I missed this one earlier in July: it seems that I’m specialising in profit warnings, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of European small cap funds.”
Sensirion revised its guidance for 2023 by lowering expected revenues by 20%-25% and halving EBITDA margin “due to challenging market environment”:
“Sensirion is adjusting its outlook for the 2023 financial year due to the challenging market environment. For the current financial year, we now expect sales of CHF 235–255 million (previously CHF 300–340 million) and an EBITDA margin of approx. 10% (previously approx. 20%). The expectation for the gross margin remains unchanged in the mid-fifties.”
Stock was down 22% in July.
All these news might be very well idiosyncratic to the names analysed, but I see more and more negative updates from many industrial companies in Europe: I’m not sure how to reconcile it with the stock markets at all-time highs.
“Contrary to the assessment at the beginning of the year, however, the corrections are more pronounced than expected and we currently do not see any signs of a recovery in the second half of the year. As a result, we now expect the current slump in demand to continue in the second half of the year, particularly in the appliance and consumer areas. These two market segments have posted strong growth figures over the past two years and also benefited from the sharp increase in awareness of indoor air quality solutions worldwide (also due to the pandemic). Although this trend continues, it has normalized somewhat. After the boom years, this has resulted in a temporary drop in demand, further exacerbated by continued high inventories, which are only slowly declining. New business is currently unable to compensate for this downturn.”