Leading German appliance brand BSH has celebrated record growth for a third year running, achieving sales of €15.9bn in the 2022 financial year, despite challenges

BSH managed a growth of 2.5% on the previous year (currency-adjusted of 4.2%) despite supply bottlenecks, increased material prices and higher logistics and energy costs.

In addition, the company said that over the two previous years, it has benefited from a boom in the consumer goods business caused by the pandemic. This increased demand fell last year, while inflation rose sharply at the same time.

CEO Dr Matthew Metz commented: “Thanks to the loyalty of our consumers and trading partners, our strong global brand portfolio, our innovative products and services and the great commitment of our employees, we have mastered the past year well.

“Our aspiration for the current year: We want to continue growing profitably in all regions and product categories. In addition to managing the significantly increased costs – for example in the areas of energy, material and personnel – the focus is on making our supply chains even more resilient.”

Stable growth in all regions

In the Americas region including the USA and Canada, BSH once again showed above-average growth in the 2022 financial year, with an increase of 16%. While in Europe, it remained No.1, despite delivery bottlenecks and increased energy and material prices, which were particularly noticeable in this region.

For the entire Asia-Pacific/Africa region, BSH achieved sales growth of 2% compared to the previous year. Due to special effects, such as restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, BSH recorded a decline of 4% in China. On the other hand, sales in the growth markets increased at an above-average rate, particularly in India and the Middle East.

With a clear view of the future, BSH is setting the course for future growth today. “Our central concern is to understand local needs in the markets and to develop and produce home appliances that meet consumer needs and improve the quality of life in their homes. For us, market proximity and international growth go hand in hand,” Dr Metz explains.

“At the same time, we are expanding globally. From 2024 we will be manufacturing refrigerators for the North American market in a new factory in Mexico. We have also invested in the Asia-Pacific and Africa region: In India, we have expanded our production in Chennai. And last week we celebrated the ground-breaking ceremony for our stove factory in Cairo.

Product categories cooling and dishwashing with strong growth

The strongest sales driver in the past financial year was the cooling product category with an increase of 8.8% on the previous year, closely followed by the sink product category, which was able to increase 8%. Cooking, the top-selling product category, grew by 2.8%. Here, however, the market was waiting for an important model change, a new oven series, which is due in spring 2023. Laundry care and consumer products, the small home appliance division, saw declines of 6% and 6.2%, respectively.

BSH customer service with its comprehensive range of services achieved a 2.2% increase in sales. Around 15,000 employees work in over 50 countries every day. 83% of all repairs can be done right away. This performance is also reflected in the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which continuously measures satisfaction with customer service, BSH said. The score rose again by two points to the outstanding value of 73 points. The success of customer service can also be seen in regular awards. In 2022, the German daily newspaper “Welt” awarded German customer service for the eleventh time in a row for first-class service from the Bosch and Siemens brands. The Bosch brand even emerges from the ranking as No. 1 in the entire household appliance industry, closely followed by Siemens in second place.

Innovative products

In 2022, BSH presented a range of innovative digital products and solutions, it said. The new premium oven series from Bosch and Siemens (shown top) was among these, while the Smart Kitchen Dock presented last year bundles a wide variety of Alexa and Home Connect functions and thus enables access to all services of the Home Connect platform as well as to recipe apps with smart cooking support such as Kitchen Stories, the company added.

For the Chinese market, BSH uses air quality sensors from Bosch in its refrigerators. These recognise bad smells immediately and automatically clean the air in the refrigerator with the help of active oxygen. In this way, 99% of all bacteria and viruses and 90% of all odours can be eliminated, the company claims. In addition, the networked device informs consumers via smartphone when food has gone bad.

The Bosch Group – and thus also BSH – is a member of the “Connectivity Standards Alliance”, an association of numerous large companies that are simplifying the smart home world with the new Matter connection standard. In the future, it will be possible to operate Matter-enabled household appliances from BSH and household appliances from other manufacturers in just one app.

In addition, expenditure on research and development increased by 5.3% compared to the previous year – BSH invested a total of €840m euros, which BSH is using to promote digital, consumer-oriented products and innovations.

Sustainable solutions along the entire value chain

BSH has been developing and manufacturing CO₂-neutral at all locations worldwide since 2020. One of the biggest levers for this is the constant increase in energy efficiency in production. In 2022, BSH saved around 33.4 GWh of energy with more than 230 energy efficiency measures worldwide. Self-generated green electricity is increasingly covering electricity requirements. BSH has set itself the goal of covering 100% of its electricity needs with green electricity by 2030.

In order to make the value chain more sustainable, the home appliance manufacturer is working with partners on new solutions. These include the use of recycled plastics and so-called green steel. These materials are used, for example, in the new Bosch Green Collection refrigerator, which will be launched in Europe in May. Thanks to the use of recycled, CO₂-reduced and CO₂-neutral materials, the resulting CO₂ footprint from the material is a third lower than that of the identically constructed comparison model with conventional materials.*

Reorganised management

Dr Metz has been leading BSH as Chief Executive Officer since October 2022. In addition to the previous managing directors, Chief Financial Officer Gerhard Dambach and Chief Operating Officer Lars Schubert, Rudolf Klötscher and Alexander Dony were appointed to the Management Board of BSH on January 1.

As Chief Sales & Service Officer, Mr Klötscher is responsible for customer service, the Europe region and the emerging markets region. As Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Alexander Dony is responsible for the Chinese and North American markets, marketing and product brands as well as small appliances. Both succeed Matthias Ginthum, who will retire at the end of March after ten very successful years in management.

*.CO₂ emissions from production materials are 33 % lower than a comparable Bosch refrigerator with conventional production materials (KGN 39VXBT). The calculation is based on ISO 14040 for production materials (without packaging). Reduced CO₂ emissions by using green steel manufactured with reduced CO₂ emissions and CO₂ neutral bio-based foam and plastic (according to certified mass balance methods.

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