Thyssenkrupp's Two-Speed Recovery: Core Business Lifts Guidance While Hydrogen Unit Retreats
Published on 08/15/2026 at 18:22 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The conglomerate's turnaround narrative is playing out at very different speeds across its divisions. While the parent company raised its full-year earnings outlook on the back of strength in steel and naval operations, its hydrogen subsidiary has been forced into an embarrassing retreat from ambitious production plans — a contrast that tells investors as much about the group's new discipline as it does about its remaining vulnerabilities.
Guidance Raised as Core Business Delivers
Thyssenkrupp lifted the lower end of its adjusted EBIT guidance for 2025/26 by €100 million to a range of €600–900 million, having previously flagged €500 million as the floor. The move came after the group posted adjusted operating earnings of €183 million for the third quarter, with revenue climbing 8% to €8.8 billion. The bottom line swung to a net profit of €34 million — the first in a long while — against a loss of €255 million in the same period a year earlier.
A substantial slice of that result, €131 million, came from the sale of the HKM stake to Salzgitter, a deal completed in July. While the one-off nature of that gain deserves acknowledgment, it was a deliberate step in the restructuring of the steel division rather than an accounting sleight of hand. The guidance upgrade also extended to the net loss forecast, with the lower bound revised upward — a signal that the operational recovery is feeding through to the bottom line.
Analysts Respond With Mixed Verdicts
Two major houses weighed in on Friday following the results. Deutsche Bank Research upgraded Thyssenkrupp to "Buy" with a price target of €16, while JPMorgan lifted its target to €15 but held the stock at "Neutral." Bank of America had already raised its target to €19 on Thursday, citing not only the planned spin-off of Materials Services but also new EU steel tariff quotas introduced in July that should support margins in the steel division — a concrete, policy-anchored argument rather than pure sentiment.
The naval subsidiary TKMS is generating even more pronounced enthusiasm. Bernstein upgraded the stock from "Market-Perform" to "Outperform" on Thursday, more than halving its price target from €76 to €125. TKMS itself raised its margin guidance to as much as 6.5% and now expects revenue growth of 10–12%, a dramatic jump from the previous 2–5% range. Such leaps in guidance are rare and help explain why parts of the capital market are approaching the group's restructuring with something close to euphoria.
Hydrogen Unit Cuts Its Cloth
The counterpoint came from Thyssenkrupp Nucera, the hydrogen subsidiary, which announced on Wednesday that it is abandoning plans for mass production of SOEC stacks, triggering a one-off EBIT charge. The unit's EBIT forecast for 2025/26 has been cut to a loss of €105–75 million, from a previously guided range of €80–30 million. Revenue guidance has also been trimmed to €450–500 million, with the green hydrogen segment expected to contribute just €100–130 million instead of the earlier €120–170 million.
Uncomfortable as this is for Nucera shareholders, it weighs lightly on the group as a whole. Thyssenkrupp has spent recent years precisely on cutting off unprofitable or overambitious growth bets before they become a burden. Viewed through that lens, the Nucera pullback looks less like an outlier and more like a pattern — a conglomerate willing to amputate underperforming parts rather than carry them indefinitely.
Technicals Flash Caution Amid the Rally
The share price has been on a tear, gaining 10.0% over the past seven days and 15% over the past month. It closed Friday at €13.79, up 2.9% on the day, and sits just 1.5% below its 52-week high of €14.00. Year-to-date the stock is up 48%, with a 55% gain over twelve months.
That momentum has stretched the technical picture considerably. The stock now trades 35% above its 200-day moving average and roughly 18% above its 50-day average. The Relative Strength Index of 71.5 points to an overbought condition, making short-term consolidation more likely. These signals do not invalidate the fundamental story, but they do counsel against expecting uninterrupted gains.
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The structural arguments in favor of the stock remain compelling: raised guidance, tangible progress toward the breakup into independent units, and a defense business with markedly improved margins. The Nucera setback does not diminish that record — if anything, it reinforces it, demonstrating a management willing to cut losses rather than paper over them. The question for investors is no longer whether the restructuring is working, but how much of it the market has already priced in.
