TAKKT AG ($TTK)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the analyst conference call 2026 of TAKKT AG. The company's CEO, Andreas Weishaar; and CFO, Timo Krutoff, will guide you through the presentation in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line. And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Weishaar.

Thank you very much. Welcome to our analyst conference. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Timo Krutoff. We've already published and presented detailed quarter 4 results at the end of February. Today, we will focus on what's ahead. I will start with a high-level overview of the last 2 years to look at where we stand. Timo will then talk about our 2026 guidance before I discuss our strategic progress and priorities. 2025 was a year characterized by a weak market environment and high volatility. Across all major regions and customer segments, we continue to feel the effects of uncertainty, contracting demand and hesitant investment behavior. Despite this backdrop, we made significant underlying progress in strengthening the company and positioning TAKKT for more resilient and scalable future. During the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, we addressed and resolved a number of internal challenges. We have, among other things, talked about the phase-out and integration of the ratioform brand, the ERP migration at FoodServices and the change in brand positioning in detail in prior calls. We brought back brands and improved positioning in the market while also fixing systems and resolving additional challenges. This helped us to achieve stabilization of the top line development in 2025, but it was not enough to return to positive growth in an overall contracting market. It's now on us to continue and to win back the trust of our customers step by step. We are now, in addition, also focusing on further structural improvements, the development and implementation of our operating model, improving core processes and upgrading our technology stack. While the external environment is difficult, we choose to invest time and resources into strengthening the foundation of this business. We upgraded workflows, enhanced systems and increased the scalability of our core processes. These improvements are not always immediately visible in short-term financials, but they are crucial levers for higher performance and profitability. Another cornerstone of our progress is to strengthen emphasis on customer proximity. In a constantly evolving market, it becomes even more important to stay close to customer needs and to respond with tailored solutions. Across all divisions, we shifted decision-making closer to our brands and local organizations, enabling teams to react faster, implement commercial measures quicker and address the specific needs of their markets better. This divisional and regional ownership is a key part of our go-to-market approach going forward. In parallel, we continue to prioritize strategic investments in the business. This includes investments into people, technology, systems and our commercial capabilities, all of which are critical for enabling future growth. These investments demonstrate our long-term commitment to enhancing competitiveness, strengthening value-add for our customers and building a more robust organization. Finally, we have established a leaner cost base supporting earnings and profitability. The efficiency measures we initiated and implemented, from process optimization to rightsizing and procurement improvements, will increasingly contribute to our results in 2026 and beyond. These actions increase our resilience, improve overall margin quality and ensure that we are structurally prepared throughout the economic cycle and very well positioned once market conditions improve. So while the headline financial numbers of 2025 reflect the challenges, we've made decisive progress in strengthening TAKKT, sharpening our commercial focus and improving the performance of our operating model. This gives us confidence for the path ahead. And with that, over to you, Timo.

Thank you, Andreas, and a warm welcome also to all of you from my side. Let's briefly recap the full year financials for 2025 before looking into the year ahead. Starting with the top line. Sales came in at EUR 964 million (sic) [ 964.3 million ], reflecting an organic decline of 6.6% in what remained a very difficult market environment. Demand was subdued across all major divisions, with continued weaknesses in Europe and muted activity in several U.S. customer segments. Turning to profitability. EBITDA for the year was EUR 19.8 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 3.8%. The margin was primarily impacted by the lower top line and by a reduced gross profit margin. Finally, on cash generation, we delivered a positive free cash flow of EUR 10.3 million, driven by improved cash generation for the second half of the year. Before we talk about our guidance, let me briefly comment on the environment and our focus for 2026. The external backdrop remains volatile. We continue to see economic uncertainty, ongoing trade-related risks and persistent geopolitical tension. In recent weeks, the situation in the Middle East, especially the escalating conflict involving Iran, has added another layer of uncertainty. In our forecast, we assume GDP growth rates in our markets at a similar level to last year, with Germany hopefully seeing slightly higher growth. We will need to see how this develops in the coming months given these risks. The picture for manufacturing PMI is similar. We've seen a positive trend over recent months and values were above the 50% threshold when we formulated our guidance. On the commercial side, we are pushing ahead with our growth initiatives across our omnichannel model, scaling what worked well for us last year and implementing additional measures where we see opportunities. We are focusing on our core customer groups, strengthening our value-add offering and accelerating commercial performance with tailored go-to-market approaches across channels and divisions. On the operational side, we continue to leverage our new operating model, simplifying, automating, and relocating processes to capture scale benefits and improve structural efficiency. Andreas will go into the specific commercial and operational actions in a moment. Let me walk you through our 2026 financial guidance, starting with the top line. On sales, the discontinuation of the bid contract business in the U.S. will reduce organic growth by around 1 percentage point. After a modest start into the year, we expect to return to positive organic growth over the course of the year as our commercial measures gain traction. Organic sales development for the full year is expected to come in between minus 7% and plus 3%. Turning to profitability. We will continue executing the structural improvements initiated last year. Onetime costs will likely be slightly lower than last year. Overall, we are targeting an adjusted EBITDA margin between 2% and 5%. Looking at cash generation, we will continue to release net working capital while evaluating additional options to further strengthen cash generation. We expect higher CapEx driven by investments in processes and systems that support our IT road map. Based on this, we expect a positive free cash flow for the year. Putting our full year guidance into context, we expect Q1 to be slow with sales, profitability and free cash flow coming in below prior year. Our top line profitability and free cash flow are then expected to improve as the year progresses with a level of improvement depending on the impact of growth and performance measures as well as the overall market environment. At the same time, we assume that the economic impact related to the Iran conflict remains temporary and limited. While we have hardly any operational activities in the region, we could still be impacted by price increases for products and freight as well as by changes in GDP growth, inflation and customers' willingness to invest. And with that, over to Andreas for an overview of our TAKKT Forward strategy.

Thank you, Timo. Let me now give you an overview of where we stand with our TAKKT Forward strategy. Our strategy continues to be built around 3 core pillars: focus, growth and performance. Under focus, we're developing the TAKKT portfolio around a strong core in Industrial & Packaging. We are aligning our brands and streamlining our operating structures to serve customers with clear positioning, broader category relevance and consistent value propositions across markets. In 2025, we also improved our D2G business and will continue to leverage value creation and development opportunities for D2G. On the growth side, our aim is to fully leverage value creation opportunities and unlock potential by expanding business with our customer base. We continue to enhance our omnichannel experience, broaden and refine our assortments and expand our service offering. Sustainability remains an important differentiator in this context as customers increasingly expect transparency and responsible choices. And finally, performance. Here, we are driving earnings and cash improvements by upgrading processes and systems and by operating more efficiently throughout the company. The new operating model, including the competence center and the increased use of technology and automation are all essential elements of this. These measures we implemented in 2025 allowed us to realize run rate savings of EUR 15 million last year, and we will continue to build on that in 2026. Let me briefly touch on our midterm financial targets. Our overall direction and target setting has not changed, but the time line to achieve these targets has become more challenging. Given the ongoing volatility in our key markets, we now expect full target realization to be delayed by 1 to 2 years. The environment remains too inconsistent to assume a faster normalization. In terms of the individual metrics, organic sales growth, our ambition remains to grow above the market over the cycle. Market growth should be in line with GDP development. On profitability, we continue to aim for a significantly higher adjusted EBITDA margin over the midterm. The pace at which we can lift margins will depend not only on our internal execution, but also on a recovery in volumes. This is why we're now formulating our margin ambition more flexibly. The overall goalpost remains unchanged. However, it takes the economic environment into account relative to where we are in the economic cycle. We confirm our target of a 10% margin in an economic environment with average growth. If GDP development is slower and operational leverage more limited, we target 8% margin. And in a more supportive economic environment, we remain confident that we can exceed the 10% profitability level. And finally, on cash generation, our target remains an average conversion of 50% to 60%. We remain committed to resuming substantial dividend payments as soon as earnings and free cash flow generation provides a sustainable basis for payouts. To summarize, the strategic direction remains intact and the measures we're implementing are focused on exactly these levers. Considering the current environment, we believe it is more realistic to assume a slower ramp-up before we reach the full midterm ambition. Let's continue with our growth measures and an update for Industrial & Packaging. While we've made progress with our initiatives, the overall top line environment remains demanding and the recovery is slower than initially expected. Our ambition for the division is clear: to strengthen the business as a leading distributor for indirect MRO spend in Europe with a more focused commercial approach and a clearer product and brand offering. To move towards this ambition, we made progress with several measures during 2025. We focused on winning tenders with larger customers in our markets. One of the more recent wins was the result of a coordinated cross-functional effort with our key account management setup, where teams from product, fulfillment and sustainability work closely together to present a compelling integrated offer. With this approach, we were able to differentiate ourselves and to secure a multiyear contract with sales potential of up to EUR 5 million. At the same time, we broadened and upgraded the product range. We added new items while removing approximately 20,000 lower-relevance SKUs as part of our 80/20 initiative. With these measures, we are broadening our assortment range while at the same time focusing on relevant products and reducing complexity from offering too many alternative options. We're making it easier for customers to navigate and are lowering supply chain procurement costs. We've increased our launch productivity by a factor of more than 3 compared to last year and generated EUR 12 million in additional sales with these products. Third, we worked on increasing brand visibility by strengthening the presence of regional and category brands. This includes the reintroduction of Vink Lisse for the Netherlands and Frankel for France where these brands have a long and successful history. For our packaging activities, we have reactivated the ratioform brand and are continuing to strengthen our dedicated sales team and cross-functional responsibilities for this category within the I&P organization. These steps have contributed to stabilizing commercial performance in an environment that was challenging for some of our core customer groups, for example, automotive. Looking ahead, in 2026, we focus on scaling mid, large and group customers in attractive industries. We will do so by improving our regional go-to-market to position ourselves close to our customers. Let's move on to National Business Furniture. 2025 was a difficult year for this business with the impact of DOGE-related cuts in quarter 1 and the shutdown in quarter 4. Despite the headwind, we were able to stabilize our order intake development over the course of the year. We especially saw a better development in the business segment, while government and related sectors remained weaker. Due to timing issues, the improvement in order intake was not fully reflected in our sales development in 2025. Good news is that the overall positive trend kept going into 2026. Our ambition for NBF is to position the business as the national partner for commercial furniture in North America, and that means offering something that many competitors do not. We serve both sides of the customer need. On the one hand, we cover transactional business, individual purchase to meet an immediate requirement quickly, efficiently and with a competitive assortment. On the other, we can support project business where customers require advice, coordinated delivery of larger volumes, shipments to multiple locations and installation support from an external partner. In 2025, we focused on strengthening the transactional side of the business because this is where customer interaction starts, and where we can build momentum for project-driven opportunities. Two measures supported this: a more strategic pricing approach, including freight integration and optimized entry-level products, which helped improve competitiveness in the transactional channel. After the upgrade of the web shop, we materially improved online performance and increased customer activity at the top of the funnel. Both actions make the transactional business stronger. And importantly, the customer contacts generated through this transactional volume give us more opportunities to expand into project work where advisory capabilities and larger orders play a greater role. Going forward, our next steps focus on completing the sales team transformation with a fully aligned incentive structure and further strengthening lead generation to expand project revenue. The aim is to use transactional demand as a meaningful entry point and to gradually deepen customer relationships with a more complex, higher-value project solution. Turning to Displays2go. We saw an encouraging development in 2025. While the market remained volatile, the improvements we made throughout the year led to a clear stabilization, and importantly, Displays2go returned to positive organic growth in the second half. This was a notable step forward even if the external environment continues to be inconsistent. Our ambition for D2G is to position the business as a one-stop shop for customizable display solutions, combining a strong product offering with a more service-oriented commercial approach. To support this ambition, we worked on specific measures during 2025. Our primary focus was on driving customer reengagement, and here we made visible progress. D2G is a genuine e-commerce business, and we operated with an agile team that continuously tests and iterates from AB testing on landing pages to experimenting with pricing. This iterative approach allowed us to improve conversion rates and increased repeat buys from customers. Combined with more proactive outreach, these measures helped us to increase both customer counts and order activity over the course of the year. In parallel, we executed the first phase of our repositioning, including the launch of a revised web shop experience that better reflects our positioning as a value-add provider. This provided a clearer and more consistent brand presence. Looking ahead, the next steps are to focus on expanding customer prospecting by leveraging the strengthened brand positioning, deepening relationships with higher-value customers and continuing to refine the site experience to support sustained growth while keeping in mind that market volatility is likely to remain. Let's move on to FoodServices, which remained the most challenging part of the portfolio in 2025. Unlike the other divisions, we did not see stabilization over the course of the year, and order activity in the call center channel, providing consultative expert sales advisory to customers, remained weak throughout. Our ambition for FoodServices is to position the business as a trusted partner for smallwares and food service equipment. To advance this ambition, we focused on specific measures in 2025. We worked on broadening the customer base, particularly by entering midsized restaurant chains with usually 20 to 300 locations and supporting them in the next step of their expansion journey. Building on our strengths of curated assortment, consultative services and on-time fulfillment, we're the right partner for openings and replenishment, and are leveraging customer touchpoints to increase repeat business. In addition, we continue to scale our managed accounts business which is the core of our Hubert model. This business serves large operators of canteens and cafeterias and relies heavily on the value-added services we provide: project support, EDI connectivity, microsites, consistent product specifications and coordinated multi-location deliveries. These capabilities remain highly relevant for this customer group. And despite the overall market environment, the managed accounts business performed positively in the fourth quarter and ended the year only slightly below the prior year. Looking ahead, the next step is to focus on strengthening lead generation for the call center with increased web shop traffic and converting the sales pipeline we have developed with chains. In addition, we will extend private label equipment, accessories and parts offerings. While the market is not expected to help, the commercial priorities for 2026 for this division are crystal clear. After the top line view, let's look at the performance measures we executed in 2025. Our new operating model is a key driver of speed, efficiency and scalability. In 2025, we made important progress in putting its core elements into place and establishing clearer structures that enable faster and more consistent execution. A central part of this is the strengthening of our core functions, the customer-relevant areas in marketing and category management and our central services teams. With clearer responsibilities, these teams can support the divisions and customers even more effectively and focus on commercial activities that truly add value. To enable this, we're consolidating transactional and repeatable processes in the TAKKT Competence Center. Through standardization and technology-supported workflows, we reduce manual workload, improve reliability and create scale benefits. This frees up capacity across the organization and allows us to concentrate on activities that deliver high value for our valued customers. In addition, we work with an external partner for high-volume, highly standardized tasks. Outsourcing these activities ensures efficient handling of routine work and enables our internal teams to prioritize customer-facing activities. All 3 elements reinforce each other by centralizing and automating high-volume tasks and by leveraging external scale where appropriate. We give our core functions the focus they need to drive customer impact. Let me briefly highlight what we have already achieved within the operating model. We have successfully established the TAKKT Competence Center and built the foundation for a more scalable structure. We have achieved substantial cost savings by streamlining processes and reducing complexity. And we have strengthened our capabilities in IT, data and AI, an important step toward a more digital and future-proof setup. In 2026, we will continue to roll out the operating model and take additional implementation steps to realize the full midterm savings potential. Let me now briefly summarize where we stand with our performance program. In 2025, we achieved around EUR 15 million in structural run rate savings. These came in roughly equal parts from the 3 improvement areas. A significant portion came from the leaner operating model and rightsizing, where we streamlined structures, reduced overlaps and shifted more transactional work into the competence center. Another part stemmed from freight and warehouse improvements, including bundling of volumes and consolidation of warehouse footprint that reduced fixed costs. And finally, we achieved savings through higher sales and marketing efficiency, driven by more targeted spend, improved ROI tracking and a reduction in low-impact activities. Looking to 2026, the next set of measures will build on this foundation. A key focus will be more efficient procurement, where we see meaningful potential from best cross-country sourcing, stronger category management and deeper supplier consolidation, areas that were only partially addressed in 2025. We will also continue the rollout of the operating model, migrating additional workflows into the TCC and increasing automation to capture future structural efficiencies. And finally, we will maintain our efforts in freight, warehousing, IT spend and other operational areas, ensuring that the improvements we achieve last year scale and continue to contribute. Together, these measures position us to reach the full run rate target of at least EUR 30 million. And with that, over to the operator for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We have already received risen hands, for example, by [ Mrs. Wagner ]. Can you hear us? I don't think she can. Let me just check. Okay. I think we're going to move on to Mr. Bruns. Mr. Bruns, can you hear us?

I think it should be better now.

Perfect. We can hear you. Thank you.

You changed a little bit on your processes, I think.

Yes, we did.

Yes, Andreas and Timo, I think if I listen to what you are doing and saying, it looks -- everything looks really good. You have better processes at outsourcing, you streamlined, automated, relocated the business. It seems that the new operating model is in place. And I can't still see any really better performance, only slightly improving operating performance. And I just wonder what might be the reason. And I was wondering if you -- I think you wanted to become a customer-centric organization, and could you share with us your promoter score for your customers and employees? I mean I could imagine that employees which are in this transformation process, of course it's a difficult situation for the company, but I would also like to know what customers think about your company. Do you have any data to share?

Thank you very much, Christian. So overall, right, you're obviously correct, right? Our great employees around the world are the foundation for our continued progress, and I want to specifically thank them for really being the ones who make all of this happen. If we look at the customer net promoter scores throughout the world and we're looking at it a little bit differentiated between the different divisions, within the division of Industrial & Packaging, we're tracking around 60 CNPS, which is a very good result, but we're not done here just yet. We see opportunities to further drive this by providing even better services. If you look at the U.S. divisions, they are all well above industry standards, particularly within the FoodService division, we're seeing marks that are above 70, which is really industry-leading and speaks to the reliability and fulfillment that also our chain customers can expect from us.

Okay. This is really -- this is frustrating. Your customers are happy in U.S. FoodService and you still have double-digit organic declines, is the environment so problematic? Or is there -- I mean, who's taking share? Is it -- I mean, because this is not an industry which declines at 10% pace.

So we have -- as you know, discontinued as part of our focus activities, the bid contract business, even though it was not margin accretive to our activities. And we are committed to becoming a more focused and higher-performing company. So this weighs on our overall growth. Also, it will have an impact on the comps for this year. And then while we have resolved the technical issues, gaining back some of specifically the longer-term customers that we unfortunately lost because of prior actions takes longer than what we've anticipated. I would agree that while the overall -- and if you look at restaurants, same-store sales, and other indexes, right? It's not a buoyant, great industry. It is not declining at the same rate we saw 2025, our FoodService business decline, why we share -- and why we've shared very clearly our disappointment. That said, we feel that we've got a very good set of measures in place. We've got new leadership in place to drive overall presence of 2 long-standing brands, Central Restaurant Products and Hubert in the industry and build on our very good fulfillment experience as demonstrated by the CNPS scores I just said.

And may I add, do you think you're still the best owner for this business?

We do see significant value creation opportunity in the short and midterm for this business that we want to be sure to unlock for us and our shareholders.

We have no other questions so far, no risen hands. So Mr. Bruns, you're raising your hand again, please.

One for Timo now.

What do I have to do? Can you hear me still?

We can hear you.

Okay, sorry. I thought I had to unmute myself again. Yes, I was -- for Timo, I don't have a question. But on I&P, I mean, this is obviously your core business and you said that you are delisting products, which might be a good idea, but I would also be interested in what new products you play, offer to your customers and the relation between new products and established products, has this changed?

So overall, right, we're continuously refreshing our assortment, offering alternatives -- better alternatives to customers, meeting emerging customer requirements, and also delisting low profitability or low demand products, and quite frankly also phasing out some products along the way. We have seen, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, a very good top line development as a result of our efforts that also allowed us to drive not only top line revenue but also acquire more repeat business. Now to your question around the product types that we're introducing, it is including also selected consumables. It includes more innovative solutions in packaging. As you know, there is the new regulation around packaging coming on board as well as ensuring that we also provide customers with hazardous goods opportunities as regulations there continue to increase. These are just some examples. We're really focused on providing offering to existing customers that have existing and emerging needs, where we're the best partners to fulfill those.

Yes. I was not aware of the new regulation on packaging. Is it in Europe? Yes, obviously.

Verpackungsrecht.

In Germany, yes. Okay.

That's the German.

I have to look into it. Yes. Okay. That's a good idea to look into it. Maybe I have more questions then for Benjamin. And then maybe on the -- you also gave an outlook into 2026 and of course also in Q1, I mean Q1 is nearly finished. And obviously, there is no major improvement there, but could you also -- so you have had, of course, some headwinds for the start into the year. Is there also at the end of Q1, is there -- do you see a worsening trend? Or are there also some encouraging signs? Because I mean the macro environment obviously is not favorable.

Yes. So let me maybe talk a little bit about what we see in current trading, right? As we mentioned and commented on in our preliminary results, we expect a slower start to the year with a top line development for the group on a similar level to what we saw in quarter 4. Looking at the different divisions and business units, we see slightly positive trend from 2025 at I&P continuing into 2026, especially in March, also because of some timing effects, we see good development so far. At NBF, we see the stabilization we've shown for order intake in the presentation continuing. Compared to quarter 4, this is again a sequential improvement that we see in demand and order intake. Displays2go is a little bit spottier in the first months so far. We're located in Fall River where the snowstorm hit, as you may know, that required a little bit of a shutdown for a good part of a week. And I've also talked about the volatility we see here with the current -- which currently translates to lower top line development. We've talked in detail about the measures we're implementing to get back to the positive trends we achieved last year and obviously eager to build on. FoodServices remains the most challenging business and is currently performing below the run rate we saw in quarter 4. As I mentioned, we have new division leadership here since January and are positive on the impact she's driving and remain confident to be able to gradually improve this business over the course of the year as the existing as well as new initiatives gain traction. So that's a little bit where we are towards the end of quarter 1.

Then maybe a question for -- also for Timo, what do you need to reach the 10% margin you target? So which -- what would be the steps? I mean, would this be additional cost cutting? Would you need maybe a run rate organic growth of 5%, or what do you need in your view to reach this?

Yes, I think there are, of course, both sides that are relevant. In general, I would say, we set ourselves the cost-cutting target of EUR 30 million. We're well on track on that. And by having done that, we are lowering our baseline from the cost perspective to set ourselves up for growth. So as soon as we see... [Technical Difficulty]

I think we are just in 2 calls. Sorry, my colleague. But I hear you. Sorry. Can you mute me maybe? I can hear you.

Yes, I can mute you. Just a second.

So let me try again. So we did put a lot of effort in reducing our costs and therefore with our EUR 30 million cost-cutting target where we are well on track, also we are lowering our breakeven point. So having said that, I think the next real big lever coming from that, of course, again, we need to go the rest of the way. But coming from that, it is a lot about top line growth. With a lower breakeven point, as soon as we see additional sales, we should also see a significant part falling through to the bottom line of the contribution margin. So yes, in general, a good growth rate, and we don't give out precise guidance now over the last year and next years, but in the area a little bit above market growth would be needed to achieve the 10% margin target.

Mr. Bruns, if you have any further questions.

No, sorry. I'm fine with the answers and sorry for having 2 conferences here in this room. Sorry.

No worries. Thank you for the question and say hi to the other guy.

We have not received any further questions, no risen hands. [Operator Instructions] But I guess there are no further questions. So with that, I would say we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in TAKKT AG. And a big thank you also to you, Mr. Weishaar and Mr. Krutoff for your presentation and your time. Should any further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. And I wish you all a successful day. And handing over to you, Mr. Weishaar, once again, for your closing remarks.

Thank you so much. I echo your thanks for everyone's interest in TAKKT. Of course, the Investor Relations team and ourselves remain available for any questions. We will present our quarter 1 results on April 30. Speak to you latest then. Thank you, and goodbye.