Waberer’s is a European leader in full truckload transportation. With a modern fleet of over 4,300 trucks and around 8000 employees, the Budapest headquartered compoany serves a diverse customer base across 28 countries in Europe. In 2019, the company has started an ambitious transformational programme.
“We are seeing the first positive signs of our short-and long-term initiatives and we are now back to utilisation levels seen in 2017. Nevertheless, we have taken further actions to improve business operations, especially in the International Transportation Segment where we are continuing the fleet reduction programme started in the first quarter of the year: in addition to the 300truck fleet reduction completed in the second quarter, we started halting another 300 trucks that will be completely out of our books in the fourth quarter,” Waberer’s reports.
The transformational initiatives aim to completely restructure the international activities of the Group and touch all key areas – commercial, transportation planning, and execution – of their European operations. These actions contribute to further improvements in fleet utilisation, customer quality, and thus the profitability of the activities.
Waberer’s went live with a new SAP-based transportation management system in April, which had serious functionality and performance issues in the first weeks, with some days of complete breakdown of the system, leading to loss of orders and inability to invoice. The resulting loss of business also had a notable impact on April results, although without long-term effects. The new system is now up and running without major interference in the business processes, albeit some fixes are still necessary.
-) Revenue in the second quarter of 2019 decreased by 6% to EUR 173 mn due to lower volumes in the aftermath of the end-March Brexit date affecting Q2 trade flows negatively in the international segment, more than offsetting the 7% growth in Regional Contract Logistics
-) Issues during the implementation of new transportation management IT system affected international operations and April results negatively but major issues have since been resolved
-) Recurring EBITDA lower by 41% year-on-year at EUR 12 mn as volume drop in April affected international margins; regional operations back on track of positive EBITDA growth
-) Recurring EBIT decreased to EUR -5.9 mn as the second wave of fleet reduction started with 300 additional trucks to be handed back, temporarily weighing on depreciation § Net income dropped to EUR -9.1 mn
-) Transformation programme has started yielding results, with positive profitability effects to gradually increase in the rest of the year
-) Although the positive effects of the measures appear slower than expected, savings in SG&A are already showing in the numbers and expected to result in improvement in the second half of the year
Waberer’s feels well prepared for the second Brexit date on October 31st. The company has set up the necessary documentation, processes and organization to handle a “no-deal” situation.
