Moeller Electric: A 10% drop is an optimistic estimate

 Furthermore, the company estimates that net profit will fall by over one tenth, Moeller Electric’s General Manager, Iordan Mincă, told Business Standard. “Our initial estimates were more optimistic. At the beginning of this year we were hoping to have the net sales posted in 2008, but the evolution of the crisis was deeper than we expected,” Mincă said.

He added that it is hard to say whether the 10 percent drop will be maintained in the second half of this year. “We hope so, it is still an optimistic estimate considering the situation in Romania and Europe,” the he said. According to the general manager, Moeller Electric posted RON 139 mln (€37.8 mln) in net sales last year and revenues exceeding €40 mln. “The electrotechnical equipment market amounted to almost €400 million in 2007.

This is our estimate, there are no official statistics. However, we do not operate on the entire market, but mainly on the low voltage apparatus market and a little on the medium voltage one,” Mincă added. He further said that the company’s share is of some 10 percent of the total electrotechnical equipment market, but that Moeller Electric is in the top three on the low voltage segment.

According to Mincă, the market rose some 15 percent last year, but this year’s decline will bring it to a level close to that in 2007. “The evolution of the market is unpredictable. The government switched from an excess of four percent to a deficit of six percent. If the world economy does not bounce back, the Romanian economy will continue to suffer,” he added.