Kalmar Q4'24 preview: No major changes are expected in the outlook

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 02/11/2025 at 07:00 am EET

Kalmar will publish its Q4 report on Thursday, February 13, at around 9:00 am EET. We expect the development to remain relatively stable compared to previous quarters, although mirroring the company's comments, the EBIT margin level is expected to decline from Q3 levels. The key points of interest in the report are the 2025 guidance and more detailed market comments (incl. order book).

We expect orders to grow from the comparison period

The market environment was still favorable in Q4. For example, RWI’s container traffic index was on average nearly 5% higher than in the comparison period. Among peers, Konecranes reported strong order growth for Port solutions in Q4, but at the same time tempered expectations and communicated that the market environment had not changed significantly compared to previous quarters. Konecranes also said that orders for straddle carriers were at a good level, which may favor Kalmar as well. Based onKalmar’s pre-silent period call,  there has been no significant changes in the market environment during Q4. The key open questions regarding the demand situation are still related to North America and especially to customers in the distribution sector.

Our expectation for Kalmar's Q4 order intake is 436 MEUR (+8% y-o-y), which is somewhat above the consensus (+1%). We estimate that orders announced by Kalmar so far to be recorded in Q4 amount to 22-24 MEUR, but the announcements are often delayed.

Actual figures are expected to decline further in Q4

We expect Kalmar's revenue to have declined by as much as 19% in Q4, and our expectation is slightly lower than the consensus (-16% y-o-y). We are a little more pessimistic than the consensus on both equipment sales and services. The decline in equipment revenue is still due to a drop in the order intake in 2023 and especially in H1'24. Based on a more service-oriented sales mix, we expect the company's adjusted EBIT margin to have increased year-on-year to 12.2%. Instead, we predict that margins will fall quite clearly from Q3’24 levels (adj. EBIT 13.5%) and Kalmar has also indicated this direction. According to the company, the expected decline in margins is due to several factors affecting the sales mix, both between (equipment vs. services) and within businesses (e.g. carriers vs. terminal tractors). On the other hand, we believe that margins are supported by the company’s cost-saving program. The consensus estimate for the margin (12.8%) is somewhat higher than ours.

We expect financial expenses and the tax rate to have remained fairly stable compared to Q3’24 and estimate reported EPS to have settled at EUR 0.48. We expect the dividend proposal for 2024 to be EUR 1.00 per share, which is slightly below the consensus. The payout ratio we predict is 49%. As a newly independent listed company, the level of dividends is also subject to more uncertainty than normal.

Steady progress expected in 2025

Kalmar only issued guidance on the adjusted EBIT margin for 2024, and thus, there is still uncertainty regarding the formulation of the guidance to be issued for 2025.
 Both our and consensus expectations point towards relatively stable revenue development (Inderes 2025e 1,705 MEUR vs. consensus 1,678 MEUR). Our own expectation is that the EBIT margin for this year is 12.7% (consensus 13.0%). The guidance should indicate stable or slightly improving operating margin and/or earnings development to meet expectations.

Our interest in the report is also in more detailed comments on the market outlook and demand drivers in different customer segments and regions. In addition, we expect comments on tariffs and margin drivers (pricing, cost factors).