25.03.2012

Record revenues for Manitex

Manitex the US based boom truck, crane and port equipment manufacturer has reported increased revenues of almost 50 percent for 2011.

Looking at the full year, revenues were $141.3 million over 48 percent higher than in 2010, whgile pre-tax profits for the period increased 36 percent to $4.21 million.

The company’s backlog as of the end of the year was $83.7 million more than double that of last year, when it was $39.9 million.

Moving to the fourth quarter, sales were up just over 25 percent to $36.96 million, while profit before tax plummeted from $1.38 million last year to just $360,000 in 2011. The main cause for this appears to be down to a legal settlement costing almost $1.2 million, for a product liability case that was instigated in 2006, along with substantially higher Research & Development costs.

The company says that around half of its growth came from increased demand for its Manitex boom trucks, particularly from the energy and power line construction sectors, which also take higher capacity, higher reach models.

The remaining revenue growth was generated by the Italian CVS port equipment business and distribution, both of which came fully on board in mid-2010.

Chief executive David Langevin said: "We made exceptional progress in 2011, with record financial performance from top to bottom, and believe that we are well-positioned for continued growth throughout 2012. Robust demand for our energy based products was the primary driver of our growth during the year, and the continued growth in our backlog indicates that 2012 will be another year of healthy expansion.”

“We are working hard to secure supply, increase our production, and ship product to keep up with the pace of our order backlog, which is principally at our Manitex cranes division, although we are seeing contributions from each of our other product lines as well, though at more moderate levels.”

“We are getting excellent cooperation from our supplier base and we expect consistent and steady growth from each quarter for the current year as our suppliers step up to meet our product demands. The energy markets we serve appear to be in a strong growth environment and the overall economic trend appears now to also be improving, all of which bodes well for our group over the next several years."

“We expect consistent sales growth each quarter throughout the year, beginning with consolidated sales in the first quarter exceeding those of the fourth quarter of 2011, as we have recently begun to expand our output, and operating leverage continuing to the ultimate benefit to our bottom line and our shareholders."

Vertikal Comment

This is obviously an excellent result for Manitex, no matter how you look at it. However it is interesting to note that a large chunk of its revenue growth and probably most of its profit comes from its core Manitex boom truck business.

The company needs its other businesses to grow if it is to achieve its long term objectives. The problem is that many of them are rather dated and parochial product lines and brands such as Little Giant and Badger cranes.
Even though the company has done some excellent revival work on them, such as its new Badger cab down Rough Terrain crane, however they will always be niche products, mostly limited to North America.

For a small company Manitex has its fingers in a lot of pies….. cranes, boom trucks, all manner of fork trucks, port handling equipment and transport trailers. Once can’t but think that somewhere along the line it will be better served focusing all its efforts on two or three businesses where it has a stronger and more international market position?

In the meantime the business is ‘cooking on gas’