28.07.2026

Sluggish start for Konecranes

Finnish port handling equipment and industrial overhead crane manufacturer Konecranes has published its half year results. They show lower sales revenue and lower profits, but a very strong uptick in order intake.

First half
Total revenues for the six months to the end of June were €1.93 billion, 5.3% lower than in the first half of 2025.
Order intake, however, jumped 6.9% to €2.3 billion, pushing the
order book/backlog to €3.38 billion, up 16.1% on this time last year.
Pre-tax profit slipped 9.1% to €207.6 million, while
Net Debt was slashed from a modest €166.1 million last year to just €22.3 million this year.

Second Quarter
Revenues: €1.02 billion -3.1%
Order intake: €1.24 billion +13.2%
Pre-tax profit: €116.3 million -12.2%

Chief executive Marko Tulokas said: “The second quarter of 2026 was very strong from an orders perspective. Order activity was robust across all three Business Areas - Industrial Service, Industrial Equipment and Port Solutions- resulting in a clearly higher order book. We saw positive development with orders from the Americas and APAC regions and some weakening in the EMEA region.”

"We kept our profitability on a solid level while our net sales reflected the timing of deliveries. The impact from the conflict in the Middle East remained limited, and there have been no new effects on our customer deliveries. We have seen some upward pressure in our fuel and freight costs, but we have managed to offset the impact through our own actions.”

“One of the highlights of the quarter was that we reached our ambition to electrify all our product lines by the end of 2026. Following the launch of the modular Generation D Konecranes lift truck platform with electric reach stackers in May, the whole lift truck product family is now available with electric options.”

“Going forward, we expect our demand environment to remain on a healthy level within industrial customer segments. For our port customers, container throughput continues to be at a high level, and the long-term prospects for container handling remain good. However, uncertainty related to geopolitics and trade policy tensions remains high.”

Konecranes manufactures a wide range of port handling equipment, including Gottwald mobile harbour cranes, container handling gantry and ship to shore cranes, reachstackers and container handling forklifts, to name a few. It also produces a wide range of industrial overhead cranes and hoists.

Vertikal Comment

This is an encouraging report from Konecranes, which has been active on the acquisition front for the past couple of years. At the start of this month it finalised an agreement to take over Spanish nuclear and port service company Coapsa and, more recently, announced the acquisition of Mitsubishi Hoist, taking it into Japan.

It looks as though 2026 could prove to be a really good first year for chief executive Marko Tulokas, who took over the helm a year ago. It just needs to efficiently start building out its order book in the second half.
Looking positive.