Dätwyler Holding AG (DAE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today here at Zurich and as well in the live web stream. A warm welcome to Datwyler's Annual Investors and Media Conference for the Financial Year 2025. My name is Volker Cwielong; I'm CEO of Datwyler. And with me today are Judith van Walsum, CFO; and as well Katharina Immoor and Guido Unternahrer from Investor Relations. First of all, I'd like to begin by sincerely thanking our global team for their exceptional dedication and commitment to Datwyler 2025. We all know '25 was not an easy year when it came to the market environment, but it was a defining year for us, and a year in which we have created an important momentum toward our ambition and in a year that we could deliver. We have elevated our operational performance. We have sharpened our strategy with a clear focus on profitable growth. We have talked about that as well in our Capital Markets Day end of last year. We have materially strengthened our earnings quality and created a good momentum behind our transformation program, ForwardNow. A transformation that is not only a short-term cost saving and improvement program, but also reshaping the way we work, it's reshaping the way we collaborate and as well changing the way how we create value for the future. And in addition to that, with the acquisition of the majority stake at Capsul'in, towards the year-end we made an important strategic move. We have strengthened our position in aluminum single-serve coffee capsules, and we could expand our presence in this attractive market. And let me briefly walk you through today's agenda. I will start with a short business review and the key highlights for 2025. Judith will then take you through the full year financials in more detail. And after that, I will return to share our market perspective and outlook for 2026 before we open the floor for your questions. All right. Let's now turn to our 2025 year performance. I think 2025 shows clearly that Datwyler is accelerating with health care-led growth, with expanding margins, and with an improving earnings quality. We've delivered net revenues of CHF 1.1 billion. We could achieve a 3.1% currency-adjusted growth, facing significant currency headwinds of 3.7% on our top line. And our growth was really clearly defined and driven by the Division Healthcare, and this is also reinforcing the structural shift of our portfolio towards the high-value offering. We increased our EBIT margin to 12.4%. This is a 170-basis point improvement year-on-year on an adjusted basis. As we all know, previous year's figures were impacted from the transformation program ForwardNow. And this reflects scale effects in Healthcare, a structurally improved product mix, and also first measurable results and benefits from the ForwardNow program, which had only been started and ramped up during the first quarter of 2025. And as our high-value portfolio expands, the operating leverage becomes increasingly visible. Division Healthcare has clearly reestablished itself as our growth and margin engine. We have delivered 8.1% currency-adjusted growth in that division. And we could successfully ramp up the GLP-1 component production. We could accelerate the momentum for our NeoFlex product range and further shift in our pipeline towards the high-value offering. And now our pipeline consists of around 70% of total projects in that very segment of high-value offering. And this strong mix evolution underpins clearly the sustainability, the visibility and the quality of our future earnings. The Division Industrial showed resilience and also improved profitability with an EBIT margin of 8.9% in a particularly challenging environment. Flat revenues, combined with margin expansion, demonstrate first of all a disciplined cost management, a good transparency in that segment and a selective growth in attractive applications, particularly in Food & Beverage and Automotive in China. Our transformation program ForwardNow is progressing in plan and is already, as mentioned, contributing to our performance. And let's remind, this program is not about short-term savings, it is really a change in the operating model. It also supports a sustainable margin expansion and a long-term value creation as we are targeting based on our strategic targets. Looking at our end markets. The progress in 2025 becomes even clearer. Healthcare remains our largest and least cyclical end market, now accounting for 42% of the group revenues, while Industrial provides diversification across Automotive, Food & Beverage and selected niche markets in diversified industrial areas. In Healthcare, growth was supported by the return of strong underlying customer demand and successful new product launches. Ordering patterns normalized from the beginning of the second quarter onward and have remained stable since. At the same time, the increasing share of high-value offerings translated directly into higher margins and better capacity utilization of our factories. Across Automotive and Industrial, market conditions remain mixed. While the demand in Europe and the United States and Americas, in general, was challenging. We still saw selective growth in China and also continued momentum in Food & Beverage and is also supported by a regulatory-driven shift from plastic to aluminum as material of choice for most of the customers. Across all the end markets, we continue to sharpen our portfolio with a clear focus on system critical applications, and we could strengthen execution discipline, fully in line with our strategic priorities and our focus on profitable growth. And before I go in more detail, I would now like to hand over to Judith, who will walk you through the numbers in detail. Judith, over to you.

Thanks very much, Volker. So let's move to the P&L, if we could. As Volker already indicated, we landed the year 2025 with sales or net revenue of CHF 1.1 billion, marginally below prior year. But if you adjust it for the unfavorable FX impact, it actually had a growth of 3.1%. Profitability increased significantly. And a very good example of that, you see if you focus on the gross profit line, where we actually were growing by over 8%. Two factors drive that. As already mentioned, healthcare started growing again and not just growing in terms of volumes, but also in terms of bringing in the right product mix that allowed us to have a very high fall-through to the gross profit line and subsequently, the EBIT and the net results. Another aspect was that in parallel, we worked also enabled and accelerated through ForwardNow, our transformation program on taking out costs, on improving the potential for synergies in our organization, on improving operational efficiency, which helped really contain that COGS line. So the COGS line itself actually contracted by minus 3.1%, which is substantially below naturally the minus 0.6% on the sales line. So that is a key factor for us being able to improve our gross margin from the 21% range to 23.4%. Our operating expenses went down, but that is particularly due to a baseline effect because in the year 2024, if you may recall, we posted quite a big provision for our transformation program at the amount of CHF 28.5 million, plus an additional impairment of CHF 9.4 million. So the -- obviously, we don't have that provision this year in '25, and that automatically led then to a lowering of the operating expenses. If you back out, however, the provision, you will see that we have a small increase in R&D, M&D and G&A. I will speak about that increase at a later point in time. Overall, our EBIT then increased to CHF 136.6 million. That is an EBIT margin of 12.4%. Now what is important is that if we compare that year-over-year, you see massive growth numbers. But that is naturally because that CHF 80 million in 2024 included that unfavorable impact of the transformation program. If we correct the figures for that impact and try to get to a more like-to-like comparison, you will actually see that the EBIT still increased by around 16% in reported terms and 19% in adjusted terms, so FX-adjusted terms. So double-digit growth in our EBIT over the last year, which, as I said, comes really back to those 2 main factors, the better performance in the Healthcare Division and very, very tight cost management and operational efficiency improvements across the board, but particularly also in Industrial. This EBIT improvement, you see then reflected in the net result as well, where the net result ended up at CHF 81 million. That is around 7.3% of sales, if I'm not incorrect. Also here, the same logic is applicable. The growth actually on a like-to-like basis was around 17% and FX adjusted nearly 20%. The net result was supported by a better result on net -- yes, on net finance results, so on the FX impact, the hedging costs as well as the interest payments. We did face, however, higher tax expenditure, and I will come back to that point at a later point in time. So let's move and deep dive a bit on to the sales, the net revenues. Here, you see the bridge. And I think it is quite visually clear how big the impact has been of the devaluation of different currencies, notably the U.S. dollar against the strong Swiss franc. Volker already indicated the CHF 41 million accounts for a minus 3.7% impact on our top line, also materially negative impact. However, that impact was to a large extent offset by the increase in volumes and particularly improvement in the product mix, the type of products that we're selling in the Healthcare Division, which led to a very, very positive impact and also by another CHF 10 million in price increases. One word about those price increases, those are not only negotiated price increases. Very often -- or these are, in fact, any product where we have a price increase. So if we have contracts that were indexed against, for example, the price of crude oil, those price increases are in those numbers as well. If we had an ex-factory contract and tariffs were going up, we could basically also reflect those price increases into the prices put forward or put on towards our customers. In other words, yes, a big negative FX impact. At the same time, thanks to a much better volume and product mix and price increases, we were able to get to that CHF 1.1 billion, so pretty much flattish versus prior year. If we now move to how that then translates into the EBIT bridge. Then there are in this bridge naturally 2 items that stand out. I start with the one that you can see totally on the right. Naturally, last year, we had that provision of CHF 28.5 million plus that impairment of CHF 9.4 million amounts to CHF 37.9 million as an impact of the transformation program. If you put that aside and really look at what is operationally relevant for us, then you can see the big fall-through coming from the top line, having in the form of CHF 34 million, having a really good impact on our EBIT. Not to be ignored is exactly that point that I mentioned before about the development of the COGS line. Minus 3.1% against the top line of minus 0.6% is a good accomplishment and shows the effort that we're putting in, in improving our overall cost structure. As mentioned, some of those changes are structural. You may recall that we have closed one of the sites over the last year. Some of them are really focused on getting sustainable improvements in procurement and therefore, into the cost of very many of our inputs. So that gives you a bit of an idea. Now speaking towards the other operating expenditures, you will see in the financial statements that in absolute terms, each of the lines has gone up slightly by roughly CHF 1 million. For R&D and for M&S, naturally, that has been a conscious choice and an essential part also of what we strategically seek to drive. Our R&D is roughly 4% of our sales. R&D is, however, essential to drive future competitiveness. So innovation is a big theme and was also a big theme, for example, in the partial acquisition of Capsul'in. When we look at M&S, we know that as a very industrial organized company, our commercial focus was somewhat underdeveloped. In the current market environment, we had to address that to build up our capabilities, our commercial capabilities and strength to position ourselves also better towards those customers that are interesting for us, those products where we can actually get a higher margin and where we have higher entry barriers. The area that is an area that remains very much for us an area to watch is naturally G&A. One should always watch G&A currently at around 6% of sales. We had to increase -- invest a bit in the framework that allows us to manage Datwyler more as one Datwyler versus as a collection of individual sites. If we want to get the best potential out of the different sites and the geographic presence we have, we had to strengthen some of the functions at divisional and also at group level. A very good example of this is procurement. And actually, a good part of what we see translated into that lower COGS line is also thanks to the concerted efforts of that strengthened organization. Let's move to the next slide. We deep dive now a bit on the 2 divisions, and we start with Healthcare. Healthy growth with 3.7%. If we take out CHF 19 million in FX impact, it is actually a growth of 8.1%. It really showed that Q2 onwards, we had that normalization of the order patterns, destocking was over and growth has come back. And the good thing is, in many ways, that growth has back also in segments where we can get a higher profitability. Against that top line, our EBIT improved with 28%. Now one explanation on the full year 2024, where we list CHF 62 million. This is an adjusted number. We took out of the number or we added back on the impact of the ForwardNow program to be able to have a better like-for-like comparison. If you really look back at last year's data and you would look at the growth in reported terms, it would be a multiple of the 28%. So we felt it was better to show this to you in a like-to-like fashion. Even so, 28% growth in EBIT against a revenue of 3.7% shows the big fall-through of the product mix as well as a few other factors. There are 2 additional ones I want to mention in addition to that product mix. One is basically the fact that with more volumes coming through, naturally also capacity utilization in Healthcare is improving. We've mentioned this at several meetings in the past, but in Healthcare due to the investments we've made in the past, we are able to absorb another CHF 100 million and by now, CHF 180 million of the right products without having to invest in another plant. You would have to clearly invest in people. You would have to invest in additional equipment, but we are able to get to a really good fall-through also because of better -- in Germany, you would say [Foreign Language], right, a better capacity utilization. A third factor is that also Healthcare is benefiting from the ForwardNow program in the sense that there are operational efficiency improvements that we can particularly undertake in our older plants to really look at the flow of the production, whether the processes are automated to the appropriate level and make sure that through site consolidation and layout improvements, we get more out of the site than what has happened in the past. So those 3 factors contribute to a very good profit result in Healthcare and a 17.1% EBIT margin. One of the essential parts is the scaling up towards what we call a higher value offering, an offering where you have a higher margin potential. And we make steady but surely progress in that area. We increased from around 1/3 to 35% in HVO. HVO stands for first line as well as certain packaging solutions like rapid transport and ready-to-use. The revenue split stayed in general, flattish versus prior year, some minor movements on Europe and on Asia, but pretty much still the same picture as what we've had last year. Let's move then to Industrial. In Industrial, we naturally have faced a very difficult and challenging and very different market situation than in Healthcare. So overall, the top line went down in reported terms by minus 3%, minus 3.3%. And when you take out the FX impact of a negative CHF 22 million, you end up at a flat growth versus prior year. So in Industrial, what was really important was that particularly cost containment had to be done in order to make sure that we would lose too much on the top line. And it's very nice to see that the team that is under a new leadership since actually a year now, February last year, he was introduced to this meeting that we actually have been able to increase our profitability slightly and grow our overall EBIT. So the name of the game there has been really how do we mitigate these negative impacts on the top line and ensure that through structural cost improvements, we are able to make a way forward. Now in Industrial, we can't treat all aspects of Industrial in the same way. So we have parts of Industrial, notably in the Automotive business unit that are really negatively impacted by the current environment, yes? If I speak and Volker can speak to that better than I do. But if we speak, for example, about the automotive industry in Europe, that is not very encouraging. Yet there are also a number of areas where we see the potential for growth and the potential for profitability. And that's particularly in those markets where we're selling towards electrification systems, so where we have platform applications for electrification purposes. China is, in that sense, also an area that stays very much in our focus. Overall, Food & Beverage, if I switch to another BU, had stable growth and remains a main contributor to our EBIT. And in industries, which is covering, for example, aerospace, defense industry and also very much having a focus on the MedTech industry, we actually see a solid growth from a very low base, but moving definitely in the right direction. When we look at the sales geographically, a very similar picture, some minor changes between what's happening in Asia and the Americas, but generally speaking, the same distribution of our revenues. All right. That then brings me to what a slide that we thought was helpful to integrate because it shows kind of like half year 1 versus half year 2. And what you can see is that in contrast to what happened in '24, where we lost somewhat on the second half year, we have actually been able to sustain in EBIT the trend towards a better profitability. In Healthcare, actually we went up from 16.9% in half year 1 to 17.4% in half year 2. In Healthcare, we had a very challenging first quarter. And really that end of the de-stocking and the start of the normalization and increase again of a solid demand started Q2 onwards. So you saw it already represented a bit in the half year results. It is even clearer now for the full year results. For Industrial, it took a moment to get some of these structural measures that we have been adopting translated into our number, and they really have come to fruition in the second half of the year. So that sets the stage well basically for the year to come, okay? Last slide on the P&L. I have to come back to the net finance results and the income tax expenses. So the net finance results are always dominated by 2 elements. On the one hand side is actually the interest payments that we pay over loans. Now we have brought down our loans substantially. We've repaid around CHF 70 million to our anchor investor, and that obviously has led also to a lower amount of interest payments versus prior year. The other element that we need to look at is, I convenient now called hedging cost, but it is basically we have quite some FX exposure. You can see that also in the financial report. If you look under net finance results, you can see that we had a negative FX exposure on our intercompany loans of about CHF 28 million that we then offset through the fair market value of the hedges, forward contracts that we have in place. Now overall, so -- and therefore, we carry hedging costs. Now overall, our intercompany loans went down quite materially, and therefore, we actually have around CHF 3.7 million less in -- or CHF 3.8 million less in costs that are linked to hedging. So we benefited clearly from better interest and finance expenses or lower interest and finance expenses. When we get to income tax, we have to speak for a moment around the base here, the year '24. In '24, we had, in absolute terms, naturally lower tax expenses, CHF 21 million. However, the effective tax rate was over 40%. The reason is quite straightforward. We had naturally in '24, again, that ForwardNow provision. And therefore, the taxable income was substantially or materially lower than in previous years than what it is now. In addition, we have quite a strict policy of when do we recognize deferred tax assets. In some cases, in the U.S., you can't recognize them because there are limitations on, for example, to what extent you can recognize interest payments. In other cases, we took as an organization, and I've spoken to that in previous sessions, a conscious choice not to recognize it, even though that then leads to a higher tax expense. But that was really based on what we felt was justifiable and towards also our auditors. In '25, naturally, our taxable income has come up substantially because better performance leads to a higher exposure there. And you can see that in the average tax rate, which actually went up from 21.4% to 23.6%. The overall DTAs that we did not recognize went down, and that leads then in the end to the increase in tax expenses as well as -- but a lowering of the effective tax rate from 40% to 28.7%, okay? So we're moving in the right direction. Maybe I should say it like that. Let's then move away from the P&L, and we look, first of all, at the balance sheet and some of the key indicators that are relevant for the external community and also for us internally. The first one that I would like to highlight is net working capital. Overall, net working capital went down in absolute terms to the CHF 295 million range. Also, our cash conversion cycle improved from around 119 to around 114 days. This is particularly due to improvements in our accounts payables. And again, this is where the strengthening of our procurement organization has been -- that was enabled by ForwardNow has been critical. So we have -- when I look at the other items, accounts receivables in absolute terms stayed relatively flat. Inventories in absolute terms went down, partly because we seek to manage inventories better, partly also because of the fact that we could sell also from or meet some of the increase in demand from the inventories, particularly over the Christmas period. So is there room for improvement? Absolutely. We're not yet there where we want to be, but the progress made in getting net working capital down to an appropriate level is -- it's a good step forward. When we then look at the next slide, then you can see a picture where I personally am quite proud of. We were able to get the leverage below 2x, and we ended up at 1.8x or rounded 1.8x to be precise, it's 1.77x. So we were quite happy about that. Part of that is naturally due to the fact that we could repay CHF 70 million to our anchor investor and therefore, lower our net debt or our debt to the -- or our debt, yes, considerably. And in fact, the loans that we have to pay now went down from CHF 250 million to CHF 145 million. We always look at this picture at net debt, which means that we also take into account the CHF 125 million in cash balances. And there, you can see indeed that year-over-year, we had a lowering of around CHF 68 million from the CHF 447 million to CHF 379 million. If you look at that lowering in net debt and you combine it with an increase in the last 12-month rolling EBITDA, you do get to that positive result of having a leverage of 1.8x. The last 12-month EBITDA grew in reported terms by around 25%. So that gives you a bit of an indicated. Adjusted, it would be around 2%. I come to my last slide, and that is then an insight in the cash flow statement. There we basically see that we have been able to maintain a solid free cash flow, marginal improvement of around 1% year-over-year. This matters because that free cash flow tells us what we can pay back in terms of our loans and how we can reduce our indebtedness. When we look at what makes up the free cash flow, which is basically the operating free cash flow as well as the cash flow from investment activities, we see that the net flow from operating activities increased slightly. You could naturally ask yourself, well, why don't we see that enormous jump in net results reflected in the cash flow from operating activities. In part, that is again due to the fact that you have to take out the cost of ForwardNow because they are not cash relevant. And in part, that is due to the fact that we capture more funds into accounts receivables and inventories due to the higher sales. When we look at the net cash that results from investment activities, actually, CapEx has gone up to CHF 52.7 million, which is around a 14% increase. However, that is in absolute terms, around CHF 7 million or EUR 8 million. And that, however, is offset by the inflow of CHF 7.7 million in the form of sales of plant property and equipment. When we close a site in the U.S., we, of course, also could sell the land that came with it. And maybe that's the last point I still would like to highlight that is also relevant for the P&L. We had a one-off impact in the Industrial results of around CHF 4.5 million linked to the sale of land and buildings in the U.S. So on that note, I would like to hand over to Volker to give an outlook.

Thank you very much, Judith. Let me now turn to our expectations for 2026 and explain how we see both the market environment and how we do position Datwyler to deliver this stepwise growth and the further profitability improvement. At the same time, we remain mindful that the global environment continues to be highly volatile and very difficult to read. We have an ongoing number of geopolitical tensions and also still an increasing uncertainty, I would say, around trade and tariff policies, although some of the big buckets have calmed down a bit. Against this backdrop, let me remind you that our diversified end market exposure and local-for-local footprint gives us an important element of resilience in that context. In Healthcare, structural growth is expected to continue in injectables, biologics and self-administration therapies. This is supported by demographics, innovation and as well a patient-centric delivery systems trend. We are strongly positioned in these applications with expanding exposure to high-value projects to our GLP-1 ramp-ups and as well increasing volumes across scalable primary packaging components. And particularly, our offering for large molecules applications gain enormous traction at our partners. The global availability of our first-line plant network, and with that, the technology in 3 regions; Americas, Europe and India clearly stands out in the market, and that will remain also for many years, that's my assumption. In Automotive, we expect overall vehicle production to remain broadly flat in 2026. Asia, particularly China, is likely to continue on a more stable trajectory, while I think that Europe and Americas have a slight potential to see a modest recovery from this very low base we have experienced in 2025. Our positioning in electrification-related applications in connectors and in system critical components and the powertrain allows us to grow through market share and also through application mix rather than only relying on the overall volume expansion. In Food & Beverage, regulation is expected to further accelerate the shift from plastic to aluminum capsules. And through a targeted exposure to that segment of aluminum coffee capsules and as well the acquisition of the majority stake in Capsul'in, we are expanding scale and IP in this attractive market. Capsul'in Datwyler have maintained a long-standing partnership for many years. I mean, the first contract we had in 2019, the first delivery contract was signed in 2020. So we know each other very well from the past. And with the vast majority of Capsul'in's aluminum capsules today produced by Datwyler, we are very confident that this is the right way to go forward. And in Industries, we could secure strategically relevant new projects, and we also expect a stable demand with a selective growth in structurally attractive end markets such as energy, aerospace, defense and as well medical devices. Datwyler is selectively positioned in these applications where high technical requirements and regulatory standards create durable and long-standing entry barriers for others. And overall, our outlook is not based on a broad cyclical recovery, but really on structural trends that we see and our deliberate positioning in these segments where we can really sustainably outperform our end markets on the long term. If you want to dig in deep into that, I would recommend the documents from the Capital Markets Day, we really spoke to that for each and every segment. Well, market set the stage, but execution drives results. 2026 remains an execution-driven year. Our focus is on disciplined implementation of our strategic initiatives and as well on operational improvements. First, the product portfolio discipline. We continue to enhance the earnings quality and as well, we reduced the complexity in our SKU portfolio by focusing clearly on high-value system critical components in both divisions where we can be the best supplier. And second, the footprint optimization. We have started with that. Judith spoke to the Vandalia close, but we are further refining our global production and technology footprint, first of all, to improve our cost efficiency, the capital allocation and as well the speed to industrialization. We combine activities, we streamline the layouts, we roll out standards and as well, we enhance the digitalization on our shop floor. Third, our commercial excellence. We continue strengthening the value-based pricing with our customers and the project selectivity to ensure that the growth we achieved translates into reliable earnings and this in a sustainable way. Fourth, innovation to launch. We prioritize the speed from development to commercialization. Particularly in Healthcare, we see that from NeoFlex, very strong growth in our portfolio here. And selected Industrial niches and as well our venture units. They gained real momentum and delivered really good results and progress, but this needs to translate into growth and earnings. We will focus that much more than in the previous years. It's now the time to harvest what we have invested. And finally, execution discipline through ForwardNow. We set ForwardNow with the transformation office. We spoke to that in earlier events. And the program continues to deliver measurable efficiency gains and higher margins, and it's supporting really the progress towards our midterm targets. And this combination really confirms and underpins the confidence in the way ahead for 2026 that we can deliver the promised step-wise uptick and improvements towards these midterm targets. If you look at our business model and the competitive advantage we offer, this lies in how we create value from early-stage collaboration with our customers to a scalable industrialization. So we do combine our core competencies, material expertise, solution design and high-volume automated manufacturing or product industrialization. And this we do with a continuous improvement culture that gets stronger and stronger within the organization. We do engage early in our customers' development processes. We do co-engineer optimized solutions, and then we do scale them efficiently into serious production. And this end-to-end integration from design to industrialization and delivery, this creates durable differentiation and as well is a very good and reliable basement for long-term partnerships. And exactly this integrated business model allows us to operate in demanding, highly regulated applications where really reliability and quality are decisive for our customers and partners. And with various initiatives underway, our portfolio will increasingly shift toward products and projects that cover the maximum portion and the largest share of the value chain, allowing us to capture more value from each and every transaction. And our capital allocation follows a similar principle. We consistently balance 3 dimensions: profitability of a business, cyclicality of a business and as well the intensity of investments in that particular business. Healthcare, for instance, combines structural growth and strong margins and therefore, will clearly remain our primary growth engine. Within Industrial, we are deliberately steering the portfolio towards lower cyclicality and higher-margin niches, while at the same time, maintaining strict capital discipline. The objective of that is to build a business portfolio that is structurally more resilient, that is more attractive and more focused. Selective inorganic growth supports this approach clearly, but only when it strengthens our core business model and improves the quality of our earnings. And nevertheless, our current focus clearly remains on delivering our ForwardNow initiatives. But this brings me directly to our engagement in Capsul'in. The announced majority participation in Capsul'in is a clear example of our capital allocation discipline in action. Why? Datwyler and Capsul'in have maintained a strong -- a very long-standing and strong partnership built on complementary strengths. Capsul'in focus on solution design, and market asset-light business model. While Datwyler was contributing to this partnership with deep material expertise and the operational execution as industrial partner. And this collaboration has proven highly successful over 7 years. Strategically, the transaction further strengthens our solution design capabilities within our Food & Beverage end markets and integrates them more firmly into our core business model. Combining innovation, material know-how, and industrial scale under one roof. In a nutshell, our strength has always been the combination of material expertise and industrial scale. With Capsul'in, we extend this model upstream by embedding solution design capabilities earlier in the value chain. And it strengthens Datwyler's position as a partner delivering complete high-performance solutions in a highly regulated Food & Beverage environment, which is a strong asset. And therefore, Capsul'in does not diversify us away from our strategy, vice versa. I mean it reinforces and completes it clearly. And let me close the outlook with our midterm targets, which we can confirm today. At group level, we continue to target organic revenue growth in the higher single-digit range and an EBIT margin of more than 17% under normal operating market conditions. Healthcare is back as the core growth and margin driver, while Industrial is expected to deliver moderate growth with steadily improving profitability. The progress we made in 2025 in execution, in portfolio quality and the earnings resilience gives us confidence that we are on the right path. And I remember what I've promised 1 year ago. I've promised reduced complexity. I've promised to increase the quality of earnings. Judith promised to reduce our debt. And to create a momentum that stands and proves a continuous increase of sales of growth with high margin quality. So Datwyler is back in the race with a clear plan, a sharpened and focused strategy and powered by an exceptional global team. And with that, I will briefly touch on the planned changes in the Board of Directors. At the upcoming Annual General Meeting, Jurg Fedier and Dr. Gabi Huber will step down from the Board after many years of dedicated service. On behalf of the Board and the Executive Committee, I would like to sincerely thank them for their invaluable contributions and their long-standing commitment to Datwyler. On a personal note, I'm especially grateful for the outstanding and trustful collaboration we have shared over the last 2 years, their guidance, their experience and support have meant a great deal to me and to our company. They have helped to shape that Datwyler's path forward, and we owe them our sincere appreciation. At the same time, the Board of Directors will propose Stephanie Bregy and Christian Holzgang as new members of the Board of Directors, both bring a strong leadership expertise and relevant industrial and governance expertise to further strengthen the Board's overall competence profile. These changes ensure continuity while adding fresh perspectives, fully in line with our long-term strategic direction. And in addition to that, the Board of Directors has nominated Jens Breu as a successor to Paul Halg, as Chairman of the Board, effective at the Ordinary General Meeting in 2027. Paul Halg will continue to accompany the company during the ForwardNow transformation, ensuring continuity during this really important phase. Jens Breu has been a member to the Board of Directors since 2019, and he brings extensive experience as CEO of the SFS Group. He knows our markets and is deeply familiar with the strategic challenges of a global technology-driven component supplier. This planned transition reflects our commitment to orderly succession to stability and to a strong governance. With that, Judith and I end the presentation session and are happy to take your questions. I will now hand over to Katharina to open our Q&A session. Both here in the room and for those joining us online, thank you for your strong interest. Thank you for your engagement and the trust you place in Datwyler. We highly value this dialogue and your continued support, and we look really forward to your question and the discussion ahead. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Volker and Judith, and we will start with the questions in the room. So please feel free to raise your hands. We can pass on the mic.

Torsten from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have 2 more technical questions, if I may. Firstly, you managed portfolio -- you mentioned portfolio management. Can you give us a feel for the effects from product pruning on revenues 2025? And also what's the outlook there in the future? I mean, are you losing volumes deliberately, of course? And secondly, it was all a little bit complex to understand the tax situation and outlook. Is there a chance you can guide a little bit on tax rates going forward?

Would you like to start with the pruning?

Absolutely. So let me take the first question. So for this year, as you would call, pruning, is consisting of basically of 2 aspects. First of all, the products that we actively push out of our portfolio, which is in the lower single-digit million. Other products, we just do not continue, because we do not go for the next order. We do not go for the next -- for the contract prolongation, which does more or less, yes, caused no growth in that area. But also that is in a single-digit million area. On the other hand, when I speak about active portfolio selection, this is more into the midterm, respectively, in the short term when it comes to new projects that our teams are winning in the market. So let me give you one example. We could win a lot of business in China for battery sealings for vehicle applications, where we know today that these businesses are highly exposed to a potential commodity turn, right? So that you invest a lot of time in these products, or projects, you invest a lot of resources in these projects and local manufacturers may be able to do that significantly cheaper. So this is what we are not going for. And that means the selective approach really to check each and every quotation for a potential earnings quality, reliability and the potential duration of entry barriers through material expertise solution design and production industrialization capabilities. Does that answer your question, Torsten?

Yes.

Yes. Thank you.

Torsten, the simplest explanation I can give to tax, because that's really also materiality-wise, the biggest impact is that we had in '24, the impact of the ForwardNow related costs, which lowered our taxable income, and we don't have that in '25. So the direction we have to take it through is -- I mean, historically, we've been between 25% and 27% in effective tax rate. So with 28.7%, we are moving in the right direction. And over time, we hope to get back into that range closer to the 25%.

[Indiscernible]. I have a question to Healthcare. You showed that the U.S. or Americas is at 24% of total share. Can you help me how much did Americas grow to previous year? And secondly, on that, you mentioned also your pipeline. 70% of your pipeline is HVO, so I'm wondering how much is America or U.S. in this pipeline? And then obviously, the follow-up question on this U.S. synergies is, what kind of exchange rate did you -- have you taken when you set up your midterm targets? So I'm wondering whether your midterm targets could be at risk because we have seen a depreciation of the U.S. dollar in between.

Yes. So in our midterm target, first of all, we always say under normal market conditions, right? So if there would be a crash of the U.S. dollar one way or the other or a war breaks out, some of these targets naturally will have to be adjusted, right? So maybe aside of that general disclaimer, in Healthcare itself actually the share of the Americas in revenues stayed stable versus prior year. So I would say we had a stable growth. It was 24% in '24, and it was 24% of sales in '25. We have a local for local policy. So in Healthcare itself, 83% or so of what is produced is actually also sold in the U.S. market, which naturally reduces our exposure to a good extent. We also seek to ensure through our procurement organization that we get what we get in via raw materials, aluminum and all that, that the majority of that, so is really sourced in America as well to make sure that we are dealing with this. Also from a revenue point of view, if you not take the production point of view, but the revenue point of view, the majority of Healthcare sales are coming from the U.S. itself.

Let me add to that. I mean, especially looking at the first line facilities, it's important for us to fill all 3 first line facilities because the operation costs for a first line facility are the highest compared or much higher compared to a normal facility focused on essential and advanced products. So from that perspective, first goal clearly is to ramp up U.S. as fast as we can. And here, looking at the overall share of our business in the U.S., we had a very pretty weak year in Industrial, especially in the first half. You can see that if you look at the documents. But a good trajectory, especially in the fourth quarter when it comes to Healthcare growth in the U.S. We have a translation effect, clearly because of the U.S. dollar, which was, yes, more and more weaker by end of the year, towards the end of the year. So that may have covered and smoothened a little bit the operational effect, but stands clear at 8.1%, which primarily came from 3 quarters towards the previous year. We do expect further volume growth in the U.S., especially for our first line facility next year since we have invested a lot of time and resources in the validation, a successful validation of products and customers in that facility over the last 6 months.

Okay. Can I quickly add 2 quick ones on other topics? I was surprised about this divestment in property, plant and equipment. Do you have more in the pipeline for 2026? So should we expect another positive surprise here?

Again, I didn't get it acoustically.

Surprised about the reduction in project price and equipment. So there are 2 answers to this, right? Are you referring to the fact that the PPE (sic) [ PP&E ] in the balance sheet has gone down? Or are you referring to the fact that we sold...

You have this one-off gain of CHF 7 million, CHF 8 million. So if this becomes recurring for the next 2 years, it's still sizable then.

So for that latter part, we are continuously looking at our footprint and footprint optimization. It's one of the pillars on the basis of which ForwardNow is based. So footprint optimization could come in the form of a plant closure. It can also come in the form of optimization, so consolidation and therefore, that you can sell off one building that you have on site or part of the site that is not used. It is also coming in the form of layout optimization. So is this a topic we continue to look at? The answer is yes.

Okay. And then the last one, probably I was not listening carefully. But on the OpEx hike, it is roughly CHF 4 million or CHF 5 million. Is this a one-off OpEx hike more? Should we look at as an investment? Or is it recurring for the next year? Or should it even increase?

You can flip it in 2 areas. I mean, the closure of the site that we have conducted and sold the building, which is the book value difference that you would see falling into the EBIT for this year as a one-timer. We do not operate this site in the future. So what you see as a sustained effect is the elimination of the operation costs of that facility for the years to come. In the other case, we have decided to combine activities, means that there will be a shift to a building that's a little bit larger and causing a little bit more cost. But based on the business model, it will be a positive business case anyway. Other than that, we wouldn't have done it and will -- I mean, reduce a lot of -- or gain a lot of efficiencies in the future on the cost base also in that case, yes.

I think this still refer to the question around the reduction in PPE. Were you referring to the other operating expenditures R&D, M&S and G&A?

It has been 2 separate questions. One was the divestiture of PPE, where you reported an extra gain of CHF 7 million to CHF 8 million.

That's correct.

The question here was, was this more in the pipeline to divest in the future.

And we've answered that.

And the second question has been on the OpEx hike.

Correct.

So on the P&L, whether this CHF 4 million, CHF 5 million higher OpEx are recurring or more had to be seen as a onetime investment?

So part of it is, as I said, it is a strategic choice or has been a strategic choice for us to look at R&D and making sure that we have enough funds set aside for R&D to drive our future innovation capability. So I think that is -- that doesn't mean that it automatically has to increase overtime. But to be in that range of, say, 3% to 5% should be a reasonable number for where we want to drive our innovation capabilities. Clearly, in the area of M&S, we had to make a one-time investment because we had to do a capability shift so that we are better positioned to sell and play in the HVO segment in Healthcare in particular. So there has been an upskilling taking place. That always goes hand-in-hand with also letting go those capabilities, you need less. In the area of G&A, it is a buildup. Over time, that should deliver the efficiency savings that we're looking for. I mentioned procurement as an example because we already see it paying off. But that's not the only area that we're working on. Also the whole harmonization and more consistent approaches in processes and standards across our organization will allow for synergies. Those synergies, however, take 2 or 3 years to come to bear. Yes. So that is -- should go up a bit and then you phase down.

Let me catch up one part of your question, the 70% of high value in our own portfolio. I mean all the projects that we're handling currently in a late stage and early stage across the whole organization in Healthcare. If we look back 12 months ago, the share of the number of projects in that pipeline was approximately half of that was high value. And now this really gets an uptick. We see that customers are interested, especially in our NeoFlex product and as well in the large molecule portfolio. And these are the projects that are coming now to the development in the market, and we are really happy and proud that we are -- that we could win a substantial part of that development agreements with our customers.

I don't see questions in the room. There's another one. Thank you.

And we see encouraging margin progression on the group level and looking at both segments, it's mostly driven by Healthcare, a bit more moderate 40 bps improvement in Industry. But in industrials, obviously, we have these 3 quite different segments, Beverage, Automotive and Industry. Could you give us a bit of more granularity, how the margin developed in each segment, particularly as it seems Food & Beverage is pretty stable, as you say. But what about the Automotive and Industrial? How did margin develop there?

If you look at the Food & Beverage area, we have pretty much full utilization of our facility. So it means that -- I mean, we've invested now in additional expansion to new contracts or contracts with our customer, Capsul'in that have been conducted late last year before our majority stake takeover. So Food & Beverage and the overall market, not the best year ever, but growth and a reliable growth. That's important to us. If you look at automotive, particularly in China, we see good utilization of our sites. We see a very active customer peer group that asks for new projects, for good volumes. So to now for 2025, this was a good market for us with higher margins compared to Europe and Americas. In Europe, I mean, this is, I think, not a secret that the Automotive year for Europe was at a very low level. And what we have experienced as well is that Americas, as such customers were withholding investments because of uncertainty, especially international companies where we work for. And yes, we do -- I mean, cannot take infinite, so when decisions have to be taken, volumes have to go up. So from that perspective, I would assess that Europe will move first and the U.S. will then follow hopefully. In the area of general industry, it's also exposed to a bit pruning, as we've discussed just before. So some of the products that have high complexity, low volumes where we are not the best supplier for our customers are about to leave. I've mentioned target segments where we have invested a lot of resources and gaining new projects that will ramp up end of '26 and beginning of '27, so it's basically an investment in the future. And for the oil and gas market, I mean, still the impact on Venezuela, I would have expected this with a higher traction, which also was shown by the first very optimistic developments in the capital market on related companies, right? It did still not really carry out. We see the Brent is hanging around somewhere, but not at the level that we would wish for to get another uptick. But our oil and gas market is -- our segment is profitable. And yes, hopefully, getting more utilization over 2026. But I said, it is very difficult to read the markets currently. I would say like the last 20 years that I'm actively in that business, it is really belonged to the most difficult periods to read the markets.

Only a quick follow-up. You have probably presented a slide with the seasonality of H1, H2 2024, 2025 with sales and EBIT development and you show that you see a clear stabilization now sequentially. How should we think now for 2026? Do you expect H1 to -- on a stable level to H2? Or do you see like in the past or so much more higher H1 to H2? Or what are the dynamics in 2026 of what you see today, obviously, in your crystal ball?

I mean you have to look at the underlying reasons why this used to be in the past, right? So if you have a stable year, you would -- and companies that -- or factories mostly in Europe that deliver your sales and margin, then you face in the second half of the year more celebration days or less working days. So this is basically the underlying model and reason why in the last years the seasonality was stronger. So the first half was usually a little bit stronger than the second half. So 2 aspects that we have to look at. First of all, growth in other regions. So we are growing in India. We are growing in the U.S. So it will be more balanced over the next years to come. If you look at this year, we had a pretty weak first quarter, still some parts of destocking we could see. So the order patterns have normalized starting by mid of March, beginning of April. And so this has caused a little bit more flattened situation compared to the years before. What we see now is that this momentum has come back. So with more and more exposure to India, first line and U.S., this will -- I do expect that this to disappear over the next 5 to 7 years more and more in our portfolio.

With that, I would -- considering the timing for a short amount of time, at least move into the chat. We have received some questions and starting with Sebastian Vogel, UBS. Can you remind us of the share of high-value products in Healthcare in H1 versus or compared to H2?

I would say that in H1, the share -- I mean, I don't have the number here at hand. I can just guess a bit. I would say it's somewhere between -- to be very, very mathematically correct, something 33%. And with the ramp-up of some of the products, especially the NeoFlex product and the GLP-1 ramp-up, we have gained in the second half more share of high value. So if you see that in average, I would see that the second half is pretty much a little bit above the 35% and the first half a little bit below.

And maybe one last question from the chat, [indiscernible]. Two questions. Products in the high-value segment increased to 35% in the Healthcare division, while the project pipeline jumped to 70%. When will these new projects be realized? Maybe you could explain FX on margins as well? And the second one, could you give an indication for Capsul'in's EBIT margin? Is it on group level?

First question, I mean, as I said, we are increasing our project -- the number of projects in our pipeline. When it comes to assessing the average sales and sales contribution in that pipeline, it's always depending on the success of the drug of our customers. So there is some uncertainty in it that whatever this goes up and down over the course of like 3 years, maximum 1 year, depending. So a lot of ramp-ups we see in '27 and '28. But some of the products clearly are in an early stage with a ramp-up rather than '29 and 2030. On the other hand, what we see is, as I've mentioned, the number of biologics and large molecule projects we have that are also expected from our customers to be very successful in the market because it goes hand-in-hand with the trend and the therapies that are expected to grow. We are very, very confident that this works out well. We do not -- I mean, since the closing has not happened yet, I mean, please excuse that I'm not talking too much about Capsul'in. On the other hand, if you have followed our slide when it came to the capital decisions and the 3 criteria that we have put to make our decision, I think it's clear what the answer to that question is.

Thank you very much. So Guido and I, after the event, will reach out to the remaining questions coming in from the chat right now that have not been answered because we are running out of time. And with that, I would like to briefly highlight our financial calendar. And again, thanks again for your time today, for your continued interest in Datwyler, for your trust and for the constructive exchange. We appreciate your continued trust, and I personally look forward to staying in close contact. Thank you very much.

Thank you.