Jost Werke Se

A very good morning here from Neue Eisenberg and a warm welcome to our Q3 earnings conference for Joost Werke SE. So I would like to start with the highlights of the first nine months and the third quarter of this year. In the third quarter, we were able to accelerate our profitable growth despite the challenging market environment. This was supported by market share gains. We had organic growth opportunities we could implement and of course by the M&A of the Hiva Group. The Hiva Group PMI post-merger integration is fully on track. We see already a ramp up of the synergies and we advance further with new cross-selling opportunities that we have identified. We were able to obtain market share gains across all regions. and in all business lines. And that is because we could successfully combine our local for local approach in operations, selling and production with the global strength of our business lines. The market demand in Europe, Middle East and Africa has strengthened somewhat over in the Q3 compared to a weak Q3 in 2024. However, the demand in the US has been contracting further due to the tariff concerns of our customers. With that performance, we can confirm our outlook for the fiscal year of 2025. Let's go a bit deeper into the financial highlights. Our operational model and our strategy proves its resilience and the strength in this challenging market environment. Our sales in the third quarter of 2025 went up by 56% to 383 million. This was of course supported by the Hiva merger and acquisition effect, but also by an organic growth of 10% that we had across all regions. Our adjusted EBIT grew by 40% to 37 million in the third quarter, and the adjusted EBIT margin reached 9.7%. that had a negative FX impact, so a constant currency that would have been 9.9%. Our good operating performance and the realization of first synergy effects from the UI integration resulted on a nine-month basis in 110 million adjusted EBIT, which is almost the value that we had for the entire fiscal year 2024. and the adjusted EBIT margin on those nine months of 2025 reached 9.6%. Also adjusted earnings per share increased 14% to one euro and 11 for the quarter three. This increase was also supported by an organic growth and of course the contribution of the EVA acquisition. Leverage has improved to 2.44 in the Q3 which means that we have been reaching the targets to be below 2.5 times leveraged by year and faster than we initially expected. So we're very happy about that. Of course, big help came from the free cash flow that was very good in Q3. It grew by 144% to 56 million. And the driving factors also here were the strong EVA contribution, improvements in working capital, some factoring, and some positive timing effects. Give you a little bit more detail on what we are doing on the Hira integration. We showed it already in previous conferences that our target is to reach 20 million positive impact in the run rate by the end of 2026. And here a bit more detail. So one part An important part of those synergies is additional sales that we generate through cross-selling synergies. We are successfully offering our Hiva products to Yoast customers in various countries. We have good success there in Australia, but also in North America, where we see additional sales being generated by using that sales channel for the existing Hiva products. But vice versa also, the Yoast products are gaining access to new customers by leveraging Hiva dealers using the Hiva network in APEC and also in Americas. We see that especially in Canada and in some of the Asian markets. So we expect the total effect of 8 million additional EBIT generated through additional sales that we find with these cross-selling synergies. And then another big lever, of course, is material costs, logistic costs, production costs. The sales of the crane business has been signed, so that carve out is ongoing and is certainly helping. But on the logistics costs also, we have a consolidation enclosure of first sites and warehouses that we have already implemented in Australia, in South Africa, and also in Europe. And we see the first effects out of that. So over 50% of the purchasing and logistic contracts have already been bundled and we are in the process of renegotiation. So that's we expect here in effect and that should be the biggest effect of the entire 20 million. Here this effect should be 8 to 10 million by the end of 2026. And of course, we are also trying to optimize and we will optimize our structure selling general and administrative cost. We are streamlining in our management and reporting structure worldwide. We're advancing very swiftly on this one and we will have the structure implemented. The majority of that structure implemented by the end of this year. We have savings from combined IT services contracts and license fees. but also the combination of shared service centers for accounting and auditing reduces those fees. But we're also integrating our marketing organization. We are running combined trade shows. We've just been, I've just been on a trade show with the Agritechnica for the last three days. We had the Wuhan show last week and we're already at these shows as one company, partially with one stand for Heva, Yoast and Cricket. So also here we expect around 8 million. 5 million out of those 20 million, we will already see by the end of 2025. Looking at the market development in Q3 versus the Q3 of last year, in Europe, Middle East and Africa, we have increasing markets. I already mentioned that it has been a weak quarter last year, Q3 and Q4 in Europe. In America, the tariffs take their toll. There's a lot of uncertainty that our customers sense with their customers. So production rates on trucks, but also on traders is going down. And in APEC and the transport business, you can say it's more or less flat, a little better in trucks and a little weaker in traders. The tractors are still negative compared to last year. However, it's not hitting us so much because this is mainly the large tractors that are being impacted by this downturn on the dealer business. We see already a slight coming back of the market. So this is the official numbers for the markets, but our dealer channel is actually improving a little bit versus last year. And on hydronics, you can say across, we have more or less stable markets, a little weaker, In America, there's also a slight impact on the tariffs, but in the rest of the world, we see infrastructure still on a very solid basis. This resilience, it comes also from a nice distribution of markets, products, and customers. And we've shown this slide before, but I think it shows very well that we are not dependent on any specific customer groups or any specific market. If you look at where our sales are being generated, you can see that it's 47% in Europe, Middle East and Africa, 27% in Americas, 26% in APEC. So already a very nice distribution. If you look at it from an adjusted EBIT contribution, You can always say it's a third, a third, a third. 31% in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Americas with 30% plus 2% with the joint venture in Brazil and APEC region with 37% of our adjusted EBIT. So also that adds to our resilient business model. And if you look at the applications, we have about 50% in transport, still 53%. and the growing agriculture business and hydraulics business with 18% and 29% respectively. Yeah, with that, I would hand over to Oliver for more financial details on our performance.

Thanks, Joachim, for the overview. Yes, and then indeed, let's go into the financials as usual. First, a little bit more focusing on the quarterly results by region and then summing up into the group. Starting here with Europe, we have seen organic growth and the first synergies that improved also our profitability. The sales contribution by EVA in the third quarter has been 36 million, leaving then the rest of the growth with almost 30% of organic growth in the third quarter. This is driven by stabilization both in transport and agriculture. And also the general overall order intake gained a little bit of a momentum. However, we still need to say that the situation in India is somehow fragile, right? We need to stay flexible and need to be close to the customer group, especially in the DACH region, right? the whole effects from the infrastructure program are yet to come somehow. We had only minor FX effects in sales by 0.3% points. So that sums then up to an almost 41% of reported sales growth from 129 to 182 million euros in the third quarter. Looking into EBIT, also there a nice growth from 7.3 million to 11.4 million. driven by a margin increase on the one side. I mentioned that also in Europe, we see the first synergies that are going to be realized. We are consolidating sites and warehouses. And on top, where we helped for a year is that we have a profitable business in agriculture, especially in EMEA. And that business has been organically grown by 25% compared to the third quarter of last year. That obviously helped to improve the profitability in EMEA as well. Please remind me that, as in the past, the EMEA region carries, let's say, the big, big share of the headquarter costs, and that is also after the hybrid acquisition still the case, as the headquarter there is in the Netherlands. So that's then the overall impact on the margin, but nevertheless increased compared to prior year. So that's the quick summary for EMEA. If we now go into Americas, we have seen growth in Americas in the third quarter. This is driven by our diversified model within the region and also, as Joachim mentioned, selective market share gains. The Hiva contribution to the growth was 30 million, which led to a reported sales growth from 77 million euros to 107 million, so by almost 39%. However, even in America, we achieved an organic sales growth of 6%, which is partially driven by a very good situation in our trailer business and aftermarket business in North America on the one side, that helped us to compensate also the margin effect from the truck downturn. And on the other side, a very successful quarter for our business in Brazil, an acquisition that you might remember we did in 2023, which is strongly growing versus prior year also by new projects and new customers with very solid margins. And that indeed then turned into a strong quarter from our point of view also in terms of EBIT for the region, absolutely wise growing from 9.8 million to 10.9 million to a margin of 10.3%. And that despite the high dilution that we will have and still have in the region here, but we are fully on track to realize the synergies there. And you have mentioned that we are benefiting here on both sides with regards to cross-sell effects. And so we are happy with the results here in Americas as well. And yeah, I'm looking forward for a prosperous 2026. Then going to APEC. APEC has seen a very strong reported sales force in the third quarter from 40 million to 95 million. So more than doubled. 55 million of that growth has been driven by hyper acquisition. As you know, EVA is especially in China, a very, very strong player with high market shares and is currently benefiting also yours, but especially EVA. from a very strong export business. So we have gained a lot of business with Chinese customers. These Chinese customers are very successful now in the global market, so not only domestic, also in their export markets. And Hiva is growing with that customers, but also organically. So without the Hiva effect, we have grown by almost 7% in the region. And this is, somehow by still solid transport business for Yoast. Again, also here driven by export business, but also by a ramp up of our agriculture business in India. So very successful here. We had strong FX headwinds of almost 11% points. That's because of the strong Euro, but nevertheless have achieved almost 100 million Euro. of sales in the region for the third quarter looking into EBIT now again very strong like in the second quarter growing absolute wise the EBIT from 7.7 million last year third quarter to almost 14 million now in this year's third quarter so the strongest region by far now in terms of EBIT and EBIT has grown by 80 percent we see the first synergies are ramping up as you already mentioned across all, let's say, cost line items in Cox, in SG&A, but also on the sales side with regards to cross sales activities. So overall, from a region point of view, Alpac has been very, very strong in the third quarter and also looking short term going forward. We still see a good momentum, especially in China for the moment. Then summing up for the total group, We see an organic growth in all regions and then together with the M&A contribution has boosted sales and earnings in the third quarter from 246 now to 283 as Joachim mentioned. Impact from Heva standalone is 121 million in the third quarter leaving us with 10% of organic growth in such a geopolitical and worldwide environment. I think that's quite an amazing result and underlines the resilience of our business model and the exposure to various markets, to all the big customers worldwide, including the new ones in China and in India helps us to balance that, so to speak, challenging environment very well. On top, we have seen a momentum increase in the agricultural business worldwide by now 18% year over year increase. And we need to see, Joachim was just on the architechnica, seems to be that we have definitely reached the bottom through the summer period in agriculture. So also there, we are slightly optimistic for the next months that this is going to continue. When we look into EBIT, EBIT has grown by 40% from last year, 26.5 million, now to 37.2 million. So a very decent margin of 9.7%, so almost close to our strategic quality of 10%. Again, in such a complicated environment. And if you would adjust this for the negative currency effects, both in sales and in EBIT, that would have been a constant currency rate of EBIT by 9.9%. So we are very glad and positive to show this number here. We see in all regions the ramping up of the synergies, as we mentioned. On the other side, here and there, the situation remains fragile from the market point of view. We need to stay flexible. And I think we are well set with our business model to deal with whatever is upcoming over the next months. And one last point to mention here, basically in all regions, but especially in North America, We have seen a very high market share for our aftermarket business that stabilized the margin here as well. So that's regarding sales and adjusted EBIT. If we now look into our adjusted net income and adjusted EPS bridge, we start with a net income of 22 million for the nine months impacted for sure by the finance results, which is increasing definitely versus prior because of the higher debt load in the interests. We also had a little bit higher taxes in the third quarter. There are some timing effects partially are related to our PPA charges here and there. There is a phase out definitely going to be expected over the next months. We need to look at this at the end. Adjusted for both, we stand within a reported EBIT of 58 million and then for sure as usually we adjust the PPA charges that have significantly increased compared to prior year because we do now incorporate the purchase price allocation of IVA. So that sums up to 41 million. That's a high especially this year because we have in the first 12 months of the consolidation Special PPA charges, there's one detailed slide in the slide deck as well, that will phase out until the end and then this DNA PPA charge is going to be significantly reduced from next year onwards. Then we add 11 million exceptionals for the first nine months. These are to 95% related to the integration of fever and then from a cost point of view, layoff costs consolidation costs advisor costs etc so all related to the integration of eva we are still fully in line with our overall guidance that we would expect between 12 to 24 million integration costs of eva in the first two years so this is the 11 million and for this year we are fully aligned summing up then to an adjusted EBIT of 110 million and then again if we do our retroactive calculation of finance result and the adjusted tax rate elevated to this, we are ending up with an adjusted net income of 63 million, which we are very happy to announce, which is already then higher than last year, despite the higher, significantly higher finance result. In adjusted EPS, that means then 44.17, an increase from the 4.04 last year. And I always like to mention also the adjusted net earnings to sales ratio, which reached again about 5%, which I think is in the current environment still a very solid number. So then showing here again the details of the PPA charges. I mentioned it basically already. That's probably more for the readout material. One important point, the last bullet point on the right side is what I said. This year's net income is affected by that. Within the first year, especially PPA charges, all that sums up to 31 million. We expect that this is going to be lower by almost 20 million from January next year onwards. Coming now a little bit to capital efficiency and balance sheet figures. We have seen on ROSI by end of September of 14.3%. That's already for the first time now sequentially improved ROSI. In the second quarter, we had 13%. So that's a good signal. Also showing the effect of the synergies and the EBIT growth. There's still a way to go for our overall target, mid and long-term target. But also here we see that we are quite fast I'm happy to announce that 14.3% showing that we see already that the EVA M1A is value accretive and it's managed in a capital efficient way. Equity ratio has decreased from 40.4% end of last year to 21.3%. That's obviously clear from the financing of the EVA acquisition. On the one side that's probably 70% of the effect and the other 30% of the effect is that still by end of September we see an impact of almost 50 million currency translation in our balance sheet. We have and that's somehow then the other side of our diversified model all over the world. We have net assets all over the world and as you know the euro currency has increased its value to a lot of currencies worldwide so we see here a translation effect but it's only a translation effect so to speak. Regarding leverage I'm quite happy to announce that because of a very strong cash flow in the third quarter we were able to get the leverage number already below the 2.5 threshold 2.5 times EBITDA threshold That has been our target for end of this year. We have now reached already the end of the third quarter. And I'm confident that we can maintain at least that level until the end. That for sure underlines our strong ability to generate cash flow. And Hiva again is also here contributing to that. Next page. Here you see the free cash flow as a result for the first nine months has been now 105 million. So the operating cash flow is improving through the acquisition and our organic growth. On top, as you have mentioned, we have now a higher business volume and that also gives us opportunities here and there for better working capital management. We are harmonizing factoring programs between Yoast and EVA, so that has positive impacts here as well, resulting in a conversion rate of 1.7 for the first nine months, which I think is a good result despite the challenging environment. Looking into CapEx, we have spent so far 28 million, which is 2.4% in terms of sales. So also here fully in line You may remember from our guidance that we want to stay below 3% this year, so I think we are well underway here. Nothing special to mention. Regarding working capital, that's the vice versa consequence of the working capital management. I think we did good in the third quarter. Working capital has been 62% and it's already below what is our target for the year and helping to improve our balance sheet. Next page, please. So that's it. From my side, handing back over to Joachim.

Yeah, thank you, Oliver. So let's look how the rest of the year is, what we expect for the rest of the year. From a market point of view, this is not much different, obviously, than the slide you saw before. This was the nine months. This is now the full year. So there's no expectation that the market environment will change. A quick summary of this is, that Americas mainly driven by US and Brazil are much weaker markets than the year before. And also that's the egg markets on the tractors remains weak. If you look at those numbers, we have been able to uncouple our development a little bit of that driven by market share gains that we have by new contracts that we have, especially in the egg sector. by increasing sales channels, as I've already mentioned, and also by some positive pricing effects where we could implement the tariff pricing on our products. So that's why we're not fully hit by this market development, but certainly the expectation is that we will also not get a lot of help from the markets in the remaining quarter. As I mentioned, we are a bit uncoupled and that's why we are happy to confirm our outlook for the year 2025. And you all know that outlook sales, we expect to be up by 40 to 50% versus prior year, mainly driven by the Hiba integration. And in 2024, we had 1.069 billion euros in sales. Our adjusted EBIT should be up 23 to 28% versus prior year where we had 113 million euros in adjusted EBIT. Adjusted EBITDA also up between 23 and 28% versus prior year. The base is here, the 148 million from last year. Our capex range will be around the 2.9. Last year we were at 3.1. and working capital we expect to be below 18.5% of sales. Last year we ended 15.3%. So let's summarize the quarter. We had a strong quarter in a challenging market environment and we think that is proving our Just Strategy that we announced in the Ambition 2030 that we showcased you in the Capital Markets Day in September of last year. The diversification across the end industries, across the customers and our regions that strengthens our resilience and our profitability. The EVA PMI integration advances swiftly and we have a clear focus on the core business and on delivering the synergies that we are expecting. We are achieving organic growth in all regions and all business lines, despite the weak market environment. And that is supported by market share gains and new contracts with new OEMs. Our local for local approach, our operational flexibility and our strong market access worldwide limits the impact from the tariffs and from the regional market downturns. And therefore we could confirm our outlook for 2025 for our continuing operations. With that, I would like to conclude the presentation. Thank you for your interest and we're open for questions.

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 in your question. If you are connected via phone, please press star and one on your telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press the lower your hand button from the webinar or press star and two in your telephone. Anyone who has a question, make you up now. For first question, Many thanks for taking my questions.

I have four, if I may. The first one on the EMEA agri-market, it's very nice to see sales growing by 25% yearly in the third quarter. Could you provide an update on your discussions with the dealers? Is it fair to assume that a significant amount of the stocks have been sold off in the meanwhile? and the inventory levels are low, so Q3 is kind of underlying demand and how the development into Q4. Then the second question is on the US truck and trailer market. So we have heard from most OEMs that idle production most recently. Could you share your assumption on the developments for the winter holiday breaks in the US? Should we expect normalized winter break or might we see extended breaks given the ongoing uncertainty? Then, thirdly, I have one housekeeping question. If I remember correctly, you hedged the US dollar purchase price for Hoover back in October 24. Should we expect FX gains in Q4 with a new interest result? And finally, on the tax rate, again, just housekeeping, your tax rate in Q3 was extraordinarily high. Was there anything specific? behind this and do you still expect a tax rate of around 25% for the full year? Thanks very much.

Okay, Yasmin, thank you for your question. I will take the first two questions and then I think Oliver can cover the last two questions better than I. On ag, yes indeed, I think that is the picture that I can confirm. The market for Tractors is still not coming back at that level. But for the dealers, we see that the dealers are coming back. There's a lot of interest also because we've added new products in our portfolio. But there's a lot of interest also because they have reduced their stock levels. So the dealers had a really tough time. You know that in Europe, in Germany, Baiba, in Sweden, Landsmannen, they all had big financial problems. The OEMs had to help. and pitch in to solve those problems. The dealers are coming back. They are active and they are interested and they have reduced the inventory so that they are preparing themselves for the new season. And we see a slight uplift. And that is also the uplift that you see already in our numbers and that we expect to continue. Mind you, always comparing to a low base from last year, right? So that's why the numbers look so attractive. On truck and trailer, it's hard to tell. I don't see a comeback, let's put it that way, in North America. Nobody has announced anything about the winter breaks so far. The volume in North America is down by about 30%, and it will be depending individually from OEM to OEM how they manage their production over the winter break. But I certainly don't see that before the winter break or through the winter break that the market will come back. We expect also that when we look into the first quarter and what we see already from the call-offs, that the run rate and production rate is going to be more or less at the level that we see today. So that uncertainty remains, but it will be an individual decision from OEM to OEM how they manage that. reduce the daily production if they close for a few more days or weeks. We don't have heard any announcements of that at this point in time.

Okay. Then regarding your two housekeeping questions, Yasmin. So regarding FX, no. No effect expected for the fourth quarter. So that has been single FX deals which have been fully set when the purchase price has been paid end of January. At that point in time, we realized already the FX gain, so it's already incorporated. Already in the first quarter, it has been incorporated, and there's no change going to expected from that single topic that you are mentioning until the end of the year. Regarding the tax rate, yes, indeed, it's definitely higher in the third quarter. There are some technical shift effects, which will, to a certain extent, phase out until year end. Nevertheless, the effective tax rate will be higher for the full year a little bit. And that has to do also with the fact that our APEC region is doing much, much better than in the past. And that means we pay global taxes as an example in China. which cannot be offset with tax losses carried forward that we carry in, as an example, in Germany, right? So it really technically a little bit higher, but it also showcases now that our operating entities are generating a lot of profit, which means that overseas especially, which then turns into profit. But there really, you are somehow right, there will be a positive impact in the first quarter that's going to be expected, yes.

Okay, just to follow up, so if you're talking about a little bit higher, so are we talking about something in the ballpark of 28% to 30% instead of the 25% tax rate for the full year?

Yeah, I would assume that's a good and fair assumption. Anyhow, for this year, as I mentioned, we have this PPA effect this year where within the first 12 months, We have higher charges because we have inventory step-ups and order backlog step-ups that are depreciated within the first 12 months. I like to look, especially this year, into the adjusted net income to see what is the real operating net profit run rate of the business.

Okay, perfect. All very clear. I'll step back into the line. Thank you.

Thank you, Yasmin. As a reminder, for questions from the webinar, please click the Q&A button on the left side of the screen. For written questions, please click the Q&A button and then text button. If you are connected via phone, please press star and one. Our next question comes from Jorge Gonzalez with Hauk of Hauser. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning, Joaquin and Oliver. It is very pleasant to see the organic growth this quarter and I was wondering if you can give us your early view on how this could be even accelerated next year. I'm especially I'm curious about your view on the U.S. market. You have already talked a little bit, but how do you see the development next year when your competitors adjust better to the fact that Mexico is not anymore in a good situation because of the tariffs and also taking into account that some of the tracois are expecting the growth to be more back and loaded? How do you see that working for you? I'm also interested in Europe. You had a very positive green switch for the agriculture sector and I was wondering if you see this also at some point starting to materialize this recovery in the US. I think the market has been quite weak since 22, and also the sector has been a little bit hit by tariffs. How do you see this going on? Do you see we are at the worst in most of the sectors, but it's difficult to a little bit put a figure there, but do you see growth in all your businesses going forward? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jorge, for the questions. Some more details on the organic growth. We've added new products in our lineup and that helps, especially in Europe. I already mentioned, especially in the implements and tools for our agricultural portfolio. We have added new products, and that generates a lot of interest with the dealers, and the dealers are coming back. So that's where we see positive impacts, and that, I expect, will also carry through next year so that we see on ag, especially on those segments, but also on the loaders, a slight comeback for Europe, and that will help. Another big driver of the organic growth has been new contracts with OEMs that we had, especially in Brazil, but also in some other areas. And North America is one of them for agriculture. Those will slowly ramp up and we will see some of that effects in the next year. As I mentioned, we don't expect a lot of help from the markets in the coming three months and probably not in the coming six months. And therefore, that is a, you know, about some improvements that we are counting on. You had a question also on US trucks. That is really hard to say. The tariffs is changing, maybe not on a daily basis anymore, but it seems like still on a weekly or biweekly basis. And it's equally hard for our OE customers to manage their supply base. and their supply chains, including their own production chains. I cannot tell you if we will be benefiting from any changes in tariffs with Mexico and so on. Our answer to all of that is flexibility. We try to be as flexible as possible with our local for local setup, with our flexible operations in production. but also with our flexible supply chain where we can swiftly change the sources of our products and therefore we will make the best out of it. And where possible, we will use the opportunities to grow our market penetration with that. But it's really so, I would say, so uncertain the environment in North America and unpredictable that we're not even trying to predict it. We're trying to act as flexible as possible and take the opportunities as they come.

I think when you look here into Americas with the organic growth, this is then our combined region, North and South America. And as Joachim partially mentioned already, So the stronger growth or the growth is coming at the moment from agriculture and slash construction business in South America. Nevertheless, this is partially export business to the U.S., so driven by U.S. demand. The local agriculture demand in the U.S., that's still somehow not improving that much, right? Especially not in the third quarter. We see here over the past weeks the first signs of improvement, but again, like Joachim mentioned, we need to be We need to be careful here and close to the customers, close to the market and stay flexible. It's definitely not as solid the recovery as in the other egg regions of the world. So the egg growth at the moment comes partially from India, partially from China, strongly from Europe, strongly from the Brazilian market.

Thank you. And I have a final question on Europe. So I understand that so far the business has not really enjoyed, and especially for GIVA due to its more related to construction, but has still not benefited from the investment plans or the support from the government, especially in Germany. I am wondering if you are expecting this also to support your sales for Hiva in Europe next year or if you think that we will need several months to see a translation of the future support in investments for your business. How you are planning to budget this part of the business for Europe?

Indeed, you're right. We don't see a lot of projects that came out of these big funding announcements at this point in time. In general, we don't like to rely too much on government announcements, more on a close collaboration with our customers and our products, our strong products. I would say we have not seen any of that. We are certainly expecting that the construction and infrastructure sector will grow not only because of some potential funding wherever that will end up, but also because there's just a big need in replacing infrastructure and in repairing and building new infrastructure. And that combined with a stronger market presence that we have in the combination between Yoast and Hiva and some additional products that we will add, I think that should be a good basis for a positive development in 2026 for that sector.

Thank you very much for the caller. I go back to the line.

Thanks, Jorge.

Our next question comes from Klaus Ringel with Odo. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hello, everybody, and thanks for taking my questions. I have two to three of them and would like to take them one by one. The first one on your guidance for sales and adjusted EBIT, and here you're giving these ranges and comparing this to your nine-month performance. It seems you're currently still slightly below the levels. Could you give us a bit more color here or where you see yourself maybe finally ending up in this range, low end, mid or upper end?

I think we've not adjusted our guidance throughout the year, so we're still working with the guidance that we gave you at the beginning of the year. We've said in the last calls already, we are certainly at the lower end of that range. But we are still within that range and we feel very confident that we will be in that range, probably on the mid to lower level of that range by the end of the year. The Q4 of 2024 was also a very weak quarter, so you have to take that into account if you do an extrapolation of the existing numbers.

No, perfectly, I think. And Klaus, to be honest, that's in line with what we mentioned after the second quarter. It's probably between the low end and the mid.

Okay, perfect. Thanks for that. Second one, you had a very strong and nice cash flow in Q3. And yeah, you mentioned good contribution from Huva here. And the question is, what's a good cruise level looking ahead now here? So it's at this level, slightly below, or could you even do more?

I think it's already at the higher end. We need to be honest and to be fair here. We had some positive timing effects also, as you often mentioned. It has been also one positive impact that's laid out in our quarterly report that we had a payback from the purchase price. So the closing accounts mechanism for the EUA deal has been closed now. There has been a small contribution in terms of cash flow. So that also helps. Also, we have a higher business volume, as I said, and that led to the situation that we could incorporate certain receivables from Hyva into factoring and so on and so forth.

Okay, thanks for that. And last but not least, it's good to see that you're bringing down your leverage step by step. Can you remind us, please, where is the leverage level where you would think about cash returns to shareholders?

Well, our range is we feel comfortable between one and two times. And as you know, we've been below the one and we have not done that because we believe that we can better invest the money of our shareholders in the profitable growth. We see a lot of opportunities for us to continue to grow organically and inorganically and And I think we've seen that it's typically a much better use if we use that money to invest into our future and into our profitable growth. So it certainly would be probably below one where we would consider these.

Okay, thanks for that. I'm going back to the line. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Nikolai Kempf with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning. It's Nikolai from Deutsche. Thank you for taking my question and well done for the quarter. Yeah, my question was similar to one of Klaus regarding cash return, but then let me put a different angle in here. If you would invest into new companies, would it follow the strategy outline at the CMD that you would continue to look more on the agricultural side of things? And my second one, coming back to Germany, yes, we are still missing momentum here on the infrastructure program. However, do you see any progress on the military side? And can you just remind us, what is your exposure to the military applications? Thank you.

Also for you, Joachim. OK, yeah, concerning the M&A strategy, it is what we have announced. more growth opportunity in the off-highway sector than in the on-highway sector. That doesn't mean that if we have a good opportunity to grow externally, that we wouldn't take that. But clearly, from a strategy point of view, and you've seen already the distribution of sales where we are around 50% in transport, we believe our opportunities in the off-highway sectors There is more demand also from the customers. I've had very positive feedback on our strategy from the main customers that I met at Acratecnica. They do support our strategy. So that would be most likely where we would invest if we were to do the next step. Concerning infrastructure and especially concerning military, our exposure to military is not very strong. And we have analyzed, like everybody does these days, if that is something that we should focus on. But it's a very slow market. And we will certainly continue to offer the dual-use products to our customers that serve that industry, the defense industry. But we don't have it as a clear strategic goal to invest into that industry, if that was the question. But we clearly track, right?

And we see increase selectively here and there, demand coming then from end application defense. But yeah, again, it's not a strategic product field, right? It's, yeah. Got it. And regarding off-highway, so that does not mean Nikolai only agriculture, right? So that could be the construction, mining, all these product groups come with needs for implements for tools, equipment, and so on and so forth.

Yeah.

we call it agriculture and infrastructure so that's that's more or less off highway yeah okay very clear thank you our next question comes from fabio horse here with her book research please go ahead yes hi thanks for taking my questions um two left um i want to first get back quickly to to the market against your report um America's unusually strong versus market, I think. You mentioned mostly new business and agriculture, but in my model, it looks specifically like transport was much stronger as well versus the market. So just to frame the question back on those market share gains, is it more due to your specific OEM exposure or have you actually also won new customers or additional business with existing customers?

Well, I think the majority certainly is agriculture and infrastructure growth. In North America, to my numbers, we are below in truck and trailer, but we are not as exposed on the truck. And so we benefit a little bit from the fact that the trailer industry has not suffered as much as the truck industry. I already mentioned there's some positive pricing effects also in that. The tariffs are driving the cost and the prices of those products. So that compensates somewhat. But you probably have the detailed numbers. But we should still be below the previous year in transport in North America.

But I mean, the explanation is all right. So Fabio, so specifically transport U.S., much more the combined business that we have in trailer and in aftermarket is much, much bigger than in the truck OEM business. So the mixed effect here helped in the third quarter especially.

Okay, then second question on the hoover synergies because you highlighted your expectations for year and 26. Do you expect additional incremental synergy potentials beyond 2026? So beyond those in midpoint 25 million that you've highlighted and as an extension, cross selling synergies 8 million year and next year imply quite the top line growth. Can you describe where specifically you're making such good progress in terms of regions and products?

Of course, there will be synergies after 2026, but that to us is the daily operational work. We do that all the time. Even within our transport business, with our regional setup, we're trying to optimize regional structures and These are more projects that I would consider ongoing business, but certainly some of them you could still flag as synergies that you generate by just doing the business more efficiently together. So yes, there will still be positive effects, but we will not count them as synergies. We account them as continuous improvements that we typically run. Second question was? Where do we see the cross-selling? The cross-selling, yeah. Yeah, 8 million, that implies, of course, if you consider 30% gross profit, that implies 25 million additional sales. We will find sales opportunities, certainly in Australia, where we have good access to customers and they will benefit from our new product lineup that we have. In North America, we have very good contacts. So I would just mention that we are very strong in the trailer industry. That is a big opportunity for high-bar cylinders. There's other products, recycling products that we can scale up also in the European markets. There is technologies like the digital tipping system that will gain in penetration. So these will all be effects from the synergies, new products, new channels, new customers that we will use. And as I said, Australia, North America, Europe, those are probably the biggest regional opportunities. Did that answer your question, Fabio?

Our next question comes from Miro Zuzak with JMS. Please go ahead.

yes hi um thanks for taking my question can you hear me yes perfectly uh just a quick one on the um adjustments between a bit reported and a bit adjusted um you had to step up inventory step up charges and the increased dpa depreciation can you give an indication was this more of a one of the 14 million and will it go back to the six million floor afterwards in Q4 and thereafter or will we have like elevated levels in this line for Q4 and also maybe you can give an indication about the next years.

It's a combination of both and slide 14 of our presentation should explain you all that probably some for the readout later. uh, in more detail. So, um, if, um, so we have taking exceptions, uh, aside purely from, let's say integration costs, right? Just looking into PPA, we see for the full year, roughly 31 million, um, of, um, of PPA charges, almost two thirds of this, um, is one off for this year coming from inventory step ups or the backlog stack ups that has to be depreciated within the first 12 months just following IFS rules. The sustainable effect going forward will be between 10 and 14 million. That's then but indeed additional PPA compared to the situation before we acquired EVA because we have incorporated assets in our balance sheet fixed assets, the brand, Hiva and so on and so forth. And this has to depreciate it over a useful lifetime.

So just in order to make sure I fully understood what you said. So let's say 25-ish levels from pre-Hiva will go to 35 to 40 million going forward.

10 to 14 million higher yeah yeah yeah i think roughly is okay um okay and in terms of exceptionals you know for consulting and so on what do you expect in q4 and also next year more or less the same run rate right so the as i mentioned in the call we have announced that we that we need two years of integration yeah um to realize the full synergy potential. And within those two years, we would expect between 12 and 24 million of integration costs. We are now, not all of the 11 is related fully to EVA, but let's say 90%, let's say 10 million. So we are at 10 million from that 24 million. So there is still some to come, right? We still do layoff, we still do restructuring, We do still need to expense the car for grants has not been done yet. I don't expect that we will fully need until end of next year, the 24 million, but probably the mid between 12 and 24 is a good assumption for the moment. Not all of this will come in the first quarter, but a certain amount.

Okay. And maybe connected to this, the gross margin, compared to revenue after Cox basically declined. Can you please give us like an adjusted number because I think the split of these special charges was not given in which line you booked how much exactly. Maybe you can give us an adjusted gross profit margin in Q3. Maybe, I don't know, even also for Q2, if you have.

That's a fair question, but to be honest, you can directly look into the quarterly report, and there you see a detailed bridge with all the details.

Okay, maybe I've overlooked that, so sorry. Have a good day. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Mirko.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was our last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Joachim Dürr for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everybody. I think this was a quarter, as I mentioned, not supported by the global markets, quite the opposite. But we were able to prove our resilient business model and therefore we're quite happy with the results we could present you today. We thank you for your interest and we look forward to seeing you next year and maybe to meet some of you at some of the future conferences. Thank you very much.