Krones Ag Adr

It's one o'clock, so good afternoon and a warm welcome from my side. My name is Olaf Scholz, Head of Investor Relations here at Crohn's. In a challenging macroeconomic environment with global uncertainties, we have confirmed today our financial targets for 2025. And Crohn's has also continued its profitable growth path. Today, Christoph Kleck and Uta Anders will give you more details about these figures and will give you also additional information. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. I think you also know how the Q&A session will work, so please use the function raise your hand in Teams or simply just a short email and then I will hand over to you. Additionally, be reminded that this meeting will not be recorded and it is also not allowed to record the meeting. Please also deactivate any functions of recording at Teams. So after these words in the beginning, I want to hand over to Christoph Klenk, CEO, to start the presentation.

Christoph, the floor is yours. Ola, thanks a lot. A warm welcome on behalf of Utah and myself to today's conference call for Q3. So happy to have you. And I would like to start off with the statement, we are quite happy where we are, quite satisfied And now we are running you quite briefly through the numbers, which you know already, and then we are looking forward to the Q&A session, which we are going to have. I would like to start off with TringTech once again. I mean, most of you have been joining TringTech and have seen what we have stated there. Nevertheless, I just wanted to do a short summary on TringTech. I mean, for us, it was really an outstanding show. And this morning in the U.S.A., I would say this string tech has maybe remarked a milestone of crowns because for the first time, as we showed to you, we have shown that we are combining our lines through digitalization with our lifecycle services, enabling a new business model. And I would say we all know how long it took in the industry, not only in ours, that such models are becoming true. And we are quite happy that we have been moving through, let me say, those challenging times and exercise to get where we are. Nevertheless, and this statement we've made already on DreamTech as well, there's a long way to go to convert, let me say, the organization, our people, our customers, and the technology to a level that we can really harvest from. Nevertheless, it's generating a further gap in terms of our, let me say, innovation level to maybe our competitors, so we are well-positioned. On the other side, TrinkTech was again a great spot to talk to our customers, which is important when we come later on to Q&A in the sense of where are the markets, what is going to be 2026 in terms of the outlook, what our customers think. And last but not least, I mean, you get a good impression with all the competition. We have the luxury that most of them are showing up on our booth as well, and we have a chance even to talk to them, of course, on a legal basis always. But nevertheless, you get quite a good feeling where they are. And in particular for us, it was important to look at our Chinese competition to understand them. And despite that, we have good research in China that we had a chance to look on their latest developments, which you not obviously see in the market. So Trintec was all in all for us a very good thing. And even with the good feedback we got, we stay humble on where we are because we believe only if we judge the future right and be down to earth, we can actually drive things forward. So with that statement, I jump into the presentation. And as always, I flip over this chart because I don't want to go in details. We go through everything. You are aware of where we are after nine months. Jumping over that as well and coming to the order intake. I mean... I was joking this morning. I mean, we were all the time saying auto intake should be book-to-bill ratio compared to sales around one. So we have a deviation. I think when I have it right in mind of four million, it couldn't be better. And it's not organized. I have to say it's just the numbers we got out of the system. So we are quite happy. I can say auto intake went well in Q3 as expected and as predicted. So we are Really happy where we are with that. And you see the comparison to Q2. You see the comparison to Q3 last year. And you see the overall comparison. I think if you look to all categories, we are fine with where we are. And it's, once again, the proof of our statement. Our markets are robust. Pipeline is full. Yes, we have some hesitation in the market for decisions because there are more projects out than what we have as order intake. But nevertheless, I would say this is fundamentally absolute sound and okay. Coming to the order backlog, no changes into that, which is good and bad to some extent. I mean, good for the visibility we have in terms of how can we use our capacities for the coming year. So that looks good. I mean, we made that statement that we are set for up in the third quarter. This is true in particular for our main business, bottling and packaging. Inter-logistic looks a bit better as the order backlog even is actually covering the full year, 2026, and I would say processing is on the same level as we see it here with the bottling and packaging equipment mainly. So we are very well set for next year. And important for us, delivery times, we're going back. We had the target to be between 40 and 45 weeks for 2025. And we are for the time being at 45 weeks. We have some slots where we could deliver faster. We organized that on purpose just to make sure that we are not losing orders because of short delivery times. But all in all, that pays off quite well. Yeah, nevertheless. We have, even here, we offer good financial stability for next year with this order backlog, even with the challenging environment we have all over the place. Bringing us to how does this split look like for, let me say, our international revenue, and even compared to the last conference calls, we had no surprises here. I would say everything is developing in the right direction. You might wonder about the strong back going down to 21% in the U.S., but, again, that has to do with growth of other markets. If you look to Europe, that went quite well. So let me say in absolute terms, it's not as bad as it looks here. So absolute terms are okay for North America and Central America, and, of course, Europe has caught up. And that was pretty necessary. Remarkable is from our point of view, Middle East, Africa, because we had just the Gulf exhibition where we had a lot of discussions and very positive discussions. So all the activities in Africa, Middle East is really good and high. On the other side, it's explainable because they have been the last continent moving out of COVID-19. So I would say that's a logical consequence. All the rest, I would say, is not so much to comment. China looks critical when you look to, we are going back by 1.5%, but again, that has to do with other markets growing. There have been absolute terms on stable level, and we see that auto activities by the end of the year in China looks good as well. So not more, not less. I think all the rest, if you have questions to the market, we can do later on in the Q&A. And with that, I hand over to Uta.

Thank you very much, Christoph. Yeah, moving on with revenue development. I mean, starting with Q3, I mean, as you can read, 1.381 billion, which is a 4.7% growth quarter over quarter. Let me comment here at this point already about FX. I mean, up to Q2, we didn't pay to, not pay, that would be wrong. We didn't focus too much in our communication on FX because actually up to Q2, it wasn't that material. In the third quarter, we saw first more significant effects in particular coming from the U.S. dollar. And year to date, we have approximately 60 million translation difference from U.S. dollar, Brazilian real, Mexican peso, and Chinese renminbi being the major ones. Coming back to Q3, taking this out, we would have been also within our guidance. Coming to the fiscal year to date, 4.107, you see 6% growth. Without the FX effects, we would have been at a little bit more than 7. I want to comment also on Nestal. I mean, as you know, in 2024, they had only been included for two quarters, whereas now they are included for the third fiscal year. So on quarter three, no effect on the growth itself of 2025, a little effect, but as you know, we had included net style also in our guidance seven to nine percent coming to our guidance we confirm our guidance and we are of seven to nine percent and we are of course well aware that this uh this fourth quarter must be much stronger than the average three quarters and i'm sure we'll comment on that also later on moving on to profitability Yeah, also here, I mean, as Christoph said, we are satisfied with the third quarter, 142.2 million, 10.3%. Already at the capital market day, we had also said that Q3 will be hit by the expenses of drink tech. This was the case. Without the expenses of drink tech, we would have been at the upper end of the guidance for the third quarter. And now looking at year-to-date numbers, 430.7, 10.5% EBITDA margin, and also comparing to last year, quite a significant increase by 0.4 percentage points. NETSTAR continues to dilute. I'm sure we'll talk about that later as well. And last but not least, we confirm our guidance also here of 10.2 to 10.8%. The only thing I would like to add here on top of what I already mentioned for EBITDAs, as you see, slight financial income, a little bit more than $5 million. That was $7.5 last year because last year we had an extraordinary positive effect, which didn't happen this year. But all in all, as we are stating, they're also within our expectations. Moving on with personal and material costs. and starting with personal expense. I mean, as you can see, 1.277 billion, 109 million more than same period last year, year to date. And this is the result of firstly, increase in FTE, but of course also merit increase in 2025. And as you can see, we are at 31% ratio, so slightly above our target range of 30%. On the other hand, if we look at material costs, I mean, as you can see, slight increase in absolute terms only, 57 million, and the ratio itself due to, yeah, very good cost management, but also certain mixed effects went down to 47.7%. Taking all together, material and personal, we are well below the 80%, which we are always also focusing on. Kohn's employees in the fiscal year increased employees by 754. About a quarter of it, close to 200, is service technicians. I mean, we have mentioned many times to all of you that they are important for us, first of all, to deliver our backlog, but secondly, also because they are a source of growth in terms of service business. So that's one part of the growth. We also have more apprentices and mean there is a certain M&A effect for here also. And the reminder of it, the remaining increase is across the world also to cater for the growth in 2025, but also then beyond towards our 2028 targets. Moving on with the segments now, starting with filling and packaging technology, making up 85% of our overall revenue. I mean, as you can see, 3.479 billion for the full fiscal year, which is a 6.2% growth. I mean, the FX effect I mentioned earlier is to the most extent in this segment. And NetStyle, as I mentioned, same development as I had said it for the group. Speaking about EBITDE margin, We had the Q3 at 10.5%. Also here, the most portion of the drink tech expenses was with them, with filling and packaging technology. So the statement made for the group is also true here. And looking year-to-date, you can see 10.7% increase by 0.3 percentage points. And also here, we confirm our guidance for both revenue growth, 7% to 9%, but also margin 10.5. Moving on with process technology, I mean, as you can see, and that is true for the quarter, but also year to date, we are more or less on the same level as we were for 2024 in revenue development and well in line with our growth forecast, which is 0 to 5%. And looking at the EBITDA margin, nice development, also strong Q3, 10.2 percentage points versus 8.7 last year. And year-to-date, we are at 10.6% versus 9.6, which is to a certain extent also due to NICS. But most importantly, it's just also because of executing the strategic measures we also showed to you on the capital marketing. Also here, we confirm our guidance, 0% to 5% growth. and margin 9 to 10%. Moving on to Intralogistics. Also here, we can see a slight growth both in year-to-date figures but also in the quarter. Year-to-date, 13.4%. Intralogistics actually also has a certain FX effect because quite a portion of their business lies in the U.S. Overall, a growth by 13.4% year-to-date. Looking at the margin, also here, nice development, strong third quarter, 7.4%, bringing us to 7.2% year to date, whereas last year we were 1.6 percentage points lower. Also here, the result of executing the strategic measures, but also a certain mixed effect. And also here we confirm our guidance of 15 to 20% revenue growth, and also here well aware of the very strong fourth quarter needed for that, and EBITDA margin 6.5 to 7.5%. Now moving on with everything which is related to the balance sheet, starting with liquidity, cash, liquidity, reserves. As you can see, we were holding 363 million cash, and combined with used credit lines and free ones, we had a liquidity position or reserves of 1.24 billion, which gives us sufficient room under global economic volatile situation. And equity. Starting first with the absolute number, as you can see, we have increased equity by $107 million, which is the result of, first of all, net income, $214 in the reporting period. Paying out the dividend, $82 million, brings us with some miscellaneous effect then to $2.29 billion, so above $2 billion. And as our equity increased by 5.6%, our total balance sheet only by 1.5. We have 42.1 equity ratio. Working capital also here stable or stable also compared to the situation in the last two fiscal years, so 17.2% as an average over the last four quarters, and looking at the breakdown, As you can see, received prepayments, yeah, around 17%. There is an absolute number approximately where they had been, 24 both September and December, so slightly above 900. Inventory also here, 13%, so absolute figures, similar number, a little bit or around 700 million. Accounts payable, yeah, 13%. So below what we had end of the fiscal year, but also end of September. You know that we are working on that number in order to get it a little bit higher. And receivables POC, yeah, 35.9%. So very similar as we had at end of last year. And we are holding approximately accounts receivables and contract assets, approximately 2 million, bringing our working capital as an absolute number to $1051 billion, which is an increase by $195 million. And that $195 million we can also see in the third line of our cash flow statement. And just concentrating on 2025, I mean, we spoke about EBT already. Other non-cash changes, you know, the most portion in here is depreciation, change in working capital. I already commented on it. Other assets and liabilities, major portion here is paying out income taxes, bringing us to cash flow from operating activities of 174 million. CapEx, 2.8%, so underproportional yet, 140 million. And with the other, that brings us to free cash flow of 80 million, which we also commented in our press release and also in our first page of this presentation. AMA Day activities, I mean, some increase in the third quarter. In the first quarter, we only had the payout of the earn-out AMCO 2.2. Now we have the acquisition of CSW, so Canon Systems Worldwide, which we talked about also on the Capital Market Day, 31 million approximately, and some stake also in GHS, which we also commented on the Capital Market Day. And with financing activities, mainly the dividend here brings us then to net change in cash of 80 million and our cash at the end of the period, which we saw on the previous slide already or the one before. Cash flow year to date already mentioned 80 million and our outlook for 2025 also did not change around 200 million. I mean, as you know, Kohns is very strong in its cash flow in the fourth quarter and we are predicting the same for 2025. Last key figure, last guided key figure, ROSI, 19.5%. You see that we are more on the upper end of our guidance, 18 to 20%. And as I always say, this is simple mathematics. I mean, EBIT increased by 11%. Average capital employed increased by 10%. And that increased at the end, the return on capital employed. Overall capital employed on average increased to a bit more than 2.1 billion. Yeah.