SKF said adjusted operating earnings rose 46% to 3.61 billion crowns ($353 million), beating the 3.38 billion expected by analysts, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.
Over the preceding couple of quarters, the rival of Germany's Schaeffler has managed to offset steep cost inflation with price increases of its own and pruning of its product portfolio, efforts that paid off even more in the second quarter.
Chief Executive Rickard Gustafson told Reuters such measures yielded a positive impact of 2 billion crowns in the quarter to eclipse a 800 million crown rise in costs while pressure was now gradually easing in some areas.
"We're seeing what I might call a normalisation in a number of areas," he said, naming logistics and a positive if slow trend on input goods.
"What is moving in the wrong direction now is wage inflation, and that is a global issue."
The manufacturer, seen as a gauge for global industrial demand due to its wide customer base, said uncertainty was likely to linger in its markets.
It forecast "mid-single-digit" organic, or like-for-like, sales growth in the third quarter.
That is lower than the forecast of high single-digit growth it gave for the second quarter, when sales rose 7.9% year on year.
"We said already at the beginning of the year that we expected somewhat stronger organic growth in the first half and a little bit of a softer market in the second half, but that overall for 2023, we'd see a year of strong organic growth," Gustafson said. "That picture still stands."
For the full year, SKF repeated its outlook for "high single-digit" growth in organic sales.
($1 = 10.2262 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Niklas Pollard, editing by Anna Ringstrom and Jason Neely)
By Niklas Pollard
