Volvo Group reported fourth-quarter income significantly increased to $550 million from the prior year’s 300 million.
For the full-year 2016, revenues declined by 3 percent to $32.6 billion but profitability improved with an adjusted operating margin of 7 percent.
Volvo Group President and CEO Martin Lundstedt says despite the continuation of a downward correction in the North American highway segment, some signs of stabilization as the industry’s inventory of new trucks came down to more healthy levels.
“However, there is still an overhang of used trucks in the market that will continue to dampen demand,” he added in a statement.
North American retail deliveries for the group fell 19 percent in 2016 compared to 2015 with virtually the entire decline, according to Lundstedt, registering in the highway tractor segments.
Volvo Group’s North American order intake was almost flat compared to the same quarter last year while deliveries dropped 47 percent in total. The decline in deliveries compared with 2015 was an effect of the low order intake earlier in the year as demand came down and dealers focused on reducing their inventories, Volvo says. Production output in the Group’s North American manufacturing system was lowered in the quarter to meet the correction and facilitate destocking of new trucks in the dealer network.
