Navigating turbulence: Swiss industry braces for disappointing q1 reports amidst economic challenges.
Keystone/CHRISTIAN BEUTLER
The results for the first quarter due in the coming days and weeks could be disappointing. There are only signs of improvement in the second half of the year, nothing concrete.
Bossard Sales Fall
At the beginning of the week, the Zug-based company Bossard provided a foretaste of how difficult the economic environment actually is. Bossard is considered an early-cycle company and serves a broad range of customers from a wide variety of industrial sectors.
Due to their size and position in the market they can be treated as a sort of yard stick. A general indicator for industry health.
Fastening technology specialist’s sales fell by a double-digit percentages in the first quarter, falling well short of analysts’ expectations.
The fact that the same period of the previous year was a record quarter puts the slump into perspective somewhat, but sales were down in all three regions of the world – Europe, America and Asia.
The strength of the Swiss franc also had a negative impact on the conversion of sales into Swiss francs, which is also likely to be the case for many other companies.
“A rather weak start to the Q1 figures season,” commented Remo Rosenau from Helvetische Bank in an initial reaction to Bossard’s figures.
Others Cautious
Bucher Industries, for example, has been cautious and has already predicted a fall in sales for the year as a whole.
Daetwyler, the Uri-based specialist for sealing solutions, expects the situation to ease over the course of the year, as do the automotive supplier Feintool, the industrial group Georg Fischer and Huber+Suhner. Who have all been active in electrical and optical connection technology.
The umbrella organisation of the Swiss tech industry, Swissmem, also confirmed this assessment at the end of February. The decline in incoming orders clearly slowed in the fourth quarter.
Inflation and interest rates are coming down, with a chance that Swiss firms will recover from the currency effect, improving numbers, but will this be enough?
Figures Coming Next Week
The next quarterly reports are now eagerly awaited. Two more traditional industrial companies, Sulzer and Bystronic, will report on the first quarter as early as next Monday.
Bystronic, like many others, predicted a weak start to the year at the end of February and an improvement over the course of the year.
Two heavyweights, ABB and Schindler, and two further second-line stocks, Comet and Cicor, will follow in the course of the week.
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