2023-10-20 05:25:02
Zurich (awp) – The industrial group Rieter expects to eliminate between 400 and 600 jobs, mainly in production, in addition to the 300 already announced as part of its “Next Level” optimization program launched last July .
In a press release released Friday as a preamble to its investors’ day, the Winterhour holding company listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange explains that these cuts will be necessary “in view of the current market situation”, even if the exact number of positions which will go by the wayside will depend on order intake over the coming months.
Over the first nine months of 2023, these amounted to 452.2 million Swiss francs, less than half of those collected in the same period a year earlier, a poor performance that Rieter explains by the reluctance of the customers to invest in new machines, notably due to the rise in interest rates and the rise in the cost of energy and raw materials.
During the third quarter alone, order intake fell 44% year-on-year, to 127.2 million. Rieter believes that the market has reached its nadir in 2023 and expects a gradual recovery next year.
Revenues increased by 10.7% over nine months at an annual rate, to stand at 1.09 billion Swiss francs. At the end of September, the order book stood at around 900 million – compared to 2 billion a year earlier – which should allow “good utilization of production capacities in 2024”.
If the turnover corresponds more or less to the projections of analysts surveyed by the AWP agency, the extent of the drop in new orders on the other hand turned out to be greater than the most conservative forecasts.
For the current financial year, Rieter’s management expects to see the costs linked to its restructuring program weigh on its results to the tune of 45-50 million Swiss francs. The annual objectives are not confirmed, namely, an operating margin (Ebit) of 5 to 7% and sales of the order of the previous year, or around 1.5 billion.
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