Zebra CEO says freight costs have decreased, but component shortages are still a headwind

Zebra Technologies CEO Anders Gustafsson told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday that while the company has reduced freight costs, shortages of components such as semiconductor chips continue to cause problems.

“In the last two years we have seen some sort of migration on some of the issues. Now it started with the freight being the issue we were talking about, the costs we were facing that were mitigating. It was a bit better in Q1 than Q4 – our cost per kilo went down, not to pre-pandemic levels but definitely down,” Gustafsson said in an interview with Mad Money.

He added that the company forecasts a hold at these levels for the remainder of the year.

But “component shortages, semiconductor shortages, and we’re spending a lot more money now to secure long-lead parts and ship them to our facilities and then ship the finished goods to our customers,” the CEO said.

And although the company has had to pay for more expensive shipping options due to supply chain delays, Gustafsson says it expects an improvement later in the year.

“Basically, we rely on air freight instead of transporting it in a container by sea [freight]which would obviously be a lot cheaper, but as the year progresses we expect to get a better deal and be able to put more things out on the ocean,” he said.

Shares of Zebra rose 6.36% on Friday.

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