Landis+Gyr affected by bottlenecks in component supplies

The Landis+Gyr smart-meter-manufacturing company mentioned in its latest report how it had been suffering from bottlenecks in supplies of components; nevertheless it managed to increase its profits considerably, from just $5.1 million last year to $59.2 million in this year up to the end of September. In the same first six months of the latest business-year, turnover fell by 1.5 per cent but still amounted to $852.9 million.

It is as a result of the bottlenecks in supplies that the company said it had had to postpone customer contracts amounting to $20 million. Nevertheless, new orders amounting to $910 million continued to flow in.

As to the $59.2 million profits, what should be mentioned here is that $15.5 million of this was as a result of the company selling off its IntelliHub in Australia.

As previously mentioned, the company is currently undergoing restructuring in its European, Middle East and African sectors, leading to an upturn in business here, the latest loss amounting to only $0.4 million, after $2.9 million in the same period of the previous year.

One area of restructuring, that of Phoenix, which meant smaller distribution centres being closed, various back-office tasks being combined, all leading to increased productivity and savings of $20 million a year, has been completed. Now a second period of restructuring, so-called Lightfoot, involves certain areas of production being transferred away from Switzerland, a move which is expected to result in savings amounting to $25 million a year up to 2020.

While the current situation for the company, which was floated on the Swiss Stock exchange only last year, looks encouraging, its managers have reduced the level of forecast growth from 3-6 per cent to 1-3 per cent.