Fincantieri S.p.A.

Good afternoon. This is the Corus call conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Fincantieri full year 2024 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Folgero, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for joining us and welcome to Fincantieri's Pool Year 2024 Results Conference Call. It is with great satisfaction that we present the results of an highly successful year in which we are seeing the concrete results of our strategy well ahead of our plan and in which we have delivered significant value generation for Fincantieri and its shareholders. Thanks to the tailwinds in all our segments, we have been able to achieve solid top-line growth, which together with the operational efficiency initiatives and relentless financial discipline has driven our margin expansion and enabled us to return to a net profit. The rights issue successfully completed last July to finance the acquisition of VAS, confirmed Sherold's confidence in the group and its development strategy in the underwater domain, aimed at further strengthening our industrial base and supporting a long-term sustainable growth path. None of this would be possible without the hard work and constant dedication of our people around the globe, who I would like to thank one by one. Let's now move to page four for a brief summary of the financial and commercial highlights of 2024. In 2024, it is the first year in which the full potential of our vision and strategy set in our business plan has been unleashed, with results well ahead of our guidance. Revenues increased by 6.2% year-on-year to €8,128,000,000, supported by strong market dynamics in all segments, confirming the growth trend of the first nine months of the year. Thanks to the business path pursued by Fincantieri over the last couple of years, we have been able to deliver a significant increase in profitability. EBITDA recorded an impressive growth of 28%, reaching €509 million, with margin at 6.3%, a material increase compared to 5.2% reported at year-end of 2023, with higher margins in all of our segments. Our net financial position has improved significantly compared to the year-end 2023, with a leverage ratio that is better than the guidance we raised in November. This is also the result of our commercial strategy on cruise, with revenues stabilized at around 4 billion euro per year that allow us to neutralize the working capital absorption. Including also the effects of the right issue and the loan granted to a shipowner reclassified to current in 2024, the net financial position amounts to 1,281,000,000 euro. It is worth noting that we achieved these results without including the proceeds related to the PPA order from Indonesia which became effective in Q1, 2025. Thanks to our financial discipline and the strong business performance in all our segments, we have recorded a net profit of 27 million euro, one year ahead of our business plan targets. Moving on to our commercial performance on page five, we achieved impressive results in 2024. with a record high order intake at 15.4 billion euro, more than twice the orders acquired in 2023, and the book to bill equal to 1.9 times 2024 revenues. As a result, the backlog reached 31 billion euro, up 34.3% compared to fall year 2023. with the total backlog supported by strong commercial acceleration in all business segments reaching an impressive 51.2 billion euro and equal to 6.3 times full year 2024 revenues. Let's now have a look to our expectation for 2025 on page six. Our guidance for 2025 sees Revenues at approximately 9 billion euro. EBITDA margin above 7%. Leverage ratio in line with 2024 with the leveraging well ahead of business plan target.

Positive net result.

Moving to page 8, our commercial pipeline remains strong, underscoring our solid market positioning. Our portfolio benefited substantially from the acquisition of new orders, consolidating Fincantieri's leading position in naval technological advancements, and its expansive global reach across all business segments. Let me share with you a few of the most relevant achievements for each business segment. We signed a major commercial agreement with Norwegian Cruise Line for the construction of six next generation vessels scheduled for delivery between 2026 and 2031. Additionally, an agreement has been finalized with Carnival for the construction of three LNG mega cruise ships, which will be the largest ships ever ordered to Fincantieri. With the order of four jumbo cruise ships for the Norwegian Cruise Line brand, Signed in 2025, we have extended our visibility to 2036. In the naval business, Horizonte Sistemi Navali has signed a contract with OCAR for the construction of two new framevo frigates, equipped with cutting-edge technology, advanced system, anti-drone capabilities, and operational management of unmanned systems across three dimensions, surface, sea, and subsurface. ensuring superior operational performance. Lastly, in the offshore sector, Fincantieri's subsidiary VAR was awarded the contract for the second hybrid-powered ocean energy construction vessel for island offshore. The new unit will be tailored to support a wide range of subsea operations, including inspection, maintenance, and repair pipeline, subsea infrastructure, construction, installation, and diving support. Looking ahead, we see further opportunities to strengthen our order intake thanks to the commercial pipeline in which we are actively participating of approximately 24 billion euro across all business segments. Let's now move to page nine for a detailed review of our order book. As you can see, in 2024, we delivered 20 units, and as we speak, we have a full slate of deliveries scheduled for the medium to long term up to 2033, offering a clear visibility for the years to come. This impressive backlog has been further enriched with the recent order of four jumbo cruise ships for the Norwegian Cruise Line brand that will extend the timeline to 2036. As of December 2024, cruise accounted for 28 units in portfolio. defense for 33, and offshore for 37, for a total of 98 ships increased by 13 units compared to the end of 2023 with a robust backlog of 31 billion euro. Now I will end the call over to Giuseppe, who will discuss our financial results in more detail. Please, Giuseppe.

Yes, good afternoon, everybody. Let's move on to page 11. on orders. Again, as we said before, we reached a record level of orders at 15.4 billion euros, and that is twice as much, more than twice as much, of the levels reached in 2023, with a book-to-bill at 1.9 times revenues. Of course, it was strongly supported by the shipbuilding segment, and most notably Incru's But also, we had a solid performance in offshore and equipment systems and infrastructure business. On page 12, our total backlog is at 51.2 billion euros, and this is a record as well. It's equal 63 times full year 2024 revenues. So this is a testimony of great, great visibility of the top line in the years to come. Backlog increased to 31 billion euros and soft backlog grew to 20.2 billion euros. The soft backlog also includes the programs part of the Italian Defense Multi-Year Plan 2024-2026 that we included into the backlog to give full transparency on the potential impact on the expected order intake and revenues in our financials. In 2024, we delivered 20 units from nine different shipyards, four for the cruise business, six on defense, and 10 from offshore. Among them, it's worth mentioning the deliveries of the fourth PPA, as well as the Explorer II, the Sun Princess, the first LNG ship, and the Viking Vela cruise ship. And this confirms our full commitment to sustainability, innovation, and digitalization. On page 13, revenues. €8,128 million increased by 6.2% year-on-year. We have strong performance in equipment systems and infrastructure and offshore. Shipbuilding revenues at €6 billion, stable with respect to last year. We had a slight decrease, but we are in line with our production and delivery schedule. Shipbuilding accounts for 67.6% of the group revenues, out of which 44.2% is cruise and defense is 22.7%. Offshore and specialized vessel accounts for 15.5% of total revenues and increased substantially, 28.1% vis-a-vis last year. And this is thanks to the substantial order intake we had also in 2023 in this segment, mainly driven by the growing demand in the market, in particular for offshore wind support equipment. And we also had some signs of recovery in the offshore oil and gas sector. Equipment systems and infrastructure, almost 70 percent of total revenues, and deliver the material. 36.2% increase year-on-year. This is thanks to the strong performance across all clusters. In the mechatronics cluster, the consolidation of Remazel acquired at the beginning of 2024 contributed by 93 million euros in revenues for the period. On page 14, EBDA, up 28% to 509 million euros with a margin of 6.3% plus 110 basis points vis-à-vis last year. And in absolute terms, it increased by 28%, driven by improvements all across the business segments. Shipbuilding, 396 million euros, increased by 7.8% versus last year. We had EBDA margin of 6.6%, up 60 basis points compared to 2033. And this is a result of a higher quality of orders and of operational efficiency programs. Offshore EBDA reached 67 million euros, increased by 28%, compared to 52 million euros for 2023. EBDA margin at almost 5%. In the equipment systems and infrastructure segment, EBDA increased by three times compared to the same period of last year, reaching 103 million euros. And the margin is at 6.9%, more than three times the margin of 2023. The substantial, I would say, margin improvement reflects, first of all, the turnaround in the infrastructure cluster, which recorded a positive EBDA of 34 million euros compared to the very negative results in the same period of 2023. And this is thanks to the risking strategy we have implemented in this business. We also, of course, the acquisition of Remazel was accretive to the EBDA of the Megatronics cluster with an EBDA margin of 19%. Let's look at what's below EBDA on page 15. So in 2024, we have returned to net profit one year ahead of the business plan target with a positive net result of 27 million euros. And that is a significant rebound compared to 2023. Of course, mainly driven to the good operational performance, good EBDA levels, but also due to lower extraordinary and no recurrent items. In this respect, in this cost, we register the reduction in extraordinary and no recurring expenses related to the asbestos claims as the asbestos claims decreased in number and also in the average amount of the claim. And this is, let me say, the first signal of a potential reversal of the trend in this, you know, in this expense. Adjusted net result. So it's net of the extraordinary non-recurring items is positive for 57 million euros compared to 7 million Euro net loss in 2023. Page 16, the leveraging well ahead of plan. Of course, we do expect further improvements. So net financial position as of December 2024 was negative by €1,281,000,000. Of course, The ratio of net debt over EBDA excluding the right issue effect falls to 3.3 times EBDA, significantly lower than year-end 2023, and this is mainly driven by a strong focus on financial discipline, deoptimization of working capital dynamics, and of course, thanks to our strategy INCRUZ as mentioned by Pierroberto before. These results were achieved without including the proceeds of the contract from Indonesia, which was declared effective in the first quarter of 2025. As with the debited maturity profile, we have a very, very well distributed profile with no significant debt maturities until 2027. And of course, our financial liability structure has no covenants and approximately we have an edge ratio of 90% on fixed rate. Now back to Pierroberto for the opportunity on underwater.

Thank you Giuseppe.

Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the line. The conference will resume shortly. Thank you. Please go ahead.

I hope you can hear me now. So I was thanking Giuseppe. And moving to page 18, we can have a closer look at the underwater space, where in the past months we have accelerated our journey to strengthen our positioning. Fincantieri holds the role of aggregator and catalyst in both civil and defense sectors, supporting a cross-fertilization between the two sectors. We are firmly committed to strengthen this role and to lead our national industry acquiring expertise and accessing markets through strategically targeted partnerships with industrial players as well as working with the most relevant clients also at the international level. In this context, since 2023, we've pursued a partnership strategy in the underwater dimension to strengthen research and innovation for the subsea domain, targeting its security and fostering industrial and economic opportunities. In particular, as for 2024, it is worth mentioning in the first part of the year, the MOU with Saipan for cooperation in subsea robotics for surveillance and control of critical underwater infrastructure. In the second half of 2024, we signed an MOU with Edge to develop advanced solution for manned and unmanned underwater systems in the United Arab Emirates to the joint venture Maestral. An MOU with SPARCO aiming to innovative technologies for the surveillance and protection of submarine telecommunication cables, which are critical infrastructure for global digital connectivity. Let's turn now to page 19. On the M&A front, Fincantieri successfully completed in February 2024, the acquisition of Remazel Engineering. And in January 2025, the acquisition of Leonardo S.P.A. Underwater Armaments and System Business. These very important acquisitions enabled the group to develop the skills necessary for an integrated offer of products and services. strengthening its leadership in the underwater domain, and expanding its capabilities in high-value-added engineering and technology operations. To mark the strategic relevance of the underwater business for Fincantieri, also in the light of our recent acquisitions, we have created a dedicated underwater pool, including our submarines business, BAS, Remazel, and EDS engineering business, focused on technology and innovation. We will make a separate disclosure of the underwater business as a standalone business segment in our financial reporting start from Q1 2025. Let's move on the business outlook on slide 21. All the sectors in which Fincantieri operates display significant growth prospects driven by positive micro trends in the cruise tourist market, geopolitical developments boosting defense spending, and the rising demand for the development of offshore energy resources, including wind and oil and gas. The cruise sector, where we are the market leader, continues to show accelerated growth. All the major ship owners report a positive trend above expectation for bookings, cruise prices, onboard revenues, and profitability. This favorable scenario, characterized by the restart of long-term investments by the key cruise companies is demonstrated by the major commercial agreement signed, further extending the order book visibility up to 2036. As for the defense sector, the rapidly evolving international scenario is expected to open new opportunities marked by fleet strengthening programs and increased resource allocation for defense and deterrence. This trend provides significant growth prospects for the group in an addressable market worth around Euro 20 billion, especially in Italy and the United States and in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where the group has strengthened its presence. Moreover, the growing importance of underwater will offer important industrial opportunities for Fincantieri, allowing to further strengthen its position as a European tender. Finally, in the offshore sector, renewable energy remains a strong demand driver for offshore wind growth, confirmed by the high volumes of new orders for SOVs, CSOVs units, reinforcing the group market leadership with one-third of the global order book. In 2024, new opportunities have emerged in a rising energy market, fueling increased investments in the oil and gas sector with growing demand for highly flexible vessels designed for construction and maintenance activities. Let me wrap up the presentation with some key takeaways on page 22. In 2024, we have continued to outperform our business plan targets thanks to our strategy supported by strong market trends built on profitability growth, margin increase, operational efficiency, and cash flow generation. This has enabled us to return to net profit one year ahead of our stated target. We have been an impressive order book with visibility up to 2036 and the strong commercial pipeline marked by a further acceleration also thanks to our focus on the green transition and on the digitalization of the shipbuilding business. The execution of our strategy is delivering ahead of our expectations. We are increasing margins in our shipbuilding segment thanks to our operational excellence initiatives and better pricing power. We have turned around the performance of our equipment system and infrastructure segment by implementing our de-risking and partnering strategy and selective focus on projects aligned with our expertise in infrastructure. We are successfully implementing the group strategy in the underwater domain. The acquisition of VAS and Remazel, along with the other commercial agreements signed over the last months in the underwater and naval defense sector, place Fincantieri as the leading technological integrator at global level. We are also ready to secure the opportunities offered by expected growth in defense spending. Our full focus on growing profitability and cash flow is has allowed us to accelerate our deleveraging trajectory well ahead of our business plan targets. Thanks to the strong results achieved in 2024 for 2025, we expect revenues at approximately €9 billion, EBITDA margin above 7%, a leverage ratio with net financial position to EBITDA in line with 2024, well ahead of business plan target, and a positive net result. With that, we are now open to take your questions.

Thank you. This is the Coral School Conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one under touchstone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one At this time, that's star and one. The first question is from Alessandro Pozzi, Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three. The first one is on margin guidance for 2025, certainly meaningful improvement year on year. And I guess there are many different driving factors. There is once There is probably a mixed effect. There's also potentially, I guess, the cost synergies on the back of higher productivity, given that you made meaningful investments in previous years. So I was wondering if you can give us a bit more color of what are the main drivers for the margin improvement. And the second question is, There are a lot of export campaigns. I think last time you talked about Norway. I think since then we've seen MOUs between Italy and Saudi Arabia. I think there are potential new opportunities with India as well. And yeah, if you can give us maybe an update on export opportunities in Middle East and India as well. And also a follow-up from this one. Given the substantial amount of potential export military opportunities, would it make sense at some point potentially to convert cruise shipyards into military ones? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your question.

With respect to margin, I would like you to appreciate that we have been implementing our 2022 business plan from the very beginning. So, guidance for next year, target achieved in 2024, 2023 backwards are, you know, related to a very detailed improvement plan that we have been implementing, that we have been pursuing, and that we have been successfully So guidance for us is confirmation of business plan since 2022. So there is a little bit of satisfaction in telling it. And as per the 2022 business plan, the progression in percentage margin is driven by two engines. One engine is the optimization engine, which basically means operational excellency shipyards combined with very, very, I would say, robust procurement strategies on the industrial side. So the first engine is made of improved margins everywhere, including, for example, cost discipline on GNAs and things like that. The second engine is the mix of revenues. So you know that the more we grow, the more we would like to keep volumes in decrease in the region of four billion, and then procure that the growth in revenues is driven by the other two core businesses. One is naval and the other is offshore. And the more we have tailwinds, pushing our three core businesses, the more we can overweight naval and offshore, not because we don't like cruise, but because we believe that naval and offshore obviously has a profile in terms of quality of earnings and in terms of translation into cash. which are simply better than Cruise. But again, on Cruise we are at the same time very satisfied because it's a volume business in which we are performing very well. We are pursuing two targets. One is saturation of capacity, which is a prerequisite for improvement of margin to happen. And two, we are working in order to have long-term view let me call it a kind of profound backlog, meaning with long visibility in time. And again, having long visibility in backlog in cruise allow us to negotiate conditions with the supply chain, which are long-term, and therefore we can capitalize, again, on saturation of shipyards, which is so important in a business of fixed cost, along with long-term partnership with supply chains, allowing to achieve better conditions. If Cruise is not growing, it means that the normalized working capital of the company will remain the same, and so there will be no absorption in working capital driven by Cruise. While the more we push on NAVAL, for example, on exporting NAVAL, for example, the more we will push in a business with strong fundamentals, in particular in term of positive and net cash from the very beginning kind of purchase profile. Moving to your second question, which is more color about export campaigns. Basically we are, as per our business plan once again, in Middle East and Southeast Asia, first of all. So we are very active in Abu Dhabi, in Saudi, in Kuwait, in all the Gulf companies, and through the Gulf companies also in sub-Saharan Africa. I told, I anticipated in previous occasions that the partnership with Abu Dhabi with edge can be a very good platform, a very good amplifier, let me say, of our commercial strengths in geographies such as South Saudi and Africa, which are familiar to Abu Dhabi financial and geopolitical platform. But it's not all about Middle East and South Saudi and Africa. For example, we are looking into Mauritania. We are looking into Angola. just to tell you some new countries. We are very active also in Southeast Asia. Indonesia in our business plan was a very important flag. We wanted to put the first flag over there because it's the beginning of a new market that we want to occupy, quote unquote, more and more. Now we are looking into Malaysia, which has the intention to increase the industrial base and the naval capacity. Obviously, to continue our partnership with Indonesian Navy, which is expected to become a prominent player in that overrated quadrant. But then we are looking also into other Southeast Asia countries that are expected to increase their naval capacity. I'm thinking of Thailand, for example. or Vietnam or Philippines, meaning geographies in which naval power is important and they need to play a more visible role in a quadrant that is somehow overrated by what is happening in Taiwan, for example. But then obviously we are looking at European programs, Italian programs, more and more. So you know that there are expectations for acceleration on programs. We are absolutely in first line in that respect. We are somehow starting to get familiar with India. India is expected to become a shipbuilding power in the future. It is one of the long-term industrial and political targets of the government. We have already experiences in India. They want to build at the same time several ships, and we can be very helpful also there. So as we anticipated a couple of years ago, the naval defense industry is accelerating, and the programs are translating into offers and visible offers. We gave a number in this presentation of 24 billion in term of pipeline, which is not a pipeline in term of pre-qualification, pre-tendering, let me say long-distance kind of opportunities, but are tendered opportunities. So opportunities in which we have made a concrete, robust, binding offer for our clients. So that's the size of how much we are positioning ourselves in the defense industry, 24 billion. We have very good opportunities also in the other core businesses, but I don't want to repeat. Your last question is about if we can close a cruise ship, or close in the sense, if we can transform a cruise shipyard into another one. Conceptually, we can do whatever. It's our business, it's our country, it's our national interest. I believe we don't need to do it. I believe we can use the existing assets of Fincantieri as they are allocated to different core businesses. Please consider that we have a large shipyard like Palermo, which we can strengthen as much as we want. We can strengthen Mugiano. We can have other ideas. So in case we need extra capacity in Dinaval, we can do it. and it is not necessary to somehow impact production activity in our cruise ship building. Consider nevertheless that the amount of complexity that we are managing in a cruise ship is equivalent to an aircraft carrier. I like to joke, every time we deliver large cruise ships, in term of tones, in term of displacing tones, we are managing a quantity, a massive complex asset, which in term of steel, which in term of cables, which in term of everything, is equivalent to a complexity to an aircraft carrier. So for example, in 2025, we are gonna deliver five large cruise ships, which means as if we are delivering five aircraft carriers, which I believe there are not that many shipbuilder in the world that can deliver five aircraft carriers altogether. So I take your provocation with this metaphor, But in reality, we can do without impacting cruise.

Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. I'll turn it back.

The next question is from Emanuele Galazzi, Equita. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for taking my question. I have three questions. The first two are on the naval business. Basically, we have heard a lot of talks about the need for consolidation of the defense industry, and you also mentioned the potential industrial opportunity. So I would like to have your view on this at this stage, and how do you see the European shipbuilding industry evolving in the coming year? The second one is on Trump that is supporting a reassuring strategy for the shipbuilding industry. So I know that it's probably early, but do you see, let's say, a risk or an opportunity from this and what could Fincantieri do for the U.S. shipbuilding industry? And the third question is on the guidance and specifically on the net financial position guidance because if I'm not wrong you are guiding for a net debt around 2 billion in 2025. Clearly there is the acquisition of WAAS but also the cash in from Indonesia. So can you help us understanding the BIM moving parts like the net working capital and the CAPEX and if the guidance assume the full cash in of the 600 million euros financial credit in 2025. Thank you.

So the first question is about consolidation.

Let me say before consolidation, Europe needs to go in the direction of defragmentation. So in other location we have anticipated this concept. So if we don't pursue defragmentation, we will never pursue consolidation. What do I mean by defragmentation? We have the Italian Frigate, the French Frigate, the German Frigate, the Norwegian Frigate, the Spanish Frigate. This is not the way to optimize expenditure. So if you need to spend more, you need first of all to spend less. So defragmentation is the name of the game. Obviously, once you have defragmentation, first of all, you're optimizing the national spending. Then, if you want to create the critical mass, you can think to combine, let me call it national champions into European champions. That's logic, but again, the logic of the logic is defragmentation. Take for example what we are, the level of collaboration we have with the KMS. The fact that we can share the same platform, so our submarine is built on their submarine, it's a natural source of value creation, and that's why we are proposing ourselves to be useful in the new strategy for naval defense, in particular in submarines. So let's see what is gonna happen in general. But what I would highly wish and recommend, it's a very mindful exercise of joining more requirements, more end user requirements in order to align specs and associate this alignment of requirements with alignment of industrial bases, alignments of supply chains, alignment of quote unquote champions. Moving to your question about USA, I'm impressed by the fact that shipbuilding is becoming more and more geopolitical. I'll always like to remember a Financial Times article of a couple of years ago with the title of The Geopolitic Social Building. If you read the newspaper today, there is another article in Financial Times with the title of That's Why Ships are like ships. So it looks like the world is realizing the shipbuilding is truly, truly geopolitical. And again, I'm coming back from a long journey from India where I participated in this Resina Dialogue, which is a kind of world economic forum, Davos of India. And India is having the same strategy. So they want to become a shipbuilding power. So that's my point on U.S. All long-term geopolitical powers have to have a strong shipbuilding as a prerequisite for security, but not only for defense and security, but also for the maritime economy. The maritime economy at large is a source of geopolitical sovereignty. So if you want to have geopolitical sovereignty, you have to be in charge of maritime logistics. So I believe we as Fincantieri has a tremendous opportunity when it comes to putting our long, long roots in the industry that are also future proof, but when we put these skills at service of U.S. and at service to other allied countries, allied blocks, because shipbuilding will be a key geopolitical tool in the future we have in front. What about the third question? On the net financial position, my general comment is that we are more or less landing at the ratio we put as exit of the business plan horizon. So basically we are demonstrating what we have been telling since the last two, three years, i.e. that our leveraging the leveraging path would have been much faster than expected. So that's the message we want to give you today. So this almost perfect ratio, because we guided 2.5, 3.5 for 2027 in our business plan. So this 3.3 is, you know, the greatest testament of our credibility in the leveraging strategy. And we are already at the landing point. We have designed, let's say, three years ago. So that's to me, that's a remarkable piece of news. I would like to share it with you. Then I will leave the floor to Giuseppe if he thinks that you need some more exciting call or

Oh, the only exciting thing about the net financial position is that it decreases. But as Pierroberto said, yes, we have reached the targets that we, let me say, we reached the upper end of the target that we set for 2027. Metaphorically, we have reached, you know, we come out from a very long mountain climb and we reached the plateau. But, you know, we have other... other rocks and other hills to climb further. Of course, we are factoring in, as disclosed, we are factoring in the financial receivable expected to be cashed in by the end of the year from a cruise owner. But, I mean, it's a guidance at which we're very confident, notwithstanding any change that may occur during the year. I mean, it's good.

Thank you very much, Eric.

The next question is from Gabriele Gambarova in San Paolo. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon, everybody. Three questions from my side. On the U.S. and on the Constellation program, if you could talk Please give me some update. I think it's about execution, but we know that you need more blue-collars workforce, so there are many pieces around any update on this front. Even maybe pricing would be very useful. And then on cruise, I understand you are managing, let's say, the business to remain at $4 billion, but even here, any comment on the Norwegian contract you signed a month ago would be interesting because it seems to me that the pricing environment is improving markedly, so it would be interesting to know if it's just my interpretation or something is moving on this front. And the third one, sorry, I return on the net debt guidance because it is not very clear to me. The normalized net debt at the end of 2024 was around 1.6 billion, so without considering the capital increase. But if I apply the 3.3 ratio to the expected EBITDA, I draw a debt which is higher than 2 billion. So there should be roughly 400 billion of absorption. I'm not able to understand, even because we have Indonesia in the middle. So I was wondering if we should refer to the 3.3, calculated on the normalized debt, or the lower net financial position ABDA reported, which is around 2.5, and this would mean basically a stable normalized debt by the end of 2025.

So in the USA, your question on USA, USA, as I just finished to tell, is the most prominent, is expected to be the most prominent place to be for shipbuilding. And the fact that we have been in U.S. since 15 years position ourselves very well, by the way, because not only we would like to be there, but we are there. With respect to the program, all the, exactly for the reason I just told, so that the shipbuilding want to be relaunched in the country, all the programs are being supported in order to accelerate, in order to understand which are the actions needed in order for productivity to improve and in order for bottlenecks to be de-bottlenecked in a sense. We are acting in this sense. Our people in the U.S. are acting in this respect, hand in hand with the administration in order to accelerate and in order create value, strategic and geopolitical value, to the U.S. shipbuilding. So that's the, the rest is ordinary business. So the comment from me is exactly this. So that is the place to be, and the new administration is particularly active in order for shipbuilding to, in order to pursue this kind of renaissance of shipbuilding. And you know renaissance, Italians have always been well accepted. Moving to your second question, NCL. NCL is a key client for Fincantieri because it's a brand containing many brands. So to interact with this kind of organization, allow us to have our system of shipyards working for different sides of ships for different brands. We enjoy a very good relationship with NCL. We have a very good partnership going on with them. They are very entrepreneurial. They were the ones who decided to reinvest in new ships, in new constructions before the others. So I have to say they demonstrated their entrepreneurship in the field, in the field, restarting I would say in advance new construction. It's a strong partnership. The agreement with them provides that long-term visibility I was mentioning before. So the possibility to have saturation in shipyards, not for the next two, three years, but for the next five, six, seven, all the way 10 years. And again, this is so important because this is the prerequisite for improved And this is the prerequisite for an optimized procurement strategy for critical items and for all the components of the ship. So yes, it's a very fruitful partnership with them. And we are more than committed to deliver impeccably on the new orders as we did in the past. Your third question is, on the net financial position. Again, it's so important when you look at the company like ours, it's so important that we stick to trajectories, so important that we stick to a kind of consistent and continuous improvement, but with, let me say, psychology, that is not the psychology of the photogram. It's the psychology of the movie. So if you try to read the photogram, you lose the rest of the movie. You know what I mean? So when we say that we are confirming existing targets, the metrics of 2024, we want to say that we have achieved in advance our targets, our targets for 2027 in terms of net financial position to EBITDA. And when we see that we want to maintain it, it means that we want to maintain it. So it means that we believe that this level is not only achieved, but it's possible to be maintained. It's impossible to be repeated. It's the new normality. It's our steady state. So don't read it in order to go for reverse engineering understanding if there are surprises hiding behind this matrix. Maybe we were too simple and too clear. We don't have surprises. We believe that we are in a very safe and robust zone, and we want to remain. We are there to stay. Obviously, we're there to stay means we are there to do better. So now, but no one is preventing us to collect all our financial credit and then to take the down payment and then to do better than that. But the message for today, we've been always very clear and very conservative when it comes to the leveraging because we knew how much our credibility was at the end of the day based on the leveraging before anything else. So the message of today is that we did our homework with several months, I would say three years in advance. We are there to stay, so we are at those levels to stay, and then if it will be better, if it could be better, as we did regularly in the last two to three years, we will update our guidance and we will guide you better and better. Giuseppe, I don't know if you want to add something.

No, nothing. I mean, if you do the math, it may look defensive, but it's not defensive. As Mr. Fulgero said, we We already reached two, three years in advance what was the target for 2027. Yes, we're guiding for the same levels for 2024, but really not defensively. Chances are that these guidance will improve, but that's where we stand right now.

Okay. Thank you very much, Peter.

The next question is from Antonio Gianfrancesco Intermonte. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. Two from my side. The first is about full year 25 guidance. So, in light of the introduction into the guidance of a positive net resource in full year 25, should we start to consider a dividend to be paid next year? And that was the first one. The second is about the Opportunity related to the tender to build the five frigates for Norway Navy. As reported by some press articles, Fincantier is currently shortlisted together with some of your other well-known competitors. So what is the timeline for knowing the outcome of the tender and what are your expectations regarding this opportunity? Do you think it would be an advantage for you to be able to build a new frigate directly in Norway shipyards? And thank you.

Let me start from this second question.

Norway is one of the opportunities we are pursuing. Norway is launching a 10 years program for increasing naval capacity. And by the way, they are very interested in, you know, having industrial base, local industrial base growing along with the naval capacity of the country. So obviously Fincantieri Vard represents the biggest construction reality in the region, which is so important also in terms of maintenance and repairs. because once you go for these multi-billionaire programs, it is not only an issue of building ships, it's an issue of maintaining and repairing ship locally. So the reason why you want to have a local shipbuilding, it is because you retain GDP in a sense, if the construction is in your country, but most importantly, you procure that repair and maintenance capacity is retained as a result of construction. So that's why that opportunity is very hot because it's engineering coming from Fincantieri Marinette and coming from the US Navy with the possibility and optionality depending on the end user, depending on U.S. Navy, depending on number of decision-making stakeholders, but with the opportunity to localize as much as possible the production as close as possible to the end user. Moving to dividend, I believe that, again, as net financial position to EBITDA metric is there to say, also net profit is there to say. So we believe that a stronger player, Aspen Cantieri, need to grow in its market cap, and we are very satisfied with the market cap value we are achieving. which is becoming more and more, I would say, adequate to the geopolitical sides, industrial relevance of a player like we are. But it's not all about market cap. We believe that the relationship with the market, the relationship with investors, need to translate also into bottom lines, and bottom lines need to translate into dividend policies. So, The answer is yes. Today we are breaking the ice with 2024 numbers. This is not the casualty. This is the beginning of, you know, all the rest of conditions remaining the same. But it's the beginning of a new phase. We'll be more than happy to disclose more about how we intend in the future to manage the earnings line, the dividend lines, and the rest.

Very clear. Thank you. Thank you very much.

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. Excuse me, there is a question from Lucas Ferhani, Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the time. I just wanted to ask a question on the underwater business separation you talked about from Q1 2025. Can you give us a bit more of a favor on what you intend to disclose? the business will be split between kind of parts that go into NAVL and parts that go into ESS. So what exactly do you want to show? And do you want to provide also maybe more information regarding the NAVL business as it becomes maybe a more important part of the business? Thank you.

But for that day,

you don't need to expect additional visibility on naval. You have to expect additional visibility on underwater. So the ultimate target is to increase the feasibility of the existing revenues in the underwater domain, which means how we intend to articulate, quote-unquote, the perimeter as of today, which are the economic dimensions of the underwater of today, and probably how we intend to project this economic base in the future in light of our and expectations about the underwater growth in the short, medium, and long term. So that's the purpose of the day. Obviously we would like to have an initial session that is in general on Fincantieri, but the ultimate purpose is to disclose more about current figures, quote unquote, and prospective figures. For the rest, I don't want to anticipate more because I'm spoiling the pleasure of the presentation, which would be a pity.

Understood. I wanted also to ask whether there'd be revenues only or EBITDA, but maybe I'll leave it then to the presentation.

We will give the

basic dimensions of the economic performance.

So we will get back to you that day. Perfect. Thank you.

The next question is a follow-up from Gabriele Gambarova. It is a San Paolo. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Thank you again. Just a couple of follow-on. The first one is on offshore specialized vessels. because the top line was up nicely, plus 28%, but the ABDA margin was almost stable at 4.9%. So I was wondering what could be the path going on for this business. I guess could the top line grow, but what about margins? And the second and last, I swear, is on this. Basically, you're going to become profitable at the bottom line level. I was wondering if you have an idea in terms on the tax loss carry forward of balance fiscal credits basically.

That's it.

On offshore, Gabriele Giuseppe speaking. Of course, EBDA margin vis-a-vis last year was stable, albeit increasing in absolute terms because revenues increased thanks to the hefty order acquisition of last year. No, we do not want to stay there. I mean, target is to improve further. I mean, VARD went through a very long recovery process. We remind many times. the 38 consecutive quarters, money-losing quarters. Actually, VAR Group, as a legal entity on a consolidated levels, closed this year, 2024, with a positive bottom line, so with the net profit, which is another achievement that we reached in 2024 after, I would say, 10 years of financial statements in the red. but it's not over yet, the job is not done yet. So the quest is for further improvement in EBDA margin. On tax loss carry-forwards, we have some capacity on, notably on VARD, but as we consolidate our tax position within the Casa de Positive Prestiti group, you know, past year, previous year's losses on Italian tax were already factored in and, so to say, sold to Casa de Poi's capacity.

Okay? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much for attending.