Bilfinger is cutting 1,500 jobs worldwide and lowering its forecast

Munich. The Mannheim-based industrial service provider Bilfinger is giving up hope of catching up in the second half of the year and is therefore cutting 1,500 jobs worldwide. Bilfinger admitted on Wednesday evening that developments in the summer fell well short of the original assumptions because the Iran war was lasting longer than expected.

The war had slowed Bilfinger down this year, but CEO Thomas Schulz had hoped to revive business, for example by rebuilding the infrastructure in the Middle East. However, customers also held back in the third quarter - both when it came to new orders and when retrieving services from existing framework agreements. This puts pressure on returns because employees are underutilized.

Bilfinger now wants to combat this with a savings program called “Agile”. It is about “adapting capacities to changing market conditions”, which was planned anyway but is now being brought forward. In this way, “we are increasing the flexibility of our organization in order to be able to react to market changes – such as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East – more quickly and independently in the future,” said Schulz.

The elimination of 1,500 of the 31,000 jobs worldwide decimated profits this year by 75 million euros, which will be booked as provisions in the fourth quarter. From 2028, the program is expected to bring in 75 million euros more profit per year.

For 2026, Bilfinger only expects sales of 5.3 to 5.7 (previously 5.4 to 5.9) billion euros. The return on sales before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization (Ebita) should only be between 3.2 and 3.6 percent. Bilfinger had previously targeted 5.8 percent. Even without the costs for “Agile”, the margin would still be 4.6 to 5.0 percent behind the previous target value.

The medium-term goals remained unchanged, explained Bilfinger: by 2030, sales should increase by an average of eight to ten percent per year - also with the help of acquisitions. The Ebita margin should then be between eight and nine percent.