The Liebherr Group has seen its financial results impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic for 2020. The firm reports a turnover of €10.341 billion, compared with €11.75 billion for 2019. The drop in turnover of €1.409 billion, 12%, has followed several years of consistent growth.
However, the figures are due to the extraordinary conditions caused by the pandemic and the firm is confident of a resurgence in its business levels in due course. The firm says it registered a strong volume of orders in the first quarter of 2020, with business then tailing off towards the end of the first quarter as the pandemic began to affect business activities in key markets.
This also had an impact on the Group’s sales revenues. Revenues in the Earthmoving, Material Handling Technology, Deep Foundation Machines, Mobile and Crawler Cranes, Tower Cranes, Concrete Technology and Mining product segments were 10.4 % lower than in the 2019 and dropped to €6.848 billion.
The firm says that there was a downturn in sales in the European Union, which has traditionally been the Group’s strongest sales region. This was primarily due to declining sales in Germany and France. However, business grew in Austria and Poland. Sales in non-EU countries as well as in North America also declined. Central and South America, Africa, and the Near and Middle East reported significantly lower turnover than the year before. But the firm says that business was stable throughout the year in Asia and Oceania, largely due to strong demand from China and Australia.
Profits fall, but workforce maintained
In 2020, the Liebherr Group achieved a net profit for the year of €7 million. Operating results and the financial result also fell compared to 2019. Despite the significant decrease in turnover, the number of employees remained stable and at the end of 2020, Liebherr employed 47,925 people worldwide, just 124 employees fewer than the previous year.
The Liebherr Group has continued to invest in research and development with a budget of €512 million during 2020. The bulk of this was used in the development of new products. A large number of joint research projects with universities, other higher education institutions and research institutes were initiated and continued.
The research projects focused heavily on the topic of alternative drivetrain technologies. In 2020 Liebherr expanded its product portfolio with several fully and partially electric machines and components in product segments such as Mobile and Crawler Cranes and Concrete Technology.
Digitalisation was another focal point for research and development.
In addition, the group invested €605 million in its production sites and its global distribution and service networks. The level of investment decreased by €151 million compared to 2019. Offset against this was depreciation of €543 million.
