German engineering and technology giant Siemens warned that full-year profits would fall short of original targets following a difficult second quarter.
"Challenges impact the level of income from continuing operations we originally expected to achieve in fiscal 2012 - €6 billion - by an estimated €600-800m ," Siemens said.
The group runs its business year from October to September.
It said net profit slumped by 64% to €1.015 billion in the second quarter.
This was due to charges in its power transmission business and restructuring at its joint venture with Nokia.
"As expected, the second quarter was not easy," said chief executive Peter Loescher. "Profit for the quarter was below our expectation due to charges at power transmission projects in Germany. We are addressing the problems systematically," he said.
At the level of sales and orders, "while we achieved clear growth in revenue, orders came in below the prior year due to lower volume from large orders," the chief executive added.
Second-quarter revenues rose by 9% to €19.297 billion, while new orders slumped by 13% to 17.88 billion.
But even if Siemens was not expecting to achieve its full-year earnings targets, "for fiscal 2012, we are on course to achieve our goals for revenue and orders," Loescher insisted.
