Thyssenkrupp Ag S/Adr

Hello, everyone. This is Andreas Trösch from Investor Relations. Also, on behalf of my entire team, I wish you a very warm welcome to our conference call on the full year results 23-24 of ThyssenKrupp. With me in the room are our CEO, Miguel Lopez, and our CFO, Jens Schulte, and also my colleagues from the IR team. Before I hand over to the CEO and CFO for their presentations, some housekeeping. All the documents as usual for this call are available in the IR section on the website. The call will be recorded and the replay will be available shortly after the call. After the presentations, there will be the usual Q&A session for analysts. This time we use Teams for the call. In order to ask a question, you have to push the raise your hand icon and we will announce your name and open your line. If you are on mute, you must unmute yourself in addition. And with that, I would like to hand over to our CEO, Miguel Lopez.

Thank you very much, Andreas, and also a warm welcome from my side to our fiscal year 23-24 conference call. Today, I will present our latest achievements and financials together with our CFO, Dr. Jens Schulte. Please let me start with some general observations. The world is changing at a breathtaking speed. We are seeing geopolitical tensions, armed conflicts, uncertainty regarding the role and course of the US, and many unanswered questions also with regard to the German government. I want to confirm, in this challenging environment, we want to transform ThyssenKrupp and make it successful again. We want to rebuild the company to what it was for decades, a German industry icon, a world class technology group and a symbol of German and internal inventiveness. I strongly believe in the opportunities that arise from global challenges, such as the green transformation, and we are in a position to benefit from the associated growth opportunities. How will we make this happen? Firstly, we know how to do it. ThyssenKrupp has world-leading technologies that can be used to reduce a large proportion of today's CO2 emissions. And we are already applying these technologies on a large scale for our customers. It is our clear ambition to leverage and scale those technologies going forward. Secondly, we have the right people, forward thinkers who want to shape the green transformation. And thirdly, there is no way around the green transformation. If we want to keep the planet habitable for future generations, we must act now. The years until 2050 are a very manageable timeframe. I'm firmly convinced that the green markets will come and we at ThyssenKrupp are already there. We are systematically aligning ThyssenKrupp to this future. We want to shape the green transformation with our businesses and use it to create a profound basis for our company and its employees. Please let me give you one important example. In the past financial year, we invested around 690 million euro in research and development. However, competitive cost structures are also needed. On the one hand, this results from the political framework, but on the other hand, it's also on us. That's why performance is right at the top of our agenda. On portfolio, we want every business to develop in the best possible way, regardless of the ownership structure. where businesses can develop better in different constellations, we are not shying away from portfolio decisions. These three strategic priorities, portfolio, performance, and green transformation, define the guidelines for our transformation. We made important progress in the past financial year, and we have set ourselves ambitious targets in all three areas for the current financial year and beyond. Jens will now present to you the financial section, including our outlook, as well as some insights on our performance program. Jens, please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you very much, Miguel. And hello, everybody also from my side. Good to see you back, at least virtually. Let me start with a focus summary of some of the positive highlights of the last fiscal year, as well as some of the challenges that we have been facing, starting with the highlighting side. First of all, I think it's worth noting that we actually did achieve our adjusted guidance, both on sales, on EBIT, and also on free cash flow in an environment where I think not too many companies actually do that at the moment. In that context, we had another year of positive free cash flows, positive 110 million euros, as I will explain to you in a minute, that has also been benefiting from payments in the marine system side that we had originally expected in Q1. But be it as it is, cash flow is positive for the second consecutive year. And I think that's a good one as well. We've had a good start with Apex. And Apex has actually helped, you know, basically driving our underlying performance. I will come to that later with specific examples. We had started further restructuring initiatives, totaling cost of 270 million euros. Balance sheet is relatively strong with 4.4 billion net cash position, slightly up from the previous year. dividend payment proposed, so we target dividend continuity with 15 cents per share, as in the previous years. And last but not least, we also had a few home runs on the non-financial target side for diversity, for example, innovation and energy efficiency. On the other side, of course, we've also had challenges And the biggest one is, and still remaining, is the Steel Europe situation. And symbolizing that, we had further impairments booked at Steel Europe at a magnitude of 800 million euros in Q4 and 1 billion overall for the full fiscal year. That is reflecting macro-advance, sector trends, but also our own necessity to develop a better business plan. And basically, it's our start, if you wish, into the final phase of business plan development. We are seeing muted demand across the industries, particularly automotive, which, as you know, is our largest customer group across all segments, but also in most of the other customer groups at the moment. And we do face geopolitical uncertainties, also with the latest elections around us that, of course, affect us as well. In decarbon technologies, I think we've made great progress on many of our business units. Having said that, as you know, and as we already reported in Q3, we had to do a project cleanup work there, particularly at Polyseus, our cement plant engineering business, where we had to book one-time cost of 80 million euros for past legacy projects. Cash flows within the project and shipbuilding businesses remain volatile as always, so that's not a change, but it, of course, makes forecasting of cash flows a bit more challenging. And last but not least, as long as we are where we are with our profitability to achieve free cash flows that are coming close to zero, we need to do very tight capital budgeting, both on the capital expenditure front as well as on networking capital management towards the end of the year. And that's what we have been doing, I think, successfully. But we always need to balance that, of course, with growth investment requirements. Going to an overview of the key financials, starting with sales, Q4 was stable over prior year. The whole fiscal year was 7% below the prior year, and with that exactly on the midpoint of our guidance of minus 6% to minus 8%. And I will analyze that for you in a second. EBIT adjusted coming out at 567 million. That is above our guidance of above 500 million euros. And if you would back out that special effect, cost booking from Polyseus would be by and large stable almost versus the prior year. Net income was expected negatively. 1.4 billion euros is more negative than we had planned for. Now, that KPI is, of course, directly reflecting our transformation efforts and is impacted by, in total, 1.6 billion euros in special effects. And of that, 1 billion euros are impairments at steel that we had to take again. And the other parts of these special effects are impairments in other businesses, restructuring efforts and some other smaller special effects. Pre-cash flow before M&A, as I said, positive overall for the year. That included early payments at marine systems of 200 million euros. Early payments in that case just means that we have been faster with actually completing our work. So we could actually complete some projects earlier than anticipated. And with that, we received customer payments slightly earlier. And so that is basically moving from Q1 of this fiscal year to Q4 of the last fiscal year. And balance sheet, you know, net cash is 4.4 billion euros, slightly updriven by positive free cash flows. Pensions plus minus on prior year, a bit up on the back of decreasing interest rates. And equity ratio now, while equity as an absolute figure has been hit by the impairments, of course, equity ratio is still at a healthy level of 35%. So solid balance sheet. Now, putting these 23, 24 figures a bit into the context of our journey over the last years, you see that on the net cash side, we are now up for the third consecutive year on our net cash position. Of course, that development has also been supported by transactions through that period. So, for example, that step from 22 to 23 was also driven by the new Sarah IPO and proceeds coming in. But it's also helped by our stabilizing free cash flow. And so I think that's a good development. And on the free cash flow before M&A side, second year positive. And so overall, I would say we tentatively see some early signs of track record building up here that we can show to the outside world. Let's take a quick closer look at top and bottom line analysis. On the top line, as I said, 7% below prior year is 2.5 billion euros less sales. That has been particularly driven by the materials businesses, as you can see in the middle part, and that also in turn driven by both price and volume developments. In each of these buckets, we also have positive developments. So material services, for example, has had a strong year for its solutions business, which is a key strategic direction that we want to take there. Solutions was above prior year. And on the SE side, for example, the packaging business was positive. But overall, these two basically brought sales down by two and a half billion overall. And that then also translated into EBIT adjusted, but much less than you would expect. So overall, we are down by 130 million euros to come to an EBIT of 567 million. And that does include, as I said initially, those 80 million in cost bookings in Q3 that we already communicated. If you would back that out, then, as I said, we would be relatively in striking distance. of the prior year, which was also testament to the contingency measures that we took and all of the things that we did in the APEX program. Quickly running through the segments, so starting with automotive technology, the environment in automotive is challenging and it still is as we speak. You can see that not only the full fiscal year was below prior year, but also the fourth quarter was below prior year by 7%. That is a reflection of where markets are, soft automotive markets at the moment. In that environment, I think the segment has had relatively resilient performance. ROS is down only by, you know, basically 10 basis points from 3.4 to 3.3%. And so that shows that we have actually worked strongly against that. And if you do benchmark work of the segment or parts of the segment against other German Tier 1 suppliers, then actually we're not doing so bad here. So while we struggled with the environment, contingency management was actually pretty good here. And BCF, so our business cash flow up to 277 million euros. So cash conversion rate is above one in that segment or has been above one in that segment in the prior year, thanks to networking capital improvements and some cuts on the investment side. And to the bottom, we also now show some examples of our APEX program, both with a view to the back mirror as well as a view to upcoming initiatives. And we will do that in a more structured fashion in the future to allow you to follow that a bit more clearly. So things in the past have been pricing and claims management initiatives around lower volume, basically lower volumes coming in from our customer contracts. We've worked on procurement initiatives. as well as an increasing share of aftermarket services in some of the businesses. And upcoming with a view to this fiscal year and beyond, we work on restructuring topics in several of the business units within AT. Then we further work on more centralized commodity teams to bundle procurement efficiencies. And we also have a specific initiative in Bielstein, Germany, know for one of our mexican plants where we ramp up further businesses that we also track through this program moving to decarbon technologies um the carbon technologies has had a good year on the top line driven by a strong order book of the previous year um so we grew by 12 percent and last quarter by 22 percent as you can see bottom line however is down and that 80 million versus the prior is very much that special effect that we've had that I already explained to the Q3 cost bookings. Apart from that, if you look into the respective businesses, Orte Erda, which is our bearings business supplying into the wind industry, it's a good business and it also is a profitable business. It is under a bit of pressure from market side at the moment, particularly in China, and hence is doing more restructuring work, but strategically very well positioned. UDA actually has had a good year. That's our ammonia plant engineering business. Very good year, turning into the positive territory again. And Nucera is basically our growth case on the electrolyzer front, where we basically work on capacity buildup and standardization and productization of our so far plant engineering business. Pre-cash flows hit correspondingly, both by profits as well as lower prepayments. On the APEX side to the lower end, You see on the left-hand side with a view to the back, growth initiatives, operational excellence, restructuring measures, so the whole spectrum. And going forward, we have defined initiatives in every business unit of the segment in Rote Erde, improving aftermarket services to expand margins here. Ude, further standardization and modularization of our so far very individualized and customized plant engineering businesses. Polyseus services boosts and New Sierra, you know, basically a growing sales and gross margin and so forth. On the material services side, flipping to the next page, on sales, we've had a challenging year, 7% down last quarter, 11% overall. Within that, as I said, I mean, what's the strategic direction of the segment is basically to increase its share of solutions and North American business to expand margins here. And it's good to see that supply chain business has been actually positive versus the prior year, despite the very difficult market environment. On EBIT, we have been stable, so a very resilient business working against basically the top-line development. And cash flows, you see cash conversion of more than two times. That is, of course, not a sustainable level going forward, but it has been a very, very strong year here. And so with that, we also... as I said, counter the negative effects. APEX backward-looking restructuring measures in Europe, investments in North America, as I said, and also growth, particularly on the solution side that we're tracking internally and coming up as restructuring at ThyssenKrupp Schulte, which is the large German material handling business that we have, further investments in North America and further expanding the share of services and solutions. Moving to steel Europe, which we are, of course, most famous for in the press. So on that side, we are also dealing with tight markets at the moment. As you can see, 13% below prior year, you know, within that 5% volume driven, and then the rest is basically price driven. Also here, we've had pockets of relative stability, such as the packaging business, for example, but overall the business, the segment has been down. And against that, we were also down on profits a little bit less than you maybe would expect given the top line, but we are down on profits at the moment. with everything that comes with underutilization. On the cash flow side, we are even more strongly down. As you can see, that is not only driven by basically two reasons for that. The first one is that profits are down and particularly cash profits are down. And the second reason is that we've had less network and capital release than in the prior year. APEX looking backwards, sales initiatives, efficiency improvements on the production and logistics front and Yeah, just general cost-cutting measures that have also found their way into the German press again. Upcoming, I think the key thing about steel is that we are working on a new industry concept, a new business plan coming up, and this will be the determining factor for the future of this business. And that's basically what we're internally fully focused on at the moment. And then closing with marine systems overall, that business is good. Yeah. So it's very nicely developing at the moment. Finally, the German site and vendor. So basically the increase in defense spending is making its way into the ship building businesses. And so we develop nicely here, as you can see, sales is significantly up a very good progress here. EBIT is strong, and if you just recollect that our capital market target for this segment is 6% to 7% ROAS, we finished at 5.9%, so almost made it in the last year. And that's testament to the good work of this team here. And cash flow is also very nice here, also cash conversion above 2%. And, of course, all of the customer payments do help a lot here. Apex looking backwards, you know, basically optimization of our legacy order backlog. That has been the biggest thing that we've been working on to improve margins. Looking into the future, we're working on a new target operating model to make project execution even more efficient. Also, you know, in line with the volume ramp up that we have right now. And then we also develop new businesses, the next-gen businesses, where we try to grow civil maritime and offshore businesses, basically. And then we have some synergies on the procurement side. Summing up the bottom line from EBIT adjusted to net income, as I said, this bridge is very much driven by the special effects, 1.6 billion, 1 billion of which is SE impairment. And then, as I said, 200 million impairments in other segments, 200 million restructuring, and then a little bit more for other factors. And the other thing that I just want to briefly comment on in this bridge is TKE. So our elevator stake, that accounting result is negative, but this is no reflection of the operational performance of this business. So elevator, as you know, has been bought by a private equity consortium a while ago. It's developing nicely. And so we are looking forward to the future of our stake here. And the fact that the accounting is negative is simply a reflection of the user PE financing structure with corresponding interest rates. And we need to mirror that in our equity accounting. That's why it's negative. But underlying performance of this business is really fun. And then from there, you know, finally moving to free cash flows. I guess the thing that I want to say here is, you know, of course, our target is to achieve sustainably positive free cash flows. We have been positive now for the second year. You know, on a midterm horizon to achieve sustainably positive free cash flows and maybe even invest a bit more requires us to achieve the bottom end of the range of our capital market profitability target, which is 4% ROS. When we achieve that, then basically free cash flows turn into the sustainable positive side, even if we want to invest more and even if we have less networking capital releases. But yeah, I'm happy to have achieved this result in the past fiscal year. Okay, turning to this fiscal year outlook now is one change that I want to comment on. So we just one note on our guidance structure. We are changing now, as you can see, to a more specific guidance. So we're coming from prior qualitative guidance indications along the lines of, you know, higher and lower three digit millions and things like that. We are now turning to specific quantitative guidance. Naturally, at the beginning of a fiscal year, this guidance is very, very broad, right? Because we're at the beginning of the year and the environment is also very uncertain. And we expect to narrow this down throughout the year with further business being booked in. Taking you quickly through our logic here. So on the top line, you see that we are guiding zero to three percent, so a slight growth. The market scenario, market model that we have behind that is that we expect in the first half of our fiscal year still a difficult environment. And then in the second half of the year, some stabilization and some parts turning into the positive. If you look at our trend or if we look at our trend, sales trend run rates at the moment, we see a little bit of support for at least that the worst is behind us. But of course, we are not yet in the positive fully. Q4 was good. It was stable, but We still need to see whether that scenario is working out. That is basically what we have defined as our market scenario for this year. On the EBIT adjusted side, we are guiding 600 million to 1 billion. So basically, from slightly above the prior year to significantly above the prior year, driven by both top line, but also strongly by efficiency measures and our structure profitability measures within APEX. And then free cash flow before M&A, minus 400 to minus 200. Now, very important to comment on this one here. This is not, I repeat, it's not a fallback into historical behavioral patterns or something like that. It's simply a reflection of the fact that we have quite significant restructuring activities going on at the moment. I commented on the cost that we booked last year, and now the payouts are coming here. And that even does not yet include anything that may be coming out of the steel business plan. We anticipate already right now 250 million euros in restructuring payments. And that is basically bringing out free cash flows before M&A that otherwise would be or could be again close to zero. And the second remark on that one, why we, of course, this is our key KPI that we measured against free cash flow before M&A. If you would just for one second look at after M&A. As you know, we just completed the signing of the divestiture of our Indian electrical steel business, which will book in 440 million euros purchase price. And then, you know, after some taxes that we need to pay, still a significant amount will come in. If you would model that against this free cash flow before, I mean, to look at free cash flow all in, this would be, you know, a round of positive results. And so we're still without any change committed to delivering sustainably positive free cash flows. On the segment side, I mean, I don't want to go through each and every detail here. You see different growth assumptions here, building on individual market models and all of these different things. DT is negative because of a muted order book this year, but we still believe in the growth case of the segment. And maybe what I would like to highlight again is, as I said, last fiscal year, one of our segments almost achieved its capital market guidance. For this fiscal year, as you can see with the two yellow bubbles on the right-hand side, we see a good chance that two of our segments achieved their capital market targets, material services and also marine systems. And so with that, step by step by step, we are committed to taking our segments to our capital market targets that we defined. Closing my part with a word on APEX, or Performance Management Program. We're coming from APEX 1.0, if you wish, that we pretty much used to mobilize the whole organization and refocus everybody on capital market targets. It was a central top-down approach, or it started top-down and then transferred to the segments. And we built a significant amount of contingency and other measures throughout this first program. of 2.1 billion euros for the two fiscal years, 23.4 and 24.5, of which 1.2 billion have been actually used in the last fiscal year to counter those negative effects coming out of the top line degradation. If you just think that we lost 2.5 billion in top line and then make your mind of what contribution margin this could mean, this has basically helped us stabilize the profit to where it has come out. So that was basically APEX 1.0. I think it was a good success. And now we switch into the second gear. We go to a more decentral approach, even more segment driven. We focus more on the top structural performance improvement projects that are required for us to achieve structural profitability. you know step ups and I mentioned some of those to you in the individual segment charts and in the future we will give you updates as to where we stand with these initiatives and overall whether we are on track or whether things haven't really worked out to you know move you a bit closer to that. We will accompany this with additional things a playbook process as you know from very much know from private equity or other investment situations just to you know drive this thinking of continuous improvement to the organization, and we also have a focused small culture process attached to that to drive performance culture more into the organization. We will not communicate any more additional new APEX targets on top of the ones that we had put out last year. The goal that we basically have with these measures is to secure the achievement of our guidance, and that's what we're here for. And with that, handing back to Miguel to close on midterm guidance and a strategic summary.

Thank you very much, Jens. Let me keep this one short. The important message here is that our mid-term targets are confirmed. For the group, that means we continue to strive for an EBIT adjusted margin of between 4% to 6%. As a result, a significant positive free cash flow before M&A and reliable dividend payments. For Steel Europe, you all know that we are working hard on the new business plan And therefore, it is clear that this will result in new targets that we will communicate as soon as possible. The other segments target are unchanged. And as Jens mentioned earlier, have been partially reached already. Now, let's have a look on our strategic agenda for fiscal year 24-25. Overall, I'm convinced it will be a year of milestone decisions. Let's start with a look back. We have already made important progress, in particular at Steel Europe. In April 2024, we agreed on a 20% sale of Steel Europe to EP Corporate Group. The transaction has already been completed within fiscal year 23-24. Through EPCG's investment, we combine ThyssenKrupp's leading materials know-how with the energy expertise of a leading European energy company. I'm sure that together we will significantly improve the competitiveness of ThyssenKrupp Steel. The cooperation with our co-shareholder EPCG is extremely constructive. The same is true for the ongoing talks on deepening our partnership as the declared target. The next logical step is to create an equal 50-50 joint venture. However, in order to take the next steps towards independence, We first need clarity about the future direction of the steel business. That means the new business plan, which also includes the green transformation of steel. What quantities can be sold in the market? What prices can be achieved? How will the cost develop? What investments are necessary and how can all this be financed? All these issues must be included in a viable and resilient business plan for the coming decades. This makes the task extremely complex, but it is necessary in order to make the steel business profitable again and to decarbonize it in the long term. In addition to this, we announced a further important step in the alignment of Steel Europe in October. The sale of ThyssenKrupp Electrical Steel India to our local GV partners. The expected proceeds of 440 million euro will improve the capital base of steel. We have to act and not with a rudimentary approach that will leave us in a similar situation to today after a short time, but with a view to the entire steel business and for the coming decades. Hence, our approach will include, first, meet the climate protection requirements, second, adapt flexibly to the uncertainties of the steel market, third, define the new operating point, fourth, revise our mix of value creation and location structure, and fifth, adapt the number of jobs accordingly. Another focus of our portfolio streamlining is marine systems. In the past financial year, we laid important foundations for a standalone solution. Current forecasts indicate an increasing demand in marine systems core businesses over the next 10 years. The long-term geostrategic developments offer us new opportunities for growth, which we intend to explore to the best of our ability by positioning ourselves independently. To our regret, the private equity company Carlyle has withdrawn from the bidding process. It is not for us to discuss what exactly led to this decision what we can say however it's not an economic decision as nothing to do with the financial performance of the marine business on the contrary the business is going very well and the order books are full despite that discussions with the german government are continuing and kfw is further performing their due diligence. At the same time, we are examining other options, above all a spin-off of marine systems, but are of course also open to industrial partnerships. We remain committed to our chosen path of making our marine system independent. Let's move now to the green transformation. The opportunities are there, we have to leverage on them. The new segment created a year ago, T-Carbon Technologies, combines four of the world's largest and most recognized industrial providers of innovative cutting-edge technologies in the field of green transformation. The task now is to drive forward the transformation of DT's business models away from individually manufactured large-scale systems towards increased modularization and standardization of products and the expansion of the profitable service business. This applies in particular to Polyseus and Oude. However, we are already strongly positioned today. For example, Polyseus is supplying the central technology for the first CO2 neutral cement plants worldwide. Polyseus will build two plants for CO2 separation for the Greek Titan group. These plants are expected to save around 1.9 million tons of carbon dioxide per year from 2029, which corresponds to around 12% of all greenhouse gas emissions from Greek industry. ThyssenKrupp Nocera is also developing very positively. With alkaline water electrolyzers, the company offers a proven and efficient solution for the production of green hydrogen on an industrial scale. In order to further expand its market position as a technology leader, ThyssenKrupp Nocera is adding innovative high-temperature electrolyzers to its portfolio. One business example from fiscal year 2023-2024 Back in May, the energy company Thepsa selected ThyssenKrupp Nocera as its preferred supplier for a 300 megawatt electrolysis plant for green hydrogen in Spain. Ude is also well positioned for the green transformation. The business is ready to meet the growing demand for clean ammonia, green methanol, sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture technologies. The company is also developing carbon-free technologies such as ammonia cracking and biomass gasification. Our slow-bearing business, Rote Erde, is struggling with a challenging wind market in China in the short term. However, we continue to see great growth potential in the medium and long term. We are focusing on innovations in order to increase our market share in the long term. For example, Rote Erd is increasingly offering customers from the wind industry modular system solutions that reduce the cost of developing, building and transporting wind turbines and make the energy transition more cost-effective. And last but not least, in addition to the necessary restructuring measures that we have initiated and will further do, We are continuing to invest systematically in the future of ThyssenKrupp. With more than 3,900 employees in research and development, we are one of the strongest research-based technology companies in Germany. Despite all current challenges, we should not doubt that ThyssenKrupp has a bright future. We will provide proof points in the quarters to come. And with that, we are at the end of today's presentation, and I would like to hand over to Andreas. Thank you all for your interest, and we are now ready to take your questions.

Thank you, Michael, and thank you, Jens. We will now start the Q&A session for our analysts. Again, we are using Microsoft Teams from now on, so in order to ask a question, please push on your screen. Raise your hand icon and we will announce your name and open your line and please make sure that you are unmuted when we announce your name. Let's start now.

The first one here is Jason Fairclough, please.

Folks, can you hear me OK? Yes, we can hear you beautiful. Look, thanks very much for the presentation, guys. Look, two questions from me. One, I just wanted to make sure I understood the way APEX is feeding through into the financials. So I think you're claiming that you've achieved $1.2 billion in EBIT improvement this year, but that seems to be bigger than the EBIT for the full year. So is it fair to say that without APEX, you would have lost money at the EBIT line this year? That's the first question. Then I'll come back to the other one.

So the short answer, Jason, is yes. It's actually the case, yeah. So that really made the bottom line. And with all that, we would have been loss-making.

Okay, that's helpful. Second question then is just on the marine disposal. I think if we go back in time, the KFW had been instructed to take a stake, at least to do the due diligence, but ultimately to take the stake in marine before the summer break. Here we are, we're almost at the end of the year. Obviously, there's some political change in Germany. But I guess the question is, is this a deal that can actually happen or is it just something you're going to end up being stuck with because people prefer the status quo?

Thank you for this very relevant question as well. I think the intention of the German government is clearly that a consolidation takes place in the industry. And that's the reason why there is this interest being pursued over time. The delay that you perceive is there. On the other hand, we still have a clear opinion that the intention is still there, that they would like to take a stake in the company, and probably that would be something that will take place earlier than later. However, and you mentioned it before, the latest developments in the last two weeks with the announcement of a new election date is for us difficult to interpret in regard to exactly this topic. So intention is there. It makes, from a strategical, also country perspective, it makes a lot of sense. But probably we need to take in consideration the changes now in the political landscape.

Okay. Thanks very much, guys. Appreciate the presentation.

The next question comes from Boris Boudin.

Hello, gentlemen.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first is on the steel business, the steel business plan. I know it's still early days, but I would be interested in knowing what kind of timing for the finalization of the business plans. And if you could share some of the main metrics, main assumptions behind the business plan in terms of maybe capacities, price of steel and also maybe we've seen some very wide range of amounts in the press. What would be the required amounts that the holding would have to fund the standalone business for making any deal? with EPCG. And maybe another question on DCARB and free cash flow generation. There have been talks about cost overruns lately. So what would the capex look like beyond the current fiscal year? And when do you expect this sustainable free cash flow to be reached? What would be the new medium term? I know the last one was 2024, 2025. what would be a reasonable assumptions according to you?

Thank you.

Let me start first with the steel business plan. I think it's important now that we expect this business plan now in the next months from the steel management. You have seen that we assembled a new team there and they are working on the plan. And as soon as we have this plan and agreed on the plan, we will certainly communicate it. It will be coming in the next months. So, in terms of de-carb, Jens, would you take over?

Sure, sure, I can do that. I guess the second question attached to that one that you raised was how much funding is required for the steel business. That very much depends on the specific business plan, right? So I will not push out a new number today. And as you correctly said, there were huge ranges in the press all over the place a couple of weeks ago. Of course, our intention is to have a business plan that is attractive enough to get along with more limited funding, so more towards the lower end of of maybe ranges, but no new number today. So it really depends on how exactly the business plan will look like when we are publishing it, you know, when it's ready. On that other point of, you know, when are we ready to come to sustainably positive free cash flows? First of all, so overall for the group is my interpretation, is your question. So, overall, first of all, I think it's worth noting that we've had two years of positive free cash flows, right? So, we delivered even in this current environment. Now, as I said, you know, with a medium-term view, of course, to get to sustainably positive free cash flows and also economic profits, so ticker value added, requires the lower end of our capital market target range for the whole group, which is 4% ROS. And where do we stand with this one? So, as I said, last year we achieved our target in one segment. This year we are targeting to achieve our target in two segments. And, you know, when we achieve the targets on the other segments really depends on the further market development. So today we are not issuing a new date for that simply because of the uncertainty around us, particularly also including our most important customer industry, automotive industry. And as long, you know, as soon as the focus clearing more, and we have a more robust market model, then I think we will return to more specific, you know, guidance on the other points. But as I said, we take it step by step by step. First segment last year, two segments this year, and then we take it piece by piece.

Okay, thank you very much. Just to follow up on the funding, the lower end, that would be a 1.3 billion. Is that correct?

No, no. So I wouldn't. Lower end means in the abstract universe of numbers that are floating around. So I didn't have a specific range in mind here. I'm just saying that we are building a business plan that is targeting to be financeable and requires less money, so to speak. But you can't read any specific number out of my statement. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And the next question comes from Bastian Zunarowicz. Hello. Good afternoon. Can you hear me well? Yes.

Perfect. So I'll just stay on steel for the moment. And so just wanted to check, I guess the process now on the business plan already has been going on for some time. I'm just wondering, which are the key questions where you're currently stuck in debating? Is it mostly the capitalization or which are the key areas which are basically deferring the development here?

That is my first question.

So maybe I just start, and of course, Miguel should chime in here. So I guess, Bastian, the key point here is not so much that we're currently stuck in key questions. So overall, as you correctly say, we've been working on this for quite a while. And then, as you know, we actually effected a management change mid of this year to bring exactly more pressure and ambition level on this topic. And, you know, that basically happened in end of August. Then we brought in a new team. This new team is working at maximum speed on this topic now. And so it's just a matter of basically, you know, coming together, crunching numbers and bringing all of the pieces together that we're not yet finished yet. But it's not that we are stuck with specific questions. And as Miguel said earlier, we are confident that this, you know, will come to fruition.

know at least first industry concepts within the foreseeable future okay thanks very clear then just to stay with steel again and actually on your outlook where you're clearly implying at least some improvement in the next business year i guess we're obviously heading towards contract negotiations automotive is one of your key customer groups i guess at the moment there's a lot of pressure on that segment which probably perceptually doesn't bode too well as to how these contract negotiations may potentially go. Now, what's driving your optimism in steel here and how far are you banking for a market rebound? Is this like a near-term rebound? Is the improvement mostly cost-driven or do you expect indeed like a market rebound maybe earlier or later in the later part of the year?

Maybe again, I start and then Miguel, feel free to chime in. So I think on the steel side, the majority of basically the anticipated performance improvement is not so much volume driven, it's actually more efficiency driven. And we still see significant efficiencies in this business. And that goes along the full way of, as you correctly indicate, pricing, not only the automotive, but also towards all of the other uh you know areas but also sg and a efficiencies where we're cutting you know more more strictly at the moment you know, energy procurement efficiencies and a few other things. So that's basically what we're focusing on at the moment. It's fair to say, though, as I said earlier, that, you know, given the current uncertainty around us and also in the automotive industry, certainly for the steel business to achieve its targets will be probably among the higher challenges in our portfolio. No doubt about this. And we will need to take a look at that also in the context of the new business plan that we are developing. But long story short, we do not so much bank on market rebounds here. We rather go for cost measures particularly.

Okay, thank you. Then maybe moving over to marine systems which is developing actually quite nicely and I guess that probably strengthens your position obviously in the current discussions. My first question is just whether a strategic partnership by now is basically off the table or whether there are still any active discussions which you're currently having? Then also on the, I think, involvement of KfW, my understanding was actually that the KfW had already finalized its due diligence process. It's basically now only sitting with the government for a decision. Maybe you can just clarify this and then technically speaking, does the KfW actually need a parliament decision to take the stake?

Thank you, Bastian. The clear orientation right now for us is the spin-off no we are driving the spin-off and um if there there would be some parties interested in in in a corporation they will of course let us know but the the the way we are driving the the the marine system independent setup is now to go for the spin-off. As we have been indicating for the last 18 months already, that we were pursuing the PE solution and the spin-off in parallel, and now after PE disappeared, Now we are going for spin-off very clearly. So we would not now go for losing time because of other considerations. We are going for the spin-off. The second is, of course, to take a stake is a decision of the government. And we will see, as mentioned before, what we could expect from them right now, given the actual situation on a new election that will come in the next months. But again, I believe the strategic interest of the government will be also there in a government to come. And it would also give to us a strength, an additional strength in the setup of a spin-off.

Okay, understood. And then just the KfW, has it already finalized the due diligence process or is this still ongoing?

Well, would it be okay for you if I tell you that you need to ask the KFW?

Okay, no worries. Yeah, absolutely.

With all due respect.

Okay, but then maybe just coming back to the questions, I guess you can answer. I guess when you talked about the racial here, one of the reasons also is you want to grow the business and that requires more capital. It's a business which has a good prospect, but you're probably not willing to maybe provide that capital from the current parent. So what amount of capital or what numbers of capital are we talking? Is this three digit million numbers, maybe sort of mid three digit, or is it possibly more than that? Is there anything you can potentially disclose on that front at this point?

I guess maybe to be precise here, Bastian, I think when we're talking about capitalization of the business, it's not so much putting more money in because, I mean, the business is cash flow positive, right? So it is largely self-financing itself, so to speak, with maybe some bridges required here and there. But I think that this would be, I mean, they could finance themselves in a standalone scenario. I think what we're talking about here is rather the financing structures in the sense of guarantees that we need to give for prepayments, right? And you know this topic. I mean, it has always been a topic for us. So when customers pay, then, of course, they require, as always, a certain guarantee for those payments. And given the volume development of this business, these guarantees have huge volumes that overall drag on our current business. you know, our current financing of the group. And so the idea is to spin it off and bring the state in because once the state is in, then as with most of our competitors in this field, then these guarantee structures are limited or not at all, you know, required anymore. So that's one logic of the spin-off plus governmental involvement.

Okay, very clear. Thank you.

Thank you very much. As a reminder, if you want to ask a question, please raise your hand icon on your screen. And the next question comes from Christian Obst.

Yes, thank you, and good afternoon. First, again, on marine systems, it's right. It's a precondition that the KFW takes over the guarantees before you go further in the spin-off process, right?

Yes, it's actually, whether it's technically KfW or another governmental entity, it would still need to be seen. But one idea is exactly that the state would take a role here. That's true.

Okay, and without that, you would not go for a spin-off? Or it's not possible?

yeah we we could still do that i mean um if if um of course we our preference is to have the state in for various reasons and that is a strong one if for whatever reason and i mean clearly we don't have any any indications in that direction whatsoever but if for whatever reason the state doesn't want to join us then we still can do a spin-off then in the first step we need to still provide some of the guarantees and then we need to see how we refinance that over time yeah but so it's it's not It would not be an impediment, but it would be much easier with a state in. Of course.

I'd like to have your opinion concerning the elevator stake. As you get no interest payment for that stake, do you like to wait until there is an IPO and you can get money out of that stake, or are you looking for additional options on how to get rid of that stake?

No, at the moment, we are clearly in a waiting position because for two reasons. First is we don't need money immediately. I mean, we have a strong net cash position and we have positive free cash flows, so no need to monetize that stake. And the second reason is that, as I said, business is developing well and we would like to wait until the owners of that business go for more specific exit plans and then go along with that. That's at least the status that we have today. Okay.

Then besides steel and marine systems, you have additional portfolio measures, maybe. What is the current status when it comes to automotive and also the trading business or material services? Is there any kind of divestment process within automotive, maybe for body solutions or engineering? And is there a divestment process for part of the trading business and material services, or what is the current status there?

On the first, on automotive, we do have a still running process on springs and stabilizers. Many of you guys that follow us for a while know this topic, right? It's not new. It's still running and cooking, if you wish, and we are still in negotiations with a potential partner here. On automation engineering, we actually stopped the process. So here, we thought that the likelihood of successfully executing is too low. And we are now, you know, starting to gradually ramp down part of the powertrain business at one of our locations. On the material side, we're actually not yet at the moment considering any divestitures. As I said, we are restructuring ThyssenKrupp Schulte in Germany, but still believe in a better future. And if anything, maybe in the future with a view to the US, we could actually think about, on the contrary, smaller add-ons, bolt-on acquisitions to build our position further there because the structural margins in the US, as you know, are much better than in Europe in this business.

Okay, thank you. And then some kind of a housekeeping question. So, of course, there are lower interest rates on average and that had an impact on the pensions. On the other hand, you have increased your weighted average cost of capital from 9% to 11%. Can you give us the main ingredient for that kind of increase by two percentage points?

So that actually has been happening in the year. No, I need to look to Andreas. I think this has been happening in the year before the last fiscal year. So that increase from 9% to 11% was in 2022-2023. And I have to admit that I don't have the exact composition of that increase over the years. mainly interest rates, Andreas is saying. But I mean, that was basically before my time. So last fiscal year, we didn't change management reporting wax, but it was the year before.

We can come back to you with the answer, Christian.

But in your report on the page 54, and I see it on the right there, it's back before in 22, 23 was 9%, and then 23, 24, 11%.

Yeah, exactly. But what I was saying is that, you know, the modeling of this and the preparation of the change was in the year before that. So basically, when I was coming in middle of the year, that was already operating. But let's come back to you. So I don't have the exact composition here.

Thank you very much for your answer. All the best.

Thank you. And we have a follow-up question from Jason Fairclough.

Yep, thanks guys. So I'm just working my way through the annual report. I'm up to about page 276. And I was wondering if you could maybe just help me out. What I'm trying to get to is some more color around the transaction that you did with Mr. Kretinsky on steel. And in particular, I guess I was looking to see if there were actually any cash proceeds or even cash outflows associated with that transaction. So if you could point me to the right page in the annual report, it'd be really helpful.

So I can answer the question, but not, you know, point you to the right page out of my head. So I would need to look that up as well. So the answer to that is, yes, there have been cash proceeds, which we have not disclosed, right? And so I would like to stick to that. And actually, as a matter of fact, somewhere we commented on that, but let's get back to you on this one where exactly that isn't the annual report. I don't have the page number out of my head.

Okay, thanks very much.

Thank you very much. And there is another follow up question of Bastian.

Yep, thanks for taking the follow up as well. Just technicality as well on elevators. I was wondering, is the stake which you own there, is that in a closed end or in an open ended vehicle? And maybe also if you could share with us the updated book value of your share there.

So on the first question, I need to ask the counter question, what exactly do you mean with this closed-end or open-ended vehicle?

Well, earlier you said that you would probably reconsider your holding there once the actual operator is exiting. So I guess if it's a closed-end, there would be a natural timeline towards exit, which you would be subject to, I guess. So hence the question, or is this just like an open-ended vehicle where this could actually sit there for an undefined period of time?

Well, basically it's for an undefined period of time. So we are pretty flexible in what we want to do with this share. But as I said, I mean, a natural scenario for us would be looking at going along with an exit.

Okay, understood. And the updated value of your stake there?

Okay, let me look that up and we're just waiting for the next question.

Right, thank you.

So the team is saying around $1 billion is the current book pay. I think it's actually slightly more than that, to be quite honest. I think we're at $1.4 billion now out of my head. But yeah, that's what we saw.

I guess it's always the vendor note, I think, which was linked to that as well. But OK. OK, thanks so much.

Thank you very much. And there is another follow-up question of Christian Obst. Well, that's another follow-up question of Boris Bourdieu.

So, shall I go?

Yes, please.

Okay, thank you. I'm back to decarbonization. We've heard of cost overruns and we see some of your peers in Europe postponing or adopting a bit more flexibility on their options to the decarbonization journey. so i would be interested in getting your qualitative comments on that on how you see things evolving and maybe if you if you could hint at the the capex dynamics past 2024 2020 the current fiscal year thank you

So you are aware that we are right now, of course, taking a very close look to the prices of the green hydrogen and looking for how we will initiate the journey with the direct reduction plant as such. Of course, right now, we need to understand whether for the beginning of the operations of the DRI, natural gas would be the choice. And we are also taking a look to how long it would be the choice in order to operate this plant. profitably. And this, of course, in very close cooperation with the ministry, so the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft. And this is ongoing talks. So we, of course, we are determined to start operations. And, of course, we need to see with what kind of of gas we do it and right now it looks like it would be natural gas for a longer time than initially expected.

Let me just before the next question is coming up, correct my previous statement on the question for you on your question on the elevator stakes. So that was 1 billion. So the first answer was correct. The second one was not correct. So 1 billion is the book value.

All right. Thank you very much. That's actually concluding all the questions that we have from the analyst side. So thank you very much. Everyone have a great day. And if you have follow-up questions afterwards, please let us know from the IR team. Thank you.

Thank you very much, guys.

Thank you. Bye-bye.