ABB Ltd (ABB) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending September 30, 2022

October 20, 2022 4:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ann-Sofie Nordh

Greetings to all, and nice to connect again, as I welcome you to the presentation of ABB's Third Quarter Results. I'm Ann-Sofie Nordh, Head of Investor Relations. And next to me here is our CEO, Bjorn Rosengren, and our CFO, Timo Ihamuotila. They will as usual take you through the presentation before we open up for the Q&A session.

But before we begin, I should mention the information regarding Safe Harbor notices and our use of non-GAAP measures on Slide 2 of the presentation. Also this call will include forward-looking statements which are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks and uncertainties.

And with that said, I will hand over to Bjorn and Timo later on for their quarterly comments.

Bjorn Rosengren

Thank you, Ann-Sofie, and a warm welcome from me as well. I have to say, I'm very pleased with our performance this quarter. Operation numbers show strength and verifies that ABB is moving in the right direction, even faster than we originally had anticipated.

You have probably already figured out that I'm very happy about the high margins of 16.6%. It looks like we likely will reach our margin targets one year early. But I'm also pleased that we executed on our promises of portfolio management. In my view, today's result is a good indication that we are improving operational performance through our new way of working, accountability, transparency, and speed.

To me, some proof points are our strong and broad price execution. The record high margin, we have made division lead acquisitions, we divested noncore operations, and we completed the spin-off of Accelleron. In short, we are making ABB a more focused and well performing company with focus on being a technology leader in electrification and automation.

That said, we still have a couple of matters that needs to be resolved. One such item is the legacy Kusile project. We now booked a provision related to this, which impacted EPS performance in the quarter. We feel confident that there will not be any additional material provisions related to these matters. I will come back to this a little bit later.

Before we move on, I want to comment on E-mobility. We have said that we want to list part of this company. And we remain committed to this. But given the high volatility in the capital markets, we do not see it happening this year. We follow the market development closely and we'll come back when we feel circumstances are right.