WRTBF - Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (WRTBF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-07-19 09:09:04 ET
Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (WRTBF)
Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call
July 19, 2024 3:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Hanna Heikkinen - VP, IR
Hakan Agnevall - President & CEO
Arjen Berends - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Vivek Midha - Citi
John Kim - Deutsche Bank
Daniela Costa - GS
Max Yates - Morgan Stanley
Akash Gupta - JP Morgan
Panu Laitinmäki - Danske Bank
Sven Weier - UBS
Sean McLoughlin - HSBC Bank plc
Mikael Doepel - Nordea
Anders Rosland - Pareto Securities
Presentation
Hanna Heikkinen
Good morning, and welcome to this news session for Wärtsilä Half Year Results Presentation. My name is Hanna-Maria Heikkinen, and I'm in charge of Investor Relations. Today, our CEO, Hakan Agnevall will start with the group highlights, business performance and after that our CFO, Arjen Berends will continue with the key finances. After the presentation, there is a possibility to ask questions. Let's first take one question per analyst and then follow up with the follow-up questions. Hakan, please.
Hakan Agnevall
Thank you, Hanna-Maria and welcome everybody to the summary of a strong second quarter. I think solid quarter, order intake, profitability, cash flow, all improved. Net sales increased by 7%, order intake increasing by 10% and we are yet to end in a quarter with an all-time high order backlog at about EUR 7.6 billion. Comparable operating results increased by 63% and we are a double digit comparable operating margin. The good progress in service continues, service order intake increased by 8%, service net sales increased by 3% and strong cash flow, it continues. We are in a very good streak there, EUR 216 million for Q2.
If we quickly look at the overview of the numbers, as we said, ordering take growing from EUR 1.7 billion to EUR 1.8 billion, 10% up, and we see that both services and equipment is growing, 8% respectively, 13%, so bigger growth in equipment. Order book up to EUR 7.6 billion, net sales growing both in services and equipment overall 7% from EUR 1.4 billion to EUR 1.5 billion and then 3% in services, 12% growth in equipment, so also continued faster growth in equipment and in services. Book-to-bill now 13th consecutive quarter with a book-to-bill bigger than 1, 1.19 and the operating results are following, up 156% from EUR 66 million to EUR 168 million basically 10.8% and then on the comparable operating income up 63% and reaching 11.3% so a solid quarter overall.
If we look at the marine and the market sentiment it's positive for us in for virtually in our key segments and we see a continued good appetite for new ships in the second quarter. The number of vessels ordered in the first half year was increased to 1,069 up from 773. Investments in new ships were higher than in the first half of 2023 driven by increasing demand for ship capacity, solid average earnings across cargo segments, low order book mainly in bulk carrier and tanker segments and continued fleet renewal. If we look at the alternative fuels, the uptake remains on healthy levels with 242 orders reported during the first half of 2024 accounting for 23% of all contracted vessel or 39% of capacity. A new bill ship prices continues to increase and this is despite we see a growth in shipyard capacity especially in China and South Korea, so for us this indicates that there is still an ongoing shortage of yard capacity....
Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (WRTBF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript