18.02.2010

Terex Cranes down 34%

Terex has released its full year results which show Crane revenues for the full year down 34 percent to $1.96 billion. The fourth quarter was slightly better with revenues down 25 percent to $557 million.

Operating income for the division fell 80 percent to $80.4 million while the quarter was down 77 percent to $22.9 million.

The company order book as of the end of December was $974 million down 50 percent on December 2008, but was down just 4.4 percent since the start of the quarter. Although this now includes the port business, stripping this out the order book was down 60 percent and 24 percent respectively.

The Terex group as a whole saw revenues fall by over 52 percent to $4 billion, while the group posted a pre tax loss of $582 million, compared to a profit last year of $88.8 million.

Chief executive Ron DeFeo, said: “We just completed one of the most challenging years ever for our industry and our company. We weathered the storm and have made many changes along the way. And while we continue to face very low levels of demand in many of our end markets, the Company is beginning to recover operationally, and our strategic transformation has started with the sale of our Mining business. When net sales declines rapidly, profitability falls even more quickly, as pricing actions, inventory valuations, bad debt, and restructuring costs all add up. This is why we chose to manage the Company for cash in 2009, as well as quickly putting in place cost reduction programs to resize the organization's cost structure to the current demand environment. We are glad that we took this path, even though at times it was painful.”


“The 2010 outlook remains challenging for Terex, but we believe that our performance will improve during the year. We have begun the process of changing our focus from cash management to growth. We see relative stability in our end markets and believe we need to capture market share in order to grow. To do this, we will introduce several new products across a range of our businesses and complete new factories in India and China that will support our business later in 2010 and beyond.”


“Given current market conditions, it is still difficult to project 2010 performance with any reasonable degree of certainty. However, we are planning for a flat to slightly improved demand environment in most of our product categories, with the exception of our large crane business where we expect to see some softening in 2010. Generally, our backlog has stabilised, and our order inquiry rate has picked up. Based on what we see today, our current outlook for net sales in 2010 is
approximately $5.0 billion, an increase of roughly 24 percent on 2009."

"The inclusion of the Port Equipment business for the full fiscal year will account for approximately one third of this growth. In terms of operating earnings, our expectation is for 2010 to result in substantially break-even performance from continuing operations. This would result in a net loss of approximately $1.00 per share for the year, excluding any impact from restructuring or unusual items.”