Konecranes Plc Ord

Hello all and welcome to follow Conecranes Q2 2026 results webcast. My name is Linda Hakkila. I'm the VP Investor Relations here at Conecranes. And today with me as our main speakers, we have our CEO Marko Tulokas and our CFO Teo Ottola. Before we continue, I would like to remind you about the disclaimer as we might be making forward looking statements. As per usual, we will first start with a presentation from our CEO, after that our CFO, and then we are happy to answer your questions in the Q&A session. But now, without any further comments, I would like to hand over to our CEO.

Thank you very much, Linda, and good afternoon from my behalf also. I'd like to start with some key topics of the quarter and start with commenting the customer activity and I'm happy to say that we had a continued very strong and good customer activity throughout the quarter that despite the continued geopolitical uncertainty which has resulted some apprehension with customers and the timing of the orders as well as some volatility in supply chain. Regardless of that uncertainty and apprehension, we had good demand, particularly in the ports business segment, as well as in defense, power, and aviation in the industrial side, to name a few. And because of that, our quarter two orders actually were very strong, and that resulted also in the highest order book that we have had in three years. This, of course, is a very good quarter two for us. Now the uncertainty in the environment reflected maybe more on the sales and the delivery side, but our volumes were remaining on the previous year level or actually slightly below. And that is mainly due to the expected timing of the ports order book. Our ability to execute and apply cost control resulted in a solid result, particularly in such a volume environment. And also I'd like to say that I'm really happy and particularly happy that we had good M&A activity in the quarter. So right after the end of the quarter, we were able to announce the recent planned acquisition of 70% majority interest in MFK, which is Mitsubishi Electric Corporation's Virob hoist and geomotor business in Japan. And of course that is a very important milestone for Conecranes and in our expansion plans for our geographical presence. Japan is the third largest crane service and wire-op hoist in the world and of course for our mid to long-term plans this is of course a very significant win. Very happy about that. So now let's move on to the quarter financials. and more specific comments. So we had good orders from all three business areas. Two great orders for port solutions, two larger ones. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Navy order for industrial equipment and the defense segment, as well as solid growth for industrial service, both in the agreement base as well as in the orders. And that resulted in an order intake growth of 13% year on year with comparable currencies. And consequently, to a order book that is 15% higher than the previous year at 3.4 billion euros and the best order book that we have had in three years. And that of course gives us good prospects for the second half. Sales is still behind previous year. That is predominantly a ports deliveries timing issue. But there was also some industrial service and port service related customer apprehension that reflected from the agreement base invoicing and resulting spin. But also we've seen some developments towards the end of the quarter that are improving that development. Too early to say though. Solid margins, particularly if one considers the volume environment, 1.6% behind previous year, that was predominantly impacted by the volume environment. Now moving on to our Demand Environment and if we look at the two key indicators here the capacity utilization and the purchase manager index or the confidence indicators looking at first the two largest and the regions, the EMEA and the EU and US. The capacity utilization has been flat roughly the last 12 months with some slight increase in the previous couple of months. Funnels, our own funnels are solid. Customers are hesitant to some extent, but as I was saying earlier, we do see solid activity in several customer segments in the industrial side. Capacity utilization related apprehension is more maybe visible in the service work and how much service workers customers actually place or order against the order book that we have and hence that reflects somewhat to the delivery side in service. Looking at the manufacturing confidence and the PMI expansion, that shows actually for the second quarter in a row in all four key market areas that we operate expansion. That has not all translated into demand for us yet, but generally speaking, that describes a more positive while still cautious environment. And China, although there is a clear slowing down or decrease in the purchasing margin index, still shows expansion and that for us shows as an active market, although at the same time very intense domestic competition. Now I would next look at the port segment and here the good activity level continues. So when we look at the container throughput index, that continues to be on a very high level historically, and we saw another 3% increase year on year in the container throughput. And of course the long-term drivers, they remain the same. The automation trend that we've seen, the geopolitical trends that drives also new placement of logistic flows and therefore also the ports and terminals. The electrification and sustainability trend as well as the demographics which drive both automation and the outsourcing trends. More on a current note, particularly if you look at the current geopolitical environment and particularly this situation or crisis in the Middle East, the impact of that is somewhat but in a smaller way in the sales side and in the sales delays. But when we look at the demand environment, in fact, that is in the short and mid-term also having some potential positive effects. Marko Äkräs may result particularly in this industry. And also the other thing is that our customers in this industry, the shipping lines and terminal operators, they are doing financially very well and very much continue their consolidation and investment into the terminals in this business. And that of course is a positive driver for us. Now, looking still a bit more in detail to the volume development, as I said, orders were solid from all three VAs, and particularly in port solutions, we saw good order intake increase. We had two large orders, one from Hillport, which was announced, and the other one was an unannounced larger order. But besides that, we also had decent order intake in port solutions in the other segments too. In the industrial equipment side, one large defense segment Navy order in the United States, but I can also say that we have continued to see solid component distribution business development also in the second quarter. And in the industrial service side, 5% growth in orders and 4% in agreement base, which of course is a positive thing. We see an increase in Americas and Asia Pacific, but some decrease still in EMEA that maybe reflects the demand environment too. And on the sales side, industrial equipment saw actually growth, and the slowness has been in industrial service side, particularly in EMEA and in Asia Pacific. And of course, as I said already a couple of times, the port solutions, it's the timing of deliveries issues, and most of that, of course, is planned and well known in advance. These volumes, of course, they resulted in the clearly higher order book compared to the previous quarter and what we had last year. So we have a 15% higher order book than previous year at the same time. That's best in three years. All business areas increased. And of course, we have a confidence building order book for second half delivery since we have 200 million euro higher order book for the second half of this year compared to the previous year at the same time. And on this section, finally, I can touch upon our progression towards the financial targets. We saw a slight decline in the 12-month rolling comparable EBITDA development in industrial service, both solutions and the group volume, whereas industrial equipment continued to gradually improve. What I can, of course, say is that we are well within the target range that we have set up for ourselves until 2029, as also communicated earlier. Now at this stage I'd like to turn over to Teo and then I'll come back a bit later also for two more things or three more things actually.

Thank you, Marko. Thank you. And let's move more into the numbers. And let's start with the group profitability slide. So as we already saw, we had a decline in the group comparable EBITDA of 1.6 percentage points to 12.7 now in the second quarter of 2016. When we take a look at it by BA, so we had actually an improvement in industrial equipment. We had a decline in port solutions and service. And when we take a look at the business areas where we had a decline, so the main reason for the decline was the underlying volume development, which was downwards. If we unpack the EBIT-A a little bit more with the help of the EBIT-A bridge on the right hand side. So first of all, we know that the decline in euros was 20 million. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Then when we take a look at the inflation, so actually the inflation was roughly in line with the price increases that we had, so somewhere between 2 and 3 percent on a weighted average basis. And we did not now in this quarter have a really net of inflation gain or loss. So we were basically able to cover the inflation with the price increases, but not really more than that. This is as such okay, but it is of course a little bit different than what we have been having in the previous quarters because we have had quite many quarters where we have had a net of inflation pricing gain. And this time that was not the case. When we then take a look at the other elements, so mixed impact was not really meaningfully big, so it was a fairly small one. Thank you very much. and the other topics are then more or less netting each other out. So it's the underlying volume development which is behind the profitability development. Then when we move into the businesses and start with the service, so the order intake was roughly 400 million euros. That is an increase of a little bit more than 5% in comparable currencies. We had increase both in field service as well as in parts. When we take a look at the regions, we had an increase in the Americas and EMEA, but a decrease in APAC. Again, taking a look at the regions, one can say that the Americas region order intake was very strong now in the second quarter. Then the agreement base continued to grow again, higher than 4% growth year on year in comparable currencies. Very good news there. And then the order book is higher than a year ago. It's also higher than at the end of the first quarter. So both sequential and year on year growth from the order book point of view. Sales minus 1.7% in comparison to the situation a year ago. Now, despite the fairly good order intake, so we have some slowness in the sales. And like Marko already pointed out, so it comes partially from the maybe a bit lower than expected invoicing regarding the agreement base. and also then that our order book is now a little bit higher than what it has been. So part of it is in the order book in a way and part is in the slower than let's say normal invoicing from the agreement days. We however feel that this is primarily a timing topic and the sales performance will recover going forward to the second half. Then when taking a look at the comparable EBITDA margin, 21.2%, this is a decline of 1.4 percentage point year on year. Here the reason is the same as for the whole group, so it is basically the underlying volume which is causing the decline in the service EBITDA margin. Industrial equipment then, very good order intake in the second quarter, more than 18% growth in a year-on-year comparison. So we had good growth in components, we also had good growth in process grains, but a slight decline in standard grains in a year-on-year comparison. And then again taking a look at the regions so Americas was strong here also like in service as well also APEC grew but EMEA was more or less stable in a year-on-year comparison. Then of course the sequential comparison is interesting and important as well and there we had a decline in standard cranes as well as in components. but process cranes were more or less flat in a sequential comparison. It's worth noting that component order intake, despite declining a little bit in a sequential comparison, still continued to be on a very good level. Here too, the order book increased both in a near-on-ear comparison as well as in the sequential comparison. Net sales grew by 8.6% in year-on-year comparison. We actually here had a growth in all business units. Some delays from the customer deliveries point of view, but nothing major, and sales growth is there. So then when we take a look at the comparable EBITDA margin, 6.9%, 0.6 percentage point improvement, So this is, of course, then a different story than in the service. For example, volume increased and supported the EBITDA. Also, pricing gave a small positive here within industrial equipment. But then on the negative side, on the other hand, we have the effects. So euro dollar in particular, which is impacting us. which is in a worse position from our point of view than a year ago and then also from the execution point of view it was not a completely clean quarter so there was a little bit of that also included in the numbers. Then, port solutions also here, actually excellent order intake, the growth 17% year-on-year. Like Marko already pointed out, we had two large orders that were received in the second quarter. Activity overall was good in RTGs, lift trucks, also port service in an year-on-year comparison. Then, when we take a look at the sales, we have a clear decline, almost 13% in an year-on-year comparison. Again, repeating what Marko already mentioned, so this is primarily an order book timing topic, so the deliveries are scheduled for a later time. This was the main reason. A couple of deliveries probably could have been going within the Q2 and slipped to Q3. Additionally, unfortunately, we were not able to deliver the pending Middle East case that was pending already at the end of Q1. So that was a little bit less than 15 million impact. But like I said, this we had already at the end of Q1. But we haven't really seen any major new delays as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. Then when we take a look at the comparable EV day, 10.8%, 1.9% point down in an year-on-year comparison. So of course the decline is primarily as a result of the lower volume. The profit was supported a little bit by a US tariff refund. So we have applied for refunds, we have received refunds. Also refund, it was a little bit less than 2 million for port solutions in this quarter and this was a tariff that we actually originally paid last year and now that we have got a refund so it is of course helping our Q2 result then this year. Then a couple of comments on the balance sheet and cash flow. And here on the networking capital side, we have actually now for the first time in two years, we have a situation that we are on the wrong side. Thank you very much. to compensate for the build-up in the work in progress or the contract assets that we now have there. And this is, of course, also a timing topic, but we are, like I said, on the wrong side of our own target in this quarter. This then, of course, impacts our free cash flow as well. So the second quarter free cash flow was not good, not a negative. and when we take a look at it on a rolling 12-month basis so we are now very close to a situation that we have cash conversion at about 100% at the end of the Q2 on a rolling 12-month basis. The cash flow is then of course reflected on this slide, so on the right hand side we can see the net debt, so net working capital development has impacted this one. A bigger impact however comes of course from the dividend payment that was taken care of in the second quarter and now we are in a small net debt situation at the end of the second quarter. When taking a look at the rolling 12 months rosy, so we are there 22 and a half with on a comparable return on capital employed basis. With these comments, I will then hand over back to Marko. Thank you, Teo.

Talking about our demand outlook, so we iterate our earlier demand outlook and in our industrial customer segment we do expect that our demand environment remains to be healthy as I was explaining earlier. And for port customers, container throughput is on a high level and as already earlier described, the long-term prospects are remaining very good. However, the uncertainty has not gone anywhere and that is of course related to the geopolics and the tariff policy that has also not changed and is almost equally as volatile as it was before and that of course keeps the uncertainty in the demand outlook. And from a financial guidance point of view, we iterate the guidance of net sales expected to remain approximately on the same level or to increase from previous year and that our comparable EBITDA margin is expected to remain approximately on the same level. So that means that we remain confident thanks to a good order book and stable profitability development, but at the same time realistic about the uncertainties in the environment. And with that, I have one more message, and that is that we have at Conecranes worked to further sharpen our strategic priorities and ambitions. And I'd like to tell you more, or we'd like to tell you more in connection with our quarter three result on October 23. So you are very welcome to join us either virtually or in Helsinki, and we will then share more of this Strategic priorities and ambitions and welcome a discussion with all of you. And with that, I am happy to close this section and move on to the Q&A with Linda.

Thank you for the presentations, Marko and Teo. Now we will start the Q&A session for today. So operator, we are ready to start taking questions through the conference call lines.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two and I will ask them one at a time. But first, I just wanted to understand on the service margin a little bit better because is there any impact also from mix or how should we think about the fact that Well, parts went up and field services went down. I would have thought that is mixed accretive. But then from the other hand, we also had Asia doing better than the rest of the world. And maybe extending that to, you mentioned the order book a bit when you were going through the explanations. I didn't quite get it, but what's been the trend of margins in the order and agreements book?

If we start with the service question and the mixed impact there. So yes, it is correct that the spare parts have been doing and we're doing now from the order intake point of view and sales point of view also a little bit better. The difference also this time as in so many other times within the service is not so big that it would be significantly impacting the margin structure so that the mix typically doesn't have a huge impact within the service. This was undoubtedly a small positive but nothing so much that it would be clearly visible in the margin. When we take a look at the cross margin in service and compare it to the situation a year ago, these two are very close to each other. Of course, now we need to remember that we have been having a little bit, let's say, additional cost burden as a result of the Middle East crisis. Thank you very much.

And the other question was about the order book margins. And I guess that is for service as well as elsewhere, the order book margins are roughly on the same level where they have been in the year-to-date numbers, right?

That is correct. And of course, within service, the order book is maybe then more focused or it's more... On the modernization side, so it's not maybe less the spare parts and the field service, but by and large, of course, that is correct. And now, by the way, when we take a look at the order intake now in the second quarter for service, and like I said, it was quite good, more than 5% growth. This was not because of the modernizations. So we didn't have more modernizations now than a year ago, actually the other way around. So modernizations, order intake was somewhat lower than in the second quarter of last year.

Got it. And just on the free cash flow, you had all these very large orders towards the back end of the quarter. Are we missing the advances from these recent large orders and is that why the free cash flow was negative or sort of can you delve a little bit into what caused it?

Timing of the order intake is basically what caused it. So these came very much towards the end of the quarter and then the advance payment in a way schedule was not in place to the extent that maybe it would have been if this had been done two months earlier or one and a half months earlier. So this is the basic example in that one. So there hasn't been any major significant shift within the contract terms from higher advances to lower advances or anything like that. So the advance payments have been and they continue to be part of the way of doing business in these kind of deals where a cancellation would be a problem for us because of the Taylor Made Cranes.

Got it very clear, thank you.

The next question comes from Panu Leighton-Mackie from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions. Firstly on the guidance, so you keep it unchanged. You are behind last year after the first half, so could you talk about kind of drivers in the second half that enabled you to kind of reach the guidance especially given that the margin comps are pretty high and then the second is on services so I didn't fully understand the kind of comment that you had good orders but then lower sales so customers are could you explain the thing with the kind of lower delivery from the agreement base and is this improving going into Q3 already?

On the confidence for the second half particularity that's of course predominantly related to the Strongor order book, so our order book is roughly 200 Thank you very much. That, of course, is predominantly the reason why we are confident on the second half guidance under these current assumptions and conditions. And the other question was about the service margin. or Service Sales probably. Yeah, Service Sales, yeah, sorry. That Service Sales topic, I mean, you were referring to how come the Service Sales is behind or the book to build to the orders is what it is. Of course, that is to some extent there are elements there that may be not easy even for someone like us to explain, but the key reason is It is that of course customers when they have such a environment where they either may be very loaded with the project which is the case with some of customers or in some cases have additional capacity or uncertainty themselves they may hold back on the agreement based orders or sales that they have already ordered in hence when they order less then of course that is something that also results in In a spin later or the sales that we would get from that inspection visit and that of course why there is a lack or a snowball that we maybe push in ahead of us or will push ahead of us in service of course the orders are there and the agreement base is there so eventually the customer will need to do that maintenance and that service and replace that part and that of course why we are also confident from the service side that this will Now that we're back on growth track with the orders that will turn into sales.

One way of taking a look at the same in light of the numbers is that when we take a look at the agreement-based growth, which has been 4% or more, and then we take a look at the invoicing from the agreement base, so it is growing less. So in a way there is a delay in delivering the agreement base and that delay is something like now was stated so that we feel that it is temporary and it will be fulfilled over time. But now it has been, there has been a mismatch within the growth of the agreement base and the agreement base related invoicing. But there is of course the other explanation as well. So if you take a look at the order book for service, which typically is fairly modest, but now it has been growing. And for example, if we take a look at the order book for service at the end of Q1 and compare it to the end of Q2, so we have a higher order book. So some of the orders that have been done now, for example retrofits, for which the quarter was quite good, so they have not been delivered, but of course the order book will be delivered at a given time going forward. But of course now the Q2 sales was maybe a little bit lower than what we would have wanted it to be.

Okay, thanks. Can I just ask as a follow-up, so how should we kind of interpret this that you have been talking about with cost of service market for a while, but now the order intake trends were clearly better, so should we kind of understand that it's been an inflection point and it's getting better or is it still kind of softest given the sales dynamics that you explained?

It is a bit, let's say, There are elements there that give confidence, but I would say that it's probably just to be on the conservative side to say that it is a bit too early to say, but the outlook is more positive than it was a few months ago. And there are elements there that could turn this much more positive going forward.

And if we take a look at the data that we get from the claims at the customers, so what we have been seeing is that the utilization rates seem to be going in the right direction, so up in the Thank you very much. But then again, when we take a look at the behavior that we had from the order intake point of view, for example, in the Americas now in the second quarter, so both service and equipment were strong from the order intake point of view. So there are also good signs in that. All right. Thank you.

The next question comes from Michael Dopel from Nordia. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. Just a follow up on this last one. So you mentioned that in terms of the service business, there are elements that are looking more positive than two months ago. Could you just clarify what elements are you actually referring to?

I believe that is, as Teo was just stating, that we see the activity in the so-called true connect or the connected crane that is on a year-on-year basis is higher, but slightly lower in the last month's comparison. But in a year comparison between quarters, it is positive. So that's one small signal. And of course, when we look at our sales funnels, they are on a rather healthy level. The uncertainty comes from things like that, okay, when does the order actually place and when it gets delivered? That to some extent is the same on the service side.

There are not very clear signs that one could immediately be able to interpret that we are going in one particular direction. So it is the funnel values, so they are stable on a fairly good level when we take a look at the number of new cases that have come to the funnel. So it is very stable in comparison to, let's say, what it was some months ago, if there is a difference within service. So it's maybe slightly to the positive. But what can one conclude out of all of this so that in the big picture it seems the overall environment seems pretty stable and then there are these regional differences like now America's looked much more positive than EMEA for example from the service point of view and I guess the same applies to the equipment as well.

Okay, so it's fair to say that in terms of sales funnels, I guess what you're talking about now is not only service, but broadly speaking sales funnels, that you see those are solid across business segments and regions.

Summary level, yes, that is so, with differences. And just on the service side, still maybe if you look at the modernization, there is quite a bit of modernization activity. One of those things that in the last quarters we have been in the funnels, I mean, because you can only go so long without doing a modernization or replacement. That is also one sign when you are saying that what are the reasons why to believe that there would be a good trend. But again, that is only one sign.

That makes sense. Good. Then just a final question on the, I mean, I guess, Teo, you mentioned the pricing net of cost inflation in the quarter was fairly neutral and it has been slightly positive, I guess, in the couple of past quarters. How should we think about this equation going forward? I mean, what are you seeing out there? I could assume that maybe there is some increased cost pressures out there on logistics and other things, but at the same time, I would also assume How should we think about this going forward? And also, not related to this, but in terms of the tariff refunds, what do you expect on that front into the second half?

It will start with the pricing. So I guess that it's the same commentary as we have been having earlier as well. So we feel that we will be able to price inflation in. So there can be, of course, certain delays if there are abrupt shocks to the system, either from the freight point of view or from the fuel point of view. But as we can see now within the second quarter, we have been able to handle inflation. Thank you very much. But let's not count on that on a short and mid-term basis. Then regarding the tariff situation, so of course, I mean, this goes in phases in the US, like you most likely know. And of course, we will be applying for more refunds. If the system allows that so we will be following how it is how it is done and and then we will be applying more as we go but there are of course uncertainties related to this one as well so so so time will tell them that how how how it will go in in practice right right okay that's right thank you very much

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Auntie Kansanen from Seb. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi guys. Just a couple of follow-ups left from me. First is on the commentary of having 200 million more from the backlog for the second half. Is this comment predominantly for the port segment or is it divided also for the industrial side?

Because it is divided by everybody, but of course mostly ports where that is coming from. But all the business areas have a stronger order book. And if you look at service and also industrial equipment, throughput times are generally speaking shorter than ports. So for all of them.

And maybe coming back to the previous question on the pricing in the backlog, I mean, Teo, you mentioned that perhaps we shouldn't expect you to be able to Are you fully covered for this kind of inflationary pressures that have this year hit? You mentioned fuel and perhaps some raw materials as well. Is there a concern that there might be a temporary kind of a net of inflation headwind coming on the second half? I understand that you're pricing new orders with good pricing, but the existing backlog?

One could maybe formulate it so that in the big picture we think that we are quite okay. But of course if there are now from this onwards, let's say during the second half of the year, again a new shock on something as a result of whatever takes place in the world, so then of course it can be that there are temporary issues for us. And the reason for that one is the same as I think we discussed in connection to the Q1 as well. Marko Äkräs and Freit at least to some extent. So then that may be more difficult to cover on a short-term basis. But like I said, based on the current situation, we don't see a massive risk from that point of view. But if something unexpected happens, then of course it may have an impact.

Okay and then the very last from me is on the industrial equipment profitability on second half of last year which is as it was referred earlier quite a challenging comp in margins are a bit of an outliers and if I remember correctly you then flagged some temporary pricing gains from the tariff landscape so could you maybe walk us through a little bit what's a reasonable expectation now on the second half versus what you did a year ago on the industrial equipment side?

I'll start again. Of course, there was some tariff tailwind. I think it was two million and a quarter level in industrial equipment. And of course, that is no longer a tailwind, but it's neither a headwind on this year. And of course, it is my understanding also the currency is working against us a bit still in industrial equipment. Other than that, whether we had anything more specific than rather just good volumes last year and good execution that I have to ask Teo from?

We had some like the R&D grant we had. That's right. But I mean, I guess it is fair to say that when we take a look at the tariff situation, so the tailwind that we had from that one, that's not going to be there most likely unless there are again changes that we do not know. No of today, but that is maybe not there. On the other hand, then when one takes a look at the FX, which has been for an industrial equipment a little bit of a burden now in the second quarter in particular, but also Q1. So this one based on the euro dollar rates now should not be going in the worst direction. It should be going slightly to the better direction now in the third quarter. And then, of course, the fourth quarter is still open, not fully hedged.

Okay, so then there's obviously the volume impact which should be perhaps positive also for the industrial equipment from the backlog which helps you to offset some of these last year's tailwinds.

Yes.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.

Thank you very much.