Frequentis AG (FQT.DE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Frequentis AG in English language regarding the half year figures for 2025. I am delighted to welcome the Management Board of Frequentis with CEO, Norbert Haslacher; CFO, Peter Skerlan; COO, Monika Haselbacher; CTO, Karl Wannenmacher; and Stefan Marin as Head of Investor Relations, who will guide us through the presentation and the results shortly. Afterwards, we will move over to a Q&A session and wish you will be allowed to place your questions directly to the management via audio line or chat box. Additionally, I would like to point out that you can already place your questions in our chat box during the presentation. And having said this, I hand over to Mr. Stefan Marin and Mr. Haslacher to open the call.

Yes. Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. Before we start our presentation, we, as the Executive Board, would like to say a big thank you to all employees around the world for their dedication in these times where things are changing faster than usual. I would like to start with our figures on Slide #2. So we were able to achieve a double-digit increase in order intake, orders on hand and revenues again. Order intake rose by more than 1/3 or EUR 81 million to EUR 309 million. Orders on hand are now above EUR 750 million, EUR 764 million to be exact. And revenues grew by almost 15% to EUR 237 million. Given the usual half year seasonality resulting from project business within the public sector, EBITDA was EUR 5.2 million, while EBIT was minus EUR 4.3 million. The equity ratio stayed at 39%. At the end of June '25, we had a net cash position of EUR 68.3 million, including EUR 62.6 million from advanced payments from customers, approximately the same ratio as a year ago. Now I would like to share some order intake and project highlights on Slide #3. Additional orders in the U.S. contributed to the higher revenue growth in North and South America that we will show you later. The rollout of the air-to-ground protocol conversion system in the United States is on track. Following completion of an order from the Defense Department, there is now a digital air traffic control system in place in the United States Army Garrison in Germany. The multi-domain communication systems for the Australian Defense Force next-generation AIR6500 Joint Air Battle Management System is the type of order that moves us forward in terms of both our product portfolio and our knowledge base in the area of defense. Public Safety won a sizable contract with the German Federal State of Thuringia. Frequentis is there the general contractor. Multimedia functionality, that means managing multiple types of inquiries, whether via phone, radio, video or digital channels, plays an important role in the LifeX rollout for all Norwegian fire emergency call centers. Other highlights include 2 orders from the U.K. and Italy at Regola, a company we have acquired a couple of years ago, our Italian subsidiary. When we go into details on order intake, so Slide 4 shows that order intake grew again this time by amazing 35.6% to a new half year record of EUR 309 million. Both segments contributed to this success. Air Traffic Management posted a rise of 10% and Public Safety & Transport a rise of 81.3%. This was because unlike usual, some orders were received in the first half year of the year rather than the second. For example, they came earlier than expected. The difference between the 2 segments is expected to be lower in the full year. Please note that major orders are multiyear projects, so they become more profitable over time. In other words, profitability is lower at the beginning, for example, in the initial phase of such projects, as you know that already from our past. Looking forward, we have a well-filled order pipeline and good opportunities for '25 and beyond and orders on hand increased by 23% to EUR 763.8 million compared with June '24. This is the first time that orders on hand have exceeded EUR 750 million, so that's EUR 0.75 billion at the half year. So for more financial details, I would like to hand over to you, Peter, our CFO.

Thanks, Norbert. Hello from me as well. So let's now switch to Slide #5. Revenues were up by 14.8% or EUR 30.5 million at a new record of EUR 237 million for the first half year. This increase fills the need for additional employees. And we are still able and proud to find enough qualified employees across the globe to handle this growth as we are an attractive employer. Both segments contributed to the growth. ATM grew by 13.8%, while PST grew by 17.6%. The revenue split by segment did not change, 70% ATM and 30% PST. Let's now go to Slide #6, revenues. Revenues grew in all regions, except for Asia. Europe is still our biggest market. We are happy with the growth of more than 50% in North and South America, with most of it coming from the U.S. The second highest relative growth rate was 16% in the Australia/Pacific/Africa region, while Europe grew by 10%. The lower revenues in Asia were due to revenue shifts within some projects. So now to Slide #7. Slide #7 shows the continued strong seasonality of EBITDA and EBIT. That eventually raises the question, EUR 31 million more in revenues, but no progress in EBITDA and EBIT. How come? This is due to our customer structure and the type of project business we are involved in. Project progress and acceptances and therefore, revenues and profitability are higher in the second half of the year. To give you some more detail, on average in the past 5 years, approximately 44% of revenue was generated in the first half of the year and 56% in the second half. On average, about 40% to 45% of raw materials, services and other operating expenses were accounted for in the first half and about 55% to 60% in the second half. Hence, the same pattern as revenues. In contrast to this linear expenses, the pattern was different for personnel expenses, about 50% in the first half and 50% in the second half. Reason is simple. We pay our employees monthly and not on the basis of milestones or project progress. Therefore, in each of the past 5 years with one exception due to the corona pandemic, EBIT was negative in the first half. And given the pattern I have outlined, this will continue. Now back to the numbers for the first half 2025. The impact on EBIT came from personnel expenses, plus 11.3% materials and purchased services, which increased by 18.8%, while revenues grew by 14.8%. Both other operating income and other operating expenses increased, and this was largely due to exchange rate fluctuations related to U.S. dollars. Exchange rate losses were largely offset by gains resulting from changes in the fair value of forward exchange contracts. Order intake and project acceptance are generally higher at year-end. Hence, the second half of the year is the more important for our profitability. For the outlook, I would like to hand over to Norbert.

Yes. Thank you, Peter. We would like to conclude with the outlook and our agenda for '25 on Slide #8. So based on orders on hand of EUR 764 million, we are working at a very good level of capacity utilization. We aim to increase order intake further. While the growth was more than 1/3 in the first half year '25, we expect the increase in order intake over the full year to be in the lower double-digit percentage range. The sales pipeline '25 and beyond remains well filled. Based on order intake and orders on hand, we are confident that we can increase revenues by at least 10% over the full year. A word on profitability. So temporary shifts in milestones, revenues and potential start-up costs of the larger programs at the beginning of the projects are the bread and butter of a project-driven company like ours. Therefore, it's always a little bit of a challenge to forecast the exact extent to which each of the roughly 800 projects per year will impact profitability. Nevertheless, overall, we expect the EBIT margin to stay about 6.5% to 7% in 2025. Capital expenditure will be about EUR 12 million. Company funded that is self-financed R&D expenses were EUR 30 million in '24, and we expect them to remain at this level. R&D expenses, as you -- most of you know, are recognized in the income statement and are not capitalized. So we are proud of what we have achieved in the first half year of '25. Again, thank you very much to our people around the world. We are on a good track for another year of growth. We are now ready for your questions.

Thank you very much for your presentation and your transparent insight. [Operator Instructions] We have 3 hands up. I will start with the person, the phone number ending 2809. He should be able to speak now.

This is Miro speaking, from JMS. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Norbert and team, I have a couple of questions. The first 1 would be on the other operating expenses. So you basically elaborated on the cost increase of your personnel, but I also realize that your other operating expenses are now minus -- were minus almost EUR 39 million. Was there anything special in there?

Okay. Miro, we do it question by question. So I will hand over to Peter to answer your question.

Yes. Probably because you cannot see us, we have a special microphone, a very good one, but we have to put it from one person to the next one so that you can understand us very clearly. So yes, there are specialties in it. One is the exchange rate differences. We have EUR 4 million more exchange rate differences in the other operating expenses. And they are mostly compensated by our exchange rate hedging income, which you can see then the other operating income. So that's special to the fluctuation of the U.S. dollar. But due to what we have done, we could compensate it. That's the first thing. The second thing is what we see is 1 million more licenses. And these are the licenses for our own business and for our office licenses that we need. Here, what we can see is a continuing trend. We cannot buy this software anymore, the software that we use on our own, we have the subscriptions. And so it moves from investments to other operating expenses, and that's an additional EUR 1 million. Furthermore, we see increasing travel expenses. Here, it's a good trend in comparison to last year that we can see that the price of flight tickets is stable. So we don't see further price increases concerning our flight rates. But what we see is additional flights necessary due to the growth. We have to visit our customers to be on site, so we have more flights worldwide. These are, I would say, the largest positions.

Okay. Very clear. A second one would be on the provision, which you basically reversed EUR 3.7 million. Was this also booked in other operating expenses? Or was this booked in other operating income? And maybe you can also tell what it was. Was there any like a special larger provision? I see [indiscernible] the report, which explains around EUR 5 million of this. But was there anything -- maybe you can explain what that is? And then maybe comment on it?

Okay. Thank you for the question. So I keep the microphone, then we are quicker. Yes, concerning the last point that you mentioned the premium, I think it's a variable income of our employees. If they meet their targets, then they get this variable income, the bonus. And as we believe in our goals till the end of the year, we have to make the provisions for that [indiscernible]. And as the half year is over, we had to book half of the expected bonuses. Unfortunately, that's not related to the EBIT. We had tough discussions with our auditors. Can we book the variable income according to the EBIT that we have achieved in the half year, but we have to book it according to the year's end expectations.

Sorry if I asked again here. So last year, these provisions were EUR 13 million. This year, they were EUR 8 million. Yes, they were lower. So they achieved their targets to a lesser extent compared to last year, basically.

Yes. Very good question. You cannot compare the value of half year with the value of the full year because concerning the full year, you see then the variable incomes that we have to pay out then for the full year. So for the half year, it's just the half amount.

Okay. Understood. So you reversed the EUR 13 million and you basically -- there was a new booking of the EUR 8 million. Okay. Understood. Very clear.

Okay. But thank you for the question. It's a very valid question, but it's only half of the variable income that we posted here because it's only half of the year.

Okay. Then I have 2 more for Norbert, and then I go back into the line. The first one would be regarding the margin in ATM. So I think due to X10 development and so on, this margin should go up significantly in the upcoming years. Has there anything changed regarding this outlook? Or do you still think this is going to be the case even though you're growing very fast in this division?

No, nothing has changed, Miro. I mean, we are still in the middle of developing Release 10. As you know, it's a very disruptive technology that voice communication can be executed over data centers and virtual environments. So this is high tech. And we still need, as outlined last -- in our last call, we still need another 3 years to fully complete of what we need for a large go-to-market.

So this will take more time...

Yes, as expected. We expect now 3 years. We have brought in large orders as launching customers, for example, Canada. So we will roll out the technology over whole Canada with more than 1,000 workplaces. But we are not where we have to be for a larger go-to-market. But no surprise for us. As we always said, we need another 3 years approximately.

Okay. And the last one would be regarding the revenue bookings. So I noticed, obviously, the excellent order intake, 36%, just a 15% increase in revenues. Now I say just, obviously, that's a very good number, right? But to keep up with the order intake, you need to grow by more than 10% in the full year. I guess, is the -- you mentioned -- always mentioned the 40-60 split between H1 and H2. Is it still the same this year, like 40-something and almost 60 in H2? Or do you think it's closer to the 45, 55?

No, to be honest, it's still with a 40-60 split, except public safety. That's why I've mentioned that we had 81% jump in Public Safety & Transport orders in the first half year compared to the last first half year because some orders have been shifted to the left, which is unusual. Usually, they're shifted to the right. So at the end of the year, we expect a similar pattern with -- compared to last year. Nevertheless, orders are very strong currently, and we also said in our outlook that we expect a minimum growth in revenues of 10%, not around 10%. We said now it will be more than 10%.

Thank you very much for your questions, Miro. And with this, we already answered a few questions in our chat box. Let me jump over there. Could you please give a status quo comment regarding the U.S. flight system orders?

Yes, we can. So first of all, I have to say that we are lucky that the FAA, so the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States, which is the ANSP in the U.S. is benefiting from the Big Beautiful Bill of the U.S. government. So what the FAA expects is a funding of around USD 12 billion to USD 13 billion for renewing their air traffic control infrastructure. What we have seen in the first half year and that will, as we have planned, continue also in the second half year is that there is an acceleration wish of the authority to accelerate their transformation towards an IP network, which is very important to us because our technology is part of that journey. And we had already significant double-digit order in the first half year and expect another double-digit order in the second half year for that transformation program.

Thank you very much. And what share in your revenue streams is actually based on software and what share on hardware? Additionally, what do you expect to see in 3 years?

I would like to comment on that. So concerning our software portion, we still are at 20% concerning hardware, it means own produced hardware as well as procured and sold hardware. We are approximately 10%. What do we expect for the future? That depends what our customers tender in the future. What we see now large tenders where we are the general supplier. Here, the customer expects us to deliver also a large portion of IT equipment and other hardware required for the airports. So it depends on the tender that we win. So I would say we still see the 10% of hardware in the future, if we don't win large tenders with large material portions.

Okay. Thank you very much. And next online will be Philip Hettich. He should be able to speak now.

Philip Hettich, from ODDO BHF speaking. First question from my side would be, I saw that you recorded a gain from sale of intangibles and PPE in the first half of the year. Could you probably elaborate what that was exactly. I think it was around EUR 850,000.

Okay. I would like to comment on that. Here is Peter again. Thanks for the question. Well, we had projects where the customer decided to lease the equipment and not to buy it. Now the customer has detected funds and asked us to take over and procure the leased equipment from us. So the lease will stop, and we have sold it.

Okay. Maybe a second question regarding defense orders. I think you're still sticking to your view that there's no immediate effect on the order intake from any additional defense spending. But I was wondering if you have anything to share in addition regarding the timing and when you would probably expect, yes, any orders to flow through? Is there any news? Or is there nothing to share at this point that is incremental from what we've already heard from you?

Yes. I mean we always said we don't expect a jump in orders in defense. So that will be more or less a multiyear development of increasing order pipeline in defense. We see that the first compelling event we need in Germany is that the EUR 600 billion will be approved into a budget and then will be distributed to the forces for tendering or for extending existing contract basis. That's one thing. And the other thing is that with the first remote tower for U.S. Army, of course, we also have set the seed for additional orders from the United States in rolling out their digital tower program, where we still wait for the approval of the authority in the U.S. and the tech center for certification expected Q2 '26. So what we expect is a continuous growth in defense and pipeline increase for '26, '27, '28. I also want to mention the share of the defense business, of course, as we have a very strong civil ATM U.S. business from the United States from the FAA, which I have just mentioned when I think Miro has asked the question. So it will always be in relation to the growth of the other segments. So if the other segments are growing very fast at the moment and defense not, so it can also be that the overall share of defense will be less than 20% due to the big growth of the other segments because we face a book-to-bill ratio larger than 2 at the moment.

Okay. Understood. And then maybe one more question on the seasonality just for me to understand. I think you always -- or you managed in the past to -- and also this first half to come in at a positive EBIT margin in the PST segment. So are there any additional effects that contribute to a better first half margin in the segment compared to air traffic to the ATM segment? Or is it -- yes, or is it just merely an effect of the structurally higher margin in PST that causes EBIT margin in the first half to be positive there?

Here's Peter. Thanks for the question. I think we have 2 things. One is, yes, the Public Safety margin is higher than the ATM one. And the second one is it depends on large projects and how these large projects are executed in the first half year, whereas we had here very good ones in the first half year in ATM in the second half of the year.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hettich. And we will go on to another question from the chat box. In recent weeks and months, there have been various reports of mostly short-term failures of air traffic control systems, for example, in Poland and at London Heathrow Airport. Are these systems currently the focus of increased attacks? Or is the perceived increase in frequency coincidence or due to greater media attention? What could this mean for Frequentis and its competitors, market share shifts or faster replacement of older systems?

Yes, I can answer that. I mean, first of all, I have to say that no Frequentis product was involved in Poland. I didn't even know of the Poland failure and neither at NATS in the U.K. what we have heard from NATS, it was a radar failure on the radar infrastructure side. I think failures always somehow appear. The question is how long is there an impact to the air traffic flow. Usually, our customers have doubled system, backup systems, tripled systems. So they are prepared for failures to -- for the backup systems to take over as soon as possible. I think in the U.K., the outage was only affected by 20 minutes. So then the backup systems went up and took over. And there will always be failures. Of course, we don't like that, but the question is how fast those failures can be covered by a backup. And then usually, we go into root cause analysis if our systems would be affected to identify the failure and reproduce the failure and then to execute changes to the program that the failure can never occur again. That's typical for safety critical systems. Is there a chance for others? I don't know. I think every supplier already had the opportunity to face a failure of his or her own system. I think it makes the system more resilient, if we can reproduce the failure and can eliminate the failure. I don't think that it's a chance for more market share. What's the chance is that the ANSPs, of course, have to think about upgrading their infrastructure due to the increasing air traffic. And I think that's the biggest challenge for companies like us to participate in that investment plans they have for the next 5 to 10 years.

Thank you very much. And could you please give us some words about your business in drones? And what you see regarding that business within the coming years?

Yes. I mean, when we look back when we started with our first research programs in CSR and in Europe, to allow drone flights autonomous from Finland to the Baltics, we thought that the challenge of drone systems called UTM systems is to integrate drone traffic into regulated airspace where air traffic is conducted. That's still our goal to provide systems, which can make sure that there is no conflict between a very large increasing drone traffic not to influence air traffic with people in an aircraft. But to be honest, since 2 years, based on the Ukrainian war, we have seen that the type of war has changed significantly. So drones play a major role at sea, on land, in the air as part of the forces. So what the German Armed Forces have then identified as a threat is that they have no real technology in the German nation to identify if a drone is friendly or unfriendly. That's why they have started a program with Frequentis to build up a technology-based to be able to identify a drone as friendly or unfriendly. And if it's unfriendly, to then start countermeasurements against this drone operating or flying in an airspace. I think that's new. That's a new market segment. We now have identified beside the civil usage. The military usage is increasing, and we think that's not a German problem at all. It's a worldwide problem to be able to -- to see a drone, to identify a drone and to then conduct method to say, are you friendly or unfriendly and in case unfriendly to take countermeasures. So the drone use cases will be more and more military in the future, we are convinced.

Thank you very much for your answer. And the next hand up from the person with a phone number ending 742. And we will move on to another person with a hand up, the person with the initial you should be able to speak now.

Lukas Spang, Tigris Capital. I have 3 questions. The first one is regarding your backlog. Can you share a little bit some details or some numbers? How much of your backlog is already for 2026 and beyond. And in this regard also, how is this number compared to 1 year ago. So if you compare the order backlog mid of 2024 and looked into 2025. So how is this number or has this number developed since then?

Yes. Thank you. So the orders on hand, as I said before, is committed orders from our customers and not budgetary approvals within their organizations. Otherwise, the orders in hand value would be around double of what we currently have in our books. So those are committed orders. Those orders are usually multiyear orders or not usually, some of them larger orders are multiyear orders as a rollout in a large geography like Brazil or the U.S. takes a couple of years. So therefore, the orders on hand is always higher than the revenues. What I can say and that's maybe a statement for the end of the year, we usually start with around 50%, 55% of already in-house orders a new fiscal year. So our plan, when we grow '26, another double-digit number, then we expect to have 50%, 55% of the orders feeding that revenue top line already in-house. Does that answer your question?

Partially maybe, but if you look at your fixed or your committed order backlog, how much of this is for 2026 and beyond?

Yes, we think about 50% is around 20 because you never know how fast you are in the project. I mean, we still have 6 months to go or 5 months to go in '25. So it depends how much of the orders we can execute in collaboration with our customer, we can execute in '25. The more we can execute in '25, the less will stay for '26. So it's a very vague figure I can tell you, but we expect around 50%.

Okay. And then staying at the order backlog or order income, you have this, let's say, midterm plan to increase your margin to double-digit number. Do you see in your order income and your order backlog that margins are going up so that you have for 2026 and beyond or if you have also in your pipeline further future orders that you can reach the higher margin in the future based on the incoming orders on pipeline orders you see?

Yes. I mean the average of the last 5 years, when we count our orders are around 10% profit. But that's very much volatile. It depends on the type of orders you get. So when you are a prime contractor and taking over a lot of subcontracting into your prime contract, then usually your bottom line in the order intake phase is not that big as if you would be alone with your own value chain only. So that very much depends on that. And it also depends on how much PST orders are in because, as you said, the last couple of years, we have ended up end of the year with a double-digit EBIT in PST and with a single-digit EBIT in ATM. And the share between PST and ATM is also responsible for that figure. But the order intake profit is only a starting point. And as you know, public sector is very much depending on change requests during the program. So those are also responsible for producing better EBIT margins than we have contracted in the beginning.

But especially in ATM, if you look on your order intake, do you see that you can reach higher margin? Or is it just that you will have not this high expenses in the future anymore, which you have currently due to the platform expenses?

No. I mean that's depending on the program. I can give you one figure. The APC program in the United States, it will be a 3-digit million program order intake for 2025. At the moment, we only get a cost coverage from the FAA and then the rollout will be contracted in August, September, where we get the whole profit and the civil works accordingly. Then we have a very good margin on that rollout program because we produce 15,000 boxes of the same. So the margin will be double digit overall from a corporate perspective. When we go into Release 10 programs where we invest around EUR 20 million of our EBIT every year to produce the software, then these programs are around 0 or if we are in a competitive situation, even minus 5, but that's part of our business model that we step in with a minus profit and then develop it during the program. So it very much depends on what type of product we get into our orders during the year.

Okay. And then to your revenue guidance, so you communicate at least 10% that leaves some room on the upper side. What do you think would be a realistic upper end to expect if you would give a range, the upper end?

I would say, at least 10%.

So you don't want to give an upper end. You think it -- which is realistic or you should expect...

We have shown at the half year, I think 15% approximately. So if it runs as expected, we will be around that figure. That's what we can expect.

Thank you, Mr. Spang. And we'll move on to Mr. Daniel Lion. Mr. Lion, we can't hear you. Okay, then we will come back to you later. And I will move on to the person with the phone number ending 2809.

This is Miro again. Three more questions, if I may. The first one on tariffs. I think there is a 15% tariff now in place for the EU. How does this impact your P&L?

Yes. Miro, I said that we have around 80%, 85% of value chain localized in the United States. So the only transfer is hours of experts and maybe software licenses to the U.S. So we expect the tariffs to have a minor impact on to our U.S. programs.

Minor means EUR 1 million or so or less than EUR 1 million?

It depends on the revenues we can execute this year in the U.S. programs.

So lower single digit. Is it low single digit?

Yes.

Okay. The second one is regarding the seasonality of your -- and the fluctuation over the seasonality of your P&L. So what we can notice is basically that the amplitude of the minus in the first half and the plus in the second half is getting higher and higher each year. Is there -- can you maybe explain how you account for the people who are working in the first half year, as you have mentioned before, but who do not basically create any revenues in the first half. Isn't there any way or can you explain how these people -- the work of these people is being accounted for? And will this remain this way for the foreseeable future? Or can you do something about it going forward?

Good question. I think what happens in the second half of the year that customers see that they have funds left, which they would like to spend. So spares, change requests, happening then in the second half as well as claims where we negotiate the whole year. We want to have a result until the end of the year, which is then for both sides of interest to have it covered in the calendar year that happens then, especially in quarter 4 to close the cases. And the next thing is a lot of customers are shifting their orders from 1 week to the next one, but what's fixed is the delivery date. So what we do here, we know that we get the order. We know it's, let's say, an extension that the customer will order and the customer is only able to buy it from us. But he isn't able to place the order, tries to negotiate or wait or have initial or full procedures. As you know, our authorities, our customers have very slow processes. What we do here is we prepare for the second half. We prepare for everything that has to be happened in the fourth quarter, make pre-investments. What we do is we order the core materials to be able to supply. We develop the one or other feature that we are able to deliver things like that happen. So it's like a chess game where we set our pieces and in the second half, in the last quarter, everything has to happen and according to the plan. So the people are not sitting around and looking out of the window. They prepare and develop and build.

But this is not bookable as own work capitalized or change in semi-finished goods or whatsoever because this number has been much lower this year compared to the last years. Since the materials...

Now what happens is the -- the materials that we procure, you see it then under inventories. So we have it on stock. The problem is we cannot put margin on top of it because we have no order. So you see then always in the first half increased inventories. That's what we prepared to be able to ship them in the second half. And also when we develop some features which are not sold, we cannot recognize that as revenue. And we will not recognize it as revenue without orders. I know other companies are doing that to put it -- to make it flat, we don't do that. If there is an order, we can recognize revenues. If there's no order, no recognition.

Okay. Then the last question would be on your segmentation according to installed base business and new business and other, which you also provide in your report. Can you please explain in detail what installed base business means or what a new product or new client business is? Maybe a stupid question, but I can imagine that you have ever and ever the same clients coming back to you for business.

It doesn't -- it's a very good question for all people, new and not experienced with Frequentis or probably haven't forgotten it. It's part of our business model. The first thing we try to attract new customers also with new products, new solutions, new customers. That's the new product, new customer business. That's always with tough tenders with high competition. And then the other phase is when the systems, our systems are done on site, we talk -- it's the installed base business. So the system is on site. The system is installed. Now the customer can have wishes extensions, improvements, things like that. We know that the customer, then the customer knows us. So we are together able to improve the system, which brings additional value to the customer. And this additional value can then be sold at higher prices because it brings value to the customer. And the competition is very limited. In some cases, no competition.

So the defining characteristic is that the system is already installed on the customer side. This is the definition.

That means the installed base. The system is installed. And everything after this installment on site that's then called installed base business where we sell to this customer additional functions, extensions, spare parts, probably additional products that fit to the system trainings, everything like that with a high value.

Thank you very much for your questions again, Miro. And we have 2 questions left in our chat box. Do you have an M&A pipeline in side? And are there any news concerning the remote tower projects in the U.S.

Yes. So M&A is still part of our corporate strategy. As you know, especially since our IPO 2019, we have acquired 10 different companies. I said in my last call that we need some time to digest and integrate them and put SAP in and all the processes. I think you know what that means. That's a lot of work. Nevertheless, we are -- we still have appetite in M&A. But a lot of things have to be checked before we are going into diligence. First of all, is the product a value for us where we can make a 1 plus 1 is 3 out of it. You know that Frequentis is going more and more into the solution business from a single product business into solutions business, and we need multiple products for a solution for our customer to create operational value for our customer. Therefore, the product itself is very important to us. The second is it has to fit to our strategy. So our strategy is to become #1 in control center solutions of national safety critical infrastructure. We are not interested in commercial business. So we want to stay in that safety critical space. And the next one is the culture of the company because we have a very special culture in Frequentis. We are a family company. Yes, we are stock listed, but still a family company. So we are very long-term oriented, and we are very risk averse when it comes to our balance sheet, not to remain with debts for the next generation because we hand that company over to the next generation at some point in time. Therefore, also culture plays a major role. And those elements are really important to us, and we are not buying just for the buying sense, we are buying to have a real value for the company. So we have a pipeline. We analyze around 20, 30 companies a year. Currently, we are not in a dedicated due diligence phase. Concerning the remote tower question, what's very interesting to us is that the first U.S. Army base outside of the U.S. has deployed the remote tower of Frequentis for military purposes. It's very interesting. Most of these towers are very, very old. Some of them have been built during the second World War. And they make a decision that if they rebuild it, it costs them maybe USD 20 million or if they put a digital tower in, which costs them much less, especially also from a maintenance perspective. What we're still waiting for, for the U.S. National Airspace is the certification of our remote tower in the tech center of the FAA. That is still the same forecast as last year. We expect a Q2 '26 certification from the FAA for our remote tower to be able to deploy it in the national airspace of the U.S.

Thank you very much. And in the meantime, we have received no further questions. Therefore, I hold the room for another moment if there might some left. And there is one more hand up from Daniel Lion. You should be able to speak now. Yes. Mr. Lion, you are unmuted, but we can't hear you maybe some audio programmation. No, sorry, still not. Maybe you can place a question in the chat box.

Send it to Stefan Marin, [email protected]. We can answer the question afterwards. No problem.

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Marin. And with this, we come to the end of today's earnings call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation and your interest in Frequentis AG. Should you have any further questions, please ask them to Stefan Marin from Investor Relations. A big thank you to the Management Board of Frequentis for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. It was a pleasure to be your host today. I wish you all a lovely Tuesday. And with this, I hand over again to Mr. Stefan Marin for some final remarks.

Yes. Thanks. We look forward to engaging with all of you at the upcoming conferences. Our full year results for 2025 will be published on the 9th of April 2026. And yes, in the meantime, just drop me an e-mail if you would like to schedule a follow-up call. Until then, all the best and take care and hope to see you virtual or at one of the several conferences that Norbert and I are going to visit. Thanks, and goodbye from Vienna.