Washtec Ag Augsburg

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Washtec's conference call on the Q3 results 2025. My name is Kevin Loren, Managing Director at Washtec. And with me today, I have our Chief Operating Officer, Michael Drohlsagen, who will provide an update on the current developments at Washtec, and our Chief Financial Officer, Andreas Papst, who will guide you through the results of the first nine months. Following the presentation, the floor will be open for questions. you may already queue for questions during the presentation by pressing the Pew Q&A button in the webcast and following the instructions. Of course, this call will be recorded and made available on our investor relations website. With that, I'm handing over to our CEO, Michael Drohlzeig.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you, Kevin, and a warm welcome to WorkTech HE's earnings call for the third quarter of 2025. My name is Michael Rothsagen. I'm CEO and CTO of WorkTech HE. The figures for Q3 2025, I would like to present to you the most important recent developments. Let's start by looking at the general economic environment in our core markets, the USA and Europe. In Europe, we are seeing the first signs of recovery, but uncertainties remain due to geopolitical risks and protectionist measures. In the USA, new tariffs and a weak dollar are making export conditions more difficult, while demand for capital goods remains stable. Due to the low level of exports to the USA shown in the last call, the risk for Washtec is low. General economic growth is suffering from the current trade barriers, which is also reflected in the lower market forecasts for Europe and the USA for 2026. This means that Washtec faces challenges going forward, such as subdued investment willingness. But given the current order backlog for Washtec, we remain positive. This is supported by our digitalization and sustainable technology offering, which gives us great opportunities for differentiation and growth. Let us take this opportunity to take another look at the core of our strategic orientation and where we currently stand, our house of strategy. our increasingly smart products for form the basis of our business model however we go far beyond this by bundling these products into modular tailor-made solutions that are precisely tailored to the needs of our customers the focus is on the entire customer journey from the initial contact to long We offer complete solutions from a single source, machines, chemicals and software. With the SCILP configurator launched in Germany in August this year, we can now configure our products in the same way as a car and create bundles with chemicals and surfaces. This is not only makes the job of our sales staff easier, but also gives our customers greater transparency and streamlines the entire process from order creation to machine installation. In the coming months, we will roll out this solution to all markets and also integrate all our products. Our digital products enable intelligent payment and control systems data analysis and performance optimization as well as customer loyalties through smart user guidance we are clearly positioning ourselves as a solution provider with a focus on europe and north america but strategy is nothing without culture that is why we focus on customer orientation enthusiasm and personal responsibility as well as a corporate culture that motivates and supports our employees. Our strategy is brought to life by the people who implement it. And in order to be able to act quickly and empower our employees, we have defined and described four core areas to provide clear guidance for all employees in the Washtec family. Clear statements for our employees and our organization. expectation management for our financial figures lean processes and a clear customer focus the framework is in place now it is up is now it is up the team to bring the strategy to life step by step and as we can see today we are already well on our way A special milestone in 2025 was the completion and official launch of our new rollover machine, SmartCare Connect, as well as our first and most important digital products in May of this year. With SmartCare Connect, we have created a digital solution that not only complements our product range, but also sets new standards in the industry. The market launch was extremely successful. we received very positive feedback from the market in the first few months after the launch. Our customers particularly appreciate its initiative usability, its intuitive usability, integration into existing systems and the wide range of options for data analysis and performance. The system achieves top washing results with short washing times especially when used in combination with our sustainable chemicals. The positioning of SmartCare Connect is clear. It is the digital heart of our new generation of washing systems and stands for innovation, efficiency and sustainability. With SmartCare Connect, we offer a solution that creates real added value for both large fleet operators and individual locations. throughout the entire lifecycle of the system. At the same time, our software SE remains a central component of our portfolio. It stands for proven quality and reliability. While SmartPair Connect focuses primarily on digitalization, smart networking and washing speed with washing time, software SE is with its robust and proven technology. Both product lines complement each other perfectly and enable us to offer the right solution for every customer. The first few months after the launch of Smartfair Connect confirm that we are on the right track. Demand is high, customer feedback is extremely positive, and the market response shows that our strategy is spot on. We will continue to pursue this path consistently. Our efficiency programs are a key component in achieving our midterm target EBIT margin of 12 to 14%. Just to repeat our midterm targets, we are aiming for free cash flow of 40 to 50 million euro, average revenue growth of 5% per year, and a ROSI of over 28%. The key levers with regards to our EBIT margin target are our efficiency program. These are the global scope configurator, cost reductions through modularization, quality improvement, optimization of the product footprint, and reduction of installation costs. We will discuss these programs in more detail during our capital markets webcast on November 20th. Our message is clear. We have had a very strong third quarter and are fully on track to achieve our targets 2025. For 2026, it will be crucial to focus on our further efficiency programs in order to realize this proportional EBIT margin growth by 2027. As part of our strategic goals, We are focusing on sustainable reductions in production costs. We see great potential here through complexity reduction, modularization and standardization, as well as the harmonization of central components. We estimate a reduction in variant diversity of over 20% at component and module level. which will also have an impact on our supplier base and its consolidation. However, the effects here will be felt downstream. The goal is clear and is being pursued with enthusiasm. Significant savings and further simplification of our product platforms by 2027. A key highlight of the current financial year is the successful rollout of our new digital products. Following an intensive preparation phase, we are already in the middle of the rollout phase with pilot projects. We have been able to launch our easy car wash pro and car wash assist solutions on the market and gradually expand their introduction. Easy car wash pro and for you and car wash assist are already in use in over 50 pilot facilities in more than five countries. Further pilot facilities are planned in over seven countries and over 500 new facilities are planned for 2026. The feedback from our key accounts and from area sales is extremely promising. The rollout of our digital products is an important component of our growth strategy and sends a clear signal to the market. WashTech is shaping the future of vehicle washing digitally networked and customer-oriented. Another important step we decided on is Washtec's new share buyback program. The Executive Board and Supervisory Board relied on the 23rd of October. The program will start tomorrow on the 6th of November and will run until 4th of May, 2026. A total of up to 100,000 shares or a maximum value of 5 million Euro can be repurchased. Why do we think this is a good program? First, a share buyback is a clear sign of our confidence in our own financial strength and the future development of our company. We have a solid balance sheet, a strong liquidity position. With a buyback, We are sending a signal to the capital market that we believe in the sustainable success of Bosch Tech. Second, our buyback program increases the value of each remaining share, reducing the number of outstanding shares increases earnings per share. I will now hand over to our CFO, who will present the detailed financial figures and the performance of the individual segments. Thank you for your attention and enjoy the second part. Andreas, the stage is yours.

Also from my side, a very warm welcome. I really appreciate that you are all in our call today. Let's go directly to our results. I am pleased to present our results for the first nine months of 2025 as the numbers speak for themselves, not only compared to prior year, but also in a five-year perspective. We did very well. Strong top-line growth and outpacing growth of profitability. We achieved revenues of 358 million, up 7.2% year-on-year, confirming the strong, especially in Europe. EBIT grow disproportionately by 17.4% to 32 million, significantly outpacing revenue growth. This is the second highest EBIT in the last five years. Only 2021, the year after COVID, showed a higher number here, which had a significant catch-up effect. Our EBIT margin improved to 9.0% compared to 8.2% last year. This reflects the success of our cost discipline and operational excellence initiatives combined with a tailwind from higher revenues. Also, free cash flow rose by 11.2% versus the prior year to now 28 million. This is mainly driven by optimized working capital management and higher net income. The free cash flow ratio of 7.8% is highest in the last five years. And if you now look at Q3 standalone, the figures are even more impressive. EBIT increased by 35.8% compared to prior year, and it even outpaced the double-digit revenue growth of 10.3%. Also on the long run, BORSTEC had never seen a higher increase in those numbers year on year. Overall, we achieved revenues of 126 million in the third quarter, with an EBIT margin of 11.8%, or in absolute terms, 50 million euro. So overall, in Q3, we are clearly on track according to our ambitions. Top-line growth, accompanied by an over-proportional growth of profitability. As you see from this slide, we have a pretty strong top-line growth in all business lines. It's a broad-based growth and a solid foundation of recurring revenue, meaning the sum of service and consumables, which now accounts for 47.5% of total revenue. Revenue from equipment grew especially in Q3 with 13.7% year-on-year. For the first nine months of 2025, this results in an increase of 6%, reaching now 184 million. Growth momentum in Europe and other segments successfully offset substitute performance in North America. Especially Germany and France continued their very strong performance also in Q3. Service revenue grew by 7.5%, totaling 160 million. This improvement reflects our focus on process optimization, digital connectivity, and expanded capacity. We hired additional service technicians and field service solution software. By September, we had approximately 13,000 machines connected, an increase of around 14% compared to year-end 2024. a clear indicator of our progress in building a digitally enabled service ecosystem. This will help us in future to grow our profitability even further. Consumables delivered the strongest growth, up 11% to 53.7 million. Looking at the revenue share, equipment remains our strong or largest contributor at 51.2%, but recurring revenue, meaning services, which accounts for 32.5%, and consumables, which accounts for 15%, are catching up. Therefore, the recurring revenues are now up to 47.5%, last year's 46.9%. The revenue mix develops further to our goal of 50% recurring and therefore higher predictable revenues. Let's now turn the perspective and take our segments into the focus. Our results clearly demonstrate resilient growth in Europe and other region while North America faced headwinds not only but also from currency effects. Revenue, Europe and other segments increased by 10.3% year-on-year, reaching 309 million. EBIT rose even more sharply, up to 23.6 to 33 million, driven by strong revenue performance across all business lines. The EBIT margin improved to 10.5% compared to 9.8% last year. These results reflect and the benefits of our high capacity load in our production plants. Beside this, we work full steam on our efficiency programs and have already achieved important milestones this year further to come. Nonetheless, we will see the full contribution of these efforts as planned next year or partwise even in 2027. Despite that, we had some additional expenses related to corporate strategy and ongoing IT projects. Contrary, revenues declined in North America by 9% in the first nine months. FX had some impact. On US dollar basis, revenue is down by 6.1%. However, operational performance stabilized in the third quarter. Especially equipment revenues came back. Overall, North America delivered an EBIT of 1.4 million in Q3, up from the prior year. With that much better Q3 result, the segment stands now, after nine months, at breakeven. This gives me some optimism for the coming quarters. To visualize different influences on our EBIT, this bridge might be helpful. Due to higher revenues, we could book 7.3 million additional gross profit and another 3.1 million due to higher gross profit margin. The gross profit margin is now at 31.6% compared to 30.4% last year. This positive performance was mainly due to the increased business volume in Europe, as already mentioned, given in the current setup of our production plants and working close to the limit. and we are facing in some regions installation capacity constraints. The product and the regional mix also supported . Contrary, we had higher selling and marketing costs resulting from higher outbound freight rates in connection with the revenue growth and of the expansion of our sales organization, as well as from the launch of the new products. Higher administrative expenses are mainly linked to IT expenses for ongoing projects, such as already named SAP investments, and new software for the service optimization. In total, earnings before interest and taxes are up by 4.8 million to now 32.4 million. This results in an EBIT margin of 9.0%. Now, some other important KPIs. In line with EBIT development, net income increased compared to last year. Similar earnings per share, we achieved 157 Eurocent compared to last year's more than 15 Eurocent. Our net financial debt of 60 million is 5 million above prior year's level. With credit lines of around 100 million, unused by more than 50%, our financial position is quite strong. In respect of net operating working capital, we see more or less similar numbers by around 90 millions compared to end of September last year. Compared to the end of last year, which was at 94 million, we are down by 4 million Euro. We are still cautious about investments. Meaning after nine months, we spent 5.5 million. The main portion of those investments is linked to our North American production plant where we bought some machines to strengthen our local production footprint and to our digital products and solutions. Our equity ratio is at 25.5% compared to 7% end of Q3 2024. But our balance sheet is still very solid and very healthy. In terms of employees, 85 more people work for WashTech compared to one year ago. The majority is hired for service. I already spoke about this one. Let us now debate a little bit about our order backlog. As usual, this slide doesn't give absolute numbers, but index numbers based on a five years view. In the first nine months of 2025, WashTech Group did very well in terms of order intake. Especially in Germany and France, we had a very strong order intake, whereas North America remained prior year's level in Euro and a little bit above in US dollar. Especially in Q3, we saw here some progress. Overall higher order intake results in higher order backlog, which is 20% over year end 2024 and a comparable level compared to end of Q3 2024. Knowing about this good order backlog, we have some clarity on increasing equipment revenues in the next six months in all seconds. This provides us with a solid base for the month ahead. Coming now to our guidance. WashTick confirms its guidance for the Group for 2025 based on our current order backlog as well as progress of our initiatives. Especially the EBIT development in Q3 supports our guidance with regards to a disproportional increase of EBIT compared to revenues. We now expect revenues and earnings growth in Europe and other segments to be comparatively stronger and in North America weaker in local currency. But overall, we expect for the group a full year growth of revenues by mid-single digit percentage and a disproportionate EBIT increase in excess of revenue growth. Full year's free cash flow is expected to be in the range of 35 to 45 million euro, and we also see improvement in our rosy number. Summing up, we confirm our group guidance for 2025 and we look optimistic into the future. This forecast is based on the assumption that the current global trade conflict will not have any significant negative impact on investment behavior in the car wash market. Next slide, please. So before we start with the Q&A session, a quick reminder about our upcoming capital markets communications. Feedback we got from you after our first capital market webcast on July 10th, we feel ourselves confirmed that this type of communication really adds some value. Therefore, we have recently announced to do our second capital market webcast on November 20th. We are working on the details, but I can tell you that we want to explain in much more details what is the plan in future for our consumable business, as well as some deep dive into our efficiency programs. These are essential part in our plan to achieve our midterm profitability targets. So we hope that you dial in. Straight after, we will be in November at the German Equity Forum, where we can meet in presence. We are looking forward to meet you there. So that's it from my side. Thank you for listening.

We will now begin the answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you may press the blue Q&A button in the webcast and follow the instructions. You will see a confirmation that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press cancel. You may ask a question once we announce the name. And we already have the first question from Steffen Alberski from Warburg Research.

Yes, hello. My first question is actually on the very strong European margin. If I look at the recurring revenues, it's likely not a positive mixed effect. So is this then driven by the efficiency?

are programs or is that simply driven by the volume and load that would be my first question and from that one i have likely a follow-up we may take this one mr augustine thank you for asking that question so yes you are right in europe we are doing very very well and our cross-profit margin is influenced by by similar different For sure there is a higher revenue which helps us there, the production load is better. And there is also a small contribution by better material prices, but also we see the first effects on the efficiency programs. Not at the stage where we wanted to have them, that is what we have announced a little bit, but we see that they are also contributing.

Okay, from that one, looking maybe into Q4 and taking your full year guidance, which implies that we have maybe a slightly lower or roughly the same volume in Q4 as the last year. If you have savings on the material side, the gains. Would it be fair to assume that on the European business you should at least be able to get the same absolute amount of EBIT with the same volume?

So indeed, yeah, we are planning that we reach or achieve our guidance in total. We will be stronger in Europe compared to last year and weaker in North America. So if I look at the Q4 for Europe standalone, as you asked, I'm positive that we are doing here pretty well again.

Okay, thank you. And then maybe a bit on the order intake. If I read your slide correctly, my assumption would be that we have a book to build in Q3 that is very close to one. And what it does not show me is the actual growth in the order intake Q3 year over year. Can you comment on that one?

We have a big, very important topic, which is a regular figure order, which we receive once in a year is related to North America. Where we, in the comparable numbers last year, we had from bigger customer, a great order in the figures. We did not have received this order this year, but we expect to receive it in the fourth quarter. So that is one part of the explanation here.

right thank you very much and the last one could you um help me a little bit with how much and the iit and other implementation costs have burdened q3 i think it will come in future then exclusively already so it's it's um the question is how much was it in q3 yeah so we are really we are facing the

The implementation of, for example, SAP S4 HANA is pretty expensive and we started the program in beginning of this year and every quarter it's a little bit more. So standalone in Q3, if you ask me right now, I would say it had cost us between 0.5 and 1 million Euro, together with the other programs.

Okay, and that one you indicated is going to go up a little bit going further.

Correct. So according to the plan, which we see is that we will need next year for fully implement S4 HANA and some other IT programs as well. It's not only S4 HANA, but the plan is that we will have done this with the first two major step until Q4 2026.

We do a lot of SAP for HANA has advantages at this driven by cloud costs. And we started in parallel to reduce the costs for cloud data storage that we, this is all our manpower and efforts to that we have only the data in the cloud and SAP S4 HANA that we really need there. And the others are still then on-premise or somewhere else to have our costs under control in the IT sector.

I don't want to spoil the upcoming capital market day, but I assume that you skipped how much that could be in 2026. Would you... be happy to share at this point or?

Probably we will not give a detailed number for our introduction. Probably that is too much insight, but we will give an indication about it, how we see it.

Okay. And then finally, do you think Would you describe yourself at this point also very confident to achieve your full year guidance with respect to sales? Yes.

Simple answer, yes. We feel confident. Okay. Good. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Augustin. We have another question from Nicole Winkler from Bernberg. Ms. Winkler?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Perfect. Thank you for checking my questions. Maybe start with a housekeeping question. In your report, you mentioned that all three business lines contributed to revenue growth How about North America? Was it mainly driven by service and consumables again in Q3, or do you already see the uptick of equipment sales?

In North America, that goes along with the story which we already said in Q2 about a major customer who places orders again. So what we now see in North America is that especially equipment in Q3 contributed here. But also there was not too bad in terms of service and consumables. But comparable to last year, the equipment product was in favour of this.

Perfect. Maybe this also goes along with this one big customer, but it also mentions that contract negotiations in North America are finally finalized and order intake increased significantly. Now looking at the order backlog, you cannot see this yet. So basically, can you give us some more color here when we should see also these kind of orders coming in from big North American clients in your order backlog?

I assume the client you are mentioning, we are confident with it, the orders are coming in, the order backlog is fine. The client I mentioned in my speech before is a different one, where we expect to get the orders in Q4 this year.

Okay, understood. Maybe also regarding the service revenue, can you give us some more detail in which amount the optimization of processes, the digitally connected equipment and increased capacity in this area contributed to revenue growth? What I would like to understand is because you mentioned it that now you have like I guess 30,000 connected units by now. Do they already contribute to service and consumer business segment?

Yes, more machines are connected. We can push the efficiency of our service business line. What is important for this year also somewhere in between the lines. We have hired throughout the year a lot of new service technicians and you understand immediately that if you hire a new person you need to train this person, you need to educate this person, so at the beginning this person contributes to the top line but not necessarily in the same amount to the gross margin and what we see now is in Q3 that we are catching up here again and we are in the same EBIT margin in service like we have been last year. And I think that is really something very positive in understanding how much new service technicians we have hired.

And it takes us three to nine months currently to train them. And this is also where we work on to reduce our complexity that in future that they contribute faster to revenue and EBIT margin than it's today.

Okay, understood. And one last question regarding your shift of workflows from Germany to Czech Republic. Have you had any or a restructuring cost and if yes in this amount in Q3?

We have cost because we have to train the people and we have some processes and people in parallel. How much it is, I can calculate it in my brain if you have the number.

So the topic is that in the moment when we shift, we need additional people. So we need the people here and we need the people there in check because they have to train. But if your question is referring to stuff like this, so we are really happy that we could do this and can do this without any major severance payments. So we are just using fluctuation. We are reducing temporary workers. And so as of today, and we are not fully through, but as of today, we do not have any significant severance payments yet.

You can calculate. around 10 to 15 people in parallel for two to three months in this over one year time period. This is our extra cost here. We have calculated this in the savings and we hope that after the starting phase that the savings we gain that we can cover the extra costs in the following months.

Okay, understood. Thank you for taking my questions. I'm going to step back in line.

You're welcome. Thank you. Question from Alexander Gallitzer from . So, Mr. Gallitzer, can you hear us?

Yes. Thank you. Appreciate the question. I have a couple of topics, different ones. Maybe first one, just a clarification. You mentioned in your remarks that for 2026, you will be focusing on pushing forward the initiatives that are underway to prepare the company for disproportionate growth in 2027. I'm not sure if I heard it. Maybe I misheard, but could you just clarify that should we read it in a sense that one should not necessarily expect disproportionate EBIT growth in 2026, or it was not meant that way?

What I meant was that we will have still some costs with doing all those efficiency programs and that we will see the efficiency gains from those programs on a full year's perspective in 2027. to execute those programs and that they really kick in. Because in the capital markets today, and also Michael today repeated it again, that in 2027, we want to achieve an EBIT ratio between 12 and 14%. So if you go from 2025 to 2027, I do not think that it will be a linear growth. So there will be a little bit of burden in 2026, but we will also grow in 2026. So that's what I believe.

Perfect. Thanks for clarifying that. And maybe just a quick follow-up. Since you mentioned the range, 12% to 14%, is obviously a big bandwidth. The upper end of this bandwidth, what would you say you need to achieve to get there?

We have calculated this already. Otherwise, we couldn't promise it. So, we need revenue growth in our segments. We think we can do this not only in equipment, also in chemicals and service. And on the other side, we have really to focus on our bottom line. There's a lot of opportunities there. And if we do this in the right way, so reducing complexity by 20, 30%, implementing our installation process in the next levels, which we are focusing on currently, and I think we are close to implement the next phase. We have some standard programs, how we want to achieve efficiency in the indirect areas. If the growing is coming as we expect it, and it looks like in the order intake,

and we do our homework and the bottom line is our program then i'm really confident that we can achieve that perfect thanks so much um there may be a briefly on consumables growth i just wonder if you could somehow elucidate to what extent consumable growth is already driven by the bundling initiatives

and maybe yeah what's the sort of natural progression in terms of time frame when those bundles are going to play maybe a role in that regard we implemented the scope configurator just a few months ago so there is not a lot of um revenue and and ebit margin due to bundling in that area more in that area in 2026, but we have to roll out the system, we have to train the people and so on. That is the first scope we think we will get in 2027. So, it's a step by step, market by market. We started now in Germany, it's focused on Germany and now we go from the biggest markets to the smallest markets to get efficiency as early as possible, but this takes time and we think full gain is in 2027.

And you're generally confident that this is getting traction within customers and there's not going to be major pushback on the bundle offer?

We are deeply convinced that this is ease up the process and also for our customers that they clearly see what's better for what kind of money and what they get finally. And we can use and chemicals are driven by headcount, as more headcount you put in the system as more you can achieve. And with that, we can also use our equipment salespeople in a better way than we have done it before.

Understood. And then just two last topics I have. One is on equipment growth. I think you already mentioned that backlog gives you certain visibility. Could you confirm or is that reasonable to expect that equipment should be also growing year on year in Q4? Because I think you're kind of competing also against a strong base. But based on your backlog, is that a reasonable assumption that equipment should grow?

You know, being a little bit cautious, yeah. Q4 2024 was a pretty strong year. equipment quarter. We expect that this year will be on the same level like last year. But in equipment, you really have the topic that you are, you do not have it always in your own hand. If the revenue slips to the beginning of January 2026, or if you can make it in 2025. So our expectation is that we can repeat what we had last year.

Okay. Perfect. And then very last one, I didn't know how, material this topic is, but there has been a press release from you some time ago on a partnership with Prague, I believe, is the owner of 100 plus petrol stations. And I think they've commented that they are delighted to have 30 of those stations digitalized. Just wonder what will you start selling more services and consumables into this specific customer, or how should one read that news flow?

You know, I think the most important thing here is that we are confident that our digital initiatives, they are accepted by the customer, and FragiSIP is for sure one of mid-sized customer where we test it, if it works. And we got really positive feedback from the cooperation with Craig and I think it's moving here in the right direction. I do not want to comment if we make now much more revenue or even with one single customer. I think that is not here the place to speak about a single customer.

What we see probably in that direction, what we see in the pilot facilities, not only with that customer, that we increase on our operator side, the number of washes per site. So this we see already with our pilots. And this is good news for our operators. And this on mid and long term run is a good news for our equipment sales, which is then in a year's perspective, but it's also good for our service and equipment that more washes we have as more we have traffic here in that business. So this is what we see and we have to support here that we have good numbers, that we have a good app and good equipment installed and that we have transparent data available to our operators and the step in place, the next step will come automatically.

Perfect. Thanks for this, Karl. That's all for me.

You're welcome. We have no further questions.

And... okay then ladies and gentlemen on behalf of the management board we would like to thank you for your interest in our company and wish you a lesson day thanks thank you very much