Rieter Holding AG

Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, also a warm welcome from my side. First, let me start by briefly giving you an overview of what happened in the first half of 2024. The cover slide is still the same like in March. It shows our air jet spinning machine J-70. We unveiled the J70 last year at the industry's largest fair, ITMA, in Milan. In June 2024, we then announced that we will install the world's first ever complete air jet spinning system with J70 technology at Guangxi Baisheng Textile Company in China. So, the future is no longer a plan, but it has become reality. This sale also reflects the strength of our product portfolio, which is designed around automation, digitization, and recycling. In the fiercely competitive markets in which we operate, this meets a key need of our customers. Customer interest at the ITM exhibition in Istanbul in June 2024 confirmed our innovation approach. RoboSpin, our automatic piecing robot, was the centerpiece of our exhibition and was sold for the first time on the Turkish market. In further confirmation of our innovation strategy, we just received a follow-up order for our winding machines from DIW, one of the biggest spinners in China. This contract follows on from a previous order in March 2024 for draw frames and combers. The cooperation is part of a broader agreement to develop state-of-the-art spinning operations and achieve unprecedented levels of quality, productivity, and efficiency. This takes me to my next point, our campus. We have just moved into our new headquarters, which is designed to further sharpen our customer centricity. Our campus is a powerful innovation hub that houses the industry's most advanced spin center. This is where we pool all our expertise so we can better cater to our customers' needs and accelerate their success. We invite you to tour our campus at our upcoming Capital Market Day in October 2024. You will be able to see for yourself the open collaboration and community zones and a state-of-the-art spin center. Before I dive into the presentation, let me also say a word about our next level performance program, which we launched one year ago. It was a tough year for our employees, but they carried out this program very professionally. It is thanks to their relentless implementation that we find ourselves in a good cost position, which allows us to perform sustainably also in low market scenarios like this year, 2024. We now move to slide number four, the key messages. I will focus on order intake, our performance program next level, the current market situation, our campus and order backlog. And I will also give a high level overview of sales. Oliver will then walk you through the details on the financials. This includes a deep dive into sales, EBIT, free cash flow, and net profit. But now let's have a look on order intake. In line with expectations, the order intake was 403.4 million Swiss francs in the first half of 2024, which was 24% higher than the previous year. The increase in demand for new machines in the business group machines and systems contributed to this positive development. Orders came mainly from China, from India, and from Turkey. At the same time, demand for consumables, wear and tear, and spare parts declined slightly due to the continued weak demand for textiles. A quick word on sales. Sales were 421 million Swiss francs. As expected, this was 44% lower than in the previous year. Oliver will walk you through the details, and I will say more about the next level shortly. Last one is order backlog. On June 30, 2024, we had an order backlog of around 640 million Swiss francs, which therefore remained more or less stable compared to the last year's final figures. Now let's turn to the market. Let's move to slide number six and have a look at the spinners margin and the cotton price development. The average spinners margin in 2023 was substantially lower than in the boom years of 2021 and 2022. It slowly started to improve in the first half of 2024. The average cotton price dropped in 2023 and again in the first half of 2024, which allows spinners to make profit with their mills. Many of our customers still had cotton in stock, which they had bought at high prices in 2022, so they made no profit with the yarn prices of 2023. Now, this situation has improved. Let's continue on slide number seven with the spinning mill utilization. We have seen overheated markets in the year 2021 and in the first half of 2022. At the end of 2022, China cooled down first and has started to recover in 2023. Capacity utilization in China remains unchanged. Over the last couple of months, the spinners in India have been seeing an improvement in their margin and volume generation. The rest of the world is still on a steady level. The demand for consumables, wear and tear, and spare parts will depend on spinning mill capacity utilization in the months ahead. According to our estimation, the steady increase will have a positive impact on volumes in the second half of 2024. Let's take a look at how the overall spinning market is developing on slide number eight. In the first column, you see the overall market and then where we stand as Reiter. Next, you see the market that covers the rest of the world, followed by India and China. China is clearly spearheading the market recovery. Africa and Asian countries are growing overall, while Europe, North and South America are stable. Turkey, meanwhile, is still in a recovery from the earthquakes. A standout in the rest of the world market is that Reuters' order from the Egyptian holding company is to be completed in 2024. In the declining market of Turkey, we are meeting a growing demand for RoboSpin, our automated piecing robot. In South America, we have received good new orders for new machines. Here, Reiter is ideally positioned to benefit from a recovery. Let's turn to India, one of the largest textile markets in the world that is also hyper-competitive. We are seeing an uptake in volumes for our customers, but they are still recording at a relatively low margin level. The good news is that the offer pipeline now is increasing for us. In addition, the strengthening of the local R&D setup will further underpin our sales efforts. In China, we are seeing a continued positive investment sentiment. and it remains the strongest market in the world. We are recording large orders for machines and systems and components. Here too, our local R&D setup is also an important support for our market position and helps us expand our market share. A couple of words on next level here on slide number 10. As mentioned, we are working intensively on the implementation of the next level performance program. The optimization of overhead structures and the adjustment of production capacities were successfully executed according to plan. Thanks to strict cost management, EBIT was positive despite the fact that sales were lower than forecasted in the low market scenario. The transfer of resources and responsibilities to India and China is on track, enabling these key markets to respond more effectively to customer needs and cycles in the machinery business. Realtor continues to pursue growth in the after sales and components business in order to achieve a more balanced mix between the business groups in the medium term. With this introduction, I close the first part of my presentation and now hand over to Oliver Stroylie for the financial.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome also from my side. I will now present to you the key elements of our financial performance in the first half year of 2024. I will start on slide 12 with the key messages. Overall, The first half of 2024 was characterized by a higher order intake, both compared to the prior year, as well as compared to the second half year of 2023, which confirmed our expectation of a market recovery in the course of 2024. In contrast, sales were remarkably lower compared to 2023, driven by a very low order intake in 2023, and amplified by a seasonally weaker first half year of 2024, especially in the machines and systems segment. Due to a better mix of after sales and component sales versus sales of machines and systems, we were able to expand the gross profit margin. Absolute gross profit amounted to 122.2 million Swiss francs, a decline of 33% versus 2023. Most remarkably, A significant overhead cost savings, largely driven by next-level measures, protected the positive EBIT of 8.9 million Swiss francs for the first half year of 2024. Net debt decreased to minus 243.9 million Swiss francs versus the prior year, on the back of a reduction in operating networking capital. Free cash flow was only slightly negative at minus 1.1 million Swiss francs. mainly driven by cash outflows due to the execution of next level measures let's continue with a deep dive on the key financial highlights on the following slides starting with order intake on page 13. order intake increased by 24 percent in the first half year of 2024 driven by more than 100 million Swiss francs higher orders for machines and systems compared to a very low base in 2023. Order intake for components and after sales was slightly lower due to still subdued demand for wear and tear and spare parts and overall significantly lower production volumes for new machines across the industry. Across the regions, we saw a continuously strong market activity in China followed by a certain recovery in India, while the rest of the world remained on low levels. This is in line with our expected sequence of market recovery, as explained earlier. Let's move on with sales on the following page. Sales for the first half year were 44% below the prior year at 421 million Swiss francs. the low market scenario in combination with a sequentially lower first half year was executed according to expectations. The drop in sales was most pronounced in the business group machines and systems by more than 60% year-on-year, while sales in the business group components came in 11% lower. In contrast, the business group after sales managed a growth of 7% against a difficult market environment. As a consequence, The growth in after sales helped to balance the high cyclicality of the new machines and systems business to some extent. Let's move to slide 15. The higher order intake combined with a low market sales scenario led to a stable order backlog. On June 30, 2024, we had an order backlog of around 640 million Swiss francs. This corresponds to a similar level at the end of 2023. Order cancellations in the first half year of 2024 remained on a normal level. However, we are still experiencing some shifts in deliveries from 2024 into the first half of 2025. The current order backlog level represents a normal level of visibility in terms of book-to-bill times of six to nine months after the extraordinarily high order backlog of 2021 and 2022. As can be seen on page 16, the EBIT margin of 2.1% against the lower than low sales scenario of 421 million Swiss francs in the first half year of 2024 is in line with our next level ambitions. Specifically, the realization of price increases in the machines and systems business in 2022 and 2023, which came into effect this year as well as a better mix of components and after-sales, led to a resilient gross profit margin. This resulted in a gross profit margin that was around 5 percentage points higher compared to the prior year. Significant cost decreases in R&D and SG&A as a result of Next Level concluded the solid operating performance in a very difficult overall environment. Let's dive into the details on EBIT on page 17. Compared to prior year EBIT, we lost 80.6 million Swiss francs gross contribution by the significantly lower sales level, most notably in business group machines and systems. A better mix, both in terms of margins and after sales and component volumes, contributed 21.5 million Swiss francs. This mitigates, to some extent, the underabsorption in our operations, driven by the significantly lower production volumes. Overhead costs for R&D and SG&A were 41.6 million Swiss francs lower than the prior year, confirming our next-level cost-saving targets. Overall, the team did a great job in executing the next-level measures, to some extent even faster than planned, and slightly overachieved in terms of cost discipline in the first half year of 2024. On the following page 18, I would like to present you a breakdown of our cash flow in the first semester of 2024. On first sight, free cash flow was slightly negative by 1.1 million Swiss francs. However, broken down into the individual elements, it becomes evident that our sales, operations, and supply chain departments improved cash generation via a reduction of operating networking capital in the first half of the year by around 35 million CHF. CapEx, in contrast, was spent restrictively, which led to an adjusted pre-cash flow of around 50 million CHF for illustration purposes. We had a significant one-off item in the first half year of 2024. As expected, which should be looked at in contrast to the solid operating performance. Specifically, we executed the expected cash out of restructuring measures amounting to 23.1 million, most notably in relation to the closure of the Ingolstadt site. On page 19, we see the summary of our most important balance sheet items compared to the financial closing of 2023. Networking capital overall increased versus the end of last year, driven by other networking capital, most notably the execution of next level measures. Net debt increased by 52.7 million Swiss francs due to the dividend cash out of 13.5 million Swiss francs and higher leasing liabilities in the amount of 35.9 million Swiss francs in relation to our new spin center and headquarters at the Riota campus. our equity ratio increased by 3.1 percentage points to 31.9% due to favorable non-operating currency impact in our balance sheet. I conclude with the workforce overview on page 20. As a consequence of painful but strict capacity adjustments and the next level execution due to the low market scenario, we reduced our overall workforce by almost one quarter compared to the prior year going forward we do not plan any more structural measures and expect to manage the flexing of our capacity with temporary personnel and other supply chain optimization initiatives that's it on the financials back to you thomas for the outlook thank you very much oliver

Well, the markets remained under pressure from the economic slowdown, the high inflation rates and noticeably dampened consumer sentiment. The first signs of recovery in financial year 2024 have emerged in the key markets of China and India. And the realtor expects demand to pick up further in the coming months. For the full year 2024, Reiter anticipates sales in the range of 900 million to 1 billion Swiss francs and a positive EBIT margin of 2 to 4%. And now we are open for questions from your side.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Questions on the phone are requested with only handset and eventually turn off the volume of the webcast. Webcast viewers may submit their questions or comments in writing via the relative field. Anyone with a question may press star and 1 at this time. Our first question comes from Christian Arnon from Stiefelschweiz. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions from my side. First, maybe on the specified guidance and here on the sales guidance. Before you talked about around 1 billion. Now you're talking sales of 900 to 1 billion. So what has changed since March that you are somewhat lowered the top line guidance?

Well, thank you for this question. So thank you for this question. I will start with that. It is correct. We had, you know, we made last end of beginning of this year when we made the guidance for the whole year, we said we will go into a low scenario around one billion. Now, we have seen that in the first half of 2024, achieving somewhere at 420 million, there is a certain risk, you know, to say what could be the volume for the second half. So if you try to calculate, we have for the second half 480 to 580 million. So 480 would mean 900, 580 would mean 1 billion. The reason behind is that we have one or two larger jobs where we know it will be very tight towards the end of the year whether we can already book them this year or they will fall into the beginning of next year it depends a little bit on the finalization of construction uh for those customers and so we said okay in the best case or in a good case we will be at the 1 billion mark and in the worst case we would be at the 900 million so I think it's fair to say we will be somewhere between, definitely not lower and definitely not higher. You also have to understand that if you have a lower backlog than in the past, then one job cannot be compensated easily by another job you might be able to advance. If you have a backlog of one and a half billion, so many things are in move. one single job does not depend so much because you still have possibilities to negotiate maybe with other customers to advance their program. So that's the reason why we said, hey, in all fairness, I think we have to have a range between 900 million and 1 billion.

Okay, very clear. And then on the EBIT margin side, that also, I mean, Can we think that if you are more landing on the 900 million, EBIT margin will be 2% and if you go more to the 1 billion, it will be rather 4%? Or is there any other components we would have to consider there?

I think this is a fair assumption. As you can see, we are suffering heavily from the volume drop. To some extent, you are able to counterbalance that, especially by cost measures on the structural cost side, as evidenced in the first half year. But EBIT margin profitability is quite sensitive on the volume front. Our baseline scenario, as just indicated by Thomas, assumes a sequentially stronger half year, which should also then be reflected in a sequentially higher EBIT margin in the second half year.

Okay. Thank you. Maybe on top of that, just one additional remark. So we were, you know, around the 2% with a volume of 420 million. Now what you can do, you can double that. Then you are landing at 840 and you would be, you know, just go normal. You would say, okay, then you are at 2%. So I think... There is some upside potential that the lower end is really a worst case scenario.

Okay, very clear. Second question would be on the follow-up orders from the IW. I mean, the first order you published back in March, you were talking about 62 million. Yesterday, you were not indicating the size. So, what Could we assume here? Is it similar? Is it larger? Is it smaller than the 62 you got back in March?

So we also announced it is the highest order we ever had in real to China. So it's a high double digit million amount. So it's bigger than the 62 million we were able to book yesterday. in March and this amount will be booked in the second half of this year. To be clear, this is not included in our order intake figures of the first half of the year. Execution of the first order is partially in 24 and then mainly in 25 and a little bit maybe in 26. Execution of the second order is half in 25 and half in 26. So this First order has not really an impact on our sales volumes in 2024. Okay.

My last question would be on the margin development, EBIT margin development of the different division. I was positively surprised by the sale, by the margin of after sales being clearly above 20%, if I calculated correctly. And I was negatively surprised by components being rather low, low single digit margin. Are these somehow new normal levels? Or yeah, can you comment on that? Thank you.

Yeah, happy to take that question. First and after sales, as you understand, this is a volume business. And since we managed to slightly grow, While being very disciplined on the cost side, we had a certain tailwind obviously on the margin. I would expect that if we can continue on the volume side, that this margin level should be more or less stable. Then on component side, I think it's important to point out that the third party volume was down by 12% as indicated. However, the other part of the business serves our internal customers, so the in-house business. And this was down significantly, much more significant than the third-party business, whereas the cost base obviously needs to serve both. So we suffered quite a lot on the component side. So if we will be able to increase, especially machines and systems volumes again, this business is expected to pick up as well. So I would expect that the margin on the component side is quite low, and this is not to be assumed as a status quo going forward.

So we should see double-digit margins again from, let's say, 25 onwards.

We do not provide a guidance on segment level, but we would expect a normalization of those margins again if volumes are to recover.

Thank you very much.

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one.

So far, there are no more questions from the phone, sir.

Okay. Thank you very much, Sandra. Now, we do have a question from Cescabe Yannick Reeves. Two questions. The first one is, can we expect a similar development in the individual divisions in the second half of the year as in the first half, also in terms of margins?

Well, I think we have now pointed out, you know, a lot is driven by volume. Now, if you take our guidance for the total year volume, So starting with 420 million in the first half year, the second half year would be between 480 and 580 million. Why is that so important? Because volume is driving absorption of our capacities in the manufacturing sites. So even in a lower end, you can expect that we should be able to have more absorption of our capacities. So this should fuel better our gross margin as we will stay, you know, even on a normalized level, very competitive on our overhead cost. We are expecting that our overall margin is improving in the second half compared to the first half. I mentioned before, if all these guidance of top line would not happen and we would be on the same level as we are today, then we would be in the worst case scenario at somehow 2%. But this is not our planning assumption. Our planning assumption is that the sales volumes are higher in the second half than in the first half, and this will drive more absolute gross contribution or gross margin with a more or less stable, maybe slightly higher overhead costs, we should have an improvement of our EBIT margins. And this will be driven by new machines and systems and also partially by the component business. I think in the after sales business, we are already on a very high level and I do not expect that we have any upside there. The improvement will come from new machines and systems and from components.

The second question is, do you expect an improvement in order intake in the second half of the year compared to the first half?

Well, I mean, let's be honest. I somehow got used to in the first two weeks to get every two weeks a big order. So it was a minimum a good start, I could say. So I would have no problem if this continues like that. I think the trend we have already announced at the last year's total year call, you know, in March, we said that we expect first China to further improve. We also have, besides the market, we do have some... possibilities on our side because we had, let's say, a lower market share in China than in the past. We are working on that. Obviously, we see that. So I think China will continue to be strong. Then we see that in India, you know, there is more and more activity coming up. And of course, we are now in, we see or we are facing that our offer pipeline, you know, is dramatically increasing. So this gives us also some confidence that now the Indian market is starting to recover. And then I know, of course, in the rest of the world, we had some good hits in some specific markets, and we do have now also quite a good offer pipeline. So yes, order intake should increase compared to the first half of the year and should also allow us that we have a reasonable start into the year 2025. I'm not expecting that 2025 will be, you know, totally fantastic. It might be a slight improvement to this year, but I do not see at the moment that it will be as rapidly as it has been in the past in a recovery. So it goes market by market. China is strong. India is becoming stronger.

and now we see also the rest of the world starting to pick up and this should be visible in our order intake okay there is another question from andreas maya finance and so maybe i translate so our r d expenses are

substantially lower than in the past and if this is a risk for the future where you made the savings how did you do that you know according to what selection selection criterias and so it's very simple you can do everything or you can do the right thing If you do everything, you spend a lot of money for many, many things, and it's difficult to manage that, you know, this whole bunch of initiatives is executed on time, on cost, on quality, and on deliverables. And so in the executive committee, we have done a screening of our portfolio of development activities and said, which are the ones which really make a difference? And which are the ones which are somehow nice to have and are also maybe more driven by the engineers than by the market. So we made a market assessment about megatrends and what customers really want from us on one side. And on the other side, where do we see that we have maybe low market shares at the moment and where can we gain more market share because we have not been so strong in the past. So we had several selection criteria and then we made like a forced ranking. And the one or the other project where we have spent quite substantially money in the past, we have stopped. And yes, what we have spent in the past was then sunk cost. Sometimes you have the tendency that is, ah, we have already spent so much money, you know, we should try to finalize the program and the project, and you add and add and add and add resources, but nobody really can tell you what is now really the advantage for customers. So this selection led us then to a much tougher management of development activities. And then, of course, we saw that we have too much, too many resources. And in all fairness, if you look on the cost, you know, we have for R&D in this first half of the year, 25.3 million. If you compare that with the sales volume of 420 million, you still end somewhere at six, seven percent R&D cost. And I have to say, You know, comparing that with many other companies in many other industries, in the machinery industry, I believe nobody can say that we are somehow, you know, destroying the future. It's still a lot of money we are spending, and we have to make sure that even this huge amount of money is invested well into the right projects. And one of these projects, coming back to my introduction, was the new airjet machine, the J-17. There we said, okay, we have even added more resources because we see this is a market where there is at the moment, in fact, almost a monopolist. And so we would like to get some share of that market segment. And there we see big chances. So let's invest more where you also have a certain payback. And let's not waste money where you don't see a payback.

Thank you. There are no more questions on the webcast, but we do have an additional question from Christian Arnold from Schiessler Schweiz on the phone. So Sandra, again back to you, please.

Mr. Arnold, you may proceed with your question. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. In your presentation, you said that you see some shift from order delivery from 24 to the first half of 25. Can you specify that a little bit? So in which markets you see some certain postponements?

This is actually reflected in our specified guidance. So while we were sitting previously at around 1 billion and now we are saying 900 million to 1 billion. you may expect, you know, the magnitude of the adjustment is mainly related to those shifts. And in terms of markets, I'd like to hand over to Thomas, you know, for a bit more call.

So the markets we see is mainly in the rest of the world because, you know, in the rest of the world, the consumption of the, or let's say the textile industry is still somehow weak. The textile demand is still somehow weak, so customers who have planned and also agreed certain investments into new spinning mills or new capacities, they are sometimes now saying, well, can we not postpone by a couple of months? We are uncertain about the future. I think at the moment, it's not very unusual. Also in the past, we have seen that. But when you have a lower total volume and you have a lower order backlog, you know, one project which is requested to be shifted has a much, much higher impact on your top line than if you have a backlog of one and a half or two billion. So the baseline is much smaller. So the impact of one project to be shifted is then therefore a little bit higher. So it's mainly in the rest of the world. We don't see that in China. We don't see that really in India. It's more in some Western markets.

Okay, thank you very much. And then maybe a little bit a longer view. I mean, looking at the US, what's going on there, and maybe most likely Mr. Trump will be the next president, and he's already talking about... New taxes, so 10% on all imports, 60% of imports out of China. Any first thought on that? Could that harm Reuters' business? Could that somehow actually boost Reuters' business? How do you see that? Thank you.

Well, a little bit like in politics, you know, sometimes it's looking to the crystal ball. You cannot always exactly estimate impact of certain political behavior. And we are also not very political as a company. But I think there are opportunities and, of course, there are also risks. In all reality, there's almost no export of yarn from China to the US. So the Chinese spinning mills in China are mainly supplying or producing yarn for the domestic demand and for some Asian companies. Export to the US is coming from middle and Latin America. It's coming also from the U.S. itself, and it's coming from some Asian countries, which are not, let's say, in any ban or potential Trump tariff. Now, even if this would happen, we have a strong organization in the U.S. We have quite a good presence, I have to say. We have very long-term relationships with the major spinners, There are mainly two, two big ones in the US where we have a very close relationship and they are super, super happy with our, also with our after sales business, you know, the way how we serve them, the way how we make sure that they are competitive. It is in fact our major market, or it was our major market for introduction of RoboSpins or automation. We have helped those customers a lot to stay competitive. Now the American customers also have done some nearshoring to middle America where we have a super, super strong position. You have seen that we said that in this middle America, Latin America, we were able to get the one or the other nice new order. And this also helps us. So I think overall, with our very global presence we have, Uh, we are very well positioned for any type of move from a political stage. So, uh, I think also with our supply chain footprint, we have, you know, being a producing in, uh, in Europe, Germany, Czech, and some components in Switzerland producing also in India and producing in China. We are, we have a very good footprint. you know, to have local for local production. And we will further go into that direction that we will mainly cover locally local needs. So I'm not scared about any political development. Thank you very much.

There are no more questions.

Thank you, Thomas, for the closing words.

Good. So, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, thank you very much for attending this call and showing interest in our company. I'm convinced that we were able to demonstrate to you that Realtor is now on the path of success and that we are delivering according to our commitments. With this, I would like to close this call. Once again, thank you for your interest. I wish you all Happy vacations and a little bit more sunshine than in the last couple of weeks. And then I say goodbye.