Siemens significantly increased its orientation for the full year on Wednesday, after a strong first fiscal quarter that saw orders, revenue and net income exceed market expectations.
The German conglomerate recorded a 39% increase in adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), while net income for the period from October to December rose to 1.5 billion euros (US $ 1.81 billion ) of 1.1 billion euros in the same period last year.
Orders increased by 15%, with the company citing faster-than-expected recoveries in China and Germany following the Covid-19 slowdown. Siemens now expects net income for the entire 2021 fiscal year to be between € 5 billion and € 5.5 billion, with updated guidance projecting growth figures in the high digits for the 12 months through September 2021.
EBITDA of 2.13 billion euros for the quarter exceeded the consensus forecasts of 1.67 billion compiled by the company and 1.42 billion projected on average by analysts surveyed by Reuters.
“What we see in Asia, and especially in China, is that there is massive demand, especially for these industries or for end markets that benefit a lot from people who stay at home, like the gaming industry and the like,” he says Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser told Annette Weisbach of CNBC on Wednesday.
Kaeser also noted that the Chinese global export model has also helped boost demand for industries favorable to the blockade.
“Think about games for smartphones and the like and that is where the greatest demand is, and these are very modern industries, so they are very automated lines and need a lot of manufacturing software in automation, which is why we have benefited a lot in this area. “
However, he suggested that Germany and the rest of Europe were more of a “recovery game” than an opportunity for long-term growth. Kaeser projected that the US will be the biggest opportunity for the second half of the calendar year and in 2022.