dormakaba Holding AG (DOKA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good morning, everybody. Very happy to have you here today in Rimland. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our Full Year Financial Results '23/'24, and the Investor Conference today. I am here joined by our Interim CFO, René Peter. And we're very happy to share with you our strong financial results. Let's have a look at the agenda. I will start with the highlights and the key developments of '23 '24. After that, René will walk you through our figures in more detail. And then we have an update on the [indiscernible], where I'll give an overview of our next steps for dormakaba. We will conclude with the outlook for '24 '25 before going into Q&A and see what is of your highest interest. I think very important, we have a strong organic growth and the margin expansion in '23 '24. First important that we are on track to deliver via our transformation program and the midterm targets where we are fully on the plan to deliver on the targets and in our journey. The net sales growth is about organically 4.7%. And supported by a strong volume growth in the second half of the year. We have seen a good first half year, but the second half, it was even better. And the adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 120 basis points to 14.7% compared to last year. The transformation program is progressing well, and we delivered really tangible, sustainable results. Also very happy to see that the cash flow generation is very positive and -- resulting in a strong balance sheet for us. We continue to be one of the leading players in sustainability, and we have done a great progress over the year in many initiatives, which I will highlight later on the presentation. Besides the sales growth and the EBITDA, which are really a good one and also I think it's also important if you compare the sales growth with competition, and we know that the industry is very attractive. However, currently, we see that the rates of new houses of the -- called the innovation -- not the innovation, but the new projects. We see much more maintenance. So the industry is a very solid industry, however, short term or cloud. Therefore, the 4.7% have been comparably good to competition. The margin we talked about, but I also want to highlight the return on capital employed with adjusted of 29%, which is an increase of 390 basis points compared to last year. René will talk to you later about the details, but I think that is more like the highlights showing and talking today. Besides the numbers, for me, it's most important that we on the product and on the customer side, making progress. So we have entered in a partnership with Tyson Group dynamic components for access control solutions globally. We have been provided with a project in China with a New York University for access automation and also for hardware. Talk about China later. Also, you see that China is post-COVID benefiting from hospitality business. In Norway, we have been partnered for supplier door hardware access control solution and project management for University of Oslo's ambitious life science building, nice project. We have more ticketing solution in the U.S. with our business in California. We got in Germany, a big retail chain with access solution and also the airport business where we had strong project wins in '23, '24, which is also a good basis on our order backlog, where we will build further innovative solutions in the airport area. Coming up, customers product highlights. I talked last time about the MotionIQ and the Door Efficiency Calculator, helping our customers to have a view on their carbon footprint and how they can optimize their carbon footprint. Today, maybe let me quickly talk a little bit about Skyra, how we help our customers to become more efficient as Skyra is a product which were the presales launched in September, the market launch will be in April in '25. And really, it helps on the critical infrastructure, for example, utilities, the remote service for energy provider is much more efficient and that you can send the key as on the go. So you don't need any further station. You can really do it online. The key can be sent out which means the customer can plan much more efficiently. You don't need a long journey to plan. It's much more -- it's a differentiator and it helps really that the customer is more efficient and can work efficiently. I think that's the feedback we also get compared to competition. If we go on -- from customer product, all what we're doing is sustainability is part of our long-term goal. So nothing where we have to talk quarter-by-quarter, but it's part of our LTI program, and we continue to deliver strongly on the progress of sustainability. We increased -- we reached important milestones on the climate change, but health and safety, which is important, human rights and product innovation. And I think one is clearly -- which is important because we are looking about what are the people next to us doing. So, the intra-rate shop by 20% on health and safety, which is very important to look at our next employees. We met our ambitious carbon CO2 target for the third year in a row. And we were installing 20,000 solar panels in the 3 Asian plants leading to savings of 7,000 tonnes of CO2. Additionally, we have saved the 400 tonnes through energy efficiency projects. And I think that is really many steps which we are doing. Also on the transparency, we have over 600 suppliers assessed, to really see about the high-risk suppliers against our sustainability standard that the whole network will be more sustainable for the future. This efforts and it's all about the team. So it's more like -- there are some people here in [indiscernible] which look at sustainability, but it's more about the team all over in the world. So we see this effort, the team working on this task. And it's also nice that has been recognized externally. You see when the Time Magazine is something which is really highly ranked Ecovadis and it's very nice for the team that you get this feedback from the public external recognition, and I think we are proud and the team can be proud to have delivered on this. With this, I will hand over to Rene to tell to you and to tell more about the financial performance.

Thank you, Till. And also from my side, a warm welcome to our Full Year '23/'24 Investor and Analyst Conference. As Till already mentioned, we had a strong financial year '23/'24, and I'm very happy to tell you more about it. Before we dive into the details, let's have a look at our key financial figures. We delivered a strong organic net sales growth of 4.7% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.7%. Return on capital employed significantly improved by 390 basis points to 29% and net profit amounted to CHF 82.2 million. We generated a solid free cash flow of CHF 204.6 million, which allowed us to substantially reduce our net debt by 23.8%. Let's look at the details starting first with our top line development. As mentioned, we delivered strong organic sales growth of 4.7%. This growth was driven by higher volume of 1.9% and price increase of 2.8%. The appreciation of the Swiss franc against all major currencies, particularly in the first half year, had a negative currency translation effect of 4.9%, resulting in total sales of CHF 2,837.1 billion. Organic sales growth accelerated in the second half year to 5.5%, thanks to a strong volume growth of 3.1%. Our transformation program, as announced in July last year started to deliver tangible and sustainable results. Our adjusted EBITDA margin improved significantly by 120 basis points to 14.7%. This is the fourth semester where we have sequentially improved our adjusted EBITA margin. Procurement savings, operational efficiency improvements in our plants and good pricing discipline, all contributed to the strong performance. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to CHF 416.9 million in the financial year '23, '24. Today, we would like to introduce price over cost as a new component in our adjusted EBITDA bridge. Price over cost is defined as a sum of price increases, cost inflation and all efficiency gains. While volume growth contributed CHF 5.5 million, we delivered a positive price over cost of CHF 47.7 million. With price increase of 2.8% and efficiency gains, we are able to more than offset cost inflation. This once again illustrates our strong progress with our transformation program. And going forward, our aim is to continue to deliver positive price over costs. I'm also very happy to share with you that both of our two business segments contributed to the strong financial results. Access Solutions grew organically by 4.9%, of which 3% was due to price, and 1.9% due to volume. Almost all access solution markets contributed to this growth. Furthermore, we have made significant progress in our transformation program. We have successfully set up three multifunctional shared service center in Nogales, India for North America in Sofia, Bulgaria for Europe and Chennai, India for Asia Pacific. Overall, over the last months, we hired more than 250 highly qualified professionals in those locations. We further progressed with supplier consolidation and reduced our supplier base by more than 20%, and we saw good procurement savings in addition to lower raw material costs. We also signed agreements with the employee representatives in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. With this, we set the foundation for our footprint optimization program. As a result, the adjusted EBITDA margin for Access Solutions improved by 80 basis points to 15.2%. Key & Wall Solutions, including OEM, had a record year in top line growth of 4.5%, of which 3.1% was driven by volume. And they achieved a record profitability of 19.7%, plus 270 basis points. The core market of Access Solutions contributed overall positively to the organic growth, overall. Let's focus on two key markets. In Switzerland, we saw good growth in Access Solutions, driven by strong project and service business, which was offset by a softer global demand for contactless smart cards. Organic growth in Germany further accelerated in the second half year due to some catch-up effects versus prior year, and good project and service business in access control and access automation solutions. To allow for better comparability, we decided to add a condensed view of our profit and loss statement, where we exclude items affecting comparability. Let's have a look at some of the key items. Gross margin, excluding items affecting comparability, improved by 130 basis points to 41.3%. This improvement is attributable, as already mentioned, to better plant productivity, pricing discipline as well as procurement savings. Functional expenses adjusted for items affecting comparability, declined by 10 basis points to 29.4% of sales. The financial result benefited from the divestment of an associated company. As a consequence, net profit excluding items affecting comparability, increased by 18.9%. As Till already mentioned, our return on capital employed increased significantly by 390 basis points to 29%. This improvement is driven by a reduction of our average net working capital and a strong increase in adjusted EBIT. In the financial year '23/'24, dormakaba generated a solid free cash flow of CHF 204.6 million. This is an increase of 15.9% to the prior year. Solid operational performance and the sale of investments in associates were the main driver for the strong cash generation. Our solid cash flow allowed us to substantially reduce our short-term borrowings and to strengthen our balance sheet. We reduced our net debt by 23.8% to CHF 454.8 million. Combined with a strong adjusted EBITDA improvement, this resulted in a leverage factor of 1.1x, which is substantially lower than what we have ever seen in the previous years. Finally, we get to our dividend proposal. Our Board proposes to the AGM a dividend of CHF 8 per share. This corresponds to a payout ratio of 51.1%. Similar to prior year, the Board took the decision not to consider the impact of goodwill amortization in the dividend calculation. To sum up, dormakaba delivered a strong financial year '23/'24 and we are well on track on our journey and with our transformation program. With this, thanks a lot for your attention, and I will hand over to Till.

Thank you, René. And now on the back of the results, strong results, let's have a look in the future, what we can do even more. Where are we coming from? I joined 7 months ago, I have been in the Board for 3 months, not the thing which I had was synergies from the merger not realized, overpromising, under delivered, widening gap with competitors, decentralized organization, many changes, some disadvantage on the cost side. What we see now, we are making progress on the transformation of Shape4Growth. We're implementing our new model. We have a new global CC organization, also on the innovation global operation, which means the first time we have a global R&D road map. We had worked on the cost targets with we had pain in helping us working on the cost targets and also implementing now on our own cost initiatives, strategic sharpening. So we are on our road, but it's lots to do even we can shape further. We see first results, good top line and also EBITDA development. You have seen that we have also strengthened the executive committee with a new CEO, working in the new model. And also what's important, I think we have the full -- the executive committee and I do have the full support of the Board of Directors to execute further on the strategy. If I look at the industry and I -- we talked at the beginning about the 3% to 5% and also later on the outlook, we are really well positioned in an attractive market. We see currently some clouds in the medium term, but the market is really a very attractive market with high potential. We are one of the key players, and we can really be part of the consolidation and further work on the industry, because it's increased safety, growing demand for reliability, the trends like digitalization and sustainability are trends, which really paying off and which our products really reflect in what we want to do. We -- the industry on top is very attractive, because in also business, we are resilient. So we have some business which are balancing out. So sometimes, if some is a little bit weaker, we have good business which are helping to support this. We have seen last year growth in Germany of 10% besides the industry being weak, but we have shown 10% growth, which means our business has a good resilience. The entrance the -- borders to enter is good. And sometimes, I've been asked in the morning in the call like what's about China. Clearly, China is always a good bench and a good way to produce. But what we have, we have local norm and standards, which are really a good one to secure the standards, the installed base and also have very local business, which gives some higher barriers to enter. And also, peace of mind with the people who use our products. It's important that we always think about safety, security, people who have dormakaba products around feel safe, feel secure. And I think that's really the trust we have and what we can build up on. So how are we seeing today? And also in the first 7 months, I had many interactions with customers, with our partners, and we are clearly seen as one of the leaders in the industry, our strengths, reliability, expertise, engineering excellence and design and the customers give us high credibility, where I think we have to -- we can capitalize on. What we have to do, what we have to change, it must be easier, it must be less complex. It must be easy to work with us. And that's, I think, also what I have seen over the last 7 months and also what is part of the transformation program. We have to reduce complexity in many areas of the company. And I will have further examples later, but I think that is one of the key messages to further reduce complexity, which has been given by the old structure, which we have to take out, and I think we -- if we have the reliability and the engineering expertise, less complex, and we have to differentiate over our products and make our brand live. And I think that is something where I want to grow the company in the future. So how do we want to go from here to -- in the future? And we have now put this page in front of you, where we go in more detail. And it shows many topics which are already ongoing on the left side, elevate performance. But clearly, it's an [indiscernible] further to continue on the transformation program to have new efforts and to start to shift, to gear up from Shape4Growth. The first part is elevate performance. And I can tell you, we will continue on strict execution of our transformation program. That's one of the key topics. René mentioned, we have reached agreements with the social partners in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We continue on our journey. The agreements are done, but now the execution will continue over the next 18 to 24 months, and it's very important. And it's key to do the execution and to follow up on laying off people and doing what we think is right. So Shape4Growth, as you know, CHF 170 million cost program was focusing operations, IT, HR, finance. So we're adding the commercial transformation, where we drive automation efficiency for our customer focus and efficiency, which we will start today, but we'll give you much more information than when we meet next time. So we're adding up the CHF 170 million, adding the commercial, and I think this has to come across together with a global performance culture, where people want to win, people want to change. People want to reduce complexity, starting with themselves, because I think it's not only the others which have to reduce complexity, it's starting with ourselves. So elevate performance continue to do what we have done adding commercial, and then coming to the second part, which is reduce complexity. We're coming up, we're coming from a local structure where the business has been local, but the business has to be local, but also the product development, the global road map for operations has to be not too local. And we have to think, on the one hand, keeping the local near to customer, however, think about the portfolio as a total. And we have to streamline our product portfolio. What does it mean? We have too many software -- too many hardware, which are parallel work. And if we are having migration strategies and think about what is the best number of products, we can unleash innovation resource for innovation. And I think that's one of the key topics, streamlining our product portfolio to free up resources. The second part is from the product, ONE dormakaba. So today, when I talk to customers, when I talk -- sometimes we talk about the offerings, door closers, hardware, automation, access control solution. Talking to customers, they're looking at the full value chain as a customer journey. So customers talk about the maintenance cost of their building. Talk about the carbon footprint, so we have to get as ONE dormakaba. And once we are in ONE customer, we are selling more and more products. And I think that's really one of our advantages this ONE dormakaba where we can sell the whole of dormakaba to give ONE more and more. Same as the product portfolio where we have the first global road map, same is on the operational network. We have done first steps in consolidating the network mainly in Europe. And we have to further work on the supply chain, we reduce number of suppliers, still -- too high complexity, too much components traveling around the world. So it's something where Carsten Frank, our new COO is focusing on, to think about how can we -- taking the complexity down to the historically grown footprint. And I think this is besides the topic, reduce complexity. And if you have done 1 and 2, I think clearly, we have to also shift gears and want to grow and innovate. That's, I think, one of the things which are close to my heart. Think about, if we reduce complexity and unleash the innovation potential, so what can we do new verticals, having new features in our software and building up leadership positions and clearly growing the market. I have two topics here, and the Innovate and Grow, one is North America. If you know dormakaba for a longer time, though, in the U.S. we have more distance to #1 and #2. So we have strong #1 and #2 position in Europe. But in the U.S., we lost some distance, and it's one of the key areas strategically to further grow in the U.S. We have always started on the hardware basis. We have a good share in hospitality, but we have to further work strategically in America. And then #3, external growth, as René mentioned, we have a stronger balance sheet. We have more firepower. So I think we also shift gears in not only growing organically but also over M&A to participate and drive the market, because this is an interesting consolidating market. And we are important. We have some history, we want to do accretive M&A that we really benefit to the core market and here, be part -- be one of the leaders in the industry. Finally, but not less important than other sustainability. We are continuing to promote sustainable developments throughout our value chain in our operations, and our products, and make sustainability part of our long-term goals. So if you go in detail to one couple of the topics shown. I think one is Elevate performance. We have three shared service centers: Nogales, Sofia, Chennai, already over 250 people employed. So we have to build up the shared server, but they can receive the work from other areas. I think that's an operation to us, and we have to continue. Operations negotiation has been finalized. Over the next 18 months, we have to really execute in it, supply chain, good progress on supplier, to really deliver next step. And also maybe to mention the portfolio. We're working on the long-tail countries to have more efficient go-to-market and make it more, how called more straight and focused to the customer. Next page. Commercial transformation. We will give a more detailed view on this in November. I think it's important that you know that the CHF 170 million has been focused on operation. HR, finance and IT. And here, the goal will be the go-to market. So one, for example, the account segmentation, the review of the go-to-market back office, the long-tail countries where it can be -- do things together more easy, where we can combine market to transform and focus on the go-to-market. Sales excellence, where we can benefit from standardization, funnel management and performance management, clearly, automation, e-commerce, CPQs that we have e-commerce shop [indiscernible] customers are easily closer integrating our network. We have taken some good examples in Switzerland and then clearly efficiency. And that's the part where we believe one additional step on the cost program, and we'll tell you more in November. Complexity. So two areas here, simplify access control solutions. So the platforms, platforms still have developed because we were living in three regions, Americas, Europe and Asia. And if you -- when we reduce the complexity, we need a migration strategy, we already have it in place. But this will be less maintenance, better interoperability, and I think it will be much easier that we're working globally, that we have defined access control solution platforms and that then the ecosystem can grow, but based on the right platforms. Second topic, the door closer portfolio. And I think also when I get my onboarding more than 1 year ago, clearly, one of the topics were, I see a great product, but the variance of the product from my perspective, really much too high and here really going to start to work on the door closer reduce cost, free up resources and come up with a good customer offering -- the right customer offering, but much more efficient than in the past. And I think there are two examples already started, and we will have a big benefit for dormakaba as well as for our customers. The innovation, the ecosystem. So sometimes, and some of you met me before in my old -- I think it's important that we talk about the customer journey. So MotionIQ, Door efficiency means like our customer can work on the carbon footprint on their carbon footprint. How can we make it easier for someone? For a big bank, for a commercial customer to make their carbon footprint of their buildings much more efficient? I think that's when we can have a talk about the whole dormakaba ecosystem and what we can deliver. Also on the door closers to have sensors. So my journey is, on the one hand, that we have door closers, automatics, be coming from the hardware. We do the electrification with motors and drives, we are think sensors, making the product more easy, making it intelligent. And here, we have many examples where we want to get, on the one hand, enlarge the offering from manual electrification to digital, and on the other hand, getting closer to the customer with different systems. And I think this is something where dormakaba can be -- has an advantage over the competition, and we have to tell more in the customer journey. North America. We are not satisfied with the performance of North America in the past. So distant #3 across the segments. We are good in hospitality, good market share. However, we have a focus in the past have been not enough. We clearly did some M&A, which has been not efficient and right. And we have to, on the one hand, work on the offering, as well as on the supply chain. We see that we have already started on the hardware and the go-to-market on the hardware portfolio. We are working on the reshuffling and the operations network towards Nogales, Mexico. And we will also hear more information in November. That's one of the key areas. It's the biggest -- single biggest market. It is the best market by EBITDA, by margin. So we have to find a solution. We have to work operationally and also unorganically in this market, to be stronger and to close the gap to #1 and #2. Verticals. We are strong in airports. We have today a good order backlog in airports. You have seen our innovation, our solutions where we can make the journey of our customer easy in the package and the control at the airport, working hospitals touchless. And I think it's on us to think about which are next potential -- next verticals where we as dormakaba can benefit. One example is data centers. Data centers, reliability, security, it's our DNA. I think it's 1 of the verticals where we have to see about what we have today, what can we add. And here, I think it's an ask to also working more on the on our own, but also sometimes with partners, where it might be right to build the ecosystem. You don't have to do everything on your own. You don't have to buy the thing, but sometimes also with partners, you can think an ecosystem, for example, in multi-housing in the U.S. Mentioned attractive market, firepower, consolidating market, we are somewhat #2 or #3. We have to grow. We have to participate in the consolidation. So, we want to grow 3% to 5%, but we have to add. We want to grow stronger, and we have to do accretive M&A to reason getting bigger and getting more profitable. That's the plan we have. The next step from Shape to Growth. Execution is key. Deliver on the promises, deliver the next steps, really doing step by step, do not overpromise, but deliver -- [indiscernible] better over-deliver. We have our midterm goal of 16 to 18, where we are confident that we are going to reach it. Then we will elevate performance, reduce complexity and free up resources for innovation and grow. And I think this chart, you will see more detail in our next meetings. And I think that's where we should focus on and talk through how we're getting better and grow more profitable. We confirm the midterm targets for '25/'26. With Shape4Growth and the transformation program will allow us to enter 16% to 18%. Who knows us for a long time, it will be the first time we are in this region. I think we once were reaching 15.9. And the new measures, which I showed you, the complexity reduction, the commercial, will allow us to further progress in the range and also work on the future. And I think, this is something where we will tell you more in the later part of this year. Before we close, some remarks on the outlook. We continue our journey and our transformation. We are well positioned, have opportunity ahead. The market is a great market. However, as you see in Switzerland and Germany, the new projects for new house are not today as positive as have been in the past, but we believe it's going to be better in the future. So medium term, some clouds still. We have a good order backlog, mainly also in the project business. We have innovative products. So what we believe, we want to grow organically 3% to 5%, and we want to deliver an EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 15% for the business year '24/'25. Before we go into Q&A and you will have questions, and René and I will be happy to answer the questions. Please save the date on 20th of November. On this day, we will host the Capital Markets Day and would like to invite you. We'll give much more information on the task we have started. Please join us in a headquarter in Rumlang to learn more about strategy, about execution, and where we are on the program. Thank you. And now René and myself are happy to take your questions. And Sadana, please, we hand over to you, and then you can get the first question also by the operator.

Yes. Thank you, Till. So we open right now our Q&A session. First of all, we'll take some questions from the analysts here in the audience following by the ones who joined us over the phone. [Operator Instructions] With that, I think we are ready to start, and there was already the first question coming here from UBS, Patrick Rafaisz.

Am I limited in terms of questions -- to two? Okay. Maybe first on Germany then. You mentioned 10% was a very strong number, of course. There was some element of pent-up demand, that you mentioned. Can you quantify that? And what would you expect the contribution of Germany to be in the next fiscal year? Number one. And number two, if I continue maybe with the overall guidance, 3% to 5%, what pricing assumptions are you making in that range?

Okay. I will answer on Germany, maybe Rene to talk about, then the pricing assumptions. I think if you look back and look about the performance in Germany in the last 7 years, we saw that the German market was very strong, but we didn't build on the strong market. And lastly, we have seen that we did 10%. Also the market is not -- is more shaky than in the past. And I think that shows really that the customers are relying on us, that even the maintenance projects are in our favor and that also the airport projects are very positive for dormakaba. So the business mix is helping us here. For this year, I see that we have a good order backlog in the project business, which is also in favor of Germany. And I believe that also Germany will perform well in '24/'25.

Okay. And on our guidance for next year, we said 3% to 5% organic growth, of which about 50% will be based on pricing and 50% based on volume, which would mean the price impact in the magnitude of 1.5% to 2.5%.

Why don't we take second question from Martin Hüsler, ZKB.

My questions about the functional expenses. You mentioned that you could decrease those by 10 basis points. Can you shed some more light? Where do you see the angle there to decrease those costs further? That's the first question. And then the second question, can you maybe give us some insight into your end markets if we separate them in new construction and modernization and even service business, how well did you do? How did the market develop? And how important are each submarket for you?

I think I will start on the second question, and then René can give you some on the functional costs. So I think this -- in price, are something like 50% new business and 50% maintenance business. If you look around the globe and starting maybe in Asia, if you look at China, there we have seen strong growth in the hospitality area, post-COVID where investments have not been done in this market. And we see hospitality is a big glass for mobile walls and also for facts and control solution. Now I think, I have been 2 weeks ago, I've been to Australia, which I think in line with the expectations, I think there is no surprise growing with the market. If I go to Europe, we are benefiting from leading positions. So we are in Europe market leader. And here, we have a very good partner network, and we are working with our system. We have seen EntriWorX on the pages to have a deeper integration of our customers to make life, to make work more easy, and we can also help on -- think about the regulations. The deeper the customers interacted, the more we can help on sustainability. So I think the interaction gets much more intense and that the distributor, the partners are leaning on us. Where we see the airport business, which is also a very positive development, the project, but we today have a good order backlog. We also see we call we are confident this will be also a good business in '24/'25. If you look back to U.S., Americas, so here, we have -- we need more team, we want to focus more. We are going to invest in the product on the hardware side. We also have a go-to-market in the U.S., we will be more focused and see that we are starting with the hardware. And we will now start or we always started beside the hardware on the automation side, where -- we are strong with a couple of customers, but we can do more. We have a much stronger portfolio in the automatics in the U.S., where we are much stronger in Europe and have to leverage our position in the U.S. Hospitality, we have a good market share. We will continue to grow in hospitality in the U.S. So I think it's really country-by-country. And our goal is overall to grow 3 to 5. And to -- yes, to at least be in this range.

Okay. And now maybe coming back to your question about our functional costs development and the 10 basis points reduction we have seen this financial year. The key driver for this further reduction is actually the shared service center. And in this financial year, as we already mentioned, we have built up 250 positions in the area of finance, HR, IT, product development, which we are currently building up, while we are at the same time, handing over other knowledge from the local organization into those shared service center. That means today, we have some shadowing costs, I mean stubble cost in the organization, which are not part of items effecting comparability. They are part of the operational expenses. But you can expect that, once we start to execute this transition, we have already successfully transitioned Scandinavia, all the four countries, too, Sofia as well as Iberia to Sofia as well as within America, that counts payable function, the counts [ rotation ] function to Nogales, as well as in India. We have already moved some of the functions from China to India. That we will see once we execute on those initiatives, some of the cost reduction on our functional costs. In addition, as Till already mentioned, we are launching a new program on the commercial side, especially focusing on sales and sales administration and marketing. And there, we will come back with some further information at our Capital Market Day.

Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel, yes.

Question on M&A. Could you elaborate a little bit more about this. I mean markets are fragmented in the long run? What do you intend to acquire here? Is it something like a 5% figure on average and looking a bit shorter out, are you already looking at various targets at the moment? Or what would be the sales size and profitability, minimum you're looking at?

I think it is the role of CEO, always to look at M&A opportunities. I think that is a key part. So we have already targets on our plate, on our desk. And we think it's important today that we clearly guide you that we are looking besides the organic of 3% to 5%, also to have unorganic. Very important that we seen sometimes the history that we want to do accretive M&A. And if I look at the targets, we want not to get too complex. So I think there are a different number of targets. A couple of ones which are typical succession targets in Europe where you can then getting had a bolder move in some regions, which we have on table succession topics where in some countries, you add some CHF 10 million to CHF 15 million. And then we have to also look about there are some other opportunities. So it's something which is an ongoing task, some smaller on the plate and has to be accretive. But we cannot give you a number like is it another 5, so it's more like it depends on the opportunity and the opportunity must be accretive.

There was another question upfront from Ciara, I think, right now. Yes.

I have a question on R&D. I wanted to ask how do you see the R&D going forward in the coming years? And also, what's the approximate share of new products coming from the R&D of sales?

Okay. So I think R&D is something where we have to differentiate. If you have this complexity and have done lots of things in parallel, first important that we have the first global road map. It means like whenever we might create on the software side, if we reduce a number of dog loss. As an example, we will unleash capacity to do innovation. So I want to invest in R&D. It's important that R&D is part of us. And if you look at R&D, you have the different layers, we have hardware, automatics and software. Look a little bit in the past 5 years, which just not commenting, but just I think there has been a clear shift towards digitization, but only digitalization. If you look at the landscape, there are many companies come up with software solutions, having some application. And I think the strength of dormakaba is a combination. The combination of hardware, automatics and digitization. And we have to build on this combination, because some company only have software. And in the end, hardware is a good entry level to go in the customer to develop it on your hardware. And so R&D is very important. We're going to invest further in R&D and we will invest in hardware, automatics and software.

Let's take maybe one more question from the audience from Holger Frisch.

Maybe could you update us on the transformation program just -- when dormakaba announced the program, you said that you would about CHF 225 million, which would mainly be booked in '23/'24. So where -- and most of the cost to my understanding, should be cash effective, so where are we currently and what still to be expected? And the second one, would be on the guidance for the adjusted EBITDA margin of 16% in 2026. Do you have a guidance...

16% to 18%.

16% to 18%, yes. And do you have a guidance on the items affecting completely for that year? What should we expect there?

Okay. Maybe I would like to first answer the question about the transformation program. As mentioned, we are well on track on the transformation program. We have achieved -- although we have spent or approximately 50% of the total transformation expense of CHF 225 million. the majority of the restructuring expenses, which you might also see in our annual report, where our provision for severance costs went significantly higher. And the rest are primarily related to an IT project like reside and the transformation to best cost countries. On the savings side, actually, we have achieved similar also 80% -- sorry, 50% of our targeted CHF 170 million savings. For next year, we anticipate roughly about CHF 40 million to CHF 50 million of further transformation expenses, with a higher cash outflow, because we expect now over the next 2 years to see now the payout related to the severance costs which we booked in this financial year.

The ISC [indiscernible].

Sorry.

The ISC '25, '26.

The ISCs, together with the restructuring costs would be about CHF 10 million, CHF 15 million higher because we still have some IT harmonization expenses, which are continuing also next year was roughly about around CHF 50 million to CHF 60 million. Same amount the year after.

I would suggest we will take a few questions right now from the call. Operator, please.

Our first question from the telephone comes from the line of Martin Flueckiger, Kepler Cheuvreux.

I've actually got three. Firstly, on your adjusted EBITDA margin guidance of at least 15%. Can you -- if you talk about it at least, it means you're actually thinking about a range. And I was just wondering what that range is, because if we're talking about a minimum, there's also a maximum and that would be interesting to learn from you. And also, what do you think the most critical drivers are going to be, for the EBITDA margin development in '24/'25? That's my first question. Then the second question is on the outlook in Access Solutions and Key & Wall Solutions, including the OEM business. I read in your -- in your press release that the growth in the order book has been very promising. I was wondering, whether you could elaborate a little bit on that, possibly put numbers to it, and also what the key drivers are in terms of verticals? That's my second question. And then finally, the third question is on your EBITDA bridge, where you talk about price over cost. Can you talk a little bit about the contribution from efficiency gains that you've seen there, in the financial year '23 and '24 -- '23/'24? And what the guidance for efficiency gains is in the upcoming financial year?

And let me start to talk about the first one, the first two question. It's a continuous improvement. It is something where a transformation program is nothing for 6 months. I think for 12 months, it's about 2 to 3 years. We have seen many measures on reducing complexity, and it's a journey. So ASP showed there was a and sequential improvement, half year, 6 months by 6 months. We are now at 14.7%. We have the target to be above 15%. And I think what we want to do, we want to over deliver, not over promise. So I think the 15%, we see above 15%, though there's no range, it's above 15%. And if the performance of the first half year would be better then we can talk about it. But I think now it's on really doing the next step going above 15%. Second on KWO, you have seen that the mobile wall business had a great performance, the whole KWO had a record here. We are benefiting from mobile walls in the U.S. because we are a single source. So we have a good position in the market. But we see continued good growth from rewards, because we can leverage now in Europe and Asia. While it's another Key & Wall Solutions system, the demand is weaker. But clearly, KW will be also in this year in words that could contribute to growth and margin.

Yes, related to the price over cost, as highlighted, we had CHF 47.7 million contribution from price over cost, driven by a price increase of 2.8% and cost inflation of about 2.5% overall. We have seen a little less pressure on the material side, on the procurement side, and slightly more pressure, especially on the salary expense, personnel cost expenses. Now related to the efficiency gain, most of the efficiency gains are relating to the Shape4Growth program. I have already mentioned that we have achieved overall, approximately 50% of the total savings. As there you can expect in the next 2 years to see the remaining amount of this efficiency improvements.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Let's continue and take a few more questions from the audience here. Please don't forget to mention your name and institution as well. Yes, go ahead.

Inge Dose from UBS. Regarding M&A, how do you expect to finance these transactions, depending on how many they are on the sizes they have. Can you remind us of your leverage guidance going forward?

I think, just maybe I give in the ballpark. We have strengthened our balance sheet. I think we're now currently leverage 1.1 reduced the debt by 23% or 24%. So we have, again, more own firepower, which means looking at smaller ones clearly would be cash-driven.

But we feel comfortable with a leverage of about 2.5x of reported EBITDA with an option we have, and the option to exceed if we see some bigger transactions. We have also currently a syndicated credit facility of CHF 525 million, which is unutilized. Therefore, you can calculate what will be the overall via power. But I also would like to highlight that we have a, let's say, from a capital allocation point of view, we are following three priorities. The first priority is actually to maintain a solid balance sheet. Then secondly, also we have -- we want to have an attractive return to our shareholders with our dividend payment of about 50% of our net profit. And then obviously, we have the opportunistic participation in the industry consolidation with disciplined value-accretive M&A transactions.

Just here upfront from Octavian.

[indiscernible] from Octavian. Maybe a bit on the timeline, you have this Shape4Growth with three different stages. Could you maybe speak more about the timeline of that? I mean you have this 3-year plan. Are we now finished with the first stage? Or where are we now and kind of the second stage? Is it already ongoing? And maybe if you compare that to be to your original plan?

I just -- I'm a month, I will try to do the right purchase. So we have announced a transformation program of CHF 170 million last year, which brings us in the region of 16% to 18% in '25, '26, which means 1 year from now. And the measures which are on the left side of the Elevate performance or someone supporting this transformation, which means like we have another 2 years in the beginning of this year. The measures which we have on top are supporting, are really giving us stronger to be on the higher side to really go have a bolder statement to see if we're working on in the future, because if we start now on the commercial side, we see effect in this year, also in the future years. If you talk about innovate and grow, you see potential in the coming years. So whilst we are executing on the first step, where we have done the agreements, execute on the severance payments on the structure of the company. At the same time, working on the commercial area on the innovation path, which will add on, on the past.

And then maybe as a follow-up question, I mean, on the adjusted margin, at what point would you consider maybe moving away from the adjusted EBITDA margin?

I think the direction of agent in the similar action. I think in this year, next year, we will -- we have the ISC for sure. So '24/'25, '25/'26, and there has to come I think we have to find the right study got which will be '26/'27.

Thank you, too. I would suggest we take a few more questions from the call right now. Operator, please go ahead.

Our next question from the telephone comes from the line of Maidi Rizk, Jefferies.

Yes. I'll stick to two as everyone else. The first one is on just basically the wage inflation. I mean, I struggle to -- on your bridge, to be honest, it looks like you had CHF 75 million in pricing for the full year, CHF 85 million in savings. That's actually a bigger number that I had. But I really struggle to justify that whatever, CHF 48 million or CHF 47.7 million in the price over cost. Can you just clarify what was the sort of wage inflation last year? And what do you think that will be for this year? And also, are you ready now to actually give us an overall split of the CHF 170 million between what is -- what will the proportion coming from procurement savings, manufacturing rationalization and server services? Just to have a bit of a split there.

Okay. Maybe first on the question on the salary increases, merit increases, as we have seen, obviously, various different ranges. Some of those salary increases were in the range of 4% to 5% or even more in North America. And therefore, this was overall in the range of about 4% to 5%. Now in addition, regarding the remaining efficiency gains, as mentioned, a major part of it is coming from the Shape4Growth initiative. And there particularly from plant performance optimization, where we have continued to invest into automation in the factories, where you have seen also some substantial improvement compared to prior year. Not yet fully realizing are the savings coming from the shared service center. As outlined, we are currently building up the backbone in the shared service center in those three locations. And we will see the major part of this transition happening in this financial year '24/'25. Therefore, currently with the buildup of these 250 employees, we are building the foundation to afterwards execute during this financial year, the major part of this transition.

And is that remaining CHF 85 million savings? Should we think about it sort of linear over the next 2 years or more heavy weighted towards this year? And then lastly, if I could just squeeze in one last one. How should we think about the at the 20% or margin in excess of 20% for key annual sort of solutions that you had in H2. This is substantially higher than what this division was historically making.

As on the distribution, please keep in mind, this transformation costs, and as I explained, the work shadowing into the shared service center, these are operating expenses as they will not be booked as items affecting comparability. And therefore, these preinvestments will be a full impact on the P&L. Therefore, if you talk about the savings, you always need to consider also some transformation expenses. We, for sure, we see a bigger impact this financial year than afterwards. Regarding the [indiscernible] business and the key [indiscernible] actually. The main reason for this very good result is actually that we see put demand in our mobile wall solutes, particularly in North America, where we have expanded our distribution network and due to the strong order intake, we have also expanded our production capacity, by introducing a third production line in order to satisfy the demand in that market. But also in other [indiscernible] locations like in Europe as well as in Asia Pacific, we have seen very good top line development. In addition, the second half year, also in the OEM business, we have seen a double-digit growth up compared to a weaker prior year.

All right. Thank you very much, Rene. Let's have a look. Do we have any other questions in the room? Don't be shy. Is everybody -- go ahead. Yes. I thought everybody is starving already.

Maybe it's too early for this question, but you mentioned about you have too many products and maybe you would consider streamlining some. I mean, you said you traveled a lot now. Can you maybe give us a bit of a glimpse where maybe we could cut some of the products or simplify or -- is it too early for the capital model to say?

I think, because you want to do a model, it's too early. So I can tell you more like on less financial perspective. If you look about, for example, our hospitality offer our multi-housing offer on the software side, there are too many software platform in parallel. And you have to maintain the platforms and you have to find the right way to migrate. And also on the hardware side, if you're having hardware development in the region, and now you have one overlay. I think there are many -- it's -- it is not the only industry if you do like product complexity reduction is someone, which is a standard program, which we have to do, which has not been done here. So we have to do it. And we will tell you more in November and where we believe the potential will lie, but I think it's a substantial one.

I see there is a follow-up question here from the room. Let's take it from UBS, Patrick. And then afterwards, there is one more question also from the call.

A question on cash flow. If we take the, let's say, EUR 200 million or so free cash flow as a base. We'll have some top line growth. We'll have some margin expansion, but provisions -- near-term provisions went up significantly, right, almost EUR 90 million or so. And I assume a lot of that will become cash out this year. How do you think about the free cash flow generation in this fiscal year?

Maybe you have noticed that in our balance sheet, we have actually the first time also disclosed cash flow from operating activities, excluding payments related to items affecting comparability. And this is roughly 12% and we expect also that in the future, we will see a cash flow from operating activities, adjust before items affecting comparability to move in correlation with the top line. However, there will be some slight change because there will be increased tax payments due to the improved profitability which we'll expect to see compensate by reduction -- further reduction of our net working capital. When we look at payments or the payments related to items being comparability, we are expecting to be in the range of CHF 6 million to CHF 7 million in this financial year and slight slightly lower than the year after.

All right. There is one more question I see from the call. Operator, please?

The next question from the telephone comes from Remo Rosenau, Helvetische Bank.

The gross margin, the adjusted gross margin increased by 130 basis points. I understand that there was an improved procurement strategy with savings attached to it, et cetera, et cetera. Has there also been some positive impact just stemming from lower raw material prices in the market. i.e., some additional tailwind, which helped you on top of your internal assets, because many other industrial companies reported about such tailwinds helping them on the margins just because of lower raw material pace. And if this was the case, how much of the 130 basis points would be stemming just from lower raw material prices?

I think it's a question which clearly, the tailwind helped us in the first half of the year. And we have seen in the second half that inflation has been more sticky than expected. I think it's difficult to think about what is on tailwind in the first half and the second year -- second half, I think the second half is important that we improved also volume. So it's not over price only, but also volume. It helped I think it's not right to give you a number on this one, because we don't have the -- it's a mix of different of our transformation program, some tailwind. Clearly, it helped, no doubt about this.

Okay. So it is on us to make an assumption about that. Okay.

Yes.

Thank you, Till. There is one more question again from the call. Operator, please go ahead.

Our next question comes from the line of Delphine Brault ODDO BHF.

I have two quick ones. First, is your guidance for the full year, and I'm thinking about the 3% to 5% organic sales growth also valid for H1. And second, how was the start of H1 in terms of sales to the first -- your first 2 months?

So if I -- the guidance of 3% to 5% is for the full year '24/'25 on the growth of 3% to 5% organic. If something on M&A that could be on top, it would be inorganic and also the above 15% is the guidance. And we did a proper start in the year. So I think there is no surprises. And we after the first 1 month, so the second month is in the making. We see no -- we are not worried about the guidance in a way. So I think we are fully behind our guidance.

If there are no further questions from the audience here -- I see there is still one follow-up from the call. Let's take this one. Operator, please?

We have a follow-up indeed from Mr. Rizk, Jefferies.

Yes. Just quickly, Till, on the M&A. Some of the M&A that dormakaba has done in the past has not created value, and I see that now it's a priority for you. What would you do differently here? And perhaps if you could share where you see gaps in the portfolio, whether it's product-wise or region? And then lastly, what's your view on the expansion in the residential segment? I know your predecessors were basically against it, we know dormakaba is essentially a play on the commercial side.

M&A, clearly, you're referring to the past performance, which is -- I will not talk about only so that we had to have some depreciation here, some write-offs. I think it's important that we talk about what can benefit on the core market. I see that dormakaba is good on innovation. So I think it will be much more regional strengthening. It has to be accretive. It's the third time I'll tell it, but I think the looks at me, it has to be accretive. You have to find the right targets to help our business. In the past, it have been maybe sometimes not focused enough, and we didn't have the strategy to execute. So I think it's a combination of getting regionally stronger and helping our products to be more efficient. So believing more that innovation comes over ecosystem and of our own R&D company, our own R&D department. So it has to be regional helping us to be stronger. Second topic was residential. I think we once talked about this. If I look at our business profile, the commercial is a totally different animal than residential, which we all know, and it has different hurdles to enter. And I have not made my few finally, but I think it is nothing where dormakaba will follow the road of the others just to do it and they are doing it today. And so we focus on commercial and if there would be any change to it, it has to be different on innovation, different on product. I think it would be not wise and we will not do it to just enter a market with the same tools, the same topic. So I see that the residential market is much more driven by the big players like the big IT, and come like Microsoft and Apple. And I think here the impact is stronger, which means that on the commercial side, it's a different way, and we will continue on the commercial. And if that opportunity to be different, we might look at it but not today.

All right. Thank you very much. If there are no further questions from the audience, then I would suggest that we close our Q&A session. I assume everybody is really starving and would like to grab some quick lunch with us. Thank very much for joining us. Thank you very much for your active participation. And yes, enjoy the lunch, and have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.