Huber+Suhner AG (HUBN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Huber+Suhner Half Year Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Urs Ryffel, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Huber+Suhner's Half Year Results 2026. For the first time, we are hosting our presentation in our own offices here in Traficon. So we are playing a home match. We are looking back together in the next hour on an eventful first semester, which has seen industry segment performing on a very high level on 1 side of the scale, and on the other side of the scale, the communications segment that is burdened by ramp-up cost and went into red figures. We follow for the presentation, the usual structure, which means that I will share an overview with you followed then by Richard Haemmerli, our CFO, who will do a deep dive into the details of our financial results. Before the Q&A, I will provide you an outlook and also share our view on the markets as well as on our guidance for the rest of the year. Before we elaborate on the details of our half year results, I would like to put the results into a slightly broader context. We have for the third time a semester with order intake above the CHF 500 million mark. While last year, the order intake was strongly driven by the orders from a U.S. hyperscaler, which came in between June and August, this year's order intake of CHF 548 million, barely includes U.S. hyperscaler orders. So that is why we rate this half year's order intake as very strong. Last year's order intake in the data center area from the U.S. hyperscaler have served for us to initiate investments into a ramp-up for our OCS technology. The OCS technology has been a business with high mix and small batch nature and production. The strong backlog on this OCS technology coming from the middle of last year has triggered the investments to ramp up and to develop a high-scale manufacturing with high volume and low batch. Consequently, this backlog reaches clearly into this year and also mainly into next years as very little of this backlog has already been executed and shipped. That's why net sales is clearly limping behind orders. However, still with a slight growth of 2.6% versus last year. Organically, 6% growth resulted in the first 6 months. As a result of the ramp-up, our operating margin suffered slightly and came down by 110 basis points or was reduced by 8.4% to now CHF 41 million or 9% EBIT margin. The strong order backlog from last year and the high book-to-bill in the first semester results in a high backlog of CHF 517 million, on which also our CFO, will elaborate a bit more in details. Let me first highlight the strong performance and the broadly based progress of the industry segment during the first 6 months. It became apparent already last year that orders are increasing in the industry segment on a broad base. And these dynamics has well last into the first 6 months of '26. With CHF 242 million order intake in the industry, we have a record level reached with growth over year-over-year versus '25 of 42%. The momentum during the year further accelerated and has also started to show effect on our net sales level, which reached CHF 189 million, an up of 22%. Based on this growth in sales, we could also capitalize on our operating leverage, and consequently, our operating profit climbed to CHF 37 million or 19.6% operating margin. The strong development was broadly based. However, the main drivers were the 2 large market verticals that we serve in the industry, which are A&T and test and measurement. But also other markets have contributed strongly to the very strong performance. On the other side, we have the communications segment with a decrease in order intake and also sales. We have -- in the comparison last year, we still have some sales from our large Indian business with a mobile operator, which has contributed the first 3 months of '25 to sales. The order intake is slightly above net sales and contains, as I said already, very little new bookings from the U.S. hyperscaler for the OCS technology. As a result of the time gap between sales and ramp-up costs, the operating margin slipped into the negative range, and the rest of the business, namely the mobile network business as well as the fixed network business, who is suffering from lower demand, has not been able to compensate for the ramp-up cost and pre-investments in our OCS technology. The Transportation segment is on track. It is very much aligned with the overall group result. However, a strong order intake of CHF 161 million and the book to bill, which is clearly positive, sticks out and gives a strong position for the remainder of the year. Net sales came in at almost the same level as last year. And operating profit climbed slightly by 60 basis points to the 9% level. When we have a look at our geographic distribution, it sticks out that we were able to achieve a decent growth in our largest region, EMEA, with 13%. This growth in sales was mainly driven by our broadly based development of the industry business with a strong geographical center of gravity in EMEA. In the Americas, we have to record a small decline of 4%. This is due to the lack of the OCS business as of now as well as to the lack of the business from our strongest market, historically, the mobile communication market. However, we will see towards the end of the year, the Americas with growth compared to last year based on our ramp-up for OCS. The third region, Asia Pacific, sees a decline of close to 16%. Here, the conclusion of our Indian project with the state-owned operator shows effect, which has been included for 3 months in the '25 figure. We don't expect that to turn around for the rest of the year. And with that, I have concluded my very brief overview of our first semester results. And I would like to hand over to Richard Haemmerli, the CFO for him to bring some light into our financial results.

Thank you much, Urs. A very good morning also from my side. I'm looking forward to give you a deep dive into our financial results. I would like to start this deep dive with a quick historic review of the development of our order backlog. Order backlog by the end of June, ended up at a record level of CHF 517 million, a clear increase compared to the end of 2025, where we were at CHF 432 million, mainly driven by the positive book-to-bill of all 3 segments. At the same time, while we are adjusting for future demand, we have made significant investments into our capacities and also into our inventory levels. And we will allude to that in the coming slides. As mentioned by Urs, for the third time in a row, order intake was CHF 543 million, above the CHF 500 million line. Also, sales was CHF 457 million, was higher than in the past 2 semesters while the margin declined due to the investments into the OCS ramp-up. Looking into the organic growth, we have achieved organic growth and order intake of 8.5%. This was offset by FX effects and copper, and no portfolio effect this year, but FX contributed with minus 4.5%. And we had a slight positive effect of copper of 1%, resulting in total growth of 5.1% for order intake, mainly driven by the industry segment, which saw continued good demand from the A&D side and the test and measurement side. Also transportation, in particular, the railway side had saw increased order intake while on the communication side, we felt the lower demand from the telecom industry. The picture is very similar on the sales side. Also here, we achieved a solid organic growth of 6%, impacted by FX effects of roughly 4.5% and a positive gain through copper of 1%, resulting in a 2.6% growth. Also here, industry had higher shipments than in the first semester of 2025. While communication still benefited in the first half of 2025 from shipments on the Indian order was lower and transportation stayed on similar levels. Looking into the gross margin. The gross margin ended up at 36.6%, which is lower than the previous 2 semesters, but still higher than the 2 semesters in 2024. Gross margin on industry and on transportation continued to -- continue positively, while on the Communications segment, the gross margin was impacted by the ramp-up. The operating expense was roughly 28%, stayed on a similar level as in the previous period. When we compare with the first half of 2025, we can see that selling and marketing expenses remained at roughly CHF 65.8 million. We saw an increase in R&D, supporting our investments to CHF 32.6 million, which equates to roughly 7.1% of total sales. On the admin expenses, we saw an increase mainly driven by M&A effect. Now, looking into the EBIT bridge on the left-hand side of the chart, we see the decline of our EBIT in absolute value by roughly CHF 4 million, industry that performed very well, contributing an additional CHF 11 million compared to the first half of 2025, while communication, EBIT came in lower by minus CHF 30 million compared to the first half of 2025. Transportation, more or less stayed on the levels of 2025. On the right-hand side, we see the margin profiles of our 3 segments. Clearly, the industry segment increased again compared to the first half of 2025 to a very high level of 19.6%. And while also transportation increased and communication swapped from the positive into the negative effect, resulting in a total margin for the group of 9%. Going below the EBIT, we look into the financial result. And here, we see that our financial result increased slightly from minus CHF 0.8 million to minus CHF 0.4 million, mainly driven through lower FX losses in the first half of 2026, while the other financial results, the income mainly from interest stayed on a similar level. The effective tax rate was 14.4%, was extremely low in this first semester. And this has mainly 2 effects. The first is the geographic mix, where we saw higher sales in countries with lower tax rates, number one. Number two, we could benefit from tax loss carryforwards in 1 of the jurisdictions. Now, jumping into the balance sheet. The balance sheet size increased by 5% to CHF 908 million by the end of June 2026. Two things stick out. Number one, the net liquidity decreased by CHF 65 million compared to the end of last year on the one hand. On the other hand, our net working capital increased significantly, and we come to that in the cash flow statement right in a minute. On the equity ratio, we maintained a stable level with the 74% as a total balance sheet size. The free cash flow from operating activities was clearly below expectations with CHF 3 million, but mainly driven by the inventory buildup that we had in the context of our ramp-up on the 1 side for OCF, but then also the activities around A&D. So the decrease was from CHF 63 million in the first half of '25 to CHF 3 million in the first half of '26. We should also note that in the first half of '25, we still enjoyed cash inflows from the Indian project that was delivered mainly in 2024, but also a little bit in the start of 2025. CapEx spending remained on a high level with CHF 28 million. This equates to roughly 6% of sales in the first half, resulting in a free operating cash flow of minus CHF 25 million. Dividend payments in the first half increased a little bit compared to the previous year due to the higher dividend per share that were paid out. We did not have any dividend payments to minorities, and the changes in treasury shares increased due to the higher share price of the Huber+Suhner stock, resulting in a free cash flow of minus CHF 65 million for the first half. Now, summarizing our first half from a financial point of view. We recorded record order intake as well as record order backlog in the first half of 2026. We achieved a solid organic growth of 6%, and we improved the EBIT margins in the Industry and Transportation segment. On the flip side, the EBIT margin of the Communications segment was negative and was impacted by the OCS ramp-up activities. Also, our investments resulted in a negative free operating cash flows, and we had quite strong negative effects, negative headwinds from the FX development. Summarizing our half year, Huber+Suhner is on a growth trajectory. We continue to invest into capabilities, capacities and competencies. With that, I'm handing over to Urs.

Thank you, Richard. And now, I would like to share with you our outlook. And for that, I would like to start with an overview of our market portfolio. which, in the first 6 months, again, showed that diversification can help to balance effects in other markets. In our industry segment, the 2 largest market verticals that we serve are aerospace and defense, our growth initiative here and also the test and measurement business to which I will also come a bit later in more details with regards to the -- recently to the recent acquisition we have announced in this segment. In the communication area, our strongest market traditionally has been the mobile network market, which is somewhat in a low right now as well as the fixed access network. That is compensated by the data center business and by the data center market, which is our growth initiative in the communication segment. And then in the Transportation segment, we serve applications on roads and on track. The Railway business is separated into the rolling stock market and the application for rail communication. And on the street, we serve primarily commercial vehicles with high-voltage products as well as for the total automotive industry, the autonomous driving with our high-ray resolution 3D RF antennas that go into advanced driver assistant systems. I will touch upon all those market verticals quickly and share our opinion and brief outlook on how we see these markets developing. I start with the aerospace and defense market. And here, it goes without saying that there is a very strong dynamics in this market across very different applications. Typically, Huber+Suhner is a supplier into this industry since a very long time. And our focus in the past has been primarily around the RF technology. This business is growing as RF technologies used in satellites as well as in communication for military applications. Our strategy also includes here that we would like to diversify and scale our market access to key customers in this business, in this market and diversify into low frequency as well as fiberoptic application, which will add an additional growth to our aerospace and defense business going forward. We will see the spendings in this market to continue and to further increase driven by the elevated defense spendings as well as by additional and larger communication programs in near space or new space application. The second largest market for our industry segment is the test and measurement business. Also here, our focus has been on RF testing with RF leads that either connect the test equipment, where the electronics for the testing as such or is within the test gears as connectivity. The market is also developing very favorably for Huber+Suhner, and we see the main drivers in the increased penetration and adoption of electronic across very different applications as well as in the testing for equipment that goes into AI data centers. With the acquisition, and I will come to that in a minute, we can expand our scope and our market access with additional technologies, entirely complementary to what we have in this high-margin application. The high-power charging business, which has developed favorably over the past few years and has outperformed our original expectations, has slowed down somewhat and is stable on a lower level than in the peaking years, '23, '24 and '25. However, we see the drivers remaining intact for that market, as there will be a constant build-out of the high-power charging network in order to support the higher adoption of EV vehicles. General industrial, last but not least, is a summary for several high-tech niche application, which we serve mainly in the area of power generation, power transmission, but also in a very attractive future applications such as cryo and quantum computing. We believe that the drivers here are very favorable for Huber+Suhner due to the fact that electrification increases and renewable energies are posted. With other words, we have here a pool of high-tech applications that could grow as a pool, but could also serve as a pond for future growth initiatives in the attractive industry segment. The acquisition of, which we were able to announce with great pleasure in July, is a long-term project and is based on a long-term collaboration with the family-owned company based in Constant Germany. Inground has a very wide customer base in testing and also a global reach. And their prime application is high precision testing for electrical contacts. That ranges from board testing to connect the testing over to battery cell testing and includes wire harness testing. Their business consists. From a technology point of view is based on pains that test contacts, either for RF or for electric testing. And this is an attractive complement to our test and measurement technology and business that serves mainly the RF market. Ingo let about 400 people, a bit over 400 people, and is headquartered in Germany, has their production base, but is also established with an additional production in Vietnam, a country where Huber+Suhner has not been present with an own operation so far. So that could also have potential for some of our Huber+Suhner businesses going forward. Sales in 2025 was in the high double-digit million range. And we expect the closing to take place towards the end of Q3 this year so that we will have still at least 1/4 of sales consolidated under the Huber+Suhner company. The strategic rationale, as I said, is really that it enhances our market access, but also our capability to provide end-to-end testing solution from high frequency to digital to energy applications, and that in a highly attractive market, which I have described and also outlined in previous presentation. Test and measurement is 1 of our strong margin applications due to the fact that quality plays a key role and also the performance of test gears plays a key role in this application. And that's a field where we feel very comfortable. Coming to communication, I already highlighted that we don't see a pickup in the mobile network market and neither in the fixed access network market. Investments are sufficient in these markets. We still see business taking place, but the business remains on a relatively low level. But overall, we believe that it has bottomed out, and we will see further in the future also growth coming back from those 2 applications, mainly in the mobile network market based on the fact that the 6G cycle will probably start in 2, 3 years from now. The component business where we serve an equipment manufacturer market that builds designs and manufactures an equipment that run communication network, is, on 1 side, impacted by the low mobile communication market. On the other side, it's compensated by the strong demand from the data center market. So transceiver business, transceivers going into data center application, is a big focal area, which we also play through our WDM components from Cube Optics, and we also have still a very attractive and broad portfolio of RF connectors going into those components. Last, but by no means least, the data center market still benefits from the AI build-outs and investments. And we don't see this market already peaking. When we discuss with large hyperscalers, their investment road maps, we see that their plans are ever going up and that investments are further accelerating. It's a race and it seems to be a top priority and requirement of those globally active hyperscalers that they can complement their existing services with AI services. And that drives the investments, which we believe will continue into the future. Huber+Suhner is well positioned in this market through the passive connectivity, including our fiber management system, so to say, our legacy business, but then also through our OCS technology into which significant investments took place in the first 6 months of this year. In the transportation market, we see that the high energy prices are driving adoption of electric vehicles in the area of passenger cars. We don't see that trend swapping over already to commercial vehicles to the same extent. However, we believe that it's just a matter of time until the business for electric commercial vehicles will pick up. We are well positioned. We are designed in, in key platforms, and these platforms include generation 2 and generation 3 designs. Generation 2 being already available on the market and generation 3, just about to be launched. We believe that with this Gen 2, in particular, in Gen 3 platforms, these commercial EVs will become commercially viable for the operators in terms of total cost of ownership because investments -- initial investments through to -- thanks to lower prices are coming down, and operating costs are clearly lower for EVs than for traditional commercial vehicles. The other application in transportation on the roads, our autonomous driving business or the sensors, which go into the advanced driver assistance systems, there, we have announced big programs a while ago with Tier 1 suppliers into the automotive industry. Those programs have seen considerable delays, but now we see volumes picking up. We further have been able to develop also additional customers, by that broadening our customer base and diversifying our business. And we believe that the ADAS business is growing when looking forward. The rolling stock market, that's the largest application in transportation. That's the stable rock in the sea, so to say, we see continuous investment taking place in rolling stock, be it for new builds, but also for refurbishment. And this is mainly driven due to the higher need for mobility in urban centers. We are extremely well positioned being the market leader for cabling with a complete portfolio, so everything that runs on a train with regard to cables, Huber+Suhner can supply, and that's a lot. I mentioned this point already in the past that in a meter of train, we have about a kilometer of cable, and Huber+Suhner is very strongly positioned to benefit from a rolling stock market, which will not skyrocket, but which will develop also positively going forward. A different picture we have in rail communication, while cycles are quite long, and in order to realize projects here, it takes a while. The business is picking up, and the need is undisputed. Riding on a train and experiencing today's connectivity as a passenger is a pain and the rolling stock operators are fully aware. With more competition coming on track with private operators entering Germany and other key railway countries, we will see a fierce competition on not just punctuality and quality of services, but also connectivity. And we have a very strong position in this rail communication market being the clear market leader for railway antennas and also moving up the value chain going towards a supply of complete system, which are not just including the connectivity, but also the access points, the switches, the routers and everything that is required to improve connectivity for passengers on trains. Another driver is the train to ground communication, which today is widely based on GSMR, a technology based on a 2G mobile standard, which will have to be replaced in the next few years by the next standard, which is being finalized these days, therefore MCS, and that will release and trigger considerable and significant investments into train protection and train management. And from that, we believe Huber+Suhner will be able to benefit. So with other words, I think we have a very attractive market portfolio. We are diversified, but we are playing in a very dynamic market. And we are very well positioned in many of those applications. So that will allow us to benefit from the global maker trends such as electrification, AI and security. The acquisition of in 1 of our high-margin applications, attractive applications test measurement will start to contribute as of fourth quarter '26 is not included in our guidance yet. We have experienced a good start into Q3 that I can disclose. And so we are positive. We are picking up speed in terms of sales and bottom line. And that, together with the strong book-to-bill and the record order backlog, will provide the basis to deliver a better second half in '26 compared to the first half. And for this reason, we are also confirming our guidance for the full-year '26, which says that we continue to expect Organic sales growth of at least 10% and an EBIT margin in the upper half of our long-term objective, which means between 10.5% and 12%. And then the usual disclaimer, we assume that the influencing factors remain more or less the way we experience them now. So no accelerated inflation, no drastic change of exchange rate, no big changes to the economic environment and to the geopolitical conflicts. With this outlook, I have concluded my presentation, but I would like to highlight the next the next events, which our financial calendar includes. So as usual, we will report order intake and sales 9 months in October. This year, it's on the 20th of October and early January top line for the full year. And the Annual Report '26 will be published on the 16th as well as this event will then again take place as a hybrid event with conference and webcast on the same day. The year -- financial year will be concluded by our Annual General Meeting on the 7th of April, but you will not have to wait to see us again. We have the Capital Market Day again this year after 2024. And we have certainly a lot of news to share on the market and on the technologies, and this is a perfect occasion for you to have a deep dive into Huber+Suhner's business in more detail. The Capital Market Day will take place also here in on the 18th of September. And with that, I have definitely concluded my speech to you, and I would like to hand over to the operator, who opens the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] We take the first question from Charlie Fehrenbach from AWP.

One is, can you tell us how high the investments for OCS in Poland in first semester were and if there will be further investments in the second half of the year? And my second question is, can you tell us what sales contribution you expect of the OCS business in H2 and the same for from Q4 on what sales contribution?

Thank you, Fehrenbach. Very detailed question. I'm not sure if I will be able to answer in all the required details. But investments, I can elaborate a bit on. So investments, we talk about 2 kinds of investments. So we have a ramp-up, which includes investments into inventory, which has also had an impact on our balance sheet. You see it in the net working capital, and you get an idea of the magnitude when you compare the balance sheet from 31st of December '25 with the balance sheet on the 30th of June. The ramp-up and the consumption of networking capital has 2 main drivers. One is the OCS business. The other one is also the strongly growing industry business. And you see that in the increase of our inventory, which will help us to get ready to increase sales in those 2 areas. For OCS going forward, we don't disclose the detailed figures as far as sales is concerned, but you can guess that we have invested in the ramp-up. We have commissioned higher automated production lines, which are now operational, and we expect business to pick up, and that is the basis to confirm the guidance as far as sales and EBIT is concerned. We have a 6% organic growth after 6 months. We promised a 10% in our guidance. And the difference will largely have to come from the ramped up OCS business. And depends on whether closing takes place as planned. So the plan is to close end of Q3, which means that we will see 3 or 4 months being consolidated in our year-end figures of a high double-digit million business.

The next question comes from Tommaso Operto from UBS.

I have 2 questions, 1 also on OCS. I mean, you mentioned that H1 orders of the Communications division does not include any hyperscaler orders. Do you have any view of the timeline potentially on when additional hyperscaler orders would be shown? That's the first question. And then secondly, on the full-year guidance, I mean, you're speaking about more than 10%, at least 10%, which is open-ended, so quite vague. So I'm wondering if you have a bit more of a range? Or if not, if you could share what the big kind of potential moving parts are which keep you at this very wide open-ended guidance?

So the OCS long-term perspective is difficult to share because there are a lot of assumptions in there. We obviously have different scenarios. And I would have to speculate, which I don't want to do. I can confirm that the ramp-up is progressing with this first hyperscaler customer. And that is 1 of the uncertainties, how much will be the output in the second half, but we expect that the output will clearly increase compared to the first half. How much is still a question and remains to be seen. I can also confirm that we have contacts with a broad range of other customers, among them also other hyperscalers, which are less advanced with regard to deploying and using this OCS technology in their architecture, but they are certainly collecting experience, and they are testing this kind of equipment also from Huber+Suhner. That's why to share a time line would be very difficult at this stage. We will inform openly and transparently once we have more knowledge and confirmed knowledge, and we can communicate based on facts. The second one was the -- the opening guidance, I mean, you can see that we still have to have a strong second half. And from today's perspective, we firmly believe that this will be manageable and achievable, but it remains to be delivered. That's why we stick with at least 10%. So we have to grow from 6% organic to 10%, which means significantly higher sales in the second half than in the first half. The drivers in -- the key drivers are certainly -- there are many, but the key drivers is OCS output, as I have already communicated. And the other one is the ramp-up of our industry business. The book-to-bill there points at higher sales, and we have been successful in increasing the output towards the end of the first semester, and it remains to be seen if there are bottlenecks from suppliers or not and whether all those barriers can be removed. But we believe that the 10% from today's perspective is achievable, but is also yes, requires a clearly better second half. That's why we don't narrow our guidance further down.

The next question comes from Louis Belong from Badder Europe.

So my first question is on the optical fiber shortage. Could you share your view on this shortage? I mean, the fiber itself and not the optical cable. And has it had any impact on the profitability by instance in the Communications segment in H1? And do you expect a bigger challenge in the future from this shortage? So that's my first question.

So fiber shortage is an effect that not only concerns Huber+Suhner, but the whole industry. And that -- there are several drivers. First of all, it's the high demand from the data center area driven by AI, but there are also some basic materials, which are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, which are needed to produce fibers. We are carefully monitoring the market. So far, we didn't have an effect in our business, and we are planning carefully head. So far, we don't see a shortage ahead for Huber+Suhner. But it remains to be said that we are a small consumer of fiber in a highly commoditized market. And overall, I will not dare to say that the fiber shortage could not have an impact on the industry. But you can be also sure that there are great efforts undertaken to increase capacity in the fiber production. But we are a small player and a small consumer. However, it's a market, which is important for us. We are following that market. And I can tell you in all these years that I followed this market, I mean we have seen cycles back and forth and up and down. And so it's always the game when demand increases, capacity is increased, and then, it drops and that puts pressure on the prices. And so the market needs to be monitored. In a nutshell, we don't expect to be severely affected as Huber+Suhner.

Okay. And maybe another question on the EBIT decrease in communication. Could you give us an idea of the split between -- the breakdown of the decline between the investment in OCS and the lower sales and maybe the higher input cost? What is the split between those effecting in EBIT?

So the lower sales is a result of not yet higher OCS output. It's a result of the lack of large mobile network program in the U.S. and in India. And what you see as a business level, I would call the ground noise. So we lack a large-sized market in the mobile network area or on a project basis in countries like India. So what you see there is a mix of several applications and businesses, which range from active equipment going into the upgrade of cable networks, providing broadband services to households to still an upgrade of mobile networks to a certain level and also other data center business. And last, but not least, also products, which go into the equipment that runs networks. You can conclude that basically the downturn of the result is due to upfront investments into our OCS production. In other words, if this business turns around, then also the segment profitability should get back to levels that correspond to our ambition.

Okay. And maybe last question on the OCS. Could you elaborate a bit more on the application for the OCS? Do you think it will be used mainly for training AI models? Or do you think it will also be used for influence? Once models are trained, the optical -- so in production, they will be used or only in training of AI models.

Clearly in both, but the lion's share of the volume will be in productive networks.

And do you think you have the best technology for the production network?

Of course.