Siemens proposed a shareholders dividend of EUR3.5 for fiscal year 2015, up 6% from EUR3.3 for the previous year, while also announcing plans for a new share buyback program with a volume up to EUR3 billion over the next 36 months.
Advertisement
But in an illustration of the group’s still fragile health, in the last quarter of the financial year which does not include income from divestments, net profit actually fell by a third to 1.0 billion euros. Analysts had forecast a net profit of EUR1.2 billion in the latest period, according to a recent poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal.
Europe’s biggest industrial company said earnings per share should rise at least 14 per cent this fiscal year on a comparable basis, with moderate growth in revenue excluding currency effects and orders exceeding revenue.
The decline in net profit reflected an impairment charge of EUR138 million in connection with Siemens’s stake in Primetals Technologies Ltd., and squeezed margins at its conventional energy and industrial-drives units.
The company reported a 10.1% profit margin for its industries from the beginning of the year to 30 September, which was at the lower end of its target range of 10 to 11%.
The growth of the company’s revenue is mainly due to the energy division and that for medical products. Among the best performers and factory orders for software and hardware high-tech manufacturing. While it is under pressure infect the economic slowdown in China, explained by Siemens. Other reasons included rising expenses in gas-turbine sector and acquisition of Rolls-Royce energy business and oil equipment manufacturer Dresser Rand.
Global oil prices have more than halved since Siemens agreed to buy Dresser-Rand, causing customers to slash around $200 billion worth of projects.
Advertisement
“Post today’s guidance, we believe there could be room for consensus upgrades over the course of the next 12 months if macro would be stable”, DZ Bank analyst Alexander Hauenstein said in a research note. In turn experts from Jefferies announced data “pretty good”.
