Macroeconomic and sector-specific conditions

Macroeconomic conditions

Following its dramatic slump in the first half of the year, the global economy began to show early signs of recovery in the third quarter thanks to the easing of local lockdowns and the gradual restart of activity by companies that had faced restrictions. The extensive fiscal and monetary policy measures helped to contain the sharp drop in economic activity and global trade. In Europe and the United States, the economic decline triggered by the coronavirus pandemic was not as severe as had been anticipated in the first half of the year. Supported by government stimulus packages, China’s economic output returned to the level seen before the outbreak of the pandemic.

Despite the recovery expected in the months ahead, the global economy will contract significantly over 2020 as a whole. In its October forecast, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that global economic output will fall by 4.4 percent, although this is a smaller decrease than estimated in June 2020. The global volume of trade is expected to contract by 10.4 percent.

Forecasts continue to come with a high degree of uncertainty as the continued course of the coronavirus pandemic is impossible to predict. A rise in infection rates could result in a return to local or national lockdown measures that might disrupt the recovery and deepen the recession again.

Sectoral conditions

Sales markets

The situation in the global economy, which was shaped by the coronavirus pandemic, was reflected in unit sales figures in the global market for industrial trucks in the first nine months of this year. Whereas the number of new trucks ordered in the first half of 2020 was 7.0 percent lower than in the same period of 2019, the decrease had been virtually eliminated by the end of September thanks to the slowly emerging bounce-back of the global economy. The number of new orders worldwide rose by 2.9 percent to 1,148 thousand trucks, primarily due to the growth of the market in China.

However, the regional picture was very mixed. The EMEA region (western Europe, eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa) registered a decrease of 10.8 percent in the nine-month period. The Americas region (North, Central, and South America) was able to limit the decline to 5.0 percent. In the APAC region (Asia-Pacific), by contrast, the rapid recovery of the Chinese market (up by 30.2 percent) meant that order numbers rose by 17.2 percent.

Global orders for new electric forklift trucks decreased by 5.5 percent compared with the first three quarters of 2019, whereas trucks fitted with an internal combustion (IC) engine saw a 5.6 percent increase in orders owing to the sharp increase in unit sales in China. Order intake for warehouse trucks was also higher than in the prior-year period, rising by 3.8 percent.

Despite the significant deterioration of global economic conditions and the resulting reluctance to invest, the market for supply chain solutions saw a rise in orders that was primarily fueled by the growth of demand in the e-commerce sector.

Procurement markets and conditions in the financial markets

Prices for the commodities used by the KION Group were predominantly lower on average in the first nine months of this year than in 2019. In the third quarter, the price of steel remained close to its level at the start of the year, but this was lower than the average price for 2019. The price of copper rose sharply following a coronavirus-induced slump in the first quarter and was above the average price for 2019 in the third quarter. Crude oil was unable to stage a sustained recovery, with the price of Brent crude remaining below its average level for 2019 in the third quarter, whereas the price of rubber recovered and rose sharply in the third quarter.

Despite the euro’s marked appreciation against the Chinese renminbi and the US dollar from mid-2020 onward, currency effects had only a negligible impact on the KION Group’s operating performance in the period January to September 2020.