By John Revill
The Zurich Engineering Group (Reuters) -Swiss Abb reported its highest quarterly contribution on Thursday, helped by demand for the United States’ demand and for products used in data centers built to support artificial intelligence.
In the United States, orders, the largest market in the company, jumped 37% in the second quarter, exceeding a 14% increase in group orders overall, said ABB.
CEO Morten Wierod said the increase was motivated by a large order and that customers were investing in automation and electrification, and was not due to pre-order to avoid higher prices imposed by the United States.
“The request for electricity increases rapidly,” WIEROD told journalists. “This is used by data centers, but many other industries increase their electricity consumption.”
ABB makes around 80% of its products sold in the United States locally, which protects it from prices, Wierrod said.
“There is no point in pre-buying because we will not be affected by prices,” he added.
During the three months to the end of June, ABB declared a 9% increase in basic operating profit to $ 1.71 billion, beating analyst forecasts of $ 1.65 billion.
The net profit of $ 1.15 billion was better than the $ 1.12 billion expected by analysts in a consensus provided by the company. Income increased 8.90 billion dollars from 8.90 billion in advance on forecasts of $ 8.72 billion.
The company’s shares increased 7% in the middle of the morning in Zurich.
Only ABB’s robotics activity was affected by the current uncertainty of trade, because automobile customers have kept investments while they were waiting to discover the final level of import rights.
But the activity of the company data center continued to do well, displaying an increase in orders of around 10 to 20% during the quarter, the high demand should continue.
American companies have announced a series of producers of large tickets and energy investment earlier this week, part of President Donald Trump’s push to maintain the country’s advantage in the booming technology sector.
About half of the ABB data center activities are in the United States, with around 30 to 35% in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and the rest in Europe.
(Report by John Revill. Edition by Susan Fenton and Mark Potter)
