2/27/2025

speaker
Suzanne Thoma
Chief Executive Officer

Welcome to our annual results presentation. Welcome to everybody here in the room. Welcome also to the participants who are here virtually. We are very pleased to provide you a very good result for 2024. This result in 2024 already mirrors the effect of the implementation of the strategy 2028. It also mirrors the industries that we are working for. We call these industries essential industries. Why are they essential? They are essential because they cater to the basic needs of a growing population. Worldwide, our population is growing and we have, thankfully, more and more people moving into the middle classes. These people need more energy, They need more and cleaner water. They need access to base chemicals and also to green minerals. That is what we are doing. We are making these industries better, more efficient and cleaner. And with that, we bridge the needs of prosperity with the needs of a sustainable society. And these essential industries, they are growing structurally. And this helps us in our result in 2024, in 2023, and it will also help us in 2025. essential industry bridging prosperity and the need to reduce the ecological footprint. These are industries that are growing continuously and they are a building block of Sulz's resistance. We have several building blocks and one of the building blocks is that we are in these structurally growing markets. So what are we reporting on? Very quickly, our CFO, Thomas Tickler, is going to speak about that in more depth. We are reporting on double-digit growth in sales, double-digit growth in order intake, a good step forward in our profitability, and we are also reporting on a company that is financially very solid and keeps becoming stronger also financially. The results for sales. We have had 3.5 billion sales in 2024. That is a significant growth over last year, as said, double digit, as was the order intake. Of course, we are reporting in Swiss francs. And so we were still a little bit hampered by the increasing value of the Swiss franc, less than in 2023. There, the Swiss franc increased by 8%. This time it was 3%. Had the Swiss francs remained stable, we would almost have touched the 4 billion order intake. EBITDA, 436 million. Strong improvement in profitability. Now, if you look back at Sulzer over the last two years, what is it that we did? Over two years, we grew 25%. But we only have 5%. more employees. We grew 25%, but we didn't open a new plant. We are producing within our existing production facilities. And as a result, of course, profitability goes up. And what also goes up, a very important parameter for us, is the return on capital employed. You will hear more about that later. If we look at cash flow, yes, we had a little bit some growing pains in the operating net cash flow. Some more receivables. We had strong sales in the fourth quarter. Then that led to a lot of receivables that had only been paid in January and February. And, of course, we're also paying more taxes, given the fact that we have a higher profit. Here you see the relative improvements, 10%. almost 11%, two times EBITDA, almost 25% up, 200 basis point in return of capital employed, and operating cash flow slightly lower. If you look at Sulzer, the last 10 years, and on our return on capital employed, we always show this 10 years back, you do see that we are in the process of really achieving a step change in our profitability or in our return on capital employed. This time, this year, 2024, 19.7%. That is coming close to a very nice profitability, but of course we aren't there. We haven't met our long-term targets at all. The company is in good shape. The company continues to improve. And as a result, of course, our shareholders should participate. And we are going to propose to the General Assembly that the dividend payments should be up quite quickly. let's say substantially, up from 3.75 Swiss francs per share to 4.25 Swiss francs per share. With this, we are absolutely within our dividend policy, and it reflects the good situation in which Solter finds itself. This in a nutshell, I'll speak later a little bit more about what is going on in Sulzer behind the scenes, but now let's first dive into the figures. Thank you.

speaker
Thomas Tickler
Chief Financial Officer

Susan, and good morning also from my side. Let's now dig a bit into the numbers of 2024 and explain a bit with more color and detail what happened in 2024 compared to 2023. So as already addressed by Susan, when you look at our order intake and sales, you see that we are in the second year in a row double digit. And when we talk about this, I would like to give you first a color what happened in Q4, because this is coming a bit too short in our press release when we talk about the financial year in total. So in Q4, when you compare Q4 2024 to Q4 2023, we had for the Sulzer Group an order intake increase of 16.3% on a Q4 to Q4 basis. And this was mainly driven by flow and services. In flow, we had an increase of 29%. So we had, especially in energy, a very strong H2O. In services, we had an increase in Q4 of 11.3%, so also a very strong Q4 2024. In chemtech, we grew 2.3%, a bit less than in the other divisions. But this is mainly caused by many projects which were delayed into H1 2025. And this is what we also address when you read in our guidance that as higher we get on the absolute levels, And as more bigger projects we get, it's more difficult for us. It is to really predict the numbers on a quarterly basis because of the nature of the project business. And we cannot really influence when we then have to book the orders. The overall growth, as you see, is intact. We don't see in Q4 for the group any signs of a slowdown. Now let me come to the order intake overall for the group. When you look at this 10.8% order intake growth, it is very important that I address here the order intake margin. Our order intake margin increased in 2024 by 110 basis points. So what does it mean? Just for a comparison, in the two years before, in 23 and 22, we had an increase of our order intake gross margin of 40 basis points only each year. So you see that the order intake we are not getting in for every price. It is really visible in the market that we have a good market position in all the essential markets for SOLSER, in all the industries where we do critical applications, And also our brand name Sulzer comes more and more into place where we have a position where we can ask for a certain pricing. And therefore, this is a very good order intake, the 10.8% plus, because we have increased our order intake margin almost three times to what we have increased in the two last years before. When we talk about sales, I will then go a bit deeper into the sales performance of the individual divisions. You see, we have growth in all the divisions. We have growth between 9 and 12 percent. Susan already addressed it when we talk about our FX impact this year. or for the year 2024, we had more or less 3% FX impact, still negative FX impact. However, when you compare with the year before, we had 8% FX impact. So in absolute numbers, roundabout, we have between 110 and 120 million FX impact negatively on order intake and on sales. One year ago, we had between 250 and 280 million FX impact on order intake and on sales. Let's come... to the profitability. You see that the profitability in 2024 went up by 130 basis points. The year before, the profitability went up by 110 basis points. So that you see the increase also of our operational profit was almost 25%. is really proving and showing that we have a good market momentum, yes, agreed, but also that our operational excellence initiatives, which we have started, that they are now getting executed and implemented. In addition, the better gross margins, which I explained to you already on the first page, which is also reflected in the higher order intake margins. The growth in profitability is led overall in 2024 by Flow and Chemtech. And you will then be surprised. I know that you all know what we have announced this morning. But for me, it was the biggest surprise when you see the profitability increase in Chemtech of 180 basis points. Now, let me talk about our return on capital employed. For Capital Employed, it was very difficult for me how to phrase this because we have 200 basis points increase in 2024 compared to 2023. So it looks like a lot. But what you have to understand, in the two years before, we had each year an increase of return on capital employed of 300 basis points each year. So when you look back three years, you have 300 plus 300 plus 200. So this gives eight percentage points more on our return on capital employed over the last three years. This is, I think, quite impressive when you see the numbers reflected in our capital employed. Now let me talk about flow. In flow, we have really a growth momentum when it comes to our energy and infrastructure business, as I already told you. But we have also a good momentum in our water and industry BU. The numbers for 2024 are the following. In energy, we had almost 15% plus, so 14.7% plus on energy and infrastructure when I talk about orders. And in our water and industry view, we have a plus of 10.6%. And this is the first bullet point. So you see on the right side, we are growing in flow, On both sides, in both areas, in industry and water, as well as in energy, with double digit. And this is quite impressive. Especially when you see in order intake, this year we have closed with 12.3%. Last year, the order intake growth in flow was 11.3%. So you see that we are on a very high level, sustainably growing in flow. Profitability, when we talk about profitability, you see again, flow is up by 150 basis points profitability. When I was last year here, not at this location, but when I did this conference, I reported to you that the year before, they were 140 basis points better. So just in the last two years, almost 300 basis points better profitability in our flow business. When we talk about sales, you see that the sales, 9.4%. This is a very good sales after 10.9% sales in the prior year. We have here solid backlog execution, especially from the energy side. A higher book to build. I told you that especially in energy, we had a very good H2. And also on the Vivo side, water and industry side, we had in sales a very strong Q4 performance. Now let me come to services. Services, it's I called it the last time, the surprise for all of us because services was growing last year, 19.8%, so almost 20%. And then we were very cautious with our forecast for 2024. And you see in 2024, again in order intake, after 20% the year before, they grew again 12.5%. And when we talk about this order intake, and I discussed in the last MISs with our business, so is there a slowdown visible? Do we see anything? So it's still really, I call it the machine, is still going on, especially in the U.S. We closed last year. in the Americas with a plus of almost 16% compared to the year before, and in APAC, so Asia Pacific, with 14% more. When I talk to the people now, they don't see a slowdown in this market. It's really on this high level further growing. Talking about sales, Sales, you see 12.3%, also to bring this in relation, after 14.5% sales growth the year before. We have here in sales the same suspects. So this is really led by the Americas and also supported by Europe, Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. Now I come to a point which I discussed with most of you a couple of times during the year, and now I present you the numbers. I always told you that in services, don't expect this year a too high increase in the profitability because services is investing this year a lot in the future growth, in excellence. And this has happened, you see it when you talk here about operational profitability, you see only 20 basis points increase in the operational profitability. But when we talk about only, you also have to see the year before they increased by 60 basis points and they also have our highest profitability when we talk about the three divisions. So for what did they spend the money? What did they do? Why is the profitability impacted by this so-called one-offs for operational excellence? I give you some examples. Since we are really growing more than, I'll say, double digit in America's in turbo services, we have invested in more capacity in land, in workshops in Houston, and this cost us money. We have opened for services new service centers, and I just read it out, the list in Thailand, India, Malaysia, Kuwait, Sweden, Denmark. So we are really expanding our footprint to come closer to the customer. And on the other hand side, we have realized In the UK, we have too many service centers, too many small service centers, which makes no sense from an operational excellence perspective. And there in the UK, we have closed some service centers. So you see here services is really preparing for higher profitability. This year, 2025, they have initiated a lot of measures which should be then visible in the performance of 2025. Then let's come to Chemtech. When we talk about Chemtech, Chemtech is, when you compare it, order intake year on year, our slowest growing division was 5.4%. But let me say something to the 5.4%. The 5.4% is with knowing that Chemtech has a very high dependency on the Chinese market. And Chinese market around about 60, 65% for the whole division. And when you look that the Chinese market went down by around about 20, 25% in our segment, you see that the plus 5.4% in order intake is a quite good result. We have taken action and measures during the year 2024, where we then also expanded with Chemtech more to the Americas and to the Middle East in carbon capture area and other areas. And this helped us a lot by the end of this year to compensate this and also land with Chemtech on a plus 5.4% order intake number. When we talk about order intake, I think this is also very interesting for you to reflect this today. I told you the 5.4%. This is also impacted by China, but nevertheless a positive growth. So when you look for chemtech the last three years, you see 2024 5.4%, the year before they had an order intake growth of 10.5% and the year before of 22.5%. So please also see this here a bit in relation what would have happened if we wouldn't have seen the slowdown in these Chinese markets. When we come to sales, You see on the sales side, double digit again, now 10.9%. The year before, we were 15.5% on the sales growth. And on the sales growth, it's really the third year in a row where Chemtech grows double digit. So it's not only the second, it's the third year. They grew 10.9% in 2024. 15.5 the year before and 14.8 the year before the last year. So the third year double digit in sales. But now you see what I addressed before, the profitability increase. Look at Chemtech. Chemtech has the highest profitability increase with 180 basis points between all our divisions. And Chemtech has done a lot when it comes to supply chain management. They have bundled their operations in Asia to optimize procurement. They have also done excellence in their factories. And they also benefit a bit from a mixed impact. What do I mean with mixed impact? I mean they have more turnaround services and upstream applications, which has normally a higher margin than the downstream business. And therefore, by this mixed change, they also achieved higher gross margins and then, in the end, much higher profitabilities. Yeah, based on this, what I explained to you, I think it's more or less the logic, the outcome that we have reached new highs when it comes to EBIT and net income. You see our EBIT is increasing by almost 22% and the net income 20%. Why a bit less? Because we have, when you calculate net income, tax expenses, as already addressed also by Susan, when you have more profits, you pay higher taxes. And we had also profits in countries like in the U.S. where you pay higher taxes than here in Switzerland, and therefore the tax expenses, they have basically eaten up a bit more from the net income than in the past years. Cash flow, let me first read the headline, the second part. For me, it is in line with expectations. When I stood here one year ago, I gave you around 250, 270, what I have expected one year ago. So when we go into this, and maybe you will ask yourself, what is this box here on top? Why we have done this? Let me shortly explain to you. We achieved 235 million free cash flow, which is recorded under IFRS. But unfortunately, we had a big down payment from a customer in the Middle East in our agent's bank account and we were not able on the 31st of December talking to the customer in the afternoon so that we get this money transferred to our bank account. So it was a question in the end of two or three hours. And this is why I allow to tell you that actually we would have had a 30 million higher free cash flow if this money would have arrived. Under IFRS, it's clear we cannot show this, but just that you know why I'm explaining this to you. When we talk about why is the free cash flow a bit lower than last year, there are, in my eyes, three main reasons for this. The first one, you see it, it's CapEx. So we always said we are investing in our excellence and growth initiatives and this costs money. And the money is refinanced from the running results. So this means we had 2024, a higher capex of around about 28 million. And this higher capex for excellence and growth had to be refinanced out of our cash flow, of our operating cash flow. And therefore, the free cash flow is alone by this 30 million on a like-by-like comparison, lower than the cash flow last year where we had lower capex investments. Then, because of the increase which we have in our EBIT and in our profits, we have roundabout 30 million more payments for taxes. So in 2024, when you compare to 2023, you have alone two positions, around about $60 million, $30 million for Texas, $30 million for CapEx, which you haven't had in 2023. And this alone has an impact of $60 million. What we additionally had is an impact on our networking capital. And when you look at networking capital, I ask you first to really reflect, why is networking capital higher? There are mainly two reasons. One, already addressed by Susan, and I explain a bit more detailed, our accounts receivables. And the other one is our much higher backlog. When we had last year, Basically, 2023 year end, we had a backlog of roundabout 1.9 billion. 1.9 billion. The 2024 year end, we had a backlog of 2.3 billion. So we have a 350 million higher backlog than the year before. And because of this, yes, you need a bit more inventory. Yes, you need a bit more WIP. You need a bit more on the networking capital side. I think this is understood by all of you. What happened? Talking now about accounts receivables. Because you see it in our balance sheet. You see that when we talk about accounts receivables, we have round about 680 million accounts receivables in total. And out of the 680 million receivables, and I have here the number 490, so almost 500 million are receivables which are not yet due. So what happened when we had really a good run on the sales side in Q4, we basically made a lot of sales. This gave us also the upside on the sales side. But unfortunately, all these invoices, they are paid in January, February, March of this year. But since we have the higher accounts receivables and accounts receivables is part of the networking capital, the net working capital increased because of this not yet due receivables. That's it basically to the free cash flow. Let me come to our balance sheet. Balance sheet, our net debt EBITDA ratio, you see it, has improved and is further down to 1.0%. There are two reasons. Our EBITDA has increased, this is the first one, by 20%. Just that you have the numbers in mind. It's increased from 440 roundabout to 503. So this is 65 million more. So we have a higher EBITDA. And on the other hand side, our net debt has decreased. And you see that our net debt has decreased when you see the net debt 2023 and 2024 by 28, around about 30 million. And then it's logic that then also the net debt EBITDA ratio has become a better one. It's down to 1.0%. Our net, sorry, our gross debt or our debt, when you see here, has not changed because we have refinanced last year a bond on the Swiss capital markets, and therefore you see our debt is more or less the same. First bullet point I want to address now in the end, here also you see Our debt levels remain the same. I explained to you bond refinance, so nothing done here. But we have an increase in our capex. We have an increase of 30 million plus alone for excellence and growth. And in total, I think almost 40 million more, which we have invested in P&E, in property, plant and equipment. So now coming to the dividend and the reflection of the good results over the last years. You see, especially when you look at the performance over the last three years, that the curve is really getting a bit more stiffer than it was before. And this allows us now to suggest then for the general assembly, a dividend increase by 50 Rappen. and not maybe as some of you have expected by only 25. With the 50 rub dividend increase we have in our calculation, which is based on our dividend policy, and our dividend policy says dividend payment should be between 40 and 70% of core net income. So with this dividend proposal of 4.25 or 50 rub more, You see here, and this is the last bullet point, we are close to the lower limit of our dividend payout ratio with 46.7%. So with this, I would like to give back. Susan, I hope that you have seen that our number really has sustainedly improved over the last two years. And with this, I hand back to you, Susan.

speaker
Suzanne Thoma
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, Thomas. Always nice to see these figures. like evolving the way they do. Now let's take a little bit deeper look into what is really happening in the company that is then reflected in the development of our figures. So what are the industries that we are serving? I spoke about the essential industries. So what does it mean, the essential industries? You can summarize it with the energy industry, both energy security of supply in energy and energy transition. Of course, this market is structurally growing. We need more energy. We need more energy because population is growing and because people want to live better. Natural resources, speak about water, same, more water, cleaner water, better water around the globe. and also natural resources like green minerals. With the digitalization that is going on worldwide, we need more of it, but we also need it better because we need to reduce the environmental impact on our planet. And then the process industries, the chemical industry, fundamental to prosperity and to well-being. What are the big process industries? They are ammonia, They are plastics. They are steel and cement. And these industries are also at the root of about 15 to 20 percent of the worldwide CO2 production. So very important to provide and at the same time to make it cleaner. So why are we so sure that our industries are growing? Well, because we look at what is happening in the world. But we're not the only one who say that our industries are growing. You see here from 2024, from Standard & Poor's prognosis going till 2035 about investments in the key industries in which Sulzer works. is active. Water, chemicals, metals and of course energy and power. These industries are not exploding. They are growing step by step and structurally which is also very good for a company like Sulzer because we can grow along with them. Keep that chart in mind. Our strategy is is in a way a very simple strategy. It doesn't mean that the implementation is simple. But we do predominantly two things. We grow organically in our markets, and we have tailwinds from our markets that are growing as well. And at the same time, we are looking inwards, and making ourselves better, more efficient, reducing complexity and increasing the quality of what we are doing every day. Our vision for Soltsu is that we are very strong, a top industrial company, industrial and engineering company. And we definitely are not there yet, but we are on the way to do that. Organic growth, And operational excellence along the value chain is, of course, linked with each other. These are not two separate elements. So if we are really good in, for example, commercial excellence, the way we set our prices and how we deal with our customers, it supports our growth. And our growth helps us, of course, to become even more efficient in our operations. It has been very good to communicate the strategy to our people around the world. They can identify with it. And everyone that is our goal knows how he or she can contribute to these goals. What is it doing? What is it that we do in these industries? Well, we help our customers. to produce more with less, to increase their quality and to reduce their emissions. We remember some of our industries are these heavy emission industries. We need them for our well-being around the world, but still we also need to reduce the emissions, the CO2 footprint. We are also working very strongly on improving our customer-facing functions. Now, we are an engineering company. We're an industry company. So sometimes these customers for us are a little bit difficult. What do they want? We have to change our mindset and become very customer-centric is the word that is often used. Putting the customer first. at the center of what we are doing and not only in the business, but also in our group functions, which leads me to an important point. Thomas has been working heavily on that is to make our overhead functions just better, more efficient, increase the quality and reduce the time and money that we need for these functions. I also would like to mention here that Thomas has also said something in the context of Chemtech regarding a supply chain. It's not only in Chemtech that we have greatly improved supply chain. We have also improved it in the other divisions and also in the function. And if you look at our results... You see that we had to invest quite a bit in excellence, but all the additional costs that we have had, costs, not investment, all the additional costs that we have had in 2024 were overcompensated by the savings. that we could achieve. So we do not have to stand in front of you and say we went into a full operational excellence exercise and that is why our result is not so good. In the contrary, we ran it in a way that it could immediately improve, not immediately, but could within the year already make a major contribution. I also would like to mention IT here. We have a very complex IT system grown over The years and the decades, this is also something we are working on just to make it leaner and to make it better. So it serves both our customers better, but also our colleagues around the globe. Thomas had quickly mentioned, this is a small side, just we are not only saving. And we are not only investing for operational excellence. We are also investing in expanding our business, not in the large production capacity, because we still definitely have enough, but in the quality of our business. With three very small acquisitions, two in the service area, one in the water area, then we have expanded business. service centers and test centers that we already have, and we have invested in three innovation and test centers. that I would like to show you here. I like these pictures. It shows you a little bit what our world is. We have an innovation and technology hub in Singapore. What are we doing there? We are piloting for our customers their processes. For example, for the recycling of battery electrolytes, we ran... a big pilot test to give the customer exactly the right process parameters and also the right equipment for their specific need. And it's important to do that as close as possible to the customer. We also have a test center in Algeville. Then we expanded the test center in Mexico. Selling pumps means selling good pumps parameters. And to have testing close to the customer reduces our lead time and makes us more reliable, at least in the perception of a customer, because it's much easier for the customer to fly to Mexico to see our test center than to go, for example, to the UK. And the third one that is an investment in Europe, in the heart of the chemical industry of Europe, What we are doing there is for the maintenance of the existing infrastructure of our customers. We have a rapid response center. So if a column is not working, we can go and provide a new one as fast as possible or repair one. And I like this picture because you see the dimensions of what we are doing. That is a column internal, and you see the people behind it. So these are really... huge installations. I would like to give you a little bit more of a flare, not very long, don't worry, about what it is that we are doing. I'm speaking about making the process industry better and more efficient and reducing our planet's ecological footprint. One example is an order that we received from the Middle East for bioplastic plants, a plant producing plastics out of natural raw material. It is supposed to become the biggest bio-based plastic plant. the biggest bioplastic installation in the Middle East. It runs with our technology, our licenses, and it runs with our installation. It is in two steps. And with the second step together, it will have a capacity of 160,000 tons per year. This, of course, is a drawing with artificial intelligence, but this is how it will look. Typical way of doing more and better. Another important business that was not such a huge business, but it leads the way in what is going to happen slowly, probably, over the years. But that is... not only to capture CO2, but also to use CO2, particularly the sea out of the CO2. And our customer in Japan is running not a pilot plant, it's bigger than that, it's a demonstration plant, and came to Sulzer for our carbon capture technology. And we could design, engineer exactly the right configuration for them and improve the capacity by 20%. Which also means improving the energy efficiency of this very energy intensive process by 20%. You have to capture the CO2. And then you have to regain it. You capture it with a solvent. Then it's in the solvent. Then you have to get it out of the solvent. That is quite a process. And speaking about solvent, it's, of course, very important that the solvent stays in the cycle and doesn't go out into the environment. And solar technology is very good in containing the solvents. This is a very innovative company, and they want to do large-scale polyurethane. That's one of the big chemicals that we use. All of us, whether we know it or not, are using polyurethane, and they want to start with the C out of the CO2. Another interesting... Project that we have had and that is now running, it has to do with making infrastructure better in the area of energy. That is our customer in Indonesia. Of course, Indonesia can do a lot of geothermal energy. That is due to the geological situation like in Iceland. And it is our responsibility to keep their energy. How many plants? There are 93 customer units running. And these 93 customer units, they represent about 330 megawatt. That is pretty much the performance of Mühleberg, to give you a little feeling for the size. We were particularly proud because we already had a three-year contract with them, and now they extended it for five years. The last example that I would like to mention again, we go back to the chemical industry. Here we are speaking about a plant that is producing ammonia, a very important chemical. We use it for fertilizers, but for many other things. Now, we are not in the chemical process here, but we are doing something else that is very important. We are providing the water. Of course, pumping the water, it is salt water, so it's very abrasive. These pumps have to run for a very long time. They have to have very high quality. And we combine it with another offer of Sulzer, and that is to clean this water. So it can be used in the plant as clean process water. This is a very good example of making, let me call it, heavy-duty industry that we all need. to make it better and to make it cleaner. So key messages, very slowly. We serve markets which are essential. All of us have to do with these markets, but this is true for most people around the world. And these markets are growing because they are structurally growing. Our value proposition is, is that we make very critical customer processes and infrastructure. We make it better. We extend the lifetime of critical infrastructure. We reduce the energy consumption. We reduce the emissions. So we balance both the need for more with the need for better. That is a growing market. When we look inside, we are now in the phase of a very rigorous implementation, both of growth and of social excellence. Sulzer Excellence and Sulzer Growth, it's actually the same. It is very much linked. And when I say rigorous implementation, I give you an example. In the Sulzer Excellence part, we track 400 initiatives. 400 initiatives, we track them every month. Because we are now in the face of the doing phase. and not of the planning and that is always the moment where it becomes difficult in the transformation process because things change and they weren't that bad before so 400 initiatives you can say it's less or more i say we we track 400 that's why i speak of 400 and respect and we track them on completion on cost on on everything That is very important right now. All of these things lead to a step change in profitability. We are very happy that we can report a higher profitability in spite of the additional costs that we have had in 2024 to start with Solcer excellence. And we see how Solcer is evolving. step-by-step as quite a resilient company, also because we are very global, very strong in three regions, and we are generating cash that can be used for our shareholders, but also to invest in the improvement of the quality of our company. So now the outlook. Outlook, ladies and gentlemen, End of February 2025, with everything that is going on in the world right now, is quite a challenge. You will understand that. It is also quite a challenge when we speak about order intake. Thomas spoke about it. We are moving into larger projects, 100 million projects, 150 million projects. And depending on when we get this order, the comparisons with previous year can be distorted. They can be distorted in a positive way or a negative way. So let's say we get a big order from the Middle East in December or in January will impact our order intake result for 2025. And it's even worse if we compare quarterly. So we are... We are somewhat cautious here as we were last year, same time, and we say we have an order intake between 2 and 5%. That would mean we are more or less growing with our markets. Sales will be up, of course, between 5 and 8% is right now. Our prediction for 2025, strong, the key issue for us, of course, is execution on the high backlog that we have. And the EBITDA margin, we will from now on only report EBITDA when it comes to profitability, will be above 15%. we see that our measures of Sulzer excellence are really gaining ground. And as it stands today, we will have less expenses, less cost for implementation of the Sulzer excellence measures than we had in 2024. So I come to the conclusion of my presentation. What do we want to do with Sulzer? We want to Make a very good company. So it has always been a good company. Want to make it a great company. And now we are not American, so we don't speak that much about great. We say a top industrial company and one that is really creating value, value for the shareholder. That is our job. It comes through creating value for our customers, and it implies also to create values for value for our employees. Thank you very much. We are now ready to answer some questions. There seems to be the first one already, and then the second one. We first take the questions from the people in the room and then afterwards outside.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-