Profit at Siemens’ power and gas division tumbled 47 per cent year to 289 million euros in the second quarter with the company pointing to broader economic factors as impacting on the results.

Siemens president and CEO Joe Kaeser said: “Overall our business delivered solid underlying profitability despite a softening market environment”. Industrial business profit rose 1 per cent to 1.82 billion euros ($2 billion), beating the company’s own consensus for 1.7 billion euros, as a strong performance at healthcare and its core automation unit outweighed weakness in turbines and trains.

Net profit eased 2 per cent to 1.376 billion euros, down from 1.399 billion euros in the same quarter a year ago.

Siemens says on its website it is active “in almost all countries of the world”, with some 290 major production and manufacturing plants worldwide, and generates 85 percent of revenues outside Germany. Digital factory revenue improved 10 percent to 2.50 billion euros and it grew 3 percent on a comparable basis. Excluding currency translation and portfolio effects, orders were down 5 percent.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2015, the firm confirmed its forecast, still projecting basic earnings per share to grow by at least 15 percent from 6.37 euros in fiscal 2014 amid gains from divestments.

The book-to-bill ratio was 1.05 for the quarter, and Siemens’ order backlog was 110 billion euros. The Munich-based group said it still expected a profit margin of 10-11 per cent from its industrial businesses after reaching a margin of 9.5 per cent in its fiscal third quarter to end-June.