described the annual financial statements as “solid”. In the industrial sector in particular, it was possible to pass on the increased purchasing costs to customers.
Rosenfeld is approaching the new year with caution when it comes to earnings targets. Sales are expected to increase by 5 to 8 percent if exchange rate effects are factored out – which is slightly more than experts expected. However, the adjusted operating profit margin is likely to be between 5.5 and 7.5 percent of sales after 6.6 percent in the previous year. In comparison to the previous year, higher wage increases and energy costs in particular were taken into account, it said.
communication
