Schindler Hldg Ag Akt

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Schindler Q3 Results 2096 conference call and live webcast. I'm Valentina, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Lars Brorson, head investor relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Valentina. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Q3 2026 results conference call. My name is Lars Brorson. I'm head of investor relations at Schindler. I'm here together with Paolo Compagna, our CEO, and Carla De Geyseleer, our CFO. As usual, Paolo will discuss the highlights of our Q3 results and our 2026 market outlook, and Carla will take us through the financials. After the presentation, we're happy to take your questions. We plan to close the call at 11 o'clock. With that, I hand over to Paolo. Paolo, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I'm glad to be back to report on our Q3 results. And I have to say, I'm quite pleased with our performance this quarter. We saw organic growth, Returning to our top line, both order intake and revenue and margins continuing to expand. In short, our strategy is working and is starting to translate into accelerating profitable growth. But now let me walk you through the highlights. In Q3, we saw a very good growth in order intake at over 10% in local currencies. with a good contribution from most of our regions and businesses. New installations grew fastest at over 15%, modernization at 13%, and our service and repair business at mid to high single digit. And all our regions grew high single or low double digit. So broad-based strength across our organization, even in China, despite a modest decline in new installation orders. Revenue growth also accelerated in the quarter to 5% in local currencies and this is largely in line with our expectations and consistent with our full year 2026 revenue guidance of a low to mid single digit growth. Overall, We saw a good execution of our backlog across our businesses, not least in modernization, where revenue growth in Q3 came in at 16.5%. Further, our margin performance saw another 100 basis points improvement over last year's Q3. On an adjusted basis, margins were 50 basis points higher. But where is this improvement coming from? Our teams are doing a good job in offsetting the additional cost inflation which we are facing with pricing and further mitigation actions. Business mix was also a modest tailwind but less than in prior quarters as our service business saw also a good growth in this quarter. But it is first and foremost delivery on efficiencies which continue to support the margin improvement. and this also drives our revised EBIT margin guidance for the year which we now see coming in at 13.5% versus our earlier 13% and Carla will be very happy to provide you some more details shortly. The improved competitiveness in our new installation and modernization businesses also has favorable implications on growth and market shares. We spoke in July on our half-year result call about how our modular platforms were supporting our market share momentum in the new installation markets that were early in our global rollout, notably Europe. I can now say that this trend of gradual market share gains is continuing in other regions as well, including Americas and Asia Pacific, well, outside of China. A word on the changing competitive landscape. It's clear that the industry looks set to go into a phase of consolidation and I believe Schindler entered this period from a position of strength with sustained improvement in our operating performance, a very strong financial position, a business model resilience and strategic clarity. And we are committed to pursuing our profitable growth with discipline and determination. I believe were the strong foundation to capture the commercial opportunities that this changing landscape will bring. Not at least, we continue strengthening our product offering, especially for modernization solutions. Here you see our new port terminal, one of the components we released in Q3 to support our port technology-based modernization packages, allowing to upgrade with port destination control systems Not only Schindler, but also third party elevator systems. And finally, a word on our organization. I'm proud that we have been recognized by Forbes again this year as being among the world's best employers. We have close to 70,000 employees and attracting and retaining talents is more important than ever to our competitiveness and to the overall health of our company. So this recognition is important to us. Now, moving to our market outlook for 26 on slide 4, which we have kept unchanged in spite of the continued macro uncertainty. Global geopolitical events directly and indirectly impact construction costs through material price volatility, energy costs, and lead times impacted by supply chain and logistics disruption. The constant upward pressure on cost and elevated interest rates are the primary reason why the green shoots that we saw in a number of key construction markets are yet to translate into a more convincing and broad-based activity recovery across Europe and North America. Against this backdrop, modernization markets remain a bright spot, with solid demand across all regions, and particularly vibrant activity in markets where elevator upgrades and replacements are incentivized by government programs and subsidies, most notably in countries like Spain and China. In new installations, the markets continue to develop positively overall outside of China, but with meaningful country variances within each of the regions. In Europe, Hopes are rising for a definitive end of the construction crisis in Germany, with multifamily building permits continuing to grow at double digits. Brands remain weaker, though, and overall order books across European construction markets remain subdued. Activity in Brazil remains solid, driven by the social housing segment, and in the US, multifamily permits continue to rise. While in the non-residential segment, the focus is obviously on the massive AI and data center build-up rather than on the more elevator-relevant office, hospitality and retail projects. There's no recovery in sight in China, with all indicators related to new construction remaining very weak. while Asia Pacific outside of China continue to see healthy growth across India, Southeast Asia and Australia. Turning now to slide five and our order intake in this third quarter. Service, our maintenance units continue to grow led by Asia with America's portfolio now stabilizing in line with our expectation as indicated in our prior calls. That's in units. while in value we continue to see in America's service growing at low single digit levels. The modernization Q3 marked the seventh consecutive quarter of double digit growth so we are very pleased with our consistently strong performance. Our average growth rates over those seven quarters exceeded 16% and was well above the overall market growth according to our estimates. Growth was well into the double-digit territory across all regions, excluding Americas, due to fewer large projects booking in the quarter year-to-date. However, our mod orders in Americas were stable in spite of the unfavorable quarterly comparison, and this considering the very strong growth of 2025. EMEA was a standout with growth exceeding 20% and all the largest mod markets of the region. And in China, orders grow further accelerated from the already high rate recorded early in the year. In new installations, China saw only a modest decrease in order volumes, which, well, can be seen as a slight improvement from prior quarters. In the rest of the world, our NA orders grew by a strong double digit, led by Asia-Pacific, excluding China, and EMEA, coupled with a solid growth in Americas. We believe our growth was well above market across all those regions and we are very pleased with the continued share gains driven by the traction of our products are enjoying in the market. And with that happy to turn over to Carla to work us through our financial results in more details.