8/14/2025

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Thank you very much and a good morning from Norisenborg here in our headquarters and a warm welcome to our earnings conference for the first half year of 2025 and Q2 of 2025. We had challenging global markets, but JOST was able to continue its growth plan driven by the merger and acquisition of Hiva that we've taken, but also driven by some local market share gains. The Hyva post-merger integration is fully on track. The first synergies are being implemented and the exit of the non-core cranes business has been prepared in the second quarter of this year. We have signed the sales and purchase agreements this Monday on August 11th of 2025. We are also glad to report that we had some market share gains in agriculture in the APEC region and also in South America. where we were able to sign new long-term contracts with our agricultural OEMs. Market demand in Europe, Middle East and Africa was stabilized in the second quarter with order intakes slowly increasing. However, the demand in the US slowed down dramatically due to uncertainties based on the tariffs policy and the economic policy of the new administration. We've also been able to place a promissory note loan of 320 million, and we're very happy with the attractive conditions that we were able to obtain. Let's go to the financial highlights and they show the resilience of our business model. Our sales in Q2 were up 31% on mainly supported by the Hiba M&A and that effect already excludes the Cranes business. that is considered operations that we will discontinue. The organic sales were slightly down by minus 3% compared to the Q2 of 2024. The adjusted EBIT grew 10% to 37 million euros and the adjusted EBIT margin reached 9.5%. This was supported by a solid operating performance and also had some positive effects on the classification of the crane business as discontinued operations. Viva contributed positively also to an adjusted EPS in Q2 2025, offsetting the sales-driven organic decline of the earnings. And as a result, our adjusted EPS in Q2 2025 increased 3% to €1.41 versus the Q2 of 2024. Our leverage calculates to 2.78, which is temporarily above our target threshold of 2.5 due to the dividend payments that we have done in Q2 of 2025. We expect the target to be below the 2.5 threshold again by the end of 2025, end of this year. Free cash flow declined to 5 million euro. that is mainly because of higher working capital. Driving factors here are the HIVA consolidation, the growing activity level in Europe, and also a stock increase to make our supply chains more resilient and to protect the supply chains, especially towards North America. Looking at the markets, the markets, as I said, were not supporting you. You can see here that Europe, Middle East and Africa on truck and trailer were slightly positive compared to Q2 2024. However, on tractors and hydraulics, we had a contraction. North America contracted significantly based on the uncertainties, mainly on the tariffs. And APAC is, you know, if you want to say a mixed bag with some light in the truck business, some shadow in the trailer business. and tractor and hydraulics more or less around zero. Within that market environment, we operated quite resilient and that is also because we have meanwhile a business model with a wide range of end markets and a wide range of products and customers. If you look at our sales by destination, we sell less than half in Europe, Middle East and Africa meanwhile. the rest is distributed quite nicely between americas and asia pacific and if you look at the applications you can see that a little more than half is transfer application and the rest is hydraulics and also agriculture where we expect some growth um so that we will be beyond 20 also in agriculture in the future so meanwhile a very nice setup and a very resilient setup With that, I would like to hand over to Oliver to give us some more details on the financial performance.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Thanks, Joachim. And as always, let's start with the regions. And within the three regions, I will focus a little bit more on the isolated second quarter results. And then when coming to the group, focusing a little bit more on the full half-year results. So let's start with EMEA. As Joachim pointed out, We have seen in the second quarter a slight uptake of the demand. The reported sales were increasing by 21%, which is, of course, driven by the M&A of HUVA. And all those numbers and all the numbers on the next slides, just as I wrote in the beginning, are from continued operations, excluding the sales and results from the grains business. And if we do this without the IVA effect and at constant currency, we see an organic growth in the EMEA region by almost 4%. And that's the case because both transport and agriculture demand have stabilized a bit through the second quarter and the order book had gained some momentum. However, we need to point out the whole situation remains very fragile and basically changes also from time to time. So we need to really be be cautious going forward in assessing that. However, the momentum is better definitely than the weeks before. And if we then go down to the EBIT, we also see that profitability compared to the second quarter last year has increased in the EMEA region and this is driven both from slightly higher fixed cost absorption effects and also significantly by the categorization of the grains business without discontinued operations of grains business. That helps a lot. And by that, the margin increased then from 5.4% last year to 5.8% this year. Good signal is also that still it's the case that we don't use short-term work in the European plants anymore, which should help us also in the weeks going ahead. Next page. If we then go to Americas, also here you mentioned reported wise the sales are increasing driven by M1A, so almost 8% reported sales growth. However, if we look at constant currency and without the lever acquisition, we report minus 11% decline. and this is basically driven by both transport and the agriculture market are significantly down versus prior year. The good thing is on the EBIT side, we still show with 11% a very decent margin in light of all the habits that we have there, which are not only the tariff discussions and then the the underlying market downturn, it's also the ethics effect. As you all know, the US dollar has weakened a lot versus the US currency and that puts pressure on both sales and EBIT as we pointed out here. So that's why we are still happy with 11.0% EBIT margin in this region. We also should note prior years, very high margin in America's region was partially driven by, let's say a special situation for two a very solid agricultural business in the second quarter. Last year, with very high shares of premium loader sales on the one side, and on the other side, we were benefiting from sharp declining in material prices, while selling prices still remained very high because of that delay in material pass-through to the customers. We benefited last year as well. So overall, in light of the decline of the business in Americas, I would say we concretely laid our teams there. to a very solid contribution to the overall resize. If we then go to our third region, which is APAC. Yeah, Joachim, again, it's a little bit of a mixed picture here. The reported sales grew sharply by more than 100%, which is driven by the Hiva acquisition. Hiva has a very strong position in China, but also in India. but also here we exclude the acquisition effect and the FX effects we see a decline of minus 10%. That means although China as a single country region is doing better than we anticipated before and that helps us also in the overall reported organic numbers, but we see a decline of the activities in India and also in selective other countries, especially in Australia and South Africa, where the US has a very strong position and so that's a little bit of a burden. When we look into the EBIT and EBIT margin in APAC, so go back, we see also almost a doubling of EBIT numbers, which are driven by M on A. And despite the expected dilution of incorporation of Hiva, we see a solid EBIT margin of almost 40%. And this is not only driven by still a very good China business. We also see that the first synergies really are implemented and start to incorporate in those numbers. And this is especially true in the APEC region as, as you know, high bar business is in APEC the biggest one. So we would have expected anyhow that this first synergy start to realize there. So that's about the regions. Let's go to the group overall. We say a very solid result in light of all the economic topics around us here. So the sales from continued operations grew by 31% in the second quarter and for the full half year by 28%. If you exclude the M&A and FX effects, it's minus 3.2% for the second quarter and minus 6.5% for the first half year, which we say, especially the second quarter, we did quite well and we are able to here and there, especially in the agricultural segment, benefit from slight market share gains, especially in the APEC region, but also partially in South America, as Joachim pointed out. So that helps that there's an organic decline of only 3% in the second quarter. We believe we did quite well in the overall economic environment here. When we look into the EBIT and EBIT margin, the absolute EBIT increased by almost 10%. and the margin is at 9.5%. That's partially driven by the classification of the grants business as discontinued, but even excluding that, we were close to 9% for the second quarter, and for the full half year, around 9.1%, which is a strong result, again, in light of the tariff discussions and so on and so forth. We still see overall that the direct TAVRF impacts are, let's say, as we always communicated, probably in the range of a mid-single digit number. And we still strongly believe that within the second half year, we should compensate here and there. However, as we always pointed out, the indirect impact from economic downturn in the US, that is probably the bigger risk for Jost as a company. and we see materializing that the U.S. economy is really at the moment going down. We need to see what that will bring for the second half of the year. However, also in America, we see a very strong aftermarket at the moment and that helps to stabilize the margin at a very decent level again. An extra slide that you don't know from before, just for your reference, we also show here the bridge for the regions and for the total group. How would sales numbers have looked like in case we would incorporate the cranes business as continued, which is not the case anymore. And again, regarding the half-year margin, we report 9.5 excluding cranes and 9.1 including cranes business, which is a very solid development for the first half year and then fully aligned with our expectations that we had at the beginning of the year. Next page is then our usual net income and adjusted EPS bridge. Reported net income declined for several reasons to 20 million euro. The biggest impacts here are for sure non-cash and pure accounting items, so to speak, resulting from the purchase price allocation that we do with the Hiva acquisition. And on top, we have to incorporate special PPA items for 2025 driven by inventory step ups and order backlog capitalization that we need to do, which for the full year will roughly amount to 20 million. So there is a significant portion incorporated in those numbers. If we start from that 20 million, add up the expense taxes and the finance results, we end up with a reported EBIT of 40 million. Then comes this just mentioned PPA effects on top and roughly 6 million of so far expensed integration costs, more or less 100% related to the hyperintegration layoff costs, restructuring costs, whatever we do there and fully in line of our expectation. We are then seeing an adjusted EBIT of 73 million, and then we normalize the finance result and the tax rate ending up with an adjusted net income of 46 million or 3.06 earnings per share, which is exactly more or less the same like last year. And that underlines somehow that, yes, we see an organic decline that has a volume impact on our P&L, but on the other side, there is right from the beginning now a positive contribution of the hybrid acquisition into the full P&L. That's a quick update. I don't want to go into the details. A slide that has been shown also with the Q1 presentation, it shows the acquired assets and liabilities at their fair value assessment at the date of the acquisition, so 31st of January 2025. There have been some changes here and there because the valuation is still ongoing or was still ongoing after the Q1 reporting is now almost final. Two major topics have been incorporated and you see then the result also in the goodwill position. One is we will start from beginning of this year to do a regular depreciation of trademarks, which will on the Hiva trademark, but also the Quiki trademark. The details are also laid out in our half year two report. And the other effect is related to the classification of the brand's business as discontinued operations. So for that reason, we also had to anticipate the fair value and fair value adjustments of especially the inventory of that business unit. And that has been incorporated in those numbers. Besides that, it's just, yeah, minor effects. So that was the balance sheet effects from the acquisition. If you go into the P&L effects, most of them are already described. We have expensed roughly 14 million of new PPA charges from the hybrid acquisition and on top is roughly 7 million inventory step ups PPA that I mentioned before. Fully in line with our expectation, slightly higher just because we have now incorporated trademarks to creation. And I promised last time to give a quick outlook for the full year once these adjustments have been made. And that's mentioned here on the last bullet point on the right side. We expect now for 2025 a full year net income impact from the IVA PPA of roughly 28 million for 2025. And then going forward 2026, probably around 50 million. That's the basis of or based on the latest valuation status. It's almost final. and we shouldn't expect any further material deviation from that picture. Next slide. Coming quickly to cash flow and also after that to our balance sheet KPIs. Joachim already mentioned free cash flow in the second quarter was depressed by working capital topics, especially driven by a slight increase of the activity in EMEA and also the incorporation of inventory that we had to secure in light of the terrorist situation and safety stock discussions. For the full half year, it means still 49 million free cash flow, which is still a conversion rate of 1.1 and therefore above our threshold of 1.0. So we should be fine with that for the moment. CapEx ratio stays well below our target at the moment, 2.3%. We communicated that it could be in 2025 up to 2.9%. So also here you see we are managing somehow also the situation. It's not that we are cancelling, let's say, smart projects. Whatever we need to do to improve our P&L going forward, we will do. However, in light of the economic activity and the fragile situation, we do a careful spending, that's for sure. And also when we look into the net working capital factors, we see that despite the situation I just was describing in the second quarter, with EMEA and the safety stock discussions, we are managing a networking capital ratio of 17.5% at the end of the first half year, which is very below our full year guidance of 18.5%. So we should here be very safe for the end outlook. If we then go to our capital figures, we see ROSI decreasing from last year by 4.1% points down to 13%. Again, fully in line with our internal models after the acquisition of Fiverr and the dilution EBIT has an impact also here on ROSI. Nevertheless, our goal is for sure once the full synergy potential has been reached that we are back in our corridor which should be above 17.5%. Equity ratio is for two reasons at the moment depressed and has been gone down versus end of last year, down to 21.3%. The big effect is the dilution in the financing of the VIVA acquisition, so the extension of the balance sheet. But on the other side, and as you all know, this was especially in effect from the second quarter, the devaluation of the USD versus the Euro had a huge FX translation effect in our equity because we hold big positions in USD net assets, our own US business, but also the hybrid businesses denominated in USD. And that has for the full half year an effect of minus, almost minus 60 million euros, just pure translation effect. So it's non-cash, etc. However, it shows up in the equity ratio and has standalone an impact of almost 3.5% points. So without that, just for that, it's almost 25%. and then even slightly better than we thought. Initially, leverage already mentioned by Joachim is at the moment at 2.78. Also in line with the expectations, we always see a slight uptick of the leverage in the second quarter driven by the cash out of the dividend. Nothing else this year. And we stick to our target by end of this year to remain below the 2.5 threshold. That's from my side, and with that, I'll hand over again to Jörg.

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Thanks, Oliver. So let's see how we see the rest of the year. Looking at the markets going through it, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, we see a slight market upturn like we've seen already in the Q2 for truck and trailer. slight contraction in tractors and slight uptick in hydraulics. So overall, I would say for Europe, Middle East and Africa, slightly positive. In America, it will continue weak. We've had a very weak first half year and we expect that the second half of the year will be more or less equally impacted. by the uncertainty caused by the politics of the new administration, especially the tariffs politics. While in APEC, we see a few positive trends, so stabilizing and slightly positive outlook for the APEC markets. Based on that market outlook and based on a solid half year one performance, we're happy to confirm our outlook for the fiscal year 2025. The numbers that I will show here are for the continued operations. So sales will be up 40 to 50% versus prior year. Last year we had sales of 1.069 billion. Adjusted EBIT will be up 23 to 28% versus prior year. The same for the adjusted EBITDA. And you see the numbers of last year here with 113 for the adjusted EBIT and 148 million euros for the adjusted EBITDA. CapEx ratio, we are targeting 2.9% of sales and working capital, we target to be below 18.5% of sales. So certainly the outlook for the for 2025, including this discontinued operations also remains unchanged. And we, I would, you know, like to add that we're probably at the lower end of that range right now because of the market contraction, but we're still very comfortable to confirm this outlook for 2025. So let's come to the summary. We believe we had a solid Q2 in the, rough market environments proving that our business model has become more and more resilient over the years. The Hiva PMI integration is well on track and we're focusing on our core business and the Hiva core business to generate and to continue our profitable growth story. The disposal of the Cranes business has been successfully prepared in Q2 and we've been able to sign it this week. We expect closing within Q4 of 2025. A slight upside potential for European Middle East and Africa and also for our agricultural business, but certainly tariff uncertainties will continue to affect Americas and the weak Indian market will also slow down the recovery in Asia Pacific. Our local for local approach, our strong market access worldwide and our high customer diversification limit the impact of those uncertainties, tariffs uncertainties and the shifts in regional demand. And so it's very confirming for our overall strategy. And as I said, we're happy to confirm our outlook for 2025. So with that, I would like to thank you for your attention and we're open for your questions and remarks.

speaker
Conference Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question from the webinar may click the Q&A button on the left side of the screen and then click the rise your hand button. For written questions, please click the Q&A button and then text button and type your question. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press the lower your hand button from the webinar. Anyone who has a question make you up now. Our first question comes from Jorge Gonzalez with Hauk of HACER. Please go ahead.

speaker
Webinar Host

Jorge, can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me now?

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Yeah. Perfect. I have a few questions. Do you manage all by one? One by one? Yeah. okay so the first time is on regards these long-term new contracts in agriculture it sounds promising can you give us a reference of roughly of how much this can contribute next year and the year after well I'll tell you a little bit about the background so for us it's very confirming that our strategy to be

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

global tier one for those global agricultural groups, be it CNH, be it ECHO, be it John Deere, that that strategy is being confirmed by our customers. So we were able to enter into long term contracts. You can calculate the size of those contracts once they're all active as a low double digit million number. But of course, there will be contracts running out and there will be phasing in. So I don't have a number and I also would not like to share a number for the next year of what the new contracts will be. But we certainly see our ag business on a very good path and also on a growing path, as I mentioned, because of those long-term contracts and also because of an underlying market that we expect to come back.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Can we expect already low WDG in this year or we should be prudent?

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Yeah, I would say you can expect that for next year. Amazing.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

So then on HIDA, it would be very helpful if you can share with us more or less the contribution in adjusted debit just to reconciliate the new divisions and to have a better idea of how the synergies are impacting already. Maybe you can give us the synergies instead.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Regarding eBuild, I think last time we said that the run rate was around 6%, something like this, which is more slightly higher than already last year. That has been confirmed in the second quarter. if you just exclude then the cranes business on a continued basis it's already above the seven percent probably between seven and eight percent run rate of adjusted EBIT margin and regarding the synergies they are starting now to being realized right so and I would still stick to the the calculation that we set the run rate of 2025 should incorporate roughly 45 million euro of some of the effects of 2025.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Okay thank you very very useful and in fact regarding the synergies we're commenting I don't know why I thought that in the previous call we commented about a potential of 27 could be the case Yeah, yeah.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Full year effect once realized. I'm just talking about the isolated effect in 2025 that is to be found in the P&L. We still stick to the range that initial target was above 20 million. We somehow precise that last call to probably 23 or slightly more. I don't expect too much. There might be a slight impact downwards from the discontinuation of the grains business because obviously there's purchasing volume related to the grains business, but still definitely the run rates once we have fully implemented all synergies should be above the 20 million, 20 plus.

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

But that's something that we find in the run rate at the end of 2026. So that has always been the communication. So no changes here regarding phasing and amount.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Okay, so the 20 is the run rate at the end of 25? 26. 26 also, okay, okay, okay. Perfect. And on the aftermarket, there are a few comments that was quite strong in Kichu. Can you indicate us more or less how much for the group? How much was for the group in Kichu?

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Definitely above 30%. And you might recap 20, it was around 27, something like this. But I'd say the very useful contribution here was that especially in the Americas region and there, especially North America, it was in some months, not the whole full half year, but in most of the months, close to 40% even. And that's then overall contributed to the overall group market after market share being jumping over 30%. But especially in the US.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Perfect. And last two on the outlook. So you commented that you were expecting the same trend to continue in North America. But this means H2 is going to be similar to H1, or do you see a decline? Because looking to the production rates, that's something. these aspects like FTR and ICT are guiding for the second part I believe that production rates are going to go down but I don't know your view you have obviously better view than them are you expecting more or less same volumes in the second part of North America or some decline well you're right the colors of our customers they may be slightly down at this point in time

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

But I would say overall, we are calculating that the second half year is more or less on the same level and the first half year.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Okay, perfect. Very, very last one on agriculture. So 25 was a little bit below initial expectations of initial recovery now because of the stocks being low. How do you see 26? I mean, is there any substantial change that invite you to be more positive for next year. I see some of the indexes for the perception of the companies in Europe improving, although they saw some correction in July. So I was wondering how you see next year and how are the stocks at the dealers? Is there anything you can share with us?

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Yeah, dealer stocks are certainly being reduced. So dealer stocks are much more healthy right now as compared to what they've been last year. And so new orders will translate into new production of tractors and also into new production of loaders much quicker than they did in the past, because in the past they would sell off the dealer stocks. So that is a much healthier state. So I expect a stabilization for the agricultural business and in our case support it with some market share gains, especially in APEC and in Americas.

speaker
Jorge Gonzalez
Analyst, Hauck & Aufhauser

Perfect. Thank you very much, Oliver and Joachim, and have a great rest of the holiday. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

speaker
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Jasmin Stalen with Berberk. Please go ahead.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Hi, hello. Can you hear me?

speaker
Webinar Host

Yes, perfectly.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Hello. Perfect. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have three topics, if I may. So first on the portfolio pruning. So congrats to the fifth disposal of the grains business. That was really a very positive surprise. Is it fair to assume that the disposal is free of debt and EV should be in a very low double-digit Euro million amount, just reflecting a significant discount to the EV multiples, for example, of Palfinger? And does the disposal contract include any earn-outs or guarantee application, or is it all set with the closing? That's my first question.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Yeah, I can do this. I think your assumptions are quite fair, so we will hand over free of debt. and yeah EV is a very low double-digit number and still at least we get a positive purchase price of a single digit euro number so equity purchase price that's what we expect to be incorporated in the fourth quarter. Your question regarding Palfinger, I would say that's probably a little bit of a difficult comparison because obviously the Crane's business unit isn't in the same shape like That's why we sell them. And if you, I mean, multiply six times zero or 10 times zero, it's still zero, right? So we are quite okay. For us, it was more important. It was clearly identified right in the beginning as a non-core business unit. And to be honest, we are happy that with such an accelerated speed, we can now concentrate on the other two businesses that we acquired this year by acquisition. Yeah. And then what second question was? How much earn out? There is a portion of earn out and we will report this once the lead has been fully incorporated into the numbers. It's probably 60, probably two thirds is fixed and one third of is somehow in earn out or performance clause. Of that single digit equity value purchase price.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Perfect, very clear. Then on agri, you mentioned 4% organic growth in EMEA, but attributable to both transport and agri. What was the development at agri standalone in the second quarter in EMEA?

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

In EMEA?

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Yeah.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Seven, around 7%.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Okay, okay, yeah. Very encouraging number.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Somehow.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned already that.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

That's fair to say it's a very fragile situation as we can see.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Yeah.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Right, so it seems to be the case that at the moment for the farmers, the overall environment starts to improve interests seem to be really at the bottom and probably are not falling further. So that gives certainty that we have reached the lower end of interest rates in Europe. Inflation is between 1.7% and now 2%. So it seems to be that the investment environment confidence level is increasing.

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

And on top of that, I think one of the other reasons, especially in Europe, was that the OEMs, the agricultural tractor OEMs, were very rigid in their pricing and they had very ambitious price positioning based on the cost increases that they've had. And I think they're more flexible in the negotiation right now. So that I think will also help the market to come back. The farmers are able, financing is getting more accessible and also there's more flexibility on finding a transaction price that both sides can live with.

speaker
Jasmin Stalen
Analyst, Berenberg

Perfect. And maybe the last one on truck and trailer market in North America. I mean, you mentioned already that H2 should be kind of comparable to the first half. Could you share some color on the current trading or discussions you have with your customers with regards to extended holidays and or how do you expect the business development after the summer holiday season? And might there be a risk for further cost measures to safeguard profitability if the business will deteriorate further?

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Yeah, so from an outlook, I would say the first half year, we had more or less weekly adjustments downwards in the call-offs that we've seen with our customers in North America. I expect that to be a lot more stable. They've now adjusted to a level that they believe in. And so I expect that we have a more stable business environment at a low level, similar to the level that we've seen in Q1, in half year one. So, and in terms of cost flexibility, I mean, we've always proven that we are able to adjust our operational cost and also to a certain extent, our structural cost to a certain level. We are certainly at the level right now where it gets more and more difficult to reduce structural cost, but at the same time, we have the synergies that we already talked about with the Hiva integration, and that is also a synergy that we will find in all regions, and that will help us compensate some of that.

speaker
Webinar Host

Yeah, perfect. Thanks. Very clear. I'll step back into the line.

speaker
Conference Operator

Thank you, Kasmin. Thank you. The next question comes from Nikolai from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

speaker
Nikolai
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Yeah, good morning. It's Nikolai from Deutsche Bank. Thank you for taking my questions and well done for solid Q2. My first one would be on the guidance. And I think you've touched on it basically because the guidance assumes that H2 will be stronger than H1 in terms of growth rate. I assume that this is partly driven by one more month of consolidation of FIBA and then the recovery of Europe as well as the APEC region, right?

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

I would say it's a fair summary. Definitely, yes. There is this technical effect from the acquisition, but also the growth rates should be higher also because the comparables of

speaker
Nikolai
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

well that's the third part exactly you know if you the comparable base from last year is much lower for the second half year than for the first half year but those are the three effects absolutely correct okay got it thanks um and then on the german infrastructure program so far from the truck or ms we've heard that hopes are high but so far this has not materialized in the actual numbers so it's more like a story for 2026 Would you share this view?

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Yes, I would share that view. That view has been changing. Not our view. No, the view of the OEMs and of the industry has been changing. In April, when it was announced, in May, there was a lot of hope and then reality kicked in to a certain degree. I think right now there's not too much hope that this will have a significant impact soon. but I'm sure it will at one point in time have an impact. So if you're talking about sentiment in the industry, I would share that view that right now everybody's questioning on how is it actually going to impact that. If you want on a positive spin, that's some upside potential because it's right now not reflected in the outlook that our customers are having.

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

Exactly. But I want to mention that again, even our first guidance or the guidance that still exists issued end of March has never incorporated any effect from the infrastructure program. We were always a little bit cautious in saying, will this really have an impact in 2020? Yes or no. And I think it's proven really very difficult to see something here.

speaker
Nikolai
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Okay, got it. And my last one, I mean, I think the sale of the Cranes business is appreciated. Any other measures we can expect or that you plan to maybe lower leverage at a faster rate?

speaker
Oliver
CFO, JOST AG

In general, we are still in the process, let's say, of PMI, of the two-year PMI phase. And part of the two-year PMI phase is very clear on the long-term portfolio. And as you know, Viva is not only producing the assets as well, um but for the time being no there is no other thing on on the table no we are doing smaller portfolio cleans up cleans up as always also in the used world that's probably the main focus for the next um six months yeah no no there's um i mean don't expect any significant changes in our portfolio right now as oliver said we have um continuous portfolio reviews we've taken out some done some

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

non-core product out of our transport portfolio recently. And we do that continuous updates and review of our entire portfolio. But right now with the business that we have and that we claim is continued business, that's a business we're committed to and that we are going to invest in. And on top of that, that's the business that we also need to generate the synergies that we want to generate. As we mentioned, the 4 to 5 million that you would see at the run rate P&L this year and 20 million that we have committed for the run rates end of next year.

speaker
Nikolai
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Got it. Thank you.

speaker
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this was our last question. I hand back over to Joachim for any closing remarks.

speaker
Joachim
CEO, JOST AG

Okay, well, thank you very much. I think, you know, in a very difficult market, we were able to prove that our business model became more and more resilient over the years, and we're very happy that we could demonstrate that in the Q2 and also in the outlook that we've given. And we thank you for your interest and your questions and wish you a wonderful day. Bye bye. Bye bye.

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