Accelleron Industries AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Acceleron Half-Year Results 2026 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listened only mode and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing by their relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Michael Deiber, Vice President, Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome to the Acceleron Half-Year Results 2026 Investor, Analyst, and Media Webcast. Thank you very much for joining us today. Daniel Bischofberger and Adrian Grossenbacher will walk you through Acceleron's performance in the first six months of 2026, provide a detailed financial review, and share the updated outlook for the full year. Before we begin, please take a note of the important notices and safe harbor statement. This presentation contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. All figures presented today are in US dollars and prepared in accordance with US GAAP. Definitions of non-US GAAP financial matters are available on Acceleron's investor relations website. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Questions can be submitted through the chat tool or asked by telephone. I will now hand over to our CEO, Daniel Bischofberger.

Hey, thank you, Michael. And good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining. As usual, I'm with Adrian, our CFO, and here is our agenda. I will start with the key highlights. From the first half of 26, Adrian will then take over for the financial review. I will return with an update on the marine and energy markets. also talking about our investment priorities and the outlook for the remainder of 26. And finally, we will conclude with the Q&A session. So I would say, let's begin with the highlights. So Acceleron delivered another strong set of half-year results, building on the momentum of 25. Revenues reached 737 million US dollars, an increase of more than 21% year over year, and slightly above 17% organically. Marine new builds and data centers continued to underpin growth. Marine developed well and we have not experienced any negative impact from the conflict in the Middle East to date. High ship utilization continued to support service demand. Growth in energy exceeded our expectations driven by strong service demand in US gas compression applications and also high turbocharger deliveries for gas prime power application mainly for the US data centers. Operational EBITDA increased more than 22%, 290 million. The operational EBITDA margin rose by 20 basis points to 25.7%. And net income increased by close to 32%, 251 million. Free cash flow conversion stood at 58%, compared with 70% in the first half of 25. This maybe reflects the high investments we are making to support future growth in marine and energy. Let us look at the main growth drivers in more details. The product business grew by around 30% year on year, while the service business grew by around 15%. In product business, the strongest growth contribution came from gas prime power demand related to the US. and from Merchant Marine New Build Activity in Asia. Data center-related revenues increased from around 5% of group revenues in the first half of 2025 to slightly below 9% in the first half of 2026. This is a meaningful increase, but the absolute contribution remains limited in relation to total group revenues. Service business growth benefited from remanufacturing work in US gas compression, as well as service agreements, regular maintenance and upgrades activities in the merchant marine segment. This slide highlights four developments from the first half. First, prime power gained further momentum. Turbocharger deliveries for data center prime power more than doubled to around 5 gigawatts, up from less than 2 gigawatts in the first half of 2025. Backup power applications remained stable at around 3 gigawatts. This is a consequence of our OEM engine customers allocating more of their constrained capacity to the production of prime power gas engines. Prioritizing prime power applications benefits us. Unlike diesel-fired backup generators, which typically run only a few hours per year, gas engines used for prime power operate a few thousand hours a year. As a result, they will generate substantial service demand for our turbochargers in the future. Let me clarify a few technical misconceptions I've seen in reports about Exxon's power solutions for US data centers. When we talk about prime power, we are referring to internal combustion engines running predominantly on natural gas. Internal combustion engines are also known as piston engines or reciprocating engines, so we are not referring to gas turbines. Gas turbines do not need turbochargers and are a competing technology to gas engines. But it's important to know that gas turbine production is largely sold out until 2030 or even 2031. And when we talk about backup power or emergency gensets, we mean internal combustion engines fueled by diesel. You might ask why data centers need two complete set of engines on the same site. One powered by gas and the other one by diesel. The reason is that environmental regulations typically limit diesel engines to only a few hundred operating hours per year. As a result, diesel engines without emission control systems are not suitable for prime power applications running thousands of hours a year. Conversely, using gas engines for backup power is also difficult. The challenge with gas backup power is not the engine. It is on-site fuel storage. For the same amount of energy, compressed natural gas requires several times the storage volume of diesel, while diesel can be stored and replenished much more easily in case of extended power grid blackouts. After this small excursion into prime and backup power, let's move on to the next highlight. We signed a long-term service agreement with the city of Denton in Texas. The agreement supports fast start power generation with a service model tailored to the requirements of peaking operations. The third A100-200L low-speed turbocharger series launched in 2009 and 2013 respectively surpassed $10,000. The series is used across major merchant vessel segments. It covers an installed power base of around 110 gigawatts, equivalent to the installed power of around 100 nuclear power plants of the size of Leipzig, the largest nuclear power plant in Switzerland. The superior performance and reliability of our A100-200L series are one of the reasons for our strong market share of more than 50% in the low-speed business. Finally, Our next-generation X300L low-speed turbocharger platform entered the market. The new platform improves serviceability and operational flexibility. Its cartridge concept allows major service events to be decoupled from dry dock schedules, giving operators more control over uptime and maintenance planning. First orders have been secured for more than 50 vessels. corresponding to more than 60 turbochargers and over 600 megawatts of installed power. With those remarks, I conclude the first section and hand over to Adrian for the financial review.