14.02.2024

A better year for Manitowoc

Manitowoc Crane has reported its full year and fourth quarter results for 2023. They show a respectable revenues growth with a bounce back to profitability, thanks to lower write downs compared to 2022.

Full year

Total revenues came in almost 10 percent higher than in 2022 at $2.23 billion, let down a little by a slower fourth quarter. Pre-tax profits were transformed from a loss of $120 million last year to a profit 39.2 million in 2023.

The full year order intake was roughly the same as last year at $2.08 billion, leaving the backlog/order book at the end of December at $917.2 million, down from $1.06 billion in December 2022 a fall of just over 13 percent.

Fourth Quarter

Fourth quarter revenues slipped just over four percent to $595.8 million, with a pre-tax loss of $1.9 million, much improved on the $139.8 million loss in the same quarter of 2022 - due to a $171.9 million non-cash asset write down for intangibles at the end of 2022.
Order intake in the quarter fell almost 33 percent to $475.7 million, even after a favourable impact of $9.3 million from foreign exchange rate changes.

2024 Outlook
The company is forecasting full year revenues of between $2.27 and $2.38 billion an increase of between two and seven percent. It will also spend $ 60 million on capital expenditure of which around $25 million is aimed at rental fleet growth.

Chief executive Aaron Ravenscroft said: “I am pleased with the overall performance in 2023 where we delivered strong financial results and continued to execute on our CRANES+50 strategy. We increased our adjusted EBITDA by 22.5% year over year, and we grew our non new machine sales 12.4%. We enter 2024 with a strong backlog and expect global demand for mobile cranes to remain strong. We also anticipate the European tower crane market to remain challenging, which is reflected in our full year outlook.”

The company will hold its quarterly conference call and results presentation tomorrow, if we have any further informatio we will update this item then.

Vertikal Comment

Manitowoc is still progressing well on the comeback trail, better progress- if truth be known - than the 2023 result might suggest.
The company is performing well on the new product front, wining back old customers and recruiting new ones with its new long boom All Terrains, while its new Rough Terrains are also gaining traction.

The company has also been working hard on its in house distribution and rental operations in order to provide some diversification away from new crane sales, in order to stabilise the booms and bust nature of the industry. While we have no specific details, it seems that the tower crane business is now holding the company’s growth back a little, mostly in Europe. Tower crane sales can be a hard to turn around quickly. But once again it has a good product line and strong brand with Potain. The only slight worry is the drop off in order intake during the fourth quarter, although the order books is still equivalent to almst six month lead times.

All said and done the company is doing well and could very well exceed the top end of its current full year forecasts.