Anders Gustafsson, CEO of Zebra Technologies, told CNBC’s Jim Kramer Friday that while the company has seen shipping costs drop, shortages of components such as semiconductor chips are still causing problems.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve had a bit of a carryover of some issues. Now, it started with the shipping being the issue we talked about, and the cost we incurred, which was moderate. It was a little bit better,” Gustafson said in an interview with Mad Money. : In the first quarter than it was in the fourth quarter — our cost per kilogram was going down, not to what it was before the pandemic but definitely down.”
He added that the company expects to freeze these levels for the rest of the year.
However, the CEO said, “Component shortages, semiconductor shortages, and now we’re spending a lot of money securing parts that are time-consuming and having to speed them up to our facilities and then speed up the final goods for our customers.”
And although the company has had to pay for more expensive shipping options as a result of supply chain delays, it expects to see an improvement later in the year, according to Gustafsson.
“We basically put everything on air freight instead of putting it in a container on the ocean [freight]Which is obviously going to be a lot cheaper, but as the year goes on, we expect we’ll have better supplies and we’ll be able to put more stuff in the ocean.”
Shares of Zebra rose 6.36 percent on Friday.
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