KSB SE & Co. KGaA ($KSB)

Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to the KSB earnings call on the results of the fiscal year 2025. My name is Sonja Ayasse, and I'm heading Corporate Communications. Our main speakers today are our CEO, Dr. Stefan Timmermann; and our CFO, Dr. Matthias Schmitz. Stefan and Matthias will do a deep dive into our financial performance of the last fiscal year, and then we'll also comment a little bit on the current fiscal year. As usual, after the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] This call will end after 1 hour. Any question that remains open will be answered afterwards. And as usual, we will provide a recording of this call on the KSB website under Investor Relations. But now enough said, I would like to hand over to Stefan.

Yes, Sonja, thank you so much for the warm introduction. and welcome. It's my honor to open our report on the fiscal year 2025. And as I do this, I, of course, say I have the pleasure to address the opening words in the name of Matthias, Matthias Schmitz, who will join me on stage to have the deep dive into the figures, but also Stephan Bross and Ralf Kannefass. And all of us, we again -- we just have to come a short introduction -- we are back on stage, excuse me, out there. We were just given the signal that there is no video signal, but the video signal seems to be back on track. So let me begin again. I heartly welcome you in the name of the entire Board, Ralf Kannefass, Stephan Bross, Matthias Schmitz and me. And of course, we represent the 17,000 employees all around the world, including their top management, really fascinating guys who have done an extremely good job, and it's my honor and Matthias' honor to present the according results for the last year. Before I start, as every year, the small disclaimer, everything which touches 2025 figures dusted, these do not blush. Everything which concerns the year 2026, especially in the second part when I touch the question, how do we see KSB developing in the year 2026. This is, of course, into the future. These are the best guesses, the best prognosis that we do at the time. Please no guarantees. The world is changing at the moment, really on a daily basis. So this is the best guidance that we can give at the time. Having said this, let me start. We have a short and sweet agenda. I will start with an introduction into the fiscal year 2025. Then for sure, Matthias will do a deep dive into all relevant and important figures, and I will wrap it up with 2 or 3 slides to explain what the drivers of KSB are, which especially for me as a person are extremely important because we're not talking about onetime successes. We are talking about a company trend, the company development, and this gives me the huge optimism that irrespective of economic hiccups, we will continue on our path. And I will, of course, wrap this up with an outlook into the year 2026 and with a short summary. Having said this, let me begin with an introduction. And I've used a few headlines. These are German newspapers, but I think you will guess immediately what the headlines are. This is what 2025 was all about. I mean, today, we live in a world which changes extremely fast. And we're now in 2026, who still remembers 2025. And in order to give you some guidance there, this was the year where the U.S. got a new President. We're in the middle of the year, of course, somewhat attached to the new presidents. We had a lot of discussions and also disturbances due to taxes, which went to a level never seen before. Connected to this, a lot of geographical hiccups in the world economy as this was not enough. We had a sizable feelable slowdown in China, which is, of course, one of the economic drivers of the world today. Connected with this, the slowdown in Europe, which already started a little bit before that, especially in Germany. Here, 2 industries which are extremely important for us, got impacted. This is the chemical industry and of course, the automotive industry. Here, we talk about structural problems, not problems, challenges, the change in terms of electromobility, which costs a lot, which the automotive industry has to digest somehow. This is attached to legislation, which is changing day by day. All of this, at the end of the day, a big turmoil. And to put it back into a nutshell, the year 2025 irrespective of the fact that we did quite a good job as we will show, it was a rough year. If I were to summarize these headlines into more digestible words, this is what you would see. These are the headlines that you know, geographical uncertainty, armed conflicts, a lot of growth problems in China and in Europe, hiccups all around the world, which at the end of the day also led to the disruption of logistical chains. And we, as KSP, once again, in another year, the 5th year, I would say, after Corona, we were truly challenged. And we did it in a way which we are now practiced, which is really proven and dusted. We showed that our troops all around the world accompanied by fantastic management in our regions, in our markets showed real resilience. We proved once more that irrespective of the fact that it was a very rough world, even in a rough world, we have confidence and we have optimism. We are flexible. We are agile when it comes to changes. And last not least, we are staying grounded on the earth, a lot of pragmatism and staying grounded accompanied all of this. And having said this, 2025, this is what today is all about. What was the result for KSB? It was, again, in a nutshell, another best year ever. And this, of course, makes me extremely happy, extremely proud. And I say, again, is this a self-fulfilling prophecy, did it come out of the markets? For sure not. Was it a onetime issue? For sure not. Because if you now look into how this fiscal year 2025 fits into the trend, this is the development of the order intake in the last years since this Management Board, Stephan Bross, Ralf Kannefass, Matthias and me had the possibility to put our energy into KSB. This is the development of the order intake. And again, the EUR 3 billion mark, it had been surpassed already in 2024. We now took it one level higher in 2025. Matthias will comment when he touches those figures. Yes, this was an absolute increase, but this increase would have basically been of double size if we would not have had the impacts of currency fluctuations. And this, I would like to stress also at this point, all the headlines that I showed you, the tariffs the currency devaluations, they had a sizable impact because KSB, as you know, we, at the end of the day, add up our big bills in the euro zone and the dollar, which was the one which had the biggest impact. Yes, it has repercussions on the Brazilian real. It has repercussions on the Indian rupee, of course, on the Chinese renminbi. And all of this, when we then draw the big line, it is sizable and it is feelable in our accounts. But irrespective of this, our order intake, it grew once again. And having said this for the order intake, I come to the turnover. And here, too, we succeeded for the first time in the history of KSB, and this is not young. This is now 155 years. We succeeded to surpass the EUR 3 billion line, and this is just a great achievement. A growth of 2.3%, double if we would not have had these sizable currency devaluations and currency devaluations you always have this is normal course of business, but not in the magnitude that we had in 2025. So here too, absolutely good news. And coming from the turnover, we come to the EBIT. And here, the EBIT, again, an all-time high, EUR 252 million, a jump of around about EUR 10 million, EUR 12 million in terms -- in comparison to 2024, a good result if I see what the world was all about. And it was not only a good result, it was a great result if I now don't take the currency into impact, but take the fact into impact that we are introducing SAP HANA at the time. SAP HANA, for sure, the biggest transformation program and project that this company in its 155 years of existence has ever had, transforming our present worldwide landscape onto the new model basis, SAP HANA. And this costs money. And we decided at KSB rather early that we would not create a bill for the future, but take the costs as they come. And let alone last year in 2025, in terms of external costs, we nearly had EUR 27 million of external costs. So payouts, which you see in our liquidity immediately at the end of the year to consultants whom we need in terms of their professionality to give us guidance in this important project. At the same time, near to 1,000 employees all around the world were working on the project. And these employees, these were not newly employed for SAP HANA. They have been existent already. So part of their work, which they did, of course, had to suffer due to the fact that they were now engaged in SAP HANA. This led to a loss of efficiency. And the same is, of course, applicable to the fact that latest by summer 2025, we froze all changes in our present software. We call this the software freeze. Why? Because you have to come to a certain point where you just say the existing software is not touched anymore that you can copy it cold and copy into the new system as the test system, which will go live at the beginning of the next year. And all of this led to inefficiencies. But irrespective of these inefficiencies and of course, the big cost block of EUR 27 million for the external consultants, we managed to grow our profitability. And you see it here in hardcore absolute numbers, if I take the return on sales, which for us is an important figure, we reached a return on sales of 8.3%, all included, so including the HANA costs, if I would carve out the HANA costs and here just these external consultant costs of EUR 27 million, we would have been at a return on sales of 9.2%, coming up from 8.8% last year without any HANA costs to 9.2%. So this shows you that irrespective of this really shaky difficult market of all the boundary conditions that we already had in 2025, we managed to grow our company in terms of order intake, in terms of turnover, in terms of EBIT and in terms of return on sales. And if I am now asked as the last introductory words from my side, what do I think when I see these figures, I feel extreme pride, and I feel extreme satisfaction and even more thanks to all of those, the top the managers and all the employees all around the world for having been able to deliver such great results in shaky times. And now, Matthias, I hand over to you that you really give us a deep dive into the figures, and I'll come back on stage to give you a few words on the possible drivers of this really successful story. And of course, the question, how do we see the continuation of the success story, how do we see the year 2026?

Thank you, Stephan. So, now first have to take a look at the camera. Am I positioned right? Sir? Okay. I get it okay. So hello to everybody. This morning, we had the press conference, and we already have published our results. Nevertheless, after the coverage story of Stephan Timmermann, I'd like to make a deep dive with you in order that you have by far better understanding about our financial figures than you might have up to now. Stephan highlighted it already. Order intake and growth. Order intake as well as sales has exceeded the hurdle rate of EUR 3 billion. We show an EBIT reported of 8.3% return on sales. And even if you have -- if you take into account the SAP HANA project, which will, at the end, in the mid of the year 2028, we cost at about EUR 88 million to EUR 90 million. The EBIT adjusted is on a margin of 9.2%. Equity ratio on a level of 48%. And one thing I want to really highlight, it's the first time that we show this figure here. The return on invested capital has exceeded our WACC, which is at about 8.3%. So KSB generates value gains exceeding cost of equity as well as borrowing costs. We are creating value. When you take a look back, and I started this chart here in the year 2021, I could have gone back even further more, but you see this development of our story is a constant one. We have succeeded year-on-year, and now we end up with an earnings after tax of EUR 166 million and earnings per ordinary share of more than EUR 80, and we have a positive operating free cash flow. I come later to these figures a little bit more in detail. Before, I told you it's a figure we follow up year-on-year, but it's the first time that I show you today. Since 2021, the return on invested capital has exceeded the cost of capital. It means it has exceeded the cost of equity and on top of the borrowing cost. So we have created a value of approximately EUR 60 million in the last years. If you might take a look to the year 2019, where our return on invested capital was at a level of 5.7%. You have to take into account we had Corona in the year 2020. So that means we really have a constant increase in our return on invested capital. And I want to outline the figure is being calculated based on the earnings after tax. So 1 or 2 tax effects, special ones we had in the 2 last years, of course, have an impact here. KSB is a company that creates value. How do we create this value in the year 2025? And here, you see a really good overview. We have achieved EUR 3.2 billion in order intake. And Stephan Timmermann before, he mentioned the influence of FX. On the right-hand side of this chart, you see the magic figure of EUR 84.3 million. What does this mean? It means if we calculate the order intake based on the ratio of 2024, then our order intake would be higher by EUR 84 million. In other words, taking the same FX ratio like in the year 2024, our order intake would have grown by almost EUR 170 million. And one major -- one big driver we had, this was the market -- the water market who really has increased its order intake. One thing I want to highlight here, and this is also relevant when I talk later about sales, the strong euro, of course, had an impact, not only in terms of U.S. dollar. Everybody is talking about U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar impact on the group order intake was on a level of [ EUR 13 million ], [ Indian rupee 26 million, Brazilian real on a level of 12 million and China, 11 million ]. These are our big production countries where we are strong. And of course, once the euro is getting stronger, this has an immediate impact on our order intake, on our sales as well as on our P&L. These are effects we cannot escape. Nevertheless, if you take a look on the left-hand side of the chart, you see the orders on hand have increased on a level of EUR 1.7 billion. So this is a very stable orders on hand. And I ask you to bear in mind these orders on hand does not mean they will, for sure, be sales in the year 2026 because we have also long-lasting projects like the energy project, they will become sales in the year 2029, '30, '31 and so on. Just as a calculation by sum, you can say that 5 to 6 months sales is being guaranteed out of the orders on hand we already have. But it's just a rule by sum. Sales, we have mentioned it before. Also here, we have an order intake, which is higher than EUR 3 billion. Last year, we promised Yes, we have an order intake higher than EUR 3 billion next year. We also will have an order intake sales, which is more than EUR 3 billion, and this is what we made happen. You can read our lips. It happened the way we have promised. And here, we see the currency effect on a level of EUR 77 million. You also might see that SupremeServ, I know everybody of you is focused on SupremeServ because there, we make the biggest profit with EUR 1,013 million is [ EUR 3 million ] beyond the year 2024, but please take into account 2 effects. First of all, we see that the Spare Part business in mining as well as in the Engineered business went down. Secondly, we have a currency effect of EUR 24 million. If you take only the EUR 24 million into account, you see that SupremeServ is doing okay, and we are following our growth story. EBIT, Stephan Timmermann mentioned before, we show a return on sales of 8.3%. And when you take a look to Pumps and Valves, you see Pumps make a high profit. Valves are anywhere on breakeven. I want to show you these figures without the HANA effect because you have to know that the EUR 26.6 million, we split or we dedicate them to the segments we are reporting. This view you see here right now means this is the profitability without the SAP HANA project. And here, we are on a level of 9.2%. You see the Valves business is breakeven and SupremeServ makes 193% Watching these figures and knowing you all ask what about valves, we does not make any profit. There's also one thing I ask you to bear in mind. Bear in mind means when we talk about the segment Pumps or Valves, this is only new business. This is only new business. It does not include Spare Parts. That means if you want to get an idea what is the profitability of the whole Valves business in this case, you have to add the profitability and the sales for Valves that are not hidden that are included in the case, the SupremeServ business. If you add sales or if you add the profitability for Valves, new business plus wealth spare parts, the whole of the spare part -- the whole of the Wealth business is on a level of something like 5% return on sales. Bear that in mind when you are taking a look at these figures. The Wealth business, all in all, is a positive one. Let's have a view on some selected income statement items. You see here cost of material, 39.5% of sales, staff cost 35%. I think these are reasonable numbers. And when you take a look at cost of material here on the right-hand side of the chart, you see that we came in the years before, we were on a much higher level. In 2023, we were on nearly 41%. Now we are 1.5% below the sales -- below the figures of '23. So you see the outcome of a constant improvement. Development of staff costs. Yes, here, we increased by 1% in relation to sales. We have hired people. And most of them we hired in India. 50 people are coming out of new consolidated companies. And of course, we hired 100 people. The majority here we hired in the R&D area. We hired them in the energy business, yes, and also in the sales area. Other expenses, what is other expenses for us, and you will see it in the annual report. We have administrative expenses, repairs, selling costs, other staff costs. If you eliminate or if you adjust the cost for HANA, we kept them stable. R&D, 2.2%. Here, we remain on the level we had in the previous year. We feel confident with that because these costs are for us, absolutely okay to cover the needs for new R&D for new products. And Stephan Timmermann later on will give you an idea about new products we are having. So we had also -- besides the fact that we have a higher EBIT, we also have increased our earnings after tax with EUR 166 million, also with lower tax than in the previous years. I will come to this later on. And you see attributable to the shareholders of KSB show or have a profitability of EUR 141 million, and this is relevant for the calculation of dividend. I will show you later. The finance income is more or less stable compared to the previous years. When you take a look at the income tax or at the tax rate, you have to bear one thing into account. First of all, the tax rate in 2023 was very, very low due to written down deferred tax assets. '24, we had some special effects. And now we pay tax on an amount of EUR 74 million, which is 31%. And this is the tax rate where we are now, I would say, in the ordinary course of business. This is also the tax rate we expect for the year '26 and '27. This is now where we stay all these ups and downs in the last years. Now they are all cleaned up, 31%. This is the tax rate we expect for the year 2026. Balance sheet, you see the total sum of balance sheet is more or less the same than previous year. One thing I ask you to focus on, this is equity with almost EUR 1.4 billion, we have a EUR 56 million higher equity than in the previous years. So what's the message here? KSB has a reasonable good balance sheet, and we have a sustainable balance sheet. Whatever might come based on the crisis and all the things we might expect right now, KSB is secure. KSB has a solid balance sheet, and this is for us a precondition to go into the future. Let's take a look at the fixed asset. You see an increase from EUR 804 million to EUR 852 million in the fixed asset. This is mainly due to the increase in investments. You see it on the left-hand side. We have invested in the last year EUR 182 million. On the one hand, you might say, well, this affects the cash flow. This is true. On the other hand, if you take a look on the right-hand side of the chart to understand the material acquisitions of investment, I give you an idea, just take a look at the first line warehouse expansion Richmond. This is what we're doing to invest in the United States. We invested in the last year EUR 10 million because we are on our way to establish our strategy in the United States, and we are on our way. Could the circumstances, could the economic field be better? Yes, of course. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the way we are going there that we already started is the right way for KSB to invest. U.S.A. is a relevant market for KSB. There's absolutely no doubt. Working capital, I want to highlight that despite the fact we are growing, despite we have very difficult economical circumstances around us, we talk now about EUR 860 million in working capital. It's a little bit higher than previous year. And we are talking now about a cash cycle of 126 days. We are talking about 28.8% of sales. And here, you have to take into account when we are talking about sales, we are talking about the average of the last 12 months. It's not a year-end calculation. It's not a year-end calculation. And when you see we decreased our cost of material in terms of sales, we are decreasing the level of working capital we have. These are 2 signs where you should really get an idea that we are working hard in order to improve our operational excellence. We started -- if you go back to the year 2018, then we had some 34% of sales. The cash cycle was at 135 days. So we constantly improve step by step our operational key ratios. Equity, I said it before, now we have a level of 48.3%, which is one really relevant sign for the sustainability of our balance sheet. You see here how did the equity develop. We paid dividend for EUR 53 million. Of course, this does not go through the P&L. Of course, not it goes directly into the equity. You also see on the other side, on the right-hand side, positively the net profit contributed with EUR 166 million. These are the effects we really have under control. What we do not have under control are the EUR 85 million other comprehensive income. This is, of course, linked to the interest and to currency. This is what we cannot control. But despite the fact, here, we have a negative impact of EUR 85 million, we anyhow increased our equity. I think 48% is an excellent figure. Nothing more to say about noncurrent liabilities as well as current liabilities. You see the noncurrent liabilities went down by almost EUR 30 million, EUR 35 million. Main effect are the pensions because here, we had the possibility to calculate with the new interest rate. This was the most obvious effect. The rest is business as usual. Let's take a look at the free cash flow. And here, you see in the year 2024, we had EUR 371 million. Now our net finance position is at EUR 315 million. This is a difference of 56%. And where is it coming from? It's coming from at about EUR 20 million. out of FX, not to be forgotten. It's coming out in a level of EUR 25 million to EUR 26 million working capital. And bear in mind, we have invested more in the year 2025 than in the year 2024. These are the 3 main effects for the change in our net finance position, and we are convinced that we have invested this money in good manners for the long future of KSB. Share price. The share price at the end of the year was at about, well, more or less [ EUR 9.58 ], let's say, roughly EUR 10 -- the market capitalization was at about EUR 1.7 billion. So the market capitalization is EUR 500 million more than the equity that is attributable to the shareholders of KSB. And I think here, this is a very relevant information to you. This is -- we are a EUR 1.7 billion company. And in between the last weeks, we were on a level of EUR 2 billion. I saw that the share price went a little bit down today or even more than a little bit, but I'm absolutely sure as we are going our path, as we are implementing MT30, the share price will further increase. That's my strong belief. Let's come a little bit to the dividend. Take a look at the share price relevant indicators within KSB Group. At the end, the earnings after tax for the KSB shareholders is EUR 141 million. And based on that, we will ask the shareholders' meeting for a dividend of EUR 26.50 per share, which is 33%. I've spoken to maybe 80%, 90% of -- to all of you, and I told you all the time that we will leave the dividend minimum on the level of previous year. We will leave it in the frame of from 30% to 40%. And so we kept our promise. May you maybe have expected a little bit more. You have to take one thing into account. In the year 2024, we have increased the dividend by EUR 0.50 in order to set aside also the profitability per ordinary share was lower. This was because of special tax effect -- and we thought in these times, then it makes sense to offer a dividend at the level of EUR 26.50. If you go back to the year 2023, there we had a higher profit per ordinary share than in the year 2025. And nevertheless, this year, we kept the dividend higher than in the year 2023. That's our way of thinking. For this reason, let's make a summary. The order intake and sales the revenue exceeded -- or both exceeded the figure of EUR 3 billion. The EBIT increased to 8.3%. If you take out HANA, we are talking about 9.2%. We are on our way to exceed the 10% return on sales that we have promised in our discussions in our presentations. Also Stephan Timmermann did in the press conference this morning. Equity ratio is at 48%. Yes, the net finance position is lower in the last year because of working capital of all the investment we did. And of course, it's being affected by the FX ratio. We have a positive value added of EUR 60 million, and our market capitalization is nearly 4x as high as it has been when the 4 of us started in 2018 with a level of EUR 1.7 billion. Now I'm at the end of my presentation. I hope that you got a little bit more a deeper insight in the financial figures than you may have heard this morning when you only went through the press release. And of course, all the questions we might not answer today as we have a little bit of lack of time, maybe after 1 hour, we are happy to explain in individual talks. Thank you very much so far. And now I hand over to Stephan, he will explain you the drivers for success.

Yes. With pleasure, Matthias. Unfortunately, our time is limited. So I really have to summarize the drivers of success. But for me, they are extremely crucial and important. Matthias showed you the continuous development of KSB over the last 7 to 8 years, which we have been able to manage the company I gave you the indicator in terms of order intake, turnover EBIT and profitability. All of this has a root cause. I'm now in management for more than 30 years. I've seen it all. Today, I have the confidence if you put the right things on track and you give the company, especially a sizable company like KSB with 17,000 employees, the possibility to develop, you can take it to the next level. And this is exactly what we at KSB are doing. And the measures that we have put in place, KSB SupremeServ, KSB Voice, KSB Climb 21, the red list and our positioning of the brand in terms of KSB -- next Level. These are the things that have been started year-by-year, one rocket more which slowly but surely are showing impact. And if you were now to ask me, when do your rockets stop to blow, I say we have a lot of blowing ahead of us. All of these things are cultural changes of the mindset of the company, a lot of growth opportunities in our more than 100 KSB companies all around the world. We are about halfway through our possibilities, those which I see at the time. And this gives me the extreme confidence that this track record, which we have shown in the last years, especially in the last 5 years from 2020 to '25, which were extremely challenging economic years, this will continue. And we have put this into our house of strategy. This you see -- it has the title Mission 1030, the 1030 latest by the year 2030, we want to have reached our 10% plus return on sales. Matthias just showed it once more. We are at the time, if I exclude these one-off costs of HANA, which will be gone in 2 years, we are already at the time at 9.2%. And this really gives me the bullishness to say, yes, we're on the right track. And the best thing is we have the right troops in place. We have the right strategy. We have the right mission. We have the right mindset. We have the right subjects of focus, and this will push the company ahead. If you now ask me to summarize it a little bit more in detail, what I would propose, these are the 9 big cornerstones of the success. And it starts with our product portfolio. This morning, in terms of the press conference, I showed concrete examples of new products that we developed in the last year 2025, the Amarex Pro, the MultiTech, our new solar controlled water pumps, which we sell out of India, the new controlled valves, which come out of MIL, what we are now taking up as valve business, huge valves, Mammut valves in China, absolutely incredible. And all of this is new business, add-on business, which we're putting into the market, which drives our success. Then we have this market orientation. What is market orientation? Today that we are thinking in 8 markets, 6 markets in the pumps, then the holistic valve business and the SupremeServ business. And this is headed by market presidents who really understand what mining is all about, what the water, dewatering is all about, firefighting, building, the petrochemical industry. And they do it in a matrix in a superb collaboration with 9 regions, and this makes us unbeatable. And KSB SupremeServ, of course, this is the big bracket, the aftermarket business, which goes from the valves and goes into every pump. We've started this journey. We're the first company who has really put a strong brand label on all of this. Are we at the end of this journey? Of course, not. We are somewhere in the middle, and there's such a lot to come. Do we have chances when big markets like the mining markets have a hiccup? Of course not, but we compensate it as much as we can, and we grow. And this makes this part of our business based on 155 years of population put into the market, an extremely strong pillar of our resilience. Then our global presence, find a company in the pump and valve business, which has more than 100 owned entities all around the world. It was started with the first generation of the founders of this company. Today, it's the stronghold, especially as the world gets more and more disrupted. We have our factories in China, we have our factories in India, we have them in Brazil. Of course, we have in Europe. We have them in the U.S. now with the investment that Matthias mentioned, our great GRW factory for the mining business in Augusta and now the big warehouse with the possibility to go into knockdown assemblies in Richmond, where let alone at the time, we're investing EUR 26 million to get our foot into the world's biggest economy of the world with absolute great people, superb managers on place, just making it happen. And having said this, the employees, I can only underline it again and again, our 17,000 employees running the extra mile, irrespective of how strong the wins are, we team up, we get what we can out of the market. This makes me extremely proud, and this makes me confident that the money, the investment, the EUR 181 million, which we spent last year, let alone last year, which, of course, has an impact in our cash flow. You can only spend the euro or the dollar, the renminbi once, you see that, but it has a huge impact on our future. because we're investing into new factories, into extended capacity, into digitalization, of course, into sustainability, but also into environment -- working environment for our employees because company culture is just extremely important for us. And this touches corporate culture, which is, as I said, one of the cornerstones of KSB, and I'm extremely proud to be part of this. But corporate culture also means when the times get rough, get that cost awareness into place and push that brand. And these are the things that KSB is really good at. And having said this, I now come to the last chapter, and this is for you, for sure, the interesting part, the outlook in summary because the last year is last year, after the game is before the game. And again, this year, we thought it might be a little bit sweeter than the 5 years before in the positive sense. Unfortunately, with the Iran war, which took off a few weeks ago already, it has really become very challenging. And I've just put one picture onto the screen that you see what this is all about. I mean we have sites in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In Qatar, of course, we have a big factory in Saudi Arabia. This is 150 kilometers away across the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. And all around this region, you have U.S. military bases. And this, of course, explains that if you get into a war with Iran, you cannot just keep it in Iran. And this is happening and the worldwide repercussions, I will not go into them. I try to summarize it on a slide. This slide, you can actualize every day. The impacts yesterday, they were somewhat of a prediction. Today, of course, they're feelable. All of us feel the rising prices of fuel and gas and oil as we go to the gas stations. In countries like Pakistan and India, if you go to a restaurant, the restaurant will be closed because today, gas shortage is really already visible in your daily life. If the war goes on for a longer time, this impact will, of course, go all across the world. What we can already feel today is, of course, logistics. We are an exporting company. We, of course, use the train, we use the ship and we use the planes. The plane freights have become extremely possible and if you -- extremely expensive. And if you try to export into the region of MEA, depending what port you choose, it has become really tough because most of these ports are either completely congested or closed. All of this, of course, leads to inflation. This leads to an impact on the interest rates. This you know the European Central Bank has already put the foot on to lowering interest rates. The Fed has done exactly the same. It has, of course, an impact depending on how long all of this lasts on consumption, on payment morale and last not least, on the investment climate that we have. And to say that KSB, despite the fact that we are an absolute great company and have a superb track record also in year of crisis will have the possibility to escape completely. I'm a born optimist, but this optimism, I would not present in front of you. And if I were to summarize this, what does it mean? It means, again, a year which is impacted by market weaknesses, by currency fluctuations, by trade barriers, by high competition. None of our competitors, unfortunately, also not in the last years, have died away. Now we have a very big one in a positive way. This is China as the market in China, their own captive market is getting weaker, the Chinese go into export, the Chinese EPC. Today they're really in good quality. And this, of course, is something that we have to counterbalance either by participating by our Chinese factories which, of course, is a good choice or by being extremely competitive wherever we meet Chinese competitors in South America or in Africa. And last not least, geopolitical alliances, whether more armed conflicts will come out of all of this, I do not know. I can tell you, we stay resilient and we stay optimistic. What I can tell you is that the first 2 months, and this is what we see at the time, January and February in terms of what would we have wished in the best case, yes, the order intake and the turnover day were weak. Would this have made me nervous in any way today? No, because January and February, especially if Easter is very early as it is this case, are always weak months, especially in terms of turnover. Now of course, if you have a January and February, which forces you to catch up, the bet is on how are the next 10 months going to develop. And this is the only part of the risk in the bet. But we, at KSB, we are resilient, and we are very optimistic that we will keep our course. Why? Because the recipes that we have to put in place in order to safeguard our resilience and to play our cards as we have done in the last 4 -- 5 years of crisis, they are a proven pattern. It's again, batten the hatches. It's again pushing sales, especially short-term sales, and this is, in our case, the standard business. It's, of course, the SupremeServ business. It's cost cutting as the normal part of the exercise when you batten the hatches, you really rethink every spending, do you have to do it? Does it make sense? Or can you defer it? This is what we are used to and doing again. Securing the margins, adapting capacity wherever is the important part, but the most important part is to keep our troops together to really focus on corporate culture to inform, to have the commitment of all those on board and then, of course, a little bit of luck and a lot of commitment. Now having said this, what will this year be all about? Just doom, no, of course, not. We also have a lot of chances. And I've just written down a few of the big titles KSB, as you know, from the heating seller to the nuclear power plant, we're everywhere. And where we're extremely strong is in electricity production. And today, growth in energy of all kinds, be it nuclear, be it conventional, let alone driven via AI and according data center. This is, of course, one of the big drivers also for KSB. And you might have read it, one of the biggest orders ever received in the history of the company, more than EUR 150 million. We booked it a week ago. These are energy pumps going into a power plant, which we will produce here in Germany. Then the metrological change of the weather due to global warming, it will not be impacted by the conflict that we see at the time. And thus, all activities, all growth opportunities in water and wastewater for flooding, for desalination, for irrigation, they are still there, and we will take our part of the cake. The same, of course, applies to the valves. Matthias, you already mentioned it. For us, the valves is a growth opportunity. The good thing about it is we know how to fix the valves. We are fixing the valves, and this will be a part of our not only growth story, but also profitability stories as we sweat out the losses which were used to -- which we were used to in the past in the valve business. And last not least, in terms of business chances, there are a lot of business chances. We are present all around the world. The Iran conflict, even if the repercussions are all around the world, there are a lot of growth opportunities in countries where we are present today already, where we have just not taken our share of the pie, and now we're doing this. Having said this, what is our guidance? The guidance corridor that we have given to you and all of our shareholders. In the best case, of course, this remains my hope we can achieve another best year ever. This is basically the top of our corridor. In the worst case, we will end a little bit below the results of the last year, where do my hopes lie that we maneuver very solidly through this corridor that we have given. And having said this, I start to summarize. And once again, today, it's about 2025. And again, 2025, it was a tough year. Luckily, we forget all of this, but we continued our superb success story in 2025 despite all of these boundary conditions. And we will do the same job in 2026. Unfortunately, again, no wins out of the market, which propel us to success. So we have to put a lot of energy into it by ourselves. But I think we are very good at this because in a nutshell, what is KSB all about? What makes KSB so good? KSB, we have a plan. We have our strategy. We don't change that strategy. We follow up this strategy. We're executing this plan. And slowly, but surely, we are reaping the success, which in my world, will take us where we belong to fly with the eagles. And with this, I say thank you so much for your attention and hand over that we have a little bit of time for the questions and answers.

Yes, we do. Thank you very much, Stephan and also Matthias, for your insights. So now it's time to open the Q&A session. For that purpose, we move to our little Q&A corner in the back. This will take approximately 1 minute. So please bear with us. We already have a lot of questions, so I hope we can answer as many of them as possible in the remaining 5 to 6 minutes. So see you in a minute. So we are back in our session. And let's start with the first question. It's actually on the profitability of Valves, Matthias. Can you please explain what caused that? What practical measures have been taken to improve the profitability? And what is the realistic time line to bring the operating margin to a decent level, say, above 5% of sales?

Okay. So the 5% of sales, we already have achieved. That's the good news because one thing I really want you to bear in mind, and I mentioned it during my presentation. When we talk about valves where we see more or less the breakeven, this is only new business. Taking into account also the spare part business, the whole of the valves business all over the world makes a return on sales of some anywhere at 5%. So again, I really want to place this message here. The whole of the Valve business, new parts as well as Spare Part business has a positive return on sales of 5%. Secondly, what are we doing right now? First of all, we have started several measures in order to increase profitability, especially in our plant in La Rochale. Secondly, we are shifting products to China. And third, we got rid of the cryogenic valve business, which is a very special business where we made no profit. I'm absolutely sure the profitability of the new Valve business will be positive in the year 2026. We are on our way to reorganize the business and to bring it back in a good position.

Thank you, Matthias. Then let's move on with our transformation project on SAP S/4HANA. First, what are the costs for the year 2026? And then is the SAP S/4HANA project meeting its deployment and cost milestones as of year-to-date 2026? And are there opportunities to lower the total deployment costs by using AI?

Yes. So the answer is yes, yes, yes. What does this mean? First of all, we expect cost in the year 2026 for S/4HANA for the implementation on almost the same level as in the year 2025. And once we are talking about cash flow and the expectations about cash flow, you also have to keep in mind that these costs are one-to-one cash affected because they are only external costs and no internal cost. Secondly, the SAP project will go live in the year -- in January 2027. Nevertheless, in '27 and '28, we will also have some process improvements, but we will spend in '27 approximately EUR 12 million for this project and in the year '28, maybe EUR 6 million. And I can say regarding cost, this project is in budget. So [indiscernible] ? Yes. Okay.

Then Stephan, let's move to the region, Middle East and Africa. So it saw the fastest growth this year. Do you think this growth will continue? And are there any risks finishing projects in 2026?

Let me start with the risks. There are risks everywhere and anywhere. And of course, in Middle East, there are risks at the time. Finishing projects, this mainly depends on the length of the war and the possibility to freight into the region. At the moment, I already said that, that's extremely difficult. But today, we are in March and the year luckily still has a 9-month -- so I remain rather optimistic. I mean it highly depends on how the war will now continue. Middle East, Saudi Arabia, this was one -- if you would have asked me 6 weeks ago, this was one of our hottest growth spots in the KSB world. We have a big factory, a sizable factory in Riyadh. Saudi, as you know, has a lot of very big investment programs, which will not be changed by the war. These are the Olympic Winter Games as a football championship. This is Bin Salman Park, the biggest green area in the city worldwide. These are huge projects, which are, of course, executed. And if you want to do business in Saudi due to the very stringent and consequent [indiscernible] Project, you have to produce in Saudi Arabia. And we are the only Pump and Valve producer, to my knowledge, who has a full-fledged factory at place, and we profit from this. And will this continue? Will this be impacted by the unfortunate war at the time? Maybe yes. Will the growth be stopped? Of course, not. It will, in the best place, be deferred and is this going to be a sizable impact for KSB? I do not think so.

Okay. Thank you very much. There's another question on our forecast. So mid-February at your preliminary figures, you still expected growth for sales and EBIT for the year 2026. How do you expect flat sales and declining EBIT at midpoint? Now you expect. So what changed actually?

So first of all, I think this is also what Stephan said, growth is still possible. For example, if you take a look at your order intake, when we got this -- well, it's a EUR 200 million order, in fact, the biggest shop in energy KSB ever got. But one thing, of course, is now even more obvious than it has been at the beginning of February. This is the crisis in Iran. And of course, at this point of time, we did not oversee what it means for the NEA and Middle East. And we did also not foresee what this can mean for the whole of the world. And we see kind of reluctancy regarding further investments. And honestly, this is a situation we cannot really foresee. We cannot quantify what that means. And so for this reason, growth in terms of order intake, we see still is possible. But of course, taking all these effects, Stephan Timmermann thought into account, we have to be a little bit more cautious definitely. And we want to stick to our guidance. We want to appear reliable. And so this is the -- these are the reasons why we see the world a little bit different than 6 weeks ago.

And I think this is very understandable. So you are the beneficiary of inflation. You have pricing power. Is it still the case?

We have the same pricing power as our competitors. Nevertheless, we have to take into account that the price pressure that is coming from our competitors, also especially in China, not only in Europe, but all over the world, is becoming more -- or is increasing more and more. So it's not in the last years that we can say we want to have 2%, 3%, 4% higher prices and we get it from our customers. These times are over. Yes, we will increase the prices, but on a level of maybe 1.5%, something like that. It depends region on region.

Okay. Thank you. Then we have another question regarding CapEx. So do you see CapEx in 2026 relative to the EUR 150 million in 2025? Should we expect further progress on the net working capital days in the next 2 to 3 years? So who would like to comment a little bit on the investment and the net working capital?

No, we will do it combined. We are extremely prudent in terms of the money that we spend. And every euro that you have spent is gone out of your cash, and we think this through. At the same time, we realize, first of all, if we want to grow the company, we have to invest. Today, growth is about new market opportunities, new technologies, new countries and all of this has to be done by presence on the ground. The time where we could fly out of Germany into Chile in order to business is over today, we have to be present. And from all that we see at the time, the globalization that we knew yesterday, it will not come back. So being local and investing locally, this is absolutely imperative. To be local, but also in many cases, like in the case of Saudi, but today, also in the case of Indonesia yesterday already in the case of Brazil, possibly also in the case of the U.S. to just be able to produce locally because local legislation asks you to do this. And this costs money, either you skip this part of the game or you take the bet. And this has been somewhat accompanying our investment decisions in the past. Of course, it is accompanied by digitalization. Of course, it is accompanied by sustainability. Of course, it is accompanied by the fact that we need working environments, which are attractive for new talents, which we need employees, I can only underline it again. They are the backbone of our success -- we're a qualification-driven company, and thus, we must invest into workplaces. Will this stop tomorrow? No. Will we do it very consciously in line with the way that we have done it yesterday, yes. And of course, we now have a very special focus on our cash flow because cash is always limited. And we want to go secure through every rough water. And this would be my summary, Matthias.

Thank you. Then a short question on the forecast, and please also a short answer. Is the weak start to the year already reflected in the midpoint of the guidance or the forecast corridor?

So the guidance already reflects the situation in the near Middle East. This is the reason why you maybe expected the higher guidance. This is all we can say regarding this. We took the crisis into account, expecting that the crisis is not a long-term crisis.

Thank you very much. Then we have a question on KSB SupremeServ. Can KSB SupremeServ get back to a growth trajectory that exceeds the growth of the rest of the business as more aftersales business is captured? Or has KSB reached the ceiling on providing aftersales for existing business and therefore, grow in line with the rest?

Yes. I'll start with the last one. Has KSB SupremeServ reached the ceiling, -- of course, not. As we said during the presentation, KSB SupremeServ, this is the backbone of all of our business. In every one of our big market areas, we harvest whatever KSB SupremeSf possibilities there are. There are certain markets, and this is the mining market where the spare part proportion of the market is extremely big. It's part of the business model. We put pumps into mines in order then to very professionally serve the customer with the coating wear and tear parts, which come in the aftermath. If markets like mining or in the last year also energy and petrochemicals are weak due to the boundary conditions, then, of course, we have this impact, and this cannot be compensated overnight by the growth in SupremeServve, which takes place. Are we the end of any road? Of course not. I said that I personally presume we're somewhere 50% down the road. We have such a lot of opportunities. And it's not about technical service. It's not just about spares. It's about digital services today, online monitoring. It's about efficiency consultancy services. It's about a lot of new things that we provide. And we do this all around the world. And everywhere, the seeds are being planted and growth is taking place. So I'm very optimistic. This is really the backbone of KSB and KSB is very fortunate that we have a product which has an aftermarket, and this is good.

And there is another short question. I'm not sure if this relates to Supreme Sur as well. What was the EUR 28 million provision outflow...

I also do not know whether it's related to Supreme Surf. In general, I can say we had some reduction in provisions because, for example, we have better means lower cost of quality and also for our standard business as well as for our project business. I think this is what the question means. I'm not that sure.

And what could be an impact from energy and logistics costs in 2026?

Regarding energy cost, I do expect a smaller impact because, of course, the energy costs are rising, but we do not, in our cost structure, depend too much on the energy cost. I think the amount is at about 2% in our P&L. And regarding logistic cost, honestly, Yes, they are increasing when we see the rates in ships. But what is more important for us that the logistics will deliver our pumps, our products to the customer in time and that we get the parts in order that we can keep on running with our capacity.

Okay. Stephan, you mentioned Chinese competition earlier. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Yes, yes, of course. And I do this with full respect for Chinese companies, which today are providing top quality, unfortunately, to an unbeatable price. This is, of course, where the sediment then steps in. Since the captive market, China is down at the time, and there are a lot of drivers, which will tell you it will not go up in at least the next months to come, maybe years. The Chinese who are by nature, international tradesmen go into the world, and we meet them as new competition, accompanying established European, U.S. competition increasingly all around the world. And this is now where our value proposition has to step in. And it's not just about price. It's the combination of local presence, Supreme serve and absolute high-tech quality products, reliability as an OEM. We stick to our promise. This must be our value proposition. So I respect the Chinese competition. I notice how it is increasing all around the world, but it's another challenge, and we are taking up this challenge.

Okay. Thank you, Stephan. Do we want to take another question, Matti? Yes. It's already 9 past, but okay. Another one on KB SupremeServ. Did the shutdown of the Grasberg mine had any impact in 2025? If so, could you give us a sense of the magnitude of the impact on EBIT? And do you expect any catch-up effect in 2026? Where do you see spare parts inventory levels at your key mining customers at the moment?

Of course, what we are not doing here right now is to give impact on our profitability, which are due to some special effect. But in general, you can say that the shutdown of Grasberg or also if you take, for example, the problems when the mine in Indonesia the hearts of English -- the accident. We had this big accident. This, of course, affects our sales and profitability also especially in the region of Asia and of course, in our spare part business and of course, at GIW, no doubt about it. And these are effects we had to compensate. And a little bit of this, you can see in the P&L in the year 2025. When I take a look at our Freeport mine, I think at the Freeport mine, it's not ours. It will not be open before end of this year or beginning in 2027. So this, of course, has an effect on our spare parts business, but it's already included in the budget 2026 because we have been aware of this. It has not been impacted in the budget 2025 because the accident happened in the year 2025.

Thank you -- and I think you also answered another question on that line. Good. Then there is a question on La Roche, our Valve plant. On the restructuring of the La Roche plant, can you update us on where you currently stand in the process? What additional measures still need to be implemented?

Yes, I think we were with pleasure. La Roche, first of all, a plant, 450 employees near Bordeaux. You might still remember 3 years ago, they had a huge impact due to a hailstorm. This hailstorm was very local, damaged the roof, which would not have been that bad. Unfortunately, the roof contained asbestos, which in France still sometimes happens, and this led to the fact that we basically had to close the factory for a year. And these repercussions, they took 2.5 years in order to fix. And this is now totally irrespective of restructuring. This meant a new roof, complete new cladding now really taking out every asbestos fiber out of this big plant and putting the workplaces back into track, luckily using the chance to optimize the workflow and to invest into clever things. Having said this, La Roche consists of 2 big parts. It consists one of the standard business. These are standard valves, which go into the European market, sold by mainly KSB entities all around Europe. This part is now back on track. It is profitable. Here, the hiccups from this hailstorm, they really have to go out of the system now. And these hiccups are that we now have to regain confidence with the customers because if you are not able to deliver for more than 1.5 years, the customer looks for alternative, which is normally. And here's our job now to bring back these valves into the market, and we're being increasingly successful there. The second part of La Roche, and this is the really painful one, it's high-technology valves. It's cryogenic valves. These are valves which you operate at minus 170 degrees in LNG tankers, extremely specialized mechanical engineering in terms of the proprietary knowledge of the materials that you use and the way you engineer these things. Unfortunately, this LNG market is not in Europe anymore. It is today in Korea, increasingly in China and a little bit in Japan. And to export out of La Roche into these markets with increasing competition, again, out of China, but today, out of Korea, this is not a good idea because, one, you have the European costs; and two, you have the delivery time. And the delivery time today for everything that we do is becoming more and more essential. And this brought us to the decision now 2 years ago that we would step out of the cryogenic business in La Roche for these super complicated valves for LNG tankers. LNG tankers on top, it's a very cyclical business. This is another boundary condition that you have. And we said all of this, we will not be able to make money. So being KSB, we will fulfill our order book, but then step out of the market. And this is what we're doing. And as we are doing this, the profitability comes back into place. And we're talking now about the new products, not the aftersales business, which also in the cryogenic Valve business is extremely profitable and which we will, of course, safeguard.

Thank you for the explanation, Stephan. Let's take one last question. It's a question that just came in the last question, actually. Is the price pressure from Chinese competitors part of the weaker EBIT guidance? Or is the weakness only related to the situation in the Middle East?

No, for sure, not. We do not take competitors' pricing to give our guidance. This is just something that we are aware of, which I do not blush to communicate, again, in full respect in regards to very professional Chinese EPCs today. Our job is to follow and contribute to these EPCs via our factories, which we have in Shanghai, in Changzhou, in Dalian and of course, to bring our costs into competitive holistic value packages, which today also include KSB SupremeServ. And this is a big differentiation criteria of KSB. We have KSB SupremeServ, and it's not just about selling something, it's also about taking care of the product in the aftermath and this for decades, and this is a stronghold of KSB worldwide.

Thank you, Stephan. I think now we really stretched our and your time line a lot, another quarter of an hour, but I think there were so many questions. It was really good to take this time and to answer your questions. If you have any further questions, please get back to our Investor Relations team. So now I want to draw your attention to the 6th of August. That's actually the date of our next KSB earnings call on the half year results 2026. For the moment, we would like to say thanks a lot for your attention, for your interest and your questions. We wish you a wonderful spring time. Be safe, and goodbye.