Review by the President and CEO Vaisala’s President and CEO Kai Öistämö “Vaisala had a strong second quarter and both our business areas performed well after the slow start of the year. We continued executing our strategy with sustained profitability improvement in the established weather business and continued growth in subscription sales as well as in services sales. Compared to the previous year, our Q2 orders received grew by 14% and net sales by 13%. The quarter ended with a new record-high order book of EUR 197 million. Moreover, our Q2 operating result more than doubled compared to the previous year, reflecting the strong growth in net sales, improved gross margin, and successful cost consciousness. After challenging 12 months, Industrial Measurements business area was back on growth. Q2 orders received grew by 8% and net sales by 7%. In the life science market segment, orders received were at previous year’s level, while orders in all other market segments grew. Net sales continued to grow very strongly in the power and energy market segment. We saw very strong growth also in the business area’s service sales, resulting from systematic sales efforts and growing the installed base of our equipment. The gross margin and operating result margin returned to a good level, operating result margin again exceeding 20%. For Weather and Environment business area, Q2 was very strong in all aspects. Both orders received and net sales grew by 18%. Orders received grew especially in the aviation and meteorology market segments, and net sales grew in all market segments. Net sales growth was mainly driven by large orders received during the past quarters and high project sales during the quarter. The subscription sales business continued to grow at a very strong growth rate of 16%. The operating result more than doubled compared to previous year and was 12.2% of net sales. In June, our new Chief Digital and Information Officer Girish Agarwal joined the company. Girish brings strong expertise in advanced AI, IT, and digitalization, which are key areas for our future success. He succeeds Olli Nastamo, who retires after a long and successful career. I want to thank Olli for his contributions and warmly welcome Girish to our team. Looking forward, our view on the full year 2024 remains unchanged, but after H1 solid performance, we have narrowed our estimate ranges for the full-year net sales and operating result. We anticipate that the business environment remains uncertain, and we need to continue to pace our investments accordingly. However, we continue to anticipate that our performance in the second half of the year will be stronger than in the first half. We now estimate that our full-year 2024 net sales will be in the range of EUR 540–570 million and operating result (EBIT) in the range of EUR 68–78 million.” Half Year Financial Report January-June 2024, July 25, 2024.
