DEUTZ Aktiengesellschaft (DEZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nine Months 2024 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm [ Marona ], the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mark Schneider. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Marona. And dear all, please note that this call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website at deutz.com later today. Your participation in the call implies your consent with this. Having said that, good morning from Cologne in this very special week. On the call with me are our CEO, Sebastian Schulte; and our new but well-established CFO, Oliver Neu. Today, Sebastian starts with operational and strategic milestones of the first 9 months of the year. Oliver will then give you an update on our cost program and a deeper insight into the financial data. Following this, our CEO will go through our midterm outlook after the Capital Markets Day in October before we look forward to your questions. Please note that management comments during this call will include forward-looking statements, which will involve risks and uncertainties. For the discussion of risk factors, I encourage you to review the disclaimer contained in our annual report and this presentation. All documents relating to our first 9 months of 2024 reporting are available on our website. Having said that, I would like to hand over to you, Sebastian.

Thank you very much, Mark. And also from my side, a warm welcome to this Q3 earnings call. We're very happy to share you -- share the progress of our performance and our activities and milestones with you. And as Mark said, this is certainly an interesting environment to say the least. And a lot of what we're presenting today, obviously, has to be seen in the light of that difficult market environment we are still facing when I talk about our core markets and that I will do in the course of this presentation. But let me start here with these highlights of the first 9 months. So first of all, and it's written in the headline, we had a difficult third quarter. I will explain why it was not easy. But the good news is, in this level, we are profitable, we are up, we are able to produce positive results. And so that brings us a lot of confidence for the quarters and years ahead. But let me start here with a structured presentation. So first of all, new orders for the first 9 months amounted to EUR 1.35 billion. That is only marginally below prior year, minus 4%. But we've got to keep in mind that we had, in the third quarter, quite a positive effect from our strategic portfolio development activities, mainly and the acquisition of Blue Star Power Systems as well as the acquisition of the Daimler Truck Engine portfolio from Rolls-Royce Power Systems. Both of those acquisitions were closed in the third quarter, and that helped us obviously bringing new business aboard. But that's also part of the rationale that we are increasing here our business. So that's not a surprise. Revenue for the first 9 months was EUR 1.3 billion. And here, we see a decline of 13% vis-a-vis prior year. And we need to take careful attention or put careful attention on the third quarter because particularly here was a decline. We see that later also in the bottom line numbers that in the month of August, we had a 3-week production break in our main facility in Cologne, almost all parts of the Cologne production were down for these 3 weeks, and that obviously had an impact not only on production volume and therefore, on sales volume, but also on production cost because we were missing here the very important scale effects to run our classic or legacy business as profitable as we want to run it. EBIT margin, 4.4% now for the first 9 months. But -- and that just ties on what I just said. In the third quarter, the margin declined to, from our perspective, rather extraordinary low level of 1.7% due to the missing volume effects and as just mentioned, the lack of scale effects due to that shortage in August. On a 9-month basis, we are here in line with our guidance. But let me look now on the revenue breakdown. On the left side, as usual, we see that by application, by end customer segment. And on the right side, we see that on the regional perspective. You see on the left side, and this is the theme which we pretty much explained and showed, presented in the last quarterly calls already. So construction equipment as well as agricultural equipment has been under pressure, minus 28%, respectively, minus 31%. And so that is clear. That is something that is an observation, which is very much in line with what we hear from our customers, from our competitors. On the other hand, we see a stable development in material handling, more than that, slight growth of almost 4%. And that will -- I'll talk about the geographical distribution in a few minutes. That is also due to the fact that this business is very strong in the United States. And as we see on the right-hand side, United States are here overall stable rather than shrinking as the other region. The other positive effect we'd like to highlight is the increased growth of our profitable service business, plus 5%. So it shows once more that even in challenging times, in cyclical times, where we are suffering sort of from the lower parts of the cycle, the business cycle, the service business is not only stable, but with the pushes we are putting on, the service business is actually able to continue to grow and 5% is quite a success here, particularly given the fact that we know -- we all know how profitable that business is. On a regional perspective, mentioned it already, Europe down 20%, Germany down 18%, Americas being here stable, Asia Pacific on a lower level, as known, minus 15%. So that's not so much a concern from my point of view. But obviously, yes, we see the strong decline in Europe and Germany, and that's highly correlated with the decline in construction and agriculture equipment. Americas, the United States, in particular, supporting here our business quite significantly. The third quarter showed -- or we showed in the third quarter, quite a number of important milestones, important strategic steps. And we're using here for the first time in a quarterly earnings call already the new structure with classic solutions and service. I believe most of you have joined our Capital Market Day, so you are, in principle, familiar with that new structure. And in classic business, what happened in the third quarter was actually the closing of the Rolls-Royce Power Systems business, the Daimler Truck engines, the off-highway customer -- the off-highway business of the Daimler Truck engines. We closed that on August 1. So since August 1, the revenue and the earnings are supporting our business. We, first time, consolidated the orders in the third quarter, and that's exactly one of the contributing factors for the very positive development of the order intake. We're also progressing well in our purchasing program. We kicked that off at the beginning of the year in order to control costs here already because in times like that, where demand is going down, this is typically a situation where the customers have quite -- have a fairly strong negotiation position. And this, we feel, obviously, from our customers, although having to say that very clearly, we have not -- we have been able not to reduce prices, quite the opposite. We are still on a slightly growing pattern here. But obviously, we want to take also the share or some of the share back from our suppliers, and that's what we're working on here. Solutions, our new umbrella, which comprises both the new tech business formerly labeled as DEUTZ Green, now we call it new tech as explained in the Capital Markets Day as well as the energy business. So let me start with New Tech. We set up the new organization under the leadership of Bart van Hustel, and he and his team have -- are now ready to operate with a lot of freedom within our organization, and that's the freedom they need to bring these new products quicker to the market and be really a reliable partner for the customers. And what they've done in the past month apart from hunting opportunities, and there's quite a few interesting perspectives, which we will present as soon as we can, of course, but what they've done is they evaluate the various technology path for the [ E-Products ] as well as the hydrogen engines being more focused going forward. We'll hear that later in the presentation. But also -- and that's more directly with more direct impact to the P&L, we closed the acquisition of Blue Star Power Systems in the United States, the genset maker. We're very happy with that transaction. We're also very happy with the first revenue and earnings contributions we're receiving since August 1. And also, we consolidated here the order backlog for the first time in the third quarter. We're also setting up, based on that acquisition, based on the energy business, the still small energy business, we've got other parts of our portfolio, we're setting up our small, lean but very powerful energy business unit, and we're now working full force on the further development of the growth strategy inside but also outside the United States. On the service side, we're happy to announce another acquisition, closing of another acquisition just a couple of days ago. We acquired our long-term Polish dealer called BTH FAST. And that's an interesting one. So first of all, it strengthens our business in Europe and Eastern Europe and Poland, a very important country for us as well. Now we can tackle that market with our own service and sales organization. And why I'm saying it's interesting, because the portfolio of BTH FAST is very much focused on segments where our rationale of remaining very active long term in the classic engine business works particularly well. There are interesting customers in the mining sector, but also the defense sector. This is why we put that picture of that Oncilla vehicle on. So that's really a good stepping stone into the East here. Closing was, as I said, beginning of November. So another brick in the wall, so to speak, for our service growth. Cost, one of the topics for us and others, but we're talking -- we're focusing on what we can do. So we started already in the first quarter with increasing the focus on costs. We were successfully able to flexibilize our classic production setup, particularly on the personnel side. We did reduce, very early this year, shifts on our large-scale production line in Cologne in order to adapt to the needs of the market. We reduced working hours. We're using the mechanism of short-time working. Initially, we started doing that in Spain, our facility in Spain, and we pretty much got rid of the majority of temporary workers, and that's good. So because temporary workers is easy to get on and also easy to get off without paying -- without entering into significant redundancy payments. So that's good for flexibility. So it shows that when we set up here the business in '21, '22, in particular, we did that a lot. We support the growth a lot with temp workers, and that's obviously very helpful now to be able to take them out in order to adapt to the new circumstances. We continue working on the savings and purchasing, I mentioned earlier, but also in terms of budget control, we look -- let's say, beforehand, we look twice on every investment. Now we look 5x on every investment and we're also -- we're pushing forward what's not immediately needed. So that's typical budget and budget expense and also cash control. The same applies for inventory. It's important to keep really the inventory as tight as possible without jeopardizing the ability obviously to deliver the demands of the customers. But -- so that -- these factors helped us quite a lot to stabilize the results not only in the first quarter, but pretty much in the first 9 months. We did, after the summer break, kick off additional measures, which -- where we see now the impact in the fourth quarter of EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million. That's already up and running and will lead to exactly the number I just mentioned. And so that's really short-term stuff in order to work tougher on cost and expenses, freezing budgets in core areas, for example, R&D, where we are realizing the capacities we have are not fully utilized, and we'll hear later about that, that this is also something for the mid and long term. But here, we kicked off the short-term savings already. And we established very strict expenditure controls throughout the company for everything, which in normal times probably is spent with a little more freedom. Now we have here control towers and measures like that, as I said, in the corporate center, but also in the regions in order to really look again 3, 4, 5 times on what do we really need. And also overtime, holidays, in particular overtime, we've done a lot of strategic important projects over the last months pretty much. And obviously, that did not work without incurring significant overtime by some of our employees, and this we're strictly reducing for the end of the year in order to really take costs out of the running business. So good on track for this EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million additional savings. But we also adjusted our guidance. You will all remember that on the 3rd of October, just a couple of days before our Capital Market Day, we had to realize that the market environment is still weak, and there wasn't an immediate sign for an improvement visible on the horizon. So that's not changed since then. So that's why we pushed a lot on our cost measures, just mentioned. I'll come to more of that later. But it's also important to know that we're feeling here some positive effects already on the implementation of the Dual+ strategy, which stabilized the business on the level we see it right now and our guidance probably not new for any of you is that our guidance is now, in terms of unit sales, less than 150,000 engines. Revenue, we see around EUR 1.8 billion, adjusted EBIT margin between 4% and 5% and free cash flow, we see at least balanced. And that's, by the way, a guidance, which we, as of today, very much confirmed for the full year 2024. Another breakdown in terms of cost and quite a substantial one. Remember, just a few minutes ago, I spoke to the initial measures first quarter and the short-term measures impacting the fourth quarter, where we took this situation, which we see right now also to step up one gear here. And so we initiated a cost program to reduce our cost structurally by EUR 50 million because we don't want to only fix the short term. We also want to increase competitiveness in the long term. And in an environment like that, this is a good environment to bring the entire organization also to the realization that structural measures are not only on vogue, but actually quite needed, quite important. So we went here with a holistic approach. We said we want to reduce R&D costs in the classic and the legacy segment structurally and sustainably by EUR 20 million. We will also -- I mentioned it earlier, I want to talk about solutions, we will also focus our expenses, our investments on R&D and new tech, so taking out EUR 10 million cost here from the beginning or pretty much from now, but it will impact the full year next year. And we're also looking into the regions where can we -- where we have to adjust here. We see EUR 5 million here. It's mainly focused on China because China DEUTZ has built up in the past quite a large structure in China and Beijing and the markets never picked up on the assumptions which our previous management had placed into China. So this is why we're now adjusting here, particularly in China. We're looking also in other countries, but China is certainly the focus. We're optimizing supply chain, particularly lifting synergies between the classic and service business. There are still a few parts of the organization doubled up, and that's an opportunity to take out redundancies here and also optimizing central functions in various parts of the organization. Summing up to EUR 50 million is our objective here. And this EUR 50 million, I mean, it's important for us to ramp those savings up quickly. We don't want to wait years for that. So the target is defined that by the end of '26, we've got the EUR 50 million completely out of the P&L. And the way we foresee that, Oliver will guide you through in a bit more detail, but at least 40% of that saving target is already fully impacting earnings next year. And in order to get that done, it's very clear and we can announce that we've got now a list of measures broken down and validated that we already see EUR 50 million validated. Obviously, we have a different degree of implementation, different maturity level, but already 30% are at a very, very high maturity level. And we are working on a daily basis to bring up that euro number, but also bring up that percentage of those level of those which are validated. Well, with that starting the presentation, I'll hand over to Oliver, who will give you more details on the cost program as well as on the numbers for the first 9 months, and I'll be back shortly.

Yes. Many thanks, Sebastian. And also from my side, welcome and good morning to our Q3 earnings call. So let me start with some further information on our cost reduction program. And you can see here the relevant financial cornerstones of our program, specifically, EUR 50 million sustainable cost reduction savings in 5 areas of savings. Therefore, at least EUR 20 million fully P&L effective already in 2025 and with the current fill level of our measures of more than EUR 50 million. The measures, they're worked out in cross-functional teams. We have implemented a stringent steering logic, and we are tracking the measures with a clear degree of implementation logic. The measures include sustainable general cost reduction measures, but also job cuts. And we are here in close alignment with the employee representatives in order to create clarity for all employees affected as quickly as possible and of course, also in a fair process. Let's have a look on the individual areas of savings and go one level deeper. So what exactly are we doing here? Well, in the classic R&D area, we are intending to reduce our cost by at least EUR 20 million. And we are convinced to achieve this because there is a continuous delay in implementation of emission standards, and there is simply idle capacity. This means there's less headcount required than it was the case in the past. But we specifically look what are the core competencies we need in Germany and the core competencies we need as a DEUTZ Group in-house. To turn it around, we specifically also look which activities do we not need in Germany or which do we not need in-house. So we are looking into saving opportunities by nearshoring, offshoring or cost reduction opportunities via flexibilization in our R&D area. In our new tech business, so our former green business, we are aligning our development costs more closely on the customer demand. We will achieve here EUR 10 million savings, primarily by a reduction of external costs, but wherever necessary, also by a reduction of personnel. In our regional organization, we put the target to reduce EUR 5 million of cost. We will specifically review the structure in our country organization, and there will be a special focus or there is a special focus on China, where we plan a reduction of up to 20% of the headcount in our Beijing and Shanghai offices. In the area of supply chain management, we target for at least EUR 5 million cost reduction. Besides general cost reduction, we see potential in a joint optimization of our currently separated engines and service supply chain organizations throughout the entire value chain. Last but not least, we are optimizing our central functions with a target to save at least EUR 10 million annually. Specifically, we are looking into streamlining of management structures where we have implemented first measures already, but we're also looking into efficiency increase in our sales organization as well as a sustainable reduction of our IT costs of at least EUR 5 million. To sum it up, we have confirmed the potential in all areas and are well on track. We will further work on developing, detailing and most importantly, of course, implementing the measures to ensure we reach our target. Moving away from the cost program to the 9 months actual figures of our current fiscal year. Well, as Sebastian mentioned, the order intake remains on a low level, driven by the overall macroeconomic environment. We can see a decrease of 3.8% to a level of EUR 1.35 billion. Reading this figure, we have to keep in mind the positive effect of the first consolidation of Blue Star Power Systems and also the Rolls-Royce Power System business, which brought us to a book-to-bill ratio of 103%. Without those acquisitions, we would have been on a level slightly below 1, of course, also on a rather low turnover level. Order backlog stays or is at a level of EUR 490 million. The sales volume year-to-date is down by approximately 22%, whereas only looking into quarter 3, engine sales volume dropped by approximately 30%. This is mainly driven also by the 3-week production stop in our biggest plant here in Cologne due to planned maintenance work at a supplier. Talking about revenue, we see that the decline in revenue is significantly less than the decline in pure engine volume. This is due to an increase in service revenue despite a weak market environment, but also due to positive effects from the acquisitions. Looking into our earnings. Well, the development of our results, we see that the EBIT adjusted is at a level of EUR 57.3 million after 9 months of the current year, coming down approximately 46% versus previous year. Looking specifically into Q3, we achieved an adjusted EBIT of EUR 7.2 million or a margin of 1.7%. Putting these figures into perspective, we need to keep in mind basically three things. So first, the third quarter is typically due to seasonality, a weaker quarter for DEUTZ Group. This is especially true in the current challenging economic environment. Second point, while we suffered from a 3-weeks plant closure in our production facility here in Cologne, so that the total sales volume was only at 33,000 units, production volume was even significantly below. This means volume was missing also on the production side with corresponding implications on the cost structure. And third, most of the increased cost savings effort will pay off only in Q4. So this will also be the quarter where we, for the first time, will see the full quarter effect of the recent acquisitions. Talking about EBIT adjusted year-to-date, we now stand at 4.4%, so almost exactly at the midpoint of our adjusted guidance for the current fiscal year. This means we earn money despite the weak market environment, which is certainly a much better picture than what you would have seen on this volume base some years ago. So we see that we are moving in the right way. Net income year-to-date stands at EUR 23.6 million, the earnings per share at EUR 0.18, both based on a continued operations basis. Let's have a look on more -- some more KPIs. Our R&D spend was at EUR 70 million, thereby 5% above last year. EUR 47 million out of that was attributable to our classic business, EUR 23 million to our green business. The quota was a bit higher than 5%, but this is, of course, also due to the lower revenue. As explained earlier, the R&D area is one of the focus areas where we are expecting significant cost reductions along our cost reduction program. Investments increased by 37% to a level of EUR 147 million. However, we need to keep in mind here that the investments shown here also include the acquisition of the sales and service activities of Rolls-Royce Power Systems. So generally, we are reducing CapEx to the minimum required, so we are also saving money. Talking about working capital, we see an increase by EUR 35 million versus year-end 2023. However, the starting point due to the typical year-end rally and a very strong year-end rally 2023 was rather low. And besides this, the working capital is also affected by first consolidation of the M&A transactions. And on top of that, looking at the working capital quota, there's a pure technical effect as well that we derive the current working capital -- that we divide the current working capital by at least the last 12 months' revenues. So the latter -- so the revenue side, of course, is not including the full 12 months' M&A effects. So having said that, we're expecting a reduced working capital quota towards the end of the year. Coming to cash flow and financial positions. Well, the operating cash flow is reduced by -- from approximately EUR 70 million to a bit more than EUR 30 million. The main driver behind this is the lower operational result. Talking about free cash flow, you can see here two figures. So first, the overall free cash flow of the entire group, including our discontinued operations, so effects from the sale of Torqeedo and also including M&A with a value year-to-date of minus EUR 138.2 million. And the second, the free cash flow before M&A on a continued operations basis. And this, from my perspective, is the more interesting one and the one we are giving our guidance for. We are here year-to-date at minus EUR 28.6 million with a reduction compared to the previous year, mainly due to lower operational results. And we are expecting and guiding an at least balanced free cash flow before M&A by end of this year, whereas the expected better operational performance of Q4 plus the before-mentioned working capital improvements should contribute to this. On the net financial debt side, we see increased result -- an increase resulting from the just explained cash flow development. So besides this, we also see on the positive side, the effect of the capital increase reflected with gross proceeds of EUR 72 million. Overall, to sum it up here, our financing situation, net financial debt situation remains solid and the same absolutely applies to our equity ratio, which currently stands at 47.5%. Last but not least, let's have a short look in the figures along our official reporting segments: so Classic and Green. We will change that going forward from the beginning of '25 as we announced in the Capital Markets Day, but so far, still reporting in the segment logic: Classic and Green. And as you are aware, of course, the classic business is still dominating on our group's total top line. The developments explained earlier, especially on the market and on the volume side, apply here to understand the figures shown here. On our Green segment, we saw a rather low order intake and revenue. And the sales volume was at 521 units, which is basically smaller electric engines at our Chilean subsidiary: Mauricio Hochschild. Overall, the Green segment contributed with a negative EBIT of minus EUR 25.5 million, thereof minus EUR 23 million due to development costs. And as mentioned earlier, as part of our cost reduction program, we will significantly reduce the green development cost, which will lead to a positive effect on this year-over-year in '25 onwards. With this, I'd like to hand over to Sebastian.

Thank you very much, Oliver. And yes, let me bridge a little bit from the short-term focus of the third quarter, including the very important starting of the cost measures, to the long-term strategic approach, our strategic journey, our -- yes, it's really a journey. I think this word describes it pretty well. I'll bring now a couple of slides, which we also showed and discussed in our Capital Markets Day just a few weeks ago. Just to put that back into perspective. When we started that journey in 2022, we really said we -- before we want -- before we are able to grow substantially and develop DEUTZ away from the very stable on top line business, but also not -- never really performing well business to something larger and stronger, we first need to strengthen the base. And strengthen the base, we said that was the theme of the first strategic horizon, which we envisage to take 3 years until '25. And the focus of that horizon was improving performance and preparing ourselves, setting the focus, but also preparing ourselves for investment in growth. And we really need both because setting the focus is one thing, but being able to execute is another thing. And now we say, all right, we actually succeeded with this first horizon. And yes, 4.4% on 9 months or 4% to 5% on the full year, what is our guidance. That's certainly nothing where we say, all right, we are -- this is great. But putting it into perspective on the current top line we're having, driven down by the significant negative impacts, particularly in construction equipment and agricultural equipment, we show that we have created a new -- literally a new baseline for the bottom part of an economic cycle. And that's why now we're able to going into that second strategic horizon to really broaden the base. And with the acquisition of Blue Star, but also with the acquisition of the Daimler Truck engines from Rolls-Royce Power Systems, we've shown that already now in '24, we've taken the first actually sizable steps to broaden our base. So that's where we are right now. And in the Capital Market Day, we also realigned or we showed how we realigned our Dual+ strategy. And our realigned Dual+ strategy for the second strategic horizon has a lot of things which Dual+ strategy in the first horizon had, but a few very important additions as well. So top left, our classic business remains unchanged. We want to grow, but we also want to improve the performance, and we want to grow also by consolidation. So margin up, growth, including inorganic steps. Solutions is more than green used to be because, first of all, we want to expand our value chain coverage. And we've taken it further than we used to have it. So it's more than just replacing our products in the core markets with new technologies. That's part of what we consider new tech, formerly green. But we also said, okay, we're going into that energy business, decentralized power generation, emergency power generation, like we show with our acquisition of Blue Star, we heard it earlier, that's taken off pretty well. And we want to go beyond that, but only in areas where we believe we have a right to win. And then the third block, the plus, the service to expand this business around the world, because service is not only so attractive for us because it's our most profitable part of the business, it's also attractive because it supports us, particularly in the classic business to be strong with customers because the customers like it when -- wherever they go on the world, DEUTZ service leader is nearby and can help. And the other thing is whatever the decline in the future is in terms of combustion engines, well, we all know 3 years ago, we probably would have assessed that decline to be much more rapid than now. But certainly, what's lagging behind that decline is the service business because there are currently 2 million DEUTZ engines in the field, of which we know individually 1.2 million. And all those engines require service and certainly far into the 2030s and potentially even 2040. So that's really a long shot. And so we'll continue to grow step by step, step by step like we are doing for the last 2.5 years already. And also at the Capital Markets Day, we defined an ambition, ambition for 2030. I mean the ambition is more than what it says, it's just a revenue ambition, but obviously, we want to translate that ambition into numbers. And that's why we said we wanted -- by 2030, we want DEUTZ to be a EUR 4 billion business with higher profitability than now, 10%. And we know already with the old structure, remember, 2023, our continued operations, we were at more than 7% profitability. So this is not so far away and with the steps we are taking to, in absolute terms, grow the highly profitable service business to also make more stable, make more resilient, but remain more or less on the same level of the classic business, but then enter into new businesses where we have a right to win, so we have -- and we were profitable. So we're actually convinced that both ambitions, the top line ambitions to the EUR 4 billion as well as the bottom line ambition to the 10%, they are ambitions, but they're actually fairly realistic ambitions. That's what we explained in a lot of detail on the Capital Markets Day. And that was 2030, but we also introduced new midterm targets for 2028 in '25, 3 years in the future. Let me also reiterate or repeat them. Unit sales, we're not going to include them in the future as part of the guidance anymore. I think Oliver said it clearly on the Capital Market Day, whoever of you want to see them, we are able to provide them, but they're not the fundamental part of the guidance anymore. And why is that? Because the production and sales of DEUTZ Classic engines remains very important, but it doesn't remain as [ absolutistic ] as it has been in the past, where pretty much we were a one product company all around the combustion engine. So in that old setup, it was important to have this as a KPI. But the more we grow in service, the more we grow in solutions, the pure number of units is not the best indicator for size and growth and performance anymore. So that's why we focus actually on accountable revenue numbers. And for '28, we see a sales range between EUR 3.2 billion and EUR 3.4 billion. We see as a step-up from where we are right now to the 10% I mentioned for 2030, we see an adjusted EBIT margin in the range between 8% and 9%. And in terms of dividend, we're also becoming, let's say, more specific and I believe also more favorable for the demands of our shareholders. We want to really establish an upward path here. So either we're stable or we grow from year-over-year depending on how the respective previous year allows for. We want to make very sure that our shareholders can trust on us keeping the dividend stable or improving and that as a promise year-over-year. So that's our -- these are our new midterm targets. And this is just a bit of a repetition from the Capital Market Day. I know that a lot of you have been part of that, have been visiting us in Cologne. For those who haven't, we're making available videos of the presentations of the four Board members, but also our divisional heads for energy and new tech, who you met there, so that everything we said can be listened to again and which would help you, we're convinced, to better understand and hopefully even more like DEUTZ and the business model. Having said that, both Oliver and I are at the end of our presentation. So thanks a lot for listening. And now as usual, we are available to take your questions. Mark, I think the floor is yours.

Thank you, Sebastian. Thank you, Oliver. Yes, that's right. And with that, I would like to hand over to Marona to guide us through the questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question from the phone comes from Jorge Gonzalez with Hauck Aufhauser.

So my first question, and sorry if you have talked about this because I have jumped from another call, is on the order intake in Q3. Well, we have this consolidation effect. And I was wondering if you can give us a rough number of the order intake for the classic business without adjusted by these consolidation effects. I did my own number, it's around EUR 400 million that would indicate a stable quarter. And I'm wondering if you have any view for the rest of the year, the guidance -- for achieving the guidance, do you need a slight improvement or slight increase in sales in Q4? And I was wondering if at this point, you still see this hike? And basically, yes, if you can comment on the dynamics on the demand.

I think, Oliver, you're preparing the -- or you're taking the question on the order intake for the third quarter. Let me just follow up briefly on the fourth quarter. It's right, we need a slight uptick. But let's also bear in mind for the full year numbers, the two acquisitions, Blue Star and the Rolls-Royce Power Systems business in the third quarter only included 2 out of 3 months, in particular, the Rolls-Royce business, there was also the seasonal summer effect. So let alone the fact that these two new business, we see 3 months rather than 2 helps already. But in principle, we can -- as I said during the presentation, I'm not sure you were already there when I said that we are very much confirming our adjusted guidance for the full year.

And on the order intake side, we have been in Q3 2024, EUR 555 million. I mean we mentioned earlier that the order intake contribution from the first consolidation of the Blue Star Power Systems business is in the range of around EUR 100 million. On the Rolls-Royce Power Systems side, it's a higher double-digit million euro. So there is onetime consolidation effect included in the Q3 figures. Overall, we see that the order intake for those businesses, also the running order intake, is on a level that is substantiating also the sales figures, which we were communicating with the expectation for those businesses. So we see that Blue Star is running somewhere on an annualized EUR 140 million level in terms of revenue with corresponding order intake and also the [indiscernible] business where we said we're expecting around EUR 300 million. Of course, they are slightly affected by the current market environment as well, which we, to some good degree, also reflected in our models and the acquisition already before. So order intake is sufficient to substantiate those sales figures.

On the order dynamics, is there anything remarkable that you have seen in October, any end market -- relevant end market like agriculture or construction that maybe is starting to see a recovery? Just -- I'm just wondering if -- because we have seen this year a mix with more smaller engines. And I'm wondering if even with only a small pickup, maybe the mix starts to improve and that can also help you at the beginning of next year. I don't know what are your views on this.

No, Jorge, not on the substantial side. I mean there are -- of course, if you search with a magnifying glass, there are a few customers in a few countries where, all right, we see, cool. They ordered more than they did before, but not on the large scale, right? Our large customers or the customers with big volumes, let me be more specific, they still show a very comparable order behavior of what we've seen in the past months. So we'll have to obviously see whether the developments in the United States bring in another dynamic going forward, but that's certainly too early to say right now. And so, in principle, we don't see that uptake yet. I mean there are, and this is more early indicators, some sort of glimpses of hope for construction because we see some improvement on real estate markets throughout the world, but this -- it does not mean that in a month's time or so orders pick up. So we are pretty much confirming what we said also during the Capital Market Day. We still have the same visibility that we had in the past months, it's only very, very small like positive effects. But this is why it's so important that our performance has improved so much by our structural changes and that we're actually putting more focus on the cost as well because some things you can influence, others you cannot. And we're very much focusing on the things we can influence right now and seeing here first positive effects, as Oliver just pointed it out earlier.

Okay. I understand. But can we say that these order levels are already at stable at these amounts or something still to see? I mean you are comfortable with the demand going sideways or is it still uncertain for the...

Like-for-like? Yes, indeed. Currently, we foresee -- we observe a sideways development on a low level.

Okay. And very last one. I think Oliver commented that the output in the quarter was below the sales in units -- in production units. I think I heard that. And I was wondering if you can give us more or less the level of output in units.

You do that, please.

Yes, sure. I'm happy to do so. So we see that we -- year-to-date September have been more or less on a production volume of [ 108,000 ] units. If you look specifically in the Q3, we have been at 29,000 units. So if you make some simple calculations, you see that the Q3 production was a bit like 25% lower than the average of the quarters before. So that is mainly driven, of course, also by the production standstill effect, but that is why production volume was significantly lower than sales volume with the impact on the cost side.

The next question from the phone comes from Stefan Augustin with Warburg.

Just a few clarifications actually on the answers you just gave to Jorge because my line was a bit bad, and I was not absolutely sure if I understood it correctly. So the first one would be, you said that the running order intake from Blue Star and Rolls-Royce for August and September was higher than the respective sales level. So is that the first one? Did I get that correctly?

Maybe quickly, yes. Yes, because the order intake we booked in fully, right? Order -- we booked in pretty much every -- all the orders the business had and the orders are not -- the turnover of the order is not 1 month. So we got in new orders and then we worked these orders off over the coming months.

Okay. So you cannot really split between a running order intake over the period and actually the order book you acquired.

Well, we can from now on, but not with the initial acquisition.

Okay. So then coming back also to Jorge's question, if we simply look at the underlying business, it is fair to say that the orders for that part were higher than the respective sales levels in classic?

Well, I would say, to put that in perspective, the order intake is substantiating -- the order intake came down more than the sales volume came down, as you saw earlier, right, because there is this positive effect from acquisitions, but also from the stronger service effect. So the order -- so prospectively, I think we have the order intake, we see the slight recoveries and that's substantiating also the sales offers we're having.

Okay. Then coming a bit to the cost development in Q3. So the operating leverage in Q3 was significantly higher than in the two quarters before, so respectively, the hit on the cost side. And I took your, let's say, statement on the production levels, which is certainly one explanation. If I do the mix calculation, I also see, let's say, a price impact. And I just want to clarify if the pricing part is just due to mix, so a higher amount of smaller engines? Or is there, let's say, a baked-in decline in the price? And maybe adding here on top is how does Q4 production most likely look versus Q3 production?

Yes, happy to comment on that. So on the operating leverage part, I think the majority is indeed the effect explained the lower -- significantly lower and proportionately lower production volume due to the standstill. I think that is the activity effects on the cost side that play a significant role here in Q3. On the pricing side, there are no price reductions or something like that. So pricing is stable. If you purely look at the average price on an engines level, you see sometimes an effect that we deliver smaller engines in the U.S. business, which are by nature a bit cheaper. So as the U.S. business runs more stable, there is sometimes a minor dilution on the pure sales price per engine, but there is -- pricing is stable. And I mean, we always try to increase prices, and we are not reducing prices. And last question was on the production in Q4. We are expecting -- I mean, December is typically a month where due to the Christmas closure, then production level are also lower, but we are expecting a better production in Q4 since the effect of the 3-weeks standstill in August was quite heavy.

Okay. And then just a final one, looking at, let's say, the events in the U.S. Can you remind us on your transactional exposure towards the dollar? And how would you -- how do you assess your business volume at risk from tariffs if there would be some and how would you evade it?

Well, if you look at our U.S. business, it has pretty much now three components. And one component is that we are selling engines to U.S. customer and these engines are, to a large extent -- I mean, all engines are [Audio Gap].

Sorry. I can't hear you anymore.

We seem to have a technical issue here. Just try to get Sebastian on the line. Just wait for a minute, I would say. Or maybe Oliver, you can answer on that one. Just a second, we got the message by Sebastian. He will be back in a second. Thank you for your patience. Maybe you can start with the dollar exposure, Oliver, and then Sebastian with the U.S. strategy.

Yes, he seems to have technical issues. So I mean, generally, we have -- like our net exposure towards dollar is like a high double-digit, low triple-digit amount. We are generally benefiting from a stronger U.S. dollar. So we are basically doing hedging activities with a proper -- I'd say, proper structural approach. On the other hand, we also have some sort of natural hedging since we are also buying locally as much as possible. So overall, we are quite well hedged. But of course, we -- translation risk remains and overall a stronger dollar is beneficial for our business.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you again.

Okay. Sorry, I was kicked out, sorry. Sorry about that, Stefan. For your question, so in principle, we have -- our U.S. business has three parts, right? And one part is the engines we're producing in Germany. All of them we're producing in Germany, but our local operations put some relevant value-add on top. That's one block. The second block is the service business, which is pretty autonomous sort of in the U.S. A lot of the value creation comes from the -- comes locally. The only thing we're bringing from Germany are the parts. And then the third business or the third block is the Blue Star business, which is where the assembly of the gensets and everything is fully made in the U.S.A. The only component which is sourced from outside the U.S.A. are, in fact, engines partially, not all of them, but partially. So when you ask about the exposure, well, of course, if there are -- in case there are tariffs on imported engines, we would feel that. However, we do currently not see a major negative impact because the majority of our competitors in the U.S. market and regardless of whether they are American companies or international companies, have also quite a lot of production outside the country. So even Cummins produces not all of their engines within the U.S. Some they do, but not all of them. So we do expect currently -- if there are tariffs applied on engines, we do expect that this would mainly lead to price level increases in the U.S. And on the other hand, for the other two blocks, as service and Blue Star, yes, there is some exposure, but the majority of the value creation comes actually from within the U.S. So overall, can we rule out that there are any negative impacts? No, we cannot. But in principle, we have a very strong and also made in U.S.A. focus in our business. So I'm not saying we are totally relaxed on that, but we are well positioned. And the other thing is also important to highlight that we believe that our recent focus of growing in the U.S. is certainly -- has certainly not been an unwise choice because our products, which stand for reliability, which stand for robustness also in and around the combustion engine technology, we do not expect under the new administration that this field of technology would be banned. So we rather expect the opposite and also the demand for sort of autonomy when it comes to power generation, that's certainly a field which we do not expect to deteriorate in a new administration of Mr. Trump.

Thank you for your questions. We have a few more minutes left. Is there a final question? Then we are happy to take it.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, so far, there are no more questions.

Thank you very much, Marona, and thank you all for your interest in DEUTZ and our earnings session. If there are any further questions, please do reach out to the IR team, and we are happy to talk to you soon and all the best for the rest of a special day. See you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.