Durr Ag Spon Adr

Welcome to the DER Conference call for the first nine months of 2024, followed by a Q&A session. I will now hand over to Andreas Schaller, Head of Investor Relations of DER AG.

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and good morning to those of you in the US. Welcome everybody to our Q3 Earnings Conference call. Joining me on the call today are our CEO, Jochen Weihrauch, and our CFO, Dietmar Heinrich. They will present the third quarter and first nine months results as well as the outlook and will be happy to answer your questions afterwards. As always, our earnings presentation is available on our investor relations websites and we assume that you have it in front of you. Please refer to our disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements on slide two. And now it's my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Jochen.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Andreas, for that brief introduction and a warm welcome also from our side to all participants on this call. Dietmar and I are currently in China with members of our division management. China remains important for us as a market and as an international base for engineering and production. This week, we're visiting the Deer Group sites to get a first-hand impression of the local dynamics. Next week, We will hold our open house in Shanghai. That's an in-house trade fair where we will showcase innovations and demonstrate how our solutions for paint shops, fine assembly, and environmental technology can improve our customers' production performance. But for now, let's take a look at our Q3 results. I will start with the highlights on slide five. Overall, it was a pretty good quarter, and we are well on track to reach our targets. We achieved a high order intake of 1.2 billion euros. This brings us to a new record order intake for the first nine months of 4 billion euros. The main driver was once again our automotive business, where customers continue to invest in modernization and replacement of their own painting lines. These projects typically extend over several years, and the project pipeline continues to be so.

The order backlog reached 4.5 billion euros.

It declined slightly compared with the end of Q2, mainly due to negative exchange rate effects. Revenues were in line with the prior year at around 1.2 billion euros. The book-to-bill ratio for the first nine months was 1.16, and the EBIT margin before extraordinary effect improved sequentially to 5.6%. Our emissions paint and find the assembly systems, application technology, and clean technology systems reached or exceeded the mid-cycle margin targets. The extraordinary effect in Q3 were positive, and included a book gain from the sale of Akamco, as we had announced already in the previous call. Free cash flow was strong in Q3, driven by high order intake and the continued disciplined networking capital management. Based on the positive development in the first nine months, we confirm our outlook for 2024. Given the high order intake level after nine months, we see a very good chance to reach the upper end of the guidance corridor for order intake and free cash flow. On slide 6, we see the key financial indicators for the first nine months. Order intake was up 14% and includes a consolidation effect of €234 million, related to the BBS automation and EJ car acquisitions. Sales of 3.4 billion euros include consolidation effects of 208 million euros. This more than compensates for the 14% decline in sales at HOMAG and, moreover, we achieved sales increases in the automotive and clean technology business. EBIT before extraordinary effects decreased by 4% and the margin was 40 basis points lower. The decline is mainly due to a strong base effect from last year as Hallmark recorded a margin of 9% in June 3 of last year compared to 3.9% this year. Net income decreased by 24% in the first nine months due to a higher PBA effect following the acquisition of BBS Automation and higher interest costs. The book gain from the sale of Agamco had a positive impact. The free cash flow of 82 million after nine months is strong. We have benefited from the high order intake and are well on track to reach the upper end of our guidance. Let's take a closer look at the order intake on slide seven. Compared to last year, the order levels are higher and more stable. I already mentioned the solid order momentum in automotive, as well as the consolidation effect of PBS Automation and Injekalp. In addition, clean technology systems and HOMA contributed to the 31% year-over-year order growth in Q3. On slide 8, we see the geographic distribution of the order intake. The Americas and Europe are growing. Orders in Germany reflect the large order we received in Q1. In China, we see a decline reflecting the current weaker economic development. The lower level for the rest of the world is due to a strong base effect from a large order that we received in the Middle East last year. Overall, we are benefiting from a strong global footprint with operations close to our customer base. On slide nine. I would like to give you a brief update on our strategic initiative to focus more on our core business of automating production processes and to reduce the number of divisions from five to three. Preparation for the merger of our paint and find assembly systems and application knowledge divisions into the new automotive division are progressing as planned. We are thus well on track for the go-live of the new division on January 1st, 2025. The strategic review of the environmental business of our Clean Technology Systems Division is also progress. This includes exploring the potential sale of this business. We kindly ask for your understanding that we will not provide further details at this stage. The decision has not yet been finally taken, and we will keep you up informed of any significant developments. Now let's have a look at the divisional development. We will start with paint and find the central systems on slide 11. Order intake remains strong in Q3. Customers continue to place orders for medium to long-term projects. The project pipeline continues to look solid, and we continue to focus on the most promising projects with regard to our value-before-warning strategy also in this quarter. Sequential sales growth has been slowed by delays at some customers, but we expect an acceleration in Q4. The EBIT margin before extraordinary effect improved strongly in Q3, and we are within our target range after the first nine months. This is driven by healthy service business and higher gross margins in the equipment business due to our strategy as reported. Let's turn to application technology on slide 12. Order intake continued to be strong and reached a new record level of 692 million euros in the first nine months. As a result, we have increased the division's order intake guidance, which we will come to in a minute. Looking at revenues, service growth was very good and equipment even a bit stronger. Nevertheless, we achieved a high book-to-bill ratio of 1.39 after nine months. EBIT margin before extraordinary effect stabilized on our target level, supported by good capital utilization and solid cost margins in both service and equipment. All in all, we're really very pleased with the performance of our automotive business. Next is clean technology systems on slide 13. Q3 orders were up year on year and reached a similar level as in Q1 and Q2. The pipeline looks good and still includes the larger battery coding project that we talked about on the last call. Revenue grew sequentially, driven by Europe and the U.S., The EBIT margin was at a solid level during the seasonally weaker summer period, and we expect a strong finish to the year. The return on capital employed is at a very high level. Let's turn to slide 14 and the industrial automation systems division. Q3 orders and sales were supported by the consolidation of BBS automation. On the positive side, We received several double-digit million orders in Q3, and the MedTech business was robust. However, we continued to face delays in demand from mobility customers and are behind target levels for order intake. As a result, we have lowered the order intake guidance for industrial automation systems, but this is offset by the increase in application technology. Sales growth was mainly driven by the consolidation effect of BBS automation, Organic growth was slowed down by the delays in order intake. The EBIT margin before extraordinary effects was temporarily impacted in Q3 by a customer insolvency and the re-evaluation of costs. We expect the margin to improve in Q4. Finally, let's take a look at HOMAG on slide 15. Order intake was stable at the level that we assumed in our guidance. The overall market environment has not yet changed. We continue to see weakness in the single machine market in particular. However, the service business continues to perform well. The year-on-year decline in sales in Q3 was similar to the first half year and in Q9 with our expectations. The EBIT margin before extraordinary effects amounted to 3.3% after nine months, and is well within the target corridor of 2% to 4% for the year. Q3 is seasonally a stronger quarter, and we had a good service contribution. Sales dynamics in Q4 is typically weaker due to the loss of working days for the Christmas holidays. With the successfully implemented capacity reductions, we have increased our resilience and are very well positioned to benefit from a recovery in demand when it occurs. Let's turn to the service business on slide 16. The absolute sales volume has increased in Q3, and the share of total sales reached 28.4%. We have seen a strong service business, especially at application technology and the continued solid development at HOMA. We continue to focus on growing our service business as an important factor in improving and stabilizing our overall march. Now, I give my hand over to you, Dr. Fanek. Thank you, Jochen, and a warm welcome from me as well. Let's take a quick look at the financial overview on slide 18. Overall, we had a solid operational performance in the first nine months. You probably noticed that the reported EBIT in Q3 was higher than the EBIT before extraordinary effect. This is due to the book gain of €18.9 million related to the sale of Agramco, which we already highlighted in our last call. Moving further down the income statement, I would like to mention the tax rate of approximately 35% for the first nine months in Q3. This is higher than our standard assumption of the 30% tax rate and is a consequence of the geographic mix of profits and losses this year. As a result, we will likely see an elevated tax rate also for the full year. However, it does not change our long-term assumption of 30%. Let's go now through the most important KPIs on the next slide. On slide 19, we can see the revenue development over the last quarters. Q3 was basically flat compared to the prior year quarter. The growth in application technology and in technology systems and the consolidation effects almost compensated for the decline at HOMAC. Revenue generation was somewhat slower than expected due to some delays in automotive projects, as Johan mentioned before, and in industrial automation order intakes. However, we expect sales to accelerate in Q4. Looking at the geographical distribution, we see that China lost share, which was partly made up by Europe and the rest of Asia. Now let's turn to evidence slide 20. Here we can see the progress we have made since the beginning of the year. A major contributor was the automotive business. The extraordinary expenses in the first nine months were opposed by the bookend on the Akramco sale, as already mentioned. All in all, we are well on track to meet our full year guidance. Slide 21, the next chart, shows the free cash flow development. Year 3 was another strong quarter at €38 million, driven on one side by prepayments and on the other side by a reduction in inventories. In the fourth quarter, we expect to see some impact from payments related to the workforce reduction at HOMA. However, we are confident that we will be able to achieve the upper end of the guidance corridor of €0 to €50 million. Depending on the timing of further orders, we may even be able to exceed it. The development of networking capital is shown on slide 22. Networking capital as a whole was roughly stable at a low level compared to the end of Q2. A reduction in inventories and trade receivables was offset by an increase in contract assets and lower trade payables. Days working capital were 38 days and thus remained below the target range of 40 to 50 days. I'm actually very pleased with the networking capital performance and we will continue to manage it in a disciplined manner. Let's turn to slide 23 and look at the financial debt side, actually the net financial debt side. It decreased to €462 million during the proceeds from the sale of Agramco and the solid free cash flow I've already mentioned. Leverage declined to 1.4 times net debt to EBITDA. In line with our expectations for free cash flow, we expect to be at the lower end of our net debt guidance for the year of between 500 and 550 million euros. On the next slide, page 24, you can see that our liquidity headroom remains very comfortable. The maturity profile shows the situation at the end of September. In October, we took advantage of our strong cash position and repaid. a 52 million euros full-time branch that was originally maturing in 2025. Our maturity profile remains very well balanced over the next years. And with this view from the financial side, I will hand back to Jochen for the outlook. Thank you very much, Dietmar. Let's take a look at our 2024 guidance on slide 26. There are no changes to the group's target compared to our last call. We remain confident of achieving the top end of the order intake guidance as already mentioned. The automotive project pipeline remains solid and we continue to follow our value before volume strategy. With a stronger order intake already in our books, we can be even more selective and stay on the conservative side with our guidance. As Dietmar already mentioned, we are now also confident to reach the upper end of the free cash flow guidance, which is also supported by the strong order intake. Looking at the revenue development in the first nine months and some delays in the automotive customer side in project realization, we now expect revenues to come in at the lower half of the guidance range. Our margin development is well on track, and we continue to focus on margins and cash flow. On slide 27, we can see the breakdown of the guidance by division. Here we have made two adjustments that have no effect on the overall guidance for the group. First, we have raised the order intake guidance for application technology to a new range of 750 to 800 million euros. This is due to the strong order intake momentum that we have seen so far in 2024. On the other hand, we have lowered the order intake guidance for the industrial automation systems division to a new range of 700 to 800 million euros due to the continued delays, mainly from automotive customers. We left the order intake guidance for paint and fine assembly systems unchanged. although we already reached the lower end of the guidance range after nine months. As I mentioned, the pipeline continues to look solid, and we are following our value before volume strategy. We are very confident that we will reach the high end of the guidance corridor and maybe even exceed it, depending on the timing of larger projects. This is always difficult to predict in our business. This is why we've kept the guidance as it is. Our unchanged mid-cycle targets for sales EBIT margin before extraordinary effect and return on capital employed are confirmed on slide 28. Let's summarize on slide 13. In Q3, we had another high order intake driven by automotive customers who are investing in modernization. These are typically medium to long-term projects. Sales growth is on track. The weakness at HOMAG was more than offset by organic growth in the other divisions and the consolidation of BBS information in the first nine months. The EBIT margin before extraordinary effect improved sequentially, driven in particular by paint and fine assembly systems and application technology. The sale of Agramco contributed a book gain and proceeds. Pre-cash flow generation continues to be strong. And finally, we confirm our guidance for 2024. Thank you very much for your attention. Now, as always, we are happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now start the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please dial 9-star on your telephone keypad. If your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial 9-star again to cancel your question. Please press now 9-star to state your question. The first question comes from Philippe Laurent of Bernstein. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the time. I've got a few questions, actually. So the first one may be, is on the delays that you mentioned in automotive, especially in PFF. Could you shed a bit more light on these delays exactly, and what's been really impacting your sales realization and project realization?

Bonjour, Philippe. Yes.

put all your questions together first, or do you want me to answer them one by one? It might be because we have a time delay in the line. If you don't mind, if you ask all the questions in one shot, I'll try, or I'll try to answer them also in one shot.

Yes, perfect. Then the second one was basically on your updated guidance on order intake for application technology. Now it looks like exactly like for PSS, basically for the automotive business as a whole, like you are expecting a relatively weak fourth quarter. I know you're typically quite conservative when you try to guide on order intake, but can you give a little more information what your expectations are right now, especially since you mentioned the order pipeline is quite strong? Yeah. and how we could expect things also to move a little bit going into 2025. And then the last one is a technical one. It's probably more for Dietmar. I wanted to know exactly, you know, like I've seen your free cash flow calculations. And if I look at the difference between your free cash flow calculation and what you show in the cash flow statement, it looks a little bit like different numbers on the net interest.

so uh have you changed anything in the way to calculate that or has there been a typo somewhere and that's it for me thank you philip then there's two questions for me one for ditmar um the delays in automotive for pfs um those i understand you're asking for potential delays on the execution side. This is not really, you know, you might suspect this could have something to do with the current situation or the model, etc. It is on those projects purely delays in the execution, for example, of preparing buildings on time for us to start executing the project and consequently generating POC sales. It's been in one case that a customer was still not done with the design of the vehicle and consequently we needed to adapt some layout. So this is what we currently see in automotive. but don't expect any orders to be taken off, et cetera. It's purely that some of the larger projects are a little bit behind schedule for the reasons I've just given. Then for, you were asking for the guidance, especially in APT. We, as I mentioned, we still have a good pipeline, so there's projects underway. On the other hand, as we're moving towards the end of the year, it's very difficult to guess for some of the projects when they come in. And also, as I mentioned, we continue very clear with our strategy of taking orders that help the business. And this as a combination... Your statement is absolutely adequate to say that we're typically trying to say maybe a bit more on the conservative side, which we're doing. And as I mentioned in my speech before, in a maximum case, it might be that we exceed the upper end of the guidance. But at this point, we are prudent because you know, some of the projects still need to be decided and we will have to see. And that was a bit more for the free cash flow. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Jochen. Yeah, Philipp, in regard to the free cash flow, especially when we consider the development in the first three quarters and then the guidance for the whole year that we just adjusted to the upper end, this would actually indicate that we might have a negative cash flow in the fourth quarter. The reason being is that the payouts for the home market headcount reduction program will happen now in the fourth quarter. And we will also see higher capex payments because we just started in the third quarter the new factory building for HomeArk in Eastern Europe. So that's why we expect actually weaker cash flow development. On the other side, with what Jochen just explained regarding potential order intake, then in the fourth quarter, still on the automotive side to come in, We might have additional, let's say, initial payments as well, so we might even get into a situation that we would exceed the upper end of the guidance.

Okay, thanks very much. I'll take the more technical question on the free cash flow calculation actually offline, but I understand the details that you provide with regard to Q4. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Philipp. Yeah.

Thank you, Philipp. The next question comes from Nikita Lal, Deutsche Bank.

Yeah. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I would have also three. So you gave us some color on Q4, but could you maybe tell us where are your markets trending to? And then the second question following that. I acknowledge that you're not guiding on 2025 yet, but could you give us a qualitative outlook by segment? What do you expect next year to change? And the third question is just a question on your PFS margin. You mentioned that the substantial improvement came from profit. Could you maybe give us some clarification here? Thank you.

Thank you, Nikita, for the questions.

I counted two. If I missed out on one, please let us know. So, oh, yeah, Q4 and then a little bit you in two words. Okay. On the Q4 market trend, we have, as I mentioned, there is There is a number of projects underway. Do we see, you know, it's always hard to judge with a big project in automotive what will come when, but it is not that we see the end of the pipeline. It is actually the market continues to look healthy. Will it be at exactly the same high levels? as this year into next year we will have to see. But in any case, as I mentioned, there is projects we can book and we will have to see when they come in with all the volatility in the market. So then we wanted to get a bit more light on the market development by segments. I think automotive are basically covered, including PFS and APT. If you look more on industrial automation, which comprises mainly our Schenck business, the balancing business, and our newly acquired activities around the industrial automation activities of BBS and Teamtechnik, we see a market that is at the moment impacted to some extent with the slower progress on investments around mobility. That might still take a little while, a quarter, two. And then we expect some catch-up investments and we will have to see that. On the other hand, within our automation activities, We are making, as I mentioned, good progress on the MedTech side here. The market size is not really the issue. It is more that we are step-by-step developing into the market, and it's all about gaining credibility, references, et cetera, which I believe we're making good progress. And last but not least, if we count the three divisions with the structure of next year, Then HOMAG. HOMAG, we have not seen a recovery yet. We had said that we don't expect this to happen before the end of the year. This is confirmed. So we are stabilizing at the low level, as we had mentioned. Our cost saving activities are working. You've heard from Dietmar also that We follow also our strategy to improve the cost base by a mix of activities in the geographies. And this is why we've laid foundation for our facility in Eastern Europe. And our hope is that the market somewhere in the first half of the next year show signs of recovery but this is what we have to watch we don't see anything happening right now other than in the last few weeks we've seen a bit more activity on the single machine market but very slight activities let's see what that means going forward but we're still a little bit cautious around too much this is why we're continuing to do our homework to be well prepared when the market comes back. On the PFS margins, you can see the uplift in the sales margin to more than 6% currently. And that really already shows that we're moving roughly 2% ahead of prior year. And that shows that all the activities that we've implemented around the strategy are now finding their ways already into the sales margin, and I would expect this to further stabilize looking at the healthy backlog that we have. Hopefully that covers your questions, Nikita. Otherwise, please ask.

Thank you all very much.

So the last question in the queue is from Holger Schmidt, DT Bank. The floor is yours.

Yeah, hi, good afternoon. Thanks for squeezing me in. A couple of questions have already been answered, but my first question is on the industrial automation business. The margin was relatively weak. in the third quarter and you also lower the guidance. How should we think about the trajectory of profitability in the next two years? And then again coming back to the auto business, to some extent you have already described it. I mean the auto industry is currently under fire. We have cost savings, we have capacity adjustments. I think the companies are all in the budgeting process. When and how do you expect this to be mirrored in your business development? As far as I could take your comments now, you don't see the impact. But why don't you see the impact? What's the reason?

Thank you, Holger, for asking. First on industrial automation. Let me start with the outlook and then come to the actual situation. We continue to be positive around business because the approach is right. We are building basically the second largest player in industrial automation. We've received also orders, good orders in July and August. Also orders where again we could confirm as turnkey orders that are both assembly, which is the BBS side, and testing, which is the team testing side, the two main companies required, and our strategy works, but the market is currently somewhat weak, which you see in the order intake numbers, but we assume a catch-up effect to some extent coming in the next 12 to 24 months. On the margin side, We have a few effects in the books where we've made adjustment of the capacity, adjustment relocated business in order to realize synergies. We've had one insolvency of a customer in North America that we had digest in the books plus some cleaning up of some projects and this has impacted the margin on an operational basis and looking forward our view on the business has not changed. On the auto industry, of course, we're dealing with customers who are under pressure. That's for sure. And automotive is always not the easiest business on this planet, and this has not been in the past. It's not today, and it won't be tomorrow. And of course, I'm not neglecting the challenges that the customers have. But this has, you know, of course, we read this now more in the media, but that situation has been around for a while. Why are we still getting good orders? It is really as our customers run a fleet of paint shops, especially that are very old and consume a lot of energy and are very bad from an ESG perspective. And many of those paint shops are old. They need to be refurbished in combination with the demand to reduce their footprint and reduce operational expenses. Many of the customers, despite the fact that they, of course, don't want to overspend on CapEx, they are still investing into paint. our equipment. And as we mentioned before, we assume this to be there for a real number of years. And this might slow down temporarily in a few cases, but it will not dry out. And this is what we're seeing from our pipeline. Might it be, you know, is it possible that in a year from now our automotive sales are slightly down or somewhat down from this year? Might well be. but we're building a healthy backlog. We're well protected for the foreseeable future and consequently we are quite positive in terms of weathering the situation in the automotive industry and continue to book the right orders for us.

Sounds good. Thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you, Holger, for asking.

Yeah, we have another question from Philippe Laurent of Bursa.

Philippe, you're muted maybe.

Okay, maybe this is not more in line. Okay, thank you very much. We have no more questions.

Okay, thank you very much.

If there are further questions maybe coming up after the call, just please contact the investor relations team. We will be happy to answer your questions. So thanks a lot for your time and your interest. We know it's a busy reporting day and we also have a lot of other news flowing around that might keep you busy. We look forward to staying in contact with you. We will be on a number of conferences during the next weeks and hope that we meet one or the other also in person. Thank you very much. Jochen, anything else you want to mention?

No. Thank you very much, Andreas. It's quite late here in China, so you and I are probably ready for We'll have beer and then we go to bed. And really thank you for joining, as I said, in a very interesting day, interesting time, interesting week, we must say. And all the best to you. And again, thanks for joining.