Philips CEO says US order delays, China pressure weighed on Q2 results
By Lucie Barbier and Alessandro Parodi July 28 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Philips said on Tuesday that delayed orders in the U. S. and market pressure in China weighed on the healthcare tech group's second-quarter results, even as it lifted it. . .
28 (Reuters) – The chief executive of Philips said on Tuesday that delayed orders in the U. S. and market pressure in China weighed on the healthcare tech group’s second-quarter results, even as it lifted its margin outlook for the full year. The Dutch maker of consumer electronics, appliances and medical equipment on Monday reported a quarterly core profit margin above analysts’ expectations thanks to U. S. tariff refunds, but its comparable order intake fell 1% because certain large orders were shifted into the third quarter. Philips’ U. S. -listed shares fell 4. 4% to $25. 02 on Monday, while traders indicated a 3% to 5% fall in the Amsterdam-listed shares before the bell. “That’s not a miss, but rather a timing issue,” CEO Roy Jakobs told journalists. “Some of these deals are lumpy. They are very large in nature — multi-hundred-million or multi-million, multi-year contracts — and therefore you cannot exactly pinpoint when they will close. ”Analysts at RBC also noted that continued pressure in China affected second-quarter sales growth. China announced in July a new policy requiring all public medical institutions to buy medical equipment through centralized procurement programs. “We have seen that this has caused a kind of market turmoil and degrowth,” Jakobs said on the press call. “We foresee a more structurally challenging situation in China, which we had planned for. ”(Reporting by Lucie Barbier and Alessandro Parodi, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)