INTERNATIONAL: Rolling stock and signalling supplier Stadler Rail has cited ‘environmental disasters’ as the main reason behind a fall in its profit margin.
The Swiss-headquartered group issued its annual financial results on March 19, reporting a drop in EBIT margin of two percentage points to 3·1%. It also had to defer approximately SFr350m in sales from FY2024 to 2025 or 2026, meaning that its revenues were approximately 10% below the SFr3·6bn recorded in the 2023 financial year.
The company cited severe flooding at three of its production plants as the main reason for these impairments. Worst affected was its activities in Spain, where the region around València was devastated by storms last autumn. Similar severe weather events in the Swiss canton of Valais and in Dürnrohr in Austria also contributed to what the company called ‘massive delays and interruptions in production and affected supply chains’.
However, the company said that despite these difficult conditions, it was able to win strategically important orders and increase its order backlog to SFr29bn. It is currently working on 360 orders and delivered around 500 rail vehicles last year.
Challenges in Germany
Stadler reiterated the challenges that its German plants are facing from the country’s weak economic outlook and the strains on the local supply chain caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
These macro-level factors compounded the challenges the company faced after winning an order to supply metro cars to Berlin U-Bahn operator BVG in 2019. Alstom lodged an appeal which postponed the signing of the framework agreement by over a year to spring 2020. Then the Covid pandemic broke out, further holding up production of the fleet before the supplier faced software problems, which it said had now been resolved.
Stadler added that of a framework order for 1 500 cars, only 484 have so far been ordered.
Signalling breakthrough
A high point in the results was the strong growth of Stadler Signalling in FY2024. Order intake rose to SFr520m from SFr56m in the same period of the previous year, an increase which the company attributed to the US$500m deal it agreed to provide CBTC for the Atlanta metro network.
Stadler said this order represented an ‘international breakthrough in the American market within the promising field of signalling’.
