Friedrich Vrwrk Grp U/Adr

regarding the Q1 figures of 2026. The company's CEO, Torben Kleinfeld, and CFO, Tim Harmeister, will guide you through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat. And with that, I hand over to you, Torben.

Thank you very much for the introduction and also a very warm welcome from my side. Welcome to the Q1 Earnings Call 2026 for the Group SE. As always, I would like to start up with a short summary of what is happening within our Companies Group and also with a short market update. Then I would hand over to Tim for the financial figures and would then give you at the end an overview of running projects which we are executing at the moment. So first of all, Friedrich Vorwerk is active since 60 years in the business of energy infrastructure. Our main market, focused here on the top right of this slide, is natural gas market, electricity market, clean hydrogen market, and adjacent opportunities, whereas the adjacent opportunities is mainly our activities in heating, district heating grids and stations, but also biomethane treatment and CO2 separation and transportation. Today, I would still like to show you this slide, although probably most of you know it or have seen it for a couple of times, but there is some change in the composition of our 15 locations. As you have heard, we have sold our property in Luig-Verdanenberg, where the activities have mostly been taken over from our headquarters in Sosteet, and we have opened up a new facility in the Netherlands called Houten, which is the main office for 5CTech, our company for our welding technologies, and from Houghton we will guide our international activities in terms of delivering welding services to our customers. Besides that, still most of our customers are from the TSOs and DSOs, so main customers are on the natural gas and hydrogen side, Open Grid Europe, GEL-Uni, Onsvars Last Transport, And on the electricity side of the business, it's Tenet, Amprion, 50 Hertz, which are among our major clients. Growth of the company group has been driven by the energy transition going on here in Europe. And looking back on the year 25, we did a great job acquiring more projects. So total project volume acquired in 25. was almost 1 billion, to be exact, 991 million euros, which is a rise of almost one third compared to 2024 figures. And as you know, the total project volume acquired also takes into account our shares in the joint ventures we are operating on many projects. Yeah, that's for the status update. And now I would like to change over to the market update. So besides all political discussions going on at the moment, many countries in the EU are still planning massive projects in terms of the energy transition. So the European Commission has just published in late April their new list of PCI-PMI projects, which also focuses on infrastructure projects which cross borders between European countries. And from the map that is highlighted from the European Commission, you can see more than 230 cross-border projects, for example, in smart grids, electricity transition lines, but also hydrogen projects and also projects for the transport of CO2. Projects are shown there are in various statuses. So for example, you will find the hyperlink project, which is operating a gas unit where we are already active in, or H2 Hercules, which is the corporate projects of Open Grid Europe, where we have also received the first project to execute in the next years. But other projects like Aquaductus, high pipe Bavaria are still in tender phase. So permitting phase is ongoing and execution will be in the next five to 10 years. But also other projects are highlighted in this map. For example, export routes of CO2 to Norway. These projects are still under investigation or they published the first project ideas. So whoever is interested in what is going on in the next 20 years in Europe, I think the map of the PCI, PMI projects of the European Commission is a good source to look at. Yeah, but not only in terms of transport grids, there's a huge upgrade in demand, but also there's a huge step in investment in the distribution grids. So the ACRE has conducted a survey among the distribution system operators in Europe, to find out how the investments in the electrical distribution grids are developing in all of Europe. And as you can see from this graph, that's a huge step up over the last five years of almost 80% in investments in the distribution grids. And of course, also Germany is leading here because Germany is really focusing on new... I'm sorry. Sorry. Am I back again? Yeah, sorry, there was a call coming in. So especially Germany is focusing on developing the distribution grid to get more charging infrastructure and new heat pumps to the households. And besides the investment in the distribution infrastructure, there's of course still the discussion going on in Germany about transport infrastructure especially in electricity as you've probably been known that since 2016 Germany has passed a law to move all transport electricity infrastructure underground so not using overhead power lines but underground cable systems to transport the energy and now this year the new government has drafted out new law that will change the law which has passed in 2016 and they want to move more power lines above ground again due to cost issues. Of course, this bill has not been passed by the government yet and also the next project in electricity, especially the large north-south and west-east corridors. They've already been planned and permissions have already been granted. In some cases of projects, the cables have already been procured, so we do not see a change in outlining these projects, at least not for the next five to eight years. What happens after that will be a point of political discussions. But in the end, just to give you a technical idea also on the advantages of underground power systems. Of course, it creates better acceptance with all the stakeholders that are influenced by the project. The underground power lines are more resistant. more resistant to weather issues and also for terrorist attacks. So there are also some electrical issues where using cable systems is more advanced, especially in transport losses compared to the background power lines. We do not see any changes here for the upcoming projects, at least not for the next five to eight years. And therefore, we are very comfortable that our cable lane services will be required for the upcoming project without any changes. And with that, I would like to hand over to Tim for our financial figures.

Yeah, thanks, Gordon. I would also like to welcome you to today's earnest call on the first quarter figures. Let me now take you through our financial results in more detail, and as usual, let's start with the top line. As we already flagged, this quarter was significantly more challenging in terms of weather conditions than in recent years. In January and February, there was a particularly heavy amount of frost and snow in northern Germany, meaning that work at some of our sites and projects had to be paused in February, or could not even begin after the scheduled winter break. This makes it even more pleasing that we still managed to increase revenue by 5% compared to the previous year, bringing it up to €139 billion. Contributing factors here included, in particular, a very strong growth in headcount over the past few quarters, as well as in the current quarter, during which we increased our workforce by almost 4%, and a very strong performance in March, which allowed us to partially offset downtown from February already. In terms of revenue breakdown, the electricity segment was once again the strongest, counted for 56% of total revenue, followed by natural gas at 26% and our IJS opportunities at 16%. Clean hydrogen revenue was still quite weak in the first quarter, However, we continue to expect strong growth in this area, not least due to the orders already received into one, but also due to the very attractive project pipeline related to the hydrogen cobwebs, which we outlined in a recent course. However, probability shows particularly strong growth into one. EBITDA increased by 75% to €31.8 million, corresponding to a margin of 22.8%. Already reaching the level achieved an exceptionally strong fiscal year 2025. EBIT nearly doubled to €24.1 million, corresponding to a margin of 17.3%. This strong increase in margins is attributable to several factors. First, we achieved modest revenue growth while simultaneously reducing material expenses by approximately 20%. This is due to a shift in the project mix as Q1 2025 included a high proportion of revenue from material deliveries, such as the cable protection pipes or a major project anymore. And revenue in Q1 2026, on the other hand, was generated with a higher proportion of in-house work which compared to, let's say, simple material deliveries, naturally leads to a higher margin. Second, earnings contributions from joint ventures increased from 1.5 billion euro in the prior year to 4.1 billion euro in the reporting period, due to the higher order volume handled by the GPs. Third, the earnings figures include positive one-time effects of 1.7 billion euro from the same, or from a branch office in Liechtensteinberg. Let us now turn to the order situation. The top two charts here on the slide show the standard metrics of order intake and order backlog. Order intake in Q1 2026 increased by 110 million euro to 192 million euro, even though no major projects were awarded in Q1. Ultimately, this order intake was achieved exclusively through small and medium-sized projects worth up to 50 million euro each. We do not typically present these projects in a project pipeline due to their respective sizes, but the total value of these projects can be quite significant and meaningful. Among the larger orders received into one, there are two gas pressure regulating heating stations, one of which is already designed for the use of hydrogen, as well as additional hydrogen pipeline projects. The two charts below show the corresponding figures, including the proportionate order volumes of the joint ventures. Joint project volume acquired rose by 50% to 196 million euro, and is only slightly higher than the order intake, as no major projects were awarded in Q1, and accordingly, no new joint ventures were formed in Q1. New, however, is the key figure order backlog, including joint ventures, which we are reporting for the first time this quarter. This figure rose by 14% to 1.4 billion euro, and includes not only the conventional order backlog, but also the proportionate share of JV orders. In this context, we also published the so-called production output figure for the first time, which rose by 14% as well in Q1, and also includes the proportionate downbench of thread needs. This will now provide all relevant key figures to form a complete picture of the company's situation, taking into account the shift in the autostructure towards more duties. Based on the current quarterly results, we confirmed the guidance for fiscal year 2026, which we published in March, and which projects revenue in the range of €730 million to €780 million, and EBITDA of €160 million to €180 million. Please keep in mind, this focus is based solely on the company's organic growth, and does not include any additional inorganic growth. Given the net cash position of €232 million as of quarter's end, The range of opportunities for further growth remains definitely open. Let me now hand it back to Torben for some updates on our ongoing projects, upcoming projects, before we open the floor for your questions.