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04.05.2017

Liebherr slips back

Liebherr has published its results for 2016, which show that mobile and tower crane sales declined 4.5 percent to €2.48 billion.

Of this mobile crane sales were €2.07 billion a fall of four percent, while tower crane sales were 6.8 percent lower at €410 million. Maritime crane sales dropped 15.4 percent to €816 million, taking total Liebherr crane sales in 2016 to €3.3 billion.

In terms of geographic spread 47.6 percent of mobile crane sales were in Western Europe, 7.1 percent in Eastern Europe, 24.4 percent in the Americas and 11.8 percent in the Far East and Australasia. The rest largely coming from the Middle East.

In comparison 78 percent of all tower crane sales were in Western Europe, 5.9 percent in Eastern Europe, 5.9 percent in the Americas, 5.1 percent in Far East/Pacific and 3.9 percent in the Middle East.

Group revenues for the year were just over €9 billion 2.5 percent lower than in 2015. Pre-tax profits however improved almost nine percent to €473 million. The company expect s tower crane, mining and earth moving sales to improve this year, along with, aerospace. It does not mention look for any significant improvement in Mobile or maritime cranes.

Vertikal Comment

This is a good result for Liebherr given the results from other major companies in the sector which have posted much steeper declines. However most of this was currency/exchange rate related given the weakness of the Euro during the period. All divisions of the business declined with the exception of Aerospace and Others, indicating a challenging year overall.

It looks as though the group as a whole will recover much of this year’s set back, although it is clearly not quite as optimistic about mobile cranes. A good deal of this will be down to lower sales of large cranes – 500 tonnes and above which has been slowing for year or two now as earlier demand was filled.
Given the positive sounds from the USA and an improving European market, we may well see a pick up towards the year end and into 2018.

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