31.08.2010

Haulotte jumps 15%

Haulotte has released its first half results which show a 15 percent rise in revenues and a reduced loss.

Revenues for the half year were €114.4 million made up as follows:
New product sales €84.5 million an improvement of 19 percent, services though fell 15 percent to €12.9 million giving the manufacturing business an overall sales of €97.4 million, up almost 14 percent on the same period last year.

The group’s rental business also performed well with revenues climbing 14 percent to €17 million. Most of this increase is due to the acquisition in June 2009 of Access Rentals which will have added a full six months revenues to the 2010 numbers.

A good deal of the equipment sales increase is due to the American market, while the overall European market was flat according to the company, “disguising positive and negative trends in individual countries”.

The Service business was impacted by the sluggish utilisation rates in customer fleets says Haulotte.

While the increased revenues made a positive impact to the bottom line, margins remained poor leading to a net loss for the period of €16 million compared to a loss of €32 million last year.

The company says that it is not expecting the world market to significantly improve during the rest of 2010 as rental companies continue to struggle, as a result it is continuing to cut costs, while investing in new product development. It says that during the first half it reduced its fixed costs by eight percent.

The group has also signed a re-negotiated agreement with its banking partners during the first half of the year.

Vertikal Comment

This is a surprising result from Haulotte and very encouraging. Expectations within the industry were for the company to post a very minor improvement or slippage over last year, so a 15 percent increase is good.

It is clear though that the down side to the improvement are the margins which continue to languish at low levels, possibly driven by the strength of the Euro during the period?

Haulotte does not publish a great deal of detail at the half year stage, so further analysis is difficult.

It is likely that interest charges were up and that fees were involved with the renegotiated credit line which would have impacted the bottom line as would the on-going restructuring costs, while the larger UK fleet adds additional depreciation costs.

So given all of this an encouraging result for the industry as well as shareholders.