Traton SE

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Triton's Q1 2020 Fixed Results Call. My name is Ursula Perrette, and I'm Head of Investor Relations at Triton SE. With me on this call is Christian Levin, our CEO, who's dialed in from Sweden. Dr. Michael Jagstein, our CFO and CHRO, is here with me in Munich. Christian will start today's presentation with the key results and highlights of the first quarter. Michael will then guide you through the through the financial performance in more detail. As always, we will conclude the call with a Q&A session open to financial analysts, investors, and media representatives. To register for questions, please click the blue Q&A button on the webcast and follow the instructions. If you want to enter the queue via phone, please dial one of the country-specific numbers and enter your individual PIN, followed by the hash key. To register your question via phone, you need to press 01 on your keypad. To cancel the question, press 01 again. Please note that this call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded, and the replay will be made available on our website later today. You can find our three-month interim statement, which we published this morning, and the slides to this call on our IR website. Before we start... Let me remind you of the disclaimer with respect to forward-looking statements on page three of our presentation. And with that, I'm handing over to Christian Levin. Christian.

Thank you, Ursula, and welcome also from my side, everyone. Yes, as you saw already from our unit sales Pre-release, we have a somewhat slow start of this year. You could see unit sales falling by 6%, so minus 6% to 68,600, largely coming from last year's and the hesitation in the U.S. demand, which we then later saw starting to turn up, but more of that later. But the decrease is also marked by a continued difficult South American market environment with low order intake scaling over from last year. Looking at sales revenues, we saw a somewhat smaller decline with a minus 4% to 3.2 billion euros. So keeping up compared to unit sales, mainly thanks to good growth in our services business. Operating profit and net cash flow declined over proportionally as anticipated. So our adjusted return on sales came in at 5.7%. That's at the lower end of our guidance for the full year, but still somewhat better than expected. Earnings per share were very low in Q1 due to certain items that were adjusted, but fully impacted our net result. We come back later. these adjustments. The highlight of the quarter is the significant increase in water intake with an increase of 80%, as you see on the slide, up to 87,800 units. So let's turn to the next page and have some more details on the growth of water intake. We saw encouraging demand increase in all three of our core geographical regions, although Germany, which everyone keeps asking about, is still somewhat lagging. Also, across all of them, order intake exceeded deliveries in Q1, supporting a raise in our books to build ratio up to 1.3. Starting in Europe, then, in a year-over-year comparison, Truck order intake in Europe remained stable at around 29,000 vehicles. But remember, this compares to a very strong start of Q1 also last year, which was before the tariff announcements from the U.S., and it was also marked by initial German market stimulus . Turning to North America, truck order intake nearly doubled, up to 18,800 units in Q1. And after more than four months of consistently strong U.S. demand, we are increasingly confident that we have passed the trough of the cycle for this time. Finally, in South America, truck demand was boasted by the so-called Move Brazil program, which provides subsidized truck financing in this unusually high interest rate environment. So strong starts in both the agriculture and the mining sector supported the higher truck order intake in Q1. And as a result, we recorded around 15,000 trucks, 25% up, despite the ongoing broader economic challenges in this region. But as explained before, while our group order intake grew by 80%, global deliveries fell by 6%, which was sharply driven down by lower deliveries in both North and in South America. Meanwhile, Europe recorded a significant increase in deliveries on the back of healthy water intake starting already in 2004 last year. The group was led by a man and especially strong in the truck segment. So before we continue, let me also clarify that the Iran war just had a minimal effect on the Q1 delivery and order impact figures, as you see on this slide. Two deliveries in the Middle East were postponed, and only a few markets, in a few markets, customers showed hesitation when placing new orders. Let's take the next slide. So despite this rising geopolitical challenge, we remain focused on our long-term success. Hence, we continue to drive our group-wide technology initiatives, such as the development of a unified software-defined vehicle platform that will eventually be implemented across all of our brands. In partnership with Flight Integration, this platform is scheduled for launch in the year 2028. Also, Our brands continue to make good progress within their various strategic initiatives. Scania delivered the first Next Era trucks according to plan in the Chinese market and started to receive first positive customer feedback. MIM launched the so-called MIM 2030 Plus, a program to continue to drive efficiency gains and enhance competitiveness for future vehicles based on our Phaeton Modular System. International partnered up with Ryder to launch a Level 4 autonomous truck pilot, deploying factory-integrated autonomous vehicles in the state of Texas. Volkswagen Truck & Bus celebrated its 45th anniversary, aiming for continued growth and success, remaining true to their philosophy, less you don't want, more you don't need. And then finally, take on financial services, expanding again into two new markets, this time Belgium and Lithuania. We're now also supporting MIM, thus underlining our consistent geographical growth strategy. At the same time, and turning the page, we continue to advance on our battery electric vehicle transformation journey. Total BEV unit sales rose by 38% in the first quarter to 857 units, and incoming orders increased even more by 45%, reaching a total of 1,252 units. In Europe, our BEV ratio therefore reached 1.9% of total European vehicle sales. Given the lack of speed, In this transition of this comprehensive planning, I'm pleased to report that the EU Commission finally decided on a so-called targeted amendment to the CO2 rules, acknowledging the specific needs of the truck industry ecosystem. In practice, it encourages early market adoption of heavy-duty vats through a more flexible credit mechanism in operation already from this year. while at the same time maintaining the long-term decarbonization trajectory. Nevertheless, or even more so, we need a faster rollout of charging infrastructure, and we need policymakers' support to address the TCO challenge. A good initiative by our Milo joint venture mid-April, where several heavy-duty e-trucks drew 1,000 kilometers, an all-electric route from Paris to Berlin, drew a lot of attention exactly to this point. With great public visibility, it highlighted the urgency for clean transport corridors and demonstrated that long-haul rail transport is feasible. And it underscored that establishing a Europe-wide fast charging network for heavy-duty vehicles is both achievable and critical for an energy-secure Europe. Meanwhile, on the operational side, MIM secured its largest electric bus order to date in Austria, underlying growing confidence of public transport operators in our bad solutions. Also in the U.S., more explicitly California, international secured a large number of electric school bus orders. And in China, where bad adoption is rapidly increasing, Scania continues the development of an all-electric next-era truck. So in summary, our battery electric vehicle transformation strategy is on track. But as is typical for emerging technologies, development risks are higher. Changing conditions require selective readjustments. And in our case, this has led to one of the one-off effects, as I mentioned earlier, and which Michael will come back to in just a moment. But before handing to Michael, Also a few words on our truck market outlook. Although there are signs of recovery, both in the European and North American truck cycles, we leave our forecast ranges unchanged for now, as uncertainty remains elevated. In April, Scania, but now also in Miami observed some cases of classroom hesitancy, bit slower order intake that is connected to high fuel prices and related to the uncertainty coming from the war in Iran. But so far, less than what I feared. So overall, though, good order intake momentum, which supports our confidence in a growing European truck market this year. At the midpoint of our outlook, we see European tracks above 6.0 at 345,000 units, and heavy-duty tracks also well over the 300,000-unit mark in 2026. In North America, the significant ordering inflection since end of last year is indeed promising, but the downside risk remains, especially given conflicting signals from both manufacturing and consumer demand. Following record track order intakes in March, international is seeing healthy volumes also in April. Main reason being higher transport pricing and better balance between capacity and transport demand. The magnitude of EPA 27 pre-buy within these orders is at the moment probably minimum, but also difficult to assess. At the midpoint of our unchanged North American market outlook, we assume a 2.5% growth, which would translate into 265,000 cross-age trucks in 2026. And with that, Michael, I hand over to you.

Thank you very much, Christian, and good morning, good day, warm welcome from my side as well. As already mentioned, unit sales dropped minus 6% in the first quarter, while the decline in revenues was less pronounced, mainly due to a growing vehicle services business. MAN delivered a strong top line performance, especially in European truck sales, which increased by 31% year over year in the first quarter. German truck sales were up 14% at MAN. Scania with a different customer and product mix, still lacked European growth in the first quarter. This, combined with significant declines in North and South America, prevented a positive group top-line performance in Q1. But, as Christian showed before, the order book is developing well, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.3 in Q1, last seen during the post-COVID catch-up. These orders will translate into unit sales and sales revenue in upcoming quarters, helping us to recover from the slow start. And let's not forget, Trayton Financial Services are constantly delivering on their growth strategy. The next slide shows that more factors than declining volumes contributed to our lower operating results. While revenue decreased by 4%, the adjusted operating results declined by 10%, resulting in a 0.4 percentage point lower return on pay of 5.7%. That is at the lower end of our guidance range, yet somewhat better than expected. It was clear that U.S. tariff costs would hurt our Q1 results, especially with Section 232 U.S. content approval still pending. Section 232 and IEPA tariffs totaled 110 million euros in the first quarter, compared to 6 million basic import tariffs a year before. Higher foreign currency headwinds, mainly from the Swedish krona and the US dollar, negatively impacted our year-over-year results by 84 million euros. And increased R&D needs also led to higher expenses. they were partially offset through capitalization. Positive effects came from a better price mix and improved fixed-cost absorption. Scania's China plant was roughly cost-neutral vis-à-vis last year's first quarter. In addition to the just-mentioned effects, our profitability was burdened by certain items, which were adjusted and summed up to 521 million euros. So, Trayton Group's unadjusted operating result was €60 million in the first quarter, corresponding to an operating return on sales of 0.6%. The four main adjustment items were, first, write-offs and supplier claims following adjustments to individual e-mobility projects. Second, impairments and labor expenses in connection with the sale of international Springfield sites. Third, expenses for civil lawsuits in connection with the EU truck cases consistent with previous quarters. Fourth, provisions for the announced restructuring at international. These items are non-operational in nature and do not change our underlying long-term view on the business. Therefore, let's concentrate again on the adjusted return on sales and how each of our four brands performed on the page you see now. As in Q4, MAN, with its strong focus on Europe, was the only brand to see a year-over-year increase in sales revenue. The 8% revenue growth in the first quarter contributed to a 2.9 percentage point higher adjusted return on sales, leaching This result was supported by ongoing cost management measures and a solid vehicle services business. Scania saw lower sales in Brazil, but stable units in Europe. Revenue decreased by 4% in the first quarter, while the margin remained nearly stable at 11%, with lower fixed costs year over year and a higher vehicle services business. As anticipated, international reported a negative margin, decreasing by 5.6 percentage points to minus 4%, while sales revenue declined by 19%. Although fixed cost absorption was reduced due to the low production volumes, the recent restructuring of central functions contributed to lower absolute fixed costs. Volkswagen truck and bus also recorded a severe revenue decline of 18% year-over-year. At the same time, the adjusted return on sales fell by 2.8 percentage points to 10.2% in Q1. Trayton Financial Services delivered a 9% return on equity while sales revenue increased by 13% with the ramp-up of the business. The weak early-year operating performance also weighed on our cash flow and Section 232 tariffs even more heavily as we paid the full 25% amount until a U.S. content agreement is reached. At the same time, the negative working capital performance in Q1 reflects typical seasonality. The investing cash flow is half-half influenced by capex and capitalized R&D. The position, other changes in cash flow includes net proceeds of 170 million euros from the sale of Sinotrack shares in January. So while net cash flow at Trayton Operations was negative 240 million euros, overall, we managed to achieve a slight reduction, our net debt by 10 million euros at the end of the first quarter. Looking ahead now, we have nine months remaining to deliver on our 2026 full-year outlook. I reiterate that the second half is expected to show a stronger performance than the first half of the year, as the higher book-to-bill ratio clearly indicates increasing top-line performance, especially at international. Scania and Volkswagen truck and bus will benefit from the so-called Move Brazil orders converting into revenue. And there is good order momentum in Europe, except for Germany, where we are still waiting for the anticipated demand recovery. Discussions regarding our U.S. content rate with the U.S. administration are still ongoing, so second quarter will still be affected by higher tariff costs with our prudent accounting approach. The economic impact of the Iran war is yet difficult to assess. Although, we already plan for higher input costs taking effect towards mid-year. While unexpected geopolitical effects are excluded from our full-year guidance, nevertheless, at this point, we feel confident with our full-year guidance, which is based on broader forecast ranges. So, we maintain our unitary and base revenue outlook between minus 5 and plus 7%, we still see an adjusted operating return on sales for the trading group between 5.3% and 7.3%, where the midpoint is at last year's level. And trading operations net cash flow is expected between 900 million and 1.7 billion euros. And with that, happy to hand it back to you, Ursula, to moderate the Q&A session.

Thank you, Christian and Michael. Before we start with the Q&A session, let me remind you that you need to click the blue Q&A button in the webcast and follow the instructions if you want to ask the question. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press cancel. If you're dialed in via phone, you need to tap 01 on your keypad. To cancel the question, press 01 again. Please ask your question once I announce your name and activate your session. And in respect of the time... Please limit yourself to two questions. Now, let us take the first question, which comes from Nicolai Kemp from Deutsche Bank. Nicolai?

Yeah, hi. It's Nicolai from Deutsche. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, perfect. Okay, great. So first question on the U.S. market. international motors holding up better than expected and given the high orders you've seen and comments from peers, do we expect to return to the positive territory on earnings already in Q2? And then my second question also on the U.S. market, how long do you think until you're kind of sold out for this year? I mean, the orders, I think, already probably cover Q2, and you have some good visibility into Q3. Would you say only some slots for Q4 are left, or how much more visibility you have for this year? Thank you.

I think, Michael, you'll take at least the earnings question.

Yeah, happy to do so. Hi, Nikolai. Thanks for the question. You know the development of the margin last year were unfortunately due to the tariffs. We saw a negative margin in Q4. You're fully right. It's a little bit better, also the Q1 margin, than we thought it could be. And as we mentioned during the presentation, certainly the order intake momentum that basically started in December and continued in the first quarter is promising for the remainder of the year. With regards to the second quarter, I cannot really say if we see positive margin or still a negative margin there. But what I clearly can say with regards to the full year, As we said also during our annual press conference, we want to see a better margin for the full year than the break-even margin we have seen in 2025. And certainly, again, coming back to what we said during the presentation, the order intake momentum there should support us with regards to the top line, especially then in the second half of the year. And you also know we have the effects here. We talked about this at our annual press conference, both with regards to the P&L and especially to the cash flow. We expect a better second half of the year than the first half. So, tough to say with regards to the second quarter, but I'm positive for the second half of the year.

Christian, will you take the capacity question international slots open?

Yeah. Yes, we're not sold out, Nikolai. We are still taking in orders now for after summer, so we're in Q3. And, of course, it's really positive to see this order momentum coming in. Our principle in the U.S. is the same as in Europe, that we're happy when we manage a lead time in the range of, let's say, up to three months or perhaps even six weekends. So we're at the same time a little bit cautious, of course, to increase too much production, given the big uncertainties that we see, not just in the U.S., but globally. But we're, of course, also keeping an eye on the negotiations ongoing in Washington, So, but yes, there are plenty of more words to bring in before we are compressed about the issue.

Thanks, Christian, and thank you. Thank you. Next question then would come from Claes Bergelind from Citi.

Thank you, Ursula. Hi, Christian and Michael, Claes at Citi. So, I just want to kick off on cost inflation. It's been a bit of a theme this result season in trucks. Peers of you are talking about likely better gross margin through the year as build rates improve, but that we also need to consider the inflation from energy, steel, aluminium, other raw materials going higher as a result of the conflict. Truck pricing has had to move higher because of EPA 27, might go higher because of Section 202, and now we have raw materials on top. So it seems like Quite big price increases here are necessary at the time when the recovery is still fragile. Can you please talk through about timing, like a magnitude, how much more pricing do you need to put through to offset this higher cost inflation? I'll start here. Thank you.

Thank you, Claes. Maybe I can start a little bit on the cost side, and then Christian can complement on the pricing side, where we can do it like this. So, on the cost side, I mean, I can confirm basically what you are saying and what you picked up here, obviously from others who have pretty much the same view. What I can also say, I mean, typically when we talk about the suppliers, suppliers typically have a duration something three to six months so that we don't We expect immediate effect, let's say, in the upcoming weeks or months. But from the middle of the year, and then especially in the second half of the year, we expect the effect that you are mentioning linked to the Iran war. We have done an internal risk assessment. And you mentioned a couple of the commodities here, steel, aluminum, a couple of these aspects, also copper we can mention. some products where oil is needed linked to the Iran war. We can expect that we see higher prices here. Our internal assessment at this point comes to a low triple-digit impact, triple-digit million impact here. So, this is what I can say and where I can give you maybe a little bit more insights how we assess this. We could add potentially energy costs from our point of view when we talk about energy costs also with regards to our factories. We believe that the effect is significantly lower, potentially only a low double-digit million impact. So, energy costs will play to some extent a role. But the much more significant effect we certainly see on the commodity side, so.

And that is a gross number, right? You said low triple-digit, Michael. That was gross, not on net. Sorry, Christian, I don't want to, because we're going to talk about the net effect now on pricing, but it's not confirmed.

Yeah, that is gross, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, as you know, Plus, it's been a bit tougher price-wise in the environment, particularly in the U.S., but also in Europe. So price increases have not been easy to push through. Lately, we see that necessity goes up, but that also eases a bit the resistance, let's say. So what we do is that, or what we have done already, we have already launched price increases in Europe. And then, as always, you need to wait a little bit before you see how much of that increase that sticks, but we're pretty dedicated this time that it needs to stick, and it's not a huge price increase. It's in the normal range that we increase prices every year, but just with more dedication. In the U.S., it's been very particular on the price side. We were early out. As you remember, all CFIs will compensate for the 232 through pricing, didn't manage as the market didn't follow. Now the sentiment has changed as there is a big appetite for placing orders, and at least in our case, we managed to get the pricing through that we need. So much better development in the U.S. I will not be able to give you a number and translate that into how many double or triple digit millions it represents, but you have to assess for yourself. But it is a better environment to operate in, and particularly in the U.S.

Thank you. My second one. Thank you so much. That's very helpful. My second question and final one is on the European order trends. It seems like April was holding the same level as in March, and then March seems to be stronger than Jan and Feb. But at the pre-close call, we learned that there was some hesitation among some smaller carriers in Europe. Is that still the case, or have sort of sentiment improved the last couple of weeks. It's obviously very fluid at the moment. I mean, one of your key peers recently upgraded its European outlook, so it seems like a bit of a mixed signal by country would be very useful. Thank you.

I can give you the question here. So it is tricky, of course, to read the situation in Europe. January, good. February, very good. March, good again. we see some hesitation, particularly we see it with smaller hauliers and in countries where the transport contracts are not typically containing fuel clauses. So if you take perhaps UK as the most developed market in Europe from a financial point of view, basically 100% of all hauliers run with a fuel clause in their transport contract, meaning that they are not directly Not at all, let's see how the economy moves forward, but not at all affected by the increase in fuel prices. That's all transferred over to the transfer buyer. But if you take them on the eastern side of Europe, and especially the southeast side of Europe, a lot of smaller customers don't have this protection that they then need to negotiate. And that's where we see a bit of buying hesitation. That's also where we see a bit of trying to push forward vehicles that are in the delivery pipeline and negotiating conditions with our financial services companies to postpone a couple of weeks to really see where this is going. And that's, of course, because their cash flow is hurt by the fuel prices. So I'm expecting, nonetheless, a relatively good April. What we see so far is a continued good market. not perhaps on the same level as we have seen on average in the first quarter, but nonetheless keeping up. So not the scenario from last year. I mean, I thought we would see the same movie as we saw when Trump announced the tariffs, where we had such a good first couple of months and then a dramatic fall. We don't see that at all so far. Then, of course, it all depends whether where the situation in the Middle East is going. So to be honest, I'm a little bit positively surprised that we're keeping up as well as we are doing in Europe. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Christian. Very helpful. Next question comes from Danila Costa from Goldman Sachs.

Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me? Thank you. Two questions. First, just wanted to ask if in North America you have seen any benefits, I guess, from the cost actions you have been doing, centralized development costs, et cetera, or if we're still to see a run rate? of savings from that. And then maybe second question actually following up on the P&L impact in China. I think before you had mentioned 400 million, how much have we seen in one queue? And then how should Scania dilution from China evolve in the rest of the year? Thank you.

Michael, I think both for you.

Yeah, I'm happy to start. Hi, Daniela. Well, to start in North America before I move to China, I can say, I mean, yes, we see positive impacts on the cost side, which is one aspect of the better than expected development at international, I would say. You know that we started to take action already last year. We took out the second shift in Escobedo in Mexico. and we continued the work taken into account, especially the headwinds coming from the terrace. You know, we mentioned that at our annual press conference that we did some sort of adjustments restructuring at international, where we took out roughly 300 people and really talking about, let's say, top and high management positions here. And As we said before, I mean, you know, since we are in the cyclical industry, we have the playbook if we are in stormy waters. So we apply all the aspects to work on the cost side and to be as sensitive as possible here. And again, we see the positive effects from this cost work in the P&L, and we will continue to do so. I'm quite confident because As I said, this is a focus topic for us working really on the cost side. You also mentioned or asked if there is any effect from the centralizing of our development efforts. It's starting, but at a very early stage. You know, we did the so-called carve-out 1st of July last year, but this is a starting point. also to look into further efficiencies. So we are certainly on this journey, but you don't see that effect in the P&L yet. I would say that's pretty much it when we talk about here in North America. I'll link to your first question. Second question, moving to China, you asked about the P&L effect. You know, we said that we plan to invest roughly $2 billion into China. In the end, we invested a little bit less, roughly $1.7 billion until the end of last year. We also said when we look at the investment last year, roughly $800 million that we expensed, again, around 50%, so talking about $400 million, or we can say for the full year, 2026. that you should expect a very comparable P&L effect in 2026. There are slightly different aspects to this. Of course, last year it was about investing and ramping up the China factory. This year we are in a different situation. Depreciation starts. We, of course, are investing less, but we are ramping up now the sales efforts in China. And this is why we are talking about comparable amounts, but with different cost aspects.

Thank you. Sorry, just following up on the centralized development costs. So the impacts, I guess, we should expect them maybe more into 27, but sort of what's the magnitude of those, if you can remind us?

I cannot give you a precise magnitude, but I can say, of course, coming back to the efficiencies we talked about in light with the trade modular system, we clearly stated here that we see efficiency gains of roughly 25% moving into the trade modular system. This is partly linked to the fact that we don't develop chassis, a cab, an electric electronic architecture. twice or three times anymore, but just once. And then, of course, we differentiate with what we call performance steps. So we will certainly not create the same products here, but we make use in a smart way of the synergies or scale effects. That's one aspect. And the other aspect is coming from simply using, for example, same IT tools to give a very simple example and to align on processes. The fact that we decided on working together in a group R&D setup can unleash even more potential, but this is a little bit too soon to assess. But I can assure you that we are looking into this right now since we started, again, first of July last year. And there might be even further potential that we are exploring at this point in time going forward. And if there is further potential, then, Gradually, you should indeed, you could see some effect, 27 onwards, but let me come back to the 25% also efficiencies from the TMS. You recall what we mentioned in previous calls. There are two aspects how we can deal with that, black or white. The one is that you see lower R&D spending, thanks to the efficiencies, but this is not what you're going to see. Because we are in the transformation, and of course, we want to make sure that we have the right products for our customers in the future. And this is why we will use these efficiencies to invest into autonomous driving, digitalization, electrification of our products. This is why you should expect a constant, let's say, significant level of R&D spend in the future. because this is clearly linked to our strategy, transforming transportation together for a sustainable world.

Thank you.

Okay, then we come to Harry Martin from Bernstein.

Hi, good morning. The questions that I have left relate to the U.S. The first one, if I could ask for your crystal ball when it comes to demand and orders. If the uplift that we've had in recent months has very little pre-buy in there and is underlying demand, then would you expect orders to continue at similar levels in the coming months? And then when we think about next year, can we think about 2027 being a strong year of growth for the market despite the EPA change? And then the second question I had on the international and the new engine, could you give an update on the penetration rates for the captive powertrain there, and also on your discussions with customers around the attractiveness of that engine in the post-EPA 2027 regulation world? Thank you.

Christian, did you want to start?

Yeah, there was a lot of questions I can start and then help me to remember. But yeah, U.S. orders, will they continue? I mean, we remain a little bit cautious, although we must admit that we have perhaps been overly cautious here in the view of the first quarter. And again, April coming along strong. So I wouldn't be surprised if the association again posts a total market order intake on a high level. At the same time, as I said on the previous question, there's so many insecurities around both U.S. and the world economy that, yeah, it's really hard to do a conclusion. But it seems that the combination of that capacity has been taken out of the market, that we see way more than 20% increase in spot rate pricing. We see also a higher and higher refusal rates on full-track loads, meaning that capacity is kind of missing, and hauliers can increase pricing, which is relatively disordering. And then, of course, we have the potential for the EPA. So a lot of this coming together is creating a strong demand. There's a lot about it. It's very hard to assess what is what. What we know is that there are very few customers especially amongst the big ones, the ones we talk directly to that explicitly talks about pre-buy. They more talk about that they have capacity constraints and they need to increase, or they need to replace and renew because their trucks are getting old. And if that's the case, and we see a bit less price sensitivity, then you could very well see that this is the start of a new cycle, and in that case, typically that cycle That will be announced, I guess, within short in the market because that will, of course, draw the demand for 26. If it's high, if it's not that high, I guess it will have less impact. And I guess one could expect also 2027 to be in the U.S. on a continued good level to fill the replacement need and to fulfill the higher demand. So super hard to read. I don't have that crystal ball, as you know. You were into the attractiveness of the EPA 27 engine. I mean, we are more or less ready with our engines. We are still not fully ready with the EPA's way forward here. We thought it was 100 cents clear. We must say that it's, again, not 100 cents clear how this is going to be implemented. And I guess that's also why you don't see any announcements yet of price increases or pricing of the J57 platforms. But we still believe that we have a very competitive, from a technology point of view, engine based on the newest platform in the market, based on the fact that we have the So I think we're in a good place. But again, that will be known within quite short, I assume. And then I think your last sub-question was on the penetration rate of our so-called S13M. And we reached, in class eight, we reached 44 cents during the full year of last year. And we are so far Q1 a bit higher, so we continue to increase. We're on 47% in the first quarter. And we think that as we have launched this on more truck variants, also outside the pure tractor units, we believe that that could go yet a bit higher throughout the year. And we have an internal forecast or a goal if you'd like to come up towards of the class 8 practice. You translate that into our total sales, where we presume put this engine in class 6, 7, or school buses. We're aiming at 5 cents of the overall volume. I hope I covered. Help me there, Ursula, if I forgot some part of the question.

No, I think that covered everything, Gary. Are you happy?

Yes, thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks. Then the next question comes from Alexander Jones from Bank of America.

Great, thanks very much for taking my questions. Two if I can, but maybe first just on the tariff costs, if you could split for us 110 between Section 232 and IEPR, just to understand sort of the flatteners quarter on quarter, and should we expect that sort of run rate to continue in Q2 as well? And then secondly, just picking up on your peer comments overnight on aftermarket. how you're seeing that developing the service sales in North America and Europe since the start of the Iran war and whether there's been any impact given higher fuel costs for fleets. Thank you.

Michael? Alexander, thanks for your question. Let me start with the Paris question. And let me say one more time what we said multiple times also last year. Obviously, this is a high demand highly volatile environment with a lot of back and forth. What we have seen last year, tariffs that have been announced increased, decreased, so there was quite some back and forth. You can say, in a way, the newest chapter is then the Supreme Court ruling end of February regarding the AIPA tariffs. New tariffs were announced immediately. with a lower rate, which are now effective for 150 days, and then potentially new tariffs will be announced. So, again, a highly dynamic environment. And this is why, in general, I would like to come back to what I said a couple of times last year. We could mention a couple of numbers about tariff effects, impacts. There is a good chance that each and every number that we are giving is wrong because, as I said before, the landscape here is changing constantly. But to give you some sort of a reference point, maybe let me come back to what we said end of, let's say the full year 2025, roughly a month ago, if we take the fourth quarter and extrapolate just the fourth quarter, not knowing about potential changes back and forth also this year, but if we extrapolate the fourth quarter into the full year 2026, and then I'm happy to translate that a little bit into what we have seen in the Q1. So basically what we said at the annual press conference is that two months last year, only two months were affected by the 232 section tariffs. both months each with a net amount of 20 million euros, so that you can multiply 20 million, and then you end up at a rough figure of 250 million for Section 232 tariffs, if they say, let's say, as we know them from the fourth quarter. With regards to AIPA and steel-aluminum tariffs, We said that we accounted 50 million per quarter here, but we also mentioned that in the fourth quarter, the volumes were not that high. If that trend changes, and we are hoping for that based on the order intake momentum that we have seen in the first quarter, then if you want to make a calculation, you should potentially add something to the 50 million per quarter and multiply it with four. So we said, based on these effects, the rough ballpark figure is in the ballpark of roughly 500 million per year. So, but again, tariffs are in a way changing, and we see quite a back and forth here. If we look now at the first quarter and compare it with the fourth quarter last year, then we see pretty much the same amount, meaning 110 million. And your question here, this was linked to the 232 section tariffs, as well as to partially IEPA tariffs until they were stopped, linked to the Supreme Court ruling. So there is a slight effect from less IEPA tariffs included There is, of course, an higher effect for 232 section tariffs because they're included now for three months and not only for two months, like in the fourth quarter. And we don't see a higher rate linked to the volume, which is the main driver also for the margin at international, where the margin is negative because the volume in the Q1 was not that high linked to the low order intake momentum last year. So this is, I would say, the guidance that I can give here so that you can maybe get a better grip around the tariff situation.

Christian, do you want to say something about aftermarket service sales?

Yeah, sure. But that question was in relation to the Iran war or... Yeah. Yeah. No, we don't see an immediate effect on the service business. The service business is holding up very well in Europe, and we count on continued growth. But I'd say that in general, due to the job done on the contract sales and patient, but also on an aging vehicle population. In the U.S., unfortunately, our service sales are moving backwards, as we lack the... The road includes the proprietary drive lines that we are currently building with the S13 and the connected components. So there we have more work to do, but we're doing, I think, a great job to advance on our strategy to capture also the U.S. market from a services point of view. But nothing particular at the cost of or due to connected them directly to Iran. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Then the last one in the queue is Christina Ammann from Thomson Reuters, a media question. Please go ahead.

Good morning. You have already answered quite a bit of my questions. I have two left. Mr. Eschen, you said it's for the full year about 500 million tariff impact. How much of that is IEPA tariffs and how much refunds do you expect from that? Goldman Sachs, General Motors has talked about 500 million yesterday. I assume it's a little bit less for Triton, but how much do you expect to get back? And the second question relates to the competition situation in Europe. Mr. Devine, how do you view the competition situation in Europe, especially regarding new entrances like the Chinese companies coming with electric trucks right now? Is that a serious concern? or is there still some time ahead?

Thanks. Thank you very much for your question. Maybe I start with the first one, and maybe let me say there is a difference there between what you're referring to, the passenger cars and the truck industry. So, in our case, the effect is a completely different one, I'd say. With regards to the Supreme Court ruling, we are at the stage that we will follow here the refund process and continue to monitor the situation. But in our case, as I was into, the IEPA effects don't play that kind of significant role. For us, the 232 sections, As I indicated before, when extrapolating based on, let's say, the Q4 into the 2026 full year amount of roughly 500 million, you see here that roughly 50% of this amount is linked to 232 section tariffs, and the other 50% are linked to IEPA and steel and aluminum tariffs. gives you a little bit more clarity here.

Yeah. Okay.

Should I continue with competition in Europe? Yes, please. Okay. Yeah, competition in Europe remains, of course, tight amongst the incumbents. We are, of course, expecting Chinese entrance in to Europe, but this remains also an open market to anyone, as we do expect perhaps one American player to appear in Europe. And so far, as you say, it's a bit early days, but we see a couple of startups with full battery electric vehicle trucks. And in the European market, then we also see some of the more traditional Chinese OEMs establishing themselves and BYD, you can discuss whether that's a startup or whether that's an incumbent, but they're also building industrial capacity in Europe. I think it's a fact that we really see Chinese competitors entering into the deals where we are today active. We should, of course, watch them carefully. They come, as we know, with a lot of good advanced technology with extremely low cost levels and therefore quite low pricing. So from our point of view, it's nothing new in a way. We have to continue to stay super close to our customers, develop our products, keep costs under control, innovate, and be the best partner to our customers' own competitiveness One trump card we have in the Fenton Group is that we are now, in short, active in the Chinese market, so we have an R&D organization of roughly 800 engineers located in China, and being then embedded into the Chinese ecosystem of researchers, universities, but of course suppliers, and in direct competition with all of these Chinese brands on their home market. And I think that's the best training camp or the best fitness center that you can have. If we find out that we cannot be competitive in China, we will, of course, have a huge problem around the world. And now you pointed to Europe, you know, but we, of course, have Chinese competition all over Africa. I mean, they are showing up strongly in Latin America. And I expect, of course, to see them all over for the United States. So yes, they should be watched closely, they should be respected, and we should stay close, but we should certainly also learn whatever is possible, and that you do best inside of China, and there I think we have a relevant position to do so. The question of when remains, of course, open, I don't know. But so far we don't see much in Europe in the ongoing deals.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Then I see no more questions in the queue. With this, then, we are concluding our event. Thank you for joining us today. And for any further questions, please contact the Investor Relations team. Enjoy the rest of the day. Goodbye.

Thank you. Thanks. Bye-bye.