SKUFF - AB SKF (publ) (SKFRY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-04-26 04:50:10 ET
AB SKF (publ) (SKFRY)
Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call
April 26, 2024, 02:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Sophie Arnius - Head of Investor Relations
Rickard Gustafson - President & CEO
Niclas Rosenlew - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Andrew Wilson - JPMorgan
Daniela Costa - Goldman Sachs
Max Yates - Morgan Stanley
Mattias Holmberg - DNB Markets
Rory Smith - UBS
Anders Roslund - Pareto Securities
Klas Bergelind - Citi
Andreas Koski - Exane BNP Paribas
Presentation
Sophie Arnius
A warm welcome to SKF Q1 2024 Earnings Call. For those of you who I haven’t had the opportunity to meet with yet, my name is Sophie Arnius and I joined SKF end of February as Head of Investor Relations.
For today's event, our CEO, Rickard Gustafson and CFO, Niclas Rosenlew will take us through the highlights of the quarter, where the ongoing transformation of SKF is showing in a more resilient and competitive company and of course, there will be opportunities to ask questions after their presentations and there are two ways to do that. [Operator instructions]
So without further ado, it's our great pleasure to hand over to you, Rickard.
Rickard Gustafson
Well, thank you very much, Sophie and warm welcome to the team and good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us for this report out. This quarter marked another step towards a more resilient and competitive SKF. Key to our competitiveness and long-term success are our innovation spirit and application engineering capabilities. This is something that will come back to later in this presentation.
But first, let's focus on our first quarter numbers and I am very pleased to report yet another resilient performance. Net sales came in at SEK25 billion and we delivered a strong adjusted operating margin of 13.4%, which was somewhat ahead of Q1 last year. The margin improvement, clearly demonstrates our improved resilience given that organic growth shifted from plus 10% in Q1 last year to negative 7% this year.
This is a result of both our ongoing strategic transformation initiatives as well as from more tax collectivises to manage the business cycle. Key tax activities includes decentralized accountability for pricing, portfolio pruning and cost management. In parallel, we continue to execute in our strategy, including investments in regionalization and in building competitive value chains, this to ensure that we're ready to quickly ramp up production once demand bounces back. And when that happens, we are well positioned to capture profitable growth opportunities. All in all, I am pleased with our strong quarter performance in a more challenging economic environment.
When it comes to our geographical regions, organic growth in India and Southeast Asia was slightly positive, driven by strong performance in heavy industries and light vehicles. In Europe, Middle East and Africa, most industries saw negative growth, while two key segments, aerospace and railway, contributed positively. Americas was impacted by a combination of OEM destocking and us actively exiting low-performing businesses....
AB SKF (publ) (SKFRY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript