Bossard Holding AG (BOSN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the presentation of Bossard semiannual results 2023. [Operator Instructions] And I would now like to turn the conference over to Dr. Daniel Bossard, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Eveline, and I cannot see the presentation. I don't know. We're waiting for the presentation. Apologies.

I just received the information that the presentation will not be visible for the speakers from [ Ms. Eisner ].

Okay. Sorry for that and I will switch here. Sorry for that. All right. Then I will start. Sorry for the little tech hiccup in the beginning. Very warm welcome to our summer announcement of our half year results of Bossard Group. From agenda perspective, we would like to guide you through the highlights 2023, give you a financial overview that will be done by Stephan Zehnder. I will then continue with Strategy 200 progress and give you a bit of an update on where we are and then go into an outlook for 2023. So starting with the highlights for H1 2023. We dare say it's been a good first half year. We would say the second-best result in the Bossard history in terms of sales and EBIT compared to some peak years in the last 2 years, 2021 and 2022. Obviously as all the other industries, we have seen a weakening in the last couple of months, which is due to a destocking of our customers. So our customers had built up stock over the last years and mainly in the last 12 months and now are depleting some of their stock together with a general decline in the overall business development, and this has led to a global demand normalization, as we call it, again, after the peak we have seen in 2021 and 2022. Also we have seen a high negative foreign exchange impact on the top line, it's been like 4.6%; on bottom line, closer to 7% impact. So the FX has impacted us quite heavily on a -- in a negative way. We have seen only a slow recovery in China. After COVID went over -- was over in Q1, we all thought that the recovery would be faster as we've seen and we also see that with other industries, this has not gone that quickly. And so the recovery is relatively slow in China. Yet we focus on sunrise industries and this helped us also in first half of 2023. So this paid off mainly in the segments of electromobility and railway and continues to do so, so over-proportionate growth. Also connected with our Proven Productivity services, namely Smart Factory Logistics and Smart Factory Assembly. That has helped us to win new business and to create better stickiness with our customer base. On the Smart Factory Logistics side, we are now at around 1,100 customers and moving towards more than 0.5 million devices, smart devices installed and growing year-on-year, roughly 7% also this year. And Smart Factory Assembly, this is the internal start-up which helps customers to optimize and automate their assembly processes. We have also doubled our installations year-on-year. And also, we are doing this, this year. So this helps to create bigger customer loyalty and stickiness and win new business with customers. Our new digital platform, our Dynamics 365 was rolled out in Singapore successfully in April after Denmark and Sweden last year and we will be continuing to rollout the new digital platform now. The next rollout will be in Malaysia and Thailand. And so far we're pretty experienced now in doing that. So with all this, with a normalization in demand and quite heavy investments on the IT side, we are proud of a good first half year 2023. And with that, we're also in line with the guidance that we gave. So from 2020, a compound annual growth rate on the top line was 20%, on the bottom line as well for the last 3 years. So in that sense, we're pretty much -- we're actually very well on track. So with that, I'd like to hand over to Stephan Zehnder for the financial review. Stephan, can I ask you?

Yes. Thank you, Daniel. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And in an increasingly demanding [Technical Difficulty] Can you hear me?

We couldn't hear you for a second. Now I can hear you.

Yes. Okay. Good. Okay. So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. In an increasingly demanding economic and geopolitical environment, we also experienced that the market challenges started to shift in the last 6 months. In this changing market environment, the Bossard Group achieved sales of CHF 577 million in the first half of 2023, a decrease of 1.5% compared to the prior year, whereby the currency impacted the sales developments negatively by 4.5%. Organically sales grew by 1.2% compared to prior year. The acquisition of PENN Engineered Fasteners consolidated since November 2022, contributed 1.9% of the group's sales development. With the lifting of the strict COVID-19 restrictions in China, demand started to normalize in the industry sectors that benefited from the pandemic. Whereas growth industries such as electromobility and railway reached gratifying growth rates, other focused industries like consumer goods and electronic industries as well as medical technology recorded a normalization of demand and these industries particularly benefited from the pandemic. Also as part of the normalization, the supply chain challenges and long delivery times have eased. Lead times and freight costs have now almost reached pre-COVID levels, which is actually good news. On the other hand, the normalization of the procurement market has caused also lower demand, specifically in the second quarter. How much of it relates to the better availability and therefore drives our customers' re-leveling activities of their stocks or how much is driven by the current economic outlook and market uncertainties is not the clear signs. But likely both are impacting demand to a certain extent. The softening of the demand in course of the first half of the year and the appreciation of the Swiss franc also impacted our P&L. With a 32% gross profit margin, which represents an increase of 0.5 percent points compared to last year, we have well-managed our price levels, but also product and regional mix were favorable. In total, sales and admin expenses increased by CHF 7.2 million compared to last year. Wage inflation as well as higher number of employees, plus 98 FTEs were part of our cost drivers in comparison to last year. And continued investments have been made in the targeted growth initiatives, especially in digitalization as part of the Strategy 200. The EBIT amounted to CHF 69.6 million, representing a decrease of 9.8%. Despite slightly lower sales and an over-proportional increase in costs, the EBIT margin of 12.1% is still underscoring the group's continued solid profitability. What is noticeable is also the marked increase of the financial result. Whereas negative currency impacts due to the appreciation of the Swiss franc contributed to the increase, the major impact was attributable to higher interest rates paid in the first 6 months. As an outcome, compared to prior year, net income decreased from CHF 59.9 million to CHF 49.9 million. The return on sales amounted to 8.6% in comparison to 10.2% in the prior year. As mentioned previously, the actual currency [Technical Difficulty] Eveline, this is not the correct chart. One ahead. One more. Yes, here we go. As mentioned previously, the actual currency reality has obviously an impact on Bossard's Group business performance, even though the Bossard Group has already explained in the past has a good natural hedge. This is due to the fact that incumbent expenses are generally incurred in the same currency areas. Nevertheless, the appreciation of the Swiss franc had an impact on the consolidated financial statements. This currency effect can be recognized not only in sales, but also EBIT level. Without the translation effect at unchanged exchange rates 2022, sales would have amounted to CHF 604.9 million in the first half of 2023, which is already, as mentioned, would correspond to an increase of 3%. On a comparable exchange rate basis, excluding the valuation effect from the appreciation of the Swiss franc in 2023, EBIT would amount to CHF 75.7 million, representing only a decrease of 2% compared with the previous year. On this basis, we would have generated an EBIT margin of 12.5% and not the 12.1% as reported. As we will see, currency did impact business performance in all 3 regions. Eveline, can you go back to the sales? Yes. Perfect. In America, the group again posted solid growth rates -- growth in the first half of the year, although it began to slow down towards the end of the period. Sales increased 9.9% to CHF 161.6 million, where also in local currency, sales growth was 13.8%. Organic growth in local currency amounted to 6.4%. Our expertise in the electromobility sector built up over the last several years has led to further expansion of our base -- customer base. In Europe, the group recorded a decrease in sales of 3.2% to CHF 321.2 million. In local currency, the sales development was slightly positive. The result is a consequence of the economic slowdown and normalization of demand in an environment marked by shortage of skilled labor and inflation. Bossard's Smart Factory logistics services drew even more attention from customers. Sales in Asia declined by 12.1% to CHF 94.2 million. Though in local currency, sales were down only by minus 3.6%. The strong Swiss franc was playing a key role. In addition, demand varied from region to region. In China, after the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, only marginal growth drivers were evident in the first 6 months of the year. However, the majority of the other regional companies showed a positive development. Looking at the balance sheet, it shows that after a substantial rise in 2021 and 2022, total assets were now slowly below last year's level. But as in the last years, the increase resulted mainly from higher receivables caused by the significant increase in sales and the above average growth in inventory to cope with the supply chain challenges. The balance sheet expansion is consolidating now on a high level. Compared to prior year, total assets decreased slightly from CHF 905 million to CHF 901 million. In comparison, the equity ratio increased slightly from 40.8% in the prior year to 41.3%. We expect that the equity ratio will further increase towards the end of the year, staying well above the 40% target ratio. Compared to last year, the operating net working capital increased by 4.2%, whereas in relation to sales, it dropped slightly from 48.5% to 47.9%. Even though sales were lower at the same time also the operating net working capital intensity in relation to sales started to ease, which is mainly due to our lower inventory levels since the beginning of the year. These were deliberately increased during the pandemic to ensure the best possible delivery capabilities to our customers in view of the continuing market uncertainties and long delivery times. On a year-on-year comparison, net debt increased from CHF 293 million in the prior year to CHF 323 million. The good news is that net debt remained stable since the beginning of the year, seeing only a marginal increase. The gearing net debt that's measured -- net debt measured against equity of 0.9 is slightly above last year's level of 0.8 whereas net debt in relation to EBITDA increased slightly from 1.9x to 2x. Thereby Bossard continues to have solid balance sheet ratios, which are within the range of the long-term balance sheet funding targets of a gearing of less than 1.3x and net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of less than 2x. In the first half of 2023, we invested totally CHF 17.8 million, thereof CHF 4.3 million relates to 2 ongoing infrastructure projects in France and Taiwan. In Taiwan, we just moved into our new office and warehouse facilities. The project in France is expected to be completed by the end of the year. This year, we invested so far CHF 5.2 million in digitalization. The biggest share of this investment was dedicated again to our new global digital platform. After Denmark and Sweden last year, we have successfully completed our first rollout in Asia and Singapore in April, as Daniel already mentioned. CHF 4.6 million was [indiscernible] for replacement investments in ongoing operations and CHF 3.5 million, we invested into smart bins and electronic labels, which we installed at our customer premises as part of our Smart Factory Logistics solutions. What the cash flow of the group concerns, we have seen an overall strong development in the first half of the year, mainly driven by the under-proportional increase of the net -- operating net working capital in comparison to last year. Cash flow from operating activities totaled CHF 54.4 million, a substantial change in comparison to the negative cash flow of minus CHF 15.6 million in the same period last year. As already mentioned, this is mainly due to the normalization of the supply markets as lead times become much shorter again and therefore, the availability of the products. The biggest impact is coming from the inventory, whereas we face an inventory increase of CHF 67 million last year, it contributed positively by [ CHF 16 million ] to the cash flow in the first half of 2023. Cash flow from investing activities decreased from CHF 20.4 million to CHF 14.8 million in 2023, mainly due to the less capitalized costs for the new digital platform. In addition, there was a cash inflow from a purchase price adjustment related to the acquisition of PENN Engineered Fasteners in Canada. Now, the group reported negative free cash flow of minus CHF 36 million in the prior year, a positive free cash flow of CHF 39.6 million resulted in the first 6 months, thereby almost recovering the dividend payout of CHF 42 million this year. With this last remark, I hand over again to Daniel. He will comment now shortly on the progress of the implementation of the Strategy 200, and what business environment to expect in the second half of this year. Daniel, please.

Thank you very much, Stephan. So I'm happy to give you a short update on the Strategy 200. As you may know, this is our strategy which is leading us towards 2031 when Bossard turns 200 years old. That's why it's called Strategy 200. And as an overview, here, we said that we want to go for accelerated profitable and sustainable growth as we indicated, the midterm 5% top line growth in the range of 12% to 15% EBIT margin based on our proven business model, which is our products and services model organically and through acquisitions over the time, and we want to achieve relevant market shares in our key markets through 7 strategic initiatives. Now, I just want to share 3 of the initiatives and give you a little highlight on where we are. First of all, our cultural initiatives called Together we Create with the idea to become much more efficient in global collaboration, which means we don't want to reinvent the wheels and we started initiatives on talent and leadership management to -- Stephan, we can hear you. Initiatives on talent and leadership management to retain and develop talent in a scarce global market with the notion that the work-age population is going to shrink in the next decades. That's getting even more and more important and we managed to keep talent and to attract new talent much better than in the past. So that's why we believe this initiative will be key for our future success, and we continue with that. On the sales engine side, the aim is to become more efficient in customer acquisition, mainly by shifting from analog to digital. So we shifted boldly to digital lead generation and we created harmonized sales roles across the group. So after all, we could see 30% more qualified leads across the group, and faster pipeline conversion. Then we are and have been ramping up our AI-based services, which is Smart Factory Logistics, which is enhanced with tools, which is capturing the historical demand from customers. So we have tons of data that we can capture from those 1,100 customers around the globe and to predictions for the future and make sure we -- they have less stockouts or through a tool called Realtime Manufacturing Services, which is a platform which allows customers to inquire special turns and mill parts and to receive quotes within seconds, and being able to place an order within a few minutes. So this is ramping up. And so here we're expecting further growth over the next months. Then the operations engine, as already indicated, where the main driver is our D365, is our office Microsoft Dynamics 365 IT ERP solution, which we successfully implemented in Denmark, Sweden, and as I mentioned, in Singapore. Next up will be Thailand, Malaysia, France and U.S.A. in the next 12 months. Then increased internal efficiency also through AI-based tool, we developed a tool called Product Solution Advisor. Now we've had this for about 2 years, which allows internal people to access our internal product data. And also less skilled people can make technical advice based on these data now. So we become much more efficient in using modern tools to provide consulting to our customers. So those are 3 initiatives I wanted to highlight very briefly. The rest of the initiatives are also more explained in our investors' handbook available online. Then to the outlook 2023. Now, as far as I can look out, I would say I'm not only talking about influencing factors and -- at the real outlook. As you see all over the global markets are cooling off. I mean, that has been a trend over the last 6 months for sure. With a high negative FX impact, which is probably likely to continue people forecasting the U.S. dollar, Swiss franc to be more at 0.7 and then 0.8. So it's not going to improve on that side. So we need to deal with that. Supply chains continue to normalize and availability as well. Availability of fasteners are at normal levels. Again, also freight costs, by the way, have come down dramatically and they're actually at pre-COVID levels. So the overall environment has normalized, as we already indicated. Inventories have reached a peak. We see that the inventory levels are starting to go down, as Stephan indicated in his presentation, with definitely a positive impact on cash flows. We had a swing of about CHF 70 million compared to last year from minus CHF 35 million to plus CHF 35 million this year, which is quite nice. Wage inflation, digitalization initiatives and interest rates are though driving our cost base further. So we continue to roll out our ERP system in the group over the next 2, 3 years. So that will have an impact on the cost, of course, wage inflation. I mentioned scarce resources will be an issue and further initiatives -- strategic initiatives will -- which will help us long-term to thrive. Then we see definitely further potential for above average growth in sunrise industry, namely electromobility and its ecosystem. We mentioned it at other instances with batteries, with charging stations. For example, India is investing a lot in electrical scooters, for example, 2 wheelers, 3 wheelers. Railway is still thriving well. Why? Because this is a long-term -- they have long-term projects. And also in the area of automation, we see further growth potential. And then last but not least, all this with our Proven Productivity services, which are here to reduce total costs for our customers, and namely, Smart Factory Logistics and Smart Factory Assembly moving forward. Now, to underline this as well, I have a chart which I maybe need to shortly explain. On the horizontal line, you see the importance of certain topics for CEOs. And on the vertical line, you see whether this topic is growing -- of growing importance or of fading importance. So on the top right, you see topics like machine learning, AI, productivity, and maybe a no brainer. But these topics, especially these days with a lot of inflation happening become more and more important. So productivity is key and that's exactly where we hook in to win new business. And we see that this happens, especially with Smart Factory Assembly. As I mentioned, we're doubling our installations year-on-year and this is happening also this year. We're creating more customer stickiness and it makes it easier for customers to onboard new people, scarce resources, onboarding new people to their company. So we are in the middle of this. And we believe by following this and to further promote our productivity services, we're in a very, very good stage to do that. Overall, I can say again, we are in a situation where maybe the water levels are a bit lower globally, but we're keeping on adding new water. And we're very, very confident moving forward that this will help us to maintain the customer base in a not easy environment moving forward. So with that, I'd like to close and hand over to Natalie for some comments and obviously move over into Q&A. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] And we have the first question from Stefanie Scholtysik from Mirabaud Securities.

I would like to ask a question on Asia. I mean organic growth in Q2, the decline actually accelerated. So despite this reopening of Asian countries, would you expect that there will be a catch up in Q3 or Q4? Do you think that the situation is going to improve in Asia and maybe which industries were affected the most, especially in the last quarter in Asia? That's the first.

Maybe I can try and maybe, Stephan, you can tune in as well. We -- as I mentioned with China, we have expected a faster growth. We see a decline in the semicon. You know customers like [ VAT ], for example, which are in a cyclical downturn and we have quite a number of customers in that range across Asia-Pacific. So that has negatively impacted the result. What has positively impacted, still the result is electromobility. And we believe, especially looking into China, there are a lot of exciting projects going on with autonomous driving cars, BYD, a new project that we were able to win moving forward. So I would judge and say it's probably going to stay rather flat over the next months without knowing it, of course. But there are industries which are still rather going down. In semicon, we expect to have a revival maybe Q4, maybe Q1 2024. And -- but other industries are doing relatively okay-ish. But the overall mood across Asia-Pacific, I would say except India, is a bit depressed. India itself is actually doing quite well. If you look at India and separate a bit the markets, they're also benefiting from this China Plus One strategy that a lot of customers have. So they want to move away from China as a key source or don't want to be dependent on and move over to India. For example, Foxconn, they decided to move their Apple production, big scale from China over to India, which in many instances, we can benefit and we're also growing nicely double digit in India, by the way. So -- and Asia is a bit of mixed picture. There are some industries moving well. Overall, I would judge to say it's going to be rather flat for the next 6 months. Stephan, anything to add?

No, from my side.

I hope I could answer your question.

Yes. And maybe on wages, can you quantify how much wage inflation was in the first half? And what do you expect it to be in the second half? And then…

Stephan?

Yes, I can answer that one. Overall, what we see for the group is about 5% to 6% wage inflation in average. So well, definitely over-proportional to what we have seen in the last years. The specific -- a bit specific for the Bossard Group is that we do in general salary adjustments 1st of May. So that's usually having the increase or the impact in the second half. So in the first half, it's a combination between the higher FTEs and the inflation. So the impact on the salary adjustments was maybe 1 -- about CHF 1 million or CHF 1.5 million. So the bigger impact we will see on the second half.

And then maybe the third one, if I may. And I hope that's not too much of a repetition for you. So on your ERP systems, you're planning to invest CHF 70 million. That's right. And I think and then you have invested already last year, CHF 15 million. And if I look at your presentation in the first half, you have invested CHF 5 million. So does this mean that you're a bit behind your investment plan in terms of ERP, or where do you stand? Where do we stand here? And how much do you intend to spend this year?

Stephan, that's a money question.

Yes. This year, we expect to spend about CHF 14 million to CHF 15 million from that perspective, I mean, what's on the platform. The other part of - or that's the CapEx, and of course, with the rollouts, we also have OpEx. With the rollouts, we have more licenses need and so forth. So that's a bit combination of that. But overall, it's about CHF 14 million, CHF 15 million this year. That's what we expect. And then of course, it always depends a bit on the plan, whether we can stick to the plan, or whether there is anything holding us back. But we implemented Singapore according to plan. And we have 2 additional companies coming up, which is planned to introduce the beginning of Q4.

Okay. And then your remaining budget is still CHF 40 million. Is that right?

Well, I have here -- I have to add that…

Yes.

…we've already introduced Microsoft AX 2012 in Germany 4 years ago. And that's part of that budget. So now, I cannot give you an exact number here, but it's not only the numbers that you brought up, it's already more that we spent already a couple of years ago.

The next question is from the line of Michael Roost from Baader-Helvea.

Can you hear me?

Yes, loud and clear.

Yes.

Perfect. Excellent. Excellent. Actually, I just have 1 question. So I wouldn't take up too much of your time. On the working capital, so you did quite a good job, I have to say, in the first half of reducing working capital from the higher levels last year. How do you expect that to continue in the second half? Are you going to accelerate that further? Or what do you expect? And also maybe as a scenario analysis, assuming growth, or let's say, things start to cool down further, can you accelerate that even further?

I can take that question up. Yes, we are expecting a further normalization of that. At the end of the day, it all depends on the demand of our customers. If the demand stays good or high, then of course, that helps us to accelerate. If the demand further, let's say, weakens, it takes a bit longer to adjust our inventories about. But I expect that we will see a further normalization also on our inventories and having also a positive impact from that perspective also on the cash flow in the second half.

Okay, perfect.

The next question is from the line of Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel.

Two questions for me. First, on destocking, you have a couple of decades to look back. What would you say? How long did these destocking periods typically last? Is it 1 quarter, is it 2, 3, 4? And when did it start? Maybe that's the first.

I would -- maybe I'll try. Now you're talking about our customer base. And I think last year, customers still expected parts to be with long lead times. So they were still sitting on stock and ordering. I would say, started somewhere beginning of the year into the last 6 months. And we hope that by Q4 or so that will start to normalize again. So that will be my judgment. But I have to say that -- a big but, it's probably also a bit different by industry, but I would say, in general, and the average, I would expect that this would go down all the lines by Q4. But okay, we don't know.

Good. And the second one on artificial intelligence. I mean, yes, a lot of people are speaking about it. Could you quantify the potential midterm savings you're going to see there? And are these kinds of, yes, operational efficiency improvements, I would tell them, are they baked into your guidance?

Well, first of all, on the -- like investing in the sales initiatives and in our operations engine, that means, of course, we want to be more efficient in winning new customers by using digital lead gen. So as I mentioned, the pipeline conversion, which is accelerated and then also, hopefully, at higher margins, but okay. And how much exactly, that's pretty hard to say. Also, on the ERP side, I think we have to see that this is a multiple year process to introduce all the systems or the system across the group. And we only have the full efficiency effect once we're having it in all 32 countries. So now we have started with 3 and this is going on. So there is a time where we have legacy systems to run for the next 3 years. And so we will also have additional cost for that. So on the operations engine, ERP system side, it could take a couple of years before we see the full benefit -- full efficiency benefit. Unfortunately, we have to change the system or we had to change. But this is a long-term effect, which could take years. On the sales engine side, I would say this effect, we should see much quicker. But how much exactly? Well, I would refer to our midterm guidance of 12% to 15% EBIT margin for that to grow hopefully soon.

The next question is from the line of Sebastian Vogel from UBS.

I have 3 questions. I would ask them one by one. The first one is on the margin trajectory or seasonality in that regard. So H1 versus H2, if I am not mistaken in the past -- more in normal past years, let's put that way, H2 margin was maybe around like 150 basis points, 200 basis points lower than the first one. Also given, I guess, regarding labor seasonality, as Stephan was pointing out, is 2023 a year that could be in that sense shape out a little bit like this normal average in that sense. Or what is your thinking in that context?

Stephan?

Well, I would expect that it's going to be kind of what we have seen as an average in the past that there is certain seasonalities, of course. I think what's a bit different is that we will see also for the currency impact on the second half. If I draw your attention to the Q2, currency was impacting the top line almost by 6%. If you look the -- on the Swiss appreciation, specifically in the last 10 days, vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar and the euro. So that we'll expect to remain and you have seen a bit also from the slide though indicative where I show you the impact from the currency for the first half on the EBIT. So that might be an additional -- a bit of an additional burden from that perspective. But again, it's -- I think, on general, if you look in the second half, as Daniel mentioned, I think you will see rather is a softening or a stable softening of the demand and then not an acceleration. So we -- I rather see that we will see kind of this 1.5 -- 1 to 1.5 basis points in the second half.

And the second one is regarding a comment in the press release from the morning in which you were -- when you were talking about the outlook, and about that on a best case, you see stable pricing there. Does that mean that in sort of best case and sort of a base case, do you expect some pricing pressure building up on your side that your customers are asking you for lower prices and you need to give in there?

Well, maybe I can take that and say we have already expected that in the first half. And well, I think we were not too bad at defending this -- the high level. Will the pressure increase? I guess, yes. Because the overall pressure on our customers will increase as well. And they will come back and ask for it. On the other hand, we also have to see that we have 2/3s of our inventory are special parts where we have a fixed volume and price agreement with customers. So whenever they order a new batch, there will be a new price negotiated at a -- negotiated a new price level. So it's not that we have to sell off the expensive stock cheap. That's not what it is. It's more -- it's rather that we have to re-quote and then see, hopefully, to still gain a decent margin. So in that sense, I am confident that we have a big chunk of our stock that we can sell still at a good margin. So in that sense, customers will come and ask for sure. Can we defend it? I think we have many arguments and also structural prerequisites to fend this.

And the last thing on the Smart Factory Services since you mentioned great growth rates over there and that's pretty much impressive. I was just wondering to put things into context. How much of sort of is the revenue contribution at the moment from these sort of services at the group level?

Well, as indicated earlier, this is still -- this is minor and will stay minor. So it's maybe all together with all the services, it's maybe 1.5% of our total revenue. But it was never and is never the intention for this to grow dramatically in the sense that this is going to be 50% of our sales or so. But it's here, it's like a shoehorn to create product sales. So our main revenue driver is product sales. Services are here to create value and stickiness and therefore driving the product sales. So -- but to answer your question, it's about 1.5%.

The next question is from the line of [ Christoph Growlr from AWP ].

I'm not quite sure if you already answered my question. But I'd rather try to ask it again. You mentioned some cost saving measures in your presentations. Can you give maybe some more details into this? In what areas are you planning to cut your costs? Or -- and maybe can you repeat it for me?

Stephan, maybe you can…

Yes, I can answer that. I cannot remember that we talked about cost cutting measures.

No. I was also thinking where did we talk about it.

I know because, again, based on our midterm strategic plan on the initiatives, I think we're going to spend money. I think that's what we said. It's a phase of over-proportional spending. And it's all aligned with the strategic initiatives. As Daniel mentioned, it's with the sales engine, operation engine and the biggest part is the digitalization and it's the new ERP system, which we're going to have. Of course, as we always say, managing the cycles, we need to watch the cost as well. But we didn't talk about taking cost measures.

Okay. Sorry, then, I got it wrong.

No, but overall, I mean, it's a fact that you look at your strategic project portfolios and say, okay, which ones or the elements of projects that you want to park and say, okay, maybe you can postpone or not and we did that and also looking at the personnel cost development, obviously, we look into being more efficient and looking into people retiring, whether we need to replace or not, those are natural things we're looking at in times where the overall economy is cooling a bit off. Yet we still do intentionally invest in our strategic initiatives because I can just repeat maybe what we've said earlier, we're thinking in decades and not in quarters. So we do invest quite a bit into our strategic initiatives moving forward. But we did look into things that we say, okay, could we park them or could we postpone them?

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Marta Bruska from Berenberg.

Congratulations on the excellent quarter. So I hope you didn't mind a little bit philosophically. So in Europe, we are already for a while, below 50 in terms of PMIs. In some markets, they're as low as they were during the darkest time of the COVID pandemic. So do you really think they could get -- that could get even worse from here in terms of expectations?

That's a good question. I am -- we don't know, of course. And we see industries -- cyclical industries like semicon, as I mentioned, which are in a down cycle, which are probably coming back looking at all the digital needs that are still around, I'm confident that this will grow. Also, looking at the whole EV environment and governments investing in those areas, I'm very, very confident looking into India as a special market, which is growing nicely. I think this -- there we see definitely a good growth by the way on the PMI. I think they're at 57 or something, quite standing out of the crowd. It's so difficult, Marta, because now with all the geopolitical things still going on and it's really hard to say what's going to happen here. I hope, of course, it's not going to get worse. And we do see industries, which are investing, renewable energies, EV, I mentioned, railway, healthcare, we'll invest further in the future. So I'm -- I think it's just a matter of time until this will relax again unless there is a war or anything coming. I know that's maybe not so clear. But actually, this is where we are in right now. So we don't see that clearly how it's going to evolve. I'm optimistic. And I think we will see nice, growing spots moving forward that the overall climate, I think, has been a bit depressed and maybe for the next couple of months, I'm afraid.

It's kind of peak uncertainty.

Absolutely.

Yes.

But I wish I could -- we could see clearer, but it's…

Maybe I think I can add here. And this is also from experience. Of course, we have now recycled and they can't influence the cycle, but we have to manage the cycle. But I mean, all these -- through these periods, opportunities are not going away. We have a broad existing customer base, I think also digitalization or inflation, the shortage of labor, these topics are not going away. So we have offerings vis-a-vis our customers, which are independently off of the cycle. So just to give a positive notion on the opportunities we have and what we also have learned if we can or what we do see doing and gaining new customers from that perspective, then usually, we benefit a bit over-proportionally when these -- when we're going to see the tailwind and I like every cycle, it will change. It's just a question of time from that perspective.

Excellent.

So far, there are no further questions. And I hand back to Dr. Daniel Bossard for closing comments.

Yes. So I'd like to thank you for taking the time to listening in. Again, the first half year was the second best in the Bossard history, maybe not to forget that. And looking forward, there are -- there is a number of uncertainties. But as Stephan mentioned, there's a lot of opportunities as well and we're consequently following those, again, we're thinking in decades and not in quarters. We're very optimistic that we're on the right track with our systems and services. So in that sense, thanks for listening in. And we'll be happy to update you again by the end of the year or beginning next year of the year results. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect. Thank you very much for joining and have a pleasant day. Good bye.