Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the result presentation of Arteche for the first half of 2026. My name is Claudia Ortiz, I'm in charge of our investor relations, and we have here Alex Artetxe, Ixone Vicente, and Luis María Pérez. You can access the presentation as well as the webcast link through our website, www.arteche.com. During the presentation, all of you participants will be muted, and at the end, we'll open a Q&A session for your questions. If you want to speak, please do so by pressing asterisk followed by number five on your keypad. I'm now going to give the floor to Alex Artetxe.
Thank you very much, Claudia. Good morning, and thank you very much for being here today at our results disclosure for the first half of 2026. I'm Alex Artetxe. I'm the Chairperson and CEO of Grupo Arteche, and I have here with me Luis María Pérez, the Director General, and Ixone Vicente, who's the CFO. It's a pleasure to share with you details concerning the company in this first half of the year, a semester in which we've had lots of activity from an operational point of view and also from a strategic perspective.
The results that we're presenting today show how strong the business is and how well our team is working and the resilience and capacity that Arteche has to carry on growing in an environment in this sector that is offering major opportunities, but also there are significant challenges as a consequence of an external environment that once again is complex and very difficult to deal with. It's been six intense months. Our activities have grown, major progress has been made in terms of corporate development.
We have the incorporation of the continuous market, the extension of our capital, and the acquisitions of Uptech Sensing and SEG Electronics are milestones that strengthen our competitive position and have sped up the development of our strategic plan. This is what we're going to be talking about. This allows us to address the second half of the year and the future with a company that is more solid, more technological, with a value proposal that is more and more thorough for our customers. Having said that, let's move on now to the main milestones of the first half of the year. Let's kick off on this page four with a rapid review of the first part of the year from the point of view of corporate development.
If we would have to define this semester with only one word, I'd say that it would possibly be transformation, because during this period of time, we have made significant progress in terms of our strategic goals, which has reinforced our position in the market as an industrial, technological, and more and more international company. In February, we were listed on the stock exchange market in Spain, a very important milestone in Arteche's evolution, and it also represents that we are achieving the ultimate goals of our roadmap. This means that we have more visibility in terms of the financial markets. This has increased our liquidity and also allows us to access international institutional investors. A few weeks later, we announced the acquisition of Uptech Sensing, a company that specializes in optical sensors and in the smart monitoring of electric assets.
This fully fits with our digitization and service solutions, which supplement our digitization capabilities. This also allows us to develop solutions that have a higher added value for our customers. In June, we also acquired 100% of SEG Electronics, a company with an extensive track record in terms of protection systems and with a strong position in the distribution segment and in Central European markets. This operation represents a very significant step in our strategy of grid automation because it is incorporating new and technological capabilities, and it is extending our presence in a segment that is growing a lot, and where data centers play an outstanding role. Finally, we also invested EUR 100 million with close attention paid to international institutional investors, and this reinforces our free float.
It consolidates our presence among some of the most important international investors without modifying our industrial strategy nor the company's management model. As we will see now, these developments in terms of our strategic strategy was also followed by excellent financial results. In a nutshell, we believe that this first half shows that Arteche does not only carry on growing, but we are doing so in a sustainable manner and fully in line with our corporate strategy, and we are building a platform that is becoming increasingly solid. I am now going to give the floor to my colleague, Luis, so that he can talk about the business itself.
Thank you very much, Alex, and good morning, everybody. What we are going to do is review the main financial magnitudes that Alex was already talking about. There is a very clear-cut conclusion, and that is that we are growing in a very balanced manner in terms of activities and profitability. If we start off with the orders that we have received in the six first months, you can see that we need to grow by 16%. We reached the figure of EUR 338 million, which is a record-breaking figure for a semester. That means that we have a pipeline that is very close to EUR 417 million, and we will see later on in the subsequent overheads, this gives us a book-to-bill, which is 1.22 x, and we have the next eight months fully covered. Continue now with the sales or the business figure.
It is nearly EUR 278 million, which is growth of 10.7%, very solid, and even at a constant currency would be a little bit higher than that. Th e next metric has to do with our direct margin, which is a very important unit because this allows us to evaluate the success of the efficiency strategies and also the commercial strategies of the company, we have reached EUR 120 million in direct margins, which means that our growth for this year is 30%. If this metric works, and with a little bit of control as regards structural costs, it means that EBITDA, it has a repercussion for EBITDA, and we can see that there is a very important figure with EUR 51 million, which is 18.4% of the sales, and this represents a growth of 29% compared to the previous semester.
The end result for the company, it is nearly EUR 31 million in profits, which is an increase of 44% compared to the previous year. We have created more value for the shareholders. The last metric refers to the net financial debt ratio, it's 0.05 times EBITDA . We've carried out some inorganic operations with Uptech Sensing and SEG Electronics. Let's move on to the next page, in which we're going to see the advancement in terms of product lines. As you can remember, those that are following this, Arteche is based on three pillars. We have the first pillar, which is where we talk about measurements and monitoring, and these are our transformers. Basically what we've done in these first six months of the year, we've increased our production capacity.
We've made available to the market an extended capacity, which means that we can have achieved an increase of 20% of the number of units that we can produce, and we can therefore reduce lead times for those product lines that were more tensioned, and specifically HV, above 245,000 volts. We've also opened a new plant in Munguía, where we're going to manufacture capacitors, and you know these are the key elements of the future for Arteche HVDC. We're also about to open a factory in China, which we hope will be up and running by the beginning of next year. Finally, we've made some powerful investments in the new LUAT laboratory in Munguía, in which to perform trials that we've performed in external laboratories. Moving on to the second pillar, which is grid automation.
Basically, as we've said, we have the two acquisitions, Uptech Sensing and SEG Electronics, I'm going to focus a little bit more on SEG Electronics, although later on we'll see the transparency. SEG Electronics is a German manufacturer that is on the outskirts of Düsseldorf. It's a leader in terms of industrial applications and distribution protection systems. They've got 55 years of experience, not only that, but they also have offices in Poland, in Arab Emirates. Why did we buy them? Because they specialize in protection algorithmics. We've also strengthened inspection and controls. We'll see later on, we do not only have controlled equipment and controlled systems, but we also have protection devices. Finally, what we will do is carry out the consolidation of the development platforms for the new IEDs. I'll explain this a little bit later on.
The third pillar is grid reliability, and what we have been doing since Arteche is reinforce our range of products and increase our commercial activity. We've been involved in some green hydrogen projects. We've signed agreements in recent months, we're working on a new value proposal for data centers. Finally, we also have other framework contracts for the supply of reconnectors, especially in Brazil, which is one of our most important markets. As I mentioned before, I'm now going to move on to the next page, okay, because I'm going to be talking about the logic behind the grid automation strategy and how the acquisition of SEG fits in with all of this. Let's see.
Firstly, here you can see this chart, you can see that there are four levers. As regards a protection and control system for grids, we have the hardware components and the software components, the hard component, which is the chart that we called SEG, and this is the protection equipment. In second, it's in German here. The second component of this chart has to do with the control IEDs. All of these IED controls, the switches and positioners, et cetera, are going to be developed at our plant in Madrid together with Uptech Sensing, which, as you know, they have their research and development center in Pamplona. Until now, we've spoken about hardware, but let's talk about software. These control and protection systems have software that communicates the different pieces of equipment and also communicates with the offices of the electricity firm.
The control systems that are based on communications are also going to be developed in Madrid, we are going to assemble them in cabinets in three plants, one in Brazil, another one in Mexico, and the other one in Madrid. Finally, the final part of this automation strategy corresponds to the joint venture that we set up last year together with Red Eléctrica, with ADI, what they do is manage the assets and substations, they have a top-level software that is installed in the control systems of the utilities. With the incorporation of all of these acquisitions to Arteche's portfolio, what we have is a value proposal, a top-quality value proposal, that allows us to deal with the so-called traditional or historic manufacturers making these solutions. Now I'm going to give the floor back to Alex again.
Well, okay. In the initial summary, when we spoke about the main milestones, I'm now going to refer to one of the most important things is the operation that we carried out in June, the extension of capital. Well, it was EUR 100 million, mainly focused on institutional investors. The main objective of this operation was not to modify our industrial strategy nor the structure of the company, but we wanted to strengthen our profile on the stock exchange, that is in the Spanish stock exchange. This operation has allowed us to increase the free float. It's also improved the liquidity of our shares, we also find that it's more efficient where we negotiate in the market. We've also increased our attractiveness as regards international institutional investors, which is a very important thing after joining the main market.
Having a more extensive shareholder base that is more diversified will allow us to improve our visibility, people will get to know our company better, it will create more value for all of our shareholders. We believe that this operation represents another step in the growth process of Arteche as a listed company. Okay, well, now let's move on to the next overhead, we're going to be talking about our contracts. It is one of the things that we usually present. For all of you that follow this presentation, we have two snapshots. On the one hand, we have a geographic snapshot, then we also have one showing the three pillars.
Firstly, I want to say that we've had a 15.7% growth, which is very positive and is over and above the market growth figures, which I said before, this allows us to reach pipeline that is close to EUR 338 million with a very significant ratio. This makes us feel very comfortable when we set up our manufacturing pipeline because they have the next eight months or so fully programmed. That makes us feel very comfortable. From the point of view of geographies, as you can see, there are two geographies that are really the driving forces. Basically, it is Europe and North Africa and North America with a very high double-digit growth, which we hope will continue throughout the rest of the year.
We have the Asia-Pacific region, the growth that appears here is only one digit, but we should eliminate a one-off in 2025 mega contract that we had in Australia, without which we'd be talking about a similar dose of growth and where we have to get something done as regards the second part is in Latin America because of the timing of projects in Brazil. We'll close them over the next few months, which is already happening, by the way, and we also hope that we'll recover Argentina, which is one of our traditional markets that has not yet been fully recovered. If I shift the focus now and we can see that the three businesses or the three pillars, we can see that the one that grows most is the one that has to do with grid reliability.
We've hired, as I said before, we have some very significant projects of green hydrogen, for instance, we have a measurement and monitoring business which is growing, and what is flat is the grid reliability business. We've seen that, well, there was a stagnation of the PV business in Spain, and this has had an impact, of course, on the control and protection systems segment in Spain. I'm now going to move on very quickly to the next page, which is very similar, but in any case, we're not going to be talking about contracts, but we're talking about the business figure, and we're going to be talking about sales.
Our growth has been very close to 11%, and here we now can see the effects of the increased capacity, thanks to the investments made in 2025 and in the early months of 2026. We're going to see the effects of the second half of the year, which is where we'll have more manufacturing capacity for medium and high voltage. For each of the regions, we have a very similar effect. We have grown significantly in Europe. We've grown significantly, too, in Asia-Pacific, a little bit less in North America. In other parts, we are at somewhat lower levels because of the timing issues that I mentioned before.
Now looking at this by business units, we can see that our business is growing, and the increase in the grid pillar, we'll have more deliveries in the second half of the year. What we can see here, well, we can see this has to do with the excellent results that we had at the end of 2025 and things that have been readied and delivered this year. This is the summary of what the business figure is like, I am now going to give the floor back to our CFO, Ixone Vicente.
Thank you very much, Luis, good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for attending this conference call. After reviewing the evolution of the business and the main strategic milestones, I would now talk about the financial evolution of the half of the year. If I would have to summarize these results in only one idea, what I would say is that it has been a semester in which what we have demonstrated is that our business model is strong, that growth becomes profitability becomes profit, and profit becomes cash flow. This is what we are going to see in the next few slides.
Starting off now with profitability and focusing on EBITDA, we can see that there has been a very, very positive evolution, and I think that this chart summarizes perfectly well what has happened in the first half of the year. The EBITDA margin is still improving semester after semester. In this first half of the year, it has reached 18.4% over sales, which is the highest level ever of our history and to date. This means that there has been an improvement of 262 basis points compared to the first semester of 2025. This has been boosted by the business of the growth that Luis has just pointed out, and it has also been brought about by the continuous improvement in our operating efficiency.
As regards absolute terms, EBITDA reaches EUR 51 million, which is growth close to 30%, which is much higher than the growth we have seen in terms of sales. In other words, what we are demonstrating is that we have very strong operational leverage as the business grows, profitability grows even more. I think that these results confirm that the investments that have been made in recent years in terms of capacity and innovation and efficiency are now very clear, and this has an effect on our P&L. The direct margins, that is an internal indicator that we use to measure the results of each one of our businesses. The truth is that this indicator in the first half exceeds 40%, which is an improvement of 380 basis points compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
This is the end result of several years in which we have executed the same kind of strategy with a very strong discipline. In other presentations, we have presented many initiatives that we were implementing. I am talking about optimizing the supply chain, I am talking about a higher level of procurement efficiency, a better management of logistics costs of the work that is done by innovation that allows us to launch products that are more competitive and more profitable. I am talking about the increase in productivity and investments geared towards increasing our capacity and optimizing our processes. All of these initiatives are no longer expectations, but these are the real results that we are seeing in our P&L.
Apart from that, we also have to add a favorable product mix and a pricing strategy that is very well developed and also a positive evolution of our currency. This improvement in margins is what actually explains this very good evolution of EBITDA that I've just mentioned. Moving on now to the next slide and focusing on the net profits. We can see how this improvement in terms of profitability, it reaches the final line of the P&L. In the first half of the year, we've had net profit of EUR 30.6 million, which is 44.3% higher than the figure reported in the previous fiscal year. Once again, the main driving force behind this growth is the evolution of our business, and that is the operating outcomes have increased 34% and now reach margin over sales of 15%.
In addition to this, while we have the good performance of the business and we have a very good financial discipline and a very good financial structure and a favorable evolution of the taxation issue, which has served to reinforce the growth of these profits. On this slide, I would also like to underscore something else, and that is our commitment towards shareholder dividend. In this first half of the year, we've paid out a dividend that corresponds to 50% of the profits of the previous fiscal year. There was EUR 22.6 million, which are equivalent to EUR 2.39 per share. This means that for one more year, we have fully reached our commitment to the commitment of the strategic plan, which was to at least pay out 30% of our profits.
Moving on now to the next slide and to close the financial segment, we have to talk about cash generation. We still maintain a high level of capability to transform our results into cash. In this first half of the year, we have a free cash flow of EUR 21.9 million, which represents a conversion ratio of EBITDA of 43%. If we exclude from this flow, if we exclude the expenditures on expansion investments, well, that ratio or that conversion climbs up to 68%, which I think is an indicator that reflects the capability that our business has of generating cash in a recurrent manner.
In this chart, which is one of the charts that we usually show, now dwelling on the different business items as usual, you can see that the main cash outflow corresponds to CapEx. We still continue with our investments plan and with our capacity extension plans and with our technological development plans. Let's say that all of them are fully in line with the growth strategy, the long-term growth strategy, that is. Thanks to this cash flow generation and thanks to a very disciplined management of the working capital, we have maintained a very solid financial position. We've closed the first half of the year with a net debt of 0.05 times EBITDA after two core operations, corporate operations, so we'll see what they do for the results of the next few months and the payment of the dividend.
In this case, it's a positive figure, that is our share perspective is positive. Now I'm going to move on to another chart that we usually show in this disclosure. We still have a very diversified financial structure divided by instruments and also divided by maturity dates, with an average cost of approximately 3.6% and an average life in excess of four years. If we also take into account that about 79% of our long-term debt is protected against possible variations in interest rates, well, we have significantly reduced our exposure to the financial environment.
In a nutshell, we are closing a semester with a business that is still growing, that is still improving its profitability, and also with a very high possibility of generating more cash flow and with a very solid balance sheet. I think that these three ideas show perfectly well what it is we want to achieve through our strategic plan. We wanted to grow more and better and do so by maintaining a financial structure that is robust. This closes the financial side of things, I'm going to give the floor back to Alex.
Thank you very much, Ixone. Now we're going to move on to the progress made in terms of sustainability. As you know, this is an essential part of our strategy. For Arteche, sustainability and respect for the environment and for people and being transparent is fully in line with our values, this is a way of managing the company properly and of creating value in a sustainable and responsible manner. This is why we are still making progress as regards achieving our 2030 targets, both in terms of the environment where we are improving our recycling indicators and reutilization levels, we are also reducing our carbon footprint, we are increasing the consumption of renewables, which accounts for 80% of the consumption of electricity in all our plants in the world.
Also from the social perspective, where we are also boosting equal opportunities in the organization, we've reached 34% of women in the management positions of the company, we also want to achieve zero occupational accidents, we have a very consolidated system. As regards governance, well, this half of the year has been very significant because we've joined the continuous market, we've reinforced our transparency standards and governance control, we have 40% of women on the board, we were supposed to do this by the end of 2026. It's also wonderful to share with you our decarbonization targets.
We have a company that is helping us to achieve higher levels of decarbonization, SBTi, this reinforces our commitment towards sustainability and encourages us to continue with this work. We are convinced that a more sustainable company is also more competitive and it's more ready to prepare or generate value in the long term. Now we've come to the final part of the presentation. What we're going to do is deliver a global vision of the things that we've pointed out until now. If we were to have to summarize these last six months of the year, after what has been said right now, I'd say that it's been a semester of growth, of profitability, of transformation, and also execution too.
We are still growing at double digits, and we have a record pipeline, which gives us excellent visibility. Our profitability, we've seen that this growth has been supported by a significant growth level, and we've reached historic levels both in terms of direct and indirect margins. This growth is becoming increasingly efficient. Well, we're still advancing in terms of corporate development issues too, with the incorporation of SEG Electronics and our investment in Uptech Sensing, as Luis pointed out, mean that we have a much more extensive value proposal in our strategy, and this is taking us towards technological solutions that have a greater added value.
Our presence in the continuous market also represents a very significant step in the consolidation of Arteche as a listed company with more international visibility. All of this has been done according to the objectives contained in the strategic plan that we've maintained a very solid financial structure with lots of cash generation possibilities. We believe that these results do confirm that we are successful in our strategic plan and that the company can carry on growing over the next few years. In short, we think that the rest of the year will be perfect. We can see some very solid foundations in our market that have been driven by electrification, by the modernization of the grids, and because there's a growing need for equipment that is more sustainable, resilient, and smart.
Our technological office has incorporated new technological capabilities, which means that we have now become stronger. Having said that, we're now going to explain what we think is going to happen in the rest of the year 2026. At the beginning of the year, in February, we shared with the market a first range of guidance based on the information visibility that we had at that point in time. Since then, the evolution of the business has been positive. What is even more important is that today we have a high degree of visibility as regards what is going to be done in the next few months. Although in the last two days we've seen that tariffs have been applied once again in the United States, but according to our analysis, we believe that there's going to be limited impact for our business.
That's why we believe that our expectations are going to be better for the closing of the fiscal year. Here you can see the figures that we hope to reach between EUR 565 million and EUR 590 million, compared to the previous range, that ranged between EUR 555 million and EUR 585 million. As regards EBITDA, our forecast says that the range would be EUR 92.1 million to EUR 100.4 million. Initially, the figure was EUR 87.7 million to EUR 95.4 million. We've also reviewed our profitability expectations, and the EBITDA margin now stands between 16.3% and 17.8%, although the previous figure was between 15.8% and 16.3%. This revision, I think, shows that the group is really evolving very well from an operational perspective.
It shows the strength of our pipeline, and it shows that we are also very confident in terms of our execution capabilities in the second half of the fiscal year. That means that we have much better prospects than what we established at the beginning of the year, and we know that we're going to make even further progress. With this, we're going to close the presentation, and now we're going to open the floor for your questions. I forgot to mention, by the way, that we are going to present the strategic plan 2027, 2029 in the second half of the year, towards the end of October or beginning of November. Now we'll move on to your questions, and we'll be delighted to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you very much, Alex. We're going to start off with the Q&A session, and we're going directly to the chat because we can't see anybody on the phone. The first question comes from Aida Pereda from El Economista. She's asking about extending our capabilities. What investments have you made in Mungia for the new plant? When was it commissioned? How much has been spent on the ultra-high voltage laboratory, and how much is going to be spent in China? Where's the plant going to be?
I'll answer those questions. Let's see. The investment in Mungia has been about EUR 6 million between last year and this year. Could we see the question, please? When did this start? This started partially in the month of April, and we can say that it's already working 100% now in July. As regards to the enlargement of the ultra-high voltage laboratory, what we've done is refurbished the machinery to work with DC, and it's been EUR 2 million. It's been pretty complex too because we made the change whilst we were manufacturing.
Finally, as regards the factory in China, the factory in China is in Dalian, I think you said, and it's just opposite the current factory. In other words, it's on the other side of the road. It will be commissioned. The structure has been finished and will be commissioned in the first quarter of next year. The investments that we've made in China. Isn't it EUR 4 million or something like that? We have a little bit more to go, but when we finish, it will be EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million roughly.
Perfect. Let's move on to the next question. Robert Jackson from Banco Santander is asking several things about the EBITDA margins in Brazil. I'll read the question. When do you expect that the improvement of the mix in sales will have a bigger impact on the EBITDA margins? Because you've said that this has to do because of improvement in efficiency. Costs have been affected by the geopolitical environment, logistic costs. Could you please talk more about Brazil? When do you think that things will go back to normal? The growth of contracts, is this being affected by some kind of bottleneck anywhere?
There are many questions, but anyway. Let's talk about the sales mix. It is already delivering positive results as regards margins, and I think that I explained this very clearly in the lecture, in the presentation today. These improvements in margins, more than 50% of them have to do with internal efficiencies, and that has to do with all the work that we've done in recent years. Although in this case, the sales mix has also had a positive effect, and we think that this will continue in the future. What we were explaining now, we were talking about the acquisition of a SEG in Germany, and it's a business with a good margin that should also support this mix so that it will be favorable.
We will see what happens in the next few months because it is an operation that is not affecting us at all in these June results. As regards costs, I'm not sure if this is a statement or if this is a question, that if costs are being affected by geopolitical, logistics issues. We are seeing that there has been an increase in costs and a cost inflation effect, and possibly this will affect us more in the next few months, more than it has done until now. Because in this first half of the year, there's practically been no impact. As we've also explained on previous occasions, I think that we've learned a lot from the past, and we know how to monitor all of these increases, and we know how to try to reduce the impact as much as we possibly can by being agile.
Especially in terms of costs, what we have been affected by are the costs that have to do with metals, with the copper, the cost of aluminum. Not because of transportation costs that had already been negotiated, but we had an inflation in raw materials, which is something that we didn't have last year. No, that didn't help us improve our margins, and this really has more to do than with the product mix than with efficiencies. If you want, I can answer about Brazil now.
In Brazil, we are very dependent on the framework agreements of the utilities dealing with reconnectors, and this year they are somewhat late. We've already signed a framework agreement this month, and our policy, as I explained, is that even though we have the contract signed, is that we do not include that in the books until we receive detailed instructions from the customer on how many units they need and the lead times, and that's what we are working on.
What I can say is that the second half of the year is going to be better than the first half of the year, without any doubts whatsoever. The final question that has to do with the growth of the If there are any bottlenecks. I'd say that there are no bottlenecks. In 2025, we did have a bottleneck in the case of certain product lines that were completely saturated, and we couldn't cover all the demand. This year, in 2026, with investments that we made urgently last year, plus a policy of transferring products to the different plants, I'd say that we don't really have a bottleneck in any of the production lines.
Okay. Thank you much, Luis. Let's move on to the next question. This is from Íñigo Reta from Gaesco, he's asking us about the results. He's congratulating us. He's talking about EBITDA margins. How come we had 18.4% in the first semester and a maximum margin of 17.8%? Do you think that it will be 20% in the next two or three years?
Well, thank you for the question. When you take a look at the snapshot of the first half of the year, well, we've spoken about some very specific snapshots of the product mix or the business mix, and we've also had a comparison to different markets. I think that what we have to do is compare the improvement in the EBITDA margins with what was reported in December, or according to the guidance. What we can see is that with EBITDA margin and the profitability of the business, well, it is sustainable, and we still have a way to go. There's plenty of room to move.
This year, if we reach the high range, we would be exceeding, we would be reaching a triple-digit, which would be a milestone, too, for the company. The figure of 20%, well, we'll see what the figures of the strategic plan have to say first, and we'll be presenting this information in the second half of the year. What we can see is that the prospects are good, that the business is sustainable, and that the internal actions on efficiency and on the business mix, these measures are really contributing value and are also producing improvements.
Well, there's another question from Íñigo. Is there going to be any relevant M&A in the U.S.?
Well, we are still working on the growth axis that we have in the plan. As I mentioned many times, while we've made a very significant effort in terms of the geographic footprint, both in the U.S. as well as in Asia, this is one of our goals, and we can see that there are major visibility, and M&A has a very high level of profitability, but we're working on this, and the U.S. is one of our targets.
Okay, well, let's continue now with the questions from the telephone, and we're going to give the floor to Antonio Rodriguez from JB Capital, who's raised his hand. Antonio, please.
Yes, hello. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the presentation, and also thank you much for your time. Just three very quick questions. If I understood things correctly, on slide nine, is that it seems that grid automation is not growing in this semester. I'd like to know what's going on there. Could you please give us some more info, more details, please, on the situation, what is expected in the future? The second question has to do with CapEx.
Could you please break down the figures and not only focus on the semester? Well, the CapEx that you expect for the total of the year, how much would have to do with growth? How much do you think it will contribute towards the sales, in other words, this new capacity that is being generated in the year? Finally, could you please give us some additional details on efficiency measures that are going to be maintained in the future or that are going to be implemented in the future? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Antonio. Well, I'll start off with the grid automation. Before the acquisition of SEG, grid automation was divided in between ACP and ancillary grids. ACP are the cabinets. The ACP business is not global, it's a regional business. ACP, we sell this in Spain, Brazil, and Mexico. The relay business is totally global, and we sell them all over the world. The first half of the relay business has grown a lot. It's grown, if I'm not mistaken, by nearly 15%. What happens is that the business has been compensated by the decrease in the regional business of ACPs, especially in Spain. We are very dependent on PV installations that have significantly slumped, and the hybridization projects that we are currently working on have not yet produced any results because they've not yet been exploited.
Basically, the fact that we are flat in terms of the growth of sales in grid automation, and that's because of the growth of relays has been compensated by the decrease in ACP. In the second half of the year, we think that there's going to be a very slow recovery of the growth of renewables in Spain through a number of submitted projects, and we'll see the impact that SEG has on the group's accounts. We expect to add on another EUR 10 million, and we know, we're sure that we're going to end the year with a grid automation that's going to have a positive growth in terms of sales. CapEx, that's for you, Ixone.
No, just to finish that question, please. Sorry. Just one very quick comment, please, just to finish that question.
Without no recovery in Spain, if we remove the EUR 10 million of contribution of SEG, we should expect how much growth for the semester? How much would be reasonable once we've corrected that situation in Spain? By how much would that division grow? How much organic growth would there be or is there going to be next year? I know that I'm really going far away, but just to have an idea of the growth in the underlying.
Before, when we looked at this puzzle that was explained by Luis regarding the capabilities that we have in this pillar of grid automation, what we are doing or what have done, we've reinforced the capabilities of our portfolio to grow in a business that is growing very quickly, and so that all of the opportunity segments can grow. Before doing all this, our focus was really much more concentrated on the connections between plants and substations. Now we have a growth capacity that is very strong in the distribution sector, in the industrial sector. It's a segment that has grown very significantly in the world, both in the U.S. and in Europe, and I'm talking about data centers.
With a joint venture with the alliance that we've set up, we also have possibilities of growth in terms of software and in the world of services too. With Uptech Sensing, we could also reinforce our participation. All of this together, I think, will allow us to grow in a significant manner in the next cycle, which is 2027 to 2029, but we could be talking about this in greater depth. Let's say that our approach for this pillar and for the next few years is very, very positive. You can answer the CapEx question.
Well, look, Antonio, I think that you were asking about what the CapEx would look like towards the end of the fiscal year. As you've seen, in H1, it's nearly EUR 14 million, and we're going to see that there's going to be a speeding up of more CapEx in the second half. Approximately, we expect to finish at about EUR 40 million, and of all of that, well, nearly EUR 34 million or EUR 35 million is going to be increase in capacity automation or innovation work or the development of new products that we have to launch into the market. I think that we've already mentioned this in the previous teleconferences. We've explained how strong the market was.
We want to increase our capacity, and that is what we're currently doing. The CapEx that you're going to see towards the end of the year and possibly in the future fiscal years, and I don't want to deliver any spoilers of the strategic plan, but it's going to be more than what we've achieved in the past. Well, yes, CapEx is usually lower in the first half of the year compared to the second half of the year. That's a classic. The same thing happens every year. Have we clarified all your doubts, Antonio?
Well, yes. Thank you very much. Yes. By the way, thank you much. You've been very clear in your explanations. Yes, I was also asking you about the additional measures that have been adopted in terms of efficiency that are going to have an impact or that are not yet going to have an impact this year, but which are going to have an impact in future years.
Antonio, well, we've already mentioned this in the past, but let's say that the efficiency measures, setting aside those that have to do with the daily actions of the industrial plan, costs, efficiency. What we have seen in recent years in terms of impact, and this has been included in the strategic plan, and it's not that I'm throwing the question back at you, but we're talking fundamentally, we're talking about two things. We're talking about automating industrial processes, and we have made progress, too, in this area in the automation of processes. We're also talking about the incorporation of solutions and products and components that before we were getting through third parties.
Now thanks to R&D and thanks to the incorporation of companies, they now form part of our portfolio. All of this is something that is going to unfold over the next months or years of the strategic plan, and they are going to produce more profitability for us. This makes us think that the EBITDA margin is sustainable and has a future, although there are external factors that cannot be forgotten. You said something about 20%. Well, I was talking about three digits in EBITDA as an absolute value, so that could serve as a reference, but you have to fight hard to achieve that.
Okay. Well, fantastic. Thank you very much. That was very clear.
Thank you, Antonio. Let's go back to the questions on the chat. We have a question from Javier Ortega from Abanca Investment, there's been a question there that has already been answered, the margins, recurrent margins, and so on and so forth. There are no positive one-offs in that margin. That margin, there's nothing hidden there. This is what we've already mentioned and has just been pointed out by Alex, there's nothing that can be pointed out in this respect. The second question is that we understand that the deacceleration in the business of grid automation, is that something that has to do with the semester?
Yes. The transformer business, we've seen that there's been a deacceleration, a slowdown of purchases. In the case of ACP, it's more regional, we have not been able to compensate that, this is what I mentioned previously. Just to remind you that in grid automation, we want to grow globally and we want to go from a regional position to a global position that these are cycles in each of the markets that do not have too relevant impact. Yes. SEG is very strong in the Central European market, Germany, Switzerland, and other places to other countries. Geographically, that fits in perfectly well with our strategy.
This is from Jurrien Spatak. Are you going to make any other placements to improve your liquidity on the stock exchange?
What we want to do is consolidate the business, we want to execute the strategic plan, of course, we also want to consolidate our position as a company that is much more international and much more diversified on the stock exchange. We're going to be working on the strategic plan. We're going to present it, let's see what happens, I think that the objective is to consolidate and execute things.
Thank you very much, Alex. We have another question on this accelerated placement and the price at EUR 33. They say that the current quotation is below EUR 30, what is the impact relative to the future? Congratulations on the results again. Thank you.
We fully trust the project, we also are very confident about what we're talking about in terms of the long term in relation to how we're doing things in our execution. We, on the project, we think does produce a value, we trust and hope that the market in the mid and long term will recognize our work. We know that there's a future for us, we know that it's going to take some time.
Alex, with this, it has been the last question. There are no more questions on the phone. Thank you all very much, I'm going to give the floor to our CEO.
Thank you very much for your participation and for listening to us, to listening to these results as usual. Over the next few days, our investors team will be at your disposal to clarify any queries you may have and to provide you with more information. Many, many thanks too for your trust, for trusting Arteche. We are fully convinced, and I said that a couple of minutes ago. We are fully convinced about the project, and we're very happy with the decisions we have taken in this first half of the year because we know that this reinforces our position to carry on growing in a profitable manner. This increases our technological capabilities and also reinforces our position in the stock market and produces more value for our shareholders, customers, and employees. That's all. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your attention and for your interest and for your questions, and I hope that you have a great day. Thank you. Goodbye.