MBB SE (MBB.DE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the MBB SE following the publication of the financial half year figures of 2025. The CFO, Torben Teichler, will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. After the presentation, you will have the possibility to place your questions directly to him. And we are looking forward to the results. Having said this, Mr. Teichler, the stage is yours.

Yes. Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Torben Teichler. I'm the CFO of MBB, and I will walk you now through our Q2 results. But before we dive in, please let me start with a very quick recap on what makes MBB special. MBB offers long-term succession solutions to sustainable Mittelstand companies. And the way we do this is quite unique because we are a family business with our 2 founders who are also the major shareholders, who founded the business 30 years ago, and they're both still on board. So in many respects, we share the same DNA with the businesses that we actually want to acquire. Secondly, we're fans of the capital markets, and that's why we're here today as a listed company, but that's also why we have 3 of our subsidiaries stock listed, Friedrich Vorwerk, Aumann and Delignit. And having brought all of these companies to the stock market in order to finance their growth and development is, in my view, a special differentiating factor for us. Thirdly, we have a long-term focus. That means when we buy, we don't have an intention to sell, but to develop and grow our businesses. And hence, we remain the anchor shareholders in all of our companies. And lastly, we focus on sustainable businesses. And with that, we don't mean that we have an environmentalist agenda, but then we believe in trends like the energy transition or IT security, which offer enormous business potential, and I think you will see that later in the presentation. With that, let's now dive into our H1 results. Overall, we had a really good first half year with revenues growing by 17% to EUR 546 million and particularly a phenomenal EBITDA increase of 37% to EUR 76 million. Our EBITDA margin hence increased by slightly more than 2 percentage points to 14.1%, which is a historic high for the first half year. And looking at the quarter, it was essentially the second quarter, which drove this very strong EBITDA ramp-up, as you'll see on the following slide. EBITDA as seen on the right side grew by an impressive 40% in the second quarter to EUR 46 million, which lifted our EBITDA margin by almost 4 percentage points to 16.4%, while revenues here on the left grew by a good 9% to EUR 285 million. The key driver of this development was again our Service & Infrastructure segment, with both Friedrich Vorwerk as well as DTS delivering excellent results really with almost a 100% increase in EBITDA. And this more than compensated for the softer development in the 2 other segments. On the following slide, we'll now dive a bit deeper into the details of that development. Looking at Friedrich Vorwerk for here on the left, the company grew revenue by a phenomenal 45% to EUR 170 million with an EBITDA margin of more than 21%. On the one hand, this was driven by smooth execution in general and a bit less strain on personnel resources, thanks to good hiring in the first 6 months so far, but also progress on a number of major projects, particularly A-Nord, but also BalWin or HDD [indiscernible], which have ramped up really nicely. The increase in output and hence, also the good resource utilization is what allowed for a very strong EBITDA margin increase by around 6 percentage points to 21% in Q2. Looking ahead, we have a well filled and good quality order book of EUR 1.1 billion at the end of Q2 but also a few new projects, both from the electricity as well as the gas sector, providing for tailwind as we move ahead. In the past couple of months alone, just to give you a few examples, Vorwerk announced 3 major order wins with overall volumes of several hundred million euros each. In the gas sector, Vorwerk will execute the SEL 3 pipeline, which is a 61-kilometer long pipeline with a triple-digit million euro volume in which Friedrich Vorwerk has a 50% stake. And that pipeline is the last stretch of a 250-kilometer project, which is one of the largest gas projects in Germany today. And Vorwerk already executed Section 1 and 2 of that project. So that is a follow-on project, which the company was able to acquire, thanks to its good performance on the previous sections. Just a month ago, Vorwerk announced the order win for ETL 182, which is an 86-kilometer long pipeline, which is particularly relevant as a backbone for increasing LNG volumes in Germany going forward. Also here, this is a triple-digit million euro project with a 50% Vorwerk share. But also on the electricity side, market dynamics remain equally strong. Friedrich Vorwerk , for example, recently won Section 3 of the SuedLink Electricity Highway, one of the largest energy infrastructure projects in Germany with a high share of HDD drilling works in this section due to sensitive ecological terrain, which shows you that especially when it comes to more complex parts such as HDD, the company is very well placed, thanks to its expertise and relevant capacity in this area. And lastly, the German government's debt finance EUR 500 billion investment -- infrastructure investment budget looks set to be a general tailwind for the industry, particularly also for the adjacent opportunities segment as well as hydrogen. Thanks to the good performance in the first half year and the current broader situation, the management of Friedrich Vorwerk recently increased its revenue guidance to EUR 610 million to EUR 650 million in revenues as well as a new EBITDA margin range of 17.5% to 18.5%. And looking at the H1 figures, I think the company is very well on track to achieve all these targets. Turning to DTS now on the right. The company continued its growth trajectory in Q2 with revenue growth of 21% to EUR 32 million and a good EBITDA margin of around 13%. Demand continued to recover in Q2 with good momentum pretty much across many customers, while the company continued to work on its proprietary software offering. And looking into the Q3, the current outlook confirms that positive dynamic so far. A real highlight and in a way, also a game changer for DTS was a major IT security solutions contract in the low to mid-double digits for IT security components and related maintenance services with a duration of 5 years. This is the largest single order in the company's history and a strong sign in my point of view that the company is increasingly qualifying for larger security projects and has the trust of its customers to execute on that scale. Looking ahead, we're optimistic on future growth for DTS this year and generally expect the focus on IT security, but also the fiscal spending plans of the German government to provide positive tailwinds for DTS going forward. So to wrap it up, Friedrich Vorwerk and DTS have really been the 2 growth engines this quarter, and we expect this strong dynamic to continue as we -- also in the quarters to come. Turning to the Technological Applications segment. The Q2 development has been softer at both Aumann and Delignit owing largely to the generally weaker automotive environment. Nevertheless, Aumann here on the left, managed to hold its adjusted EBITDA margin broadly stable at a rather high 10%, thanks to effective cost and project management, while revenues contracted by 38% year-on-year. And although that looks dramatic at first glance, it is more or less as expected with half year revenues of EUR 108 million, pretty much halfway of the company's guidance of EUR 210 million to EUR 230 million with an EBITDA margin range of 8% to 10%. So the H1 revenue and EBITDA margin are fairly in line with the guidance so far. Order intake was still down by more or less the same magnitude as in Q1 and stood at EUR 40 million. This reflects a temporarily weaker automotive environment, and we hope that the rise in EV registrations and a more stable macro environment will eventually improve the overall investment again. Positively, however, the diversification drive of the company seems to be paying off with the Next Automation segment delivering an order intake growth of 20% in the first half year. And thanks to the company's strong cash position of EUR 105 million, management is able to continue to expand into new end markets such as industrial automation, aviation and life sciences, not only organically, but potentially also through acquisitions. Turning to the Delignit on the right side. The environment has really not much changed actually since Q1 and remains challenging with LCV demand still mixed and OEM customers having volatile call-offs. As a result, revenues came in at EUR 16 million in the quarter, down 11% year-on-year, while the company has been very proactive in adjusting its cost base and steering through this environment. There currently are a few interesting opportunities outside the automotive industry, such as in the rail floor business as well as a number of M&A opportunities, which the company continues to look at. Nonetheless, the guidance for 2025 remains cautious at this stage with EUR 68 million in revenues with an EBITDA margin of 6% to 7%. And finally, the Consumer Goods segment. Here, we had a somewhat softer consumer environment and the ramp-up of converting capacity at Hanke, which has led to a rather modest start to the year. In Hanke, we had a temporarily lower productivity due to the installation of new converting machinery. And although this was expected, it slowed us down a bit in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, I think this is a very important step in increasing our converted capacity to 100% from the current level of around 80% and look set to provide Hanke with additional revenue and particularly profitability potential in the future. At CT Formpolster, demand remained seasonally weak over the summer months, but we expect it to improve again as we head into autumn. To summarize, we have really had a strong tailwind from the Service & Infrastructure segment with Friedrich Vorwerk and DTS, both driven by sound demand dynamics and recent significant order wins, which more than compensated for the more modest development of the rest of the portfolio. On the back of this, we continue to expect to reach our guidance of EUR 1 billion to EUR 1.1 billion in revenues and an EBITDA margin of 11% to 14% at the upper end of both ranges. And I think if you look at the H1 figures, which you've just seen, they pick this up quite nicely so far. Turning to our balance sheet. We've seen a seasonal increase in working capital again, some investments as well as additional share buybacks in the first months of the year. Nonetheless, our balance sheet remains, as always, rock solid with EUR 457 million of net cash at the group level, of which EUR 292 million are attributable to the holding MBB SE. And that obviously provides us as well as our subsidiaries with ample room to maneuver the current environment to pursue M&A and to focus on capital allocation in general. And that finally brings me to my favorite slide, actually, our sum of the parts valuation because MBB has hardly ever been as undervalued as today with our net cash at holding level, which you see here on the left side as well as our Vorwerk share alone already significantly exceeding MBB's current market cap of nearly around EUR 900 million. If you add the rest of our listed portfolio, you arrive at a value of around EUR 220 per share, which compared to our share price of EUR 167 today implies a discount of almost 25% on our liquid portfolio. And that does not even reflect the value of our private portfolio. First and foremost, DTS, but also Hanke, which together are worth several hundred million euros and basically come on top for 3. So I think this makes the MBB stock very attractive right now. And looking at our operating results, I'm optimistic and I hope that our share price has the potential to pick up with our underlying value. Well, I hope I was able to give you a brief walk through our Q2 figures and our portfolio, and I'm happy to answer your questions now.

Yes. Thank you very much for your presentation and the dive into your numbers, Mr. Teichler. [Operator Instructions] And as you may have been very clear, Mr. Teichler, there are no questions yet. And I will hold the room for another moment for Lukas Spang.

Yes. Mr. Teichler. Just one question concerning DTS. You mentioned this 5-year contract. So can you share some more details about this contract? And concerning your pipeline, is there more of these kind of projects inside the DTS pipeline? Or is this more a onetime shoot? Or how should we think about new contracts on the DTS side?

Yes, sure. So this DTS order win basically has a volume of around EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million. It's largely for third-party IT security products, but combined with DTS services and support. And I think if you compare the scale of that order with the EUR 100 million turnover we did last year, this shows you this is quite a significant order the company received. And I think it is a very good milestone also in addressing new clients and also existing clients, and showing them that the company is actually able to execute large projects like this. And so I think that this will be a nice lighthouse, let's say, project for the company in the future. And apart from that, as you know, there's always an underlying business, which basically is what you see today in the figures. So this project was not -- or this order was not included in the second quarter yet. So the performance you see now in the first half year with more than 20% growth is purely organic without any larger onetime effects. But at the same time, DTS is again working on also other projects, which hopefully come as we move along. So yes, it's on the one hand, a good, let's say, operating environment right now for DTS with its customer base and also addressing new customers. But on the other hand, we have this large flagship order, which came through now, which is, I think, something that helps the company to address these larger projects also in the future.

Okay. But is there more of them in the pipe?

The company, of course, is always involved in orders, also in larger orders. But, I mean, it's obviously always minor whether you win a contract or not. But yes, they are working also on other projects. But I think the major message is you have an underlying business development right now, which is now being augmented by this large order and hopefully more in the future.

And is this order, I don't know or don't remind if you had it on the presentation slide, was it a private customer or a public customer?

No, it's public sector.

Public sector. And can you repeat the number of the volume, please?

Well, it's between EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million.

Over the 5 years?

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Spang. And we have one more question in our chat box. MBB slipped below 50% of Aumann shares. Does MBB expect to increase its share to 50% again?

Well, as you know, Aumann had a share buyback offer in spring. And we, as MBB tendered our shares into that buyback offer. We were actually a bit surprised that part of the free float obviously didn't. And that eventually led to us selling some shares in Aumann. We are now, if you take out the treasury shares at more than 48%, again, so I think at the moment, that's where we are. Aumann hasn't deleted its treasury shares yet. But obviously, given the very low valuation and also the cash of the company, maybe they will, at some point, think about further share buybacks. But for us, that is the current situation.

Thank you, Mr. Teichler. And one more hand up from Michael Gielkens.

Just a short question or 2 questions from my side. On the one hand, can you maybe give a bit of an update on the margin profile of DTS, a bit more clarity perhaps because you have the own software business, which is, of course, a higher margin. And I believe that was ISL Sicherheitslösungen, which was one of the more important companies in that segment, which you just bought out the last part of the minority. So you now own -- DTS owns 100%. Can you give us a bit of a view on where the margin profile for DTS on an EBITDA level might be moving in the next, let's say, 3 to 5 years with this own software?

Sure. Well, so overall, we had a, I think, a decent margin now in Q2 of 13%. In Q1, I think it was 15%. So we're clearly in the double digits at DTS. And that margin obviously develops as we grow on the one hand. And on the other hand, it develops, as you correctly mentioned, by increasing the share of -- on services and particularly on software. And the -- let's say, the idea of that acquisition into ISL was to acquire a hub, which gave us an entry into the IT security software market and develop based on that platform, new products, which we can sell into our existing customer base and to generally improve our offering also for new customers. And we have -- I think our DTS has been quite successful over the past couple of years with that. Having taken over now the minority stake is, I think, logical and also a good further step in that development because we're now fully in control of that company and of its development activities. And so we expect this share of own software to organically grow, also grow disproportionately over at least a couple of years, and that will obviously increase our EBITDA margin profile. I would say that, I mean, the 15% is definitely achievable, but we might be moving also towards a higher level depending on how fast the software sales pick up. So yes, it's definitely a margin driver from the current level. And yes, we're obviously also looking at the M&A front for opportunities to add interesting pieces, which could accelerate that process.

Yes. And another question, Torben, regarding the liquid portfolio, primarily the equity securities that you hold there. If I recall correctly, there is a bit of a, let's say, a blue chip Northern U.S. bias in that portfolio. Will it be possible that we, as shareholders, maybe get a bit more clarity, let's say, top 5 positions or composition or industry breakdown or geographic breakdown just on a very high level, but to give us a bit more clarity what our economic exposures in that component of the balance sheet are.

Well, honestly, we don't really want to start discussing individual positions because then this calls might end up being discussions about Microsoft and the likes. But you can expect this portfolio to be, on the one hand, a large part of bonds, sovereign bonds, corporate bonds and on the other hand, a stock portfolio, which is in large part, a large-cap blue-chip portfolio with a certain U.S. focus. So anything you would expect from a conservative -- more conservative institutional investor. The aim is to invest this money responsibly and generate a return until we find further M&A opportunities or other ways to use the cash. And so that's our setup, which we've been operating for a number of years now and which has been fairly successful for our purposes so far. So it's definitely not a sort of activist or very niche or special focus portfolio, but really a, let's say, large-cap blue-chip portfolio.

Maybe a final question from my side. Thank you for answering, by the way. You've sold shares in all 3 of the listed portfolio companies, 2 in the open market and with Aumann, you participated in their buyback. You still have a very big cash position. Should we take that as a signal that you're preparing for more acquisitions or that you're ramping up discussions or is that a separate topic? And while we're on it, how are the M&A discussions going on both platform acquisitions and add-ons?

Sure, yes. Well, first of all, maybe for M&A. So we're always looking at M&A. And that has 2 parts. One is the add-on part at our portfolio companies. The other is stand-alone acquisitions. And we are, of course, looking at things in that space. We are always looking at interesting companies and hope to acquire them at good prices. But I don't think we definitely don't need to sell with the current cash position we have. We're definitely not dependent on selling any of our portfolio in order to finance such an acquisition. First of all, I don't think we'd spend EUR 300 million in one shot on any M&A deal. And even if we did that, we obviously have a capacity to leverage. So that is definitely not related. But to your M&A question, yes, we are looking at things and on both tracks, add-on as well as stand-alone. But as you know, it's a binary process. But taking the past couple of years, I think the environment has become more interesting than it has been, for example, like 2 or 3 years ago. So that's definitely the case, yes. And for our sale, for example, Vorwerk shares, basically, we were approached by several banks, which are pushing us to provide liquidity in the stock, largely due to strong U.S. interest, which has really picked up since Vorwerk entered the SDAX in April. And we have provided some part of that liquidity in order to develop the stock further and to develop the stock further, that simply requires attracting new investors to the stock. So that was the rationale behind it. Nevertheless, if you follow the presentation with our figures for Vorwerk very clearly is the fastest horse on the stable, so to say. And hence, we remain fully committed to the company and also our majority shareholding, which, by the way, has become dramatically bigger in absolute euro terms, thanks to the very strong share price performance.

Thank you, Mr. Gielkens. And as we have not received any further questions, I will hold the room for another moment if there are any left. And that doesn't seem to be the situation. We, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining, listening and the dynamic conversation. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Teichler, for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. We are happy to welcome MBB SE again at the Hamburg Investorentage in the end of August. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. I wish you all a lovely and wonderful remaining Thursday. And with this, I hand over again to Mr. Teichler for some final remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much for your interest in MBB, and I look forward to seeing and hearing from you soon. Thank you.