CEO Håkan Jeppsson comments:
"The weakening economy, particularly in Europe, continued to have an impact on Inwido’s markets in the third quarter of 2012. In this uncertain market climate, I would nonetheless like to affirm that our business model, focusing on the consumer, has shown good resilience. Being able to report an operating margin of 11.8 percent for the third quarter of the year shows stability. The reason that we have been able to perform so well, despite declining volumes and difficult market conditions, is hard, goal-oriented work. Over the past year, we have made structural changes in virtually all of our markets. We are continuing these efforts uninterrupted to gradually further enhance efficiency. We are also continuing to work on our margins in a structured way and, most importantly of all, we are delivering good products and services to our customers.

Within our individual segments, both the European markets and Supply have continued to develop in line with or better than in the year-earlier period. The fact that we are capturing market shares and delivering positive earnings, albeit from a low level, in markets such as Poland, Ireland and the UK is promising. The general volume decline in our product categories in these markets is 10-20 percent. Even our component company, Supply, has, after a year of major structural changes, a stable and profitable business. In the Nordic markets, we still have healthy profitability even though it is not at the level it should be in all areas. However, consumers’ hesitance as a consequence of the general economic unease, is affecting both volumes and the product mix in a way that disadvantages us. We find the discrepancy compared with the preceding year primarily in Sweden and Finland. In both of these markets, the sharp decline among manufacturers of prefabricated houses provides a large part of the explanation.

The weak market trend means that we will continue to assess and implement adjustments to our structure over the remainder of the year. In the longer term, we judge growth opportunities to be favourable since the underlying need for new and improved homes is considerable around Europe. Efforts to develop even better products and services focused on smart solutions for consumers’ well-being has never been more intensive within Inwido.”

Read the entire report in the pdf attached