ABB Ltd

ABB. We call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently.

To constantly outperform.

At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently.

To constantly outperform.

At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently.

To constantly outperform.

At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently.

To constantly outperform.

At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently. To constantly outperform. At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently to constantly outperform. At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently. To constantly outperform. At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently. To constantly outperform. At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun. Industries are the beating heart of our world. They move us, supply us, shelter us, power us, connect us. They improve our homes, our cities, our environments. And behind them all is ABB. Electrifying. Automating. Partnering with our customers to keep them not just running consistently, but running more productively and more efficiently. To constantly outperform. At ABB, we call this OutRun. And it's how we help industries become leaner and cleaner. ABB. Engineered to OutRun.

Greetings and welcome to this presentation of ABB's second quarter results. You will hear from our CEO, Motten Wyröld, and our CFO, Christian Nilsson. And they will talk through results as per usual tradition. And after this, we will run through the Q&A session. I'm Ann-Sofie Nord, Head of Investor Relations. And with that, I will just simply hand over to you, Motten, for the presentation.

Thanks, Hansi. So let's talk through the building blocks that resulted in another record quarter for both orders and revenues. Good earnings growth, a solid margin improvement and good cash flow. In total, things progressed more or less as planned. We delivered on our guidance, so I'm pleased with the results. But I want to start with M&A. You have heard me talk about the teams being active on a good target pipeline. Now we see these efforts result in three recently announced acquisitions, which combined would add approximately 3.5% to our 2025 revenues. This includes two smaller deals, one being in the Italian company Special Trasfo, who is specialized in medium voltage transformers. I want to make it clear that we're not going back into the general power transformer business. No, these are custom engineered components aimed at industrial and energy applications. It fits well in the motion high power division as they can integrate these transformers with our large motors and drives into fully optimized powertrain solutions. Marine & Ports Division This will further strengthen our already leading position in marine. And this morning, we also announced a larger deal, namely our offer to acquire Rotorq. We have followed Rotorq from a distance for a long while, impressed by their technology. They are a leading manufacturer of actuators and would expand our automation offering. And importantly, timing is good as ABV is in good shape. We have improved governance and performance of our own company. We are ready to welcome Rotorq into ABV. This is an important step to expand the ABB automation offering. It broadens our scope in what we call the Sense Control Act automation loop. We can take these solutions into our extensive market reach and build on our digital and technology capabilities. We see a strong strategic fit between Rotork and the ABB purpose and our leading position in the electrification and automation. This deal will bring together two businesses with highly complementary technology portfolios and similar customer relationships, geographic footprints and strong installed bases. Beyond the strategic fit, we see Rotork's culture and operating philosophy similar to ours. Last year, they generated revenues of £777 million and a high adjusted operating margin of 24.6%. Absorbing this into the ABB result for 2025, our revenues would increase by about 3% and operational EBITDA margin would improve by about 20 basis points. This acquisition would be accretive to our earnings per share in year two, as the first year is burdened by certain acquisition-related costs. We have agreed on a price of 503 British pence per rotor share. In US dollar terms, this comes to about 5.5 billion. or in 2025 multiple terms, an EV to sales of about 5.3 and EV to EBDA of about 19.5. These represent a discount in the region of 5 to 25% versus our own multiples. And accounting for synergies, the EV to EBITDA multiple reduces in the mid-teens range. From a timing perspective, we expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2027, post Rotorq shareholder vote and customary regulatory approvals. It is our strong view that Rotorq joining ABB adds long-term value across the stakeholder groups. The Road Talk board is aligned on the strategic fit and it is supportive and recommends the offer. But what do we actually mean when we talk about the Sense, Control, Act automation loop? I would say that automation is about closing feedback control loops. You are sensing a condition. You take algorithmic decisions in controllers, which triggers an act in, for example, a motor and drive running a fan, pump or compressor. First, there is sensing. The sensors feed process signals into the automation system. These are signals of pressure, temperature, flow or level, or the chemical composition of gases and liquids. The automation system controls, monitors and optimises the continuous production processes. This can be in a pulp and paper plant or on an oil platform. The system uses the sensor signals to infer a processed state, to analyse deviations and to calculate corrective actions. This takes us to the act phase. The DCS signals the activators which triggers for example a valve to optimize how much is open in order to adjust the pressure or flow or liquid or gas. Our position within the automation loop has this far been biased towards the DCS and sensing. Rotorq is a leading independent manufacturer of actuators, with a particularly strong position in electric actuators. By adding this to our portfolio, we would improve our offering into the act phase and further strengthen our competitive position. As part of the automation extended platform, it will enhance our ability to help our customers through increasingly digital, connected and autonomous solutions across energy and process industries. There are of course different types of actuators and Rotorq is leading player across electric, pneumatics and hydraulic actuation. Electric actuators represent more than half of Rotorq's sales. From a customer perspective, these come with the benefit of consuming energy only when performing work. This reduces operational cost and improves energy efficiency. They also provide highly accurate positioning and motion control. This is essential for applications requiring multiple points of positioning or precise adjustments. Rotorq will be a really strong match, extending our current offering. And in the combined setup, we are better balanced in the sense control automation loop. As I mentioned earlier, we have followed Rotorg for a long time. They have many qualities, as the plan is that they will operate as a separate division within the automation business area, adding about 12% to revenues. By running them as a separate division, we would retain accountability and operational focus, very much in line with the ABB Way operating model. And Automation Products is a profitable business, so our mix improves. In the combined setup, the business area operational EBITDA margin would have been 15.2%, 120 basis points higher than reported 2025 actuals. We are very hopeful about what we and Rotor can jointly accomplish. Together, we will be a strong partner to customers as we move towards increasingly digital, connected and autonomous solutions across energy and process industries. Now let's turn back to Q2, and we delivered new record levels for both orders and revenues. In the order chart, you see that this is the first time we generated about $12 billion in one quarter. The very strong comparable increase of 28% is driven by a broad and good activity across most of our customer segments. And notably, the automation business area even tempered overall order growth for the group. Importantly, their market environment remains strong, so their order decline is linked to the very tough comparable. Christian will talk more about this shortly. But speaking of strong markets, we had surging order growth of 58% in electrification and a very strong 20% in motion. In total, the elevator pitch would be that all of our three business areas continue to see a robust overall market situation. And we don't see a pattern of pre-buys. But demand is rather unpinned by sustained customer investments across the secular megatrends of energy expansion, energy efficiency and energy resilience. Areas where ABB's portfolio is very well positioned to deliver. Looking closer at the different customer segments, Data Center stands out with a triple-digit order increase. We had a challenging comparable in the utility segment, but the market is strong with investments in grid build-out, stability and reliability. We also see good demand for upgrades on electrical infrastructure in for example tunnels and airports. A link to transport, marine and rail continue to be strong areas. In the building segments, orders were up in the commercial area, including for HVAC. In the quarter, we got yet another proof point of what we can accomplish with the combined strength of our business areas, the power of ABB. Under the extended partnership with VoltaGrid, Motion and Automation will supply synchronous condensers with the associated prefabricated e-house units. These are systems that act as critical stabilization assets, enabling the voltage stability required by next-generation AI chips. Well done by the joint team. As I mentioned, revenues were the highest on record at $9.5 billion. You can see in the chart that revenues tend to be sequentially up in the second quarter, but this year the uptake was larger than usual, in line with our guidance. Revenues increased in both the project and short cycle businesses, and higher volumes was the biggest contributor to the strong comparable growth of 12%. This includes a good pricing contribution of close to 2%, with the teams balancing customer relationships and defending our own profitability. As a net total, we delivered a positive book-to-bill of 1.27, and it was positive in all three business areas. The backlog is up at the record level of 30 billion, up 28% on a comparable basis. In my view, we performed very well in a strong market. Looking at the different geographies, orders were up by double digits in all three regions. The Americas continued to be the strongest growth driver, and orders increased by 52% like for like. Looking specifically at the US, orders were up by as much as 62%. This high number includes some large bookings, but also base orders were very strong and improved by about 30%. Europe was up by 12%. Here we saw a decline in the largest market, Germany, but this was more than offset by order improvements in several of the other large countries. Asia-Middle East Africa improved by 12%, with China being up 10%. Let's turn to earnings, which reflects both favourable market conditions and a strong execution. We converted a 12% comparable revenue growth to a 20% increase in operational EBITDA to 1.9 billion. This reflects a margin improvement of 90 basis points to 20.2%. Similar to the prior quarter, we had pressure on gross margin. It dropped by 50 basis points from last year, impacted mainly by unrealised derivatives on FX and commodities. But we also still have a bit of a gap on the price-cost balance. That said, we did achieve a gross margin of 40%, which, admittedly, is a good level. The impact from the unrealized derivatives feeds through to income from operations, or EBIT. And we had about 130 million of special non-operational items, partially offsetting a strong business performance. In total, we improved income from operation as well as earnings per share by 8%. And with that, I hand over to you, Christian.

Thanks, Morten. So, let's take a look at what happened in different business areas. As usual, we start with electrification, which delivered new record highs across virtually all the headlight numbers. Comparable orders were up by as much as 58%. and the absolute intake advanced from an already strong trajectory and for the first time hit the plus seven billion mark. This is underpinned by strong broad based sentiment across major customer segments. I actually noted that this was the sixth consecutive quarters with a positive book to bill in electrification. In Q2, it was 1.39 and the order backlog increased by 59% to 13.7 billion. Looking at the different segments, data centers stood out again with a triple digit order growth. Still, we see a solid project pipeline with data centers requiring increasingly more electrification content. The market is clearly very supportive and we are performing well in this strong market. But there are very good developments also in the other markets. If we exclude the data center segment, electrification orders still increased by double digits. One segment to highlight is land-based infrastructure. This is driven by modernizing electrical infrastructure for tunnels, roads or rail. Demand in the building segment also improved, driven by commercial activity. The utility segment is another strong market, although in this particular quarter, the order growth was limited due to last year's high comparable. Now turning to revenues, which amounted to 5.2 billion on a comparable growth of 19%. This was driven by good progress in both the shorts cycle and project business. Higher volumes was clearly the main driver, but the team did well also on price management, which added about 2%. and it was encouraging to see the sequential acceleration in pricing in the second quarter. We still have a bit of a gap in price versus input cost to cover in gross margin. And here we expect to be at least neutral for the full year. But in the second quarter, this gap was more than compensated for by efficiency improvements and stringent SG&A control. As a net total, the operational EBITDA was up by 26% to $1.3 billion. This reflects a margin of 24.9%, yet another record high from the electrification team. Looking at the third quarter, we expect comparable revenue growth to be at least similar to what we saw in Q2. And the operational EBITDA margin should improve from the second quarter levels of 24.9%. Now, let's turn to motion. Contrary to the usual seasonal trend, orders actually increased sequentially and reached 2.6 billion. This reflects a comparable growth of 20% from last year, driven by improvements in both short cycle and project business. As Morten mentioned earlier, we see a good demand for our grid stabilization technologies with our industry-leading synchronous condensers. Other positive segments were rail, marine and mining. On the more short cycle side, there was strength in HVAC for commercial buildings as well as in data centers cooling. Similar to recent quarters, the softer areas are the process related segments like chemicals and pulp and paper. Turning now to revenues of 2.2 billion with a comparable revenue growth of 4%. More or less equally driven by volume and price. With an additional percentage of growth derived from portfolio changes. As we mentioned coming into the quarter, profitability was under pressure. Operational EBITDA margin dropped by 130 basis points to 18.5%, and there are multiple factors to consider. First, the positive impact by operational leverage on comparable revenue growth. This was, however, more than offset by Argumesa Electric acquisition operating at a loss and diluted margin by around 70 basis points year-on-year. This is similar to what we saw in Q1. and we expect it to be dilutive for the remainder of this year. Additionally, we still have some operational inefficiencies in our high power division. These should however be resolved during the second half of the year. And lastly, there were some timing impacts in production volumes in the traction division, which had an adverse impact on profitability. The high level view for motion can be summarized as good orders in a solid market, but some challenges on profitability, which partially will linger throughout the year. Looking at the third quarter, we expect comparable revenue growth in the mid to high single digit range year on year. And operational EBITDA margin should be similar to the second quarter. Now, let's turn to automation, where orders remain sequentially stable on the level of $2.5 billion. These orders actually make it one of their strongest quarters, but still recorded a year-on-year decline of 14%. This is due to last year's high comparable, which includes a very large single booking of $600 million. You can see it in the charts on the left-hand side. But let's take a look at the order drivers. Demand for marine as well as port automation and electrification continues to be strong. Overall, our performance in oil and gas remained solid, with any disruptions linked to the Middle East conflict contained to the local market. Similar to what we see in motion, the softer demand is noted in the process-related industries of pulp and paper and chemicals. And we still see a muted CapEx environment in the mining segment. Revenues came through slightly better than expected with comparable growth of 7%. Overall, we generated revenues of $2.2 billion, but it came with somewhat of an adverse mix. The higher share of revenues from the project and system integration business had a slight negative impact on gross margin. But still, the team improved operational EBITDA margin by 120 basis points to 15.4%, supported by a stringent cost control, not least in SG&A. I should also mention that in the quarter, we had about 70 basis points of margin support from a one-timer. This stems from a provision release linked to a project settlement. But overall, another solid delivery from the automation team. Now, looking at the third quarter, we expect comparable revenues to improve in the mid-single-digit range. And the operational EBITDA margin should improve year-on-year. Cash was another solid point in our results. As noticeable in the chart, we didn't have the usual pattern of sequentially higher free cash flows. As you may recall, the first quarter was boosted by about 425 million from a real estate sale. But on a year-on-year basis, we improved slightly to 881 million. This was backed by a good operational earnings increase, which offset the impact from higher capex spend in continuing operations, as well as a lower cash flow in discontinued operations. But all in all, this was a good cash quarter. And we are well on track to improve our free cash flows from last year's strong level of 4.6 billion. And with that, I hand it back to you, Morten. Thanks, Christian.

So let's finish off with the outlook. As evident in our Q2 results, we play in strong markets. Order backlog is rising and the short cycle business is clearly supportive. We raise our growth guidance for the year to a low double digit to low teens increase in comparable revenues. This adds confidence to our current margin outlook, which is to improve from last year, even when excluding the real estate gain in the first quarter of 2026. For the third quarter, we expect a low to mid-teens growth in comparable revenues year on year, and the operational EBITDA margin should show sequential improvement from the second quarter. So, Noancy, let's open up for questions.

Yes, very good. And just as a quick reminder for those of you who are dialed in on the phone, please press star 14 to register to ask a question. And also remember to mute the webcast as your line is opened. And also, again, we kindly ask you to limit yourself to one question. This is so we can allow for as many as possible to be heard. But you can also put your questions through the online tool in the webcast and I will then voice them over from here. And with that, let's take the first question and it comes from Martin Wilkie at Citi. Martin, your line should be open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking the question. So the question is on electrification orders. Obviously, a phenomenally strong quarter, even after a couple of very strong quarters beforehand. I mean, you said there's no pre-buy, but I guess what everyone's trying to work out is whether lead times are extending, and this is reflecting... deliveries and build out further out into 2028 and beyond or whether this is sort of a near term driver that's going to get put into the ground in 2027. So just understanding a little bit more about how you see the duration of the backlog that you're building and what it means for demand strength for the overall industry. So is this lead time related or is this really true underlying strength in higher and higher build outs for your customers?

I can take that. We see the strong growth here in all sectors. And the lead times are the same or similar to what they have been before. So we don't see any pre-buys. We don't see really any change from a lead time perspective. It's more that we're getting more capacity online. That means also we can take more orders on our side and you see that also reflected in our increased revenue guidance both for the year or for the quarter now and the year so that's really the driving factor behind it just high high activity level and good demand in the market very good thank you thanks Martin and then Magnus from Nordea are you with us Magnus

Hi Martin, Kristian and Magnus from Rodea. Staying on the same topic, I think Kristian talked about double-digit growth X data centers and order intake in Q2. I think we were slightly higher than that, maybe teens or so in Q1. Could you frame a little bit if the order growth X data center is moderated in the quarter or not?

The double-digit growth outside the data center is definitely here in Q2 and it's a similar pattern that we saw in Q1. So let's say the continuation of that good performance both in Q1 and now as we see it in Q2 outside data centers.

I could add to that. I could add to that also in electrification specifically in this quarter we had a very high comp in the utility segment which didn't support order growth for that reason. So otherwise all good.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

And then we have a question here from the online tool. It comes from Benjamin. Could you provide more What are the differences by geography?

We see for this quarter about 2% increase in price. So up from the Q1. That's also what we talked about after the first quarter. We see We also said that we will because we need some time to get that full compensation of the cost increases we saw earlier in the year. There is a bit of a lag and that's what we are executing on and according to that plan. So that is still valid as we said earlier that it will be more than compensated on cost by the end of the year. Though of course there are differences here in the short cycle versus the long cycle. The long cycle business, you can also do more of hedging when it comes to material and long and fixed contract. Of course, the short cycle, you cannot do that. So there's where you need to be quicker when it comes to adopting more dynamic in pricing. So we see that more, as I say, on the short cycle business where you need to do faster updates. Then in geographies, of course, the strongest, let's say in Europe, where we have more of inflation is in the in the Americas where we see those the strongest growth so there is where you have more price effect than for instance what we see in China but also the price decline that we saw earlier you know at least a year back in China that has reversed so that is also a What gives a positive impact on pricing when we're talking about the average? But of course, that difference is still there between the higher price increase markets, talking US versus China, but the delta has now been lifted on both sides.

Maybe Europe, we can have kind of in the middle between the two, I guess it's fair to say.

Thank you. And then we move to the conference call and we take the question from Andre at UBS. Please.

Yes, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. Can we just talk about Rotalk acquisition? And could you comment on what kind of drove the decision to pull through at this stage rather than at any sort of point of time in, I think, the last 10 years that we talked about it on and off? And just one specific angle on that. In terms of customer fit, from what I understand, Rotalk is obviously very petrochemical oil and gas exposed, but your DCS, Ltd. synergize these two across the time.

We looked at Rotor for quite some time and been impressed about the performance and what we really like is the leadership in technology and on market leadership. That are two aspects that we like and it's a good fit with the automation, electrification and automation focus from ABB and also it's very similar to road torque and if you look at end user and end customer exposure you also see a very good overlap it adds I mean 40% of the business of road torque is oil and gas so that would add if you're looking at an avb overall it's at 0.5 percent more oil and gas exposure to our existing avb business so we see rather these complementing and being able to connect the sensing and the control through our distribution our distributed control system Our leadership there and then the actuators with really the act part coming from the automation system. So combining these two we believe is a great fit for end customers and end users. It gives a better service expansion opportunities also for road torque when they have a wider ABB network to help. So that is where we believe there is good both revenue and cost synergies between us. to be able to create that value that we are confident that we will have getting Rotork into ABB. So we are looking forward to that new opportunity.

And I'm going to... Why now?

Sorry.

Sorry?

I was just at the beginning of the question, why now?

Oh, I think here, maybe more the timing is from an ABB side. We are running as a strong, strong performing company. We have a good governance model in our ABB way is well established. And we believe it's the right time also to take in some bigger assets or bigger parts into the company. So this will benefit us. over automation business, it will benefit the overall ABB business. So we believe now is a good time. Thank you.

And I'm going to tie on to that with a question on Road Talk from the online tune from Delphine. He says, what assumption do you have on the midterm revenue growth for Road Talk?

Well, I will not comment on the outlook. I think that is something that they have to do as they are still a separate company. So I will leave that with them. And I'm sure there are opportunities to ask that question also.

Good move. We'll take another call from the conference. Call line will open up for Will Mackey at Kepler, please.

Thank you very much. I wanted to come back to the data center and market segment and touch on I'm sure a subject on everyone's mind, which is the continuity of order intake that you've achieved this year. You talk about a positive price level and a positive pipeline going ahead. But could you comment broadly on how you see that pipeline maturing into orders in Q3 and Q4? And do you see the current levels of demand that you've just booked sustainable going into the next couple of quarters? Thank you. Yeah, thanks.

We have had seen a very strong comparable growth, of course, coming into these quarters for the electrification business, reaching the first time about five in Q4, first time about six in Q1, and now the first time about $7 billion growth. continue always making records in business. I haven't seen that happening at kind of that the that that always happen. So we should kind of be a bit also aware of course of that one. But in general we see a very strong pipeline also when we're talking about our large customers in this field. So the capital allocation and the investment plans are clearly there. It's our ability, of course, then to we don't take orders that we cannot commit to the right execution date. And that's why we see a strong and a positive outlook also when you look at the future for the data center sector. But I think we should also recognize there will be kind of variation in the order intake. You may remember everyone of the Q1 last year, where we'd had kind of less of bookings, a large order in that quarter. Then now we had some very good quarters behind us. But in general, we're looking at a strong demand and also a good outlook for the data centres. I cannot promise you that we will continue to make that kind of records that we've done every quarter now. So you will see some variation in the order it takes. But the longer term outlook is very strong. Thank you.

Thanks. And then we have next in line, Max from Morgan Stanley.

Hi, good morning. Just my question is just around the electrification revenues and your capacity. So, if orders are running at this sort of six and a half to seven billion level and we end up, you know, let's say at 27 billion of orders plus, I'm just trying to understand kind of how quickly that can convert into revenues and kind of how much capacity you have because you know I guess I guess if I look at your sort of sales this year they're going to be say 21 billion and if we think about kind of a lot of this capacity or a lot of these orders being for delivery in 27 you know my interpretation would be that there'd be no reason that the growth should slow down you know we should be landing at somewhere around 25 billion I guess I'm just trying to understand How quickly and how high can revenues get up to next year? And can we see kind of 25, 26 billion? Is that realistic with the capacity that you have? Thank you.

You're quite early here, Max, when it comes to talking about 27 already. So we will get there in January with more guidance for the 27.

But you have the backlog. You're kind of locked in for a lot of it, I guess. So, yeah. Yeah.

True. And what we will see is more kind of also the short cycle business, the book to bill is where we will see how then the total turns out. What I can't talk about is kind of the capacity build out, you know, that we have over time invested. and increased our capex now for many years. It's investments in the United States, investments in China, in India. We also announced in this quarter $200 million expansion and additional capex into Europe because we see, we talk now a lot about the United States and the data center build-up, but as Christian also referred to, we're seeing a strong demand. Also, we're up 12% in Europe. in this quarter, 12% in Asia and Middle East Africa. So if you're looking at, we are adding capacity to be able to deal with the higher order backlog that we now have in place. So of course, as I said earlier, we do not take orders where we are fully committed that we can deliver on time. Ltd. can show today is based on committed capacity that we have in place or are being built. And what was why we increased the guidance is we see that some of the capacity that is now coming online based on previous year's investments is giving the expected benefits the expected increased capacity. And this is a continuous job now on expanding more or less We are in a good journey there to be able to execute on this and get that order backlog into revenues.

Maybe just one clarification. Do you have any orders in your backlog that extend into 28 already, or is all of this now still for 27?

No, we have also for 28, especially if you're talking about automation business. There you will see the pipeline, for instance, in the cruise segment being much longer.

In electrification, sorry.

Well, there are also in electrification, you know, they are also part of the portfolio goes also into these like in cruise ships, into mining and also some of the data centers. So this is not all for 27. It is also into some in 28. So that's kind of from all parts of the business. Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And I'll take one question here from the online tool, which is linked to electrification orders, but not on a year-on-year perspective, but rather sequentially. Were there sequential improvements across all end markets or was this focused largely in data centres? And the question comes from Benjamin.

Yeah, we in society, what we looked at now is the year over year. If you look at the sequential development there, the biggest driver was clearly the data center industry. But again, strong performance. on the utility sector there. I think we have more of a strong also increase in this war because they're versus Q1 while from last year there it was more flat. So you have all this starting. You're starting to get more complex now with the sequential and the last year. So we need to get all these numbers in place. But the sequentially the main driver for this for this quarter is in in in data center. If you look at the big picture for electrification.

And then we open up the line for James Moore at Rothschild.

Good morning, everyone. And my question is on EL and mix. Could you comment on the share of 2Q orders, the 7.2 billion and 2Q sales, the 5.2 billion from data centers as a percentage and within the data center orders? Can you comment on customer and product mix for both On customer, was the colo orders faster than neoclouds or hyperscaler or the other way around? And on product, is it that you're seeing a much higher growth in medium voltage, say, than low voltage UPS and PDU or a different view of that just to help understand the composition?

When you talk about the product mix, there is nothing that stands out. Most of the projects we do, we do medium voltage and low voltage switchgear. Then there are sometimes we do, I mean, on the UPS side, there is a difference. We are much stronger on the medium voltage side. But there is no... Real no shift between them. Where we have gained solid traction and market share is in the medium voltage UPS. I think that is a stronghold that we see more customer who likes that technology and that we have booked more. If you look at the percentage for the quarter.

I'm looking at Christian. Of course, with the triple-digit growth in data centres, it's fair to say that data centres are growing at a faster pace, which mathematically makes the share bigger for electrification in that space.

But what we don't see is any... There is no change also in our kind of the mix between hyperscalers and co-location. That is also the same. So it's more that it's a higher activity level where it's a similar customer base, it's a similar or the same... Thanks very much. Thanks, James. And then we have next in line, Jonathan.

at BNP Paribas.

Hi, thanks for fitting me in. Maybe just on the whole M&A. First of all, trying to understand the synergies. Do you have an idea what the bill of materials for an average Rotor actuator was? I'm particularly interested really in how much of those materials, those subcomponents ABB will be able to make now. And was Rotor a major Do they buy much from you to begin with? Is there a big cost synergy angle? I'm thinking about motors, controllers, things like that. Then how much further will we take this? Do you have any interest in moving a layer even lower into valves? Or is actuation as deep as you're willing to go? And then just finally, also on M&A, more maybe on the exit side. I see immobility losses now are only 18 million. Are we still on track for, say, break-even by the end of the year? And if we get yet, does that open up the possibility of an exit in 2027? Thank you.

Yep. Thanks, Jonathan. On the synergy side, the synergy is really on the revenue side majority, where we can combine our offering and coming up, as I say, a stronger end user preference and be able to drive the growth here as a combined offering, but also especially in the field of service, which the A very wide service network of ABB being present literally everywhere through ourselves or with service partner, I think opens quite a lot of new service opportunities for that offering. Of course, there are in the field also on procurement when you talk about component level. It's more, as always, you will look at what's the best buy between the two and how you can leverage that bigger volume as part of Ltd Ltd On the e-mobility side, we see, as you said, much less losses in the Q2 compared to Q1. We are having a plan that gets us to that break even by end of the year. If the revenue plan, as forecasted now, can be met, we have that kind of line of sight to get there. And that was always the plan. And we are getting there. We will move on. But that is more of a 2027 event, because as I always said, getting the upgraded product portfolio, which is done, getting the business to break even or profitable level is which is ongoing. And then we will take the final step when we are ready to that also. And that's something we will come back to in 27.

Maybe just to clarify, so the break-even would be at the end of a year for the individual quarter and then we have, as we said, maybe estimate around 50 million of losses for the year.

Thank you. And then we take the next question from Kari at SB1 Markets.

Yes, thank you, Kari at SB1 Markets. Yeah, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah, not surprising. I want to go back to electrification and the data center order intake and the rate of growth 100% plus for the first half of the year. So can you give us some indication of how much of that this volume or the underlying volume for the whole segment, how much of that is market share growth given that you have added capacity and how much of that growth is priced. So if you can just rank those and give some indications of ballpark between those three drivers, that would be very helpful.

The price to start there, I say, is in line what we said earlier is about 2%. from that is for the overall some and where it's not like it's one segment that is really sticking out it's that so you can use that same but of a couple of percent for our 2% for on price when we're looking at the the The mix, as I said earlier, between geographies, we see good momentum both in Americas, but also Europe and Asia on that side. And also the mix between customers. There is no real change there. It's just higher activity level in the segment. And I can just also... When we're working with the large partners that we have and our customers, the outlook when it comes to new projects is strong and you will see some of the capital commitments that's being made. And of course, we believe that We are in a strong future position to win those projects. We have gained market share in this segment, at least from the first quarter. I believe that trend will continue also in this quarter. I guess we need to see the full reporting before we can make that claim, but we are on a track where The closeness to customers, the offering we have, has been a winning combination. And that's what our ambition is, to keep on that journey and winning share in a good market.

Can you help me understand why price is such a modest driver? Because it seems to be that the costs related to data center build-out are going up quite significantly in pretty much everything. So why is not your gear going up in price more?

Well, when I talk about the 2% increase, there are, as you said earlier, there are differences between regions, between China being lower than compared to the United States. You also have to remember that many of the hyperscalers are very large customers, and they have also leverage in a price negotiation. But we... We believe with the pricing and how we have been running it, we have been able to kind of protect margin, but also winning share. And that has been the formula that we have followed and that we will follow as well. So, of course, we're not leaving price on the table. On the other hand, you have to find the right balance. And we believe that we have a pretty good balance right now.

Thank you. And then we take one question here from the tool. It's from Thomas Jäger who says, your margin guidance for Q3-26 of sequential improvement versus Q23, what drives it as historically margins were largely flat Q3 versus Q2?

Yeah, no, it's correct. You would assume that pretty flat because that historically, I think the four last year has been very flat between Q2 and Q3. This time we're guiding for a slightly or what we expect is a slightly better or even an improvement in the third quarter. And it really comes from the strong revenue growth that we are guiding for as well. And normally a good

drop through a margin in the especially in the electrification business or product related businesses so that is what is the background for the guidance and it also fits what we've said the whole time on the price to cost input uh trend that we so have a bigger gap in q1 we we shrunk that gap now a little bit in q2 and then we expect to improve that uh as we have said earlier in the second half of the year too which is also contributed to this yeah

Thank you and then we take the next question from Sean at HSBC via the conference call line.

Good morning, thank you for taking my question. I was intrigued to see that you're now specifying data center cooling as one of the order segments within motion, so just keen to get a little bit more more detail here. I mean how much of total motion are data center that is data center and what kind of growth rates do you see? Is this also a triple-digit growth area? And specifically, I believe you've talked about being a component supplier to cooling. Maybe a little bit where you see the key drivers of your growth ambitions in data center cooling. Thank you.

Yeah, I can start there on where we play as motion with our drives and motors is to be the, as you say, component provider to the cooling companies. And we are partnering with all of the major cooling companies in the world who delivers those air cooling or large chiller units that sits in the data centers today. We're also part of the cooling when it comes to Ltd Ltd Ltd Ltd that sits in. So that's kind of what is relevant for us. And we are partnering with all the different cooling companies because we are not a cooling player ourselves. So we are more partnering that. And then the end user or the hyperscaler will discuss which cooling company do they want to work with. And then we can do the electrical part and they will do the cooling part. That's a partnership how it how it works for us in in in cooling. In Motion, we saw a strong order intake growth also in this quarter, up a comparable basis 18%. Part of that is also coming from the data center. It becomes more and more an important part through the HVAC or the cooling business of Motion. I don't think we have given out the exact percentage as we have done for electrification, but it is a good part of both the drives and the motor business that goes into these cooling companies. But it's very often a similar unit that sits in a data center that you will sit on top of a large commercial building when you need to cool a building. That doesn't really matter if it's data center or a commercial building as an example.

But I think it's fair to say that we don't see the growth rates are not as high as you see in electrification. And then we take the next question from Daniela at Goldman's. Please, your line should be open.

Hi, good morning. Hope you can hear me. I was wondering, sort of following up on data center, but more into the developments that are coming up where people discussed a lot VDC 800. I think we've seen some of your Asian peers starting to sign VDC 800 related MOUs. Do you see any momentum on that? Are any of the orders already related to that, or should we be expecting them soon? Just curious how you see the development for that, if it is still far away or starting to materialize.

Yeah, we have zero order in the backlog for 800 volt DC data centers. And nobody has because there is waiting for the kind of availability of components from the Nvidia and the like. So that's the next step. But of course, what we are working on is building up the complete portfolio. So we are ready to support that 800 volt DC data center architecture, which is coming soon. into more into the 20, late 27 or 28 onwards. That's where this will start to have a commercial impact. But the investment we are doing right now is on the technology side. DC has been a high focus and high attention for us for many, many years. We are already a leading player in the in the field of DC switches, DC breakers, DC components. and then we also see that more of this will move to some of the medium voltage sides with the new architecture which again it will give new opportunities for our medium voltage UPS and so here this is a field that we are allocating quite a lot of our R&D investment into that area we're also doing partnership we made And also acquisitions, we announced a couple of days ago an acquisition in France, Avantix, that is coming in with DC technology, with silicon carbide technology, and joining the electrification team, supporting also here DC and data centers. So it's an area of high attention for us. Most of the development work we will do in-house, but then also with some acquisition and partnership. We believe this is a good opportunity for ABB because, as you may know, DC technology and DC grid. We were one of the first companies here or the first company to talk about DC grids in ships, which is today the standard, and we are using a lot of that know-how and internal development also now into that data center space. And so that is more to come on this topic throughout the year on how we're seeing that future.

Yeah, maybe a bit of a commercial break here for our webcast on the 24th of September on the DC topic. You'll find the details on the website, ABB Investor Relations. And then we open up for a question from Kolwinde at Alpha Value, please.

Yeah, good morning everyone. So my question was also on Road Talk and I wanted to actually just understand the service opportunity a bit better. What is the potential for you to increase the penetration of service within Road Talk? Because as I understand, it's about 24% of 2025 sales and the company was already on a trajectory to increase that. So I just wanted to see where ABB could take it. And then does Road Talk also give you a sliver of opportunities on the data center cooling and nuclear side as well. Thank you.

Thanks. As I say, I will not go into the numbers as that is for a later stage in this process. But what I can say is that service is one of the areas where we believe that the ABB service network can can help and accelerate a well-performing service business already, but to expand that even more. We believe that is one of the good opportunities. And then, of course, there are many areas you mentioned, for instance, both data center, where you do need actuators for cooling applications, the marine side, the nuclear side in power. There are all areas where actuators and electric actuators are needed and beneficial. And that is more of kind of for areas that needs to be, of course, explored. But I will leave that to the later stage when we have closed the transaction and when we take this business together.

Very good. And we have a couple of minutes left. So let's see if we can squeeze one more question in. We open up the line for Alessandro at Octavian, please.

Yes, good morning. Thank you, everybody, for taking my question. It's on Rotorch as well, and I guess you might tell me that you postponed the answer here, but I would like to mark the point. If I look at your indication for the multiple, acquisition multiple, after synergies in mid-to-end level, and I make a couple of calculations with a few assumptions on the depreciation, etc., I calculate return on invested capital on this 5.5 billion, like, I don't know, between 5% and 10%, I would say. So, in my opinion, you kind of need to double EBIT on this acquisition going forward. Do you agree with this? And do you have a plan to do that? Can you share some indications?

Well, maybe not to necessarily counter your calculation here, but like we said, if we look at the multiple at acquisition at 19 and a half, we do feel that we have synergy opportunities that will bring that into the mid-teens. And those synergies, as we have referred to before, it's going to be both on the cost side, but majority on the commercial and growth side. So I think we certainly don't come to the conclusion that we have to double the EBIT, if I understood your question right. This is a high-performing business that will be accretive to ABB, second year accretive to our EPS, and it comes in at a high performance level. And we look forward to utilizing these synergies, like we said. I think that's it.

That's it. And that's also it for this call. We're up on the hour. So we close it here. Again, a reminder then about that commercial break for the webcast on 24th of September. I hope to see you there. And until then, have a nice summer. Thanks.

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