Maneuvering in a tough environment

The appliance market in the fourth quarter of 2011 remained very competitive. The headwinds of price pressure, higher raw-material costs and weak demand grew stronger as the year progressed. Despite this challenging environment, we were able to generate an underlying operating income of SEK 4 billion in 2011. Furthermore, we have taken actions to increase prices, take out costs, acquire companies in emerging markets and change the organization to strengthen the company’s position as we entered 2012.
Already at the end of 2010, demand for appliances started to decline, while costs for raw materials increased and prices for our products began to decrease. This downward trend gained momentum as 2011 progressed, with rising raw-material costs and lower prices having a headwind on results of more than SEK 3 billion in 2011. In this very tough environment, we were able to generate an underlying operating income of almost SEK 4 billion, which is above...