Manitou, a global French provider of earthmoving and handling equipment, has agreed to buy the assets Dezzo Equipment, its South African dealer.
Dezzo Equipment has specialised in the sale of Manitou equipment and services in South Africa since 2008, said the company in a written statement. The distributor's various sites cover the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga regions. Dezzo Equipment employs 28 people and had sales of €8 million in 2023.
This investment will enable the group to sustain its activities and strengthen its service to customers in the region, said Darren Hall, vice president Middle East Africa and managing director of Manitou Southern Africa. "Dezzo Equipment has a huge expertise, with many technicians and a perfect knowledge of our products and services. We are proud to integrate the staff into Manitou Group. This operation will enable us to maintain and strengthen our products and services offer to our customers in these two areas".
This assets deal will be finalised in Q3 2024, following approval by the South African merger control authorities. The purchase comes as Manitou Group reports first quarter revenue up 3% from the same period last year, reaching €685 million. Order intake, however, for the quarter was €186 million versus €455 million for Q1 in 2023.
Nonetheless, the company noted that the expectation remains of stable revenue in 2024 compared with 2023. Also, expectation is still for a recurring operating profit for 2024 at over 6.5% of revenue.
The increase in first quarter revenue was achieved in an environment of slowing markets, explained Michel Denis, group chief executive. “In the North American market, our business plan has to contend with a growing wait-and-see attitude among customers and a very gradual ramp-up of our operations. On the other hand, European markets turned out to be more dynamic than expected,” he said.
“With the cancellation of allocations for our customers and the reopening of order intake for all our dealers, back to normal for all our operations has almost been achieved,” he noted. “Our order intake is experiencing the opposite phenomenon to the one we experienced between 2020 and 2022, when the lengthening of delivery times pushed customers to anticipate their orders to secure their future revenues and led us to an order book of almost two years of activity.”
