Aumovio SE (AMVOY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A very warm welcome to everyone joining us today for our Q3 results presentation and Aumovio's very first quarterly earnings call. Before we begin, let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Lutz Ackermann, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations of Aumovio. I joined Aumovio in October, and I'm truly excited to be part of this team, especially at such a pivotal moment following the company's successful stock exchange debut. With more than 10 years of experience in Investor Relations across various industries, I'm confident that Aumovio is exceptionally well positioned for the future. I see significant untapped potential to create long-term value for our shareholders and I look forward to engaging in a constructive dialogue with you about the opportunities ahead. We are very pleased to have our CEO, Philipp von Hirschheydt, with us today as well as our new CFO, Dr. Jutta Dönges. Jutta, we are thrilled to have you on board. Welcome. Jutta will take a moment to introduce herself. Both the interim report and the presentation of today's call are available for download on our Investor Relations website. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session for sell-side analysts. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Jutta. Jutta, please go ahead.

Thank you, Lutz. And also from my side, a very warm welcome. And thanks to all of you for joining today. I am very happy to be here today and to have joined Aumovio just a few days ago as the Chief Financial Officer. It's a great honor to be part of this exciting journey as Aumovio as its path as an independent listed technology company. Let me quickly introduce myself. Over the past years, I have held various leadership positions in both the public and the private sector, most recently as the CFO of Uniper SE, a listed German energy company. During my tenure at Uniper, we have successfully executed a financial turnaround and repositioned the company in the banking and capital markets as well as the rating agencies. And prior to that, I have served on the Executive Board of the German Finance Agency and I chaired the Executive Board of the Federal Financial Markets Stabilization Agency. In these roles, I was responsible for finance and governance functions and had a particular focus on stabilization measures during the pandemic and the reprivatization of government shareholdings mainly via the capital markets. Earlier in my career, I spent more than 15 years in investment banking, most of the time at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt, advising clients across industries on M&A, financing and capital market transactions. Finally, I hold a joint master's degree in mechanical engineering and economics from the Technical University in Darmstadt and a Doctorate in Economics from Goethe University here in. I have also had the privilege of serving in several nonexecutive roles, for example, in the Supervisory Board of Commerzbank, and I'm currently a member of the Supervisory Board of TUI. And with that background, I look very much forward to contributing to Aumovio's strategic growth and financial resilience. I am excited to work with my colleagues to implement our value-enhancing strategy to lead the finance organization and to shape the future of mobility. Today, Philipp will be guiding us through the presentation as I only joined at the beginning of this week. I'm very much looking forward to getting to know all of you and entering into a constructive framework. And with that, over to you, Philipp.

Yes. Jutta, thank you so much. And also from my side, a very good afternoon and good morning. And before I start, let me also welcome our new CFO, Jutta, who started beginning of this week, and we had already several Board meetings, and we are more than happy and pleased to have Jutta as a significant enhancement into our executive Board. Also, as Lutz said, he joined 1st of October. It's his birthday, by the way, today. So what can we have better than as a President to have the first investor call with all of you. So we are very much looking forward to the additions these 2 are going to bring to the Automotive SE team. Yes. And it's a great pleasure to be here today and to discuss with you our 9 months results. As we said we are -- the third quarter is going to be a challenging one. And -- but I think we have exactly achieved what we promised, we came in even a bit better than what we thought. And by that, we are progressing towards our targets for 2025, and we made again significant steps forward in our transformation strategy. So as you can see, not only for us, but for the automotive world, we are all working and operating in a difficult and uncertain environment. And we are very mindful that the economic impact of supply chain complexities, regulatory uncertainty and muted demand continues to weigh on most players in the automotive industry. However, despite these challenges, our first stand-alone results clearly demonstrate our strength, our resilience and as I said, the progress which we have made in our transformation. So if we're looking at the performance in the first 9 months, you see that the positive trends we have all been mentioning in the first half of the year is continuing into the third one. Adjusted sales came in at EUR 14.1 billion, down by 4.2%. And they are basically because of 3 trends, a bit softer than what we have seen last year. First, the foreign exchange has extended its results. We have and are working, as we always said, on our project and product portfolio, where we have been given back already in the beginning of the year, build-to-print business to the customer, and we extended that to a second project, a bigger one, which we stopped in the third quarter of this year. And thirdly, yes, we are also part of a softening European market. As you all know, the biggest region in terms of sales in our business portfolio. We have significantly increased our adjusted EBIT over the last 9 months compared to 2024 and with EUR 409 million and 2.9%, we have, through our successful execution of self-help measures as well as the project mix and product mix as I was mentioning, managed to get our EBIT up, adjusted EBIT by close to 150%. Adjusted free cash flow before spin-off and restructuring costs was positive, totaling EUR 190 million, as you can see here. After accounting for these onetime expenses, the spin-off and restructuring costs, free cash flow amounted to negative EUR 150 million. Just as a quick reminder on how we define adjusted free cash flow, we calculate it as the sum of our operating and investing cash flow with specific adjustments made for interest-related cash movements and for any acquisitions or disposals of businesses. Now regarding this period, there was only one notable cash inflow, which came from the dissolution of the cash pool with Continental. It is important to highlight that this is a one-off event for this year and not something we expect to repeat. So as we already were mentioning via our several communications, investor calls and alignments which we have had over the course of this year, our goal is and remains to achieve a positive adjusted free cash flow by year-end. And in addition to that, we decided to narrow our previous sales guidance of EUR 18 billion to EUR 20 billion to EUR 18 billion to EUR 19 billion. So a slight reduction, but we now expect that our adjusted EBIT margin is going to trend towards the upper end of our guidance range of 2.5% to 4%. So our strong improvement in this 9 months and also in the third quarter was primarily driven by enhanced profitability, as I said, the active portfolio management and very disciplined cost management, and I'm going to come to that. As you all know, on September 18, we debuted at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and are listed in Prime Standard of Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the form of a Societas Europaea. And we are expecting and gearing up towards then the MDAX inclusion by December 2025. Yes, I need to say once again, as we have managed that in a very short period of time, a big thank you to all our employees and to our advisers as well as to our former sisters and brothers at Continental who managed to get this project done on a very -- in a very, very short time period. For us, this means this is only the beginning. As an independent company, we now have the opportunity, and we have responsibility to prove ourselves by delivering the best products for our clients and creating lasting value for our shareholders. To achieve this, we remain firmly committed to what we cannot say often enough to sustainable value creation and the consistent execution of our 3-pillar strategy, which is in leading products. We are transforming our organization into a high-performance organization and what we commit we are going to deliver in the future. So all that, I think, is something which we have been showing in the third quarter of this year. Turning now to the adjusted EBIT growth and the sales results of the 9 months, you can see, as I already was mentioning, a 4.2% reduction compared to last year's result, basically half of it due to negative FX effects and then the other half reflecting our portfolio measures as well as the overall automotive environment and macroeconomic uncertainty. What were the main reasons of why we have significantly increased our adjusted EBIT. It has been on the one hand side, and we will come to that in more detail, an increase in our gross margin and a very distinct -- we are working on that for quite some time now, very distinct fixed cost measurement. We have managed to deploy R&D expenses even more efficiently, and we have continued our fixed cost program, which we call Accelerate, which targets the sales and general administration expenses as well as the fixed cost in plant management. And so that's how we managed to sequentially improve our margin, and it shows that we are capable of executing what we commit and that we have a very tight control on costs and are in the process of step-by-step improving our operational efficiency. Yes. Let's -- if we look at the next page showing the transition from the reported to the adjusted EBIT, you can see that we have had in the first 9 months, a quite significant array of special items. By far, the major part, the restructuring and termination. We are a company in transformation, something which we do very diligently. And we have had out of our solution from Continental and the spin-off of our Aumovio company, EUR 154 million spinoff costs. And as, for example, the divestiture of our Italian drum brake plant, we have EUR 63 million booked for adjusting our plant footprint as well as to optimize our portfolio and with EUR 34 million, we also do have some parts in others. So I think what you can see here is the clear commitment of the management team to work on our fixed cost base to improve our overall efficiency and to make Aumovio a performance company. If we go more into details to compare 2024 to 2026, you can see that we have been managing to increase in that 9-month period, comparable 9-month period, our gross margin by close to 2.5 percent points. This is on the one hand side, due to the fixed cost management in our plants as well as a significant improvement on scrap and rework. And additionally, we have -- and as you know, our clear target is to be at R&D net to sales at a single percentage in 2027. So we are still working on deploying our R&D resources in a much more efficient way, which leads then to a reduction of net R&D means net of customer reimbursements of EUR 136 million. The EUR 82 million SG&A costs are altogether then an improvement, which we were able to significantly overcome the others. So a lot of different topics like operational FX topics, lower reimbursements for tooling or less income from invested companies to reach then 2.9% in 2025 year-to-date. Now let's look at the development across our business areas on Slide #8. So you can see that our diversified and complementary business mix continues to support revenue performance despite a challenging market environment. Operational discipline remains a key focus for us. While overall sales across business areas remained subdued in the first 9 months of the year, we can see that Autonomous Mobility had a slight sales decline, mainly due to exchange rates and specifically in North America. Here, you can see the significant improvement after 9 months from negative EUR 87 million to negative EUR 10 million, very short of becoming breakeven or only short of becoming breakeven of EUR 10 million, and that is mainly due to significant fixed cost savings and here in research and development. The Architecture and Network Solutions organization has in sales been short of last year, mainly due to the fact that we have terminated the build-to-print business. I reported out in the last quarter results already about that. And then we have seen a volume reduction in that business and the cost savings has not yet been able to compensate for the sales decline. Very positively have developed our Safety and Motion business area, the biggest one with sales only slightly lower than last year and the EBIT increased significantly close to EUR 100 million. Also here due to a very tight fixed cost control and measurements now rolling into the operational results as well as a significant improvement on quality costs led to an EBIT margin of 4.5%. And the biggest turnaround, we can see on the user experience side, I mean, we already reported in the first half that we are on the brink of being breakeven -- another quarter being breakeven. So great results by the user experience team. Sales on prior year level, although we have added back in the third quarter, one business to customer. And you see that the strong improvement in EBIT, we already explained at the Capital Market Day, it's about operations excellence. It's about getting the plants and the projects being ramped up, and to see our management works, and we are making big steps forward towards the mid-digits return on sales level, which we want to reach in user experience in the long run. Yes, Contract Manufacturing one of the last times we are going to report that. I mean, next year, we are going to run out. I think sales with EUR 100 million, not very decisive and slightly negative because of the contracts which we have concluded already some time ago. Now let's look into the future. Let's look into order intake, where we continue to see substantial order intake across various customers and regions in the first 9 months of the year with EUR 14.7 million. What we have seen in the third quarter a slight reduction in order intake compared to the first half. However, the important part is that what you can see here now, we do diversify. Our clear target is to grow in Asia, in China and specifically also North America. And where we are a bit shy of what our targets have been is in Europe, which accounted only for 41% of our order intake. But we have seen a significant uptick on the, for example, Chinese OEMs where we have -- in China, meanwhile, representing 22% of our total order intake, significantly above our sales share today. And we also see that we are in a very competitive market capable of getting more and more business from Chinese OEMs, which are meanwhile even higher order intake than the international ones. So that is running quite nicely. And we also expect that in the fourth quarter, we are going to see a decent order intake. However, we also see that the security and uncertainty in Europe lead to the fact that many customers are postponing their orders into next year, done already, which creates then some shortfalls, as you can see already in the European order intake. But we are proud, as you can see, we have EUR 5 billion order intake with radars and satellite, cameras for autonomous mobility, I think shows the future of that business area. We have won again a big telematic control unit order from a German OEM. And as you can see here, the MK C2, not only a very favorable brake -- integrated brake system for European customers, but also more in China, we collect orders. And second, and user experience this year has also managed to get -- this period has managed to get a significant increase in orders, specifically in Asia and specifically with Chinese OEMs. So if we look into comparison of our sales towards the market, for us, we are focusing on value creation. We are focusing on bottom line improvement. Top line is only of a second measure. I mean we know that growth helps, but growth only helps once you turn it into profitability, once you are capable of achieving your capital cost once you're doing better in return on capital employed for the entire company. That's something which we always stress. So all that in Q3, Aumovio faced persistently challenging regional performance regarding vehicle production across all our major markets. And these headwinds were also driven by, as I said, our active portfolio management, which contributed to a lower sales baseline compared to the prior year. And if we are looking at the results, our the global vehicle production increased by an estimated 4.4%, whereas our sales declined by 3.7% adjusted for foreign exchange efforts and effects. Specifically, we were shy in Europe, where our sales declined by 7.9%, and that was primarily driven by the termination of the projects I were mentioning, the one in Architecture Network Solutions as well as the one in user experience. In North America, we grew by 3.5%, trending a bit behind to 4.7% production uptick. But I guess for North America, and you can see that remains a very solid contributor to our overall growth. In China, we did grow, but I mean, the market is very dynamic, and we were not able to cope up with the overall market development. However, we do see that we are getting more and more grip. We transfer more and more responsibility into the Chinese market. We are capable of managing time to market of our customers. They are reflecting in the order intake of our Chinese OEMs. So I think all the right steps have been taken in order to make us successful in the future. If we now turn to our transformation agenda on Page 11, you can see that over the last 21 months, actually, that we have managed to significantly reduce our workforce and trying to adjust to the necessary needs in the markets and to become a much more effective and efficient company, 20,000 employees reduction. And specifically, also our fixed cost measures have been running as predicted. And we are also proud to say we are now able also to increase the total savings, the forecast of our project scope of all fixed costs, which we are targeting since Q3 2023. We always said we are going to save EUR 200 million in 2024. We saved EUR 200 million in addition in 2025. And we assume we are going to make this year now, not EUR 200 million, but EUR 300 million. On the R&D efficiency side, we are, as I said already in net absolute amounts, EUR 133 million better than last year, which now leads to a net to sales ratio at 11.9%. This is compared to 12.3% in 2024, an improvement, but also shows we still need to do something, and we do see also good chances to be even more effective in the future and to see of how are we going to be able to reach our target of single digit in 2027. The next steps still need to be taken. And one major step of making us more efficient is our footprint. So we have made consistent progress in executing our ramp-down strategy. You can see here the R&D locations and production locations we have already closed or are going to be closed over the course of the next months. And we always said we are going to focus on mega factories, and we need to be in the market for the market. That is specifically important and necessary and also looking at recent developments for sourcing, purchasing or procurement for development as well as for production. So in 2024, we had 56 plants. And if you were following us on the capital market, you might remember that our vision is to come to less than 45 plants. If you add up here all what has been already done and what is going to be done, you see that we are going to get to 49 plants going forward. And what you also see is something which we mentioned in the Capital Markets 2023 that we need to look at the amount of the number of R&D locations, which we have, you can see that we have also managed to create a significant reduction of complexity also there. In parallel, we have announced that we are going to invest USD 110 million in new brownfields Texas, supporting our ADAS component production for the local market, which also shows that on the one hand side, we are capable of managing and decomplex our organization as well as growing where it's necessary and building up mega factories going forward. One other key highlight is how we have managed to close as we promised and committed to reduce -- to sell our plant, our drum brake plant in Karben, Montenotte, everything according to plan. And this is going to -- this plant is going to go out then or has been gone out in the last quarter. So with all that, let me now turn to our adjusted free cash flow calculation on Page 13. The free cash flow remains and will always remain one of our most important financial metrics. So we have started -- if you look here on the slide, on the left-hand side, we start from adjusted EBIT. And by adding back depreciation and amortization, we arrive at an adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 1.1 billion. This is after 9 months, I would guess so a strong level, especially considering we are currently in a transition phase. However, bridging from EBITDA to free cash flow involves several deductions. Firstly, we are investing into our company, but with a clear focus on high return areas. And something which I explained already several times, we do have a well-invested infrastructure. So our investments in the first 9 months represent 3.1% of sales only, and that again demonstrated our disciplined approach. Net working capital, employee benefits and interest payments are relatively smaller buckets, but also still relevant. Despite not being income positive at the group level, we incurred tax payments totaling EUR 261 million. This was primarily driven by noncreditable withholding taxes such as those on intergroup dividends and the fact that no cross-border profit and loss offsetting is possible. Going forward, we will evaluate measures to improve the efficiency of our cash tax outflows. That's something which we now being a stand-alone company, something which we will -- which we are able or focus much more. Others include various positions such, for example, prepaid expenses. And the largest -- if you look at it, the largest one-off item in our 9 months adjusted free cash flow is a combination of cash effective restructuring charges for the rightsizing of our company as well as spin-off costs, which together amounted to around EUR 340 million. These all were necessary steps to rightsize the company and prepare for future growth. If we adjust for these one-offs, our underlying adjusted free cash flow, as I already explained in the beginning, before restructuring and spin-off costs stand at a positive EUR 190 million. And this is a solid result and a clear signal of the company's underlying cash generating strength. So let's look quickly on the component of CapEx as well as on working capital. As I said in all our meetings during Capital Markets Day as well, we are an invested company. So it means that we have done our major invest in new best cost country plant as well as in the necessary technological changes. We discussed about user experience just recently, where we have had to invest in mega plants, where we have needed to invest into the technological and product turnaround, something which we now see in the 9 months result, we make big progress. And you can see here then that the elevated levels from 2020 to 2024 -- or 2023, are now over, and we will return to normalized CapEx levels post completion of these mega factories. So we are committed to a disciplined CapEx management. You can see that in the results of 3.5% or EUR 490 million after 9 months. I think that is something we manage quite well. The operational excellence programs run all as planned. You see that on scrap levels. You see that on gross margin programs. You see that here on the CapEx level. That's something we are quite satisfied with where we still need to make some improvements is on the working capital side. Our composition, if you compare that to 2023 is getting better, but there is still some chances of becoming better in terms of overall structure and efficiency. But you can imagine that the geopolitical crisis, which we are currently experiencing are not helping to significantly improve inventory levels going forward. So before, let's say, turning into the last pages, I think you can see with the next page that we are remaining with a very strong liquidity position, which provides us stability and financial flexibility. We have one of the most and strongest or, let's say, strongest balance sheet in the industry with a total liquidity of nearly EUR 4 billion, comprised of EUR 1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents and EUR 2.5 billion credit facility. And even after accounting for gross financial debt of EUR 335 million, which includes all leasing liabilities, we maintain a net cash position of EUR 1.1 billion, giving us significant financial flexibility. Additionally, the net pension liabilities have been reduced from around EUR 1.7 billion to EUR 1.3 billion over the last 9 months, primarily due to an increase in the German discount rate from 3.5% points to 4.1% points. So we deem our balance sheet is very healthy, and it helps us and position us perfectly for future growth as well as for resilience. Now very shortly, we expect the fiscal year 2025 to unfold in a generally stable yet challenging market environment, particularly in Europe, where light vehicle production volumes are projected to decline. And I mean, we discussed that we have a major stand in the European market that we are working on diversifying that. North America is expected to see a contraction with production down 2% year-over-year. Now maybe that's going to be even a bit better. But by contrast, China is the one who is showing the overall growth in the market. And with 6.6%, we do see strong growth, and that all leads to 2% points on a worldwide basis. So if we then come to the end or before we go into Q&A, we have said we have narrowed our guidance for 2025. We are -- despite the subdued sales in some regions, our total sales will remain within our guidance, but now narrowed to EUR 18 billion to EUR 19 billion. The operational discipline and the transformation efforts are driving our performance and adjusted our EBIT margin is expected to close at the upper end of the previously communicated range of 2.5% to 4%. As I said already, we strive to achieve a positive adjusted free cash flow by year-end, and this outlook reflects foreseeable impact from trade conflicts, exchange rate shifts and material and logistic costs, while excluding potential disruptions from new regulations or macroeconomic shocks such as semiconductor supply issues. So we remain firmly on track to achieve our full year 2025 targets. Our year-to-date performance provides a strong foundation with revenue and expense goals well supported. Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, our diversified business model continues to demonstrate resilience, keeping us aligned with our growth ambitions. Maintaining cost discipline is the key priority of Aumovio. We are committed to rigorous expense management while continuing to focus on operational excellence and innovation. Our cost efficiency and transformation initiatives are delivering tangible results, and we expect these benefits to continue throughout the year. But what you also see is that our order intake is specifically in regions outside of Europe growing. So our innovations are also showing its improvement and order intake is at a level where outside of the, it should have been. Looking ahead, we remain somewhat clearly focused on enhancing profitability, progressing towards our midterm objectives and delivering long-term value for our shareholders. So with that, I come to the end. Lutz?

Okay. Thank you, Philipp. Thank you, Jutta. Now we come to the Q&A session. And operator, please take over for the moderation of the Q&A.

Yes, coming to the first questioner. It is Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank.

The first one would be on the quarterly performance of some of the divisions. If we start with UX, the margin obviously deteriorated Q3 over Q2. I assume the Q2 margin, which was quite positive, is also linked to the onetime pricing effect that you had during the quarter. Should we expect a sizable improvement into Q4? Or what's really the reason of going from 5.4% to a negative margin again? And then linked to that, looking ahead, do you think you need the UX business in your portfolio? Or could you think about carving it out again as it was previously planned? And then in contrast to that, obviously, with the strong decline in top line, A&S actually performed quite well sequentially, increasing margin to 5.8% over 5% in Q2. Is this basically cost measure related? Or was the business that you gave back loss-making and really margin accretive now just to hand it back? The second point would be on cash. Thanks for providing a lot of detail already for this year. Thinking about '26, is it fair to assume that restructuring should be an outflow of around EUR 150 million and there is only a slight portion still to come in terms of spin-off cost? And then last question I would have is on Nexperia. Following headlines on Bloomberg today, it seems that you have first exports approvals from China. Could you just comment on that? What's the situation currently? Where is the inventory? Are you at risk to stop production somewhere?

Yes. Thank you for the question. So good. Let's see whether we covered everything, what you were asking. And I will -- let me start with user experience. You're absolutely right. The second quarter was exactly elevated because of a onetime investment or let's say, a onetime customer reimbursement, which we expect. So our clear target is to remain breakeven for the entire year. You see that the loss -- or you have seen that the negative adjusted EBIT margin has significantly reduced. And if you compare that to the sales, which we have seen before, you can imagine we made really considerable steps forward. So that's why we are convinced we are going to make also a, let's say, black zero on the user experience side going forward. All our portfolio measures, we have been doing over the course of the last months, and last quarters, we always say we look at the business. First of all, we bring it towards the top 3 position in the respective market. We see of how do we get it performing. Does it fit into our strategic focus -- and if we say no, we need to review of whether it's going to -- whether we are going to be the best partner. That's something we have now the time after the spin-off to look at, and that's something which we are going to do then over the course of the next months and strategic cycles, and we will get back to you once we have reviewed all that. I mean you missed your last question, you mentioned already something which did not have to now the great strategic discussions. We are since beginning of October, working in a big task force team to manage down the Nexperia impact towards our company. As you have seen rightly, we have received also yesterday after a verbal communication that during the course of this week, we have also received written approval to be exempted from the export control of Nexperia China exports out of China. So we are again delivering into the rest of our plants worldwide. So we assume that at least short term, we are not going to have any interruption of our processes and production. Let's jump back to the A&S as you are absolutely right. I mean, where do we focus on if we hand back businesses, if we stop businesses, that's definitely projects which are not supporting our value creation. So the business we have been handing back was not, in a way, contributing to what we expected to do so. And also the team is heavily working on adjusting the cost base. So it's twofold in everything what we do. Let's say, gross margin improvements via portfolio measures and then also fixed cost measures in order to improve the total bottom line. So what is missing cash -- the cash burden for 2026 out of the restructuring in -- which we have had in -- so in -- for restructuring, we expect cash out until year-end still of somewhat EUR 100 million to EUR 120 million. And then for the next year, it's going to be seen next year.

The next question comes from Horst Schneider from the Bank of America.

The first one that I have that relates to the outlook for the fourth quarter, alone by the R&D reimbursements, of course, Q4 is going to be strong. So I just want to check if my assumption is right on R&D reimbursement. I think it was last year something like EUR 120 million Q3 over Q4. So is that going to be the same again, roughly in this ballpark range also this year? And then what are the building blocks for Q4? Because I think you mentioned, Philipp, that clients are postponing a little bit. So I'm hearing that maybe the revenues could be down quarter-on-quarter. What is else happening quarter-on-quarter? So the R&D reimbursements go up, how are the other things developing? So price costs, this stuff that influences the margin? That would be great if you could comment on that. Then I think we never discussed for Aumovio really the dividend. I know your dividend payout ratio. If I strip out the special items basically from net income, you have got a positive net income. When I look at your cash also, you could pay a dividend. So how should we think about this dividend topic for 2025? In general, what do you intend to do with your net cash? Because it's unusual for a supplier that a supplier has got so much net cash. I know some of your peers have got the problem they've got too much debt. So you have the comfort you have got too much cash. So therefore -- but nevertheless, what do you want to do long term with this cash? You want to be a company that accumulates cash or at some point, you either want to buy back shares or maybe also consider maybe M&A? And the last one that I have relates to CapEx and R&D because CapEx was very low in the third quarter, you highlighted that. Is this trend now something like 3%, 3.5% CapEx something we should also consider going forward? Or you think that CapEx should go up, not just in Q4, also in 2026?

Yes. Thank you very much for your questions. Let me try to answer them step by step. So fourth quarter, you're absolutely right. It always in Aumovio, we have had significant increase of R&D reimbursements in the fourth quarter. That's always the best quarter in this regard. And we have also -- and that leads then to the fact that our net R&D is going to get better always also in the fourth quarter. Our cost measures are still running. We expect now -- I mean, we expect -- we know that our Italian plan is going to go out. We know you have seen that on a very constant base, we also work down the amount of headcount which we have in our organization. But we are still cautious in terms of sales and do not see a significant increase to the third quarter. And that's why we also to see that we have narrowed our sales forecast.

The positive impact from this plant in Italy that you are mentioning, how many employees come off the payroll?

Some of 350, 300, 350 can come off.