IT & Diversified Sector Archives - Page 8 of 8

CEO of Barry Callebaut to Step Down Next Year

December 12, 2014 By Doyle Buehler

Barry Callebaut, a well-known chocolate maker from Sweden, said that its chief executive officer is set to give up his position next year.

This declaration was made by Barry Callebaut after it reported a raise in its sales volume growth and a pick-up in its full year earnings.

The company is one of the leading chocolate producers for big food firms like Unilever and Nestle. It has already confirmed its financial targets for the fourth quarter and stated that it’s seeing a possibility of the company benefiting from its western Europe business where growth has been quite slow for the past few months.

Victor Balli, Chief Financial Officer of Barry Callebaut stated that at the moment, the market environment is very challenging so that company isn’t expecting a strong growth in the next coming months. He made it clear though that he’s expected that the company’s business in Europe will get back to giving Barry Callebaut a rapid profit growth.

Chief Executive Juergen Steinmann of the Swiss chocolate maker will be stepping down by the end of August of 2015 saying that he announced it ahead of time in order for the company to have a smooth transition.

Steinemann has been sitting in his position for more than 5 years now and with the integration of cocoa business that Barry Callebaut has acquired from Petro Foods almost completed, he has made a decision to give up his position as CEO of the company for family reasons.

ArcelorMittal Stays Improved Steel Business Balances Weak Mining

December 10, 2014 By Carrie Davis

The largest steelmaker in the world, ArcelorMittal SA said that it was able to gain higher than expected profits for the third quarter even with the weak mining operations because of the improvements in its European and U.S. steel businesses.

Making about 6% of the steel production in the world, ArcelorMittal is also one of the leading iron ore producers in the globe.

The company just recently made an adjustment in its forecast for the steel consumption in the world because of the slowdown in China plus the major declines in the former Soviet states as well as in Brazil.

However, what’s important is that ArcelorMittal was able to make a sharp upward revision on its U.S. consumption estimate while Europe was not changed that much. By the way, these two regions of the world account for around two-thirds of the steelmaker’s shipments.

The third-quarter profit of ArcelorMittal was $1.91 billion which went higher than the analyst estimates and increased by almost 12% than its profit for the same period of last year.

According to Lakshmi Mittal, the chief executive of ArcelorMittal, the company was able to fare well in Europe for the third quarter of 2014 and that he sees a strong recovery in North America plus a turnout in the operations in Africa.

Aker Solutions Sees Risks of Delays in Oil Projects

December 9, 2014 By Stephen Kenwright

Aker Solutions, the famed oil services company of Norway, said on Friday that there are risks of the added delay in major oil projects of global firms trying to save on their capital.

What Aker Solutions mentioned on its statement is that the delay in major projects will lead to lesser activities in the North Sea over the course of the next couple of years. Also, the firm said that radically lower prices of oil could force many companies to cut back more on their expenses and stated that the markets that would emerge as the best ones next year will likely be sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil.

Still taken from the statement made by Aker Solutions last Friday, it said that the major western oil firms are already expected to keep on exercising strong cost and capital control and this trend will likely be toughened by the lower oil prices over the past few months.

Since June, oil prices have fallen around 30% and experts forecast that Brent crude will remain below $90 for a longer period of time pushing many energy and oil firms to reassess expensive offshore improvements which is a major source of income for Aker Solutions.

The earnings of Aker Solutions before taxes, interest, amortization and depreciation is 617 million crowns which is equivalent to an increase of 8.8% for the third quarter compared to the 607 billion that analysts expected.

The order backlog of the oil services company went down from 53.9 billion crowns to 4 billion three months ago.

Adecco Posts Slowdown in Revenue Growth

December 8, 2014 By Stephanie James

The leading staffing firm by sales in the world, Adecco, stated that it’s hurt by sluggish revenue growth for the third quarter of the year because of the slow performance of its Germany and France operations.

Europe, which happens to be one of the main drivers of revenue for the company, is currently struggling to sustain economic growth with a review conducted lately saying that euro zone business activity revealed a sluggish growth rate for October.

Adecco said that the bleak growth of its revenue has driven it to take fewer part-time staff which experts say can likely pose a threat to the company’s profitability target for 2014.

The largest market of Adecco is France which experienced a lower than expected profit growth dragging the recent third quarter results. The revenues in this country went down by 3% compared to the flat sales that it disclosed during the second quarter.

Meanwhile, profits in Germany edged up by 1% only as some of its stakeholders delayed their projects and postponed their investments.

Patrick De Maeseneire, the chief executive of Adecco, said that the management is still hoping for a fast revenue growth in 2015 but understands that it’s kind of improbable given the tumbling European GDP estimates.

De Maeseneire said that the company will rule out purchases for its staffing business until the end of next year and declared a recent 250-million euro buyback arrangement by the end of its current buyback program.

Japan-Based Auto Parts Maker Takata Facing Serious Crisis

December 5, 2014 By Carrie Davis

Takata Corporation, a Japan-based manufacturer of Air bags and other car accessories, has been part of the recent news explosives all over the world because of its defective products that are now installed in some of the major car brand distributors. A lot of serious instances of exploding airbags were recently reported to cars with Takata products. This is one of the reasons as to why they are now losing a big amount of money due to recalls of these affected cars.

As per Yoichiro Nomura, Takata’s executive VP, the company wanted to apologize for all the concerns and worries their products brought to its loyal consumers. The executive also mentioned that they were now having a hard strategic plan of having recalls on cars that are affected to do something about it.

They were able to keep enough amount of money for the recent and future recall of cars affected, as well as some other concerns that arose because of these incidents. They were able to present some reports for the net loss of the company having Takata fully liable for the product defects. But aside from the company, there were no reports of cancellation yet for the 3^rd and 4^th quarter of this year.

Puma Back On Track Because of Their Successful Footwear Sales

December 4, 2014 By Kyle Mills

Puma, a German company that is popular in producing sportswear, has been recently reported to have some good news on their sales report from the previous years. This increasing sales growth is due to its success in its newly produced footwear and Arnesal shirts.

When Puma shifted its focus on producing some fashion apparels before, it does not seem to be successful and now that Puma is getting itself back into sportswear, they were expecting a good return from their deals with Arsenal as an effective sportswear brand.

Despite the fact that Puma is now having some successful trend in its comeback in the sports apparel, they still decided to cut their annual sales forecast. This is in preparation of their company for marketing costs in recovering their brand names to the market against the Adidas and Nike, 2 major brands of sportswear in the world.

Puma was able to get the position as supplier to Arsenal Footclub this season and a lot were expecting to have a better quality sportswear than before.

The sales of its footwear were expected to be higher than the previous sales because of the high demand of consumers. Thanks to the effective marketing strategies and popular brand ambassadors featuring sports icon. The demands for Arsenal shirts were also reported to be high due to these marketing efforts.

Now, Puma is expecting to have a slow growth in their sales as time goes by but still preparing themselves for future changes. Analysts were also expecting that Puma will have some good results in the incoming years as the sales margin seems to show a stable growth.

Cheerios Protein Maker, General Mills Inc, Cuts Annual Sales Growth

December 3, 2014 By Stephen Kenwright

One of the biggest food companies in America and Minneapolis-based, General Mills Incorporated, has been recently reported to have their annual sales forecast cut due to some changes occurred in the economy. They’ve highlighted that the demands in their products were not the same as before and this is one of the reasons as to why the growth in the market seems to be slower.

As they have seen in their reports on the previous quarters, the sales of their products have been beaten by some other innovative breakfast meals offered by some established companies. This is what they have seen to be one of the reasons on why the profit rate seems to decline.

When Ken Powell, Chief Executive of the company, has been interviewed last September, he pointed out that the sales of soft goods, such as foods and other consumables, were declined due to some changes in the retail environment.

Some of the well known brands offered by the company, including the popular frozen and canned vegetables called as Green Giant and Pillsburry’s refrigerated products, were just one of the reasons for sales drop. The slow sales growth does not just affect the sales in the country, but it also includes the sales in the international markets where the company is also operating.

As part of their strategic plan to increase the declining sales, the company has decided to get organic meals producer Annie’s Inc and also introduced some healthier morning snacks as they were expecting that these innovations will be successful.

As they have this plan started, they were expecting to have their sales grow in the next incoming years.

Acer Swings Back Into Profits in Third-Quarter of 2014

November 15, 2014 By Doyle Buehler

The net profit of the Taiwanese personal computer producer Acer Inc was able to swing back all through the third-quarter of the year.

What helped the company go over analyst estimates are its cost-cutting efforts and the recovery in the overall market for personal computers.

Acer’s net profit rose at NT$651 million or US$21.31 million for the quarter that covered July to September which is way higher than the analyst estimates at NT$477.5 million. This result compared with the company’s loss of T$13.1 billion during the same period last year.

August and September revenues for Acer went down against the year earlier but the decline went at a slower rate than the double-digit declines which the company went through during the first half of 2014.

Since the introduction of smartphones and tablets, the personal computers market went sluggish because more and more people are falling in love with the idea of the portability of those devices.

While there’s a decline in the sales of personal computers, Acer showed signs of growth during the past few months with Intel predicting that the market will have a healthy fourth-quarter. This is mainly forecasted by the PC chip leader because of the heavy replacements of the old personal computers that are done by many businesses.

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