Jost Werke Se

Yes, thank you very much and a very warm welcome to our Q1 2024 investor relations and analyst call here in Nuremberg. And let me go through the financial highlights. At first, the markets were softer, but we still reached the result of 299 million euros in sales in the first quarter. That includes a contribution of 21 million from the M&As that we have recently closed. The adjusted EBIT margin remained strong on the prior year's level at 11.6%, despite this drop in sales, and our adjusted EBIT reached a total of 35 million euros. We're very happy with the cash flow development, where we also generated 35 million, and that's more than double of what we had in the Q1 of last year. And with that, our leverage could be improved down to 0.09, to a factor of 0.09. Our adjusted earnings per share came in at 1.70, also a very strong result, and the net earnings adjusted net earnings to sales are at 8.5%. So based on those numbers and the outlook that we have from our customers and from the markets, we can confirm the outlook for 2024 that we've already given. Yeah, let's look at the markets that we've seen in Q1. And as I already mentioned, we see a normalization and a drop from the record levels that we had, especially in Europe and in North America in the last year. So in that year-on-year comparison, we're now comparing an extremely strong Q1 2023 to a much more normal Q1 2024. On the truck markets in Europe, we saw a decline of 18% against that previous year's level. On trailers of 19% and in the tractor markets of 20%. We more or less followed that market trend with a minus 18% that we've seen in our numbers. And the JOST numbers, they are organic. So here we have excluded the M&A effects so that we get the fair comparison. North America, the drop was even stronger. We've seen 15% on trucks versus last year, 25% on traders versus last year, and also 25% on the compact and low horsepower tractors versus last year. Our sales came in at minus 28%, so we had probably a little bit of a destocking effect also at some of our dealers, especially in the trailer and in the tractor market. Asia-Pacific, stronger than last year, plus 5% on truck, plus 4% on trailers, minus 12% on tractors. We're not very exposed on tractors in Asia-Pacific, so we also here followed the market with sales of plus 5%.

Okay, with that, I hand over to Oliver for the key finance.

Thank you, Joachim, for the overview. Let's jump now a little bit more into the details, starting with the segment region Europe first. And Joachim already took the wording normalization or normal, and that's exactly what we see with regards to the demand in Europe. We see this as a normalization after a very strong quarter one of last year, which was supported by strong pent-up effects. Nominal rise, that means minus 7.9% in sales for Europe organically as... Yeah. Joachim just showed minus 18%. The difference here is mainly driven by the consolidation of Jaxa, the business that we bought in quarter three last year, formerly known as Crenlodo Brasil. That's consolidated in Europe still and supported that reported increase. F-Inks impact didn't have a big impact in sales in quarter one this year. So let's jump now to the adjusted EBIT. Absolute loss following the organic numbers, not 200%. So we were able by adjusting fixed costs, by having a good flexibility, especially in our Eastern European plants, to somehow mitigate the minus 18% in organic sales growth down to an only minus 13% decline in absolute EBIT. And this results then in an adjusted EBIT margin of 8% versus 8.5% in last year's quarter. You always have to be in mind that the vast majority of the group headquarter costs are allocated into the region. This is why the fixed cost portion is a little bit higher here in Europe than compared to the other regions. And that for sure has a scaling effect when it comes to sales decline in that region. Overall, the share of aftermarket and agricultural business in Europe stabilized and for sure helped to keep the margin on a very healthy level with 8%, as I mentioned before, in Europe. Then let's go to North America on the next slide. Despite the minus 28% driven by the market, as Joachim showed before, we had again a very strong profitability in North America. The sales were burdened, like shown, especially driven by the decline in the trailer market in North America. And so far, we hadn't backwind from the agricultural market. That's still down. And it's also comparing here to a very strong first quarter 2023. But on the other side, with the measures that we have taken in last year, portfolio optimization, we mentioned a couple of times before in other conferences, we were really able to keep the margin at a very good level and indeed increased it from 10.5%. to 11.0% and we are very happy with that. And the current momentum is still very healthy from a profitability point of view in our North American segment and underlines the flexibility that we have there. So very good profitability contribution there. And then let's go to the Asia Pacific Africa segment. Here we are reporting a reported growth of 3.1% in sales. Organically, that's even a little bit higher, 4.9%, so almost 5%, because we had some FX effects in sales in that region. We have basically still robust markets in all of the region, India, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and surpassing the strong basis even of prior year there as well. The Chinese market was quite good in the first quarter and we see here a step-by-step recovery of the truck and trailer market. Despite the overall situation in the Chinese economy, it seems to be that we are in a favorable situation here. And we also had a small contribution from the company LH Lift, which we acquired last year. This company has a plant and a business in China as well, so not only in Finland, and that's allocated to that region here. When we look into the EBIT and EBIT margin, also, again, a very strong profitability result. The margin came a little bit down from 22.5% in first quarter 2023 down to almost 21%, but that's only driven by mixed effects. Now, as I said, the Chinese market for us was quite good in the first quarter. And the Chinese EBIT margin is a little bit lower than compared to the other countries in the region because of the different product mix here. Overall, the proportion also of the agricultural business is step by step increasing. We have a very successful ramp up of our plant in Chennai in India. We are quite happy of that. That plant already contributed to sales in the first quarter and is already in terms of adjusted EBIT ahead of our budget and business case planning for that plant for 2024. So that's the three regions now consolidating to the group. What does that mean? As Joachim pointed out, driven by the market and cyclical declines, especially in transport in North America and Europe, we had to deal with a reported growth of minus 12.7% in sales. from 342 down to 299 organically that's almost 18 down which is fully in line uh with the reported numbers that we get from the market associations and informations there um The point is also that the agricultural market remains on a low level. There is a stabilization scene, but it's not enough at the moment to give us really support for the overall company. That is somehow expected for the second half. But at the moment in that numbers, it is what it is, so to speak. FX headwinds account for minus one percent points in reported sales. And the overall contribution of the ramp up of the M&A effects in sales is almost 21 million in the first quarter of 2024. Regarding EBIT, also again, like you pointed out, a very strong margin. So we were able, despite the decline in sales, to keep the prior year's margin at a level of 11.6%, underlying the resilience of our business, for sure supported also by a strong aftermarket business in both business lines. but also benefiting from measures that we have taken in 2023. Again, as I said, especially in North America, we see clear positive effects from portfolio optimizations we did there. And we are still at the moment in favor of a good price level, healthy price level, and a good level of material costs that we can keep down, so to speak. So that's... Then for the group, coming now to our standard adjusted net income and adjusted EPS bridge, relatively plain vanilla this quarter. So we end up with a reported EBIT of 28 million. If we then add up again our typical normalizations, especially from the PPA in this quarter, exceptions with only 1 million this quarter, we come to the adjusted EBIT of 35 million. And then deducting again the finance result and also our adjusted tax rate, we end up with an adjusted net income of 25 million compared to 30 million in first quarter last year. We have to take here into account that These 25 million versus the 30 million even include a 1.4 million rise in interest rates due to the Eurobore. So that makes it even more impressive from our point of view. And if you go to the very last comment on that slide here, impressive is also the net earning sales ratio was 8.5%, still on a very, very high record high level from a Yoast perspective here. Okay, next page. Our main KPIs we are tracking. ROSI still on a level above 20%, almost 21%. So very close to the record level we had in first quarter last year, showing the efficient use of capital. And this, in light of the sales decline, we believe is a very good result. Equity ratio also stayed very strong and well above our threshold of 35%, where we always want to be somehow, and supports for sure the DV leveraging of our company, which you also then see in the net debt figures. Joachim already mentioned that's due to the strong free cash flow we generated. so to speak second half of last year and now again in first quarter this year we were able to push that down to 0.93 times EBITDA and this for us is very important at the moment it helps us especially to keep the interest costs down and very competitive for the full year of 2024. And please to the next page, some cash flow and working capital figures. Free cash flow I already mentioned, more than doubled in first quarter. There are a couple of effects, but more or less they are a wash. So we have some support from a factoring program that we started and implemented in first quarter on the one side. So that's a positive impact. On the other side, and you are all aware of this, we had to pay the final earn-out payments for the acquisition of Elo Group. And all in all, more or less, this is a wash. So the 35 should give us a good flavor of the real performance in terms of free cash loan first quarter. And we believe this is a very good one, to be honest. CapEx still under control. There's 2.2% fully in line with our target range of 2.5% for the year. And also working capital, you can see for sure we are here benefiting also from the factoring program. But even on top of that, we are carefully looking about our inventories, especially in an environment when sales decline, you need to do that. And also our payables development compared to last year, I think was very good at the end of the quarter. So that... means all in all we were able to push the networking capital ratio down to 17.8%, so even below the 18% mark. So from that point of view, giving us support again also for audio leveraging at the moment. Then let's go to the next page. I think that's from my side. And with that, I will hand over again to Joachim for the outlook. Yeah, thank you, Oliver.