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Earnings Call: Q1 2019

Apr 25, 2019

Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
VP of Investor Relations, Cargotec

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this news conference regarding Cargotec's Q1 2019 results. In Q1, our orders received grew in all business areas and comparable operating profit remained on last year's level. My name is Hanna-Maria Heikkinen. I'm in charge of investor relations, and today our CEO, Mika Vehviläinen, will start with the group development, and after that, our CFO, Mikko Puolakka, will continue with the business areas, financials and outlook. After the presentation, there is a great opportunity to ask questions and get great answers.

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

Thank you, Hanna-Maria Heikkinen. Good afternoon from my behalf as well. Thank you for joining the Quarter One conference call for Cargotec. I know it's a very busy day today, so we appreciate your participation. During the Q1 2019, the strong demand for our solutions continued. Our orders received increased for the fifth consecutive quarter with 19% increase in Kalmar, 11% increase in Hiab, and 33% increase in MacGregor, although from obviously fairly low level. Although the comparable operating profit remained at last year level, operating margin was not satisfactory from our point of view. This was due to the supply chain issues in Hiab. However, we have a number of corrective actions taking place. The situation is already improving. I am confident that we will see further improvement in the coming quarters. Mikko Puolakka will cover Hiab more in detail during the business area specific presentations.

A few words about the market environment during the Q1 2019. Global container throughput grew slightly 0.4% during the Q1. This slight growth was contributed mainly for the pre-shipment with the anticipation of increase in tariffs between the U.S. and China during the Q1 that is now postponed. Market is expected to show a robust growth in container traffic this year with the market growth estimates varying between 4% and 4.9% for the 2019. Construction activity remained at the good level in our key markets in U.S. and in Europe. MacGregor's area, the market improved slightly in merchant sector, but still remains well below the historical levels. The activity in the offshore side is still at the very slow level. I said orders increased by 18% and increase in all business areas.

The total order intake exceeded EUR 1 billion, with the 33% improvement in MacGregor continuing the slight trend we have seen towards the end of last year. Hiab order intake was EUR 341 million. This is the second highest order intake in quarter in Hiab's history, only exceeded by the Q4 last year. Also in Kalmar, we had a record order intake with EUR 560 million of orders. What's delightful that this came from multiple sources and not from any single larger order. Obviously, the strong order intake, fifth consecutive increase is now showing in our order book, which is 27% higher than in Q1 2018. We are now seeing the order book trending up slightly in MacGregor. We have a record order book both in Kalmar and in Hiab at the moment.

Sales increased by 11%, and we saw increase happening in all three business areas, but as I already commented, the operating margin was disappointing due to the difficulties we still faced in Q1 in Hiab. I am very satisfied with the progress we are making in our strategic key focus areas in services and software. Kalmar services corrected by the comparable currency exchange and adjusted for divestments grew by 5%. Hiab services continued strong growth with 11% growth, and MacGregor is now showing signs of service recovery with another quarter of service growth of 8 percentage points. Total in Cargotec level, services sales increased by 5% adjusted for currencies, acquisitions, and divestments. The strong development in our software businesses continued with the sales increasing by 18% and orders by 56% from Q1 last year. This is primarily attributable for the good progress we have made in our automation software.

During the Q1, we closed an important software acquisition for us, C2 Labs, with their Octopi cloud-based software terminal operating system intended for smaller and mixed cargo terminals that will further enhance Navis' position as the leading terminal operator solutions provider. We are currently well on our way to our target of EUR 1.5 billion of services and software revenues. With that one, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Mikko Puolakka, our CFO, who will cover the business area specific results. Thank you.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Thank you, Mika, and good afternoon also from my side. Let's start with Kalmar. Kalmar had a very good quarter in all financial metrics. Orders grew, as Mika indicated, 19%, and the growth came across all Kalmar divisions.

In all geographical areas. Kalmar order book is now above EUR 1.1 billion, and this has grown by EUR 100 million since the beginning of the year. Kalmar sales were up by 8%, and when we eliminate the impact of our two divestments last year, the Siwertell bulk business divestment as well as the Kalmar Rough Terrain Container handling business divestment, then sales grew even 11% year-on-year. Reported service sales were flat, but also when we eliminate the previously mentioned divestments, services sales grew in Kalmar by 5% year-on-year. Kalmar profitability improved by 13% and was EUR 32.3 million, and the profitability improvement came to great extent from the top line i.e. sales growth. All in all, very good quarter for Kalmar. Moving to Hiab, where we had also very good development in orders, like Mika said already earlier. Orders growing by 11% year-on-year.

All major divisions in Hiab, i.e. loader cranes, truck mounted forklifts, as well as services grew very well. Orders grew in all geographical areas. Hiab order book is now close to EUR 500 million. This of course offers a very solid basis for the revenue growth in 2019. Hiab sales grew by 14% from 2018. When we eliminate the Effer acquisition, which we did end of last year, Hiab sales grew by 8%. Service sales grew 11% very much in line with our long-term service growth targets. Despite the good growth in sales, the Hiab operating profit however declined. This is to great extent driven by the inefficiencies and additional costs arising from the supply chain disturbances. We have taken several corrective actions and measures. The situation continued to improve throughout quarter one.

I would say that currently the issues are mainly related to our Stargard assembly operations as well as loader crane installation capacity. We are very actively working on fixing those. The positive matter of course here is that this is not so much any more the external component supplier issue, but very much in our hands. Very much for us to be fixed. As Mika said also, we expect this situation to improve now in the second half going forward. Moving to MacGregor. MacGregor orders grew by 33%, but still the orders were on a fairly low level because of the very low market. The order growth came mainly from RoRo business, primarily from the RoRo division, where the orders were very low in the early part of last year. MacGregor total sales were up by 10%. Service sales were up by 8%.

Service sales came mostly from the merchant segment. Looking the MacGregor profitability, yes, there is a small absolute improvement despite the profitability did not significantly improve despite the sales growth. The improvement, kind of a low improvement came because of the low capacity utilization what we have in certain areas, especially in the RoRo as well as in the offshore divisions. The Rapp Marine integration is still ongoing. Rapp Marine is delivering at the moment more or less break even results. Looking the consolidated financials, like Mika indicated, the highlights of the quarter were definitely the orders and sales growth in all business areas. Those were clearly the bright spots. Profitability excluding the items affecting comparability remained on last year's level. We had roughly EUR 6.3 million restructuring and other cost items affecting the comparability. These items are related to the company-wide restructuring program.

Mainly personnel related layoff costs, the TTS related acquisition costs. Earnings per share for quarter one was EUR 4.48. Cash flow from operations was weak if we compare to previous years. However, it improved from quarter one last year. Cash flow was EUR 31 million. It is still very much impacted by the supply chain disruption as well as growth in receivables, accounts receivables, as we doing quite high invoicing towards the end of the quarter one. Our financial position is strong. Our cash and the committed unused credit facilities were EUR 451 million at the end of March. Net debt has increased now in quarter one. The primary driver for the net debt increase is coming from the IFRS 16, where we took EUR 192 million lease liabilities in the balance sheet in early 2019. This is also highlighted in our gearing.

Gearing 63% currently. If we eliminate the IFRS 16 impact, then gearing is 49%. As you can also see from the chart, we have very well-balanced maturity structure. No major debt repayment coming in in a single individual year. ROCE was 7.8%, more or less on last year's level. Our long-term target for ROCE is 15%. This requires still work, especially on the profitability side. Last but not least, our outlook for 2019. We reiterate our guidance for 2019 and expect our comparable operating profit for 2019 to improve from 2018. With those words, I will then hand over to Hanna-Maria and the questions.

Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
VP of Investor Relations, Cargotec

Thank you, Mikko. Thank you, Mika. We will start with the questions from Ruoholahti. Are there any questions from Ruoholahti?

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Yes. There are. Okay. Good afternoon, it's Erkki from Inderes. Actually, three questions from me. First, this is more for Mikko. Could you provide comparable order growth numbers by division? I mean, eliminating for all the M&A actions as you provided for sales.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yeah, for Kalmar, the orders growth, let me just take the orders. If we take Kalmar, the order organic growth for orders. Let me check the exact numbers now.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Maybe if you take the second question-

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yeah

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

while he's looking for that. Okay, that's fine. Thank you. This was the fourth quarter in a row when your moving 12-month gross margin declined slightly. When do you actually see that the actions that you have taken, improving profitability, start to show in gross margin? Is it already in the second quarter, or do we have to wait until second half of this year?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

I think the margin, of course, is driven by multiple factors. One is the mix, and we see sort of product mix within the different business areas also to affect that one. At this stage, we see this is primarily been an issue now, of course, with the Hiab, and we do see the Hiab situation gradually improving. We already saw improvements within the quarter itself. March already being clearly better in terms of deliveries, and we expect that positive development now to gradually improve throughout the year. We expect the Q2 to be better than Q1 and then improvement from there.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Okay. Thank you. Finally, going forward, regarding your current SG&A level, is it something that we should model in for the rest of the year as well?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

We expect actually further productivity improvements on SG&A. We have the company-wide EUR 50 million savings program that Mikko was referring to, that is delivering savings already within this year. Also within the business areas, we have a number of productivity measures that we are in the process of executing.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

That's all from me. Thank you.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

I think for Kalmar, the reported order growth was 19%, when we kind of clean up the divestments, then the growth was 26% year-on-year. For Hiab, the reported orders were 11% growth, when we eliminate the Effer acquisition, then it's 5%. For MacGregor, the reported order growth was 33%, when we eliminate the Rapp Marine acquisition, then it's 28%.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Very well.

Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
VP of Investor Relations, Cargotec

We will continue with the international questions.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen over the phone, please press star one to ask a question. Once again, it's star one to ask a question over the phone. We will now take our first question. Please go ahead, caller. Your line is open.

Speaker 10

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I would like to talk about Hiab. Are deliveries still limited by the supply chain, or are the issues now mostly on the cost side? Would you say there's a significant backlog for urgent delivery or are lead times still stretched? I'm just trying to understand delivery phasing for the rest of 2019.

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

Right, Tim, maybe I take that one. Yeah, the supply chain. At this stage, we still have issues, but a lot more limited issues in terms of availability of the components. Right now, the primary issues are actually around our Polish facilities, which is a Loader Cranes manufacturing facility that are to do probably with, I would say, the maturity of the operations, the fact that it's a relatively new factory that has had a very strong order increase within the two years of operations, then also the labor availability and labor rotation within that market, that is also part of the issue in there. There is a long list of corrective actions that we are currently executing on that one, we see gradual improvement taking place in there. When it comes to the lead times, this varies from product area to area quite a lot.

I would say that some of the product areas are now within a few weeks of delivery times, and the longest lead times are extending well towards the end of this year at the moment. It's very product specific at the moment. Our on-time delivery numbers are actually considerably up compared to the same time last year or even towards the end of last year. We still have long lead times in certain product areas. We are obviously also following up on cancellation activities with long lead times, and we have not seen any further changes in cancellations. Those remain at the normal level.

Speaker 10

Okay, thank you. Is this issue still negatively impacting on mix?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

Yes, it is. Generally what we see, obviously, first of all, the loader crane as such is a good business for us, we are not able to execute quite what we need in there. Within that product area, specifically, the deliveries of smaller, more simple cranes that have a lower margin are usually easier to do. There we have less delivery issues. The more complex heavier cranes are where we have further, or I would say, more restraints at the moment. There we have more delivery restrictions, and that's affecting the mix of the deliveries as well.

Speaker 10

Okay, thank you. If I may take a second question on MacGregor and TTS. Is the acquisition still expected to close in Q2? In terms of profitability for MacGregor, either from MacGregor standalone or MacGregor TTS combined, do you have a view on what kind of revenues or market activity are needed for the division to return to historical margins or to go to the sort of low single-digit margin range?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

On the TTS case, this is still with the Chinese competitive authorities. We still expect this to be resolved during the quarter two. In terms of the margins, obviously we have a limited visibility on the TTS situation. They have reported their Q4 so far with those slightly positive numbers on that one, not that different from the MacGregor numbers. Obviously, after the closing, we still expect the synergies to be at the level that we have indicated earlier when the deal was announced, that should then drive the profit improvement even with the existing market conditions.

Speaker 10

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please go ahead, caller, your line is open.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Hi, Mika, Mikko. Hannah Magnus here with UBS. A couple of questions from me. How does the capacity utilization look in Kalmar at the moment? Of course, the backlog there is up a lot. Do you think you can sustain the current delivery rate on the equipment side there without seeing any bottlenecks emerging?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

The capacity situation varies again from product area. We see actually the ordering increases coming pretty much across the board from different product areas, which is in a way good news. I would say that for certain products for the North America logistics sectors, we are now serving or selling towards the very end of this year or early next year capacity already. In certain other areas, we are actually having a situation. Overall, I would say that the delivery and capacity situation in Kalmar is in better shape than it is in Hiab at the moment. We still have further improvement opportunities, but the situation is not as critical.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Got it. Thank you. Could you just give us some flavor on how large the addressable market opportunity is for Octopi compared to Navis?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

It's considerable. When you talk about the smaller terminals and mixed cargo terminals, you will have thousands and thousands of different small ports. The idea, of course, is that it's impossible to serve that kind of small market segment with on-premises software and dedicated teams. Octopi solution will be a cloud-based, SaaS-based solution. We will obviously take an advantage of the Navis network and Navis brand name to leverage on that one. It will enhance Navis sales to a certain extent, but obviously the revenue per customer will be relatively limited, but it will be, again, SaaS revenue. That will be the kind of revenue profiles that we are seeking in the further software expansion.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Okay. Do you think the market could be of a similar size or half the size, or any view on that? Makes a difference, of course.

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

It will be smaller than the current Navis market, which is a very large market. Again, the penetration is probably a bigger driver there than the actual size as such.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

For sure. Absolutely. That's very useful. Finally, could you expand a bit on how you think the mix is going to change in Hiab going into Q2 versus Q1?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

I think we will see the situation gradually improving in high-margin product areas, and I would see that will then reflect on the gradual improvement on the product mix from the Q2 onwards.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Okay. Got it. Thank you so much.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, star one to ask a question over the phone. We will now take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yeah. Hi, this is Johan. That should improve when the percentage of completion or the kind of progress in those projects will advance. Some of these orders we have been receiving in the latter part of last year, so it takes some time before we get the bigger volumes in the place.

Okay. Throughout 2019.

Yeah. Then on your networking capital situation, still sort of increasing during Q1 versus end of last year. When should we see the big release coming?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

This is very much related to the, I would say, our Stargard operations, especially in Hiab, to a certain extent in Kalmar. We have still some backlogs. Gradually, when we are sorting out the supply chain-related issues, then we expect also that the working capital, especially the inventories should be then notably down from the current levels.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

This should be sort of in line.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yeah. Gradually in the second half of this year.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay, good. Just some IFRS 16. You said the debt you've assumed there and depreciations related to that, how much will that be?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Basically, we have estimated that the IFRS 16 has roughly a EUR 7 million positive impact on 2019 results.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. The depreciation impact, how much was that in the quarter and how much do you expect for the full year?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Let me check from the notes.

Operator

We will now take our next question. Please go ahead.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yeah. If we look at the depreciation, it's roughly EUR 4 million on the machinery and equipment, then EUR 6 million on land and buildings, mainly buildings. It's basically the note number six in our interim report. When you compare the quarter one 2019 depreciation versus the quarter one 2018 depreciation, that's more or less the difference, roughly EUR 10 million.

Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
VP of Investor Relations, Cargotec

That's on number 35 on the interim report, if that helps you, Johan.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yeah. Note number six.

Operator

Do we have further questions? Do we have further questions from the line?

We do have one more question queued up over the phone.

Okay.

Speaker 11

Thanks for taking my question. In the context of the growth seen in the software and services through the Navis automation solutions such as Bluetracker, can you comment on the possible impact or opportunity that the IMO 2020 software regulations or any further regulations provides for Kalmar and the software business going forward?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

I would say that there is not a direct impact from the IMO regulation or generally, I would say that the pressure that the sustainability and the CO2 has in that one. Obviously when the industry overall is seeking for a more sustainable way of conducting business and shipping, the digitalization is one of the best leverages that the industry would have in terms of the kind of more accuracy of the shipping arrival times, how the ships are loaded and unloaded, and optimizing that one has a potential larger impact on CO2. Indirectly, the requirements for the maritime industry for more sustainable transportation will benefit our software industry.

Speaker 11

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We do have further questions queued up over the phone at this time. We will now take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Karl Bokvist
Analyst, Citi

Yes. Hello. This is Karl Bokvist from ABG. Thank you for taking my question. My first one concerns Kalmar. How should we think about margin development in the coming quarters? If we look at Q2 2018, the year-on-year margin development was fairly negative, so perhaps that was a temporary effect. How should we think about Q2 2019 versus Q2 2018?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

I think in terms of Kalmar margin improvements, we will see further improvement on the year. Overall, if you look at our guidance for the year, it's fairly clear that MacGregor's contribution for that margin improvement this year is not going to be great. The margin improvement will come from Kalmar and Hiab businesses.

Karl Bokvist
Analyst, Citi

Okay. Should we expect accelerating the margin improvement, or will we see a development in line with the Q1 improvement, or how should we think about this?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

I think you would expect to see a gradual improvement from this one onwards. I think if you look at the profile from last year, it's not that far off.

Karl Bokvist
Analyst, Citi

Okay. I have a more long-term question. If we look at your ROCE target, let's say 15%, in your own view, how far ahead in time are we from reaching 15% and how do you plan on reaching it? Is it mainly focused on improving margins, or is it in terms of having a more efficient capital base?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

The capital has a fairly slight impact on the ROCE. Obviously, we have a lot of opportunities in our supply chain to get the inventory level down. The biggest lever by far for the ROCE is the improving operating margin. One needs to remember in our assets, we have a considerable chunk of goodwill, about EUR 1 billion, and that sets kind of the limits on the asset side for the improvement. The big lever here is that, again, when we look at our target of reaching the 10% operating margin, that should then lead us towards the 15% ROCE as well.

Karl Bokvist
Analyst, Citi

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Once again, caller, your line is now open. Please ensure you're unmuted.

Leo Carrington
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Hello. Sorry. It's Leo Carrington from Credit Suisse. For the FX transaction effect for 2019, how do you expect this to play out in terms of timing and magnitudes?

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Sorry, was the question related to Forex impact?

Leo Carrington
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Yes. At the EBIT level.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yeah, we have not separately guided the Forex impact for this year, Gradually should US dollar/euro remain on this kind of levels, we should start to see some tailwind for Hiab. At the moment Hiab has not yet been benefiting too much from the strengthening of the US dollar, The reason is again related to these supply chain issues. We have been hedging the deliveries still on rates which are sailing somewhere mid last year, The delivery due to the long lead times, those deliveries will be now done in quarter one, quarter two this year. That's why you have not necessarily been seeing that great impact there, positive impact from the currency yet.

Leo Carrington
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Okay. Thank you. A broader question. What's driving the service growth in Kalmar and Hiab? Is it just the increase in focus from your organization, or is there a change in customer desire to have third-party service versus in-house?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

I think it's primarily been our own efforts. The market's been there all the while Increased focus, change in people, change in system processes, the more sales efforts in there, Tracking better our installed base and understanding our capture rates. Quite a large number of efforts We've been on this track now for nearly three years. It's good to see that throughout the 2018 and now into 2019, those efforts are now starting to pay off. Obviously, you need to do that by market by market, customer by market to win back the business. Effectively, we have left somebody else to eat our lunch in the past years, and now we are now recovering from that one.

Leo Carrington
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Thank you. Last question from me. On the acquisitions, excluding TTS, would the acquisitions made in the last year be in line with their respective divisional margins in 2019? i.e., have the recent acquisitions been accretive or dilutive to group margins?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

In the Rapp case, actually, it's a fairly break-even business as well. Rapp, that's why you see actually that part of the sales growth in MacGregor quite large extent actually came from Rapp with the similar sort of break-even results to the MacGregor business. It doesn't really have an impact. In Hiab's case, the Effer actually is dilutive. The Effer's gross margin and operating margin is lower than the average in Hiab is, but it's very much according to business plans that we have made there. It's tracking according to that one. At this stage, it's dilutive for Hiab numbers. The impact of that one is not that significant. If I remember right, Mikko, if we did 10.7% operating margin in Hiab without the Effer, it would have been 11.1% if I remember correctly.

Mikko Puolakka
CFO, Cargotec

Yes.

Leo Carrington
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have one follow-up question at this time. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yeah. Hi, it's Johan here again. I don't know what happened. I was cut off. Just two questions. How do you see pricing developing? I think you talked about price hikes that you pushed through last year, but because of long lead times, you have not yet seen those in revenues and margins. Is this still the case or are pricing still going up? Secondly, you have won a big number of automation projects over the last year. Although not all of them are at a big value. How is the pipeline for automation projects going forward? Is it still the sort of EUR 10 to a couple of EUR tens of millions that we should expect? Thank you.

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

Thanks, Johan. On pricing side, yeah, absolutely true. This supply chain situation is sort of impacting us in many different ways. One, of course, that has been the fact that even though the list price increases were done already sort of mid last year onwards, they haven't really bit into the margin situation so much. We will again see gradually those price increases that we put in effect last year to actually flow through our margin improvements now from Q2 onwards. Also I would say from a raw material component point of view, we see a little bit easing of the pricing pressure. That's part of the expanding and margin improvement we will be seeing through this year. In terms of automation, we landed one automation deal, one sort of mid-size, I would say, automation deal and one small one in Q1.

We see the activity level roughly at the same level as last year, mostly sort of phased investments. There are no larger sort of one sort of very large automation deals in the near term sort of funnel at this stage. I would say pretty much you would expect this and we expect this level to continue what we saw last year.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Excellent. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have one last question queued up. Please go ahead, caller. Your line is now open.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Hi. Magnus here again. Could you give us a flavor on how the activity level has started in Hiab in April compared to what you saw in Q1?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

We still see the Hiab demand actually this year to remain at the healthy level. If I look at our own sales funnel and the market indicators, we expect the situation for the time being remaining favorable for us.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Okay, perfect. On MacGregor, finally, could you talk me through a little bit the activity level you see on the different vessel type? I think you called out the RoRo in particular as being good this quarter, but what do you see for the other types?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

Overall, the level of activity, of course, is low. RoRo has the specific impact for because it's been one of the more profitable businesses for us, and as last year activity was exceptionally low. It's now visible in our revenues and partly explains why we don't see margin expansion even though we see kind of a little bit sales growth happening in there. I'm very pleased to see again that the RoRo activity has now returned early this year, and that pipeline looks better, and that bodes very favorably for us in terms of future revenue and margin on that area. Otherwise, on the merchant side and an offshore side, the level of activity in different vessel types is well below the historical normal level.

I think overall, one would expect in container side, for example, that the demand is shifting partly from the very large vessels into more into the feeder type of vessels. We see some demand, but well below the historical level for general cargo and bulks.

Hannah Magnus
Analyst, UBS

Okay, good. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions in the phone queue at this time.

Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
VP of Investor Relations, Cargotec

There are some further questions from Ruoholahti. Erkki, please go ahead.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Hi. Erkki from Inderes again. One final question from me. The component issue now more or less resolved. What are the other internal issues you're referring to and that you're now tackling? Is it personal churn or is there something else to that? Would you say how easily and how fast can these problems be solved?

Mika Vehviläinen
CEO, Cargotec

They are primarily related, I think, to the maturity of some of the processes, we are tackling them with quite an intense program in terms of the further resources and capabilities into organization. Then the one further issue is the, I would say, the very hot job market, really, we would say across the whole Eastern Europe, but from our case, of course, particularly in Poland. There are certain measures we have taken to secure to sort of lower the rotation or attrition of the labor force in there. I think these improvements are biting gradually, as we have guided earlier, we expect that the first half will be more difficult than the second half, and this improvement will be flowing through gradually, some of better Q2 and then further Q3 and Q4.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Okay, thank you.

Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
VP of Investor Relations, Cargotec

There are no further questions. It's time to thank you for the active participation. Our Q2 report will be published on July 18th. See you then. Thank you.

Operator

This will conclude today's call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.