The operating result declined by 36% due to global supply chain disruptions, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, negative currency effects, as well as significant investments into building up the software business. In addition, the results were impacted by strong negative base effects that will level out by the year end.

In local currencies, sales increased by 9.1% with the strongest contribution coming from the Americas (+15.8%). Europe (+7.5%) and Asia/Pacific (+6.7%). The Eastern Europe / Middle East / Africa region (+3.0%) made disproportionally low contributions to the overall growth over the first eight months of the year.

“2022 is an exceptionally demanding year for Hilti due to the challenging external environment as well as a strongly back loaded year in Europe triggered by the launch of our new battery platform ‘Nuron’ in September. We are making massive efforts to limit our margin decline caused by the tremendous cost increases in our supply chain while staying the course with strong strategic investments, especially into our software business. With a successful launch of Nuron we expect our results to improve until year end to above 10% growth in local currencies and a profit decline to below 15%. This corresponds to our pre-Corona 2019 profit level before software investments,” says CEO Christoph Loos.

Going forward, the Hilti Group expects a diminishing growth dynamic in the global construction market. “We are able to cope with these challenges fairly well due to our healthy financial position and the long term perspective of our shareholder. This allows us to continue with long term investments even in demanding times,” closes Christoph Loos.