Semperit Aktiengesellschaft Holding (0G29.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you very much, and welcome, everybody, to our results call for the first 2 quarters of 2025. With me today is our CFO, Helmut Sorger. As always, we will guide you through the earnings presentation, which is available on our website, followed by a Q&A session. On Page 3 of the slide deck, I provide a brief summary of the highlights. After a subdued start of the year, with January and February being particularly weak, we significantly picked up speed in the second quarter. This is reflected in a clear improvement in EBITDA, which increased from EUR 11.1 million in Q1 to EUR 19.6 million in Q2. This is a 77% improvement. As already mentioned during the previous call, orders recovered after a slow start to the year. During the first quarter, we primarily experienced the impact of project delays by customers in the conveyor belt and the liquid silicon rubber industries. We have now caught up. Overall, both our order book at the end of June and our order intake for the first 6 months are higher than last year's comparable figures. Nevertheless, the challenging environment of the first half of the year meant that we were unable to fully compensate for the weaker start. The 7% decline in sales translated into EBITDA down by 35% and a margin of 9.6% compared with 13.7% last year. This disproportional decline in EBITDA reflects our high operating leverage. Conversely, when demand rises, it will have a strong positive effect. Further down the P&L, earnings after taxes turned negative to EUR 11.2 million. Overall, however, Semperit remains on a very solid financial footing with an equity ratio of 45.5% and around EUR 113 million in cash at the end of June. We are, therefore, confirming our guidance for operating EBITDA, which means excluding costs for our digitalization project at between EUR 65 million and EUR 85 million for 2025. Turning the page, you see the shift in revenue and EBITDA year-on-year for our 2 divisions, Semperit Industrial Applications and Semperit Engineered Applications, showing graphically the impact of some of the latest economic trends. Due to the performance of the SEA segment in the first quarter, the current ratio of revenue and EBITDA contribution is unbalanced with SEA delivering 58% of sales and 38% of EBITDA. However, it has already improved since the end of March, and we will come back to a more balanced share in revenues and earnings in the course of the next quarters. Starting with the operational update on Semperit Industrial Applications at Slide 5, we see a continuation in margin recovery since the final quarter of 2024 to around 19% in the second quarter on the back of cost reduction and better equipment utilization. Overall, the markets are still challenging. Sales were down by 4.7% and EBITDA declining by 19.2% year-on-year with margins slightly lower, but still resilient at 18.1%. The overall order situation has improved compared to the same period last year, primarily driven by hoses. In our hoses business, we are currently receiving mixed signals from OEMs regarding a recovery. Nevertheless, our direct customer business indicates that their reduction in inventory may have come to an end, and this is already reflected in a slight recovery in order intake, which continued in the second quarter. Consequently, both order intake and order backlog at the end of June exceeded the levels seen in the first half of 2024. In turn, Profiles continues to suffer from the weak construction industry, but leading indicators such as German building permits should now have reached the lowest point by now. However, due to the time lag between approval and the start of a building project, it will take some time before this will be reflected in our order books. On the next slide, Semperit Engineered Applications show a significant recovery in the second quarter. As we emphasized in our last call, we viewed the project delays that primarily affected the Belting division and the liquid silicon rubber tooling in the first quarter as a temporary effect. The order situation improved in the months since March. Overall, however, this was not enough to fully compensate for the weak start of the year. Segment sales were down 9% year-on-year. This resulted in a decline in EBITDA by 46.9% compared with the same period of last year. As to business units, Form managed a slight growth year-on-year with strong mountain applications and an improving demand for filter membranes. Markets for handrails show a mixed picture with Europe doing pretty well, U.S. stabilizing and subdued demand in China. Belting had a very strong order intake in May and June, bringing the order backlog above last year's level. The focus now lies on working through these orders thoroughly. In addition, we work on initiatives to further improve our margins and bring new products to the market. Rico, respectively, our liquid silicon rubber business increased its EBITDA on the back of stable revenues, driven primarily by the second quarter and by cost savings. The order situation in the tool shop also has improved. This has laid a good foundation for future capacity utilization in the production of liquid silicon rubber parts. In this business, we are focused on strengthening our competitive market position and broadening our customer base. With this, I would now like to hand over to Helmut to take us through the financials.

Thank you, Manfred, and also a warm welcome from me. Let me start with the highlights on Slide 7. As you know, our financial framework is built on strong foundations, and I want to reaffirm that our unwavering commitment to generate free cash flow, maintaining a resilient balance sheet and proactively managing working capital is not just strategy, it's strength, particularly in times like this, it makes a difference. The cost initiatives that we started in 2023 have proven to be necessary and have supported our margins. We continued them in the first half of this year, which had a slightly negative impact due to restructuring provisions, but we definitely expect positive momentum in the second half of the year. Financially, we're in good shape. We have cash reserves of around EUR 113 million and a very solid balance sheet with a conservative leverage ratio. We also have the capacity to take on more debt to fund further growth. In addition, we are investing in the digitalization of the group with our oneERP lighthouse project, which is on schedule and on budget. And last but not least, we've paid a dividend of EUR 0.50 per share or EUR 10.3 million in total on April 30th to our shareholders. The next slide summarizes the main items of our P&L and other key financial indicators in comparison to the same period last year. As you'll recall from our last call, we suggested using the first quarter as a proof of our operating leverage, sales were down 14%. EBITDA was down 52% in the first 3 months. While the situation has improved when comparing the first 6 months, the markets are still troublesome. This is not unexpected. We clearly indicated that the first half of the year would be difficult and difficult it is. Revenues are down 7%. EBITDA is down 35% year-on-year. So the second quarter showed good momentum, but was not enough to offset the weak start to the year. And as already mentioned, we were also burdened by restructuring provisions and personnel expenses, but this will enable us to further reduce our fixed cost. You will recall that we've included operational EBITDA underneath reported EBITDA to highlight the impact of our oneERP project. For the full year 2025, we estimate project costs for this business transformation and digitalization initiative amounting to EUR 5 million with EUR 2.2 million already spent over the first 2 quarters in 2025. Regular depreciation increased slightly due to our growth investments. EBIT additionally was impacted by a value adjustment on intangible assets of EUR 3.3 million. This was related to the acquired customer base in our LSR Rico business. When we bought Rico in 2023, we purchased customer relationships, which are amortized over the expected useful life. We've now reviewed and adjusted these because individual customers refrain from ordering due to overall economic activity or have in-sourcing plans for the parts production. EBITDA thus amounted to EUR 2.6 million. The financial result was impacted by negative currency effects resulting from the weaker U.S. dollar in the amount of just under EUR 4 million, bringing earnings after tax to around minus EUR 11 million. Further down the table, free cash flow came in at EUR 13.9 million. Overall CapEx was halved to EUR 18.5 million year-on-year, both for maintenance and for strategic growth investments, which is another lever we have under our control when things are temporarily getting tougher. Turning the page and plotting the last 12-month industrial revenues against the operating EBITDA margin, margins were down from 14.8% in the fourth quarter 2024 to 12.5%. This is primarily attributable to the fact that margins in the first half of 2024 were above the level of the second half of the year. With that top line pressure should now have bottomed out as should have margins. When looking at the year-on-year EBITDA bridge on Slide 10, the steep decline in volumes could not be offset by price mix and other measures like cost savings. Cost of materials, services, energy went slightly up year-on-year and the seasonal inventory buildup was the major offsetting factor in that period. As we had introduced our operating EBITDA to account for ongoing project costs for oneERP, the difference to reported EBITDA amounted to EUR 2.2 million. Over the page, we present the constituent parts of our working capital management with an improvement compared to the situation a year ago. In total, trade working capital as a percentage of our last 12-month revenues was down at 16.3% after 17.7% % last year. Compared to the end of the year, we see a slight increase, which is mainly due to seasonal inventory buildup. The extension of our payment terms is clearly reflected in the development of trade payables. The bridge chart for year-on-year net financial debt development on Page 12 shows that the free cash flow generation largely covered our CapEx for growth projects and the dividend payment. Overall, net financial debt increased in absolute terms by around EUR 15 million. Given the lower EBITDA in the first half year, net debt-to-EBITDA was up slightly at 1.7x, still a comfortable level, but an increase compared with 1.2x at the end of 2024. At EUR 113 million, cash was slightly below the year-end level with financial liabilities remaining stable. As announced, we repaid the maturing tranche of the Schuldscheindarlehen in the amount of EUR 31 million from our own funds at the end of July. Our revolving credit facility of EUR 100 million has not yet been utilized and remains fully available. Finally, I finish my presentation with the priorities of capital allocation and usage of cash, which you are certainly familiar with now in conceptual terms. Without going into detail for each component, the important thing is that we managed to reduce maintenance and growth CapEx to around EUR 18.5 million, given the overall market condition. We feel it's prudent to pull this lever, which is in our control. Having said that, I'm still pleased that we could reward our shareholders with EUR 0.50 a share dividend, which was paid out April 30th. This is a signal to our investors about our confidence in the business model as a future growth platform. With this, I've come to the end of my part of the presentation and would like to hand back to Manfred for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Helmut, and let me finish our presentation with the outlook for the remaining year 2025. As we have mentioned, we gained traction in the second quarter and continued to sharpen our cost structure, and we are confident that market dynamics will begin to support us in the second half of this year. In the SEA segment, we are already seeing a positive momentum from our customers' restocking, which is a trend, which we expect to persist. So for example, if a customer recently processed 100 meters of hose, they would only reorder around 85 meters. We are now returning to an environment, where they will reorder the full 100 meters. Our focus here is now on output and further gains in share of wallet. While the construction industry, which is important for our Profiles business, is expected to turn around in 2026, we do not think that this will benefit us majorly in the short term. Overall, we made significant progress in optimizing the costs, and we also intend to expand our Profiles business with U.S. customers. The seals are manufactured on site in our U.S. production unit in Newnan, Georgia. The order situation in the SEA division has recovered significantly. The main priority here is now to process and ship everything in the second half of the year, particularly in the Belting business. So overall, we expect a recovery in the second half of the year, although uncertainties naturally remain high. Against this backdrop, we confirm our guidance for operating EBITDA to be in the range of EUR 65 million to EUR 85 million in 2025 and will, of course, narrow this range further down in the second -- in the course of the year. With regard to CapEx, we should be in the region of EUR 50 million. Nevertheless, we are able to adapt our investments to the market environment. However, our work does not only focus on Semperit's organic growth, we are also working on inorganic growth and screening the market for opportunistic acquisition opportunities. These must, of course, leverage our existing business and create synergies without making our portfolio more complex. Such opportunities could arise from companies facing succession issues or offering interesting restructuring prospects. Finally, before we finish the presentations, let me just recall our 5 investment propositions with a key focus on market leadership, innovation and our resilient business model with high operating leverage. When the market recovers, we will benefit disproportionately, and our strong platform puts us in an excellent position for future growth. And now Helmut and I are available for any questions you might have. So if I may turn it back to the operator, if you would please start with the Q&A procedures.

[Operator Instructions] And we also have the first question coming from the line of Markus Remis from ODDO BHF.

I'd like to start with a question on the order dynamics. And maybe you can shed some light on how they developed over the -- or past Q2. So over the summer months, I know we're in the middle of August, and it's seasonally a lower kind of lower activity period. But is it kind of at the same dynamic level that you were just elaborating on?

Well, if I may answer this question, Markus, we saw that the order intake gradually picked up, I would say, starting with April, and this continued throughout the month with an increased trend over the months, April, May, June and also is continuing in July. And this is valid for almost all our businesses. I think only the Profiles business, as we have mentioned, the construction industry is still lagging behind. But even in the Profiles business, and I'm not talking about the month of July, the order intake was higher than July of last year. So basically, in all the businesses, we saw an uptick in order intake starting in Q2, which has gradually increased over the course of Q2. And now as we said, our order book is considerably stronger than it was in the same period of the last year.

Okay. Very comforting to hear. Now with regards to the revenue generation in the second half, does it mean that, well, as of Q3, there's going to be a plus in terms of year-on-year growth on the revenue line?

Yes. I mean, basically, if you take our last year comparables, Markus, you certainly see that we had a very solid first half of the year and then basically some delaying effect kicking in, in the second half of the year. So in order to make math work and in order to see conversion of our order book into revenues, we have high hopes in a good Q3 and Q4. But Q4, you never know what weather does and shipping activity does, yes. What you certainly also have to bear in mind, sometimes it's mundane issues like cutoff dates when a container gets out of the bonded warehouse, it's considerable values that you have, whether -- if you have that at quarter end, of course, it shifts a little bit. But we're hopeful.

Okay. Very clear. Then I would have a question with regards to the CapEx number that you cut from EUR 60 million to EUR 50 million. I mean, is there any specific growth project that you postponed because, I mean, growth is also -- growth CapEx is giving kind of future revenue and earnings growth. Is it to cut? Or is it a delay or shift into 2026?

It's a period shift primarily. One growth project in the project business with regard to railway systems is, of course, dependent on when this investment in the U.S. is taking place when they are building this railroad. And therefore, we adjusted growth CapEx to some degree. But pushing maintenance out and then using period cutover.

Okay. So EUR 60 million might be a good benchmark for 2026 then?

No.

No. What would be the benchmark guidance yet there.

Sorry, that was [ basically ] hard to understand.

For 2026, we have not given a CapEx guidance yet. We -- Markus, we are working on the budget, on strategy, basically utilizing all the opportunities, and we'll come up with that in Q3.

All right. Understood. And sorry, just going -- yes, in terms of pricing, I know it's difficult to summarize overall these products, but maybe you can give us some feeling on kind of the pricing dynamics so we get a sense, okay, volume is picking up, to which extent is that also coming already with some, I don't know, better pricing? Or is it purely volume driven?

Well, it really depends now almost on the business and on the product. I mean we have -- what I can say is we have a very proactive pricing management. So we have products, where we are increasing our prices. I could say that out of the EUR 345 million in revenues, maybe EUR 3 million come from pricing initiatives overall, I would say. But we have some businesses, I would say, a little bit more than half of our businesses, we managed to increase our prices, but we also had businesses, where we had to decrease our prices. But overall, you could say 1% from revenue increase -- so from revenue comes through price increases.

And then final question, again, turning to Helmut, please. On the working capital development, is it fair to say that like with more now growth coming through, it will be difficult to achieve an operating cash flow in excess of this EUR 50 million CapEx?

Look, we started an intense focus on working capital about this time last year. And we did structural measures. We did financial measures to do that negotiations with suppliers. And we see this is gaining momentum in the organization. So there's really a change of processes. Referring to what's the potential, you saw, of course, the seasonal uptick. But related to our revenues and related to activity, we're confident to be able to hold these tight targets. Of course, safety aspects are -- safety stocks are of more importance when you see business activity picking up, but we try to stay on top of these things. And we have our focus not only on cost, but also on working capital. So if you say EUR 50 million on CapEx spend, this is one of the levers to reduce and push CapEx out. The other one is clearly to stay on top of working capital. If that answers your question, Markus.

Yes, I was more of the direction, if you think that the operating cash flow would be sufficient to cover this EUR 50 million. to put it very directly, given that now growth is kicking in.

Yes, because the operating leverage that you've seen as an inverse in the first quarter and also continuing in Q2 with much less momentum. If we see the volumes turn, then, of course, you have the uptick in EBITDA and also in operating cash. clearly.

The next question comes from the line of Marc-René Tonn from Warburg Research.

First one was coming back on the impairment we have seen at the [ LSI ] (sic) [ LSR ] business. And perhaps you could give us some assurance, I think probably you have done this impairment in this size. They made a very comprehensive view on the -- on your balance sheet figures with regard to Rico. Could you give us some indication on what would have to happen to cause some additional impairments there or whether you are now very confident to be in a comfortable position going forward regarding these balance sheet figures? That's the first question. I will follow on with the other ones later on.

Thank you for the question. I mean we have intangibles identified for the acquisition of the Rico business, one of them being the customer base. This is -- the valuation is based on the customer revenues as of 2023 with customers that we -- customer relations that we purchased. Now the impairment of EUR 3.3 million is basically on top of the amortization of this customer base. We amortize it over 25 years because historically, Rico had a very low churn rate. And with regard to specific customers, we saw the order activity just dropped because of basically economic activity and that led to an impairment trigger for that customer base and for the Rico business. We identified a valuation loss of this EUR 3.3 million on top of the amortization. But on the other hand, we were able to compensate the lost revenues with new business because as Manfred has said, revenues with Rico year-on-year are flat and profitability is even better. So we also did, of course, an impairment test since Rico was below our budgeted figures due to the lower -- to the lower tool production rather, not the call-offs were good in parts production, but the lower tool demand. And now we have basically good order activity for the tool shop and the tool shop is well utilized. So we had the headroom at the end of the year that we also published, and we have a remaining headroom for this. All the deficiencies that we saw from negative budget deviations we put into the planning. So what's next is every summer, we do strategy with Rico. There's a strategy project that Manfred is leading together with the Rico management to get his expertise in, of course, from injection molding. And of course, we evaluate and do the business plan as every year. But at the moment, we have a headroom, a slight headroom, but there is a headroom. I hope that answers your question.

It does. Second question would be, given Continental's announcement to -- following the spin-off of the automotive business to also review its shareholding in ContiTech probably going into next year, whether you feel any impact of this decision with regard when you talk to customers, whether they are, let's say, due to a certain degree of uncertainty perhaps more open to do business with you or whether there's anything, which comes from that? Or is it just simply not affecting you by any means at all?

Well, we don't have any concrete evidence that this is affecting us. If at all, I think it would affect us in a positive way, but we don't have any specific and concrete evidence that I could confirm that this is impacting us in a positive way.

And lastly, perhaps and -- sorry if I missed it, the restructuring in the personnel cost in the second quarter, did you provide a number for that?

It's a little bit more than EUR 700,000. We did not provide the number technically, yes.

The next question comes from the line of Christian Obst from Baader Bank.

I have a question concerning your hoses business. So during '24 and the start into this year, you talked about reducing workforce and lower the capacities there a little bit. Is this ongoing? Or do you have stopped that now because of the mentioned restocking and the expected further increase maybe of demand? So what is the current situation you are driving your hoses business there when it comes to capacities and to the workforce?

Yes. We are building up capacity and resources in order to produce and to ship the high order intake that we are having.

And we are hiring.

Correct.

So what -- when was the low point? Was it late spring, May, April? What was the low point of the number of employees there?

With regard to capacity, that was last year. We started basically hiring late Q4 preparing for this year and the hiring is in progress all year 2025. But of course, the new colleagues are in training now, new operators are in training that takes some time, but we're hopeful that we can keep up with demand.

Exactly. And the hiring is happening mainly in the Czech Republic, which currently has a very tight labor market, but we have all human resource measures in place to get the people on board.

Okay. And does this mean then that the average margin will be a little bit depressed at least at the beginning of the ramp-up and the new hiring going into the second half of the year?

No, we haven't really seen that because, I mean, that's already ongoing. You would have seen that in the first half of the year already, but it's more the operating leverage from the higher activity that should provide us with tailwind margin-wise.

Okay. And then when it comes to Belting, you say you have a strong order intake in May and June, and you're now preparing for shipping that properly. Before you talked about that there is a slight shift of the mix in these orders towards less favorable margins and there's an ongoing pricing pressure coming from Asian competitors. So what is the current margin quality of these orders you are getting there?

Yes. I would say the margin quality is still very volatile. We started the year with very slow margins -- with lower margins, but we were able to pick up those margins now in the second quarter, but it's still very volatile. Yes, does it answer your question?

Yes. So when it comes to the mix, is it still the case that you are -- that the order intake is from the mix less favorable than it was, let's say, 2, 3 years ago?

Compared to 2, 3 years ago, I would say, yes, that's correct.

And of course -- sorry, just to add to that, Christian. And of course, we are now nicely booked with these orders. There's good belts, heavy belts in the mix, but we also have taken orders in order to fill capacity to get a good absorption of cost, which, of course, our plant in Poland is a large site. And of course, the better you cover your fixed cost, the better off your result-wise.

Of course. And the old discussion years ago also that Belting might be some kind of a divestment part. This is nothing you are talking about now and you are looking into that. So your focus is on improving the underlying margin and profitability, right?

And I've answered it before. Everything is for sale. It just depends on the price.

But our main focus is on the margin recovery. That's correct.

[Operator Instructions] We have a follow-up question coming from the line of Markus Remis from ODDO BHF.

Yes. One follow-up on the U.S. part of the business and the impact all these tariff discussions on -- have on your business. Can you summarize if there was any tangible impact in the first half and also kind of elaborate what you bake in for the second half?

Yes. The biggest impact was the uncertainty that the U.S. administration created. And I think we've -- looking back to the first quarter, that was really a value of tears for us because we saw the order -- the contact with the customers was there, but they were just pushing the orders in order to get certainty about the situation. Now you could like or not like the situation that we have at the moment with the 15% tariffs into the U.S. But at least it's for now certain situation that you can plan on. And I think the uptick in order activity shows, okay, at least you have some guiding principle and uncertainty is not there. We see some positive momentum with local production of Profiles in the U.S. I mean, here, we see a clear uptick, which is certainly driven by the tariffs. On the other side, I mean, certainly, free trade helps more with industrial activity than tariffs of 15%, 30%, 50% or 100%. But the impact, I mean, it's already you've seen we adjusted our guidance to reflect the impact. Now it goes from 10% to 15%, but the major impact for us was the timing and the shift in orders.

Right. And is there any kind of change in the trade flow, meaning that, I don't know, some volumes are diverted from the U.S. into Europe. Does that create some kind of higher competitive [indiscernible].

It will happen. Let's be clear about that. It will happen. We don't see the impact, [ Manfred ] (sic) [ Markus ] at the moment, but that's certainly something that not only us will experience.

It's still a very balanced view, I think, between threat and opportunities. Some of those tariffs are a threat for us. Others are an opportunity for us. I mean, to give you a concrete specific example in Belting, we have competitors in Brazil, who now have a hard time to export to the U.S. and we have competitors in China, and it's the same thing. So this is an opportunity for us. But at the same time, the Chinese competitors are taking other parts of the world, which is a threat. So at the end of the day, I think it's still a very balanced view between threats and opportunities, but everyone is welcoming when this -- when there's more certainty. And to add to this, we're part of the EUR 600 billion. We already talked with you about the plans that we want to grow in the U.S. also with sites. We have 2 manufacturing sites there, but we certainly want to grow in the U.S. independent of the tariff situation.

Okay. And which parts of your business would you consider as most vulnerable, either directly or indirectly on the tariffs?

It's hard to tell. That's really hard to tell. I mean...

Yes. I would agree. There's nothing that jumps out.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Stanek for any closing remarks.

Well, my closing remarks, a big thank you for your participation, and we wish you all a wonderful rest of the summer, and we will back in November with our figures for the first 3 quarters of this year. Thank you very much.