Level of orders
The value of the KION Group’s order intake was €11,707.6 million and therefore 6.2 percent below the record figure achieved in 2021 (€12,481.6 million). Currency effects boosted the value of order intake by a total of €391.2 million.
Despite the highly challenging market environment, the Industrial Trucks & Services segment increased the value of its order intake by 3.2 percent to €8,425.6 million in 2022, thereby exceeding the high prior-year figure of €8,166.3 million. The segment benefited from customers bringing orders forward – particularly in the first half of the year – due, in part, to the long delivery times. The sharp drop in orders in the second half of year caused by the loss of market momentum was more than offset in monetary terms by the price adjustments for new trucks. All sales regions registered a year-on-year rise in order intake. The fast-growing service business made a disproportionately strong contribution to the increase in order intake.
The Supply Chain Solutions segment was unable to match the very high level of order intake reached in 2021, when there had been a number of big-ticket orders. Although order intake held steady in the first six months of 2022, it dropped sharply by 22.3 percent to €3,361.9 million in the year as a whole (2021: €4,329.4 million). It was clear that customers were unwilling to make capital expenditure decisions, especially as growth rates had returned to normal levels in the e-commerce sector, and this led to the slump in order intake in the SCS segment. A few big-ticket orders that had already been confirmed were cancelled altogether, while some customer orders whose negotiations had been concluded were postponed until further notice. The reduction in new business (business solutions), which affected both North America and EMEA, was only partly offset by an encouraging rise in orders in the service business (customer services).
Despite the market losing momentum in the second half of the year, and even though the KION Group’s order book had already been at a record level at the end of 2021, it swelled by a further 6.3 percent to stand at €7,077.8 million as at the reporting date.