Bell Equipment published its interim results four days after Izak van Niekerk took over as chief executive, and the numbers in them were mostly his predecessor's. Revenue for the six months to June fell 12% to R5.35 billion, and profit fell 66% to R77.6 million.
Bell makes articulated dump trucks at Richards Bay and at a factory in Germany, and sells them into mining and construction across more than a hundred countries. The squeeze this half was American. Bell is paying US import tariffs on the machines it ships there and choosing not to charge the full amount on to customers, and a weak dollar against both the euro and the rand did the rest to its margins.
The factory carried the loss
The damage landed in one place on the segment table. Bell's South African manufacturing arm, which builds the machines and ships them to dealers abroad, swung from a R60.9 million operating profit a year ago to an R81.4 million operating loss. Factory overheads barely move with volumes, as the company puts it, so a thinner order book runs straight down the page.
The rest of the map is uneven. Europe has stayed at the subdued levels it has sat at since late 2023, with infrastructure projects much talked about and few of them built. The UK dealership did better than Bell expected, and Zambia held its run of strong years on the back of copper. At home, mining customers bought fewer trucks while the construction sector was busier than it has been in years, and municipalities and provincial transport departments have started buying Bell's newly launched motor grader.
The market doing the taxing
The country charging the tariff is also the one growing. Bell says the American dump truck market has recovered from the roughly one-fifth contraction it went through in 2025, with demand now fuelled by the AI data centre building boom. It has found a second way into that market too. Under a supply agreement with CNH Industrial announced at a Las Vegas trade show in March, Bell will build CASE-branded motor graders at Richards Bay for exclusive distribution across the United States and Canada, and the first of them are about to come off the line.
Van Niekerk says the company will try to claw back more of the tariff subsidy it is carrying by the end of the year, which would take some pressure off margins. Bell still holds more cash than debt, and declared a 30 cent interim dividend worth about R28.7 million, against none in the same half last year. Shareholders are paid on 28 September.
