23.07.2007

New record for Haulotte

Haulotte the French based aerial lift manufacturer, has reported first half revenues of €310.2 million, an increase on the same period last year of 31 percent.

Europe continues to represent 90 percent of the groups business, while machine sales nudged up one percentage point to represent 85 percent of revenues.

Revenues at the company’s rental businesses represented a slightly smaller percentage of total sales dropping back one point to 10 percent. Services and finance remain at five percent of the total.

Haulotte says that order intake grew at a faster pace than sales, rising by 50 percent on the same period of 2006.

Based on this the company is predicting that full year revenues will come in around 25 percent up on last year which equates to €649 million. This is at the top end of its revised guidance issued in April.

In spite of the higher revenues the company is maintaining its earlier ‘revised’ net profit forecast of 12 percent due to the continuing weakness of the US dollar relative to the euro and “persistent pressures on raw material.”

Vertikal Comment

Once again a sparkling result from Haulotte in spite of US based manufacturers stepping up their sales into Europe while they benefit from a weak dollar.

The high dollar is not all bad news for Haulotte, it gains some benefits as it has increased the number of American components it uses in order to help balance exchange rate fluctuations.

Back in April we predicted that CEO Alexandre Saubot was being a touch conservative and said that we thought the company would turn in full year revenues of €650 to €675 million.

We are holding to that forecast and expect that net profits might just break the 12 percent level.

Watch this space.