KSB SE & Co. KGaA (KSB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

September 11, 2025

XTRA DE Industrials Machinery investor_day 151 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Matthias Schmitz

executive
#1

Thank you for coming to KSB. And who are we? Who are we? And this is something you really -- I ask you to bear in mind. We are a company that is 154 years old in an old economy, mechanical engineering. And of course, we are 130 years stock listed. So that's the tradition KSB is very proud on, 154 years and stock listed for over 130 years. And if we're going to take a look at the development of our share price, yes, we are on more or less the highest level this company has ever seen. We are proud on what we achieved and we are eager. We are really eager to achieve even more in the future also for you as investors, shareholders and everybody else. For us, it's something again where we say, wow, 130 years, not so many companies do have that. In a way, this year is our birthday. So a little bit only the highlights I'd like to give you about 2025. I know you're aware of the figures. We had an order intake of more than EUR 1.7 billion. Sales revenue more than EUR 1.5 billion. We had EBIT adjusted by HANA. We are running really in the way as we have budgeted this year, as we have foreseen this year, and we are running in the way that I have told you in a lot of meetings we have, especially on the one-on-ones. This company, even under these difficult economic circumstances is on its way to increase this year a little bit better than the previous year. And once you're going to take a look back, the development we see is not a 1-year good result. It's a development that we are following up since 2015, where we are improving year-on-year further on. And of course, this is what we bear in mind with our Mission TEN30. And Stephan Timmermann, our CEO, of course, will give you a further insight on that. For that reason, bear in mind, if you're going to take a look in the figures 2023 to the actual year 2025, here, we compare the half year. We are on our way, and that's the message to you to be in 2025, a little bit better than in year 2024. We are not a company looking for onetime success. We are a sustainable company, and we are looking for steady growth and steady development. This is our path to the future. We have confirmed this in the past, and that's the way we are going ahead in the years to come. Take a look at the share price even in this year. I know the share price is a little bit under pressure like all of them, but the company we are talking about is a company with a market cap of EUR 1.7 billion. Once we have started as a team, it was 2017, '18, the market cap of KSB was at around EUR 400 million. Now it's a company of EUR 1.6 billion anywhere there. So this means the market value is 4x as high as 7 years ago. Why is it so high? It's, of course, on the one hand of the work, but that's something where I really want to say thank you to you because the market price, of course, depends how eager people are and how they are interested in our share. And once people are buying shares, they give us trust. So we say thank you for the trust you give us because once you buy a share, you make up your mind what is the future of this company. And we feel and we recognize you trust us. And you can be absolutely sure, read our lips. We're doing the utmost to fulfill all the hopes you're putting in us, and we are strengthening all our efforts in order to further development -- to develop the company in the way we have done this before. So for this reason, Stephan, as a CEO, I think it's your job to take over and summarize all of the stuff and give maybe some final messages. Thank you.

Stephan Timmermann

executive
#2

With pleasure, Matthias, and it's really already recapping what Matthias said from all that we can see today 2025 will be another successful year. And I put this into proportion, heading a German company, of course, closely aligned with the car manufacturing industry, the car supply industry, the German tool machinery industry and of course, the chemical industry, a big one is just across the river. And if you see what figures they are reporting in terms of order intake, it's not an increase, it's a decline in profitability, what cash squeezes they are in, then I must say we are extremely lucky to be able to head a company, which despite globally, really, yes, challenging conditions, which I will pinpoint a little bit later in one slide are doing very well. Order intake up, turnover up, profitability up. And from everything that we can see today, the guidance corridor, which we gave to you, we will fulfill it, and we will fulfill it with pride and with pleasure. And of course, when you say this, we have a lot of clever people under the guidance of Matthias who do calculations. At the end of the day, it's 100 companies which we consolidate 9 regions, 2 of them will report today and boundary conditions, which are wild. So what do you have to rely on? You have to rely on a superb management, which pushes the company and even better employees. And my pleasure is not only to host you, but also to host management meetings and sales meetings. And last week, I had the pleasure to be in Vienna where we had our top management meeting, our international management meeting, IMM this time in Vienna 2.5 days, 50 nations, 136 managers from all around the world to reflect on how is the company doing and what potential do we have in terms of growing despite all of the hiccups that we see and the message was absolutely amazing. And I'm so happy that I don't have to reflect this, but that Rajeev for India will tell you his part of the story and Jens for South America and then 2 market areas, Thomas for energy and Jonathan for mining will give you an insight where this optimism and this energy comes from despite the fact that the world is not easy at the time and markets are not easy. And from Vienna, I'm a lucky man. You can see I moved on to lovely Istanbul. This was Monday and Tuesday of this week. There was a sales meeting. The picture is blurry because Robert, our super photographer was not there, who's also taking photos today. So anybody who said, I don't want my photo taken, please hands up. And then Robert will, of course, take this into account. The sales meeting was basically concentrated on pushing our standard business, and Ralf will reflect on that. The standard business, the project business, the valve business, the spare part business, which Falk will have as a key subject is for us important because from standardized projects, we get economies of scale in big factories like here in Frankenthal in data production. And they only pinpointed again, 120 participants, 40 nations, they pinpointed how are we going to push the standard business, the OEM business. And I was just happy to say a few words and then to listen and the energy that I took out of this was amazing so that I come back here without blushing. First of all, we're going to stick to our forecast corridor, which has been postulated, but we will also stick to developing our fascinating KSB story to the next level in 2025. And in the following slides, I've just shown you once more, you know the figures. What we -- and this is always 17,000 employees all around the world have achieved in the last 7 years, order intake, then turnover. We're today a EUR 3 billion company coming from EUR 2 billion. So the figures might -- 30% might so somewhat sound small, but we're coming from a EUR 2 billion company now sizably in terms of order intake and this year, also in terms of sales, above EUR 3 million. We have grown our profitability and here the figures now get a little bit bigger sizably. And with this, of course, our return on sales, which is for us somewhat of an important figure. Last year, 8.2%. This year, we want to get a little higher, knowing and stressing, and I think this will be mentioned during the discussions with a very sizable impact, which we created ourselves. This is the introduction of SAP HANA, one of the biggest transformation programs that we are undertaking at the time, which costs a lot of money. You just have to know and part of this money, those costs which go to external partners will hit -- impact our result this year, but we will digest it. And despite this big impact, we will continue to increase our profitability. And this -- I think this is just a great story. And on top of this, and here come back to what really makes me proud because in my eyes, this is the true success of the company. It's our employees and the spirit of these employees, the engagement of these employees. We measure this engagement with a lot of questions, around about 30 questions every 2 years. Here, you see the development. And those of you who are interested in engagement, increasing the engagement by 71% in 6 years is absolutely fascinating. And these are figures. If you then see the people on the ground, how they are running the extra mile, how they're burning for KSB, how they are putting new ideas on track, how they're trying to squeeze out our competition, which is good, which is tough and good wherever they can, then you can only say you're superbly proud. And reflecting these last years that I've now shown you, basically our years since we are together as a team from 2018 onwards up to today and I include now 2025, I think this has been a true success story. This just makes you humble and extremely proud to be part of this success story. And of course, when you show these figures, figures don't blush. And when Jonathan and Rajeev and Jens will come on stage, you will see what I'm talking about, what is the true input into the story. Of course, when you tell this story, you are asked what are the drivers of the success? Where does this come from? And I can tell you right away, it was not the markets, but it was basically what we, together with our managers, our team, which met in Vienna put on track since basically 2018. And -- the key pillars of the success you see here once more, those who are following the company a little bit longer than just today know the story. It's our focus on the aftermarket business with KSB SupremeServ, giving our service organization, which today is a EUR 1 billion-plus organization, a shelter brand label, which slowly but surely is really developing into a differentiation criteria in the market of service. It's our high focus on employees, employee satisfaction, giving them an environment that they are proud of. And this starts with having the right work desks and offices in place and ends in the way that we communicate, integrate party together to really make them a proud member of the KSB family, 17,000 all around the world. Then in 2020, CLIMB 21 -- 2021, we introduced it. That's where the name CLIMB 21 came from. We started to develop the strategy in 2019. This is reshifting the company, a good old German company focused on technology and superb products to a market-orientated company, where we take market segments into the focus, know the customers of these market segments and then reroute our superb technology and Stephan is going to elaborate on that one, really on to customer groups. And Jonathan will give you an input how we live this in mining, and Thomas, you will do the same in energy. And you will get a reflection there. There's a huge difference whether you talk in applications, have a pump and you can use it there and here and here or whether you say, I know the mining community worldwide. I know my competition in the mining community, and I develop products which are really made for the job and which differentiate ourselves from the [indiscernible] and FLSmidth and the Metso Outotec in mining. So this was CLIMB 21. Then -- and these are all processes. So don't see them as projects which have been started and stopped and now we head for the next project. An ongoing project was what we called the Red List projects, 100 companies all have to perform if at the end of the day, and that's our mission to get the company sizably above 10% return on sales one day, then all have to perform, knowing that you always have hiccups in the development of a company. We have good times, we have bad times, but the trend of every company which belongs to KSB must be a positive one. And this is what the projects entrepreneurship Red List was all about that irrespective of how big the company is, if it does not perform, a little bit of extra love is invested into looking where the roots are, which lead to the mild performance. And I must say today, there's not a single company worldwide, which is not earning money. And this, of course, adds to what we have shown our profitability story. And all of this has now been summarized in our Mission TEN30. What's the roots of Mission TEN30? Mission is clear. 30 is the year 2030 and TEN is our return on sales. And it says latest in the year 2030, which is now in 5 years, we want to have surpassed 10% return on sales from all that I can see, we will not only reach it. We will reach this figure before 2030. And this is today the guidance, which all the regions, all our 9 regions and all our 8 market areas follow, and they follow up with a lot of measures which have been put in place. And last not least, since the evolution of the company, all the things that we have put in place somewhat commemorate a new KSB and KSB has changed like a reptile somehow its coverage across these 154 years, we took the chance to say, let's rebrand label, let's put the KSB logo and our signature, which is connected to this into a new, more modern look. And this is what you see today, and let's give us a new claim, which fits more to what we are today. In the former days, it was pumps, valves and service. Today, as the video showed you, it's solutions for life, which just shows you we are today a holistic provider, not only of superb pumps, which we design to what the customer needs, we then also take care of the whole aftermarket service business, which is sizable 30, 40, 50 years depending on the application. All of this is put into our house. This you know, our Mission TEN30 house, and I will not deep dive into this too much anymore because it starts to become repetition. Important is that the big columns that you see on the top, the quality leadership, the qualification, the digitalization, those are the big pillars how we differentiate in our competitive landscape. And I can always phrase again, we have superb competitors everywhere, be it in the building Grundfos Wilo, be it in the mining business with FLSmidth and Metso Outotec and we are -- be it in the petrochemical business, but we differentiate ourselves due to the fact that we know what is important for the customer. And qualification, I think you will hear it several times. The 17,000 people that we have on track, it's lifelong learning. They know where the problems are, and they know how to assist the company, and this makes us extremely strong. This is all then based on the markets and 2 will present themselves this morning. And the markets, again, they collaborate with the regions and 2 regions, Rajeev and Jens will be on track. And this is where the challenge now begins and where I come back to our IMM 2024, '25, it's the matrix of our managers, the markets and the regions. If they work, we're unbeatable and they work. And this is, I think, something that you will see as the day goes by. Now if you ask myself, me once more, okay, with the strategy, now I understood, what makes KSB so exceptional. And this is the question that I have to answer at least in Germany again and again because our figures are outstanding if I compare them to other parts of the German industry. Then here, you see once more in summary, what KSB is all about. It's our product portfolio, which is unbeatable. In good times, it's a curse because you have to see that this huge product portfolio, pumps, valves and of course, today, also the aftermarket business has to be state-of-the-art. So Stephan, together with his troops has to do a lot of R&D business in bad times, and we are in bad times, is our differentiation because one market will always be in a hiccup and then another market will suddenly pop up and research. And one lovely example is Thomas Pabst and his energy and nuclear energy. If you would have asked me about nuclear energy in 2019, at least as a German, I would have said this is a rock bottom business we're stepping out today, and Thomas will show you this irrespective of our German mindset or identification with nuclear power is something which is booming worldwide. And we have stayed on track. We are leading in terms of technology. We are heading the new generation of reactors, which is now coming, the small modular reactors. This will be Thomas, which will detail it a little bit more, and we're extremely strong. And thus this wide product portfolio, this is absolutely something which is a diamond and which drives our company. The market orientation I already described, we are very close to the customer and this collaboration markets together with regions. If this works, and this is a pure peoples-to-peoples business, this makes us unbeatable. We have the lucky possibility to do good aftersales business. Also, this is not normal. If you are Elon Musk and build rockets, you don't have an aftersales business once the rocket is gone, that's it. We sell pumps, and then we can harvest for decades, whatever services, digital services and Stephan again will elaborate on this, spares, monitoring, whatever is necessary. And of course, one, keep the customer close to KSB, extremely important, create our reputation, qualified people, 24/7 all around the world and last not least, of course, earn a little bit money. In order to do this, you have to be globally present because our market is the world with more than 100 owned companies, KSB companies and of course, a huge network of partners. I think we are unbeatable. There are little companies in the field of valves and pumps who have this worldwide network. And of course, we didn't build it. We could not have built it. This is really 154 years of development of the company of all the work that our predecessors already started with going global rather early. And today, I think we're covering the world and still every day discovering new spots where to grow. And Jens in South America, I think you will give us examples of that. Then employee engagement, I've stressed that it's for me, I think the most important factor. Profitability can only be achieved if you have engaged employees. You cannot go to war with people who are not motivated. And that's why we put a lot of effort into all of this, and it pays back. It really makes KSB unbeatable. This means investing money, not only into lovely workshops, but also into lovely offices and showrooms and whatever. Of course, you can only do this if you have the according cash flow. And today, we are in the lucky position that the money that we earn, part of it goes out as dividends and part of it is reinvested into new products, but also into growing our capacity, our efficiency, digitalization, SAP HANA, all of this without having any debt in banks. And also this, again, for a company, a EUR 3 billion company, I think this is worth mentioning. It is then, of course, governed by a corporate culture, which today also has changed. If I would have been standing here 10 years ago, I would have told you this is a German company with international entities. Today, I say we're an international company with a German corporate center. That's it. And we are shifting as the possibilities are created more and more of our services into our world, realizing that we are much more cost effective than sometimes also faster because competencies like digitalization in India, I do not blush to say our Indian colleagues are just faster and better. And China, exactly the same. And if we have them on board, why not utilize them. Cost awareness, last not least, every euro that we earn, we see that we invested wisely. We are, at the end of the day, not a Mittelstand company, but we are not a cause concern, whatever this is in the English language, the money that we earn, we appreciate it, but we're also very conscious in how we spend it. And last not least, the brand. It is unbeatable. Today, KSB, if you travel around the world, you become humble when you see how this brand is appreciated by customers and for what it stands. And this then brings me to the question, okay, with all these success factors, how can we stay on track in terms of the future success? And this for sure will be your question. I can answer one thing. It will not come out of the markets. And I will not go into the details, and there are much more things that could have been added. Let alone, if I reflect the last 5 years in 2020, we had Corona, the world came to a standstill. Then we had the Russia-Ukraine war, the beginning of this dreadful war in 2021, February 2021, the world came to a standstill. Then we had hyperinflation, we had gas shortage. We had commodities missing no more electronic parts. We had logistical hiccups because the Suez Canal was blocked and then the Houthis blocked the Red Sea. And despite all of this, this company has been continuously developing. None of our competition, unfortunately, has died away. They're all there. They're all aggressive. Markets have completely changed, but we have found our way to maneuver this company through all of these hiccups and have not only grown the volume, but also the profitability. Will 2025 now be a home run? I think you're much wiser than me there, of course, not with all that has been begun with the tariff discussion, it is not predictable. The only thing that I can say, we follow this up, of course, very closely. We react quickly in there, you need the engagement of your employees, and we will find our way and also make 2025 to a best year ever for KSB. And if I were really trying to summarize what is the foundation of our success, it's basically today just keep moving the bus resilience in what we do in our company setup, growing it in our strategy, but also in our mindset. And part of the mindset is, of course, it's not only us. We are just one little cornerstone of 17,000 employees. It's also our Administrative Board, which accompanies us and our Supervisory Board. And in that respect, Harald Schwager, you're trying to hide. I have to greet you all the same, the Head of our Advisory Board, Harald Schwager is here today also just to listen in. And if there are questions, for sure, he will answer this. But this continuity in management, this continuity -- the possibility to continue our strategy, the belief that what we have started will continue. It's all processes. The bus is driving, and we're maybe halfway through what we can achieve. This personally makes me extremely happy to be part of this family. And my mission is fly with the eagles, not scratch with the chickens, take the company really to the eagle position. And again, from all that I can see today, looking in the rear mirror and now looking in the head and talking to our great employees, we will get there. And with this, I thank you so much for your attention, and over to you, Sonja. Thank you.

Stephan Bross

executive
#3

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome here in the Frankenthal. Tough times for you now, tough times for me, 15 minutes, 15 slides to explain our product innovation and digital technology ramp-up. And this is what I'm trying to do. And afterwards, I would like to have convinced you that we are doing the right things to shaping our future following the growth path and success path Stephan has already shown to you. So an idea stays an idea and never becomes an innovation long as it is not successfully introduced into the market. Otherwise, it is maximum an invention, but never an innovation. So that means all what we are doing in terms of R&D, in terms of technology has to follow our business strategy. R&D is a lever and leverage, and we have to leverage, and we have to do everything what we are doing according to our business strategy. And the business strategy and to organize this more in a structured way is all of our efforts have to follow those 4 items. Either we are doing product development and enhancements to have better energy efficiency of our products. We have to enhance our product portfolio, either we are going into new applications with the same product or even in new applications with new products, which needs a lot of knowledge of the application itself, but also of the products. We are doing every time cost efficiencies or cost down programs to be competitive at the market. But what really makes out the future sustainability of KSB in terms of the market is smart products, digitization, but not for digitization per se. It is to follow up to support our regions, our market areas for their strategy. When we're looking into the budget that we're spending each and every year, it's about EUR 70 million. And you can see the distribution here on pumps and valves and on digital solutions. 35% of the overall budget we are spending each and every year goes into digital solutions, but not for digital per se, as I said, to support our business. And I do not want to tell you what we're doing on cost efficiency and energy efficiency. I would like to concentrate the rest of the 12.5 minutes on digitization, what we are doing there and why we are convinced that we are doing the right things there. This is why I've structured my agenda a little bit what and how. What is digitization about and how can we make business out of it? Can we make already business out of it when we're just putting a sensor on the pump or the valves? Does the client pay for it? No, of course, not. We have to adjust our systems, our products, our philosophies, our processes according to that only one goal to support our customer in the best way. Therefore, we need an ecosystem. What I mean with the ecosystem on digital products and solutions, I will explain in a few minutes. Then of course, I'm coming to some innovations, especially when it comes to sensoring to monitoring of our pumps and valves. And at the end of the day, everybody is using his smartphone. There you have a platform. You can only use digitized solution. You can only serve the customer if you have a platform that you're providing. And especially that, what we are working on, this I would like to explain you a little bit more in detail. What is a digital ecosystem. The digital ecosystem consists mainly of 3 parts. One is you have to have a physical solution. On the left-hand side, sensors, for example, communication, everything what is necessary to make the product smart, left-hand side. Then you have to make something out of it. What you're doing with the data, what you're doing with the information. You have to transfer them, you have to digitize them and you have to monitor them either with AI or with human resources. And this is what we're doing in our monitoring center -- in our monitoring digital consultancy center. And at the end of the day, you have to run that system, operate that system. You have to give updates, you have to monitor it, you have to have a help desk. All that is necessary as an ecosystem to make digital business happen. This is exactly what we are doing. Why we are doing it? Because we have a clear strategy. Our vision is -- our mission and our vision is we support our customers. Customers is in the focus using our products in the best way from commissioning the pumps and the valves, operating them. And even if it comes to recycle, which is more and more important, there we would like to be supporting our customers. Do you see in this mission any word of digitization? No. Why not? Because it's the customer which is in the focus and digitization is just an enabler, but a very powerful enabler. And this is what we are doing. Why is it so necessary? Because if you're looking to the cost of the life cycle of such a product, it's only the upper part on the surface, which is the CapEx, the investments. But the longer the pump, the valves are running, the more customer has to pay, especially in the OpEx, maintenance, for example, energy consumption. And this is exactly where we would like to help our customers with digitized solutions. Wherever I have seen a pump being installed in the field and being a field service engineer, for example, I was it for several years responsible for the service. There are a lot of failures which can happen and I'm flipping through everything that is normal business for a technician who has to do something with the pumps, whether it is unbalance, whether it is vibration, whether it is noise, that can already be centered, and we are doing it. Today already with our KSB Guard. Since 7 years now, we have the KSB Guard in place. More than 6,000 units are monitoring our pumps over the world. And in the next year, in the first half of the year, we will have a new release of the KSB Guard. We call it Guard 2.0, which much more sensitivity, smarter sensors, easier communication, easy to install. So this is what we are doing, the next level of the KSB Guard. But if you're a little bit more experienced with pumps, you will know that about 80% of the pump failures are according to mechanical seals. And this is exactly what we are going to tackle next year by a new extension of the KSB Guard, we call it KSB Guard Mechanical Seals. We will be the first one, the first company providing a sensor system, which can take the signals directly from the seal of the mechanical seal. Everything what is available at the moment at the market is if you're taking a glass, for example, putting it on your cooker, water in and putting the finger in, then you have to wait until the heat really heats up the water and then you can have a signal. What we are doing now with the mechanical seal of the guard is putting the finger direct on the hot plate and giving the information immediately. So this will be the first of the kind. We are now actually in the field tests will be released in the next year, especially for a critical application like hot oil application where it comes to accidents when the mechanical seal fails. This is on the left-hand side of the ecosystem, the innovations and the development on the hardware side, software side. But we have to bring it into a platform. We have to make something out of it, and this is what we are doing there, putting everything in one platform so that the different products can communicate. We're taking the data points, having intelligence there, getting out of the data information and out of the information actions. And this is what you can see there on the right-hand side. What we are doing with those information. We are giving guidance to our customers by our monitoring system -- by our monitoring center. Here, we really have specialists looking at your equipment, looking at the customers' equipment whenever there is a service contract, for example. And then going into the details, giving warnings or giving, I would say, advisers how to run it up. You can imagine that this is quite personal intensive. So what is the solution? Using artificial intelligence in that way, that we are combining artificial intelligence together with human intelligence, reducing the necessity of having real human experts by bringing already the knowledge by teaching our systems already to the edge devices on the left-hand side and reducing then the necessity of having the experts more and more growing up. All that -- I'm good in time. All that has to be worked out in a platform. We call it our DSP, the digital service and product platform, which we have provided or which we are providing to fulfill the different needs. On the one hand side, we have the customer needs. The customer has to work on this platform very easily, very intuitive, has to run on smartphones or even on handheld devices. On the other hand, we have, of course, our hardware. This has to be maintained. This has to be updated all the time. Then we have the algorithms and the data. Data is key. Every pump and every valve that is sending data and they have to be stored, they have to be analyzed, which enriches then also our knowledge going back into the AI systems and teaching them. So this has to be provided. We have to have the interfaces to our business model, SAP because at the end of the day, we would like to earn money with it, and this has to be processed in our systems. As you see is -- and we have to operate it, as I said, and this altogether, we are working in our digital service and product platform. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, it gives us a lot of headaches because just having such a system is not enough. You also have to comply, especially on the different legacies. On the one hand side, we are here in Germany, in Europe or in America, we have different legacy. So that means on the one hand side, we have to secure our know-how and to protect it. This is what we are doing physically and also on the software side. We have to apply with the global legacy and global compliance on the right-hand side, of course, we have to integrate it into our business models because you can imagine such system, if you have, for example, like with your mobile contract, if you just processing EUR 10 or EUR 15 a month. This has to be pure automatically running through the SAP system, and this is also a challenge. What we are tackling also in our development programs and quite successful. So summarizing all my speech today is, yes, we are doing a lot of digitization. We are working out new business models, especially to support our SupremeServ for the aftermarket business. But we are doing it not just for digitization per se. We are doing it only to serve and to satisfy our customers. Thank you very much.

Ralf Kannefass

executive
#4

I'd like to give you some insights as well before I go there, I'd like to step back very briefly to Istanbul and what Stephan just was referring to. It was not just a sales meeting. It was special sales meeting, a global sales meeting on a specific business where we want to grow. And that's what we call OEM business. So it's a huge market on a global scale. It's addressed by our market area general industry. And right now, I would say we have maybe 2% market share roughly. It's about EUR 80 million in our -- more than EUR 3 billion. And the market is more than EUR 4 billion. And this is a way where we have to grow. We have to grow in 2 directions where we not coincidentally, but by purpose, want to be and want to succeed. And that's what we are addressing special tasks, and we believe that we will dramatically grow until 2030 also in this area. And it's, by the way, also mainly addressing pumps, for instance, like the [indiscernible], which you see later also in the factory and also the MoviTec. So global markets of 2.5 million pieces and 3.5 million pieces a year. And we are only making 120,000 so far, respectively, 50,000 for MoviTec. So it was not nice and just having good food and nice weather in Istanbul, but it was specifically addressing OEM business and to make KSB even more valuable in the future. Now I have the big honor to present the valve business to you. And I think the valve business is not so much known to the global community, especially on your side maybe. And I'm also looking forward to all your questions, what you have. There are many, many different valves, different type of valves in the world. And we always say the valve business is about twice the size of the pump market. So the pump market overall is maybe EUR 50 billion a year. The valve market is maybe EUR 100 billion, but it's very fragmented. And you see only 4 areas of valves. There are much more valves you can imagine. There's even valves in our body. We do not only have a pump in our body. We also have many, many valves in our body. Otherwise, it wouldn't work. It would be too much for this only one pump. What valves do we offer? We have a gate globe check that's basically where you just move a piece of metal most of the time into the current and try to stop and open and close it, even check valves that is avoiding flow of the fluid in the wrong direction. Then we have butterfly valves. It's not about the small butterflies in the nature, but it can be huge even up to a diameter of 3 meters, this big one, which you see in the top middle. We have diaphragm valves. Diaphragm valves are specific solution where the -- where you separate the current from the open piece of the valve by a diaphragm. So this is used for either toxic fluids or also food or also pharmaceutical. We just need to make sure that there's no air coming in, that there's no toxic fluid going out, things like this. And last but not least, we also have control valves. And later also in the presentation of Rajeev, he will also refer on this because we are making them also in India. So the good thing of the valve business is in all the market areas where KSB is present today for pumps, we are also present for valves. So we are meeting the same customers, sometimes even the same projects. It's different people at the customer buying the valves. It's also a different mindset. It's also in a different phase of big projects when the valves are bought, mainly the valves are bought together with the pipes and the pumps are more bought by the system engineers and different pieces in the customer. When I show you these examples, you could say, yes, you also have pumps there. So there are many, many nice examples all around the world where water treatment stations, for instance, in Park. Certainly, we also have pumps in the water treatment station, yes, but we also have valves. Then the other example there is the Dangote petrol refinery in Nigeria. Again, there are many, many different examples as Tuas Nexus on the left bottom side, that's a wastewater incineration plant in Singapore. On the right top, it's a chlorine electrolyzer. That's where we -- it's very toxic, and that's where we are using the diaphragm valves. On the right bottom, Hinkley Point, that's nuclear valves. And in the middle, it's a thermal energy system in Radolfzell in Germany. So it's a huge variety where you can use us. It's a huge market, very fragmented. And our market share right now is below 1%, I would say, and our global position in the market is maybe, I don't know, number 20-plus x, something like. Where are we making these valves? We have 10 factories around the world. We have one in La Roche. We have one in Burgos. Burgos is making, by the way, the very big valves, the 3-meter diameter. We have Frankenthal, where we are also making some standard valves here. I'm not sure whether we have time later to look at this, I don't think so. Pegnitz, we are making more high pressure and high temperature valves. Cochin and Coimbatore are 2 places in India, which Rajeev will also introduce. In China, we have 2 sites in Changzhou and Dalian even 1 in Korea, that's Busan. And last but not least, also Echternach that's where we are making in SISTO, which is a 50% KSB company, the diaphragm valves I was just explaining. Just a little bit about the figures. The valve business, especially the new business is in the magnitude of about EUR 400 million roughly. And the good thing is also the valve business is coming with spare part business. And this we want to push for. That's for sure. And right now, the spare part business is in the magnitude of EUR 60 million. So you need to add up the EUR 400 million plus the EUR 60 million, and then you see roughly what the number is in the size of KSB. The EBIT, which comes with the pure valve business, and that's what we are showing also in our business annual report is stretch 0 right now. It was very negative. We had some problems, especially in La Roche. We are fixing them right now. And most of the valve business especially when I look into the valve business as a complete business, including the spare parts, most of the sites are highly profitable, above 10% EBIT. And that's also our target then for the future. When we say about Mission TEN30, we want to achieve also with the valve business, including the spares above 10%. It must not be dilutive to the overall targets. What are the measures? You read it more quickly than I can do. Certainly, we are looking at different sites, try to improve the operations. We are doing some localization also, I show you one example in a minute. Expansion of our standard business, as I was just describing a minute ago, this OEM business for the pumps, pushing for the standard business is key to success on a global scale for pumps and valves. Application-oriented, that's something which we did in the pump market so that we do understand more clearly as a whole company, why we are selling, what and where, not only incidentally, we are a huge company, but you also need to have a clear strategy behind where and what and why you're selling. And that's why we implemented on the pump side, more an application-oriented approach. That's what we are going to do also on the valve side. There's also the help of partners. We can't do all the business ourselves. In the valve business, we have sales partners. We call them -- in some regions, we call them dealers. In the U.S., we would never call them dealers because they wouldn't like us to call them dealers, anyway. And this is applicable for both pumps as well as valves. Most of the dealers or sales partners are focusing either on pumps or on valves. Many of them are also taking care of the spare part business later and some of them are also doing the service. That's why it's interesting for us to work with them. Many more examples there. Maybe a step to some operational improvements. You see here something what we did in [ thickness ]. I click through the operational improvements, there's also some investments. We were focusing in thickness from 2 different places, integrating into one building, also doing some modernization, also investment in machine tools. We have some examples on localization. Here, you see Changzhou in China, where we did also localize for the Chinese and the regional Asian market, this big valve I just mentioned from Burgos. So we are making it in future since April this year in 2 places. One is in Europe and one is in China. And last but not least, we are also moving into, yes, I should say, the smart pieces of the valves like the controllers, not only the drives, but more the controllers. So position us for the best. That's also important area to grow also in a digital way for KSB. That should be all from my side. And yes, Sonja. Thank you very much.

Unknown Executive

executive
#5

Personally, something about myself. My name is Jens Deltrap. I'm now 17 years with KSB. I consider myself not just a Dutchman who's in Brazil, but basically a global citizen. I've been working in Italy, United States, then back to the Netherlands, then to Germany. And now the last 10 years, I've been sent to Brazil, responsible for the region, South and Central America. Actually, South America, so let's go to the first slide. South America is actually a very beautiful region. I don't know whether some of you have been there, maybe in a long, long, long past as a backpacker, traveling to Peru, traveling to Brazil. But normally, it's not the region where you go to on a holiday with your family because it's not an easy region to travel. It's considered dangerous. It's sometimes dirty, it's complicated, a lot of chaos, but you can also make a lot of profit. And I will try to show you a little bit what we do there because for me, it was actually quite a surprise how good you can do business over in South America because normally, people don't know too much about it. Actually, my story is about -- is divided in 4 parts. First of all, something about the region and our presence there. Secondly, a short pitch, 2 slides about the results we had over the last years. Then some of our performances over the last years. And then the most important was the potential because we still consider South America as a region with a lot of potential, and I will try to show you this in the coming 25 minutes. Well, first of all, is the region. The region is a region with a lot of potential. I already mentioned this. And one of the big drivers behind the potential is the demographics because if you travel in South America, you will see that there are a lot of young people. I'm personally living in near Sao Paulo. And if you are in the city of Sao Paulo, it's very busy, but you hardly see any old people. About 25% of the population is less than 18 years old. So it's not like Africa where you even have more young people, but even South America has a lot of young population. So the demographics for the coming years is very positive. Secondly, it's very rich in minerals. Natural resources and minerals are basically the things that are driving the economy there. Minerals in the sense of mining, you will see that later on as well in where we stand in which market segments, but mining is important. But on the other hand side as well, agriculture, meat, soya beans and oil and gas. So it's very much mineral natural resources driven. And then for us, as a European company, a corporate and KSB is European, the business model is very European. Later on, you will see in the story with Rajeev, there you completely go in a different world. South America is far away. It's unknown, but the business culture is very European. So as a European, I feel very comfortable. If they would have send me to China, probably everybody would have seen -- or this is not a Chinese. If they would send me to India, probably everybody would say, well, doing business with the European is difficult. In South America, normally, the business partners are Europeans. They have been living there for 50, 100 years, but they're French, they're Spanish, they're Portuguese. So the ethics are very similar. So for us at KSB, it's very easy to do business. On the other side, everybody knows there are downsides. The politics are very unstable. I've been living now in Brazil, as I said, for almost 10 years. I had 6 governments. So basically, every 1.5 year, you have a new President. Now it's Lula. It's basically the second time that I have Lula there. We had Bolsonaro. We had a lot of people. And every 1.5 years, you have to adapt yourself. Interestingly enough, the economy and the companies are not linked to business. So whoever is the Prime Minister, whatever government you have, right, left, you still do business. So they're quite dislinked. It's not like you're in Europe. Traditional high inflation, also known by you, you will see that later on also a little bit and protectionism as a consequence due to the fact that politics is unstable, high inflation, as a consequence, normally, the government is very protectionistic. So these are the pluses and minus normally in our region. The other thing you see is that the region is very big, is very far away. If you travel from Frankfurt to Sao Paulo, you have almost a 13-hour flight. But even within the region, if you travel between my countries, from Sao Paulo to Colombia, it's 6 hours. To Chile, it's another 4 hours or to Panama, one of our latest companies that we established, we're talking about 8-hour flights. So going from Frankfurt to New York is quicker than going from Sao Paulo to Panama. And sometimes people underestimate that. I got a call from Germany and say, well, let's have a quick meeting with your country managers next week and you get them all together. And then they don't realize that actually for us, that means that they miss a week because they have to travel one day, or in a [ meeting ] travel back one day. So the distances are quite long. Then something about the macroeconomics. The worldwide shortage that we had during the last year in natural resources actually was a big benefit for us. because due to the war in Ukraine, due to the problems between China and the U.S., you saw a lot of differences in the trading of natural resources. And for us, being one of the providers of the natural resources, this was a big benefit because the prices increased. There was a high demand for those resources. So for us, this was great. Secondly, the restructuring of the global supply chains, also very positive for South America. A good example is the soya bean. Argentina is a big producer of soya beans. We do supply a lot of pumps in those industries. And what we saw is that the demand for soya beans during the last year was increasing tremendously, basically due to the tension between China and the United States. So these kind of restructuring the global supply chains for us, again, was a big plus. And we -- because we are confronted with this protectionism already for many, many, many years, we are basically ready for the deglobalization. In South America, specifically for Brazil, basically, everything is produced in-house. I'm not talking about KSB now specifically. But in general, if you look at the cars driving around in South America, almost all cars are produced in South America. Little by little, the Chinese come in, but we are very, very autark in that sense. On the other hand, also macroeconomic, Trump is giving some headaches. We're looking currently what's going on. But I'm pretty confident that normally South America is quite flexible. But within some months, we are able to find new opportunities. You see this already. Brazil and South America is getting closer and closer to China. So the little import we have to the U.S. is little by little now already shifting to Asia. Another thing, the volatility of the U.S. dollar, also something we have to watch because many, many countries are indebt with U.S. dollars. And of course, if there's a fluctuation like this, you immediately see that in the interest rates. Fortunately, we have a positive net finance position in all our companies. So we are not indebt in general as a company. Two social things that are also quite interesting to understand is, first of all, the middle class crunch. What I mean with that is that you see that in South America, there's hardly any middle class. You have that discussion also in the United States, a little bit in Europe where people talking about the disappearing middle class. In South America, the middle class is already gone. We have a lot of poor people, and we have a lot of rich people. And the rich people normally are really rich and the poor people are really poor. So this is something that you have to understand when you do business there. The other thing is the brain drain, everybody is leaving. Everybody wants to leave to the U.S. and everybody wants to leave to Europe because nobody wants to stay in South America. And this is a problem for us, of course, because we're losing a lot of competence. So now KSB, quickly, how is KSB doing in the region? And you see a lot of dots. These are our own dots. These are not sales partners or partners. So we are quite present in the region. We have 8 companies with 1,600 employees in the region. 1 foundry and 3 manufacturing plants, 2 of the manufacturing plants are in Brazil, 1 is in Argentina and the foundry is as well in Brazil. We have 14 own SupremeServ facilities, so branches where we do service. And Brazil, Chile and Argentina, they represent 92% of our volume. So 92% of our volume is in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. And this is interesting. We already in the region have 41% of our business in SupremeServ. So when we're talking about globally trying to increase our SupremeServ in order to increase the profit to 30% or from 30% to 40%, we in our region already are at 40%, 40-plus percent. And you can see that in our profitability. On one of the next slides, I show you the profitability of our region, and there's a direct link between the 2. So the higher this percentage of SupremeServ, the higher the profitability, if you do it right, of course. And then the main markets for us, mining, of course, because it's natural resources, general industry, mainly in Brazil because Brazil is the powerhouse of South America and water, water, of course, because where you have people, you need water. Here, you see an overview of the competition. And you can see that normally, as I said in the beginning, KSB in South America in the main markets is market leader. If you look at Brazil, which is roughly, as I said, half of the economic activities in South America, we are clearly market leader with 17%. And the two #2, which is actually Franklin and Ebara are both at roughly 10%. If you look at the more engineered competition, Weir, Sulzer and Flowserve, they are behind with 9% and 4%. And there's still some room with the others. And you see that the others are roughly 13%. So there's still room to increase by picking up the small pieces of the smaller players. Chile is our #2 country. There, we are #2. Why not #1? #1 is Weir because Chile is very, very, very mining driven. And as you might know, Weir is our competitor -- main competitor in mining. They're the global market leader in mining, and we were not able up till now to beat them as the #1, but we are clearly #2. Also here, you see that many, many, many competitors are local competitors, [ PG costlun ] companies that you probably don't know because not too many European -- traditional European manufacturers are actually present in South America. Now quickly the pitch. When people tell me, what have you been doing over the last years in South America? What was the development? Then normally, I showed those 2 slides. And actually, in those slides, we distinguish basically 3 important areas. The first period, you see that this is actually the customer order intake. So this is the top line. You see that the top line went down from EUR 200 million roughly to a minimum of EUR 150 million. And then we distinguish 3 phases. The first phase, what I would call the restructuring phase, then the rebuilding phase and the last is the reward phase. And you can see that actually our dip was somewhere in between 2015 and 2016. And then little by little, we consistently went up back to the EUR 330 million last year. Even more prominent, you see that in our profitability numbers. You see that we came from a profitability somewhere at the 2010 of 7% -- 7%, 8%. We went to a minimum of almost breakeven. And then during the last 10 years, we consistently moved it up to last year, a little bit more than 16% ROS. And also this year, our forecast is that we will improve again probably with 1%, 1.5%. And also here, you very clearly see the restructuring phase, the rebuilding phase and the reward phase. Okay. So what we did is actually this. We basically outperformed, this was the most important thing. We outperformed the local GDP growth and the inflation because when you do business in South America, you always have to watch the inflation. It's great to do 10% growth, but if you have an inflation of 11%, doesn't help you too much. Secondly, we also increased the quality of the top line. We had a substantial increase in our margin over the last years. We established 3 new companies because as you saw, the main business we are still doing in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, but we have to think about the future. So we have been establishing new companies in what we would call the white spots. We also consolidated 3 companies we already had or 2 we had, Peru and Colombia and one of the new ones, Ecuador. And as you saw, we basically increased the ROS through a sustainable double-digit number. And here, you see the growth of 2 companies, over the last 10 years. The first one is Brazil. In local currency, this is in local currency. And the average growth we had over the last 5 years, I did the calculation is 17.9%. And if you then deduct the inflation, as I said, the inflation is always a very important element. If you deduct the inflation, which was over the same period, 5.9% per year and also deduct the GDP growth, you still get a net growth of 9.1%. So that basically shows you that our performance over the last year was basically increasing our market share in the Brazilian market. And we did the same also in Chile, there we have a sales growth number of 11.7%. We had an inflation of 6.2% over the last 5 years, a GDP of 2.2%, and that leaves you with a net growth of [ 3.3% ]. So we always try in each country to have at least a net growth of 2%, 3% in order to make sure that we're increasing our position. And this slide actually shows you a little bit about the quality of our top line. So we did grow, but we also increased our margin in parallel. And when I get the question, how did you do that? Then actually the bullets or the pizzas or the slices on the bottom side show you the real trick. This is the increase in our SupremeServ business. So if you look in 2020, 30% of our business was SupremeServ. And actually, last year, we reached 41%. And for me, this is the main driver. So the more SupremeServ business you do, the more spare parts you sell because basically it's spare parts, it's selling the spare parts, the higher your ROS can be. Next to this, of course, we have effective price increases. During the break, I had a short chat with one of you. And I told them, if the inflation is high, normally, the customers don't really look at your price increases in that depth. You saw a little bit the same in Europe during the last years with this increased inflation, suddenly, all the manufacturers are increasing the quality of the top line by increasing the margin or increasing the prices a little bit more than they should have done. And this is also happening in South America. And if you have an inflation of 6%, instead of increasing 6%, you increase 6.5%, you increase 7%. So it's very easy to increase the quality of the top line. We have a very strict margin control, of course, very important. SupremeServ, I already mentioned, and we increased the productivity in the plants. And for this, I show you this little graph on the right side, on the top right side. And there, you see the sales divided by the blue headcount. And also here, you see that during the last 5 years, we had a substantial increase. So actually, we also put a lot of effort in increasing the productivity of our plants. And finally, localization. Localization in South America, also very important. As I said before, protectionism is the name of the game for the government there. So it's very important to produce locally. Fortunately, during the last years, we had this philosophy during the whole group, local for local. And currently, we are producing around 80% of our sales volume is locally produced in our factories in South America, very important for us. And here, you see some pictures. If you nowadays go through the factories, you don't really see the difference between a South American factory and a factory that you will see today. It's really European style, which is not very common in South America. Very often, if you go to local manufacturers, you really see a big difference in style. For example, something like lean manufacturing is not very typical South American. It's more something that you see you would consider in Europe. But in South America, it's very rare. But for us, it's quite common. It's quite normal, and this also gives us a lot of push. Investments, also something that we have been doing a lot during the last years. In average, over the last years, we invested in 22 new CNC machines. And then if you imagine that every machine will cost you roughly EUR 0.5 million, you're talking a lot of money. So this is a lot of money. And this also helps us, of course, to increase our productivity. Then very quickly, 3 new companies that we established, and I come to the point potential. Here, you see 3 companies that we established during the last years, last 5 years. Basically, every 2 years, we try to create a new company. And again, these are small companies, companies that normally have a target within 5 years to reach roughly EUR 5 million. And here you see Ecuador, which we actually established at the beginning of 2021. Last year, we were at EUR 3.8 million. This year, we will probably reach the EUR 5 million. So they are basically according to plan. Panama, we established in 2022. There last year, we had a great year. We already achieved the EUR 5 million. This year, we will go down a little bit because there was a big project in this EUR 4.7 million. And Bolivia, we started last year. We didn't really make the EUR 1 million in the first year because we only started at the middle of the year. So we only had 6 months. But we are quite confident that with each company, we will reach roughly the EUR 5 million. And very interesting is that next to the business we do in these countries, they buy pumps at our manufacturing facilities. So last year, for example, these 3 facilities basically bought EUR 6 million in our manufacturing plant in Brazil. So there's a double whammy. We made profit in the countries, and we make profit in our intercompany plants on those companies. Now Sonja has already signaling me, give me 5 minutes, okay, I'm almost there. The most important actually for me is the potential, where is the potential in the coming years? Because I personally feel that we will be able to continue this growth rate, so roughly 5% to 10% per year to stay at the profitability of around 15%, maybe a little bit more. And these are the 4 areas where we feel that we are able to grow and make more profit. First of all, SupremeServ, I think there we have already talked a lot. Standard business, I will show you some slide there. New countries and new markets. First of all, SupremeServ. SupremeServ, again, is pushing the spare part business for us. And where do we see this? First of all, reverse engineering. More and more we go into the pumps of the competition. We ourselves have an enormous amount of pumps in the market, the installed base, but our competition also has a lot. In the past, it was always a discussion, can we service the pump of the competitor? Nowadays, it's basic business because if we don't do this, they are doing this to us. It's very clearly that pirates will enter into our market. So we have to attack them as well. So with reverse engineering, the scanning, the in-house foundry makes it easy for us to copy those pumps. We have invested recently in the sand printer that actually makes it not necessary anymore to buy models, patterns. So it's very easy for us now to scan, make the foundry part and then copy the part from the competition. The installed base, also logical for you, I think that if you know your installed base, you know where to go. So we are very keen on every time registering the products that we send out to the market. It's very important. The infrastructure, also a point in SupremeServ. You have to imagine that the closer you are to a customer, the more easy it gets to service, but there is a limitation. You cannot open a branch in every city. That would be ideal. But of course, from a cost point of view, that doesn't make sense. So what we're doing there is we are copying a little bit the McDonald's model. If you look at McDonald's, they have various levels of cost structures in their infrastructure. They have a full-blown McDonald's. They have a McCafé, which is a more simple one. And they even at least in Brazil, have this little Mac ice creams, which are portable booths, which they set up in the shopping mall and they sell ice cream. And with this idea, we started to set up very small containers, service containers at key customers to be as close as possible to those customers. So very important for us. And finally, also mentioned already by Stephan Bross, the monitoring aspect. More and more, we equip our pumps with guards. And this guard, just like the device you have in your car, is giving all kinds of signals. And these signals, of course, help us to afterwards [ attract ] the customer and tell them, hey, you should do service, something is wrong with your seal, something is wrong with your vibration. So the SupremeServ part, very important for us, number one. Number two, Mr. [ Kanafat ] already mentioned this, the standard business. The standard business for us, at least in South America, is not so important for the profit. That's more the SupremeServ part, but to increase our market share. If you remember the slide of the competition in Brazil, you saw that #2 was Ebara and Franklin, and they are focused 100% on standard pumps. So it's very clear. If we want to grow, we have to focus also more on standard pumps. And this is what we're doing with this action. And here, you have several elements. First of all, we did set up a separate organization for this business. We have now a separate sales force for only OEMs, and we have a separate sales force only for resellers and dealers. So this is also helping us to push this business. We're investing a lot in tools, especially the selection tools because for the standard business, the customers in generally do not come to you and ask a lot of advice. They want to be self-supporting with their own tools, with their own digital tools. We're doing that as well. We're investing in products, and we're investing in logistics. So on one side, pushing spare parts to secure the profit and on the other side, pushing the standard business to make sure that we are able to increase. And then we have 2 more things where we think we can grow. One is pushing new countries. As I already mentioned to you, in the last 5 years, we established Ecuador, Panama and Bolivia. And now in the next years, we still have plans every 2 years to open a new company. 2026, our plan is to open a company in the Dominican Republic, 2028 Guatemala and actually, as it looks now, 2030, Costa Rica. So our plan to continue to open these companies after some years, consolidate those companies is still valve. And then the final [ feet, ] Sonja, or the final 3, but it's one shape actually. We're looking into new markets. And actually, with the setup of the market segments, this matrix that we have within KSB, we also, as a region, are thinking more and more about market segments. So general industry, water, PCC. And what we did is we actually made the Boston matrix, which you probably all know, per country, per market segment. And what you see there is that we still have a lot of rising stars that we can actually move into the cash cow position. And if you really look into this, and this is really interesting, is there are some interesting combinations because sometimes we see a rising star, in this case, mining in Peru. In parallel, we already see a cash cow mining in Chile. So by combining the 2, we have an optimal possibility to grow the business in Peru. So what we tactically did, we took the team of Chile, send them to Peru and help the guys in Peru to develop the mining business. And the result was that in the last 3 years, we basically tripled the business from USD 5 million in Peru to USD 15 million. A similar thing, if you really look into it is here. Here you see the petrochemical business in Colombia being a rising star together with the petrochemical business in Brazil, where we are very strong with Petrobras. So by combining those 2 teams, we see a similar effect. So the last thing where we see a lot of opportunities is in combining these teams in the different countries and the different market segments. Sonja, I think that's it. If I would have more time, I would have given more examples, but unfortunately, we're limited.

Sonja Ayasse

executive
#6

I could listen to you for hours, but it's really, really interesting, but we have to make a cut now and talk to you later in the Q&A. Thanks a lot.

Rajeev Jain

executive
#7

Good morning. From South America to India, another part of the world, a different continent. It's my privilege to represent India, KSB India in front of all of you. And I will share the journey of KSB here in India with my presentation. To start off, introduce myself, my name Rajeev Jain. KSB has been my first job and working in this company for more than 3 decades and had also the privilege of going and working in other locations as well. Before my Indian job, I was responsible for Asia South region in Singapore and looking after the Southeast Asia countries and also have worked 4 years in Korea. So with this experience, came to India in 2016, and this photo you see is of our latest office near Pune in Shirwal and the biggest energy plant. This is an index or these are the subjects which I will take you through. To introduce the region. We have 3 legal entities in India. The biggest one is KSB Limited, a manufacturing entity with 6 manufacturing plants across India, pumps and valves as well as control valves. Then KSB Tech, 100% company owned by KSB based in Pune and doing all the engineering as well as IT support work for KSB and with an employee strength of almost 330 employees there, young employees based in Pune. Last, KSB MIL controls, a company, mainly in control valves in the southern part of India and specializing in those high-tech products, with an employee strength of 305 employees. So total region comprising of these 3 legal entities, almost 2,900 employees and contributing 10% of the sales to the group. KSB journey started in India in 1960 and then has steadily increased their footprints, their market presence continuously over the years. And this is -- these are the snapshots of this. 1960, the first plant set up in Pune. We call it Irrigation and Pumps division because India is a very agricultural country and the business started with borehole pumps in India. [ 1960's, ] this is still our headquarters in India, where we are based. Subsequently, India, we invested in a foundry, 1974. 1978 was a power plant division, a smaller one, which today we have converted into a SupremeServ division totally. 1987 was the Coimbatore plant valves in South of India, totally dedicated for valves. 1994 in -- near Pune, in a place called Nashik, we have our standard pumps division and catering to basically the standard pumps for KSB. 1997, KSB acquired control valves, MIL control valves. And today, it is a flourishing business both domestically as well as internationally. 2005 is the time when we set up KSB Tech center for expanding and sourcing the engineering and the IT business, just started with 6 employees. And today, it's almost 330 employees today. And last, this is our pride as well, the Shirwal plant, and I show it in the next slide. This is our Energy division. Our division today, with pride, we say because India is booming in energy business. And today, we make pumps for all our big power plants, petrochemical plants and also the nuclear power plants. An investment which KSB did EUR 40 million in 2017, a unit where it is powered by solar power, 80% of the consumption, we do it by solar energy. And why I say we are proud of it because 1 of the 3 units in KSB world where we are rated 3 star, that means best among -- best-in-class amongst the KSB factories. Coming to the industry outlook, the macroeconomic factors, I know you must be reading and well aware of it, but India is today in a very good momentum, I would say. And we have consistently had a good GDP growth, almost more than 6%, 7% and it is sustained over the years that today also -- the next year, we forecast a continuous momentum in this GDP growth. If you look at the inflation steadily coming down over the years and today, we are at a very good rate, almost less than 2%, and this has also helped the banks to reduce their interest rates and a thing which is pushing good momentum for business in India. A purchaser Manufacturing Index, an index where we measure the economic growth. And consistently over the years, we see in the last 2, 3 years, the figure has been above 50% and 58% represents that means over the past month, the business is still growing. And I benchmarked it with the World Global Index as well. And lastly, the CapEx, the investment. This investment in India happens both through the government sector as well as the private sector. And today, you see the government sector is also investing a lot and majorly to bring up this economy in India. And this continues together with the private investment as well. Coming to the pump market, pump industry market, organized sector, I would say, almost we estimate EUR 2.3 billion and forecasted to grow almost 8% -- 8% to 9% over the next 4, 5 years and maybe beyond. KSB steadily has grown in the last 6, 7 years to #2 position. We are ranked second in terms of our sales turnover, the second largest and with almost approximately a market share of 12% in India. The competitors are local as well as international. In the local ones, we have Kirloskar, Shakti and international, we have Grundfos, Sulzer, WILO, all of them are there. But KSB today is #2. And I will show you in the coming slides that we are going -- or we are aiming for the leadership position there in India. Similarly, in the valves, we are mainly -- as I mentioned, in Coimbatore, we are in the manual valves. Also, we are the second largest gate globe check valve manufacturer after L&T and also having a 12% market share. And basically, the valve market is dominated a lot by the local players. I mentioned that L&T and Bonetti. These are local manufacturers for control valves. Also, we are amongst the top 3 in the market for control valves. In the globe control valves, we are the leaders. But even the overall control valve market, we are the top 3 along with Emerson and KOSO. So this gives us a very good position of strength and to lead the market. Coming to the market side, I start with energy. And this is the booming market in India today. With India's growth, there is a high demand for energy. And this demand for energy is being fulfilled by all the options available, starts with renewable, and you see good growth in solar energy as well as wind. And not only that, I think the demand is so high that the government was forced to open up the fossil fuel thermal power plants. And in the next 4, 5 years, we will see a good growth of almost 43 gigawatt investment coming up, and it is already happening. These are not headlines. These are things which are happening already in front of our eyes and the investment is coming. And so you see the growth in the next 5 years will be 3x more than what it was in the last 5 years. And this is the scale of investment and the activity happening there. Similarly, in the nuclear energy market, power plants of 700 megawatts are being set up. And this is also going to triple from 8 gigawatt to 22 gigawatt. So all in all, a very good outlook for the Energy segment, a segment where KSB has been traditionally strong, has been having the leadership position globally as well as in India. So these are good times for us in India, especially on this investment and this booming market. And I already mentioned that coming to the next infrastructure, all of you know, India needs a lot of infrastructure development. And this is already recognized by the government and a lot of investment is coming up having 18% of world's population, our water problem or water availability is only 4%. And that is where the investment comes, big projects like linking the river waters so that where there is more rainfall, this is being supplied to places where there is scarcity of rainfalls. Many missions initiated by the government, also water treatment, which was never so much a focus. Now that water treatment is giving a focus to increase it from 30% to 80%. So a lot of investment from the government side, and this is driving our water business as well. Manufacturing. Manufacturing, if you look at India's GDP, manufacturing contributes only 15% of it. 55% comes from services, 15% comes from industry. So this manufacturing, the boost of Make in India concept by the government is taking -- is going to take this manufacturing contribution to almost 25%. And this is where the incentives and all the industrial investment is happening both by private as well as public sector. So this is the third segment where there is a lot of investment happening. Now I come to another segment, Irrigation. I mentioned agriculture. Agriculture also is around 15% of the GDP and is something which is very critical and very sensitive in India. And this is a market where as a pump supplier, we cannot stay away. And I mentioned that we started our footprints in India with borehole pumps. And today, this market is changing to solar market. And the government has now initiated many schemes where this market is being driven by solar pumps. And today, we had made an entry into the solar business, solar market. We are already doing almost EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million, and -- but this market is growing exponentially. And so this is also a good opportunity where our share today is 6%, 7%. Of course, there are a lot of local competition. But in spite of that local competition, we have had, I would say, a reasonable share, but we intend to take this quite forward in the coming years. Segments, I think this has already been mentioned. KSB strength is that we are present in all segments. So we are insulated against -- a lot against external environment. If one segment goes down, the other is there. So with this backbone strength, we are present in all these segments. And if you take -- I just put the share of business in these things where we are present in a quite good percentage out of our order intake in all these segments. And of course, all these segments in India are quite bullish and will be growing quite well, as I mentioned, in a good percentage of at least 8% to 10%. Our competitive edge was also mentioned is our product range. KSB is a very elaborate product range. If you see we make a small pump of 1 horsepower to a pump for a nuclear reactor, the most critical pump. And if you talk of pumps, there is only one shop where you [indiscernible] manufacturer, where you can get the complete range. And this is our strength. And you see this elaborate range both for pump valve as well as SupremeServ. So this is our distribution of business. Moving with times, we are also digitizing and you see EUR 55 million of our business is through e-sales, which is very important, and we are adapting to that and digitizing our processes so that we can bring speed and momentum in the market. And our share of export and domestic is -- 85% is domestic, 15% is export. Of course, this is -- this could be better or in exports, but our growing domestic market helps us to keep a very good ratio in domestic as well. One of our good competitive edge is the dealer network. If you look at a dealer in India, it's a vast country and having a lot of customers spread out in the country. And so we have a dealer network of almost 800 dealers who stock our products and reach and serve our customers across the country. And if you would ask me what is your biggest strength, I would, without any hesitation, say that dealer business is one of our core strengths where we excel and this continuously helps us to grow the business. When you have an established sales channel, bringing in products becomes very easy. Just bring in products and there is an established sales channel and makes it -- make the business very, very easy. And this is the tradition which we have been following in KSB India. Coming to next, I think -- and I said 50% of our KSB business is today in dealer business. And this is very -- this has many advantages also that it is a cash and carry business. We don't have big credit terms. So it helps us to balance our project business and makes our business more profitable. We can -- and today also helps when we -- when the markets open up into new sunrise segments, we call it green hydrogen, railways, firefighting pumps, life science. It becomes easy when we enter these segments with the products, there is an already a sales channel available where we can deliver those products. SupremeServ, I guess, a lot has been spoken. And this is, I feel, again, a very good initiative, which we have had in our group as well as in India. This SupremeServ business in earlier times, maybe were -- we were a little bit passive and we were waiting for customers, but today has become a very proactive and our front liner business. We take all these steps. If I look at dedicated plant, this is a dedicated new home for this business, central warehouse where we sell our standard pumps business, spare parts, which is mainly dependent on delivery. Authorized service centers, we call that [ pump ] partners across the country, service centers, KSB-owned service centers, reverse engineering and last SupremeServ Academy to retain our talent, to train our people and to continuously ensure that the knowledge remains in the company. So all these measures, I guess, are great and I would say, seeds for the future growth of profitability for the company. KSB Tech, I mentioned briefly, this is also a very great initiative by KSB that we had that vision 20 years back to set up this division in India, and it started with 5 years and Dr. Bross is here, was the founder member of this. And today, it's such a successful unit, a unit which gives us comfort, a unit which is a go-to unit where we have any issue, and this is now with 330 young employees, employees where in India, you see the boom of GCCs, and KSB has been the front leader in establishing this and being ahead. I don't go through the details, but all anything technical, engineering, IT and you name it, if you don't have a solution, you go to KSB Tech and they will find something. KSB MIL controls also, I mentioned this. This is also, let's say, a jewel in our crown because of the special products, a business which is very profitable, double-digit profitability over years, 2 decades and a good SupremeServ business and bringing out good quality products. Marketing in India is very important. And since we do standard business, building up a brand -- it's all about building up a brand. And this is what all we do that the KSB brand, not only globally, but in India is very well known. You would find it every corner, whether you see those simple things like umbrellas, we also brand label our dealers, the media presence on televisions as well as news and investors, because we are listed in India. We are publicly listed in India, our company. And hence, we do all those digital as well as social media. And of course, exhibition and fairs are where we all meet and interact with our customers. Strategic outlook. The company has been -- this is KSB Limited, has been growing in a very, I would say, satisfying growth story for the last years. We have a compounded annual growth rate of almost 18% continuously and consistently for the last 6, 7 years. And I'm sure with the Indian story, with the Indian market opportunities and with KSB's preparedness, we would continue the same story in the future decade as well. So same 18% in order intake as well as sales. Coming to the -- aligning with the group strategy, what are our major pillars? I mentioned about energy. I mentioned about SupremeServ, mentioned about standard business, all aligned with the group strategy. Solar pumps is a bit of a local thing, but this is an opportunity, we KSB grabbed with the competence available and the products available. And last but not the least, the Valves. Valves is a very profitable business in India, both Coimbatore and MIL, as I mentioned, a double-digit profitability and in fact, on the range of 14% to 15%. Overall, the company does an EBIT of 13% and a good profitability and it is for years and years. Investments normally, it's almost 5% of our sales. This is traditionally which we have been doing -- continuously doing. And some examples of that capacity expansion is very important with the growth. That is in Nashik as well as in tech, we are adding floors, of course, SupremeServ Academy, robotics is the need of ours. So we are kind of bringing automation in our plants, replacing machines as well as capacity expansion. So this is a continuous process of almost, as I mentioned, 5% of our total revenue, we continue to invest. Our ambitions, 2030, I guess, continue this growth. I mentioned the 12% to 15%, maybe it's a bit conservative, but I'm sure it will be easily achieved with the market opportunities what we have. Sustain the [indiscernible] or the ROS to 12% to 13% in spite of a growth of 15%, 17%. So it's a very profitable growth. Strive for leadership position in the market. We have been closing the gap with our top manufacturer that is Kirloskar, and I'm sure in the next 2, 3 years, we would be able to achieve that leadership position. SupremeServ already said. Solar pumps is an opportunity, which will be there due to the huge market potential, and we want to achieve more than 100 million there. Sustain our quality leadership, KSB's brand is known for the quality and the technology and to keep that is in our DNA and as genes over these years. Gender diversity is something -- a subject which we are working on. We are not there, but it takes time, and this process has started. And so this is what we want to achieve that. And of course, climate neutral. The last session of my presentation, we have been spending and investing a lot on renewables inside our company as well. Today, 68% of our energy consumption is coming through renewable, 68%. All our plants have Solar, either rooftops or the Solar access, and we continue to do that and drive that. And maybe we will achieve at least 80% to 90% of our needs through Solar. It's also CSR, corporate social responsibility is a part of KSB, again, culture, I would say. And almost every year, we spend 2% of our net profit on these activities. This is also a statutory requirement of Indian law, but KSB has been doing this much before this law also came into force. People, of course, organization, and I feel we all in KSB Group have been very proud that this employee engagement has come to such a good level today. And this is one of the main reasons for our success, sometimes underplayed, but I would say this is the top most reason for our success. And in India, we achieved an employee engagement rate of almost 88% with a new and a young employees as well. So to summarize my last slide, I would say the Indian story is real. Indian story is there to stay, and we would see this continued investment and this momentum in the coming years. And the government has a big vision of creating it a EUR 30 trillion economy, which today -- from today's investment and the measures look a reality. Energy infrastructure will be the key enablers. These will be the driving force. And with KSB India, with our readiness, with our future readiness preparedness, the investments in all these capacities, products and the improvements which we are doing, I guess we are ready to take on this opportunity in the country. And last but not the least, I mentioned Valves and Solar also will -- portfolio will help us to do that. So I would say in a summary that we are very well positioned to have this continued sustainable profitable growth in the coming years. And it's great that together with KSB and the German technology and with the local manufacturing, I would say, strength that we combine these together to make a very winning combination over the years and we'll continue to do so. Thank you very much.

Jonathan Samuel

executive
#8

So next, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jonathan Samuel. I've been with the KSB Group now for 31 years, 27 of which was spent in mining. In those 27 years, we have seen a 500% growth and KSB mining is growing very rapidly. I want to start with a statement. If it can't be grown, it has to be mined. It's a very impactful statement because think about all the basic necessities that we have, food, shelter, clothing and then the modern amenities that we like, the modern luxuries that we like. All of them require some basic material. And this basic material has to come from the earth. It has to be grown or it has to be mined. Now mining is not very sexy. It's considered to be dirty sometimes. We don't see it as we drive to the malls, but mining is a quintessential part of how we live life. So in today's presentation, I want to show you what is the footprint for mining globally. What is KSB's footprint. And then we look at some facts and figures, what is our order intake and sales, how we do business, how business has grown, what is our sales share? Unfortunately, there is competition, and we fight with them every day. But what is our sales share, who are our main competitors? But we look at the key opportunities. I said we have grown 500%, but we have loftier ambitions with Mission TEN30. We want to grow more. So we will talk about the key opportunities and risks, and we have mapped out a strategic roadmap, how will we get to 2030 and reach all our lofty ambitions. So that's the theme of my presentation. So what is our footprint? Mining is worldwide. I know when you drive along the highway, you don't see mines, but you see all those dots there, the different colors. They represent different metals and minerals that are extracted from the earth. So what metals do they get? The most -- the highest mined metal is copper, copper, gold, iron ore, coal, cobalt, nickel, the list is huge. So except in the Sahara desert or in the middle of Australia, you will see that mines are everywhere in every single country. And KSP's reach is global. We are a global company. We attempt to be at everybody's doorstep, and that is how we reach the mining customers. So this is a map that you have seen. If you've attended any KSB presentation, you've seen this map. I've modified it a little bit to show you what is KSB Mining doing. So we have 4 production sites just for slurry pumps. So the asterisk means slurry pumps. So we have 4 production sites in 18 countries. Worldwide, KSB has 33 manufacturing facilities that can also produce pumps that can be used in mining. We have 3 foundries on 3 continents. We have a total of 9 foundries. We have 850 staff worldwide working in mining. And we have 15 spare parts warehouses. Why is this important? We talk about SupremeServ. SupremeServ is about the aftermarket. SupremeServ is about spare parts sales. That is what is driving the profitability of this company. In mining, the lifeblood of mining business is spare parts. And spare parts is an inventory business. You have to have the spare parts ready when the customer needs it. Mining pumps start wearing the moment you push the button. Why? Because they're pumping rocks, solids, sand, mud and sometimes paste. So it's very important to have spare parts ready as soon as the customer needs it. That's the reason for us holding millions of dollars worth of spare parts in 15 different warehouses all over the world, some of them in KSB warehouses and some of them consignment stock at the customers' premises. So this is an aerial view, a partial aerial view of KSB Mining's flagship manufacturing complex. I don't call it a factory because it's a manufacturing complex. It's located in 140 acres in Georgia in the U.S. In this complex, we have about 650 employees. We can start with research and development, start with a clean sheet of paper, design pumps and go all the way through a foundry machine shop, heat treatment until you ship the pump, you test and ship the pump, all of that in that campus, 140-acre campus. And KSB has invested well over EUR 100 million to make this the world's leading one-stop shop. None of our competitors has anything like this. They have a dispersed supply chain model. They buy from China, from South Africa. They put it together in Phoenix, Arizona, and they supply to a customer in Canada. We, KSB, have taken a different approach. We have it all in one place, so we can bring customers to this great facility and showcase the technical ability of KSB. We have a lot of plans for expansion here. It's a great investment for us, and it is turning out to bring us a lot of profits as well. So what are the facts and figures I want to present to you. Quick look at the global marketplace for mining, for pumps. So in 2023, the actual was EUR 2.3 billion -- sorry, EUR 2.5 billion, and it's expected to grow at an annual rate of 3% and end up at EUR 3.2 billion by 2030. This includes the addressable market for KSB because there are other pumps that are running in mines, positive displacement pumps, load pumps, diaphragm pumps, injection pumps. There's a lot of little stuff that we don't make that's available there. But from an addressable pumps, spare parts and service, this is the total market, EUR 3.2 billion by the year 2030. So what is KSP's share? [indiscernible] already mentioned, we have a #2 position for slurry worldwide. So last year, we had EUR 316 million in pumps and parts. So you can see that parts are EUR 225 million. So the main business in slurry in mining is parts, and that's what drives the profitability. And so our approach has always been SupremeServ before SupremeServ name was given to us. So it was -- it's a very important part of how we do it. Now we also have non-slurry pumps. Wherever you have human beings, they need to transport water. And slurry pumps need water to be added to the slurry in order to be able to transport them. Those are the laws of physics. So we have EUR 213 million in slurry pumps and parts and over EUR 100 million in non-slurry. So typically, KSB sells 2:1 ratio between parts to new pumps. So KSP's order intake, KSB Mining's order intake and sales, we started at 283 in 2022, and we have grown to 326. There was a little softening in 2024, but we see because of a lot of geopolitical reasons, projects have kind of disappeared. But if you will see, pump parts continue to grow, which means we are putting more and more new pumps into the field. They are operating -- the price of commodities are at a very healthy level. So customers are pushing these pumps very hard, which means these pumps are generating more spare parts, which means our business is in a very healthy position. The same thing with sales, you see the same pattern going from 278 to 317. So this is a trajectory we expect to maintain in the coming years. So what are the fundamentals for mining? And are the fundamentals still valid? Have they changed? This is a question I get a lot. So the fundamentals start with increased population growth. We heard about South America. We heard about India. These are great -- and China. These are great population centers. So when you increase the number of people on this planet, they need more things. In order to make these things, they have to be either grown or mined. So mining will continue to grow because of that reason. Our dependency on fuels and metals continues to grow. Everybody wants to travel. There's more traffic on the roads these days. There's more people flying. Airports are full. So dependency on fuels and metals will continue to grow. Life continues to be modernized. Everybody has a cell phone. Everybody wants to drive, everybody wants to have modern amenities. So that will continue. And urbanization, people are moving more and more into cities. If the cities don't fit these people, then they build bigger cities, we build newer cities. So those fundamentals will not change. They continue to grow. But there are also megatrends, and I will start with the trend on 1:00 position, sustainability. This is something that's a big push that we are receiving from a lot of governments, from a lot of companies because of global warming. And we are a responsible company. We talked about the corporate social responsibility. So our CO2 reduction is important. Water is a scarcity in a lot of places. Pumps consume water. So customers come to us and demand what can you do to consume less water, so we can be more efficient. So that is a trend that is continuing to happen. Green energy is a big topic. It's not a fad anymore. It is a real thing. So carbon dioxide reduction, decarbonization and electrification. There's a lot of push even for remote pumps to be electrified. And resource scarcity. Mining has been going on for a long, long time. But the grade, the quality of the ore is getting less and less. All the easy mining has been done. So what's happening is they have to process more and more rock in order to get the same amount of copper, gold, iron ore, whatever you're doing. So what's happening is pumps, mills, processing plants, concentrators are getting bigger and bigger. And KSB Mining is ready to answer that question. And also, while we have water scarcity in one place, there are many places like Indonesia or Brazil and India where there is flooding. And there is a big demand for how will we control the water level, how will we control the level of the lakes? How will we prevent flooding to our mines. KSB has the answer to that in many places. Digitization. This is a question, especially as the generations change, nobody wants to work in mines. So customers come to us and say, how can I monitor my equipment from far away? How can I make sure the health of my equipment is good? How can I control and operate pumps from 10 kilometers away from the comfort of an air conditioned office. So these are questions that we have answered, and I will show you some examples of how we have done that. This power struggle is very important to understand between countries. Minerals and metals are so important as we see power struggle there, between global companies and local governments, between indigenous people and mining companies. We are small fry, but it impacts our business. So we are mindful of how we deal with all of this. We are extremely mindful of how we manage our money and our risks, but this is something important that we have to take care of. And last but certainly not the least is technical service. People are losing competence at the mines. They cannot find young people to go and do the hard work, the blue-collar work there. That is where we step in. We have qualified employees who can step in and do these services for customers that in turn can be monetized. So who are our main competitors? I divide this into 3 portions. One is the slurry circuits. This is where the big rocks, the solids are pumped. The big 3, we are Metso and FLSmidth. I told you earlier that we are #2 in that group. So we are a solid #2 and pushing hard for #1. Dewatering, I told you flood control, water is always -- when you dig, you're going to hit the water table and water has to be taken out. So Xylem, Surumi, Grindex are some competitors that we face. And there's a lot of process water. And sometimes you also have acids. For example, in gold, you do leaching, acid leaching in order to extract the gold. So there, you have competitors like Flowserve [indiscernible] gold pumping. Now the mining market, like a lot of other things, is also highly commoditized. So you have a lot of fragmented local manufacturers in China, in South Africa, in Asia, in India, who also participate. They form a very large portion. Sometimes we really don't work there. But in many cases, we are faced with these smaller manufacturers in a very fragmented market. So what are the key opportunities and risks? We divide our big mining market into 3. One is hard rock mining. So hard rock mining is copper, gold, iron ore, nickel, moly and battery minerals, lithium, cobalt, graphite, things like that. And then we have another section called the industrial minerals. The oil sands, some of you may have heard of it, it's very particular to about 100-kilometer radius in the province of Alberta and Canada. Their oil is not available like in Venezuela or in Saudi Arabia. It is meshed in soil in bituminous rock. They have to extract it. And then with the high-pressure, high-temperature steam, they have to extract the oil from that. JW has long been a leader there, and now KSB is providing a lot of equipment there. So we have a strong leadership position in the oil sands. Phosphate started in Florida and now we also found in Morocco in Saudi Arabia, some parts of Russia, which is unfortunately not available to us at the moment. Potash is the same. This is all necessary for agriculture. And then last but not the least, dredging. Dredging can be in lakes, ponds, rivers, ocean-going dredges in order to build, reclaim land in order to get sand. So these are 3 areas in which KSB Mining is focused on. But if I were to tell you that everything is hunky-dory, we are on a rosy path, I would be lying. There are challenges. So the main challenges, one, system integration by our competitors. They make more than pumps. So they try to put it all into a big box and say, we will take care of all of this. So that is a challenge that we have to overcome. Geopolitics, with all these tariffs, we have all these questions about which block do you belong to? What tariffs will you pay? So these are some challenges that are beyond our control, but we have to find ways to navigate through them. And then changes in mining technology. There's always people looking at, can we move material from one point to another without using pumps. There's always research going on. So we always have a finger on that pulse. And last but certainly not the least, Chinese ownership of mines all over the world. They want access to those metals and minerals. So they go and buy those mines, and they like to provide Chinese equipment. So that is a challenge certainly for us. So what is our strategic roadmap to 2030. First, people first. You've heard that multiple times from the Board, from the rest of my colleagues. We have a mining academy that trains people. So in front of customers, you have highly trained people, and we also engage our people to stay with us. Number two is we are exploring new markets. For dredging in aggregate, for copper, phosphate, battery minerals, we are opening up more and more fronts. The primary markets, Canada, U.S.A., Chile, Peru, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia. But in addition to that, we are getting into Morocco, into Zambia, into Ghana, into a lot of different places where there is mining. Number three is new products. We have competitive advantages in some places, but price becomes a big factor in some areas. So we are building a whole range of new products in order to be able to do that. We're also doing a marketing branding. We want to be recognized as best-in-class and give our customers a 5-star treatment. So that's a marketing campaign that's going on. We are bringing new technologies, Internet of Things technology, which allows us to remotely monitor the health of our pumps and report to our customers. And then we have also started a global supply chain. We have a foundry coming up in India. We have a foundry in Brazil, in South Africa, where we can also produce cost-competitive product for the local markets. So success stories. I'm just going to show you some big pictures. These are stories that we are really, really proud about. The first one, the IoT technology I told you about, you see some harnesses that are attached to this big pump. The pump is able to read those -- through those sensors and through an edge device, communicate to the cloud and call the factory or send information to the factory to tell us what that information is about. That little cartoon I created using AI is the pump calling the home and saying, this is my health. Sometimes I wish I could attach this to my children who are in college because they don't call mom and then I'm in trouble. So I wish I could attach this to the children, so their health is reported on a daily basis back home. This is one of the largest pumps that we have sold into the oil sands. I told you in Alberta, they pump large rocks. This pump is delivering 6,000 tons per hour. They have 12 of these pumps that are delivering oil laid and bituminous rock to be extract -- for the oil to be extracted. So this is a very successful pump. I was in Canada 2 weeks back when I took this picture. So this is a great success for us. It establishes our market superiority and leadership. This is in Escondida. Escondida is a mine in Chile. It's at about 8,000 feet altitude. This pump is delivering 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes per hour with copper in it, copper and gold in it. And we have 8 of these pumps running. These are typically operated with about 2,500 horsepower electric motors. So these pumps have been extremely successful for the customer, and we are looking for more expansions there. So these are our medium-sized pumps. They are running in a gold mine called Peñasquito in Mexico. We have over 60 of these. These are helping in the gold extraction process, very successful, been running for the last 15 years. And with their expansions, they continue to buy slurry pumps from us. So these are the dewatering pumps I talked to you about, flood control. When coal mines get flooded to the monsoon season, they have these floating platforms that are built by KSB Indonesia. They put a slurry pump on it, and it removes the water to prevent the mine from getting flooded. This is where it all started many years ago. These are phosphate mines in Florida, where they dig up the matrix, extract the phosphate and then put the tailings back into a tailings dam. So these are long-distance pumps. These lines are about 10 miles, 15, 16 kilometers long, and they provide excellent service for the customer. These are dredges that remove soil or sand from the bottom of lakes. And then the sand is classified and used for construction, for road laying and things like that. So this is also a big business for us. This is worldwide, wherever construction happens, aggregate business is alive and well. And this is a tall pump. It's in Australia. This is going -- is a borehole pump, UPA pump that is used for dewatering and maintaining water levels in mine sites and not allow the water to come in and flood the mine. And then, of course, last but certainly not the least is a giant of a pump. This is on an ocean-going vessel called the Spartacus. It's owned by a Belgian company. We have 3 of these pumps. One of them is actually underwater behind the cutter that's almost half the size of this room. It is cutting rocks in order to create ports. So when the cutter cuts the rocks, these pumps pick them up and pump them to the shore. And these pumps have been providing excellent service for this customer, these 3 pumps that they have just recently signed a letter of intent with us to buy 3 more for a new vessel that they are building. So these are some success stories I want to highlight, and thank you for your attention. Appreciate it.

Unknown Executive

executive
#9

I'm very happy to be here presenting SupremeServ. I'm very proud to help on this journey. As said, we are somewhere in the middle of where we want to be. A great start over the last couple of years. Before that, since I was asked to also introduce myself real quick. My name is [indiscernible]. I'm working 25 years in our various roles in aftersales in the industry of automotive agriculture and now here dealing with Pumps, Valves, fluid systems. So I'm excited to lead you through our journey. Originally, I was planning to ask you what is the term that you've heard in all those presentations. Until now, it's obvious, it's KSB SupremeServ. Dr. Timmermann elaborated why this is because this is absolutely key for the health of our company. And with that, I'm here as I'm representing all our SupremeServ global activities with an absolute clear focus on service excellence because in service, you say, do it right or do it twice, no one wants that, right? So we need to make sure that our service activities are top-notch industry-leading and driving into the right direction. Why is that? Of course, to retain customers, to make customers happy and to make sure they stay with us. But as I said, there's also another reason. I don't bore you with the financials you have seen them. But I'm proud to say last year already, order intake is above EUR 1 billion with 3,500 SupremeServ colleagues. And of course, looking at EBIT, it was closed already discussed already. It's a big portion of our company. Hence, we need to do the right things, not only today, but also for the future. We need to work with Dr. Bross and his team on the technology side, making sure that we are on top of things that we are connected, that we know how our pumps are doing because, of course, if we get data from the pumps, we get the aftersales business. Just to mention one example here. What's our regional focus? Of course, it was also mentioned, we are truly global around the world with the impact of Russia these days, but the rest of the world. We are very active with our own service technicians, with partners, making sure that we are close to our customers and to our operations because also there, uptime is key. None of our customers wants downtime. None of our customers wants unexpected downtime because that is highly impacting their operation. And that, of course, what we are focusing in day in and day out. Right now, obviously, we are very strong in Europe and growing, as you heard earlier in Asia Pacific and in the Americas with all those challenges that Stephan Timmermann elaborated at the beginning. But due to our setup, we fight them, and I think we're doing great compared to our competition. Talking about competition, what is our competition? If we talk about SupremeServ, we have various competition that we face. One is, of course, the other pump manufacturers, right? That's a natural competition. That's what we have to fight, right? On top of that, what we are seeing, and I specifically put the company of Hydro here are those independent service players. What do they do? They also want to service pumps, all sorts of pumps. They come up also with digital solutions, putting their sensors on our pumps, for example. Do we like it? Not really because it's the same. If there are sensors on our pump, there's a certain risk for our SupremeServ business that we don't want. That's why on the technology side, we need to be cutting edge. And we, of course, also have customers that are doing their own service activities. And that is, of course, what we support. At least in this scenario, we typically sell our parts. But we have various types of customers that we need to deal with and various demands that we need to fulfill. So from that perspective, it's slightly different if you compare that to automotive, for example. But the good news on this one is as much as other pump manufacturers want to go on our pumps, we can do the same in return. So obviously, we are not only looking on KSB pumps, but we also are in a position to service others. And I always put myself into the shoes of the customer. Customers typically don't want to deal with too many service providers. That is a plus for us typically if we do the job right, if we are ahead of competition. And that's why we focus not only on KSB pumps, but also on others. How we do that, I will talk in a minute. Just a little bit more facts. I mentioned already 3,500 people working in the SupremeServ world. We, by now, have more than 190 service centers around the world that we do ourselves. We have 10 SupremeServ academies. Rajiv was already mentioning the one in India that we also invest into. Why is that? Because obviously, enabling our people is key in this game. I'd also like to highlight our additive manufacturing facility that we have in Germany here in Pegnitz, which, of course, gives us some flexibility on producing parts and being fast in case needed. Nevertheless, our world is changing. And that means we always need to make sure that we are ready for those changing market demands from the different big directional changes that we are seeing. Just mentioning a few nuclear business, which is very good for us. We have countries that stopped completely like Germany, obviously, not so good for us. Then we have the conventional power plants same thing also going into the direction that we don't favor too much. But therefore, we look into other alternatives opportunities where we do not only sell pumps, but make sure that we service them and that we actually provide additional value to our customers. How we do that? I will elaborate a little bit later. But I mentioned, for us, it's key that we have the right people, that we have the right workforce. And this is exactly why we put quite some focus on what we call the KSB SupremeServ Academy. As said, we have 10 around the world. And the target of this academy is not only enabling our own people. That is, of course, absolutely important. That's what we do with people around the world. But we also use that for strengthening our customer relationship because we also offer those trainings for our customers. How to operate pumps, how to make sure they have a good life, how to optimize them in the various environments. And typically, this is where we see a very strong customer relationship. If we help them enabling their -- 10 minutes, okay. Thank you, Sonja. If we help them enabling their people, they typically come back with questions. There is a strong relationship. They typically buy our parts. So that is one of the major focus that we do. And of course, we need to make sure that we deliver standardized, unique, supreme service around the world. And this for us is one of the tools how we enable the people to ensure that if they are being called and say, KSB SupremeServ service that the quality is there, that people know what to do and that they know how to do it fast because speed is obviously one of the key drivers when it comes to service, especially when it comes to unplanned service and that we also have, of course. But with the Academy, we had some challenges because we're a global company. We have people that do not necessarily speak English and German. And in the past, most of our trainings were in English and German. That means you have stuff that is very difficult to reach. And in order to overcome that, luckily today, there is the technology that we can use in order to overcome that, in order to provide the training in 25 different languages. And therefore, we upgraded the whole academy with the help of artificial intelligence. We created virtual people that are doing the training that can speak all sorts of languages, all sorts of languages that we want them to speak, and that is why we initiated a new sales excellence initiative with the help of the academy and the respective trainings, making sure that everybody who has customer contact gets the information, what do we have to offer on the SupremeServ side, what is relevant for the specific customers so that we ensure that whoever has customer contact knows what they can sell. And that is an upgrade that we -- so this is obviously not a real person. And this person can speak, I said, 30, 40 different languages with very limited effort, we bring those messages in the organization, making sure that we are fast, making sure that we are to the point and that people know what they can sell. And of course, we do not also do that ourselves, but we also work with our business partners, sales and service partners. We have almost 800 around the world. Also there, we use training because we want to make sure that they are up for the job. And we continue, as Ralf Kannefass mentioned in his presentation, we continue that growth because for us, that is a very important part of our growth strategy that we have ahead of us, obviously, not only on the pump side, but of course, also on the SupremeServ side. What is our goal? Our goal are our products, knowing where they are. We are on a journey to find them because in the old days, it was not too common to make sure that we know where all our pumps are. We have initiated this initiative, which we call registered products. We have established a digital tool where we can not only find them, measure whether they are doing okay or not and get the geolocation. We then can compare it with our data that we have. And guess what, we generate business right through this approach, right, through that. Just one example that we had recently, late 2024, we were finding some pumps in North America. We were sending our team over there. Customer was very happy. It was serviced by independent players the last couple of years. We took over. Already now we have SupremeServ business of more than 2 million generated with this customer alone. So that's what makes me optimistic that we can continue that journey and that it has a very, very positive additional impact supporting our growth story. Stephan Bross already mentioned the monitoring centers that we have around the world. Also there, we are extremely closely working with the team of Stephan Bross making sure that we also continue to develop next solution. But there, we definitely drive into the direction that we do not only put those sensors on guards that -- on pumps that are out there in the field already, but that we get to the point where we put them on straight from the factory because also here, the more we connect our pumps, the safer our aftersales business is. There is the next level coming in 2026. So that helps us ensuring our business. I said already, we also tap into new businesses. One of our customers is helping with the transformation that we see in the energy business, and they were asking us if we want to support that meaning we had to establish a service center in the north of Germany to be able to service offshore installations. We quickly enabled our staff because there's all sorts of certificates, safety and so on that needs to be done. But we tapped into it also a very successful business. We started probably a year ago, 1.5 years ago, now it's fully in operation. customers happy. And of course, that is something that we want to tap into further because that's the future, and that is probably making up for the business that will go away due to the different political decisions that we are doing, that we are seeing. But also in the interest of time, I skip a little bit more here. We are focusing on what we call optimization services. What is that? We help our customers to optimize their installation. If we look at energy costs that we are facing, especially in the Western European world, that becomes more and more interesting for them. So we help them analyzing how can the customer optimize the installation that they have, of course, with a clear focus on pumps, but not only on pumps. We tell them with our measurements, with our technology that we use there, how they can save money. And that is something where even big customers, big chemical customers, for example, had always said in the past, we can do it ourselves, ask us now for support. For me, this is showing how important that topic is, and it's also showing that we are ahead of competition there because those big chemical customers, they work typically with all the other players as well. But in the end, they decided to go down that route with us. So that's definitely showing another step into the right direction. And typically, if you position yourself as a trusted support as a trusted service provider, there's more business to come. So right now, with this big chemical company, we are also talking about taking over additional business, not only for additional pumps, but also for additional services. And I think that is how I see our business to grow, not only looking at how can we provide spare parts, but also how can we add true value to our customers and to their operation. And that is what we are focusing on next to the traditional service that we provide. Of course, we also do additive manufacturing, as said. There, we are ahead of the game from a technology perspective, of course, that is something that we continue to grow. And so do we on the reverse engineering side because if we focus on competitors' pumps, then typically, we need reverse engineering because buying the parts from competition is probably not the smartest thing. We can do always. We have the knowledge. We have the technology. We are ready to go. We have lots of projects with that, very happy customers because that customer then has one service provider and not multiple ones. The downside there is that, obviously, competition is trying to do that themselves. But nevertheless, I think our positioning is there. And how do we ensure that positioning is even better? Very simple things. You have heard them all. But what we do different now is we power them with artificial intelligence. What do I mean with that? Sales approach, I mentioned it already. We enable -- we upgrade our sales force through knowledge, through additional knowledge in their local language. So we meet them where they want to be met. This will be a big game changer going forward. We do the same on the lead time reduction. We do not use AI just to do nice slides. We really put it into our processes. Example, when it comes to quotation, right now, it's a process that's relatively manual. Sometimes it has to be manual if you don't have data from pumps that are 70, 80 years old, it needs to be manual. But all the new stuff, which we have today in our systems where the drawings are available that can be done by the machine, and that is the direction we are going to ensure that whenever a customer has a quotation, he gets immediate feedback, not in a week, not in 5 days, but like in almost no time for those standardized quotations. So we take AI away from just knowledge management or from making nice PowerPoints. We integrate it into our processes right now with a clear benefit for the customer. And that is, again, my major driving. I want to be that we are even more customer-centric than we are today. And that is one enabler. And last but not least, we look at our processes to optimize them also with the focus on being faster in front of the customers because that we produce quality, I think everybody knows, but we need to focus on speed because quite often, competition is very aggressive, and we need to win those games by providing speed by being fast, especially in those unplanned activities, unplanned events that we have and that our customers have. And if we then react fast, we have an even stronger customer relationship. Just a quick run through where we are, what we are doing, what we are focusing on. So I want you to take away from this message. We will be the worldwide best service for Pumps and Valves. We put the various activities into place. We were already coming from a great journey, but we ensure that we even speed up more, that we elaborate further on that journey and that we make sure that we leave competition, whether it's another pump manufacturer or the independent player behind us. With that, we are very confident we can do that. And you saw SupremeServ as a topic around the world, all my regional and market segment presidents inhaled it. They elaborated on it, made it very transparent how important that is for KSB. And my role in this or I see it is make sure we enable the various organizations around the world with the right tools, look at where we have state-of-the-art tools already. If we look at India, there are obviously a totally different focus on digitalization. China, same thing. So...

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#10

Moving closer and closer.

Unknown Executive

executive
#11

I get the message. So from that perspective, thank you very much for the reminder. If there is further questions, of course, there's the Q&A session afterwards where I will be present. happy to answer further questions. Thank you very much.

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