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5/18/2026
Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Brockhaus Technologies AG investor update call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Marco Brockhaus.
Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Brockhaus Technologies earnings call for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2026. Before we begin, I would like to point out that the slides we are presenting will be published afterwards in the Investors Relations section of our website www.brockhaus-technologies.com. After our presentation, we will open the call to questions from your side. To be fair to everyone, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up. Thank you very much in advance. Before we present our results, I encourage all listeners to review the legal notice on page 2 of our presentation. which explains the understanding of forward-looking statements. Additionally, please refer to Note 6 and 7 of BayKHT's Consolidated Financial Statements for 2025 on page 84 onwards of our Annual Report 2025 or page 14 of Brockhaus Technologies Quarterly Statement Q1 2026 for a discussion on alternative performance measures as well as the reconciliation of non-GAAP figures. For information on risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, we kindly refer to the section on risks and opportunities in the management report 2025, starting on page 57 of our annual report 2025. Let's turn to page 3. Let me give you an update on the sale of our stake in bike leasing. The closing of the sale of the bike leasing stake remains subject to the required owner control procedure by Decathlon Pulse and is expected to take place in the first half of 2026. The German and Austrian antitrust authorities have already granted merger control approval for the transaction in January and February 2026 respectively. On February 26, 2026, Brockhaus Technologies Extraordinary General Meeting approved the transaction with a clear majority of more than 98% of the votes cast. Based on an illustrative calculation as of September 30, 2025, the pro rata purchase price attributable to Brockhaus Technologies for the shares sold would amount approximately to 240 million euro after preliminary transaction cost and taxes. The final purchase price will be determined at closing using a customary closing accounts mechanism, taking into account the cash, financial liabilities and networking capital of the bike using group at that time. The management board in close coordination with the supervisory board is currently reviewing a combination of measures to return a substantial portion of the expected net proceeds from the sale to shareholders. By definition, this would mean more than 50% of the net proceeds would be distributed to our shareholders, subject to applicable legal requirements. As all strategic options require careful assessment from both a legal and strategic perspective, we expect to present our initial considerations to our shareholders at our annual general meeting on August 19th, 2026, at the latest. On the next slide, we provide an overview of the key performance indicators by segment, highlighting what we accomplished in the first quarter of 2026. On the right-hand side, you can see the group KPIs in total. That means including discontinued and continuing operations. continued to show resilient growth, even in a challenging economic environment. In sum, Broca Technologies generated total revenue of 47.9 million Euro in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, corresponding to organic growth of 13% through the prior year period. The gross profit margin of 60% was above the comparative periods levels of 56 percent. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to 7.6 million Euro in the reporting period, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 16 percent. As mentioned before, for comparably purposes, the revenue and adjusted EBITDA figures presented here for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 are reported on a consolidated basis and include both the group's continuing and discontinuing operations. The continuing operations comprise the security technology segment, which is IHSE, and the central functions. Due to the disposal on December 23rd, 2025, the revenue as well as other income and expenses of the former HR benefit and mobility platform segment bike leasing are presented separately as discontinued operations in Brockhaus Technologies consolidated statement of profit or loss for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Accordingly, they are no longer included in the revenue and earnings figures of the consolidated statement of profit or loss in the Q1 2026 quarterly statement, but presented separately in one line as income from discontinued operations. On the left-hand side, you can see the KPIs for the continuing operations. In the security technologies segment, IHSE revenue in the reporting period amounted to 5.6 million Euro, down 14 compared to the prior year period. This was primarily due to generally cautious market and environment, which, compared to Q1 2025, resulted in significantly reduced investment activity, particularly in the Americas region, driven by the prolonged government shutdown, US tariff policy, and the war in the Middle East. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to €189,000 in the reporting period. corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 3%. Despite significantly lower revenue and gross profit, EBITDA was only slightly below the prior year period. This was mainly attributed to substantially lower fixed cost in personnel expenses and other operating expenses. In this regard, management had already initiated comprehensive measures to reduce fixed costs in Q3 2025. Moving two further columns to the right, expenses in central functions were in line compared to the first quarter of 2025. In the discontinued operation, the former HR benefit mobility platform segment by increasing revenue increased by 18% to 40%. €42.3 million in Q1 2026. This was primarily driven by improved results from the resale business as previously leased bicycles and e-bikes through the subsidiary Bike2Future, which was specially established for this purpose, as well as the dealer commission introduced in August 2025. These factors also had significantly positive impact on the gross profit margin, which amounted to 58% in Q1 2026. The number of new bikes brokered via the digital bike leasing platform in the first quarter of 2026 totaled to 21.5 thousand, largely in line with the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA of the segment amounted to 8.7 million euro, in the reporting period corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of almost 21%. The main drivers of the higher EBITDA margin were increased revenue and the significantly higher gross margin. Personal expenses and other operating expense, by contrast, increased to a much lesser extent. Turning to the next slide, let us look at IHSE revenue development by region. As mentioned before, overall IHG's revenue was below the previous year's level compared to the first quarter of 2025. In EMEA, revenue increased slightly by 4% year over year, driven by a growing defense business. APEC also showed growth momentum. In contrast, revenue in America has declined by 66% year over year, primarily due to the prolonged government shutdown, U.S. tariff policy, and the war in the Middle East. On the next page, I would like to run you briefly through our financial leverage structure. At the end of March, debt from loans amounted to 66 million euro. When subtracting cash of 27 million euro, we are left with net debt from loans of 39 million euro. Adding 18 million from our financial liabilities and deducting aid of net debt from lease refinancing, this brings us to 49 million euro in total net debt. If you compare that to the adjusted EBITDA for the last 12 months, this corresponds to a leverage ratio below 1, underlying the high balance sheet quality and resilience of our business. As our limit for this KPS is somewhat 2.5 times EBITDA, we consider our current financial position as more than conservative. This concludes the first part of our presentation, and I now hand over to Paul, who is in charge of our acquisition team. Paul?
Hi everyone from my side. Let me start with an update on IHSE's cost program. The program was initiated in the third quarter of last year and completed by year end. As expected, the related one-off costs still weighed on full-year figures last year. However, we are now starting to see the first structural savings coming through in Q1 of 2026. As you can see on the right-hand side, personnel expenses were down over year, and other operating expenses declined by 13% year over year. So the measures taken in the second half of last year are clearly beginning to show in the cost base now. At the same time, IHSE has further increased its focus on the core product suite and reduced exposure to non-core activities. Overall, this is an important step towards higher efficiency and the goal of bringing IHSE back to past profitability levels. On the next slide, let me now turn the topic to the management transformation at IHSE. The new two-headed management team is now fully in place, providing continuity for the next phase of the company's development. Frank Breitenfelder, who you can see here on the right-hand side, who already joined as managing director and CFO in April last year, is responsible for, let's say, everything internally, so finance, purchasing, legal and risk management, or compliance. And joining on May 1st of this year, Dr. Thomas Niesen, the guy you can see on the left hand side, has now completed the management team as managing director and CEO, overseeing sales, research and development, product management and project management. Thomas Niesen is an experienced manager and expert in industrial automation and network technology. who previously held global roles at Belden Inc., also a publicly listed company, including VP of R&D, as well as VP change management and VP product management in their automation solutions department. With this new management team and a strong pipeline of product innovations, IHSE is well positioned for 2026 and beyond in our view. And with that short update, handing back over to Marco for our own outlook.
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