A difficult year lies behind the largest German industrial group. But Siemens is starting the new fiscal year with momentum. After a quarter with a loss for the first time in a long time, profits in the billions are now bubbling up again.
Siemens ended the fiscal year marked by the Ukraine war and high depreciation with a profit in the billions. After a strong fourth quarter, the bottom line is a plus of 4.4 billion euros, as the group announced in Munich. In the new fiscal year, which has been running since October, Siemens wants to earn significantly more again.
The central industrial business at Siemens had even run at a record level. There Siemens earned 10.3 billion euros – in this division alone an increase of 17 percent and more than analysts had expected. In the 175th year of its existence, Siemens exceeded the 10 billion euro mark for the first time. The fact that the bottom line profit fell by 34 percent was mainly due to a billion-dollar write-down on the remaining shares in the energy business Siemens Energy, which was floated on the stock exchange a good two years ago.
It even gave the group its first quarter of losses in more than a decade. The Spanish wind power subsidiary Siemens Gamesa, which had accumulated a record loss in the past fiscal year, played a large part in this. Siemens Energy is currently in the process of completely taking over the German-Spanish subsidiary. But the withdrawal from Russia also had a negative impact on business.
All in all, Siemens sales increased nominally by almost 16 percent to 72 billion euros. The shareholders will not feel anything from the drop in profits either: the dividend is to rise by 25 cents to EUR 4.25 per share.
“The high demand for our hardware and software offerings continues,” explained CEO Roland Busch. This also applies to the business with digital products, which he focuses on. Sales in this area grew by 15 percent to 6.5 billion euros, exceeding expectations. Incoming orders rose by 17 percent to 89 billion euros.
Busch spoke of an “extremely challenging year” and an “outstanding performance”. In the fourth quarter of the year, everything was right again at Siemens with a whopping profit of 2.9 billion euros.
For the current year, Siemens expects a significant increase in profit. Adjusted for certain purchase price effects, it should rise to EUR 8.70 to EUR 9.20 per share. That would be an increase of 59 to 68 percent – last year it was 5.47 euros per share.
