Interroll Holding AG (INRN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Interroll Annual Analyst and Media 2025 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Vicki, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Paul Zumbühl, Chairman of the Board of Directors. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Paul Zumbühl, I'm the Chairman of the Board. It's about 14 days ago, 2 weeks ago, where we announced in the press release the change of the CEO. We made a summary on the reasons why we did this change. Afterwards, I had a couple of very constructive discussions and also phones and conversations with those of you and also some investors. For that reason, I would like to summarize and to have the essence out of these conversations. And I put that summarized in three questions. The first question was why did the CEO change so quickly and so surprisingly. Of course, from outside, it appeared that it was quickly and surprisingly. The Board of Directors had assumed its full responsibility, not just in the crisis, but also in terms of long-term thinking. We managed very well to the crisis. We keep still up an excellent profitability, as you will see afterwards from my colleagues. So that's not the reason. The reason is, finally, we see now the Board of Directors the ideal timing for such a change. And that's also due to our market position where we see for the future, not only that we are in position to defend our market position, but also to extend despite challenging economic circumstances. That was confirmed yesterday and the day before that was also a coincidence when I was with the new CEO, Mr. Markus Asch at the most important fair in -- LogiMAT in Germany, worldwide, I would say, and where we really could see also the value of our positioning. The value of our positioning is still, and I said that over years as CEO, we are the most global market leader for products in the material handling industry. Our position is unique. In the years before we invested, as you know, substantial money in our infrastructure for our size of the company, we are very well positioned globally with 36 company. That's an excellent basis. We just introduced SAP HANA 4 without any or bigger problems, I would say, but without any disturbance. So we are very well set. And the Board asks now in a discussion since already a while who and how we're going to make -- want to make the next steps. Because the world has changed also in terms of the competition. Some of the companies don't know yet if they are not in Asia, we know this. And we see not just problems and challenges. We see a lot of opportunities, but the timing is going on. So we have to act and proactively act. And that's, I think, the strength of our Board also for myself. I didn't want to stand in front of you. It's more in the back behind the curtain. But I want really to share these thoughts on you. So the task is now how to get the company back on its long-standing growth path. The next question summarized is what qualifies the new CEO for the future. To say it upfront, Mr. Asch was already 5 years in the Board. So that has absolutely nothing to do with the basic decision that we want to have a change. I would like really to emphasize that. So we had different options, but we came at the end of the day or myself also that Markus Asch is really the best option we had. We had eight options without going further in details. Why? Because Markus Asch is not only has proven its track record in 4, 5 years at the Board in strategic thinking, but as an executive at the top level that requires all the capabilities, execution capabilities to bring together the operational excellence plus the strategic. So he's for almost 30 years, a top manager in executive boards. He was also CEO of a bigger organization. And he, for me, personally, he is one of the few executives who can really combine the strategic and execution capabilities. I said always strategy. A lot of companies have an excellent strategy, but a lot of companies fail because maybe I overemphasized that a little bit maybe. Strategy is maybe 20%, execution is 80% with the right people. So his capability, not just strategically, but also to bring the people together, his leadership capability and make things done is of huge benefit for Interroll. And during the discussion, we came really also in the Board. We haven't taken that very easy. We think not just short term, but also long term, he's exactly the right person for Interroll. Also cultural-wise, and of course, with his excellent know-how and knowledge in global market, he lived also in America for a while. Yesterday and the day before, we were at the LogiMAT and a company in the positioning, I said that before in the [indiscernible], the customers are the best auditors of Interroll in terms of strategy. You can tell a lot of things, but at the end of the day, the customer is proving whether you want to choose this company or not. And this is also, at the end of the day, this value pricing, which I mentioned several times in the past. And I'm really glad also yesterday and the day before with a number of customers we talked that's really the case. So we are really in the pole position, but have now to put all the number of horsepowers on a full track on the road. That's the next step. We don't need to make investments and other things. That's really good. It's also highly motivated for our team. Now the third point is just to summarize myself, what is my role as a Chairman. First of all, I would really emphasize that I don't take any executive role nor I interfered and I will never interfere also in the future in the operational business. I think I always respect the segregation of duties. However, thanks to this long-standing experience and in-depth knowledge I gained over almost 25 years, this can be of help for the company by supporting the new CEO for certain tasks in the Investor Relations and also in other strategical fields. Almost not yet 14 days in -- or 8 or 9 days in operations, Markus Asch, he has seen already a lot, and that's a huge advantage that we have really a seamless transition. So we don't have -- sometimes you have in a horse race, you have sometimes to change the horse to rank still in the top ranking, and that's our wish, and that's what we want to achieve. We would like to really long term to keep this excellent market position as we have. That's my introduction. Thank you very much. I hand over, sorry, now to the official press conference with Markus Asch.

Thank you very much, Paul for your introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor for us to have you here today to present to you not only the figures of 2024, but also talk to you about our outlook about how we see the markets, how we see customers, how we see our own situation and how we develop this company in the future. A very special and warm welcome also goes to the people that are attached to us online that are not here physically. If we quickly have a look at what we will present to you during the next, let's say, about 45 minutes, we talk about the overview. I will introduce to you the overview roughly how we see the situation, our performance, our -- both as well in markets as well as in operations, but especially on the finance side. Heinz Hossli, our CFO, will then go more into details, show you the figures, show you the comparisons and all that you're used to know from him. Then Maurizio Catino, our CSO, will take over, talk about the market, both how we saw it developing in the last 12 months, but also some of the outlook and where we focus on. I will then take over operations innovations and further digitalization to tell a little bit or to inform you a little bit how we see today product innovations, how do we see products? What's relevant for us in order to drive this company in the future and do the summary. At this point, I would also like to introduce to you Mr. Demirel. Demirel is our COO of the group. He joined in September last year. He will be also available for you later on for questions. when we meet together. So that's in a rough introduction, what you can expect from us in the next about 45 minutes. Let's quickly go into our achievements 2024, and we have divided them basically into two main clusters. One, what did we do on the market side? How do we see markets, what's relevant for the markets and the other one, what was happening behind that in order to prepare and stabilize the organization to prepare it for further growth. Maybe on the left bottom, first of all, we have successfully regained new customers. You might ask yourself the question, why was that necessary? And we have been open to you, and we will be open to you during the time of COVID and the consequential issues in supply chain, we have also lost customers or we have lost partial customers, and we have regained them on products. And it was important also to gain not only to flow with the market, but also to gain additional customers, both on products as well as systems. And we will -- Maurizio Catino will show you in more detail what we have managed that, and that's quite a differentiated perspective on products as well as on systems. Maybe second headline is service. Today, between 11% and 12% of our business is service. That is good, but that has potential for growth, because with service, we do not only keep relation to our customers. We also understand the applications much better, and it helps us to further develop our products. So we have shown you the first implementation in the United States that step-by-step will be implemented throughout the world. We have the structure in place, and we will further develop that because it's elementary for our business and for further growth of our business. Third component, it's about our markets and how we see markets, and we have taken one step and that's India. What we show here is we are entering new markets. That's right and wrong. We have been in India before through partners. But as we see the potential of India in the future. India, not only as an economy that is growing, but also the industrial base is growing, also benefiting from some of the issues with China. So we have to be there with our own infrastructure, and we have to substantially develop that, and we will do that. And then on innovation side, and I will later on talk a little bit more about innovation, how we see things there. We are completing step-by-step components and modules that are required for our customers. And what we show here is small wheel vertical sorter and destination platform, that's mainly for the e-commerce business where we drive additional solutions into demands of applications of our customers. So what is happening below that? What's important to stabilize, to strengthen the company and to help it further develop. One is the pricing strategy. We have successfully defended that. And basically, two main approaches. First of all, you can only do this with value that you generate towards your customers, but also on the second side, with a clear execution and consequential execution. In times where growth didn't happen as in the last few years, it's important that we drive fitness into the company. So we have continued to focus on cost fitness and have achieved that, and you will see that later on in the figures. There is a clear result on that despite maybe a difficult environment. And then it's preparing the company for scalability. And I think what we have done very well is the backbone is SAP. So the ERP system we are today with our subsidiaries, with our entities on S/4HANA and we have managed that. And many other companies are struggling with that move. We have completed that move, and we have completed the move pretty smoothly. Now there are further activities have to come, especially facing customer interaction, but that's a second story. And then on our production as -- and I will later on talk a little bit more about that in detail as we are living more and more in a fragmented world, in a world that is changing all the time. suddenly, yesterday, they were announced additional taxes in the United States. Maybe in 2 weeks, they are gone again. How do we organize ourselves? So our task is to be flexible, to be fast and to be able to adapt to customer demands in the regions and locally sourced. That's in a nutshell based on what we have done outside towards the market, but also what we have done to stabilize and to structure and to make it really sound the business to be prepared. How do the figures look like? They have been disclosed to you. And again, Heinz Hossli will go into details. I just quickly introduce to you the headline, about CHF 519.5 million order intake and about CHF 521.1 million in sales and an EBIT of about CHF 78 million. And when you look at the right-hand side, we'd like to again put it into perspective, how does our business look like? So basically, we do about 20% in rollers, about 35% in drives. So that means the product side is about 55%. And then we do about 35% in conveyors and sorters and about 10% in pallet handling. That's how last year our business was structured. And when we then talk about our initiatives on products, our initiatives on systems, how we drive the product approach also into systems for you to get a good overview of our situation, how it looks like today. Last slide from my side before I hand over to Heinz Hossli is you have seen that slide before. That's why we included it again in which phase are we as a company. So basically, we are -- and I will elaborate that a little bit later when we talk about innovation. We are in the task of modularizing and standardizing our approach. Why? If our products and solutions are standardized, they are scalable. Our business model is the one of standards being scalable and not individual solutions. That's the business of our system integrators of our customers. Our business can be scaled. And we, as a company, are prepared for that scaling efficiency. But it also means digitalization, I will talk a little bit later about customer interaction, but that also means that our necessity to be very close to our customers, to understand our customers closely to understand their applications is essential to drive innovation, to drive solutions and to drive the way how we interact and how we serve our customers. What I mean with business excellence is the way how we do business. Our task is to be easy to do business with, not to be complicated. That means from commissioning to installations, to programming to components, to support, our task is to serve our customers that they are efficient in what they do, and that's what we will focus on also on our digitalization projects. And then it's a scalable system. And again, and I'm very thankful, Paul Zumbühl has given me a lot of insights in the last 2 weeks, we have done a lot of deep dives. And the special confirmation is what happens from our customers. When we talk to customers in the last 2 days and basically, they say, look, when I get something from you, I know it's proven. If I have to produce it myself, it's individually, it has to be reworked. It has to be adopted. It has to be commissioned. That's our place. And if we do that well, and we will do that well, it's a scalable business. and scalable business, that's what we are good at and that's what serves our customers. With that, I would like to hand over to Heinz Hossli, who will go through the financial results before we then hand over to Maurizio Catino on markets. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Markus. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure for me to present to you the financial results for the year '24. Starting with order intake, we have CHF 519.5 million, as already mentioned by Markus Asch, which is basically exactly the same value as we had the year before. So we have now stabilized the order income. And in local currency, it was a growth of 3.2%. When we look into the details, then it's very obvious on the first side that the product business has grown, whereas the project business, in our case, pallet handling and conversion sorters has suffered. The key reason is still this huge wave of investments, which have come from all verticals, which are e-commerce related. This needs to be absorbed in the market. We still see this that we miss big size, large orders in -- especially in sorting, which is a part of the conveyors and sorters business. This trend will come to an end. And there are first signs also that the e-commerce-related verticals start to reinvest, which is a positive sign for us. If I look at the order intake from today's point of view, what is really good is that the product business came back. We have a good growth in the product business. And these are all numbers in Swiss francs. And if you see the impact from the currency, they would even be a little bit higher in local currency. So this was a good step, and we did this in all the regions. What we now need to wait for patiently is really that we see and materializes in our order intake from the bigger sized projects. This is what we led. We said simple as that. And we will see this throughout the presentation. Order intake of bigger-sized projects led to the result we have today. The book-to-bill ratio is also worth to mention with 0.99x, it's close to 1x. So we have now brought the order intake and sales closer together, but it's already the third year where it has been below 1x. In other words, starting into '25, we have an even lower backlog than we had a year ago. If we look at sales, a similar picture. Sales is minus 5.3% in Swiss franc, in local currency, minus 2.4%. If we look into the region, it's a very diverse picture. EMEA is a plus 8.2%. This is basically a rebound. It's not a full rebound what has been lost in '23, but it's a rebound. And it's also the region which has a good balance between products and project business, and this is visible. They benefited from a strong rebound in the product business. When we look at Americas, exactly the opposite, minus 18.2%. This is what I mentioned before, the lack of bigger sized orders in conveyor and sorters marks here very deep. If we look into detail on Americas, there is also very positive to highlight is the product. The product growth in the U.S. has been very strong, double-digit growth, but it could not compensate what we lost on the project business. And this net resulted to this minus 18.2%. What looks very bad is APAC with minus 24.2%. Reality is slightly different. The reality is that in '23, we invoiced a very big project in Korea, which we published also an information on the media in December '21. So it is a project roughly CHF 12 million in sales. And this has been realized in '23. Such a project is not coming every year, and this is the explanation of about 2/3 of the difference in APAC. What is positive to mention in APAC is China. In China, we had a very strong double-digit decrease, 25%, 30% in the last 2 years. We could now stabilize China on a low level, but at least we could stabilize. And we see this -- and you will see this also in the presentation from Maurizio Catino, APAC is still the region where we have the biggest potential to overproportionately grow. It's a fast-growing region. We need to position ourselves well, but we have the lowest maturity in the market, and this is the region we need to focus on more. When we look now on the share, how this has changed, not surprisingly, EMEA is now back to 59%, a plus 7% compared to last year. Americas lost 5 percentage points, and APAC lost 2 percentage points. The overall target, what we always mentioned, 50-50, 50% of the sales should come out of EMEA, 50% from the other two regions, this remains in place. And we are pretty confident that the future will go into this direction again. That is what you see now on EMEA, such a high increase. This is a one-timer. EMEA is the region where we have the highest maturity level, and we have now benefited from this rebound. But in the future, we believe overproportional growth is possible in the other two regions, which then brings the balance to 50-50. One thing I would like to point out, most of you are fully familiar with this. Some sometimes say, yes, it's good that you mentioned it. And this is why I want to mention it, the currency effect. The currency effect we see as we consolidate in Swiss franc and as we have almost all operations in other regions, we see it on the top line. And this is also why you don't see a diluted bottom line because most of it is regionally hedged in local currencies. But on the top line, translating this into Swiss francs, we have a big effect. We also believe that the Swiss franc will continue to appreciate in the mid and long term. So we will not see or expect that this will turn into positive numbers. What you see here is 5 years in a row. And you see it's a significant impact in 4 of the 5 years. Only '21 was a level where you can say this is not really material. It doesn't make a difference. But the other 4 years, it is material. And we get many times, even though we don't consider as competitors, but we get compared to Kardex, we get compared to a KION Group in Germany. And obviously, they all publish their figures in Europe. So on the top line, it makes a difference on the bottom line, not so much. When we look at this in a different view, this is what this chart shows. I think very easily readable. What we have done is we froze the exchange rate of 2019, and then we calculated this with fixed exchange rates up to '24. And you can see how the gap has changed and is getting wider and wider The yellow pillar is what we published, the official figure in Swiss franc. The gray pillar is what is the currency impact, what would it be with constant currencies 2019. And if you look at this '24, this is exactly CHF 90 million. CHF 90 million in correlation to the sales we publish is quite a lot. It's quite a lot. Now I switch to profitability, starting with the EBITDA. EBITDA is minus 5.6%, CHF 100.4 million or 19.1% as EBITDA margin. And the good news is that the EBITDA margin despite the lower top line remains at exactly the same level like in previous year. Basically, there are three fundamental factors which contributed to this EBITDA margin. First of all, is the pricing strategy and very few concessions in the market. So we are very firm on executing the pricing strategy, not making too many concessions in the market. Second one is we had tailwind from raw material side, and we also did a good job in purchasing. And the third one is basically the DNA of Interroll. We are very good in managing and adapting fixed costs. So the fixed cost in Interroll are not really fixed cost, what you see in other industrial companies. We have somehow the ability to make them a little bit more variable and to adjust them. When we go now to EBIT, it's a minus of 7.3% or an EBIT of CHF 77.8 million. Here, the big difference is only the lower sales. The depreciation and amortization is basically unchanged to the previous year. So we have our assets. We need to depreciate and amortize it. No change. But in relation and expressed as a margin, it has a decline from 15.1% to 14.8%. Coming to the result, there are basically two levers which made the change, and this is not what we had something in the last years. But this year, we clearly have a very positive financing result. This is CHF 3.1 million. And this is coming from both. It's coming from hedging gains on foreign exchange rates despite we have overall on the top line, a negative foreign impact, we were able to gain something with hedges. And the other one is that we get much higher interest on the cash we have on the balance sheet, which we invest in no risk short-term investments. On the other side, the tax rate is much higher. The tax rate is 22.7%. And the tax rate, as I mentioned already last year -- last year and also the year before was much lower than average. The 22.7% is now much more in line with the long-term tax rate, what we had in the past. Looking forward, 22.5% -- between 22.5% and 23% is what we expect under normal circumstances. Now I'm coming to the cash flow. Operating cash flow of CHF 92 million, a minus of 18.7% in percent of sales, 17.5%. If you just look at the bare number, you might say this is not a good cash flow. In my view, the cash flow besides the very strong balance sheet with an equity ratio now of 79.9%. The cash flow for me was the highlight of the year. Because last year, we really optimized net working capital. We reduced inventories. We reduced accounts receivable. We maximize this, as I said last year to the maximum. Now this year, obviously, this onetime effect, you don't get. What we see, and this is easy to explain basically what is the difference to this outstanding last year operating cash flow. The difference is the reduction in inventories was again CHF 11.1 million. But last year, we reduced CHF 25.5 million. So this is a gap of CHF 14 million. And the other one is on the tax paid. We have now tax paid of CHF 28.1 million. Last year, we had CHF 20 million. This is another CHF 8.1 million. If you sum this together, this basically explains the delta between the very outstanding cash flow last year to the cash flow of this year. When we look at the investments, we considerably invested less than the year ago. We have an investment of total investment of CHF 20.7 million. Last year, CHF 25.1 million. So it's considerably less, and this resulted then in a free cash flow of CHF 77.4 million. So also minus 15% to the outstanding last year. But nevertheless, also looking in the cash flow in relation to sales of CHF 14.7 million, this, in my view, is a very good result on the cash flow side. Now switching gear coming to value creation over the long term. This is now, again, a decrease, what you can see. You can see in yellow the return on equity. You see in the green, the return on net assets. So declining top line assets in place, asset utilization is lower, and this results in a lower return on net assets. That we go lower in the return on equity, this is simple because we basically have now a balance sheet which is inflated by cash and by equity. 79.9% equity, over CHF 2 million or almost CHF 195 million net assets. This is the reason why this value goes down. This brings me to the dividend proposal. The Board of Directors has decided to propose to the general assembly, which will take place on June 6, 2025, a dividend unchanged of CHF 32. This would then be the third year in a row with CHF 32 dividend payout. The payout ratio increases to 43.7%, which is also in line with what we have communicated in the past that we go from this 1/3 to 50% payout over a period of time, not really defined over how many years, but we will go towards the payout ratio of 50%. And if you look at our cash position, this dividend of 32% is also justified when we look at the cash. This slide shows you the development from 2003 to 2024, starting with CHF 2.50 to CHF 32. And what I would like to highlight here is, and this is what you don't see too much with industrial companies, there is only 1 year where Interroll reduced the dividend, and this was during the financial crisis of 2008. In all the other years, the dividend has kept stable or has increased. Now I come to sustainability, and this is a change because in the past, we published the same day, the annual report and also the sustainability report. Now we have decided to publish the sustainability report from now on, but also in the future on a later stage. The reason is quite simple. The reason is because of our subsidiaries. We have a lot of small subsidiaries and the burden to report financial figures for the consolidation for the annual report. And at the same time, all the KPIs also for the sustainability report is too much. So the choice is you hire people or you smoothen the workload, and we decided for the second one. So we smoothen the workload on the local controllers, and we will publish also in the future the sustainability report a few weeks later. The sustainability report for '24 will be published on May 16, and it will be again a progress report according to GRI, and it will also fulfill all the requirements from the Swiss Code of Obligations. Something I would like to highlight related to sustainability is the achievements what we had with EcoVadis assessment. 20 of our units participated at the EcoVadis assessment in 2024. All 20 received an award. We got 7 silver awards, 7 gold awards and 6 platinum awards. And the group scored a silver award. This is an outstanding result. This is also in all units clearly above the sector average, what other industrials comparables to us do with EcoVadis, and this is something we can be proud of. Now I come to the end of my presentation. I would only highlight that we have now introduced and we launched this morning a new Investor Relations and sustainability web page. We are -- as mentioned also last year, we really went now paperless. All information digital in a different format. It's much easier to read. We also changed the layout of the annual report. It's no longer portray. It's now landscape. So it's made to fit a screen. And please have a look at it, and we are also very open to receive feedback, improvements, which can be made. The page will grow over time. So this was an initial setup. It was also done last minute with all the components of the annual report of a quick report of a chart generator. We have integrated the former online platform into this new micro site, and this is now a starting point, not an end point. And from here on, we will grow. The advantage is clearly that we can now fully focus on Investor Relations and sustainability. And the main page will focus more on sales and marketing. With this, I come to the end, and I would like to hand over to Maurizio Catino. He will talk about markets and focus on customers. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Heinz, and good morning, everybody. I mean it's my pleasure to present you a bit more details on the last year results and a bit of an insight on what we see for next year coming, plus some, I would say, strategic initiatives that we will put in place in order to restart our growing, let's say, direction in the coming years. So you have seen already these results, and this is how I want to start my presentation because it's clearly that we have seen a rebound last year in EMEA. This rebound has been driven by our backbone, our product business. The product business has overperformed, performed pretty well. And we are keeping recovering these customers that also Markus mentioned before, we have lost during 2021, 2022 during this raw material crisis that has impacted us quite heavily. We have done this, and I would say this is a masterpiece because we have regained lost customers. and we have been able to keep our price stable, so to defend our pricing position. The secret of this was obviously leveraging our strength like faster delivery time and high quality, which is still very much appreciated into the market. This is -- I mean, why Interroll was positioned there it was. And I'm really confident this will come back again soon. The regions, as also my colleague says that not performed according to what we were thinking of. The main reason for U.S. was basically the local situation also, I mean, connected with the election and the main player in the e-commerce standing still for a while. But also here, we start to see a different setup, and I will give you a little bit more insight later on. When it comes to China, we're still very convinced that China is for us a big opportunity, not only for China itself, but also for the surrounding region, especially now Southeast Asia and also South America, where we have a focus, and I also have a slide for that to present to you. A bit more detail to make my comments a bit stronger. You see that the share, as Markus presented already, has moved on, let's say, 50%, 50% solution product into a 53%, 55% of, let's say, product compared to solution. The main impact has been from the project side, very clearly top customers in sortation business. Why? We have basically seen a switch from the so-called greenfield, so-called structure or new warehouse into brownfield. So in this unpredictable time, customers are normally focusing more on retrofitting and adjusting the operation that they have instead of building new warehouse and, let's say, basically installing completely new equipment. Nevertheless, you can easily see from the green and blue, let's say, part of the cake that we have been able to get new customer and recovery customers. So basically, you will see later on that we also in the solution and project business have been able to increase our customer base. Yes, we have probably less amount of sales due to the fact that the average sales per customer is decreased. But we believe that are anyhow in a very good position when the market is rebouncing and the greenfield will restart because we will have a bigger customer base now base. And this, I mean, immediately will bring our sales up again. When it comes to the product business, you see that we are much more stable here. But also here in the pie cake below, we see that the green and blue are increasing. So the message is in both project and product area, our number of customers is going up, and this gives us confidence for the future rebound. This is also clear from this graph. You see in gray the number of customers. And you can see that from 2022 on, we are constantly increasing up in the product business. And I always said that this graph is in a counterbalance because when the customers is going up, sooner or later, the sales are going up. You see the effect on the product business on top, which is already going up. Normally, the curve has started to go in the right direction also in the part of project business. So this is basically a good sign. But again, customer first sales is a consequence and is coming as soon as the market will come back to a normal position. Let's go in a little bit into the future. This is our focus. Let's talk first about the airport. I presented the airport business already last year in this room where I said airport is very healthy. It was the case. We had a very good business last year in airports. So we were awarded of some of the major new airports worldwide, and this will stay for 2025. We have a full book of orders already for, again, major hub. And we believe also that for 2026, this is also with our partners discussed, this trend will stay. So this will sustain our foundations. Where we see that the market is restarting now is basically in warehousing distribution and connected to the courier express and parcels. So box shipment. This has been standing still for a while. What's going on? Well, obviously, the COVID time, we all know overinvestment in this area, and they have reached a certain level of capacity, and this capacity has to be fulfilled. The market is growing in this area. So e-procurement is increasing worldwide. And we are now getting close to the, let's say, breakeven point, let's go like this, where the capacity built during the COVID time are now at the same level of the requests coming from the market. So in a nutshell, investment will restart. There is also a clear trend in the e-commerce. We came from -- we have to deliver to customer to -- we have to deliver to customer as fast as possible. And this is driving business into so-called micro fulfillment or midsized distribution center because, of course, speed in delivery means we have to -- the warehouse has to be closer to customer, so closer to cities and therefore, the dimension has to be lower. But here, in this area, we are absolutely with our motor platform well positioned -- we are testing our also new product, Markus will present some of those later on to fulfill our customer expectations. Last but not least, the food and beverage, why I've put a focus, and I will strategically focus my team on this is just because, I mean, this is a very stable single-digit growing market. The food is basically very much connected with the population. Nevertheless, we also see a very big trend into e-grocery business. So e-commerce is coming into e-grocery. The demand is slowing, increasing. Of course, people are still going into physical supermarkets to buy groceries, but we see more and more partners and customers, which are investing into this area. So we are convinced that in the next 5, 10 years, supermarket will be a mix of e-procurement, delivery and physical shop. So kind of an omnichannel. So this is, I mean, for me, the right moment to invest resources and people to be closer to this market and also in case, invest a bit in product -- specific product development in that area. Rolling On Interroll, you all know this program. We always said that our backbone is an enabler because our platform enables the mid small customers to sell more because they don't have the OEM capabilities to build conveyors like we are doing. The program went pretty well also last year. We have increased, let's say, our contribution to 11% of our global turnover just with these partners, which, I mean, I remind you, they are 150 in number. We are pushing more and more so-called matchmaking. We reached 18 of matchmaking. Matchmaking is when two of these customers are working together with our product in order to fulfill a big end user expectation. And this really proves the program is working because, I mean, none of this medium, small customers would have been able to approach such a big project if not together in a collaboration spirit. So 48% of the customer base in the ROI has increased the spending with us. And now we have the so-called 15 millionaires, So 15 of these partners have, let's say, had with us a turnover, which is more than EUR 1 million. Last but not least, why I love this program and still will invest into this program is the fact that those customers are willing to test and beta test our new product and, let's say, innovation. We have proven -- it's one of our values. So our product has to be proven in the market -- and those allows us to really test in real condition our new product before we massively launch into the market. So we are safe that the product is really proven by real applications. Concluding with white spots, I was also presenting the idea of India last year to this crowd. You know we had a press release. We have acquired our dealer in India. And I mean, I am still a strong believer India is a great potential. Why? Of course, we're talking about 1.3 billion people, very highly digitalized people. So they will, for sure, push on the procurement and e-commerce. And I mean, we see more and more distribution centers being built. Last but not least, more and more of our, let's say, partners and customers are moving into Saudi Arabia and UAE. Those guys are differentiating from oil a little bit, and they are putting strong investment into logistics hubs. I had personally some interesting discussion about some hubs in Saudi Arabia in the LogiMAT last week. And India is very well positioned also to serve this market because they are very well connected. When it comes to China, I mean, we are still convinced you have to win in China because winning in China provide us the opportunity to leverage other area of the world where Chinese influence is becoming bigger and bigger. As you can see, Southeast Asia by far, but also South America. I mean, Chinese are stepping into South America very strongly. So I think we need to, I mean, leverage our position there in order to be able to grow in these two areas. Last slide from my side is a video. The importance of this video is that, I mean, we always told we are a partner of system integrator, and we are close to end customer in order to support them to -- I mean, develop their intralogistics skills. We had made a partnership just recently with a very big group, which is Maersk. Maersk obviously is a logistics provider, but they decided to use their hubs. They are very good position when it comes to real estate because they have a lot of hubs into harbors. We're talking about more than 400 worldwide. So what they decided is to convert some of those up into automated warehouse because this gives them a great opportunity to act as a 3PL, so a third-party logistics company. So basically shipping goods for others. I believe this is a great example of what you can do with the Interroll modular platform because they basically both for this installation, the entire range, almost the entire range of Interroll product that you have seen in this video. And they have completed successfully this operation and this -- I mean, it also allowed us to have a video together. And I can tell you when you talk about Maersk, this size of company. It's not always easy to step into that plant and running a video. So enjoy it. [Presentation]

Great. Thank you very much, and I give back the words to Markus Asch, our CEO.

Thank you, Maurizio. We'll now move on to give you a quick update on operations and innovation. And then we are pretty much on time to go to the summary. First of all, when we look at operations, as indicated to you before, what is operations task is to serve our capability to deliver worldwide our products and solutions; and second, to deliver them in the same quality level and in the same expectation level towards our customers. So a couple of highlights. First of all, in our German factory, which is the main hub for production of automated rollers of rollers we have now installed an automated roller system to be, first of all, prepared for a ramp-up of additional volumes, but also secondly, to be more efficient. That's our task to drive efficiency into the organization. Heinz Hossli has talked to you about the EcoVadis certification. That's the second point. Also on our factories, we had to do ISO certifications. And the fact that we achieved all of those shows you that there is a quality structure. There's an excellent foundation for us to work on and to further develop from the future. And maybe another couple of words about the Interroll production system. Basically, our task is, again, to -- in a fragmented world where flows are changing, where expectations and demands are changing in the various regions to have a consistent approach and quality towards production, but also towards assembly. And what we are doing and it has been initiated and Mr. Demirel there is doing an excellent work to say, okay, what is the modular system behind? How do we produce a roller? How do we produce a drive motor or assemble how do we assemble a conveyor? How do we assemble a diverter? How do we get to the components and through the systems that in a system and in a consistent way, they are being applied all over our facilities that are more than 10 around the world that we ensure the same quality, that we assure the same swiftness and the same delivery performance towards our customers. And that will further be rolled out in 2025 and this year and in the time to come to continuously develop lean principles also on the assembly side and to be sure that we maintain a quality throughout all of our offerings towards our customers. Let's move to innovation. And on the sample -- on the left-hand sample, I would like to introduce to you again how we see today our value of Interroll and how we see -- how we saw it yesterday, how Paul Zumbühl has implemented into the heart of the company and how we further develop it. And it's very -- in a sense, it's very simple, quality, simplicity, speed. And then a huge underlying proven. And what does it mean? For us to prepare, propose, execute one-off solutions to customers cannot be the future and it's not the future. So our task, and we have done that in the past, and we will further develop that is to see what is the application and what are behind the application, the LEGO principles. How do we see the modules? And then how can we standardize the module, industrialize the module and scale the module. And in the past, this has been, like in many other companies, a focus on products. It then has been a focus on systems. And we now go one step further. We also now implement controls and software into it. What does it mean? If you look at the MCP blade that we launched in the last few days on the LogiMAT, it is an MCP, as you know it and our customers know it. But it's an MCP now with an additional control and software where we provide, again, a standardized, a pre-engineered software tool, how to most efficiently run those parcels on an MCP. And the typical approach that today was approached in the industry has been overcome by a software that automatically adapts always -- today's structure is called zero pressure accumulation. And basically, now we move almost always adapt the distance of the parcels to each other. So it doesn't matter whether there's a part of 20 centimeters or 2 meters, it will always be adapted. It will always be improved. And we have had Fraunhofer evaluating that and say, what is before after direct comparison. And in their pilot tests, we have improved efficiency on the same mechanical installations up to 100%. And then we had a second huge effect because of software and eliminating those start-stop functions, you actually save energy. And you can save energy in average up to 30%. So that's what innovation drives when you not only look at the product and at the system, but also in the customers' processes. And our task as a company is to fully focus and understand our customers' processes and the drive innovation, productivity into products, into systems and into total process solutions. That's what we do with the MCP Bay, and we had pretty good effects or we had pretty excellent effects from our customers. And that serves them totally different customers, I will talk a little bit later. On the right-hand side, and that's basically serving in our modules, serving an open spot between high-end sorting and more lower-end sorting. So that's a medium sorter going into e-commerce and going into the cap market. So we have -- we are launching those. We are driving their solutions and modules into our customers that help them further develop. Let's quickly talk about the digital side. As introduced to you before, we have basically prepared our backbone with S/4HANA. And now initiatives are happening in the communication and the exchange to our customers. Again, if we look today, our customers do not only have a product which they buy from us, but they are involved in a huge process to install, to commission, to software commission to run the products and the solutions where they buy the components and the systems from us. So our task is there, first of all, to help them in planning and then in commissioning and to be faster in their ramp-up phases with hardware and software tools. And so we have installed and step by step, we will roll out now, for example, a product called Layouter, where they do the layout. And based on that, we derive the necessary requirements on hardware and controls and software. So we help them to drive efficiency into their processes, into our structures. We will see there in the next while substantial investments going into that system because it helps us to position ourselves in our customers with additional value besides products and today's systems. Let's summarize how do we see the situation also outlook for 2025. Our task is, and that's what we do well, and we have had an opportunity in the last few days also to liaise and to reflect with our strategic customers. The products, the systems, the hardware, software combinations, the process efficiencies, are they serving their customers' needs. And as Paul said, they are our strongest benchmark. They are our strongest reflectors, and that's good so. And we are very encouraged that they tell us that you are solving one of our problem. Today, we cannot scale complexity. So we are taking some of the complexity of them away. Second, what we also need to understand maybe 80% of the market is not the huge ones, but they are smaller companies, and they are struggling with being able to find software people to find systems engineers to do it. So they also need support. And with us helping on hardware controls and software standardized modules, proven technology, we help them to do their business well and to compensate where they cannot find people in the future to make that happen. As Maurizio Catino has introduced to you e-commerce and the business. Cap business, you already see ramping up e-commerce in some fragments. Also, it will also ramp up. And it's very clear from the market side that emerging markets are essential for us, not only because as Heinz has introduced to you to grow our share, but also because they have spillover effects into other regions as well. So for us, there is -- it's a no option to say we just hang on or stay in our today's market position in those regions, we will further develop and grow them. And in order to do so, and that's what we show on the market-driven innovation, we develop capabilities that today we might not have in all of our functions because applications are sometimes differently positioned and differently fragmented in emerging markets, and that's our task, and we will execute that very consistently. What we mentioned here, regain strength in innovation, that's market-driven innovation. Innovation that drives value to the customer, to the product, to the system as well as to the customers' process. And as I indicated to you before, the multi-belt switch is essential because it serves a market need that today is pretty open between high end and lower-end sorting. And that only works if while we focus on markets, on customers, on applications and driving solutions there at the same time, we consistently and continue to do our homework well. And that's reflecting on cost fitness and that's also digitalization internally. Today, our systems are in place. Further systems will be in place also for internal efficiency drive. That's for us important. As I indicated to you, towards serving the customer, the internal production system is substantial. And what I mean with quality initiative, quality is not only a product, it's also a system that we built. It's also a customer interaction. It's also how we help him in doing the layouting, how we help our customers to do the installation and commissioning and then also how we approach our different customers and different applications on the service side that the way how we integrate, the way how we approach the way how we support our customer has to be consistent and will be consistent. Last point, supply chain localization. Today, we are very thankful that we are very localized with our assembly. what we further will develop, how do our supplier structures look like, how do we prepare ourselves to be even more resilient in the future. Again, as indicated to you at the beginning, there is an unpredictable situation. For us, the demands are always local. The demands, but the execution has to be as regional as local as possible to serve those demands. If you are too much dependent on components and being shipped from left to right, that can be a possible danger in the future. So much as an overview over market, finances, strategy, the way how we see our business, the way how we focus our business. So I would like to summarize a little bit how Paul Zumbühl has introduced. We have structured and prepared the ground. We have done a lot of investments for our structure to be able to scale the company. Our focus has to be and will be on the markets, what does it take to capture those markets, especially on the merchant side, but also to serve with additional value on the highly developed market and how do we execute very constantly, and we will not compromise there on our basic values, which is quality, speed, simplicity proven and therefore, scalable solutions. Thank you very much. So we would be at the end and are then open for questions. If you're okay, I will go back and then we will share the questions as they come in. Would you please quickly say -- then your name that also for the one that are not in the room that they can hear it.

Remo Rosenau, Helvetische Bank. I'll have to come back on the CEO decision, I'm afraid. Mr. Zumbühl, you mentioned that you had several options, eight options actually. This raises the question for me. I mean, this is not a process which takes 5 minutes, right? So although it looked like a surprising decision from the outside, this seems to be the decision which has been taken quite a while ago internally. Could you tell us when you have taken the decision internally to replace the CEO in order to come up with eight options?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Rosenau for the question. I think I answered this question, absolutely right. So I wanted really to emphasize that since Mr. Asch was in the Board, that is the next option we take is absolutely not. Secondly, I mentioned that was a long-standing process and the decision. I can't say you now how many months and that, but it is not one decision from one day. It's not a decision from one day to the other. But a CEO change is something special, you cannot just change the CEO. It has a lot of implications. And I know this because the intro has an excellent story. We are healthy. We have a good backbone and this needs reflection. And the Board of Directors reflected in a substantial time to make the right decision. And sometimes when you read a CEO change, then all of a sudden, everybody thinks, oh, that's a short-term problem. We have to change the CEO. So we are, I think, one of the rare decision takers who make such a decision on the long run, long-term thinking. Before any clouds arising at the horizon, then it's too late. Then you are all of a sudden involved in internal things, and this is not possible. We have just seen in the presentation that these opportunities, and I really emphasize opportunities and not just challenges are here, but the timing is running. Thank you.

Another question on the financial side now. You're almost on CHF 200 million net cash right now, CHF 195 million. What about share buybacks? I mean, the stock has performed quite badly in the last 2 years. Also to address potentially the selling of the founding families, they sell since 10 years in the market all the time, all the time. You can look it up in Bloomberg through over the market, which is really a bit of a bit unfortunate because it's not a very liquid share. So also with the share buyback, you could probably address this issue a little bit. So what are your thoughts about that?

Yes. Maybe I address the question to you. The one thing which is very strategic for Interroll is we want to be bank independent. We have seen this 2 years ago when the supply chain hit. Even there, we used credit limits because the cash is also distributed. It's not all central in Switzerland. If you have cash in China, you cannot move this very quickly to Switzerland. This is the basic foundation strategically, we want to be fully independent. So we will always have a high cash balance. The second one is we want to be open even though we did not make M&A acquisitions because internally, we have very high hurdles how to do one, and we are not going to buy a #2 or #3 to clean the market and to lose the customers over time. If we do an M&A acquisition, it clearly needs to add value for the future, also out coming from a long-term view. Short term, this would be very easy. We could stand here very lucky and tell you, yes, we have not decreased sales. We have kept sales stable because we acquired a company. But this is not the thinking. This is not the strategy of the company. We think long term, we execute long term. And this is why if we go for an M&A, it needs to fit our purpose. It needs to be a technology which we can incorporate into our products or there needs to be products which are very close to our core. We are also not interested to go into a different segment. Now I personally am fully convinced new markets, new products, mission for fail. So you can go with new products in an existing market, you can go with an existing market and you add a new product. This can all be win-win. But going into a new market with new products, this is a mission for failure. Many companies have shown this. So we are very confident sitting on the cash at the moment, having this freedom to operate. If this continues, this is -- clearly, it's also no secret, then someday, if we cannot generate a return on invest, then we need to give it back to the shareholders in one or the other form so that they can invest it somewhere else. As long as we can generate the value, I think we should use this for growth. Growth costs money. Mr. Asch made it very clear. And if you have followed the financial presentation, I think the line is very clear. We have an issue in the top line. The rest is very strong. Cash flow is very strong. Balance sheet is very strong. How we manage the cost is very strong. What we do, we focus really on things we can influence. And we do not get distracted from things which we cannot influence. I think this is also a core message.

Maybe two small amendments to it. In projects, we need securities from customers. So if you don't have the cash, we have to go with bank guarantees, which costs a lot of money. And second, when you look at the components, as we more and more serve our customers with modules, not all of the modules in the future, we can do maybe ourselves in order to serve our customers well. So there will be upcoming investments going into that area that we serve our customers well with ideal components to serve their applications, both in hardware as well as in software.

Thank you, Markus. Yes, this would have been my last one. Sorry. If the business comes back, you automatically have much more cash bound again in net working capital. So I think just looking at the figure now in a downturn with the low or bottoming of the sales, it's dangerous. If we come back into growth mode and if we come back over proportional projects, which is clearly my view on it, if e-commerce will start investment, projects will be over proportional. This requires a lot of investment upfront, delivery times are not as short as with product. So you have material ordered, payment -- you make payments for the materials and you have capital bound until then you invoice and commission and you get paid by the customer. So you can easily say CHF 100 million, you can put apart for a rebound of the project business. And this is also how we optimize cash. It's no secret. In a downturn of the business of the top line, you reduce net working capital and you -- as long as you generate cash, you accumulate cash.

Torsten Sauter, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question on innovation. You're emphasizing on one of the latest charts that you are trying to regain strength in innovation. And it sounds like if you're rectifying a situation. Can you elaborate a little bit? Maybe I'm interpreting too much into that, but have you seen competition catching up? Has this to do maybe also with the top management change?

No. What we -- and I elaborated on that already with like one or two sentences. Some of our innovations maybe have not been too systematic consistent in the market in the last few years. What we are focusing -- refocusing innovation is where do we drive value towards our customers in products, in systems and in processes. And that's a clear focus. Where do we drive value? Again, serving quality, simplicity, speed, proven. Further questions? So then I think we can go -- sorry.

Nejc Lavric from Octavian. Maybe on this European rebound, I mean, you mentioned that part of it actually came from regaining customers. I mean, can we expect this trend also to continue in this following year? And maybe can you remind us again how much of this increase year-over-year actually came from regaining customers, but not the market actually coming back?

So as I said, the cornerstone or the backbone of every sales strategy is the amount of customers you have in the market. So when you ask the question, will this continue? I can tell you this is the focus we have. Yes. I mean, last year, we have also made a transformation of the sales in order to better fulfill the expectation of product business. So this focus will stay. And I mean, just to remind that our modular strategy is done in order to scale our product into our solution and into our systems. So at the end, for us, the product and the number of customers we have in the product business will be of essence also for the future. Now to answer your second question, it's a bit more complicated, so how much from new customers the share. So I'll show you that basically in the product business, this consists of 4% of our business. So this is pretty clear. How much this will come again. We set always ambitious target. This I can tell you. And basically, this will continue. What is weighing now in more -- how Interroll is again the fact that the size of the project is starting to increase. So when we will see a movement from just retrofit and brownfield and again, real investments, we will sum up the two effects, more customer, more average sales. And this will bring back us to growth path.

Maybe if we look at the cost side on your other operating expenses, I mean, it went down quite a bit in H2. Can you maybe elaborate on that? And then also on the increase in other operating income that was higher than historically. I mean, did something change there? Maybe these 2 points.

Do you want to take on the question?

Yes. I cannot give you the details about this. There is no fundamental change, what we have. And when you look at it now, we show personnel cost as one big block. And if you -- we don't show this for the direct labor separately. And so they are in there. And the seasonality has an effect on it. We build up WIP during the second -- or during the second and third quarter normally and invoicing in the fourth quarter. And this has an impact, what you see. But nothing unusual, which is in this, to account.

[indiscernible] I have a question on the product business that recovered quite nicely, but drives grew more than twice as strong as rollers and roller seems to be quite a commodity product. Is there any -- are you kind of -- is there a structure -- is it purely cyclical? Or is there a structural reason to outgrow with drives as roller seems rather commoditized or higher level of competition?

I would say you can. First of all, and that's what I showed you at the beginning, how is our business structured? Products and rollers is our core, and we will have to defend the core like a bull. We see that on the roller side, there is some competition. And there are -- there is also some competition in Asia, also in Europe. So our task is to fight them very carefully.

And maybe, Markus, I can also add one other thing. In the product category drives, we not only have the motors we use to drive rollers, but we have a specific product category, which is drum motor, and this category is going into the food market as a single component. There is no roller connected to this business. This business is specifically for OEM and machine builders, plus most of your luggage in the airport goes into this drum motor when you do the check-in. And as I said before, the airport business is going up consistently. And therefore, this area of the product business, so the drum motor drives have experienced last year an overperformance compared to the rollers. And this has created what you correctly have noticed that the drive has overperformed the roller. Nevertheless, growth is in both areas.

Yes, Marc Possa, VV AG. You were nicely describing the future kind of LEGO system where the customer has not just the speed, but the simplicity as well. Can you allude or describe the value added and how you price that? I mean if a customer historically just bought a system, a mechanical system without any software and interfaces, how much more can you price the newly offered value in percentages?

Unfortunately, we cannot disclose at this point the details, what we can confirm that we exactly have that perspective that you just mentioned that we differentiate between the product system and then the value add of efficiency increase through the process. And we are now piloting the system basically rolling out. And in this, we will then carefully validate the value we generate towards customer and align that with the pricing. So the message, this is happening. This is clearly our focus. The details is what is happening in the piloting and the rollout now to come.

And is there any connection to the installed base? I mean, will you also be able to offer migration sets or kind of improvement sets to your customers?

Do you want to?

Yes, I can say. This is also again -- so just remember, we have launched a product yesterday. But yes, obviously, there is a possibility. We are exploring and trying to understand how much on our installed base, this can be done. It will not be 100% for sure because it will depend also on the needs of specific customers. But yes, I cannot exclude that this could be an opportunity for us as well.

We will now detail what components can be used, old one, mechanics, clear on the drive side, where do we differentiate? And on the software, then it's, of course, be new. But the message is also for today's installation, this can be an opportunity.

Yes. [indiscernible] I have one question. You mentioned that you have -- or the bottom is reached you said in the statement, you said that you see positive signs from customer. And I'm wondering on what visibility is this build on? Have you signed many contracts already year-to-date, so up to mid-March, do you have a high pile of contracts to be signed in the next month? Or is this wishful thinking that second half will recover? Can you give us more flavor why you are so convinced because we had this already last year, then we have been spoken about an interesting tender pipeline, which never materialized. So what's different to last year? And what is the momentum in H1 compared to H2?

You can add on. Basically, our message is not the principle of moving hope. but some validation, and we see following validations. First of all, some of our customers see a tremendous -- when I say customer system integrators, they see a tremendous increase in quotation volume. Some of our customers already tell us they see an increase in their order volume. So it's -- again, it's fragmented. It's not the total business, but it's fragmented. So we already see on our customers' place in some of the verticals, it's happening. So that will then in the next time come to us. And we also see from our business that not only the volume on the quotes is now substantially increasing again, but also we see a substantial improvement on the order intake.

Just in order to understand the future market structure since you're in a position to enable more simple, easier to implement solutions, does that mean that the current market structure that consists of many little small integrators as well, not just the big ones and clients that, that will remain and therefore, the mix effect will drive your margin positively?

I mean we -- you just...

Yes, I'm sorry. If you want. The midsized and small-sized customers, we will do business as it is. Why we see an opportunity above? Because the complexity of the integration and installation is increasing. And we see for the future an opportunity, which is consistently confirmed by our big customers, where they are much more interested into connecting the system and providing the right performance in their installation than keeping building their own hardware. So the paradox is the more they go into software, the more they search for software connections, which are seamless and easy, the less they are interested in the hardware part. So you are right, there are a lot of hardware provider. There are many less hardware and seamless software integrated provider. There are very few companies that can do both and have a global footprint like Interroll has to basically serve these companies, which are big integrators and they have projects located globally in the world. If you put on top the fact that everybody is scared on the fact that they have to localize production because they don't know how it will work with tax and duties and we have production in all over the region. I mean, yes, for me, this is a good opportunity.

And maybe to add on, your question is spot on. The bigger part of the market is the smaller ones, and they require help. And with our standardized modules, we serve them that they can be more efficient because they will not get the people in the future to do the commissioning and programming. So your question is spot on. If you're okay, we have just a couple of minutes left. We would turn to the online questions and go through it. There is first a set of questions from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. How has the year started? Will 2025 be a transition year? What is expected on CapEx? And how do we see gross margin development? We want to be there very -- a couple of messages. First of all, Heinz has introduced you that book-to-bill was below 0 in the last few years. It is now accumulated slightly above. So that's the first year. Of course, this year is more a transition year. So we will see a book-to-bill increase. How fast this turns into sales, it's a different story. It has to be executed. When it comes to CapEx, it's roughly on the same level than previous year. And on the profit margin, you have to watch when you see fluctuations on profit margins, mainly driven by fluctuation in product mix. We have on the products, a substantial higher profit margin than on systems because that's the nature of the business. So the change in more products has also increased the profit margin. And at the end, it's the EBIT that is relevant. So that was the first one. Can you quickly check the second one?

The second question that is coming from Sebastian Growe from BNP. The first one is sales growth. You have pointed to growth opportunities, especially outside EMEA. What is needed to drive that catch-up and what is under your control as opposed to how much a market recovery, especially in the U.S. project business is required? How might ongoing tariff discussions derail your plans? And as you label the importance of speed behind your growth plan, when might we see a pickup in order activity? I think this question Maurizio?

Do you want to answer this question, Maurizio?

Yes. On the first part, at least. Well, let's say, first of all, U.S. project business, I mean, as you have seen in my presentation, has been impacted. I think it's pretty easy to understand who can make a big difference in U.S. when it comes to project business. And basically, we are very well connected into this market. We -- you might know that after, let's say, last year where they were waiting and seeing what was happening, discussions of new investments and also different, let's say, delivery strategies in the market. are public. I don't remember -- some of you have told me before the meeting that they read about a certain amount of investment in the northern part of U.S. Yes, it's going on. So I mean, the expectation is that our business in U.S. will face this year an improvement compared to last year for sure. And again, because this is also part of the question, I would say that tariff discussion are not impacting us at all. To be honest with you, it's an advantage because not all -- not every competition we have is producing in U.S., while we are basically producing everything in U.S. market. So I mean, this is a good point for Interroll, and this is also well known by our U.S. customers there. So not knowing and not having a clear picture on how this tariff will go, they might prefer to go on the safe side and award us with projects.

Maybe two components to add. First of all, we have an excellent structure because we are in the U.S. with our infrastructure. We are localized. So we might be affected by raw material tariffs, but not affected in total. And today, when you look at the tariff codes, our products are not in the tariffs yet. So we are safe, but it will change. So we have to be just flexible and fast and get things done. I would like to ask the second answer the first part of the question, what about EMEA? We have the same challenge that every single machinery business in Europe has that what has made us successful in the last 20 years in Asia will not be the solution for the future. So more localizing in solutions, understanding local applications, adapting our sales and service and product structures to it is crucial. And if you carefully remember what Paul Zumbühl said, we will develop the capabilities to succeed there. That's very clear. So more of the same will not fix our Asia growth plans. That's very obvious. You then asked about importance of speed, what -- when do we see growth. Our task is that this year, we see our order income, our book-to-bill that has to move substantially above 1, and then we'll see how this turns into sales. And there was then a second part of the -- on the profitability when it comes to outside EMEA, do you want to?

Yes. The second question is, can you comment on the potential mix impact when expanding the share of business outside EMEA? Is pricing a means to drive the planning step-up in growth? Or is there a need to increase fixed costs to drive that growth? So in basic principles is that the price to the customer is different from region to region. We produce in the region for the region. This is the approach. I think this is a very good approach. What is not different is how much we want to earn from region to region? So if the product mix is the same, we also have the same aspiration to make the same profit. Nevertheless, we have lower production cost in China. We can sell at a lower price in China. The market requires this, but the requirement -- the internal requirement on the profit margins remains the same. So we don't see a big difference in the three regions when it comes to profit generation when the mix is comparable. The mix is decisive.

So the next two questions from Walter Bamert. Maurizio will answer.

So he's asking what share of group revenues was there in 2024 in the airport business? I think we don't give any indication on shares specifically. What I said is that we see also in 2025, an increase in business. And I have also to say that due to the fact that this business could have, I mean, longer time cycles because from the order to the installation, this can obviously overlap over years. Probably, I mean, if we look at the book-to-bill ratio specifically for this area, this has been already above 1x last year and is now growing in the right direction. So I still expect a growth story in 2025 and also going partially in 2026 as well.

Next one, e-commerce. You have done?

So then he asked, do you expect big U.S. e-commerce order in 2025 or only small ones starting in April, March? Okay. That's very detailed. Let's say, we, as I said, are actually in discussion for both, yes. So big and small projects. Why? Because there is, let's say, a different strategic approach in America. I quickly mentioned during my presentation that they are going into, let's say, more smaller location, but closer to cities because they have a big topic when it comes to the delivery time. Nevertheless, you cannot serve this small hub as spots. It's a little bit technical, but image that if you have a lot of small things, you need a big one to serve the small things. Otherwise, the system doesn't work. And therefore, the basically projects are in both areas. So there are a few big and many small, okay? So following the strategy that they have to come closer with smaller delivery center. That's basically the discussion we are having.

So the next question was one from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Revenue share of aftersales service, I mentioned that between 11% and 12% last year. Then the next question is from Walter Bamert from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Did Mr. Zumbühl introduce -- in his introduction, talk to about Chinese competitors? If I recall, not specifically, but we talked about Chinese competitors. And that's very clear that they have -- are prudently aggressive. And there's -- the main reason is because the domestic market is under severe fire. So you see them very aggressive in China but also substantial spillover effect into Southeast Asia and also into Latin America. So that also answers a question from Andrea Bianco, how do we see Chinese competitors? So our task is to face them, fight them with the right competitive products, but this value towards our customers. And that's exactly what we talked about, our systems that are more than a product, it's a product, it's a system, it's a process solution that drives productivity in our customers. And so then we have a question from Constantin Hesse of Jefferies. If I could please follow up on the order intake system, integrators don't seem to be seeing much of an improvement yet based on recent results calls. And could you please elaborate? I think we have answered that, how we see that. So we could jump that. And then another one, Constantin Hesse again from Jefferies. Can you elaborate on what your strategy is in Asia, China and regain growth? Also, I think we have covered that question. So, next one? Constantin Hesse, Jefferies again. A bit more clarity on order intake, please? I think we cannot disclose everything except that the book-to-bill is now slightly above 1x. Anything else?

Yes, I think this is what we can say after-the-month's book-to-bill is over 1x. The signs that we get from the market are better than a year ago. I think when we were standing here a year ago, and we made a bold statement, we said we are pretty much convinced that the worst is over. This has been proven truth. Q4 '23 was by far the lowest order intake, what we have seen. So this clearly and during all the calls during the year of '24, I mentioned this to various of you. This has been a bold statement at the time when we had the media conference in March because it was only 2 months after closing of Q4, but this clearly has been showed now this was by far the worst quarter. That is a steep recovery, obviously not. This is why I always said also at the half year webcast, it's more of the same. And this is what you see in the figure. It's more of the same on the order intake. It is a growth in local currency, not a big growth. So I think the more of the same was exactly the right wording during the year of last year. And now we need to see. And as Markus said, most likely, this will be a transformation year, but we need to gain orders. and then the sales will follow. But we are pretty much positive that the momentum on the order side will continue in the right direction. And if some of these bigger projects can be realized, then this is already the case because we have shown last year or in '24, we have shown the growth in the product business, the lag in the project business. And if the project business comes back a little bit, then this is already the case.

So we -- in my understanding, we should be complete, right?

Yes. There maybe is there a last question from the audience after we have now answered the questions which have come in from the remote people in the chat. If not, we would then close and we would invite you for an apron we can have some discussions also out there.

And thank you again for coming and for all the questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you.