Bystronic AG

Good morning, everybody. A warm welcome to our Bystronic full-year research for 2025. I'm happy to welcome Heinz Baumgartner, our Chair, dear investors. We will go through the presentation. I have Javier Perez here, our new CFO. He will maybe introduce himself later as well. Please take a minute to go through the disclaimer. I will read it at the same time and then continue in the expectation that you are as fast as me by reading it.

Perfect.

So we will start with a business review. Javier will then take over for the financial review. We will do an outlook together and we will take a little bit more time for the Q&A session. Let me start with the business review. You have seen the numbers already this morning. I will elaborate a bit more later on the regions and so on. So we had an order intake of 634.5 million Swiss franc, which is a 5% increase at constant exchange rate. We had, as expected, a little bit lower net sales compared to last year at constant exchange rate by 2.2%. I will elaborate on the reasons why and so on as well. I think what was an achievement, of course, we are not happy with the numbers, but it was with an extremely improved EBIT, which is minus 19.8 million compared to the 84 million we had in the previous year. Adjusted EBIT without the one-offs was 47 million, which is in comparison to last year, a big improvement because we have even much less net sales. The operating free cash flow was slightly higher than in 2024, despite the fact that we had the payments of the one offs with severance payments. So the cash out was this year, but we will elaborate on this one as well. So in overall, the numbers are in line with what we have expected. Again, on the A-B side, slightly higher. On the H-A, slightly lower than we had expected. What is really positive in my eyes, it's the first time after a few years, for not saying many years, to have a positive book-to-bill ratio, so order intake is higher. for 2025, then the net sales, which of course results as well in a higher backlog. If we go to the quarterly view, you see that there is not a real recovery in the market. At least we have now over, I would say, seven quarters a stabilization in auto intake. The last quarter, 2025, was good. And with that, I'm coming to the regions, starting with Americas. We had a solid demand. We had a lot of headwinds. You know, the whole tariff discussion, it was a hit for us. But due to our local production, we could mitigate some of the costs. Nevertheless, especially in net sales, we had a few weeks. during the summer period, you know, all the famous first of August when everything was announced. We had some customer postponing. We even stopped some deliveries because it was very uncertain how to calculate and so on. This had a certain impact. But in terms of order intake, It was really stable. And I think we were even able to somehow pass some of the tariffs to the customers. Of course, what was sold and in delivery was a pain for us. And it cost us a hell of a money. And we will shortly elaborate this when we talk about the EBIT as well. Meanwhile, I can say... When we made the presentation last week, there was a stabilization of the terrorist discussions over the weekend. We have now a new development. Nobody can exactly say what it means, but in overall, for us, it will not have an additional negative impact and will not have an additional positive impact because whether it is the 10 or the 15, adding the existing terrorists, we stay more or less in the same range. In EMEA, we saw a slight recovery. We had very good performance in Italy and in Spain over the whole year. And we had a quite good development in the last quarter, even in DACH, Germany and Switzerland were quite strong, but really pushed by smart factories. Now the definition of smart factory is wide, but I'm saying about larger systems, not single machines. So there is a strong trend towards automated system, less single machines. So exactly what our strategy pays in. And the last quarter was really strong and they made it up for the, let's say for the full year. China is quite stable with even a positive development at D&E. That's our second brand. As you know, we made a new repositioning of our D&E brand. We decoupled D&E completely from Bystronic with look and feel, different sales channels and so on. And we even relocated the whole company from Shenzhen to Foshan. So we have now a state of the art factory where we could increase the efficiency of building machines. We are coming close to 1,000 machines building out of this factory, which is very, very positive. But even the Bystronic brand in China seems to stabilize, but even towards smart factories. The weak point is definitely APEC without China, so with Southeast Asia, especially South Korea, is slow. It was slow over the full year. And we are right now investigating what to do in this region, which was a quite important region in the past for Bystronic. So a little bit how we developed the auto intake. I already mentioned a few times that we, if you look, At the numbers, you will recognize that we are doing less business in the single machines, so in the standard machines. So a big driver in order intake and growth is definitely driven by the smart factories. So larger projects, there is a really big demand and growing demand for smart factories. Our software solution pays in a lot, so I think we can make a differentiation with our overall system. As you know, we still have a lot of small customers. I don't want to call it mom and pop shops anymore because they have smart factories as well, where they like to have the full software solution we offer. What is very strong, and this is a sign of recovery, is spending. We cannot sell more bending because we don't have more capacity. So the request for bending solutions and even here for automated bending solution is extremely high. We will invest heavily even in this year in bending solution as a fully automated bending solutions. I already mentioned the D&E relaunch. I think I don't have to repeat it again, but here on the picture, You see the factory. It's a 50,000 square meter factory. One floor located in Foshan and not anymore in the city center of Shenzhen. Of course, we have even a cost advantage. But the reason behind is really to build more efficiently machines and not having it divided over different floors. A highlight of 2020. 2025 was definitely our tube business. As you know, we established tube as our own business unit in our organization. We put the head of this business unit and we really focused on the market. The tube market for small tubes is not a sheet metal market. This is something we had to recognize. And of course, what was a big highlight in terms of order intake, but not in net sales, was the large tube machine, the 330, which I think is really breaking through and contributing a lot in terms of order intake. Why I'm saying net sales? Delivery times. I mean, we can tell it, but you will not have the final acceptance within the year where we do the sales recognition. So that's something you see in the net sales as well. And it's normal. I explained it before. If you have single machines which you deliver within three to six weeks and you do an installation within two weeks, you will have sales recognition very close to the order intake. As more you go to systems, you will have a sales recognition just delayed, right? That's something you see in the net sales. That's something you will see even in the coming quarters because there will be, when you do a shift from single machines to systems, you will have a small down till it recovers and it stabilizes. Okay, I think the organization, the reorganization is nearly done. I mean, there are always some minor adjustments to do. I think what makes me extremely happy is that we finally have the EC, the Executive Committee, finalized with Javier, a CFO, with Alberto Martinez, having a huge experience in our sheet metal business leading the division systems and with Wilfrid DeBacco having somebody having a very long standing experience in service business for the division service. I think we have now a very strong market focus so we aligned our organization to the needs of the of the market. I think we are much leaner, you see it in the in the cost savings. So of course we are now more agile and we are able to do very fast decisions. We increased our efficiencies, bundled our competences, we consolidated our group function. I think there we still have some potential but I think now together with Javier We will tackle new topics as well. So in optimization of our production setup, we did a lot. I think there is still some room. Innovation, as I told already last time, we integrated R&D into the divisions. So Tube, which is not a division part of the system division, but they have a dedicated R&D, which are very close to the market. We have R&D in our division system. And of course, we put a huge focus on automation solution. Well, meanwhile, the headquarter of the automation development is in Switzerland. So we finalized this move. Expansion of smart factories, I think I don't have to repeat it. Last point, opportunities. You know that I was very open during the last conferences. We had quality issues. We had reputation issues. Some of you might ask why service is slightly lower. That's because we decided we want to move more towards the customer. Maybe we squeezed a little bit too much our service business. And with that, we disappointed some customers. So, and of course, the price pressure in the past led a little bit to a situation where we did not put the quality on the first priority. I think we are back now there. We see this even in terms of warranty costs and so on. Is there still possibility for improvement? Definitively yes. And I mean, I mentioned it with the R&D market oriented product portfolio. And last but not least, the focus on tube laser cutting systems remains very important for us. I think it's last time I'm showing something about the restructuring. The EBIT we are showing was only possible because the restructuring went better than expected. When I'm saying this, it's not that in overall we are doing more, but it was more in effect already in 2025 than we anticipated. So we will have less of this savings in 2026. The target to achieve the 60 million annualized savings, I think it's achieved. Unfortunately, it's a sad number. We reduced by 600 FTEs, even slightly lower. As I mentioned already, nearly 85% of these savings are already achieved in 2024 and 2025. I think overall we are satisfied with the outcome of the restructuring. Okay, shortly on the ESG, I think we can be proud here. I mean, we have plus 24% in renewable electricity. We have minus 6% in waste and circularity, and we still have a waste of 2,150 tons. So our scope one and two, we reduced by 14%, which is, by the way, in line with the STBI. And for me, I would say the most important one on this slide, not because of CO2 and so on, but the workforce injuries went down. So our total recordable insurance rate went down by nearly a third, so by 28%, to a rate of 1.15, which is, I would say, in our business, a good benchmark, definitely. So coming to our strategy, I want to just elaborate that now because we did an acquisition, we are not only moving towards acquisitions. We still want to be in a growth mode in our core business. We need ongoing investments in our productivity, in our automation solution for our sheet metal market. We are offering broader options. range of products for our full lifecycle management. It goes in combination, by the way, even with our service offerings. We still see some white spots in the world, so we will focus on expanding regional markets. And of course, we still aim to gain back some market shares. I don't have final numbers. One year ago, I told you that we lost market shares. I can tell you today we've certainly that we gained market shares back. We will elaborate these numbers and maybe during some roadshows or so we can even share more information on this one. And then something which was the main focus of mine and coming from a world having a lot of OEMs. Astronic does not have a lot of OEMs. You know, the few ones they have, they were more concentrated on smaller mom and pop shops. I think here the focus on OEMs as well is here. Then we made some strategic partnerships. I think these two are in my eyes quite important. You know that Japan is always a difficult market for Europeans. So either you are Japanese or you don't make business basically. So we have a strong alliance with Komatsu. Basically, the final signing will be in two weeks from now at the Komatsu headquarter, where together we want to establish a kind of a sales force and enter to the Japanese mainland. We see quite huge chances here. Then we partnered up with SSAB on green steel solutions, so we still push towards our ESG targets. And last but not least, besides of the organic growth and becoming again profitable with our core business, of course, we are targeting more M&A. You all read it. In the next slide, I will elaborate a little bit. We definitely want to have a diversification on one hand, but only on our DNA. So we don't want to become Concetta again. So we are definitely not buying back Mammut. So don't worry. It has to have our DNA. And so that's very important. Why I want to have this, we have to become more resilient and not being depending only, let's say, from the sheet metal market.