25.04.2013

Manitou drops first quarter

Telehandler and access company Manitou has reported a steep fall in first quarter revenues, with a 14 percent fall to €271.8 million.

However it also says that order intake in the quarter was very strong, and that the slowdown reflects the slow order intake that it experienced in the third quarter of 2012.

Looking at the three divisions, Rough Terrain Handlers- which includes telehandlers and aerial lifts fell 22 percent to €171.9 million, while
Construction Equipment/Gehl increased 21 percent to €64.8 million. The industrial division fell 14 percent to €35.1 million entirely due to the ending of the Toyota agreement, the non Toyota business was up over six percent.

Geographically Southern Europe fell 20 percent to €97.3 million, Northern Europe 27 percent to €79.8 million and Asia Pacific two percent to €30.9 million, while the Americas improved 20 percent to €64.6 million.

Manitou says that the first quarter is not representative of its expectations for the year, and that although business remains unpredictable it expects the next three quarters to gather pace and compensate to some degree for the slow start.

Chief executive Dominique Bamas said: "The pause in first quarter revenues resulted from the natural flow of the vacuum in order intake recorded in the third quarter of 2012. It is not representative of current demand which continues to be strong, although remaining volatile.”

“Excluding the impact of the termination of the Toyota contract at the end of 2012 in France, two of our three divisions continued to grow as compared to the first quarter of 2012. So instead of only focusing on revenue, we are happily focusing on our first quarter order intake, which reached its highest level in a year, and we’re organising ourselves accordingly.”

“Our order book is growing and, this time, we’re adjusting our production rate upwards. Each change in the cycle represents an effort for us, but our continued work to reform permits us to get through these cycles better and better.”

“The solid strength of final demand, and the acceleration of operations, therefore permit us to maintain our objective of stable revenue for 2013.”

Vertikal Comment

This is another surprise from Manitou, although we were aware that the third quarter in most of Europe was very hard and was probably covered up at the time by the reduction in lead times that the company has been working on - pushing the revenue shortfall forward into the fourth and first quarters.

Looking at the comments the company has made we would expect it to pull things back over the next two quarters and it could well finish the year well ahead of 2012.

At the same time as it announced the results it announced further management changes which should help stabilise things for the second half.
The business has certainly experienced a challenging two quarters, but looks set to bounce back rapidly. The half year results will of course be a good indication of how well and how fast it is doing so.