Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB reports 4th quarter net profit of $540 million

ABB reports Q4 net profit of $540 million

ZURICH — Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB Ltd. reported a net profit of $540 million for the fourth quarter Thursday, helped by cost-cutting and a weak U.S. dollar.

Despite restructuring charges of $350 million, the company more than doubled its net profit from the $213 million earned in the same period of 2008.

Earnings per share rose to $0.24 from $0.09 the previous year.

The results were above analysts’ expectations, pushing ABB shares up 7.6 percent to close at 21.28 francs ($19.70) on the Zurich exchange.

CEO Joe Hogan said ABB would “continue to aggressively pursue growth in emerging markets,” and take advantage of global efforts to improve energy efficiency and tackle climate change.

Orders for the company’s power generation and transmission products rose by over a quarter to $1.86 billion. Industrial automation and robotics, on the other hand, saw orders fall, resulting in a group-wide drop in revenues of 4 percent to $8.76 billion.

Results benefited from a weak U.S. dollar compared to local currencies.

Looking ahead, ABB said it was heartened by the fact that fourth-quarter orders stabilized compared with the third quarter, indicating that the worst of the recession may be over.

“However, given the longer-term nature of the ABB portfolio, management’s outlook for the company’s businesses for 2010 and the overall economy remains uncertain,” it said.

“The recent global economic downturn, however, has resulted in overcapacity in some customer sectors and has reduced the amount of capital available for investment in others.”

The Zurich-based company said it would focus on growing its business in new markets during 2010 and raised its cost-cutting target to $3 billion by the end of the year.