SAF-Holland SE (SFQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SAF-Holland SE Q3 2025 Results. Today's presenters are CEO, Alexander Geis; and CFO, Frank Lorenz-Dietz. The presentation slides are available on the SAF-Holland Corporate website. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference call will be recorded and published on the corporate website of SAF-Holland SE. Everything spoken through un-muted microphone will be processed during the online meeting and published on the website of SAF-Holland SE. [Operator Instructions] The Q&A session is exclusively for institutional investors and analysts. All other participants of the conference call are kindly asked to contact the Investor Relations team directly if they have any questions. Mr. Geis, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our conference call on our Q3 '25 results. Let me begin with the Q3 '25 financial highlights on Page 3, please. The past quarter was again characterized by a challenging market environment, which SAF-Holland mastered well, thanks to its resilient business model and operational discipline. In numbers, group sales declined organically by 2.5% and ultimately reached EUR 417.2 million, which is around 5% below the prior year. Despite softer demand from OE customers and additional tariff-related expenses, we were able to maintain a solid profitability of 9.1% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.2%. And in addition, the company generated a solid operating free cash flow of plus EUR 38.5 million. That's a clear improvement compared to the second quarter. Leverage remained stable at 2.4x due to the cash outflow for the dividend payment, M&A activities and additional lease liabilities for our new Texas plant in Rowlett. Given the continued softness of the North American truck market and muted demand from Southeast Asian customers with U.S.-based end clients, we have adjusted our full year '25 sales outlook accordingly. Now let me continue with the group sales and adjusted EBIT development on Page 4, please. You can see that group sales in the third quarter of '25 continued to reflect the lower demand in the global CV markets. In particular, the North American OE markets as well as demand from the Southeast Asian customers, for instance, in Thailand and Vietnam were affected by the U.S. tariff policy. As a result, OE sales declined by 6.9% year-over-year, leading to an organic sales decline of 2.5% in Q3. And in addition, FX effects weighed on top line performance by 3.3 percentage points, while Assali Stefen provided a low single-digit euro million contribution to group sales. Overall, group sales declined by 5.2% compared to the prior year. And in the first 9 months of ' 25, group sales were 9.9% below the previous year's level with organic sales down 9.7% year-over-year. Between July and September, adjusted EBIT was again affected by a net effect of tariff-related costs in the low single-digit million euro range, which we expect to largely offset through further price measures over the next months. In addition, profitability was impacted by a moderately higher depreciation ratio. Consequently, adjusted EBIT declined by 12% year-over-year, resulting in a 9.1% adjusted EBIT margin. For the first 9 months of this year, adjusted EBIT totaled EUR 121.1 million, corresponding to a solid margin of 9.3%, while the adjusted EBITDA margin remained nearly on the prior year level of 13.1%. So now moving to the sales split by region and customer group on Page 5, please. You can see here that the overall distribution of group sales by region and customer segment continued to reflect investment hesitation among truck and trailer customers, particularly in North America, India and Asia. In this context, the EMEA region performed quite well, accounting for around 52% of group sales, supported by the acquisition-related contribution of Assali Stefen. The Americas region represented 37.1% of total sales, while the APAC share declined to 10.9%, mainly due to the softer demand of Asian trailer manufacturers with end customers in the U.S. as well as a weaker mining business. Looking at the split by customer segment, you can see that OE sales declined by 6.9% year-over-year to EUR 246.7 million, driven by the overall weakness of the CV market. Within this, the trailer OE segment accounted for 48.1% of third quarter sales, up by 1 percentage point due to the stronger performance in EMEA. The truck OE segment with a strong exposure to the Americas, was more impacted by the uncertainties related to the U.S. trade policy. In contrast, the aftermarket business once again proved resilience, declining by only 2.5% to now EUR 170.5 million and underlines the continued robustness and stabilizing nature of our aftermarket operations. As a result, the aftermarket business contributed 40.9% of group sales in the third quarter of this year. So speaking about -- having spoken about the different regions and the summary, we come now to the single regions and starting with EMEA on Page 6, please. Here, you can see that the top line development in the EMEA region showed a return to positive growth, supported by slightly improving demand from both trailer and truck customers in recent months. And as a result, sales increased organically by 5.6% in Q3. The aftermarket business remained broadly stable compared to the prior year, continuing to provide a solid foundation for the region. In addition, Assali Stefen, as said before, contributed a low single-digit euro million amount to sales in the third quarter, following its first-time consolidation at the end of July '24. For the first 9 months of '25, total sales in EMEA were 3.1% below the prior year's level, reflecting an organic decline of 7%. Looking ahead, while the recent positive order momentum is not expected to continue at the same pace, current volumes remain sufficient to ensure efficient capacity utilization. On the earnings side, adjusted EBIT grew to 8.2% in Q3, mainly driven by better fixed cost absorption and higher utilization levels. And as a result, profitability for the first 9 months of this year stood at 7.8%, including a onetime FX valuation effect from Q1. Moving to Americas on the next page, please. Here, in addition to the cyclical downturn in the North American CV markets, demand for both trucks and trailer remained subdued, primarily due to the ongoing uncertainties surrounding the U.S. trade policy. In contrast, the aftermarket business once again demonstrated its robustness and resilience. And as a result, organic sales in the third quarter declined by 7.9% year-over-year, while negative currency effects further reduced sales by around 5.7%. Overall, third quarter sales in the Americas were 13.6% below the previous year, contributing to a 14.4% decline over the first 9 months of '25. In addition to the lower top line, earnings were a little bit impacted by additional procurement-related costs linked to the U.S. tariff situation amounting to a net effect of a low single-digit euro million figure. While initial compensating effects from price adjustments were already visible, the regional teams are now working for further -- to further mitigate the impact of the Section 232 tariffs, which came into effect at the end of August. Consequently, adjusted EBIT decreased by 22.2% year-over-year, resulting in a still double-digit adjusted EBIT margin of 10%. And looking ahead, we expect that the tariff-related cost burden on the procurement side to be largely compensated, among other measures through pricing and efficiency measures in the coming months. So for the first 9 months of '25, adjusted EBIT totaled EUR 53.1 million, which equals to a margin of 10.6%. So last but not least, coming to APAC now. And here, I can say that the market environment in APAC remained uneven and overall subdued, particularly in those segments that are strategically important to us. While the Indian domestic trailer market achieved moderate growth despite the usual slowdown during the monsoon season, unfortunately, customers in Vietnam and Thailand with end users in the U.S. continue to show purchasing restraints due to the uncertainty surrounding the U.S. trade policy. As a result, sales in the third quarter of this year amounted to EUR 45.5 million, representing a 21.5% year-over-year decline, which equals an organic decrease of 13.9%. And also here, in addition, negative foreign exchange effects reduced sales by a further 7.6% year-over-year. On the earnings side, the decline in profitability was mainly due to the lower top line, particularly in higher-margin markets. Nevertheless, despite continued market softness and tariff-related uncertainties, we maintained a solid adjusted EBIT margin of 10.8%, making the 11th consecutive quarter with a double-digit profitability. So overall, we closed the first 9 months of '25 with a robust adjusted EBIT margin of 11%. And having said this, I hand over to Frank for the key financials.

Okay. Thank you, Alex, and hello to everybody on the line. As usual, let me start with a short overview on the EBIT to adjusted EBIT reconciliation for the group on Page 10. Our reported EBIT for the third quarter of 2025 declined by 21.7% to EUR 28.9 million, mainly reflecting a lower top line as well as some additional tariff-related expenses. Total adjustments for restructuring and transaction costs amounted to EUR 3.8 million in Q3, primarily related to the integration expenses from recent acquisitions and expenses for the restructuring of production and logistic processes in North America and EMEA. These measures include, among other things, expenses for the footprint optimization in North America. In this context, we are relocating part of our production from Dumas to the new plant in Rowlett, Texas. In addition, depreciation and amortization from purchase price allocations were, as usual, adjusted accordingly and totaled to EUR 5.4 million. As a result, we achieved an adjusted EBIT margin of 9.1% for the third quarter, while the adjusted EBITDA margin for Q3 remained robust at 13.2%, nearly reaching the prior year level. Moving on to Page 11, where you see the bridge from EBIT to basic earnings per share. As mentioned earlier, EBIT amounted to EUR 28.9 million for the third quarter of '25. By implementing targeted measures to reduce FX valuation effects, mainly from intercompany financing and benefiting from a favorable euro-U.S. dollar exchange rate, we were able to avoid any material valuation impacts in Q3. In addition, besides the improvement of the EURIBOR versus prior year, we further optimized our financing structure, leading in total to a 17% reduction of interest expenses compared to the prior year. As a result, the finance result, which had been significantly burdened by FX effects last year, improved to around EUR 8 million in Q3 2025. Income taxes also declined significantly, partly because the prior year quarter was negatively impacted by catch-up effects from previous periods. As a result, the overall tax rate stood at 33.9% for Q3 and 35.8% for the first 9 months of 2025. Overall, reported EPS improved by 49.4% to EUR 0.31 in Q3, reflecting these positive financial developments despite the weaker top line. Using the new calculation method for the distribution relevant profit for the period, this would correspond to a distribution relevant EPS of [ EUR 1.07 ] for the first 9 months of 2025. Moving to Page 12, where you see the development of the equity ratio. Compared to year-end 2025 -- 2024, equity decreased by 9.5%, respectively, EUR 49.9 million to EUR 477.2 million, mainly due to the dividend payment of around EUR 39 million as well as negative valuation effects amounting to around EUR 37 million. Since the balance sheet in total increased by 3.9%, the equity ratio declined to 26.9%. Turning to Page 13. I would like to speak about net working capital development. Net working capital at the end of September 2025 was influenced by several factors. As the OE business remains subdued, the aftermarket business, which generally required higher inventory levels continued to be relatively strong. In addition, we adjusted our net working capital management proactively as a precautionary measure in light of the ongoing trade policy uncertainties, and we built some additional stock buffer related to the relocation of production from -- in the U.S. from Dumas to the Rowlett plant in Texas. As a result, net working capital increased by 11.2% to EUR 297.3 million compared to the end of December and included factoring of EUR 34.8 million. Moreover, it also reflects the usual seasonality in trade payables and trade receivables. Consequently, the net working capital ratio stood at 18.7% of sales, also reflecting the overall lower last 12 months top line development. By year-end, we expect to return to our target corridor of 16% to 18%. And now let me address the cash flow development in Page 14. After generating net cash flow from operating activities of EUR 30.5 million in the first half of the year, we achieved an additional EUR 48.8 million in the first quarter. For the first 9 months of 2025, this results in a total of EUR 79.3 million. Compared to prior year, this development was primarily driven by lower EBITDA and a higher net working capital level, reflecting the current market environment, as explained before. However, this impact was partly offset by lower tax payments. Investments in property, plant and equipment and intangible assets totaled EUR 31.7 million, representing 2.5% of group sales. As in the first half of '25, these investments focused on further automation and modernization of production processes, preparations for the new plant in Rowlett, Texas and capacity expansions for air disc brake and localization of fifth wheel production at Duzce in Turkiye. Moving on to an overview of the leverage development on Page 15. Despite the refinancing measures implemented in recent months, the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio remained unchanged at 2.4x at the end of September compared with the end of June. The increase versus year-end 2024 was primarily driven by higher net debt, including around EUR 20 million in lease liabilities related to the new Rowlett plant, which is scheduled to open in the coming months. Net debt also rose due to the financing of net working capital, as explained before. The dividend payment as well as the purchase price payment for the remaining 40% stake in the Haldex joint venture in India. EBITDA declined to EUR 227.5 million, reflecting a stable margin at lower sales caused by the current market conditions. Excluding the IFRS 16 effect, our leverage would amount to only 2.2x. Looking ahead, we expect to gradually reduce leverage in the coming quarters, supported by further operational measures. Our target remains to bring leverage step-wise below 2x over the coming quarters. Before I hand over to Alex, let me shortly also comment on the recently announced share buyback program on Page 16. Following our successful implementation of a group-wide cash pool and hence, the concentration of our cash flows in recent quarters as well as the elimination of all debt maturities until 2027, we see this as the right time to initiate a share buyback program, reflecting our confidence in SAF-Holland's financial strength and long-term value creation potential. We, therefore, plan to invest a total of up to EUR 40 million in the repurchase of our own shares. Along that program, we will acquire up to 5% of the outstanding shares as treasury shares, probably starting at the end of this month or earlier and continuing until the end of next year. To this end, we intend to renew the authorization for share repurchases at the 2026 Annual General Meeting. We are convinced that this share buyback represents an attractive investment and a clear signal of our confidence in the company's long-term growth potential. Our liquidity position remains strong, supported by a successful cash pooling and solid financing with no outstanding maturities before March 2027. And with that, I hand back to Alex.

Yes. Thank you, Frank. I'm on Page 18, showing the '25 forecast for the trailer and the truck markets. Here, you can see that between January and September, the truck and trailer markets were particularly affected by the investment hesitancy, driven by the ongoing uncertainties surrounding the U.S. tariff policy, especially in North America and Asia, as explained before. We continue to expect that both the truck and trailer markets in North America will decline by 20% to 30% compared to the previous year's level, with the truck markets likely to trend towards the lower half of this range and the trailer market towards the upper half of that range. Expectations for the Brazilian CV market remain unchanged, but thanks to our strong positioning in steering axles and trailer equipment with such components, we are less exposed to the weaker market development. So we are growing against the market. In contrast, the Chinese CV markets have gained positive momentum, supported by government stimulus programs, and we now expect both segments to increase by 10% to 20% year-over-year. Our outlook for the Indian domestic trailer market remains unchanged with an expected development between flat to minus 5% compared to '24, implying a strong recovery in demand during the fourth quarter. In EMEA, we have slightly adjusted our expectations. Following a phase of positive order momentum in recent months for both truck and trailer, order activity did not continue that pace. Overall, as communicated last week, these regional developments and market trends have led us to adjust our '25 sales guidance. So next slide, please. And in light of the market developments just outlined, we have revised our group sales guidance and now expect group sales between EUR 1.7 billion and EUR 1.75 billion for the full year of '25. Given the ongoing challenging market environment and moderate order expectations for the coming months, we have, in line with our Drive 2030 strategy, initiated an efficiency program aimed at further optimize our organizational SG&A structure. In this context, additional adjusted expenses in the high single-digit euro million range may be incurred by the end of the year. Last but not least, the forecast for the adjusted EBIT margin and CapEx ratio remain unchanged. So let me briefly summarize the key takeaways for the third quarter on Page 20, please. First, the ongoing trade policy uncertainties continues to weigh on global CV markets. The tempered investment sentiment in the U.S. also affected the trailer demand in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, despite these external headwinds, our solid underlying profitability once again demonstrates our operational discipline across the entire organization. And after a rather subdued cash flow performance in the second quarter, we were able to return to a strong level of free operating cash flow in the third quarter, even against the backdrop of continued net working capital development. And looking ahead, while we expect order momentum to remain moderate over the coming months, we are proactively addressing this through continued strict cost management and further efficiency measures, particularly within the indirect workforce, so SG&A. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the presentation. I guess we can now start with your questions. So operator, the first question, please.

[Operator Instructions] And first up is Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank.

It's Nicolai from Deutsche Bank. Two on my side. First, on the share buyback, I think it's something that is appreciated by the capital markets, and it's also shown by the share price reaction in the last 2 days. I'm just wondering, does the share buyback now limit your M&A activities, or is it just an additional tool to allocate cash to shareholders? And my second one, a bit of housekeeping. It's on the free cash flow in Q3 and the others plus EUR 13 million. Can you just give a bit more color what's behind this?

I will take it. Thanks, Nicolai. First of all, as mentioned, the share buyback, we came in a really good position with the cash full implementation to having a centralized amount of cash available. And in terms of capital allocation, there are a lot of opportunities. We are convinced that share buyback is the best one for the time being as we also have no refinancing requirements. And from the total amount talking about EUR 40 million in the next 13 months, this does not burden us in any financing of potential M&A. So no change in the Drive 2030 strategy. We are focusing on external growth, looking for M&A targets and continuing as presented in our Capital Markets Day. So no change at all. Then related to the cash flow improvement in the third quarter. Talking as a CFO, it came late. I would have appreciated to see this already in the second quarter. It's getting net working capital somehow under control, having a strong cash-related operational performance, so strong EBITDA generation, no additional investment in net working capital, and this is then finally ending up -- also cautious investment in CapEx, this is ending up in the numbers you see.

Okay. But do you know what the others is referring to in this case? On Slide 14.

Yes. The other position normally is a change in accruals that if it's yes, -- basically, it's a change in our accrual positions.

Next up is Klaus Ringel from ODDO BHF.

It's three on my side. One would be a follow-up to Nicolai's questions on the share buyback program. Do you intend to cancel the shares that you have bought back? That's the first one. Maybe let's take it one by one.

Yes, I can take this. As mentioned, we will take the shares as treasury shares, and we will not cancel them.

Okay. Second one is, yes, maybe an early question, but your view on the North American transport market going into next year. Is it fair to expect a stabilization, or might we even see a slight year-on-year growth there next year?

Well, I would like to take that, Klaus. This is Alex speaking. We do not expect that the market further drop. It already bottomed trailer for sure, and truck also went down drastically over the last couple of quarters. Well, we have changes -- we see changes in the tariff policy every other day, and it's really hard to predict what's going to happen next month. So basically, we saw that the tariff war with China now, as it looks like, got stabilized with the 50%, 55% tariffs implemented for Chinese goods being imported into the U.S. We don't know what's going to happen with Canada and with Mexico in the future. So it's really hard to predict anything. The only thing I can tell you is that the other countries in the Americas like Canada, Mexico, Brazil doing okay for us. I'm not super happy if I'm okay with that development. It's quite stable. The one market which is suffering a lot is the U.S. market. And I'm talking to a lot of customers, both OE manufacturer, but also fleets. They have a lot of cash available. And due to the uncertainty at the moment, they are really hesitant in investing more and more. There is no need for new equipment. I can -- do not -- I cannot give you really a good question what's going to happen in '26. We hope that the markets are going up. We are ready for that. We did our homework with plant consolidations and new equipment installation. We can scope with an increase. But I guess it has a bottom up, and it can only get better.

Okay. That's clear. And the last one would be on the, yes, additional efficiencies or the new efficiency program that you spoke about. Can you give an indication of the cost impact or the, let's say, amount of savings you're expecting from that?

Well, we are further consolidating plants in different areas of the world. And we are already implemented a structural change of SG&A in the third quarter, which will be impacting us a little bit in the last quarter of this year, but mainly in next year. So we have to work on our overall SG&A rate, which is for the sales we are doing now, in my point of view, too high. So we're not talking a blue collar, we are talking a white collar. We put departments together and get more leaner in all respects of the organization in all the regions, but also in the headquarter, and this is what we are going to do. I said before, this might have an impact in the high single-digit million euro range by the end of the year, but we have to do that to get prepared, to also make sure that the profitability in the years to come will be even better than at the moment.

Next up is Yasmin Steilen from Berenberg.

I have two left. So the first one coming back to the U.S. market. So we've heard from most OEs that the idle production in September and November again. So have we also seen idling in November? And what are your expectations on the winter break? Might we see some kind of extensions there? And if the OE market remains weak, when could we expect the aftermarket to significantly improve? And maybe on the legislation emission, legislation changes in the U.S., is there any update from your side what your expectations are? And then finally, could you provide an update on the progress of the expansion of the disc brakes into the trucks business? So what's the current status after the first production ramp-up with your European customer in Q4 last year?

I would like to take the question in terms of the order income. Well, in November, we do not -- cannot speak about November, but we do not see a significant drop of orders coming in, in EMEA. In the U.S., it's still, as I said before, it bottomed, okay? So order intake is there, but it's not really super good. So we do not see a big increase now in December and January. From what I see in EMEA, our customers, both truck and trailers and mainly trailer is our big sales contributor in EMEA, they do close 2 to 3 weeks, which is the normal closure period in the Americas. I can report that we have talks with a couple of truck manufacturers, but also trailer manufacturers. And some of them, they are closing 2 weeks, the other 3. The most I heard was closing that they do close the last 2 weeks in December and the first 2 weeks in January. But in average, I would say they're going to close 3 weeks by the end of the year with New Year's Eve. So no longer closures, so to say. In terms of the legislation changes with the Euro 6 in U.S., we do not hear anything new. We are in constant dialogue with the official authorities. I think only the government, Mr. Trump, knows what's going to happen. But at the moment, I cannot report any news regarding this. We hope that we get some news in beginning of next year, how it's going to look like by the end of '26 would be good to have some presales already in '26. At air disc brake, I can report that we are -- we started already Q4 '24 as reported before to a major truck manufacturer in Europe. We got some new inquiries for quotation for other brake specifications, not only from that truck manufacturer, but from two other truck manufacturers in Europe. And also, we are in the process of releasing our brakes with three truck manufacturers in the U.S. That's a constant process we are following. It's not overnight, but we see the first signs of success here. And we also are talking with another truck manufacturer, actually with two truck manufacturers in China. We got some orders for trailer brakes, but also for truck brakes, we increased our capacity for another model also in China. And there are rumors and talks that the government might change the legislation soon that all trucks have to be equipped with air disc brake in China. If this is true, we are ready now. And yes, we have a dedicated plan for this in [ Suzhou, ] which is in China. So we are ready for that. And this is also one of the big pillars in the future, not only to do -- to increase OE sales to our truck customers, but also then get more aftermarket sales in the coming years. Does that help?

Yes, perfect.

Next in the line is Jorge González Sadornil from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking.

Can you hear me?

Yes, good morning.

Sorry, I have also a few questions on your look for next year. Sorry about that. My first question is about the EMEA market. So I saw the demand, at least in Spain is quite strong. So I'm wondering if Germany with your comments that now the demand is not that supportive, is maybe in a wait-and-see approach due to the potential support from the government at some point next year and on relation on the infrastructure investments. Do you see some kind of postponements because of this because maybe the stocks are already at good levels and your clients want to wait for more clear programs to enjoy the support, or it is just related to the economy? That will be my first one, please.

Well, that's not an easy question. I try to answer that as best as I can. I can confirm that the Spanish market is developing quite well. They had a double-digit increase in percentage in trailer registrations. We are one of the main suppliers to Spain, also supplying the big ones. Here, I can confirm that we got an increase in orders, and we see that, and they already developed for the whole year quite well. And about Italy, I have to say they are not too bad developing, so quite good. Well, the -- I wouldn't say the pool house, but the market which is really under the bus at the moment is Germany, I have to say that. And if the German government would be much faster in decision-making. And also then after they have taken the decision to bring them up to speed, that would be much of a help. So they freed up a lot of money for infrastructure projects. We don't see that that much at the moment to happening because they have to free the money and then they have to do all the requests for quotations and the bidding process, and it takes a very long time. We see a little bit more request for quotations coming in on the military side, specifically for low beds, heavy-duty equipment that's coming in. But also here, before the German government frees up the money and the decision has been made who gets the money for the investment. That takes too long, I have to say this. Other markets are doing okay. The biggest weak market we have at the moment, as I said, is Germany and here in particular, it's the curtain-sider business. And the curtain-sider standard business is very much impacted by the car manufacturing business, which dropped a lot. So a lot of Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, they do not have many orders from the car manufacturers. So it's much lower than before, and this triggers the orders for the curtain-siders. We're lucky as the curtain-sider business is in the hands of a handful of the biggest players in Germany, where we do not have a lot of share. I have to say, we are very big in tippers in coolers and in small other trailers. And here, the market is okay. But we are also waiting for the infrastructure programs, the military spend and also the curtain-sider business coming back.

Okay. That's helpful. So we can say that taking into account the situation in Germany, we are in Germany and in these countries -- in the Central Europe at low levels already at maintenance kind levels for demand, or this is difficult to say?

No, we are in Germany. Well, Germany is the biggest market and Germany has some of the biggest manufacturers in Europe, of course, of trailers and everybody is in a waiting mode to get free cash out of the infrastructure programs from the government and the military spend. It's -- I repeat myself, the government is far too slow, and they are just waiting to spend the money. But once it's coming, should be much better. I heard yesterday that the GDP growth for Germany is expected to be 0.9% for '26. That's not super good. At least it's not a further drop. But it's -- in my point of view, it has bottomed. Well, we have to wait what's going to happen with the spending.

Okay. Then for the U.S. market, I was hearing yesterday from [ Daimler ] Truck that they expect the recovery to be backloaded in the second part of next year in U.S. It's true that the truck is always more related to new regulations. But what is your view for the trailer? Are you expecting if the tariff volatility ends, and we have some clear scenario. Are you expecting the trailer to benefit a little bit from the delays in truck, or do you think the situation is similar and the clients will keep waiting? How do you see the different levels of investment for these two types of products?

Money is available. As I said before, I talked a lot to truck OEs to trailer OEs and fleet, they're saying, well, we have to renew the fleet. We are waiting for, let's say, a certainty in the market, not having a government going back and forth every other day because you cannot base your decisions made on tariffs being 15% one day, then 50% the other day and 125% the other day, that doesn't make sense. The trailer market is the lowest I have ever seen in the last 25 years in -- basically in the U.S., I said before, the other countries are doing quite okay. But the U.S. market is really down in trailers being in certain segments, being down 50%, 60% that's unbelievable, and there is still a hesitancy to go the first step and invest on the truck side, which also accounts for about 50-50 of our OE sales, so 50% truck. As I said before, we are working on getting more orders for truck suspensions, where we can grow further and also the air disc brakes where we would like to grow further. We saw some positive signals coming in already, but it's far too early to say it's getting better next year. But to summarize, truck, we have to see. Maybe there is a good signal where the new legislation might kick in '27, so there will be a prebuy in '26 in trailer market, I really expect that the market will be better next year because it bottomed up already.

That's great. And finally, my very last one. I'm curious on India. If we take out the share of exports to other countries in South Asia that at the end are producing for U.S. If we focus on India market itself, what do you see for next year? Do you see an acceleration or the country is still difficult to forecast at this point?

Well, if we take our export sales mainly to Southeast Asia, so we had a couple of customers, they bought a lot of actual suspensions from us for container chassis being supplied to U.S. customers that stopped completely. The import duty on complete container chassis or trailers manufactured in Vietnam, I think it's more than 500%. For components, it's 46%. And if I'm not mistaken for complete trailers, it's 500%. So basically, those customers are out of the game unless there will be a new agreement with the U.S. government. But if you take those export sales out to those customers, we slightly grew over the last couple of months. We also will be growing a little bit moderately in the last quarter in India, and we hope that our internal demand will be higher in '26 than it was in '25. We don't see a declining domestic market in India because also here, it's lower or it's on the -- we just discussed that a couple of hours ago with our team. It is on the '22, so 2022 level, which was low to medium. And of course, we also did some initiatives to grow, and it's not only our company, York anymore, but also on the Haldex side, we invested quite a lot in new product lines. So also here, we would like to grow, but the biggest contributor is York with the axles and suspensions. And here, we expect a slight increase for the domestic Indian market in next year.

So next up is Holger Schmidt from DZ Bank.

I have two questions left. The first is on the pricing environment with low demand and intensifying competition, how do you see the competitive environment developing? And are you seeing rising price pressure? The second question is at the Capital Markets Day in the beginning of the year, you outlined that you are looking to tap into adjacent markets. Could you give us an update on your efforts and progress in this regard?

Yes. Let me start with the price pressure before we come to the Capital Markets Day and M&A with Frank answering this. While there is always a price pressure, okay? Everybody would like to fill the production facilities. We are working two shifts. That's our -- basically our sweet spot. We are not working Sundays and night shifts where we have to pay a premium, specifically here in EMEA. We have all our production facilities under control. In the U.S., it's a little bit more under pressure since both truck and trailer is really down at the moment. But also here, you can see we came in double digit also in Q3 with the lowest sales quarter for the last, I think, 3 years, where we have seen, so everything is under control. We initiated our SG&A initiatives to further reduce our overall cost with being in effect in 2026. So from that perspective, it's okay. From a price pressure, there is always price pressure. But you have to talk with your customers, we are not selling by price, we are selling by features. We are the lightest in the industry when it comes to axles, have premiums. Our fifth wheel business state is good for both on-road and off-road. So one part number for both. We are the only ones providing that. This is why we still have a very high market share. And I cannot report anything unusual in price pressure because this is ongoing in good years and even in bad years, where the markets are down or up, that's a standard daily business we have to deal with.

Yes, exactly. We have stable margin and keeping or gaining market share globally. So there's no price pressure basically.

And we don't see any change in the behavior of your competitors.

Well, they also need to make some money at the end. And please recall the split between OE and aftermarket. We are at 40-60 at the moment. Following our conversations in the last couple of years, well, and I grew up in the aftermarket, that's our profitability business, we are making sure with that we come in now with 9.3% hopefully, for the whole year. So that supports us. The perfect split is 1/3 aftermarket, 2/3 OE. We still have -- even if OE now jumps up, we still have a good share of aftermarket, which is the stabilizing factor of our company, and we don't see a change of behavior. We had a lot of Chinese companies coming into Europe. Most of them have withdrawn because they don't make any money and selling a component once it's easy fill by price, but second, time, it's quite difficult because you have to have the service, the parts available. That's an infrastructure you have to build up in decades. It took us more than 40 years to build up our aftermarket structure in both areas, the big ones, EMEA and also in Americas. You cannot cope that overnight in a couple of years. Yes, we have seen a lot coming in trying to sell by price, but they all disappeared again.

And taking your second question related to the entry or growth in adjacent markets and industries. As presented in the Capital Markets Day, we have two initiatives. One is the internal initiative to build on our position we have already with Orlandi in the agriculture business, bringing in additional components, especially from Haldex that are good products for agriculture. This is something where we are working on. We have a project team pushing this. It takes time to enter into these markets, but we are convinced and our targets are unchanged for the organic part of the adjacent industry growth. And the second is the external growth for sure, as we know that our core markets are consolidated, and it's hard to do bigger M&As in our core business. We are looking especially into adjacent industries related to agriculture, to grain business, whatever. And this is a big portion of our M&A activity and scanning of companies that we are looking into. So unchanged.

And well, we are in talks. Of course, we cannot speak about whom we are talking, but we also have to make sure that we are not going to overpay for companies we might acquire in the future, and it has to make sense also from a scale perspective and from a synergy perspective. It doesn't make sense to add another EUR 10 million or EUR 20 million here and there. We are in talks. And as soon as something is going to happen, we will inform you, of course, officially with an external information.

The next question comes from Miro Zuzak from JMS Invest.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

I have three questions. The first one regarding the Americas regions and especially South America. We learned from competitors of yours that they are gaining market share, organic growth up 8% or 6% in the quarter, new customers ramping up and so on. Is it -- are these market share gains against you or against other players? Because I see your sales are down. I don't know the split between North America and South America. But are you -- is this a reason for the soft Americas Q3 results that you have presented?

Well, I'm not sure if any of our competitors are reporting in both first North America and then South America. I think they also only reporting Americas. There might be the case that they are growing a little bit in agribusiness, which they acquired a couple of companies before. We cannot see that we are losing market share. In some segments, we are a little bit increasing. Specifically, as I mentioned before, Brazil went down in both trailer and truck market. We are coming out this year better than last year. We are planning also an increase in Brazil for next year. So far, I can already see because we ramped up a couple of new production -- product groups in the last two years. We even increased our capacity in our plant in the south of Brazil. So from that perspective, we are targeting bus, truck and trailer segments, and specifically, the bus segment is running well. I have to say that. But from the other product groups, I don't see that because we have our output. We see the data of build rates and our build rates, so we don't see that. There might be that another competitor lost some market share because most of the components were coming from China. And as we know, China got a huge hit in tariffs. That might be the cause. Most of the components we are getting for the U.S. maybe are not coming from China. It's just a small percentage share of our components we are using made in China. So from that perspective, we did not get a huge hit. Of course. We got some hit, as I reported before, with the tariffs implemented, we passed those on to our customers. A little portion is still remaining, and we hope that until the end of the year, we can also fill that gap with the increase in our sourcing spend. But from a market share gain, I cannot confirm that we are the ones lost any business.

Okay. Very clear. Second question regarding your guidance, EUR 1.75 billion is the upper end. Against the backdrop of your comments in the call and also the Q3 numbers presented, is it still realistic to get to the EUR 1.75 billion, or is this rather, let's say, the profitability higher that basically the outcome will be rather in the middle or maybe even a bit the lower range of the guidance.

Well, Miro, I cannot comment on this because we just went out with this range. This range was also triggered by our huge FX loss. Just give you a gut feeling for this. If you see the FX losses per year, if they weren't there, then we didn't have to do our talk, and it is in the ballpark of...

Would have been basically in our...

EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million of just FX loss mainly coming from the U.S., but also from India. We have already the numbers for October. They were okay for us. And we are now down the road middle of November, end of December, we are pretty confident that we do not have to adjust it further time. This guidance, we are cautious, but I'm not commenting if it will be now EUR 1.750 billion or whatever. The range is EUR 1.7 billion to EUR 1.75 billion, and the rest I leave to the imagination.

EUR 50 million is fair call for high market.

Okay. So worth a try maybe. Just one further question and then I step back into the line. Regarding the cost and the cost seasonality, I think you did a great job on the costs on all three lines, selling, administrative and also R&D. Now I went back in my model back a couple of years to understand the seasonal patterns, and I actually didn't recognize any. So in some years, you had like larger Q4 cost compared to Q3. And in other years, we had lower Q4 costs compared to Q3. This year, what is your forecast regarding the cost lines versus Q3 in terms of seasonality? Do we see like an increase again in Q4, or do you think you can maintain this excellent level that you have presented in Q3?

So we don't give a forecast for cost by quarter. I think if you take our full year EBIT guidance of around 9.3% and the 9 months EBIT of 9.3% of sales, then that's what you should take into your model. We should not -- we will not give any more details on that related to seasonality.

So we are quite confident that the reason why we did not change the adjusted EBIT guidance for this year that we will hit the guidance. So we can also not comment on the seasonality of Q4. I would say that. Typically, OE sales is a little bit lower because of the end year closure in all the areas, mainly in Europe and in the Americas. And you have some more days off in the U.S. you have the aftermarket. It's a little bit less than last year, but the people are still a little bit cautious and watch the cash they are having. So there is no big development.

Okay. I see we have no more questions in the line and also time is basically over. Thank you, everyone, for your questions. The Investor Relations team is available in case of you have any follow-up questions. And we will be on the upcoming conferences, as usual, available and maybe some road shows. And having said this, have a good day, and bye-bye.

Thank you.