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10/29/2026
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the DREGAwerk Q3 2026 earnings call. I am Mathilde, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. for operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Stefan Drager, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and thank you for joining our conference call on our results for the first nine months of 2026. With me today are Gert-Hartwig Lescow, our CFO, Tom Fischler and Nikolaus Hammerschmidt from Investor Relations. After the presentation, we will be ready to take your questions. Let's get started on page five with the business highlights. With continued good demand and excellent net sales development, we delivered a strong top line in the first nine months of 2026. At around 2.7 billion euros, Water intake was noticeably above the high prior year level, while net sales grew by around 110 million euros to around 2.5 billion euros. Earnings rose by roughly 35 million euros to around 112 million euros, lifting our EBIT margin to 4.6%. This was mainly due to customs refunds. But even without those one-off effects, There is still an improvement of around 11 million euros. As a result of the significant increase in earnings and continued effective working capital management, our free cash flow rose considerably to around 114 million euros, coming from around 16 million euros in the prior year. As communicated last week, we confirmed our guidance. I will come back to this in our outlook at the end of the presentation. With that, I turn over to Gert Hartwig for a review of all financials. Gert Hartwig, please.
Thank you, Stefan, and welcome, everyone. Please turn to page seven for the group overview. As usual, growth rates are quoted on a currency-adjusted basis. As Stefan Drager said, we continue to see good demand for our technology for life. Order intake rose by 3.6% in the first nine months. This growth was supported by all regions except the Americas, which saw a significant decline as a result of the major order for hospital infrastructure systems from Mexico in the second quarter of 2025. In the third quarter, order entry increased by 7%, mainly due to strong development in Germany and APEC. Compared to order intake, net sales showed higher dynamics with an increase of 5.3% in the first nine months, driven by Germany, EMEA, and the Americas. In Q3, net sales were 1% above the prior year quarter as growth in Germany, EMEA, and APEC was largely offset by a decline in the Americas. This decline partly reflects the higher prior year base rather than a change in underlying demand. In 2025, medical deliveries, particularly in the US, were concentrated in the second half of the year. The gross margin benefited from custom refunds by around 1 percentage point and increased by 1.7 percentage points to 46.8%. Functional expenses rose by around 55 million euros or 6.1% in the first nine months, driven by higher costs for personnel Logistics, and IT. In Q3, the increase was more pronounced at 8.7%, mainly reflecting the same cost drivers. Looking closer, the increase in personnel expense reflects both structural and one-off effects. Since Q2 2026, higher expenses from the ongoing collective bargaining agreement have been a structural driver on top of one-off accruals for the share price linked variable management compensation. In addition, logistics expenses rose particularly due to a higher cost for air and container freight and ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Furthermore, one-time project-related expenses were incurred in connection with taking over the newly leased International Distribution Center in Lübeck to ensure our ability to deliver during the transition phase. We are working to offset these pressures and our target remains unchanged to keep full-year expense growth below net sales growth. Our EBIT in the first nine months increased by almost half to around €112 million, lifting our EBIT margin from 3.3% to 4.6%. EBIT for the first nine months included one time effect of €27.9 million from customs refund. The total amount, 7.8 million, was attributable to the second quarter and 20.1 million to the third quarter. A portion of these refunds, totaling 3.8 million euros, relates to custom expenses from the current fiscal year and therefore has no impact on earnings in comparison to the prior year. At the same time, custom expenses totaling 25.8 million euros were incurred in the US during the current year which are not refundable under current law. So, just to be clear, the net effect on tariffs here today was negative with roughly minus 2 million euros. In the third quarter, EBIT declined from around 57 million euros to 48 million euros. The EBIT margin amounted to around 5.6% after 6.8% in the prior year quarter. Lower net sales growth was offset by a disproportionate increase in financial costs. At the same time, the comparative EBIT level was high. In the third quarter of 2025, EBIT had more than doubled due to significant sales growth characterized by catch-up effects and moderate cost development. Due to the significant increase in EBIT, our role in 12 months DVA also rose considerably from around 49 million euros to around 117 million euros. Let us now take a closer look at the development of the medical division on page 8. At around 1.5 billion euros, order intake in the first 9 months was 3.5% below the prior year figure. The reason for this? was the Mexico effect it shows in the steep year-over-year decline in the Americas region. Adjusted for this, order volume in the medical division would have remained almost the same. In EMEA and APEC, demand remained nearly unchanged, while Germany recorded a noticeable increase. In the third quarter, order intake was 3% lower than the prior year figure. Growth in Germany, the Americas, and APEC was offset by a significant decline in EMEA. Net sales increased by 4.4% to around 1.4 billion euros in the first nine months. This was driven by Germany, EMEA and the Americas. In Q3, net sales declined by 1.4%. The main reason for this was the significant decline in the Americas, which was hardly attributable to the high prior year level. In the third quarter of 2025, we were able to accelerate deliveries of anesthesia machines in the US again. Despite negative currency effects, the gross margin improved by 2.2 percentage points to 45.2% due to customs refunds and a favorable product mix and country mix. Functional expenses rose by around 6.5% in the first nine months and by 7.3% in the third quarter. This is primarily due to high personnel expense and trade costs. Our EBIT margin in the medical division stood at minus 9.7 million euros after 9 months, coming from minus 22.7 million euros in the prior year period. The EBIT margin therefore rose from minus 1.7% to minus 0.7%. In Q3, EBIT fell from 11 million euros to 4.5 million euros. The EBIT margin amounted to 1.0% after 2.3% in the prior year quarter. And our rolling 12-month DBA increased significantly by 31.9 million euros to minus 13.4 million euros. I will now turn to our safety division. We are on page 9. Order intake in the first nine months rose significantly by 13.1%. This was supported by all product areas and regions. In Germany, orders grew by almost 28% due to a major order for defense solutions. The Americas and APEC also recorded disproportionate growth. In the third quarter, order momentum picked up even further, thanks to the good development in all regions. and the major order in particular, the division recorded an impressive increase of 20%. In addition to Germany, the Americas and APEC also delivered significant growth. Net sales were clearly above the prior year level with an increase of 6.5% in the first nine months. This was particularly driven by EMEA as well as Germany and the Americas. The APEC region recorded a slight decline In Q3, net sales increased by around 4% as the decline in the Americas was more than offset by the positive development in the other regions. Despite negative currency effects, the gross margin improved by 1.1 percentage points to 48.8% due to a better product mix and customs refunds. Functional expenses increased by 5.4% in the first nine months and by 11.1% in the third quarter. This was largely due to higher personal costs and freight costs. Our EBIT in the safety division increased significantly in the first nine months from around 100 million euros to around 122 million euros. This lifted the EBIT margin from under 10% to over 11%. In Q3, EBIT was around 2 million euros below the prior year figure at around 44 million euros. The EBIT margin consequently came down from 12.6% to 11.4%. Rolling 12 months DBA improved by around 36 million euros to around 131 million euros. Let's move on to the developments of our cash flow and other key figures on to slide 10. In the first nine months, our operating cash flow increased significantly by around 82 million euros to around 175 million euros. In addition to the growth and earnings, which was mainly driven by the customs refund, this was particularly due to effective working capital management, especially better development of trade receivables and payables. Higher operating cash flow as well as lower investment outflow led to an improvement in pre-cash flow by around 98 million euros. Going forward, we expect pre-cash flow to continue to develop positively. Looking at our net financial debt, we had a significant reduction by around 116 million euros to around 106 million euros. The reason for this was the increase in cash and cash equivalents due to the strong pre-cash flow. As a result, the already healthy ratio of our net financial debt to EBITDA further improved to 0.3. At the beginning of the first quarter, we repaid a maturing note loan in the amount of 50 million euros with our own liquidity. Our 12-month rolling return on capital employed rose from 12.0 to 15.6%. This was due to the higher EBIT in that period. At around 736 million euros net working capital was 2% higher than in the prior year. Our equity ratio as of September 30th stood at around 52%, around one percentage point above the year end level of 2025. Now, I hand back to Stefan Drager for our outlook on page 12.
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