Koenig & Bauer AG (SKB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to anyone on the call. I'm very happy to welcome you to our Q1 financial call to present to you our business development in the last 3 months or in the first 3 months of this calendar year. We have quite a lot to talk about today, and we'll just jump right into it. On Page 2 in the presentation, you see our typical just summary of what are the major highlights in Q1. As you've already seen the figures, it's clear that we're very happy to publish strong order intake. There's a lot of pressure in the markets. We see it all over the newspapers, the press, our competitors, various industrial companies are really suffering under weak order intake and under market difficulty. So we're very, very happy with the order intake development in Q1, 21.4% above last year and a similar number above 2 years ago. So it's the best order intake we've had in several years in Q1 to start the year. And this is not driven by one-off major orders from, for example, banknote or other major projects. This is really solid base business in our major business units across the board. We'll go into that in more detail. So I think it's a very strong vote of confidence from our customers in Koenig & Bauer, even in these difficult times and a weak economy, they're willing to place orders and buy from us. On the operating side, we see 2 different trends that we'll also talk quite a bit about today. On the one hand, we're very happy to finally show significant progress in the operating performance in the Special & New Technology segments. This is something that even in the old segments with Digital and Web and now in the new segment with S&T. This has been our focus for the last roughly 2 years of the Spotlight program and our product strategies and cost-cutting initiatives have really had the strong focus on improving the S&T performance, and we're finally able to show you that significant year-on-year improvement also there driven by several business units, not just one or the other. And despite headwinds in some of the businesses in S&T, which we'll also talk about in a few minutes. On the other hand, the Paper & Packaging segment, which we already started to talk about in Q4 and in publishing our full year figures earlier this year. The Paper & Packaging segment with its strong reliability on the global sheetfed offset business continues to be under pressure. We've had an insolvency in the competitive environment with Manroland. We've had several other competitors that have announced weaker earnings. And we're seeing that the weakness in the global markets is finding its way into our margins in that segment. And Q1 on top of the typical seasonality we see in that segment shows that drop in profitability that we'll talk about as well today. The third, we started to roll out our new strategic framework. This is not a program like a P24 or a Spotlight. This is really our strategic framework for how we're going to align our various and many initiatives going forward to transform the company and secure our long-term stability and competitiveness. And I'll go into it a little bit today, but this is something that will follow us over the next quarters and even years. This is a strategic framework to guide us in the time to come. And finally, despite this softening in Paper & Packaging in Q1 that we saw, we're also very happy and very confident based on our order intake, our order backlog, the ongoing cost-cutting programs and initiatives that we can confirm our full year target for 2026. Despite the seasonality at the beginning of the year, we still see Koenig & Bauer at a stable group revenue of around EUR 1.3 billion and an operating EBIT at around EUR 80 million for the full year. So we're off to a good start on the order intake side, on the profitability in S&T -- on the Special & New Technology side and P&P with the typical seasonality, not off to a good start, but still confident by the end of the year, we're going to meet our targets. Again, I won't go too much into detail today on IMPACT. We presented it already during our year-end closing and in our annual report, and we will be talking about it in our general assembly in June. But at the end, this is a strategic framework for how we're going to structure our initiatives. We have over 40 initiatives ongoing at Koenig & Bauer already from products to cost cutting to AI programs to go-to-market strategies, technology developments, people, et cetera. And this is the way we're going to talk about it. Today, you'll hear about a couple of them, particularly on go-to-market and on competitiveness, some of the things that we pushed forward on in Q1 that we want to highlight for you as usual. On Page 4, you see a new way we want to kind of talk about how to separate how do we see the short term or the actual business environment in some of our business segments or business units compared to the more long-term trends in those business units or segments. And what you see at the top left is our banknote business is really performing well. It's one of the upsides of the geopolitical crisis and countries fighting for national sovereignty and reducing risk that we see that the banknote security business is strong. We had strong order intake in the last couple of years. We didn't have exceptionally high order intake in banknote in Q1, but we see a very, very strong pipeline going forward in banknote business. So this is not only an anchor business for 2026, we see going forward through the end -- towards the end of the decade that the banknote business is going to remain stable in the long term, which is very good news for Koenig & Bauer. The offset business, we're also confident it's going to stay stable. We see growth in the packaging business. We see declines in the commercial graphic arts business. But that in the short term, these are the little round circles in the bottom right of each box -- in the short term, the offset business is very much under pressure due to the general economic environment and the competitive intensity we see in there, but we're still confident going forward. I won't go into all of these to highlight some of the other topics, we're still seeing a strong performance in metal print and in our glass and hollow containers in the long term. But I would point out that one of our very good businesses in S&T the last few years, the last few decades has been our glass and hollow container business under Koenig & Bauer Kammann. That's not something we talk too much about in these kinds of calls. But that, for example, is a business that in the long term, we see it very attractive. In the short term, it's under a lot of pressure because glass production is down worldwide due to the high energy prices. Plastic hollow container pricing is down in the short term due to high petroleum prices. So this is a business that's under short-term pressure, but long term, we're not concerned. And I think the other thing I would point out, similar to digital printing, we're still seeing a long-term trend and that it will grow. It will drive our business going forward. But in the short term, there is some low impact. Again, this shift to new technologies in uncertain times. We've talked about in the past is always a little bit more uncertain than in good times. So that's a new way to look at our businesses and trying to separate where we see the long-term growth for the company and the strategy compared to the short-term economic environment. On Page 5, you see some of the new highlights. And as mentioned, we'll talk about go-to-market. So the IMPACT really means we've spent a lot of effort, a lot of money and a lot of time developing a new and broad product portfolio throughout the last 5 to 10 years. And we're confident that portfolio is ready to scale more rapidly than has been in the past. It's about selling what we have and selling what we have to offer our customers now and pushing that into the market with more efficient sales structures and sales pushes throughout the globe. So in some cases, it's taking regional successes and making them global. In other, it's about just launching new technologies. Two examples, we had a very successful trade show in Brazil, which is with the Mercosur deal that's still going through, but confident to go through the European Parliament that is going to push sales in South America. We had a very successful show that helped us in Q1 with order leads, a few orders as well, but this will also help us going forward in Q2 and Q3 as some of those leads turn into fixed orders. We also, just last week, had a very big -- the last week of March, we had a very big trade show in Radebeul with the VariJET. This is our new digital printer that we launched at drupa in 2024, but are now, again, focused on go-to-market. We have the fourth installation ongoing. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's about moving from our first 2 machines that were the beta production, now having the first production machine and installing now the second production machine, so the fourth in total. And more important for us, at this VariJET 106 Executive Summit, 2 of those customers presented at our summit about how they're satisfied with the VariJET performance, how they're producing in a production environment with our digital printers. And again, with 80 experts from the industry at the summit, we're pushing out our VariJET digital printer to the market. The same goes for the Special & New Technology segment, particularly our digital and web business unit that we continue to report separately, and Alexander Blum will show in a few minutes. We had technology days in Wurzburg with a strong focus on launching our CI-Flexo XD Pro. This is a program that many of you that have followed us for years is familiar. This was the program we transferred from Italy to production in Wurzburg and during that transfer completely upgraded, revamped, reengineered and now relaunched this XD Pro CI-Flexo machine. And also here, an amazing presence from our -- we have roughly 150 visitors to this trade -- to this open house and technology days, presenting not just the XD Pro, it's about our digital solutions, also presenting the RotaJET, which is not pictured here, but is on the left side of this room. So again, it's about go-to-market and scaling up the machines we have in our portfolio. And finally, on Page 7, an announcement we made in January and showing also that IMPACT is not just a strategic framework. It's about initiatives and delivering. We announced the closure of Albert-Frankenthal GmbH. We announced it in January with the intent to cease operations by May 31, 2026. For those of you that are familiar with German industry, you know how hard it is to close plants that are -- that are highly organized with labor unions, with works councils to negotiate social plans and to close on time is quite difficult in Germany. It's just a fact. And also here, we're proud to announce that not only did we announce that we will close it and cease operations on May 31, this will now happen. So the deals are done. The contracts are signed. The employees have been released or have at least been informed of their released, and we will completely cease operations on May 31. This is, of course, cash out and it's restructuring and it hits the P&L, EUR 6.6 million were recognized in the first quarter. It seems perhaps like a small topic with 75 affected employees, but this is over a 100-year-old factory. This was the last step of closing it and it was a difficult task for the operations team installed, and it did a fantastic job, and it's all about increasing competitiveness by increasing resilience and reducing structural costs and reducing our footprint. So this is a project that it's never fun to close plants and dismiss employees, but it's simply necessary in the times in which we're in. And again, to show you, we're not just talking about our strategy. We're implementing it and doing that quite quickly. And the final highlight that I brought with me is our decision on how to proceed with our Koenig & Bauer Coding operations. We announced in the summer of last year that we are opening up a strategic dialogue with the market on how to manage Koenig & Bauer Coding going forward. We were open for various solutions from a full sale of the business to potential joint ventures, strategic partnerships. And at the same time, we also evaluated the going concern under Koenig & Bauer management with Koenig & Bauer ownership, what can we do better and how can we develop the business. The result is, I think, twofold. The first is through this process, we recognize how well positioned Koenig & Bauer Coding is and how much potential we have for this business going forward. And that's the good news. So the fundamental use of 2D QR codes, the regulations ongoing throughout the world, not just in Europe, about track and trace packaging require and will drive significant growth in the market in which Koenig & Bauer Coding is underway. On the same side, the M&A market in Germany for German industrial companies is very, very weak. So we did evaluate a potential sale. We did have interested buyers. We had a lot of interested buyers, but we came to the conclusion that the pricing being offered and the multiples being offered for German industrial companies in the current environment, especially after the start of the latest crisis with the Iran war and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, we saw a rapid deterioration in the robustness of that M&A process starting in February that we had to come to the conclusion that we're not willing to sell coding undervalue. And therefore, considering that coupled with the second view, it is a great market. It has great growth opportunity. We are now announcing to the capital markets and to the team in coding that we've decided to continue to develop the business as sole owner. We will continue and are discussing with various strategic partners how to cooperate better and scale the business faster, but we will remain the full owner in the coming years, and we'll develop the business on our own. We're happy to report more about our initiatives there in future calls. The foundation is great. The business is profitable. It's generating cash. It is growing, and therefore, we'll keep it on that path. So that's the last update from my side. And I would hand over for the last business highlight to Alexander Blum before he presents the figures.

Thank you very much, Stephen. Information technology is at Koenig & Bauer as important as engineering technology. And that's why I'm very happy to start my presentation today to you with 2 examples that we have recently conducted. One is the one already knows, we have a close partnership with Google with regard to information technology. It's our technology partner and is offering a whole wide range of technologies from desktop to the cloud via the Google technology. And we have continuous talks together with Google, how we can improve our operations, how we can improve the dealing with our information, with our data, with our operational flows and our operational systems. On the other hand, also artificial intelligence is very, very important, and it's a strategic initiative for us at Koenig & Bauer. It has the highest priority in order to explore what we can do with AI and with regard to our bread and butter business to improve operations and be more -- to be better for our customers and more efficiently internally with regard of generating our services and machines. And I had the pleasure to present our AI Champion model, our house of AI at Koenig & Bauer with the recent conference of our IT service provider, [indiscernible] group. Having a look at our financials. The order intake, as Stephen Kimmich already mentioned, was very strong and it increased by over 21% from EUR 245 million up to EUR 279 (sic) [ EUR 297 ] million. We see an increase of order intake in both segments. On the one hand, Paper & Packaging had an increase by over 12%. And on the other hand, the Special & New Technology segment had a very strong plus of over 40%. So that gives us a very good tailwind for the rest of the year, and that's why we are still confident due to all the crisis and uncertainties with regard to the development -- the further development of the year 2026. Order backlog increased -- decreased slightly, but it's again over EUR 1 billion. You probably remember, end of last year, it was below EUR 1 billion. Now again, it is over EUR 1 billion. And also, we need to remember that an order backlog above EUR 1 billion is not the normal case of case if you have a look back into the last 2 to 3 years with the history of Koenig & Bauer. But this also is an important anchor for us in the volatile market environment that we are living in. Top line slightly increased as well by over 3%, and it brought us an increase in revenues up to EUR 260 million. You have a look at the split of regions, first of all, the export group ratio increased from 84% to 88%. So export is, of course, very important to Koenig & Bauer. It always -- it always was and it still is, and it's still working. I think that is the very good message. And you also see in the graph on the left-hand side that the North American share also increased again by a quarter-on-quarter basis. So we had last year a lot of trouble within the United States, probably not only me, but all the exporters from Europe or from outside the U.S.A. due to the tariffs. What we see right now is that the situation is getting back to normal. On the other hand, Germany is under pressure. You see this on the very well [Audio Gap] on the bottom line, you see a decrease from nearly 19% -- EUR 39 million down to EUR 31 million. With regards to the profitability, and our operating EBITDA, we see a decrease in -- after the first 3 months. I will show you in a second a little bit more deeper insight into our segments because this is twofolded where the development arise from. You see in the bridge that our Special & New Technology segment improved its profitability by 4.1% (sic) [ EUR 4.1 million ] And on the other hand, the pressure within the market of Paper & Packaging as a consequence, the profitability decreased on a year-on-year comparison by EUR 8.4 million. That basically is the reason why we see even though we had a very good order intake and a slight increase in revenues, that's the reason why we see as a group a small minus with regards to operating EBITDA after the first 3 months. But please keep in mind, the first quarter always is by far the weakest at Koenig & Bauer. It was the same situation as last year, only a little bit bigger minus this year. But in general, the seasonality is what it is, and it's still the seasonality also the known seasonality from last year. It's still the same in 2026. One comment to the nonoperating extraordinary items. They amounted to EUR 6.6 million for the closure of the operations at Albert-Frankenthal GmbH. Of course, within the number of the operating EBITDA, this is adjusted. So you don't see the costs within these numbers. But to be here very transparent also with regards to the reported EBITDA, there is a nonoperating extraordinary items of EUR 6.6 million included. Having a look at our long-term trend with regard to the last 12 months development. And even though Q1 in 2026 was weak, you still find there a positive trend with regards to profitability. Now with regards to last 12 months operating EBITDA, we still reach -- after the first quarter, we still reach a margin of 5.9%, and this is better than the last 2 years. Cash flow. Also with regard to strong order intake, cash flow was negative. As usual -- as this is usually the case with regards to the beginning of the year and with regards to the development or the stronger expected revenues in the following quarters. So that's why we always need to increase our working capital position at the beginning of the year in order to make the realization of our revenue growth happen during the last 9 months of the year. The equity ratio is still in line more or less with the year-on-year figure with 22.3%. Our net working capital ratio improved to 23.7%. This is for the classical machinery business, each and every ratio, which is below 25% is a good KPI. And even though the overall working capital position increased by around EUR 5 million, the ratio was below due to the higher revenues. And our net financial position is now with minus EUR 171 million. It reflects the negative free cash flow from the first quarter. Having a look in our segments, and let us start with the Paper & Packaging segment. First of all, you also see there the increase in order intake by 12.4% after EUR 172 million order intake last year's quarter -- last year's quarter, it is now EUR 194 million, the increase by 12%. And also the order backlog is slightly higher than the order backlog compared to on a year-on-year basis. The revenues decreased. It was a very weak and small cash flow, a small revenue in the first quarter 2026. This also is one of the reasons why the result is negative at first quarter with Paper & Packaging, next to the reason that there is a lot of dynamics in the market. There's a lot of pressure in the market. Stephen mentioned the M&A Manroland insolvency. This was the #3 in Germany and also worldwide, probably #4 in the offset market. So that is a big player, which is disappearing from the market as it is announced by the solicitor. And this is an example why this market is also -- it is under pressure. However, order intake is stable or not even stable, it's also increasing. That's why we see that we feel now temporarily the pressure in the market, but we don't fear that this market will decrease in the future. Also, as Stephen Kimmich has told you the market analysis, it is expected to be stable on the long term. And our results with regard to order intake and order backlog also is supporting this thesis. Special & New Technology is also a very nice development with regard to order intake, plus 40.6% compared to last year's quarter -- year-on-year quarter, and that is really a very good result because it is not only provided by the Banknote Solutions business, but also by MetalPrint and our digital and business unit. So the Special & New Technology segment was always under pressure. And it was in the high-intensity care with us at management. And finally, we see positive results. Order intake is taking -- is increasing. Revenues increased by 24% and also the operating EBITDA increased tremendously by over EUR 12 million with regard to operating EBITDA. So that is a fantastic development. And once again, not only supported by banknote business, but also by other business units within the S&T segment. So we feel very confident that this strong development and this operational turnaround will also help us through the year 2026, but also in the following years 2027, '28, '29. We still stick to the good old tradition to show you also details on our business unit, Digital & Web as part of the segment S&T. And first of all, you see there that the Digital & Web business unit could double its order intake compared to first quarter 2025. So that's a very good result. The revenues have been more or less stable with only an increase by plus 1.6%. However, the increase in profitability was huge, and it was plus 88%. So nearly the operational breakeven was reached within the first quarter, and it shows really a very, very nice and a great increase in profitability. And it also demonstrates that the measures taken in the past were the right ones. And finally, we also see the result. Current uncertainties, yes, it's a little bit of repetition of what we have said in the past, unfortunately. But however, we still see all the geopolitical escalations. We also feel the global trade impact. And of course, this has operational consequences. However, with an export ratio of nearly 90% with a high -- with a good split of our operations throughout the whole globe, we feel prepared to also steer safely through this crisis or this ongoing crisis. On the one hand -- on the other hand, we have a broad range of products, not only 1 segment, but 2 segments with different business units and different products that address different markets within different regionalities. And this will help us in order to mitigate crisis in one or the other regions of the world. And that's why we also -- we also stick to our guidance. It remains what we have said for the year [ 2029 ]. We expect group revenues of EUR 1.3 billion. We expect an operating EBITDA of EUR 80 million as in the last year, and we keep up to have a high operating resilience with regards to a great order backlog of over EUR 1 billion. Allow me to summarize the key takeaways of the first quarter 2026. First of all, Koenig & Bauer grew against the market trend, which is a very important proof point for us as management to see that our business model is working. And this was due to the growth in revenue, but even more important with regard to growth of order intake. Secondly, strong order backlog. This is the anchor, and it is again over EUR 1 billion. It offers us planning certainties with regard how to use our internal operations. And last but not least, we saw -- we now see the turnaround. We see actually the turnaround within the S&T segment, and that also helps us to mitigate some pressures within other market segments that we are working in as well. Thank you very much for your attention. This is the end of our presentation. On the following slide, you also see the current timetables -- of our financial calendar. But this also -- there is no news with it. The next big meeting is the General Meeting of Koenig & Bauer, the Annual General Meeting this June 17.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research.

And first of all, congratulations to the Digital & Web performance and the reduction of the losses. I hope it's going to continue and be quite good. And coming to the first question is actually a bit on the broader situation. So you elaborated that there is Manroland insolvency that has put pricing under pressure. Still, we have a very good order intake. So my question is a little bit, did you get opportunities from the insolvency of Manroland already? So were you able to, let's say, get on some orders that had been available due to their insolvency? And how do you look at the possibility, if I see that correctly, there is possibly a sale of the service business later in the year of Manroland. Is that -- would that something -- be something you could be interested in? How do you see the situation? That would be the first question.

I mean I think in general, Manroland, depending on the market study, had between 4% and 5% market share. They were the fourth largest, at least based on our market data between Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, Koenig & Bauer, Komori, and Manroland. Manroland was the fourth largest with, call it, around 5% market share. Considering that the offset business itself is not a growing market. It's -- overall, it's a slightly decreasing market. We see it for ourselves as long-term stable. And part of the answer is that as Manroland disappears from the market, that market share has to be sorted out among the remaining players. And obviously, our expectations on our management team and our sales team is to take our fair share of that market share that is now open. I'm 100% sure that Komori and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen have the exact same strategy to also capture as much of this market share as possible. It's too early to talk about expectations on that. Obviously, it is a chance for us, for our competitors to fill our plants a little bit better. And we expect that also to happen. But it's -- again, it's 5% of the total market share is now up for grabs, and it's much too early to talk about how that's going to play out.

Coming back here a little bit. If the pricing is so strongly under pressure in the offset market, as we can see also on the competitive side, still you have that good order intake. So how shall we look at the pricing quality in that order intake in the first quarter? The idea was if you would have been able to capture some of the orders from Manroland, that would be an explanation. Let's bring that question a bit more to this point. How should we look at the quality in these orders? It's P&P.

So I think maybe I answer the first question -- part of that question, and I hand over to Alex to talk about the price quality question. I mean the Manroland obviously didn't happen until, I think, the second week of March. So it had no impact on order intake in Q1. And there was nothing that happened in Q1 that we would attribute to us taking order from Manroland. That's a clear answer from my side. I think to the price pressure, Alex Blum can discuss.

And also in addition, I mean, our sales teams are fighting against Manroland also in the months before and the years before, it was clear that Manroland was not extremely strong, and we always try to get as much clients from Manroland and shift to Koenig & Bauer, probably one of the reasons of the why they are now insolvent with the price pressures, we do not believe that the price pressure will remain for the full year 2026. We also see that, yes, at the end of last year, prices were extremely under pressure. This was also especially true for the fourth quarter of last year. We also had a slow start in 2026, but it became better and better. And with regard to March, we see that prices are recovering. Hopefully, that trend remains the same. So that is the assumption that needs to be proven. But we have good reasons to believe that the prices will again stable on a decent level.

But prices in March is a good news. Another one I have is actually on Frankenthal. I hear in the back of my head that this was, let's say, mainly webfed business, at least in the past. What did you, in the end, finally produce there? And where is it shifted to? And will the -- will the EUR 6.6 million in charge we have at the EBITDA level, will that be a cash out later in the year? Or is that mainly noncash...

So I think we split that question to answer again among ourselves. I'll answer the first part and Alex can answer the second. So we produce in [indiscernible] rollers, Walzen in German. And the rollers are basically in all machines, sheet set and web machines for how to transport paper or transporting the substrate across rollers and through the machines. So there's thousands and thousands of these produced every year for our various machines. It's with the exception of one type of -- the different types of rollers depending on the technical requirements, whether it's on the coating and various other technical requirements. But around 2/3 of these rollers, we would call commodities. And those have now been outsourced and we will be purchasing them from our supply base throughout the globe. And about 1/3 of them, which are more highly technical and less commoditized, that's open knowledge. We are shifting that production to our component manufacturing facility in Wurzburg as just an on top additional volume for our facility there. So about 2/3 gone to outside suppliers and 1/3 to in-house production and that 1/3 is, again, the most technically demanding where it's difficult to purchase them in the free market.

With regard to cash effectiveness, yes, most of the EUR 6.6 million will be cash out, will be cash effective until end of the year.

And then I have one more left, which is on the coding business. Since you said you're going to develop ideas and strategic cooperation. Is there a possibility to think about solutions that in this cooperation, you would be able to monetize part of the value of coding as an idea, for example, you make a joint venture and in...

A clear answer, no. So we're no longer looking at equity participation in Koenig & Bauer Coding. That's -- it's -- our current plan is to remain 100% shareholder of the company and develop with arm's length strategic contractual partners throughout the globe, whether that's sales organizations or product development or suppliers or development projects. That's the big question. But this is now a multiyear project. So we are now fully committed to the business in the years coming forward. And that was -- it was a clear result of this process, which is important to us. And to be honest, when you put a company like this up for sale to the market, you also learn a lot through the process through the feedback. We had strategic players looking in depth at the company and evaluating it and telling us where the strengths were and the weaknesses were. So we learned a lot through the process as well. And we're happy, and I will be at the general assembly with the employees tomorrow morning at Koenig & Bauer Coding, and we're happy to keep them in the company. Again, the market dynamics are great. We would have also been happy with an M&A transaction at a fair market value. But again, it's a great business, great team, great products. And now we're committed to further developing it in the coming years as a 100% shareholder.

The next question comes from the line of Patrick Speck from Montega. [Operator Instructions]

My first one is also on your coding business. I was wondering if -- I mean, you explained how you see the market potential, et cetera. I was wondering if you see the need for any additional investments by that, I mean, CapEx to take -- to get the business ready for these markets, new markets? Or are they already, yes, state-of-the-art?

No. I think it's certainly nothing that we could plan or you should plan or there's no -- absolutely no plans in that direction whatsoever. Koenig & Bauer Coding is a profitable business, generating free cash flow on its own. And our intention is to develop the company through its own strength and not with additional capital injections or additional major measures. We'll see what comes out of the development in the next couple of years, but it's certainly not part of any plan nor should you plan in any way.

That's why we also target strategic partnerships that also is limiting the need for all the investments.

Could you let us know what is the share of your order backlog that refers to coding?

Maybe for Landenberger, can take that -- Ms. Landenberger take that as a homework, but it's for just Koenig & Bauer Coding, it's -- I mean, it's less than -- less than 3%. It's low...

It's low because this is much more a serial production that we see with the coding business. And the lead times are -- or the production time and the lead times are much, much lower than within our own -- in our other businesses. So I don't expect this to have a very high influence in our order backlog.

And secondly, I mean, we know your seasonality is very back-end loaded. But I was wondering, I mean, you gave the comment that you saw the price pressure coming down a bit from March. I was wondering if you would be able to reach an EBIT on a breakeven level in Q2 already. Do you see that?

Honestly, I mean, with regard to EBITDA, we are very close to the breakeven. And we see improvements quarter-on-quarter, but kindly understand that we do not guide on the performance on each and every quarter.

But you see at least the improvement on a quarter-on-quarter level despite the new headwinds coming from the Iran war and pressure in supply chains, et cetera.

That's at least our management goal to be better and better each and every quarter and to improve and also to stabilize the situation. And you can also see this having a look at our LTM performance. That basically shows that with regard to the first quarter 2025, the first quarter 2026 is better. So the trend is showing definitely in the right direction, even though the first quarter 2026 had some, let's say, some special developments.

And lastly, will there be any more extraordinary effects from the closure of Frankenthal in Q2 or anything else extraordinary despite...

Yes, but they are much, much lower than the EUR 6.6 million that you have seen in the first quarter. There will be some more less, but yes, much lower than the EUR 6.6...

[Operator Instructions] We now have a question from the line of Johannes Ries from Apus Capital GMBH.

Maybe some more words about the recovery in the -- for the ROTAjet market. What customers you have seen the recovery from what region? What have been the driver? And what is maybe a special effect? Or do you expect this could go on in the coming quarters?

I think your question refers to Digital & Web or overall.

Overall, yes, definitely.

Not just, ROTAjet.

ROTAjet is highlighted, yes.

I mean I think it's the Spotlight program, which you're familiar with, really addressed across the board at Digital & Web. All of our structural costs employee count, product costs, product strategies. So it's not one thing. It's across the board. And it's not -- I think that part of your question is very important. It's not one-off quick wins that don't recur. This is stable cost reduction and margin improvement. I think you can expect EUR 6.7 million -- EUR 6 million improvement every quarter, but the general trend is heading in the right direction. We also had good orders in Q1, so also sold another.

[indiscernible] question on the order intake side.

Yes. So order intake in Q1, as mentioned on one of the slides, included also an additional RotaJET, which is very important. Also, we see our order backlog, the HP programs, which are digital printing, which is strong. And the customer technology days we did in Wurzburg a few weeks ago was focused only on Digital & Web technology. So the Flexo roll printers and the RotaJET Web digital printer. And again, 150 guests at this kind of event is a very large presence, and we left that those days with a strong pipeline. So we have a completely new management across the board in the Digital & Web segment from sales, to engineering, to operations, to the CEO of the business unit. We have supported it strongly out of our holding and our strategy groups to really turn it around. And that the new management team has now been in place for, I guess, just over a year, the CEO for now 2 years. And these things take time, and we're finally seeing it happen, and we have to keep the momentum.

That was mainly the question of maybe the demand or maybe the order intake should stay at a higher level even going forward, looking at the pipeline, what you have done cost side, but it was also a revenue question and a problem in the past. And if that not only in one quarter and maybe even in the future could get better. That was the question, okay.

So we can -- absolutely, that is the positive trend, not just on sales and profit, the positive trend on order intake is one of the key focuses. We need volume. And again, the pipeline and the reaction from the customers gives an indication that we're heading in the right direction.

Second question, on your digital activities, you have been quite positive, say maybe in the positive area. Maybe you can update a little bit what happened in the first month of the year, how you maybe develop further this business?

So Kyana is fully -- I mean, it's on track in terms of -- since the launch, we're signing up customers every month, every quarter, more customers go online for Kyana business. That's still a developing business since we carved it out about a year ago. The Vision Protection, we're seeing also -- you've seen quite a few press releases the last several months and quarters that the first customers are signing up for it and in the program. Auraveo is ongoing, but I think there's nothing new to talk about there today. Overall, there's several digital projects between Kyana and Vision Protection and Auraveo, and they're moving forward. And more to come, we'll keep you informed.

Super. And I believe nothing to say on the Volkswagen business like you said some weeks ago with the full year report...

Also there, the project continues. That's the most important message, and we continue to repeat it. The project is ongoing. The cooperation with Volkswagen is ongoing, and that's the news we have to publish. And we'll -- also there, we'll keep you updated when there's anything new to talk about.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Dr. Stephen Kimmich for any closing remarks.

So I'll keep it short. Thank you very much for joining. And I think Q1 showed in a lot of ways, we're heading in the right direction despite the difficulties in the market. A lot of things we've talked about with you in the last 1, 2 years are starting to show up in our figures, which is important to us here. And I hope you were able to get some insights. And Q1 is always seasonally our weakest quarter or has been in the last decade, and we're looking forward to publishing our Q2, Q3 and Q4 results in the coming quarters and to show you that we are remaining on track. So thank you very much for joining and talk to you next time.