Summary of Glaston Corporation‘s Interim Report for January-March 2023. The complete report can be downloaded as a pdf-file. The release is also available on the company’s website.
January─March 2023 in brief
• Orders received totalled EUR 56.9 (59.0) million.
• Net sales totalled EUR 51.3 (52.3) million.
• Comparable EBITA was EUR 3.0 (3.5) million, i.e. 5.8 (6.6) percent of net sales.
• The operating result (EBIT) was EUR 1.9 (2.2) million.
• The comparable earnings per share were EUR 0.019 (0.022)
President and CEO Anders Dahlblom said, “In the first quarter of 2023, market activity continued at a good level. Despite growing market uncertainty and a longer decision-making period for new investments due to economic uncertainty and rapidly increasing financing costs, our order intake totalled EUR 56.9 million, which was 4 percent below the level of the corresponding period in 2022 but 10 percent above our Q4 order intake. First-quarter net sales were down by 2 percent to EUR 51.3 million, primarily due to low machine volume in the Automotive business. Profitability was reasonable with comparable EBITA at EUR 3.0 million, corresponding to an EBITA margin of 5.8 percent. Profitability was impacted by the loss in the Automotive & Display business, which was a result of low volume and production ramp-up in China.
“The Services business saw a slow start to the year. Order intake was 2 percent below the level of the corresponding period in the previous year, mainly due to the lower upgrade order intake than in 2022. The weak upgrade order intake in the latter part of 2022 affected Services’ first-quarter net sales. Daily Services and spare part business grew 9 percent and 6 percent respectively.
“Ramping up the capabilities for the production of Automotive pre-processing equipment in Tianjin, China continued in line with our plans. The first delivery projects from Tianjin have low profitability as we are still building up the local supply chain. This impacted our first-quarter profitability and this will continue for the second quarter. In addition, we are manufacturing the first flat tempering CHF Solar lines in Tianjin, mainly during the first half of this year.
“Growing our business in China is one of our strategic focus areas. Compared to the solar and automotive markets, the development of the architectural market in China has been characterized by uncertainty. Taking place in early May, the China Glass exhibition will be the first post-COVID meeting point for the industry, giving us valuable market insight and offering a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with our customers, with the goal of gaining new business.
“Our good progress in sustainability continued. In 2022, we made major progress in reducing our own carbon footprint and we are now ready for the next step: we are committed to setting near-term company-wide emission reduction targets in line with climate science with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Our commitment to the SBTi challenges us to work together with our suppliers and customers to reduce emissions across the whole glass processing value chain.
“In the review period, signs of increasing market uncertainty and more cautious customer behavior have been perceptible. However, the underlying growth drivers for our products and services remain solid and our high order backlog supports our performance in the coming quarters.”