LIMOGES, France — In a contracting building market, Legrand turned in a solid first half and revised its full-year targets upward.
Very resilient first half
Sales: +4.9%, i.e. +6,0% excluding exchange rates
Adjusted operating margin: 22.2% of sales
Rise in net earnings per share: +19.0%
Free cash flow: €813.8 million [USD $892.58 million], 18.9% of sales
2023 full-year targets revised
Sales growth (excluding exchange rates and Russia): +5% to +8%
Adjusted operating margin (before acquisitions and Russia): ~20.5% of sales
Benoît Coquart, Legrand’s Chief Executive Officer, commented:
“In a generally contracting building market, Legrand reported very solid results in the first six months of the year. Sales rose +4.9% with organic growth a resilient +4.6%, buoyed primarily by faster expanding segments including energy efficiency solutions, connected products and datacenters. Financial indicators remained very strong, with adjusted operating margin a high 22.2% of sales, free cash flow at €813.8 million, net profit equal to 15.2% of sales, and net earnings per share up 19.0%.
Our Group is actively pursuing growth and development initiatives, launching many new products and acquiring three companies since the beginning of the year—Encelium, Clamper, and Teknica in Chile, announced today—while continuing to optimize its cost structure.
These strong showings confirm once again the pertinence and resilience of our value-creating business model. Building on these achievements, we have revised our full-year targets upward.
Sustained deployment of our strategic roadmap, combined with underlying trends that include electrification, changing ways of living and working, digitization of uses, or energy-consumption monitoring, are boosting our faster expanding segments. As a result, we are targeting a full-year 2023 performance fully in line with our medium-term model of business growth and value creation.”
Tagged with financial results, Legrand