Stadler Rail lowers guidance due to severe weather disasters
Published: Wednesday, Nov 13th 2024, 22:40
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Stadler Rail has recently been hit hard by disastrous weather conditions: Production has been massively affected in some cases. At the same time, there have been delays to a major order from Berlin. The train manufacturer from Eastern Switzerland therefore has to lower its forecasts for 2024.
The storm disaster in Spain at the end of October also affected Stadler Rail, the company announced on Wednesday evening. The plant remained undamaged and the same applies to the approximately 3000 employees. However, several of Stadler Valencia's external warehouses were affected.
And above all, around 30 suppliers to Stadler Valencia have been hit hard, according to the press release. They were unable to deliver the required components and the Stadler plant is currently working at reduced capacity. Between 150,000 and 200,000 production hours would have to be postponed until 2025 and vehicles would not be delivered as planned.
Plant in Valais flooded
The supplier Constellium in Valais is also working through a backlog after its plant was flooded in June. However, the manufacturer of aluminum profiles will probably not have made up its backlog until the end of August 2025. And in Austria, a Stadler commissioning center was flooded in September.
Only Stadler Rail's problems in Berlin are not due to a storm. In 2019, the company won a major tender from Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG).
Following an appeal by Alstom and production problems due to the Covid pandemic, a software problem was recently added to the mix, according to the press release. BVG has only ordered 376 of the 1500 vehicles so far, meaning that the plant in Berlin-Pankow is underutilized.
Guidance is suspended
All in all, these four events are likely to reduce the EBIT margin in 2024 - according to an initial assessment - by a maximum of 2 percentage points, Stadler Rail explained. The company had previously expected profitability of more than 5 percent.
At the same time, the previous sales target of CHF 3.5 to 3.7 billion in 2024 can no longer be achieved, the press release continued. Part of the turnover will be postponed to 2025, although the extent of this cannot yet be quantified.
Stadler Rail is also suspending its guidance for the 2025 and 2026 financial years, as the effects cannot yet be estimated. The company will make up for this in the first quarter of 2025 as soon as the 2025 budget has been revised and the financial planning for the following years has been drawn up.
Stadler is currently working on a "catch-up program", the company emphasized. A similar program had already enabled the company to quickly catch up after the Covid pandemic.
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