Cargotec Corporation's audited 2015 financial statements showed that earnings per share doubled and sales were up 11% over 2014.
In the fourth quarter, orders received decreased 10%, sales were up 3.5% and operating profit excluding restructuring costs was down 12.6%.
Cargotec's 2016 sales are expected to be at the 2015 level or slightly below. Operating profit excluding restructuring costs for 2016 is expected to improve from 2015’s $260 million.
Said Cargotec's President and CEO Mika Vehviläinen, “The year 2015 was a milestone for Cargotec with regard to our set targets. Kalmar and Hiab reached the profitability improvement measures initiated two years ago ahead of time by the end of the second quarter. MacGregor's market situation is challenging, but we are confident that we are taking the correct measures in order to adapt to the situation in that business area.
“Orders received were strong also in the fourth quarter in Kalmar and Hiab, and therefore, orders for the full year 2015 reached the previous year's level despite clearly lower orders for MacGregor. Sales in 2015 grew 11 percent and the operating profit margin excluding restructuring costs improved to 6.2 percent. Our 2015 cash flow was also strong. The doubled earnings per share enables dividend growth of 45 percent. We see attractive opportunities in executing our strategy by further investing in growing our businesses, which in our view increases shareholder value best.
“Towards the end of the year, we updated our strategy with the aim of transforming Cargotec into a market leader in intelligent cargo handling by building on services, digitalization and people leadership. We will invest in R&D in order to ensure that our products remain market leaders and ahead of our competitors' products. We will develop our portfolio by investing in businesses with high growth, as well as by complementing our technological competence and geographical coverage.
“In particular, we will invest in competence development in order to accelerate our transformation process. We have also updated our financial targets: the new goals for each of the business areas are to reach 10 percent operating profit margin (EBIT) over the cycle as well as to grow faster than the market, and for the group to reach 15 percent return on capital employed (ROCE pre-tax) over the cycle. These targets reflect our growth strategy and expected high return on the planned investments.”