OULU, FINLAND – Scanfil's second quarter sales of €195.5 million ($213.5 million) represented a decrease of 19.7% from last year's second quarter.

For the first half of the year, the company's €394.4 million ($430.7 million) were down 15.7% from the first six months of 2023.

“In the second quarter of 2024, Scanfil continued demonstrating resilience to market fluctuations and its ability to deliver the targeted operating profit margin of 7%-8%," said CEO Christope Sut. "As communicated earlier, the market was slow in the quarter, driven by lower customer demand and continuing destocking. Our turnover was EUR 195.5 million, -19.7%. The efficiency improvement project we initiated in Q4 2023 helped us to deliver profit margins in line with our long-term target despite weaker market conditions. In Q2 2024, profit margin landed at 7.1%, one of the best quarterly profit margins ever for Scanfil. The margin improvement was driven by the focus of the whole team worldwide to improve operational efficiency, which also contributed to our strong on-time delivery rate of >98%.

"I am pleased to see that our focus on creating accountability across the organization and enforcing performance management allows us to be resilient in changing business cycles," he continued. "Our financial position is strong. Gearing was 10.8% (36.5%), and the equity ratio was 55.4% (45.8%). Improvement was also seen in our inventory management, with a reduction of EUR 24.5 million in H1. From June last year, inventories decreased by EUR 40.9 million. Our net debt level is now down to 0.4 times EBITDA, which is well in line with our long-term target and positioning us well to be able to finance our future growth.

"We had a very active quarter in sales, winning new projects with an annualized value of EUR 40 million in Q2 and EUR 84 million in H1 2024. Depending on the project, implementing a new contract can take between 6 and 18 months."