JOST Werke SE (JST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the JOST Werke Fiscal Year 2024 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Joachim Durr, CEO. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you very much, and a warm welcome here from Norenberg to our 2024 earnings conference. We're happy to inform you about our performance in the year 2024, a year that has been weak in the market environment, but that JOST views has used very well to further develop the company. So here's some of the highlights. We have developed our strategy and presented our midterm targets, which we call Ambition 2030, at the Capital Markets Day in September of last year. We have signed the acquisition of Hyva Group in October 2024, taking a first important step for this growth strategy into the off-highway markets and segments. We were able to sign new OEM customer contracts in our Agriculture and Construction business, gaining the market share and implementing the strategy of being a global Tier 1 supplier to the ag and construction industry. We have invested strategically into R&D with Aitonomi Group and Trailer Dynamics to gain access to pioneering technology in Transport. And we have significantly improved our carbon footprint by reducing our CO2 emissions, Scope 1 and 2 by 58% compared to 2020. But that's not the only highlight. We also, together with Hyva, will boost our global market presence and our resilience. We are expanding our product portfolio with the products that you see here on the right in yellow. We are increasing our exposure to the off-highway markets that will give us more resilience and more profitability. We are enhancing our regional footprint worldwide, and we're strengthening our push-and-pull sales organization and sales setup with the Hyva brand. By that, we are reducing the dependency from individual OEMs. While OEMs remain an important customer to us, each individual OEM has less weight because we have more customers with Hyva acquisition. And therefore, we are growing the resilience on markets and products. We will increase the midterm profitability via the synergies that we have identified and are enhancing our unique selling propositions and our market positioning. Looking at the outlook that we have given, I can confirm that we are achieving the targets that we have given in the outlook after the IAA in October of last year. So sales are in the corridor that we guided. We ended up with EUR 1,069 million in sales, which is down 14.4% compared to the year 2023. Our adjusted EBIT was EUR 113 million. That's 19.8% below previous year. The EBIT margin, still a very healthy 10.6% in a declining market environment. CapEx is a little bit outside of the range due to the fact that sales was lower than initially expected, and we continued with the important investments. And working capital improved from where we guided, ended up at 15.3%. This is all excluding the M&A and [ are JOST ] only numbers. A bit more details on the financial highlights. The market downturn in Transport was around 19%, and that did affect our sales numbers. Also in ag, we have declining markets, but we have M&A contributions from JOST Agriculture & Construction South America and from LH Lift, and that supported our sales in the business in Agriculture, which grew by 5%. Adjusted EBITDA developed in line with sales, so the margin remained stable at 13.9% despite the clear sales decline and the strong sales decline. And I think that's quite good achievement. Also, our cash flow is at record levels with EUR 115 million, supported by strongly improved leverage -- and that supported strongly improved leverage, which is down to 0.86 multiple. The reported net income grew by 1% to EUR 53 million, and that was aided or supported by financial result and the lower tax rate. And I'm sure Oliver will give you a bit more detail on that. Our earnings per share declined -- adjusted earnings per share declined by 16% to EUR 5.20. So we propose to pay a dividend of EUR 1.50 per share, stable versus prior year despite the M&A in Hyva financing and a lower market environment because we think it was a very successful year overall, and we want our shareholders to be able to participate with us. Yes, this slide underlines our resilient business model, and you all know that our business model is based on a flexible and asset-light operations and production, but it's also supported by a wide range of end markets, products and customers where we have a very resilient setup. As you can see, sales by destinations is -- Europe is losing weight and the Americas and Asia Pacific and African markets are gaining weight. And with the Hyva integration, that will improve even further. Same is true for our OEM and aftermarket mix, which gives us a lot of resilience because as you know, the aftermarket remains stable when the OEMs decline, and that supports our margins. And also if the applications between truck, trailer and tractor, we;re more and more becoming even. And that also supports the resilient business model that, as I mentioned, is based on a flexible and asset-light operation and supported by a regional end-market mix that is very resilient. With that, I would like to hand over to Oliver to give you a bit more detail on the financial performance.

Yes. Thanks, Joachim, and good morning, good day from my side. As always, jump into the performance section and start with the overview on the regional performance, starting with Europe, and also within that, focusing a little bit more on the total year numbers instead of the isolated fourth quarter numbers. What you can see in Europe, we were faced with an organic sales decline by 18%, strong headwinds from the market environment, as Joachim outlined, truck demand is down by 24%. Trailers down by 5%. As you probably know, trailers started to suffer already in 2023. And the agriculture/tractor market also down by roughly 15%. On the other side, we had a little bit tailwind of the consolidation of the acquisitions that we did in the second half 2023. So the former Crenlo do Brasil business and the Finnish company LH List, both in total provided positive sales effect of EUR 52 million for the European region. As you know, JACSA/Crenlo is still consolidated in the European region, although that might change in the future. But Joachim will outline that a little bit later. So that means then a reported decline of minus 10%. No material FX effect in terms of sales. And what you can also see isolated for fourth quarter, you see the organic decline continued and was minus [ 17% ] for the fourth quarter. And that, I mean, resulted into the outlook adjustment, as [ Joachim ] mentioned, beginning of October, at [ best ], was then clearly visible. Then coming to the EBIT for the European region, you see that for the total year, it's down by almost 20%, so a little bit more than the organic decline. We supported the stabilization of the margin overall with cost takeout programs that have been initiated already in the first half and then paid off into the second half of the year. You also know from previous calls that we were partially on short-time work, although, and also that's probably for a little bit later, that has been canceled now as we see a step-by-step improvement also in the European region going forward and resulted then with all those measures into a full-year EBIT margin of 6%. You know that the European region is bearing a higher proportion of fixed costs, R&D, IT, et cetera. And this is why the region is always a little bit dilutive compared to the overall group. There's one special effect I would like to mention here. You see, if you look into the profitability of the fourth quarter, that's normally by far the lowest quarter in terms of EBIT for Europe. Normally, this time, it's a little bit higher. There's a one-off cost allocation that has been taken place in the fourth quarter to allocate for certain global function costs, and that's shifting profitability towards Europe from, especially, the North American region, where you see the opposite effect. Yes, and I mentioned already the short-time work in the second half of the year. So going then to North America, we would say so that we have successfully adapted to a much lower market there and achieved still a very healthy business. You see in the total-year numbers that organic decline has been almost 27% and even a little bit more in the fourth quarter. Trailer demand goes significantly down throughout the whole year by 26%. And then starting, especially in the second half of the year and especially within the fourth quarter, we also have seen that the truck demand started to decline. And also on top, we were suffering from an agricultural market that has not improved, quite the opposite, was also down by [ 15% ], resulting then in an EBIT of EUR 29 million for the total year and respectively, and adjusted EBIT margin of 11.3%, which we believe is still a very solid number in the light of the sales decline. What is the reason here? Aftermarket, in general, remained relatively strong in both business lines, supporting the profitability. Don't look too much in the fourth quarter numbers. As I mentioned before, there is an opposite effect of the profitability that has been shifted to the region Europe, and that's leveling out then in 2025. But on the other side, we were quite well adapting to the low utilization, especially in the fourth quarter, by layoff temporary workers, reducing the capacity in the plants. We consolidated actually also sites in Michigan. And that will help also not only in 2024, we'll have much more in 2025 to achieve also going forward, a good level of profitability in the North American market. So we are quite proud of the teams there, how well they managed the sharp decline in sales. Going then to the last region, Asia Pacific, Africa, solid profitability, strong, partially driven by a good product mix, especially a product mix towards the off-highway market. You see the overall organic sales decline is 7% from EUR 208 million to EUR 194 million, a little bit more in the fourth quarter. Overall robust markets, especially in Oceania, so Australia and New Zealand. And also on the other side, we are not super unhappy with our Chinese business. The China business is for [ years ] is quite a good one. Why is it the case? Although domestic demand is slow and lower in China, we have very high market shares with the export business. So with all the trailer and truck OEMs, they all come with a [ fifth wheel ] to the export market, so when Chinese producers export to the emerging markets. And that supported sales and EBIT in the region. A little bit of a weak point in 2024 was India indeed. Now everyone was expecting after the general election, which happened in April and May, that the second half might already see a stronger upturn there. That's still a little bit lagging behind. We think, in 2025, we would -- we should see here an increase, but let's see. I think Joachim will outline that later. Yes, basically no FX headwinds, too much in sales. Coming then to the EBIT margin, you see for the full year, it's more or less in line with prior year. So 24% for the full year and even in the low fourth quarter, 25%, quite a very healthy margin, as I said, are pretty much driven by a favorable product mix with good sales in the off-highway and mining section, especially in Far East. So countries like Indonesia were supporting here quite a lot of the business. On top, we had a very successful ramp-up of our new agricultural plant in Chennai in India. Especially the first half year was a very good one, contributing to the overall EBIT and profitability of the region, despite the case that this is still a ramp-up plant. And a third good point is that we -- as outlined already before, we definitely realized good synergies in China from the integration of the LH List company. That's the Finnish company you might remember, which has as a facility or had a facility in China as well, close to our existing facility. And those facilities have been fully integrated and reduced to only one and now realizing very nice cost synergies going forward. And also the sales synergies are quite promising going forward from the products that have been acquired through that. If we now go to the group and sum it all up, you see for the full year, as already announced with the prelim release, mid of February, an organic sales decline of 80% from EUR 1,250 to EUR 1.069 billion growth. And this is, again, as Joachim pointed out, pretty much driven by an organic Transport decline of minus 19%. If you look into the business lines, we see that we report a growth -- nominal growth in the Agriculture business line of 5%. However, again, this is driven by the M&A effect. The organic sales development in agriculture is minus 12%. So a little bit less than the Transport cycle but still a decline. And what you can also see is that the fourth quarter didn't show a release so far. The run rate of the organic sales decline was even a little bit lower in the fourth quarter, was minus 20.3% when compared to the full year, again, resulted in the changes of our outlook beginning of October when we disclosed that to the capital market. Coming to the EBIT development, Joachim already explained, full year EUR 113 million resulting in an EBIT margin of 10.6%, which is then down by minus 19.8% versus prior year. So a little bit more. And the reason this year indeed that despite the sharp decline in the second half year in terms of absolute EBIT, we continued to invest in certain strategic topics, where we will benefit in future from a better cost basis like smart automation, like plant consolidations, as I outlined already, which we definitely executed as planned. And I think, on top, we showed good cost control overall. And again, many thanks to our teams here throughout the world for having a very disciplined execution, especially in the second half of the year. If we now go to our KPI numbers, first here, regarding income//P&L development. We start with reported income, as Joachim showed, EUR 53 million. So that's even slightly higher than you would expect out of the EBIT. That's indeed driven by a nice finance result. You see here, it's only minus EUR 4 million, so adding up here in that bridge, which is a strong improvement versus prior year. But that's by EUR 14 million driven of U.S. dollar derivatives rate that we concluded to hedge the purchase price of the Hyva acquisition. Then we also benefited from a lower tax ratio. Partially this has to do also with our new allocation model between the regions, so somehow our shareholders are benefiting from that development and that restructuring also in the tax organization. So that means then reported EBIT of EUR 67 million. Then adding up our typical, as you know, PPAs, EUR 24 million, so slightly lower than last year. And on top, EUR 22 million other exceptionals. Just two sentences here, you can cluster those exceptionals predominantly in 3 categories. One, it has to do with the project of acquiring [ Hyva's ] M&A fees, due diligence costs and so on and so forth, resulting up to EUR 9 million. And then there is another big group, which has to do with site consolidations and also the closure of one plant in Germany, where we built provisions to execute that closure over the next 12 to 18 months; that bucket sums up to EUR [ 18 ] million, but also will benefit in the future with a lot of savings on top and other restructuring measures in our workforce resulting by minus EUR 4 million. So that [ jumps ] up to that other exceptionals, coming then to the EUR 113 million adjusted EBIT as disclosed. And if we then apply adjusted finance results and adjusted tax rate, we are then ending up with an adjusted net income of EUR 77 million, which is then EUR 5.20 per share. Also an important number, at least we look at it what is the adjusted net earnings versus sales ratio, so bottom line net income adjusted for the adjustments that we showed here. And this remains more or less stable with 7.2% compared to 2023, 7.4%. So also underlying, somehow, the overall good development for the P&L and income despite the market challenges in 2024. Then coming quickly to our KPIs for the balance sheet development, overall, I would say, quite nice improvement all the year, showing now a good resilience going forward. You see, ROCE has declined indeed from 21% to 17.1%, which is driven, for sure, by the lower adjusted EBIT but is with 17.1%, only slightly below our long-term target of 18% and a quite healthy margin in light of the market environment. Equity ratio rose up to 40.4%. So at least for, let's say, the last years, the first time again, up over 40% and giving us tailwind in terms of a strong balance sheet when now digesting the Hyva acquisition, for sure, which will have a certain dilution on the equity ratio. And this, despite the fact that we had to consume a negative FX translation effects of around EUR 8 million in the balance sheet. And also, as Joachim outlined, nice development in the net debt ratio or net debt leverage, so to speak, which is down to 0.86%, according to our definition, which underlines now the power and possibility to digest the Hyva acquisition without having a capital increase, still being able to pay a dividend as proposed. And on the other side, we had to consume in 2024, the acquisitions of the share in Trailer Dynamics with EUR 15 million, the dividend payment last May of EUR 22 million. And as you know, the Alo arbitration outcome is roughly EUR 21 million payout in January of 2024. And despite that effect, we were able to reduce the net debt quite significantly, which is, and that's then shown on the next page, for sure, driven by a very healthy free cash flow development. So the cash conversion rate increased even more up than compared to last year, where we already had this 1.2, a very healthy one, above our mid- and long-term targets now up to EUR 1.5 million -- 1.5x to EUR 150 million, driven by strong operating cash flow, which was somehow supported also by the working capital development. So we achieved, and you see that on the very low chart here, a nice decrease in terms of accounts receivable reductions, which is not only driven by the business volume, that's probably the flip side, we also did a good improvement in terms of factoring usage, quite an opportunistic one. So whenever it makes sense and we save overall interest costs, we try to do so. And on top, we had a very good development in terms of inventories. And that again now pushed the -- despite the fact that we had to pay the earn-out for Alo, the free cash flow up to EUR 115 million. Regarding our CapEx already, Joachim mentioned slightly above our target, which was up to 2.9%. And indeed, the fact is that certain CapEx projects that were already planned for 2024, we still executed despite the fact that the sales drop was quite significant in second half of the year as these projects are clearly supporting the profitability going forward, and that's why we decided to do so. Yes. And with that, I would like to hand over to Joachim again to give us the quick financial and business outlook for this year.

Yes. Thank you, Oliver, for the details. And let me come to the summary. The JOST organization has been very successful with our local-for-local management approach and focusing on the regional organization to run the operational business and to have the customer proximity. We will continue with that organization, and we will do some slight adjustments with the integration of Hyva. So our group steering will be focused also in the future on 3 regions that we have cut a little different and combine them with the existing Hyva regions. So we will report in 3 regions. The first one is Americas, that's North and South America; the second one, Europe, Middle East and Africa; and the third one, Asia Pacific and Oceania. And that will be the reporting and the operational structure on how we run the business in the future. It's a continuation of the already existing business model. And we will, as I said, continue to focus on the regions headed by a regional top management team that develops and implements all the regional activities that drives the Ambition 2030 strategic topics and that also has the customer focus and the operational focus on the local-for-local operations and customer support that we give. This is being supported by 3 business lines. In the past, we had 2 business lines, Transport and Agriculture, as you know. Now it's 3: Transport, Agriculture and Hydraulics. And these business lines continue to be responsible for the strategic global product development and the market road map on where we sell which products or which products do we develop for the future and manage the profitability of those products on a global basis. And with that new business line, you will find the sales of Hyva Group consolidated in that Hydraulics business line, and that will be transparent also for the future so that we and you will have an ability to follow the development of the Hydraulics business. Looking at the markets, and we've now added the market expectations for Hydraulics. I would summarize that the market for 2025, I expect it to bottom out. So I would say that we, probably in the last 2 quarters, have seen the bottom of the market development. And even though that is for this quarter, probably less than it was the quarter of -- the first quarter of 2024 because that was still a quite good quarter we see overall over the course of the year a bottoming out. For trucks, in EMEA, a slight increase, mainly in the later half, but we also see some promising signals already from our truck OEMs. In Americas, it's a bit more uncertain. Right now, it's very difficult to make any predictions for the North American markets. Our customers are having difficulty to decide where to locate their fighting because they don't know which tariffs they should calculate in these calculations. So there is a lot of uncertainty right now. And therefore, the current expectation is that there will not be too many investments and therefore, a slight decline in Asia Pacific, Africa, APAC -- sorry, Asia Pacific, we see and expect a slight increase. Same for trailers, where we see a stable market in North America and a slight increase in Europe and APAC. Also on tractors, we see the bottoming out. A little question mark in the Americas market. But overall, the expectation is that we are going through the bottom right now, and we see a bit more demand coming up for 2025. And you can more or less assume the same for the hydraulics markets. Also here in North America, a bit of an uncertainty. Also South America with an expectation of maybe a slight decrease. The remainder of the markets, there is more upside potential and maybe even some hope for a little further increase in Europe, depending on what's the situation with the Ukraine conflict will be in the course of the year. So markets bottoming out. And that, for the outlook, means that our outlook is not market-driven or slightly market-driven, but mainly M&A driven. A big increase with the consolidation of Hyva, and that will be the big growth story, obviously, for 2025 because we will consolidate 11 months of Hyva sales and results -- into our results of -- or in our outlook for 2025. So with sales, we expect sales will be up by 50% to 60%, little market effect, but mainly M&A effects with the Hyva acquisition. Same is true for EBIT. We expect it to be up 25% to 30% versus prior year. The same for the adjusted EBITDA. CapEx, we expect to go again to our normal range of 2.9% of sales. And working capital also, we expect to be below 18.5% of sales. So far for the outlook, as I said, the Hyva consolidation will be the biggest impact. So to give you a bit more detail on where we stand with the post-merger integration activities, we have had the closing on February 1. The global PMI programs have successfully started. We have a strong cross-company collaboration with teams from the JOST organization and the Hyva organization, very entrepreneurial mindset in those teams. And we noticed that it's a very similar mindset when we talk about customers, when we talk about markets, the products and the way the product being sold into the market and supported in the markets, are very similar. And that's why find a very good culture in those teams. We have started the PPA analysis, and we will inform you about those effects with our Q1 numbers that we disclosed then in May, I believe. Coming back to the synergies and the cross-company collaboration on the PMI, we see even more synergy potential with a slight upside versus the initial assessment. You remember, we've said that we target EUR 20 million synergies. Right now, we have the hope to -- we'll be able to exceed that. We find a lot of opportunities. You also remember that we said the EUR 20 million, we will find in the run rate of Q4 of 2026. So this year will be the year where we identify the synergies, where we take the decisions and we expect the actual impact of the synergies to come in mainly in 2026, starting at the beginning of the year and to have the entire synergies of those EUR 20 million in the run rate of Q4 2026. Also there, we will give you more details with the Q2 numbers of this year. Now we have an attractive bridge financing in place. But we have already started to -- for a takeout financing to stay flexible and opportunistic with -- even after the bridge financing. Yes. To sum it up, we've had strong -- we expect strong sales and adjusted EBIT growth for 2025, of course, mainly driven by the Hyva consolidation. The markets worldwide are bottoming out with an expected pickup in demand in the second half of 2025. And with the exception of North America with an uncertainty, we already see the first positive signs on that. The Hyva PMI integration is well on track, strong synergy potentials, and that should support our midterm target and our commitment to be back in our margin corridor in Q4 of 2026 on a run rate basis. The adjusted steering metrics strengthens our regions and continues to drive the entrepreneurial mindset and the local-for-local business model that we have. And therefore, the JOST resilience is further growing with an even more balanced regional footprint and a more balanced customer mix. So we think we are well posed to continue to generate value for our shareholders and to boost the profitable growth that we've shown you in our Ambition 2030. Thank you very much, and we're open for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Jorge González Sadornil with Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking.

My first question will be on the guidance and the selected market figures that you provided for '25. I'm wondering whether are you positioned in your guidance compared to these numbers that you are offering. If you are basically in line with this or there is any market or product what you are more cautious and maybe more optimistic than this selection? And specifically, I will be interested if you can put these numbers in context with new investment budgets in Germany and the potential reconstruction of Ukraine, whether you see upside for your business in general with these two events, if that is reflected some way in this volume outlook for '25?

Thank you, Jorge. I'm happy to elaborate a little bit on that. And of course, indeed, the market numbers here, they do not take into account any effects of those investment potentials and the potential Ukraine ceasefire or Ukraine rebuild even because for 2025, probably would be very optimistic to already calculate with that. But of course, that would have a very positive effect on our business. So any investments into infrastructure, be it in Germany with the big funding that is right now in the decision process or be it in Ukraine for rebuilds, would have a very positive impact. The -- our products for transport, for truck and trailer, they do support those infrastructure investments. And especially now with Hyva, with the hydraulic cylinders, and you see on that market side, the tipping function; that is something that you would need for any type of construction and of course, for any type of rebuilding in the Ukraine. So that would certainly be a big boost for our business. We have not assumed that in the numbers that we're showing at this point in time. So that would be a clear upside.

Okay. And allow me a catch-up on this question. Can you share with us -- I think in the past, you mentioned that Hyva has more market share or is a dominant player in Asia, especially in India. But how is Hyva comparing in Europe? And if you might take the opportunity of further growth next year to maybe push a little bit more for getting market share in Europe?

Yes. You're right. Hyva is very dominant in India with this application. They are also very strong in Asia. But also in Europe, I would say that they have about 40% market share on these tipping [ cylinders ]. And if the market grows, of course, we will grow with that market. In the synergies, we also have, of course, some opportunities to better serve customers, to have better dealer access if we combine the JOST and the Hyva volume. So there also is on the market share, a slight upside, I would say. But it's a very established and competitive market. So that will not be something that will change in the course of a few months. So from that expect -- from that effect, I probably would not expect too much in 2025 or '26. But the growing of the market and also in Europe, Hyva is clearly the dominant player for those applications. We will certainly grow with the market.

I would say -- I would add I would totally agree and on top, would say, let's say, market share expansion, market share increase, that's probably more a potential than in Americas and APAC specifically. You pointed that out already that with the leverage of the sales platform of JOST in North America, but also in Australia and Oceania, once the markets here catch up in terms of our structure investments, we should, let's say, over average benefit from that development. When it comes to EMEA, there could be some regarding South Africa. As South Africa is now consolidated in the EMEA region, there, JOST has a very strong sales platform, yes.

A very last one from my side on regards to the cost savings -- sorry, the synergies. I don't want you to anticipate us any number, but just to understand the message of potential higher synergies, this will support your target of achieving the lower end of the midterm guidance in margins for '27? Or it's more like long-term kind of synergies to be achieved?

Yes. I would say, on all synergies, our expectation is that you would find them in the run rate of Q4 of 2026. So that will have a full effect then in 2027.

The next question comes from Nicolai Kempf, Deutsche Bank.

And well done for a year that seems challenging in terms of end market. You did mention that truck demand in Europe is showing some positive signs in the first month. Can you share a bit more color on this? And my second one and third one would be more of housekeeping questions. The tax rate was indeed quite low in '24 what kind of tax rate can we. Assume in '25. And also for venture costs, should we put in a much higher number now in '25 for financing the transaction?

Yes. I'll take the first question and then let Oliver answer the second one. Thanks, Nicolai, for your question. . Yes, concerning truck, we see the order intake or the call-offs that we see with our truck OEMs increasing. That will not have a sales impact in Q1. It's more that the outlook that they're sending us for Q2, and not only the outlook, also the firm orders that we're seeing for Q2; they are improving. So that's why I said we see a bit of positive impact in the order intake, and you will -- that will only have an effect in Q2 and Q3. And concerning tax...

And indeed, Nicolai, that's exceptionally low, and there is a certain portion of one-off in there, again, as I said. So we reorganized a little bit our management allocation model throughout the world, and that had impact on the DTA and DTL calculations. So going forward, definitely stay pleased with the P&L bridge that I showed and the adjusted tax rate that we apply there, which is, I think, it's 27% at the moment. It should always be a fair assumption for the modeling. Also going forward, I don't expect much changes when it comes to incorporating the Hyva numbers there. That's probably more or less the same.

Got it. And on the financing cost? Anything...

Financing costs, I mean, we guided, I think, around EUR 30 million, EUR 35 million interest costs all in for 2025, I think to -- in various meetings that we had before. So we can calculate with a, let's say, overall interest rates, I mean, most of the instruments are somehow linked to the EURIBOR, which is partially swapped. But with 4.5%, 4.6% interest rate, I think that should be okay.

The next question comes from [ Felix Oberdorfer ] with [ D&F ] Financial Services. It looks like we don't have Mr. [ Oberdorfer ] with us, so we may proceed with the written questions.

Now here he is, Mr. [ Oberdorfer ]. We can see you now, but we cannot hear you. We cannot hear you. Use the chat in between -- and let's go to the other written questions first.

And then we can go back where you can use the chat.

So the first reading question comes from CIC Bank [indiscernible]. In the next full year, which sector do you foresee will improve? Off-highway or on-highway? How will Hyva contribute to the sales? Europe is foreseeing a down trend when it comes to on- and off-highway market? Which forms larger parts of the sales? How do you see the share in coming full year?

Okay. I'll start with that. You say, in the next fiscal years, which sector do you foresee to improve, off-highway, on-highway? As we see here in the market development, we think that's more or less even. We see in Infrastructure and Agriculture bottoming out and a slight growth opportunity and the same for Transports. So it's more or less even, I would say. More detail you find on this market development between truck and trailer, which is transport and tractor and hydraulics, which is mainly off-highway, some of the hydraulics are also transport applications. You're obviously seeing a downtrend when it comes to on- and off-highway markets. We do not expect a downtrend in Europe for on- and off-highway. We expect the bottoming out, as we sit here. So that is -- that assumption we do not share. We believe that we have seen the worst in the last 2 quarters, and that we see a bottoming out throughout 2025. And then the last question, how do you see the share in the coming fiscal year? We still have more sales in transports than we have in off-highway. So we still have more on-highway applications globally than off-highway. Of course, with Hyva and the construction footprint that Hyva brings with it, we have -- we are growing share of off-highway. And we expect that, that will continue to grow because as I mentioned in one of the slides earlier, also in the Agricultural segment, we see that on a global level, we're adding market share. With our investments that we've done in India and in Brazil, we get very positive customer response, and we see those markets growing in our off-highway footprint. And therefore, you can expect that overall, the off-highway portion will continue to grow quicker than the on-highway section of the JOST business.

Received the question from [ Felix Oberdorfer ] in the chat. The question is, can you say something about Hyva performance in the second half of 2024? Can you say something about market dynamics differences in trailer, trucks between Americas and EMEA? It appears that EMEA is [ ahead ] cyclically, correct? And then another -- the last question is the cost allocation difference in the fourth quarter between Americas and EMEA, is that permanent?

Okay. Do you want to start with the first one, Oliver, and then I take the rest?

I take also the cost allocation question. Likewise, with us, I think you mentioned that before, somehow, Joachim there. We're also a little bit suffering from the economies in the second half of the year and had a volume impact. So there, second half margin was slightly below their first half-year margin, more or less in line with [ COS ] development. However, still in line with our investment case and with the synergy potential that you have outlined. We will be, by end of 2026, on the run rate they need to be. And the start into the year is quite solid, to be honest. And then the next question, cost allocation difference. Yes, in general, it will be permanent. But what you cannot do is taking the difference of the fourth quarter and multiply by 4 because this was a retroactive change for the full year. So the effect of the fourth quarter is then expected to be a full year going forward as a permanent effect. But it's then -- it not an increase. It's just the same effect, but spread out over the full year.

Okay. Yes, and considering the markets, typically, I would say we don't see a big link between Americas markets and EMEA markets. The link that I think you're asking for is more between the trailer and the truck markets. And yes, indeed, typically, the trailer markets are a little ahead of the truck markets. And that's usually because it's a more dynamic production, it's more flexible production, it's much simpler supply chains. So if there is increase in capacity needed, then it's much easier to replace a trader than it is to replace a truck. It's also a much lower investment, and that's why we typically see the trailer markets being faster and quicker and the truck market following that. On the truck market, you always have an overlay of emission regulations because trucks are impacted by admission regulations. So if there is a tough step in emission regulations, like there is foreseen for 2027 in North America, which is freshened right now where the new administration; then you would see a prebuy effect, where our customers would try to avoid those new trucks which are typically less reliable and more expensive to operate. And therefore, they will buy the old ones. And that's when we typically have these prebuy effects that more or less overlay the market dynamics in those markets. But we cannot -- I do not see a link between North America and Europe that we would say that one market follows the other. It's more than the truck market is following the trailer market. And as mentioned, in Europe, we've seen the trailer markets go down already in 2023. In the last quarter, the truck markets were still strong in the first quarter of 2024, and that has been another sign of that typical pattern that we see. And now we are seeing that the trailer manufacturers are stopping their short-term work, they are improving, increasing their capacity. And we also see now the order intake or the call-offs from the truck OEMs with a little bit of hope that they will follow throughout this year. So I hope that answers the question. If not, then just send another one.

Answers that you gave, Joachim, also answered the next question by [ Niclas Bentler ], which was, what gives you confidence for H2 pickup and tangible reasons for that assumption? I think that you just answered it. So probably we should go to the next one by Claudio [indiscernible]. Where is the organic sales growth embedded in 2025 guidance and constant 2024 perimeter -- at constant 2024 perimeter?

I can take that. So if you take the midpoint of the sales guidance, I think then we are around 1,650. Then for sure, you have to exclude a little bit of FX topics at the moment, for sure, the Hyva acquisition. And within Hyva, we have to take into our mind that we will only consolidate for 11 months from February to December. Having -- putting that all aside, that is probably between 0% and 2%, 2.5% organic growth incorporated in those guidance, which probably fits well to that picture here when you multiply this with the sales volume in each of these regions and segments. And it's then driven somehow by the slight recovery that we see in the EMEA regions, which at the moment, we see confirmed. However, as Joachim pointed out, there's little bit of a development towards the second half of the year, where we have to see how these things develop. There are ups and downs that are possible as Joachim outlined before.

I think I don't see any more questions in the chat right now. We answered all of the ones that were post. No, there are no written questions at this point.

Okay. Then I think we've answer all questions and there is no further questions online. With that, I would like to thank you very much for the interest in our company. I think we have had a quite successful 2024, considering the market environment and very good performance. And we're happy that also our shareholders will be able to participate with the -- from that performance. We're looking forward to 2025, which will be an ambitious year to implement all the potential that we have, a big growth in sales, growth in EBIT and adjusted EBITDA. And we also think that it's a very nice setup for the future where we improved the resilience of our company and are well positioned to boost our profitability even further. So with that, we would like to thank you very much, and we wish you a great success in 2025. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye-bye.