Siemens raised its full-year profit and sales guidance on Friday for the second time this year, after the German conglomerate beat earnings forecasts for the second quarter.
Siemens President and CEO Roland Busch told CNBC on Friday that the company has “good momentum” going into the second half of the fiscal year, with growth and production back to their pre-Covid levels in Europe and China.
Siemens reported adjusted second-quarter EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) for its industrial businesses of 2.1 billion euros ($2.53 billion), a 31% increase on the same period last year, as the company recovered sharply from its pandemic-induced downturn.
Net income for the second quarter hit 2.4 billion euros and earnings per share rose to 2.82 euros, while orders climbed 8% on a nominal basis to 15.9 billion euros on the back of sharp growth in healthcare unit Siemens Healthineers.
“Growth momentum came, in particular, from the automotive industry, machine building, our software business and – from a geographic perspective – from China,” Busch said in a statement Friday.
“Besides the gratifying margin developments at our Industrial Businesses, our successful portfolio management also paid off.”
In light of the results, Siemens raised its net income outlook for fiscal 2021 to between 5.7 billion and 6.2 billion euros, up from its previous projection of between 5 billion and 5.5 billion euros.
Busch also told CNBC Friday that he expects the company to benefit from an acceleration of clients’ transitions towards digitalization, automation and cleaner energy strategies.
“Our markets are growing faster than the GDP because we are sitting on those product portfolios which are pulling more demand, coming back again to the level of automation but also CO2 reduction, so energy efficiency is a huge topic,” he said.
“Also when you see then stimulus programs kicking in, they really give us tailwind because they are targeted for not investing in what was invested in in the past — they want to do the new things which are all about energy efficiency, using less resources, but also again automation and digitalization is one of the big topics.”
