Challenging Environment Leaves Traces in Hilti Group Results

Schaan (FL), September 23, 2022 – In the first eight months of 2022, the Hilti Group increased sales by 6.1 percent to CHF 4108 million. The operating result declined by 36 percent due to global supply chain disruptions, the Russian invasion in Ukraine, negative currency effects as well as significant investments into building up the software business. In addition, the results are impacted by strong negative base effects that will level out until year end.  

In local currencies sales increased by 9.1 percent with the strongest contribution coming from the Americas (+15.8%). Europe (+7.5%), Asia/Pacific (+6.7%) and the Eastern Europe / Middle East / Africa region (+3.0%) made disproportionally low contributions to the overall growth over the first eight months of the year.

“2022 is an exceptionally demanding year for Hilti due to the challenging external environment as well as a strongly backloaded year in Europe triggered by the launch of our new battery platform Nuron in September. We are making massive efforts to limit our margin decline caused by the tremendous cost increases in our supply chain while staying the course with strong strategic investments, especially into our software business. With a successful launch of Nuron we expect our results to improve until year end to above 10 percent growth in local currencies and a profit decline to below 15 percent. This corresponds to our pre-Corona 2019 profit level before software investments”, says CEO Christoph Loos.

Going forward, the Hilti Group expects a diminishing growth dynamic in the global construction market owing to continued cost inflation, growing uncertainties around the energy supply, political tensions and rising interest rates.

“We are able to cope with these challenges fairly well due to our healthy financial position and the long-term perspective of our shareholder. This allows us to continue with long-term investments even in demanding times”, closes Christoph Loos.

^{1 Free cash flow definition changed and prior period figures were restated.}