NORMA Group SE (NOEJ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Hello, from my side, a warm welcome to all the participants here. I'm here in my together with Annette Stieve, CFO to NORMA Group, and we'll take you, as usual, through the slides. Also, as usual, answering of questions will be pushed to the back end of the presentation. Let me start with a few general remarks. I guess it's obvious to everybody that NORMA is a company in a period of change. Our decision to sell the water business has been the first very decisive step to free up resources and enable future growth and, at the same time, crystallize value inherent in that water business. But that alone is not enough. There still is a lot of homework to be done in the company, in the remaining company, to ensure that the margins, the business setup, the cash flow of that remaining business meets our expectations. Above all, this means putting structure of our company to the test. This morning, we announced to our employees that we are starting a transformation. We will further elaborate on this one, the details for you, as shareholders, towards the back end of the presentation. But let's first start with the Q1 numbers and take it by walking through the various slides. First overview with the slide with the key figures. Here is net sales, totaled to EUR 284.2 million. That's obvious a decrease against previous year, mainly driven by unfavorable market conditions. The adjusted EBIT came down to EUR 10.3 million and reached a margin of 3.6% for the first 3 months of 2025. One-off effects had a major impact on those figures, combined with our, call it, inability to reduce the fixed cost to live with the lower revenue amount. CO2 emissions, one of the points where we are on track, it's looking good. We measure those at a rolling 12-month basis for actions we've taken to reduce CO2 emissions. The next slide takes us -- from EUR 37 million down to EUR 34 million, which is EUR 3 million less. The following slide shows the regional development -- here, we are sticking to the standard sequence of our slides. This is a little bit tricky now as we reallocated certain volume between industry, automotive and water business. Keep that one in mind. It's more obvious once we go to the following slide where we actually look at the business by industrial area. Nevertheless, as I said, we are sticking to the previous slide sequence. Let me talk about the Americas region first. Overall, I already mentioned, down by EUR 4 million. We have seen our industrial business slightly down; then the water business, in fact, is about EUR 3 million down. New mobility energy (sic) [ Mobility & New Energy ] has seen a decrease of about 5 million, down to EUR 131 million revenue. The next block takes us to EMEA, where we see overall a reduction from EUR 137 million down to EUR 120 million. Key factor there, as previously mentioned, is in the area of new mobility and new energy. APAC, on the other hand, has seen a smaller downward movement by EUR 3 million from EUR 37 million down to EUR 34 million. Key area there was, again, Mobility & New Energy car production, in general, we have to note that, on a global scale, is very soft, has been soft, and the uncertainty is causing further difficulties for the industry as a whole. Now we turn to a slide that shows everything by business unit. This is also important to see what the impact of the sale of the water business will be to our numbers. We are starting with the Industry Applications on the left-hand side. Sales there increased by 6.4%. Reallocation of business that previously was with MNE that we moved over. This was sales from construction, agricultural machinery as well as energy storage, we are now showing in industry that has a positive effect. Why did we reallocate those segments? In terms of their business style, in terms of the order behavior and also in terms of the production volume they are ordering from us, they behave more like Industry customers. They have more like the typical industrial demand, i.e., smaller volumes, a little bit different fluctuation of the business. Therefore, those customers are simply better allocated to Industry because it gives us a chance to service those customers with resources from the sales as well as engineering side that are simply better trained to deal with their demand. In the middle of the slide, you see the Water Management business. There, sales came down by 2.3%, and the reallocations moved EUR 1.6 million of business into that business. The very far right-hand side shows with EUR 1.7 million, the impact of the Teco acquisition in the first quarter. Next is Mobility & New Energy, our biggest segment in terms of sales with EUR 180.6 million back in Q1 2024. There, we've seen a reallocation of EUR 11.3 million in order to focus the sales team more on the really key automotive customers. Volume and mix down by EUR 1.6 million. Currency, a little bit helpful with EUR 1.2 million. As mentioned before, automotive industry has been hit very hard in the first quarter of the year. We also expect that the second quarter for automotive business will remain more tricky. And later on, we'll actually allude to the fact that we see the second half of the business year doing better than the first half. With this, I hand over to Annette Stieve, who will take you through the financials of Q1 2025.

Many thanks, Mark. Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome also from my side. Let's start with an overview on the development of our P&L. Our material cost ratio improved by 180 basis points due to cost reductions in purchasing and also lower purchase prices. Our gross profit ratio was up by 30 bps, mainly resulting from lower material costs and a reduction in inventories of finished goods and work in progress of EUR 1.5 million. In Q1 '24, we had an inventory increase by EUR 3.2 million. On the other hand, personnel expense ratio was up by 420 bps. This includes expenses in connection with the premature departure of our former CEO. The other expenses decreased in total. These costs include temporary workforces, consulting and marketing as well as IT and telecommunication expenses. In Q1, we had additional one-off costs for the rollout of a new ERP system in Germany, mainly for temp workforces, special freight and IT consultancy. The system is now up and running. The good news is, however, that even with these additional costs, the expense ratio remained stable in relation to sales. Adjusted EBITDA as well as adjusted EBIT were primarily impacted by the decline in sales and increase in personnel expenses and the one-off costs in the first quarter. Let's have a look to our adjusted EBIT margin per region. In EMEA, adjusted EBIT margin came to minus 1%. The negative development was caused not only by the decline in sales due to the market environment, but also by temporary additional expenses. These additional expenses originated in the already mentioned rollout of an ERP system here in Maintal at the beginning of the year. They mainly comprise costs for special freight and extra shifts as well as for IT and consulting services. The EBIT margin was also negatively impacted by the inflexibility in personnel costs due to lower sales. As a result, personnel costs could not be fully adjusted to the revenue level in the first quarter of '25. The adjusted EBIT margin in the Americas region was at 9.6%. It was negatively impacted by temporary inefficiencies and personnel structures, meaning that personnel expenses increased disproportionately compared to the weak sales. In contrast, slightly lower costs for regular freight supported the margin in the Americas. The good news here is that after the weak start in January and February, March is already looking more friendly in terms of sales and margin. Adjusted EBIT margin in APAC amounted to 5.5%. The main reason for the decrease was increased personnel costs due to existing inflexibilities in personnel structures in connection with lower sales. At the next slide, we show our operational adjustment in the P&L. This year, they are expected to include around EUR 15 million from PPA effects. In addition, we assume around EUR 20 million associated transaction costs in connection with the sale of the Water Management business. On top, additional adjustments from one-offs for transformation costs are to be expected. One important remark from my side. We have not adjusted for any further one-off costs in Q1, for example, severances or something like this. Let's have a look on our EPS on the next slide. Adjusted earnings per share, adjusted earnings in the current period were negative and amounted to minus EUR 0.3 million. This development is due to the following circumstances. On the one hand, they were caused by the significantly lower adjusted EBIT as a result of lower sales in the first quarter of the year. On the other hand, it resulted from a high tax rate in the current quarter, which is due to a noticeably lower adjusted pretax profit in relation to the actual tax expense. All in all, the main reason for that is the nonrecognition of deferred tax assets in the EMEA region. This resulted in a negative adjusted earnings per share of minus EUR 0.01 for the first quarter. Let's move over to the balance sheet figures. Our net debt slightly increased by 2.6% against the end of '24. Leverage was stable at 2.4x adjusted EBITDA compared to 2.4x in Q1 '24 and up from 2.1x at the end of the full year '24. The total equity level is at EUR 698 million. Equity ratio further increased by 230 basis points to 49.3% against 47% at the end of March last year. On our next slide, we will discuss our net operating cash flow. Overall, our net operating cash flow has turned from negative to positive compared to the first quarter of '24. And on top, our net operating cash flow significantly improved compared to previous year, mainly due to an improved trade working capital. The positive trade working capital effect is based primarily on measures from our Step Up program. In addition, prudent investment behavior at the beginning of the year slightly supported the net operating cash flow development in Q1 '25. With this positive news, please let me hand back over you again to Mark.

Yes. Thanks a lot, Annette, for those extra insights on the numbers. It's obvious, the first quarter was not satisfying for us as a group. There are many explanations in terms of external effects, also one-offs internally, which, at the end of the day, are stories to explain what has happened, but not a reason to continue in that level going forward. For the time being, we, as a company and as an Executive Board of the company, stick to the full year forecast we announced back in March 7th of May. Our data shows quite clearly that the second half of the year will be better than the first half of the year. NORMA will focus on maintaining and expanding the profitability going forward. All businesses have to be strategically aligned accordingly. And amongst other things, we have to ensure that we increase the operational efficiency measures, for example, through the growth and efficiency program, Step Up, as well as other measures we'll be talking about as we move on. This will mean, for us as a group, continuously improving the overall setup, being very careful with spending to ensure that we actually come out with better results as we move forward. On the remaining slides, I will give you an overview of the Step Up program as well as our transformational measures we are taking going forward. Let's first look at some interesting improvements within the overall setup of the company. Here, an example from our plant in Michigan, St. Clair, which produces quick connectors. Interesting projects the team has developed there by analyzing the standard work in the molding process. Opportunities to reduce waste were identified by the team. The team designed and implemented an automation solution within the production cell that replaces all of the operator tasks, including like parts handling, packaging, counting, granular work as well as label printing. As a result, the teamwork could save 6 operators for those jobs, provide them new jobs and deploy them clearly in, what I would call, higher qualified positions than packing and the like. This is a great example of how we can, with constant work, improve the daily setup of the company. Another example more from the sales side, growth initiatives there, the sales team went out and sought, consulted various new customers. An interesting one, as mentioned here, is this one, a coffee machine for large industrial use, i.e., not the small machine one, but this is really a more commercial machine with an interesting story. This customer, a maker of coffee machines located in the U.K., had an issue with leakage problem in his machine. We developed a very customized NORMA V-Band connection to help him there. This product of ours totally took care of any leakage in the machine, and we will now ship like 20,000 clamps a year to him for that specific purpose. All in all, not a very strong revenue story, but a typical example of how NORMA engineers, NORMA application engineers and sales team help customers to design, to produce a better product. This door-opener will allow us to sell more products to that customer and therefore, underlying that, if one provides a great product, it's easier to sell a second product to that customer. This slide reinforces the measures that further growth and efficiency is needed in order to improve NORMA Group's midterm margin. And those will take us as we move forward to the lower double-digit level. In order to achieve that, a number of actions are required. Here, we have the interim slide on the transformation. And it's important to recognize it is a move forward to improve the economic setup of the company. I mean what is a quick assessment of the current situation? Since like 2020, the overall economic and geopolitical environment changed. A couple of root causes there: coronavirus; Russian war in the Ukraine; global overall customs conflicts with tariff and non-tariff burdens; hiccups being built up left and right, making it harder to do international business; sluggish market ramp-ups for electric vehicles, specifically in Europe and the U.S. China is slightly different. Electric vehicles do there much better. In fact, in Shanghai, we recently noticed that like 1 out of -- 6 out of 10 vehicles are electric vehicles in that city of Shanghai. In Europe, in the U.S., we are still far away from that one. Yes, to adapt to this new normal and for the company to come out stronger, we need to organize us more efficiently, more effectively in order to remain competitive and grow profitably again. Only if we are financially strong will we be able to seize opportunities that the market offers, have the funds to invest in innovation and to successfully transform the company. To achieve our target vision of becoming an industrial powerhouse in the area of our products, we need to identify duplicate structures in our organization. We need to take out waste in the overall administration and handling of the companies and also cut our cost structures to today's reality, which is a sharper business mindset of the overall business life we are living in and a more volatile business we need to be prepared for. If we move the slide forward to the NORMA Group's target vision, I'm talking to the right-hand side of this slide. The target vision is we are pursuing actions, measures, necessary to create NORMA -- to transform NORMA into a focused supplier of connection technology for industrial as well as mobility customers or, as we like to call it, industrial powerhouse. We will differentiate us as an innovative, high-quality driven solution provider, one that customers like to come back to and give us their business in the years to come. In the new setup, we will see a lean organization under 2 sales segments: industry Applications and Mobility & New Energy. As a result of our transformation, the group should be able to return to lower double-digit adjusted EBIT margins. The entire transformation is to be expected fully implemented in 2028. Let me now share with you a couple of the elements of this transformation. We are currently developing a comprehensive transformation list of actions that will consist of 3 building blocks. First, footprint. We will optimize our global manufacturing footprint over the coming years. Over the past decade, we have seen NORMA expanding its manufacturing locations by several acquisitions, often with very small plants that are clearly below 50 employees and alike. This is not very efficient. This has led to a footprint which is rather fragmented and not streamlined according to the current market needs. We will thus optimize our footprint by integrating smaller production facilities into larger locations and thereby taking advantage of economies of scale in many aspects of the plant's P&L. I will give you a first example how we proceed at the next slide. The second building block in this transformation is administration. We will have to increase the efficiency of our organization in the administrative areas. As part of this measure, we will eliminate double functions in the new setup manufacturing site, in the now fully loaded manufacturing site, streamline the organization under the 2 sales segments, but also shifting parts of the admin capacities, of the admin work into shared service centers in best cost countries. This overall should help us to get to a situation of an economically more affordable overhead cost structure at NORMA. In terms of OpEx, we will work to optimize our spending in those areas, which is, a, helped by less plants; but b, also helped by having fewer focused employees working on various matters. This OpEx saving will affect spendings in all areas like consulting, marketing, IT, professional service, office supplies as well as insurance. Insurance, by the way, will also be helped by reducing the number of sites and also disposing of the water business. We are fully aware that you require far more information than this in order to fully evaluate the impact. And of course, we will provide this information as time moves on. However, for the time being, we need to stick to the communication links that force us to also talk to the social partners, to the employees in order to communicate the plans to them as well. Against this background, we will finalize the analysis and report more details with the Q2 numbers or H1 numbers on August 12. To close this off with the first step of change that is happening at NORMA. We are reducing the number of plants in China. Currently, we have 4 plants in China. We will be relocating the work of the smaller plant in Wuxi that has come to us through an M&A transaction and relocated to a nearby larger site in Changzhou. That will allow us to save on management capacities, IT capacities, local annual close capacities, et cetera. One-off cost of about EUR 1.7 million will hit us for that relocation. But going forward, this will provide a payback within about 3 years. Also note that the current building in Wuxi is, in fact, owned by us and the depreciation will, for the time being, remain in our books. This project can be seen as a blueprint for what we are doing with the manufacturing setup. It is not about closing a plant, but more about merging a smaller plant into a larger plant and therefore, benefiting from economies of scale in manufacturing, but also in local administration and related expense. Concluding, let me please give you an overview on the next step of our transformation in the last slide of this presentation. Here are 3 blocks. It starts off at the bottom with the finalization of the analysis. That is key to, in fact, do the next planning steps. In parallel, we have started to work on the transformation details in terms of employee efficiency, in terms of employee reallocation, reallocation of work and also reallocation between the locations. Cost and benefits from these measures to be decided upon will be duly calculated in the weeks to come in order to ensure it is not only said, but we can document that the numbers are right and to create confidence amongst our shareholders that those actions will happen. As mentioned before, we will communicate the details with our August 12 call around the H1 numbers. With this, I close the overall session, and we open the lines for questions.

The first question comes from Nikita Lal of Deutsche Bank.

I have 3, if I may. So the first one is, on your current development, so how is Q2 evolving so far for you? Could you please comment about the current environment and markets in each SBU, especially with regards to the tariff situation? And my second question then on tariffs is how it evolves in March and April, and is there a run rate we could assume if tariffs do not change over the course of the year? And my final question is on your transformation program. You indicated that it should be fully implemented by 2028. Can we expect a double-digit margin by 2028 then? Because until now, we were just talking about midterm targets.

Nikita, thank you for this question, for sure. So Q2, how is it evolving? To be honest, the month is not still really dry, we'll have to see. But all in all, as we saw already, March was already much better than January and February. And what I currently see from April is financial guys are never euphoric, but it looks reasonably good, I would say. So that is what we expected. In particular, we had also a dip in our Water Management. The year started slow. That was mostly due to weather patterns, very cold weather patterns in the States. And we had enough orders, but at the end, nobody was able to bring that under the earth neither us nor the competitors. So what I see there is much more promising and the run rate shows that we are on a good track. Maybe that is what I can say. All in all, in terms of automotive business, we were all prepared that this will be a bumpy year. Nobody thought that tariffs would come in this different varieties, I would say. Anyhow, we are touched by a lot of them. Our Q1 figures are nearly not touched because the main bulk developed later. But at the end, we will pass that over to our customers. We are, with each and every customer, in negotiation. We already made it more or less for Water Management. And well, for MNE, that is never that easy because you have to touch each and every contract. But most of them, well, they have an understanding for that. And currently, the tariff sky is lighting up again. There are no redundancies anymore. So let's see what comes. To your question what I expect until the end of the year, to be honest, I can't say it because this has nothing to do with any economical logic. These are ideas which are reversed after a certain time. So we follow that up in detail. We take that serious. But how this spiral is going up or down, I can't answer for the moment.

To pick up on that one, I mean, it's not us doing the tariffs. Therefore, it's hard to ask us on how they will come out. But the agreements with the customers is that we pass on the tariffs. Technically, mathematically, as we pass on those costs to the customers, the margin, in a smaller percentage, simply comes down because we add cost to the revenue. And therefore, there's a small margin compression effect with customers in the automotive area. Industrial business, a business where we want to do more, in many instances, has a slightly different customer supplier relationship. It makes it a little bit easier to pass on different elements of the tariff increases in a flat increase rather than we do it in automotive, where we need to document every cent of tariff spend towards the customer and then get the adjustment. Best example for this easier passing on is, in fact, our water business, where as of May 19, we will implement a 5% price increase across the board for all retail customer-derived price list. This includes overall cost increases, but also tariff-related increases we have to do on individual products. Assuming this covers your second question, let me move to your third question in terms of our transformation program. It runs till '28. It should be finished in '28. So if the last action hits us in December '28, the new margin, the double-digit margins will realistically appear in the early part of 2029. But on the way to that, we will see various improvements as time moves on driven by larger, more visible actions like other plant, I'm not using the word closures, but other mergers of plants that give us a better loading, a more efficient manufacturing setup than today.

So maybe there, even me, I'm a little bit more optimistic, not too much. But as we are targeting clearly with this program, not at 10.0, I hope that already in '28, we have the double digit. So finally, as we are targeting on a good double-digit margin at 13%-plus, 14%-plus, we should be on that level. But the answer is yes, double digit is key, and it's a good double digit because we are on a good transition path for MNE, where we still have things to do, but for IA, which is also a very good margin, we are really confident.

Hope this takes care of your question.

The next question is from Marc-René Tonn of Warburg Research.

First one would also be on the transformation program and basically 2 parts. First would be, admitted and appreciating that you will give more details in August, but can you already give us some detail when you would expect a net positive impact from the transformation? Is it something which may already happen in 2026 with the cost associated with the programs and the benefits? Or is it something we should more look to be achieved in 2027? And related to the transformation program, I think when you launched Step Up, the program was finalized before the former CEO joined the company. Do you expect -- with this transformation program now being launched, is there already someone as a CEO you have in mind, you're already talking to and who is part of developing the program? Or would a future CEO then be basically executing the program you are currently working on? Whether there's any details you could give us on that, that would clearly be helpful. The second question would be a bit more general regarding margin developments, particularly in Mobility & New Energy. And considering that you have different technologies, basically, for the old ICE business, probably leaning a bit more to metals and metal forming and everything which has to do with e-mobility a bit more, going to injection molding, do you see any difficulties here? How do you see this developing with the volatility, which is in the market concerning the e-mobility pickup or customers kind of trying to limit you on price increases for metal products in exchange for giving you new contracts for injection molding products? Any update on that would be helpful. And the third question, can you give us any more color on the Water Management disposal process, perhaps some update regarding the time line, which you would expect? How we should look at this for the quarters ahead? Or just some general statement on how satisfied you are with, I would say, the stream of offers coming in.

So many thanks, Marc-René. So maybe I'll start and then I pass also over to Mr. Wilhelms. So first of all, our transformation project. So there, I really ask for patience at the end. I think Mark explained a lot already in his explanation, but we will really detail that with our next announcement at the H1. But now to give you any kind of estimate what is not fully aligned with all the others, that is not a prudent work. So we will give you and provide more detail and more substance about that with H1. This we promise. But please, I ask you for understanding that we are not going now on estimates and guesses and whatever because that is all dependent on each other. Towards the CEO search, I hand over to Mark Wilhelms.

Yes. Thank you. As mentioned before, we, as a company or as a Supervisory Board, my colleagues have engaged a very reputable headhunter to help us select the right fit there. As that person is not yet identified, that person has not been involved in developing this plan. Having said that, this plan to me is so obvious that there can hardly be a disagreement of a new person coming into the company and saying he or she does not want to improve the margins. The need to more efficiently set up the company is very obvious. The Q1 numbers have shown that we need to get our act together and do a couple of things quickly. For example, like the China plant rationalization, it's something that the manufacturing team noticed, accepted, accepted also from our sales team that new orders, better fill of that Wuxi plant is not on the horizon, and therefore, they reacted quickly. Why is that not happening overnight in the automotive business? You always need to have the agreement of the customer for the new manufacturing location, any potential changes to the process, et cetera. And therefore, it takes a bit of time. Manufacturing things, the relocation will be finished by August. I have personally seen the vacant space where we will install those machines at a plant when I was in China like 2 weeks ago. So the space is there. The power lines are right now under construction. Now if the plant -- if the machines are relocated by August, by the time the plant, the legal entity is fully closed, it will be end of the calendar year. Then you asked about margin development, ICE business versus new electric vehicles. As a company, we are taking a very hard stance to be selective in the business we take. We are doing our initial calculations always with a 10% EBIT margin as a goal for the team. We work hard to stick to that one. That should help us going forward. While NORMA has a lot of expertise in metalworking, we also do have good expertise in plastic, plastic injection parts earlier on, I showed an example of this St. Clair plant in Michigan, which is the Americas plant for quick connectors. Good improvements are happening there that underline that we can improve profitability in plastic injection products, in automotive products, in electric vehicle products as well. That should give you comfort that we will maintain a good balance of margins between ICE and electric, between metal and plastic injection products, as well as between new mobility, which, in essence, is automotive products, and industrial products. To come to your third question, water disposal time line, there is no change to the time line that we've previously announced. The process is moving along. We will soon see that we will approach the various bidders with more information to allow them to work on their proposals. Before summer break, that process should be reasonably well stabilized so that we, by then, have a signed deal. Hopefully, we should be there. And our current goal is to have everything squared away towards back end of this calendar year. Now you know that summer break is at very different points in the year in various countries of the world. Do not push me to the Asian summer break, which is the first one to start, in fact. Hope this answers your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Pal Skirta of Bankhaus Metzler.

I have two questions left, on your working capital and material cost ratio, if I may. My question on trade working capital. If I look at your slides, you've mentioned a positive trade working capital effect on your cash flow in the first quarter. And I was wondering if you maybe could give us a hint about how sustainable is this going forward. And the question I have on material cost ratio, which also significantly improved in the first quarter, is if maybe you can give us some main drivers of this improvement. What I'm trying to understand is if this was more just a short-term pricing relief we saw in the first quarter, or should we see this improvement in material cost ratio as a sustainable one for the upcoming quarters?

Well, many thanks, Pal. So in terms of trade working capital, how sustainable this is, we expect that's pretty sustainable. On the one hand, we improved that continuously with our Step Up measures. On the other hand, we have to keep in mind that we had higher inventories onboard by the end of the year because we knew we needed safety stocks. We knew that we have to change our ERP system. Therefore, we built some safety stocks, and therefore, we had higher trade working capital than usual. So therefore, I expect that this improvement can be really carried over. On the other hand, material costs, well, our major material costs for the time being, that looks all pretty well. These things are paying in our pockets. So that's at the end, logistic costs, whatever. Energy is also on a good slope. I would say that, if we can speak about the tailwind, that might be the tailwind. The question is how these prices might develop under the recognition of any kind of tariff. That is pretty hard because there, you always have to go via the full supply chain.

The next question is from Peter Rothenaicher of Baader Bank.

One question on this ERP system topic. So could you quantify what was the negative earnings impact approximately in the first quarter? And are these issues with the ERP introduction done? And are there further introductions to come up, which might also result in some additional burdens?

I could not hear you pretty well, but I'll try my best. And otherwise, I motivate you to ask further. So what was the issue? The issue was -- starting with the good news first. The problems are solved. We are on a good way. But anyhow, Maintal is in the slope of that is not a new system or anything. NORMA Group identified already 5 years ago, roughly, we introduced a core model of ERP to the group. This group system has been rolled out to more than 20 factories, and Maintal is one of the latest. Maintal is one of the most complex and comes from a very, very exotic, I would say, old system. So therefore, our major problems there were in terms of logistics, more or less, order management. Things have been solved now. We had to invest there, more money in these different things, but things are done. We created a little backlog, but also that is now improving. So I would say we are in the situation that these costs will vanish and will not occur anymore in Q1, in Q2. But finally, we have to pay them for Q1. That's clear. And the major points there, for sure, when you have points like this, you invest in special freight. And special freight once you paid it, it's paid, so you don't get it back.

So let me add to that one, what Annette Stieve said, it's not a new system. It's a system that has been launched in a number of other plants. It's Microsoft D365. It's a recognized ERP system, not too common in Europe, but globally still a very common system. And as we are moving from an extremely diverse ERP setup a couple of years back to a common setup, we are also able to generate more efficiencies from having the same ERP system versus having different systems. Having said that, a launch of a system that is different for the end user, for the hourly workers is always a little bit, call it, troublesome, more work than one would like to have. But again, as we are using a common system now in virtually all plants, it is much easier to generate efficiencies throughout the organization and get better as an overall company.

Maintal was the last very big company. We have a few very, very small ones, but that was the last significant one. And I assume the cost, I estimate them to -- that is a lower single-digit million cost, so something around EUR 2 million, EUR 3 million.

Okay. And my second question is on the Water Management disposal. You mentioned you are on track with these negotiations, et cetera. Do you think has there anything changed with the new overall geopolitical tariff situation regarding the potential selling price you might be able to recognize? Or are the statements you made end of last year still valid with perhaps potential selling price of more than EUR 800 million?

Let me just be clear on one thing. You said negotiations. We are not in negotiations with a single bidder. So that's clear. We are offering the company through a full process, a process that is being started. So do not think there are specific negotiations. Overall, what we need to recognize, the business is a good U.S. business with pretty low impact from the whole tariff China thing. It is benefiting from more extreme weather, an issue that will not go away pretty soon. Rainstorm, dry days make it, specifically in areas like California, Arizona, difficult to maintain your garden. So those business drivers will remain unchanged. What we, however, do need to keep in mind, the euro amount we get from a potential buyer may change depending on the FX rates that are prevailing on the day he transfers the money. We have all seen that the dollar got a bit softer over the last couple of months. Hard to tell where that actually pans out in the next 6 months.

So to be honest, for sure, things like this, we also discussed the project. Our investment banker, Goldman Sachs, I would say, is one of the best in the world. We also discuss these questions. But the feedback we get from the market there is that NDS is somehow a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that is pretty much unaffected by these short-term things. So at the end, we, by ourselves, by the way, search since 2014 for a second NDS, and we have never found one. So therefore, I think the big potential companies, who have big interests there, know what they get there. Therefore, we are very confident, and I don't see a significant impact.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for participating and for your questions. As there are no more questions, I am closing the Q&A session now and handing the floor back over to the host.

Yes. Thanks a lot for your interest in NORMA, your interest in how this company is evolving going forward. And as mentioned, with the Q2 numbers or H1 numbers mid-August, you will hear more details about the transformation process. Goodbye.