(new: price, analysts and details)
FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) – Investors punished Schaeffler’s surprisingly low profitability in the final quarter of 2024 on the stock market on Wednesday. The automotive and industrial supplier’s shares collapsed by up to almost 20 percent in the morning. They fell to a record low of 3.69 euros. Bargain hunters took advantage of this level, but in the end the discount was still eleven percent to just over 4 euros.
The company performed weaker last year than the market expected. The margin in particular developed significantly worse. Sales increased thanks to the Vitesco acquisition, but analysts had hoped for more.
The margin before interest and taxes (EBIT), adjusted for special effects, is expected to have fallen from 7.3 to 4.5 percent. Schaeffler had forecast 5 to 8 percent, the market consensus had expected 6.3 percent. In the fourth quarter, the discrepancy between a realized margin of 1.8 percent and the market expectation of 5.2 percent was even greater, emphasized analyst Sebastian Kuenne from Bank RBC.
“Another big disappointment,” was the conclusion of Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. He downgraded the shares from “Buy” to “Hold.” It was already the second profit warning for the 2024 financial year. It clearly shows the difficulties in integrating Vitesco, especially with difficult end-user markets in the industrial business. Looking ahead, 2025 is likely to be another year of transition instead of a year of improvements.
Analyst Akshat Kacker from JPMorgan suspects that the consensus estimate for adjusted operating profit (EBIT) in 2025 is now likely to fall by 10 to 15 percent. The analyst expects further information from a conference call before the quarterly balance sheet on March 5th.
After severe losses from March to September 2024, Schaeffler’s stock price recently stabilized between around 4.10 and 4.60 euros. The titles are now in danger of falling out of this stabilization./bek/tih/jha/