MAN AG has increased its sales and order intakes in the first eight months of the year.
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According to dpa-AFX, between January and August, MAN’s turnover was around EUR9bn, an increase of 13% compared to a year ago. Order intakes were EUR12.7bn, an increase of 22% compared to a year ago. This is an increase compared to the first six months of the year when turnover was up 12% and order intakes up 20%.
MAN CEO, Hakan Samuelsson, said that its outstanding businesses are Commercial Vehicles and Diesel, and that the performance to date means that the group is on track to meet its full year target of a 10% increase in turnover. Return on sales is expected to reach just over 10%. Without taking into account restructuring costs for its loss-making bus division, Samuelsson said a return of 10.5% would have been achievable. Long-term, MAN is looking for return on sales of 8.5%.
MAN is planning to move bus production from Saltzgitter, Germany, to Poland. Around 200-300 buses will be assembled each year with significant cost advantages because of the peculiarly labour intensive nature of bus assembly.
Samuelsson said that although a recent boom in truck demand has ended, “all signs suggest that we have a stable market.” In particular growth is expected to come from eastern Europe and Asia. This year MAN is hoping to sell 100,000 trucks, up from 80,000 last year. By 2009 it wants to increase this further to 110,000 units.
In India MAN has set up a joint venture with Force trucks that should be producing around 25,000 trucks a year by 2010,with half of those going for export to other Asian countries. After India, MAN is hoping to target China. At the end of August, MAN entered into exclusive cooperation talks with the Chinese firm Weichai Group.
