Welcome to the Continental AG Capital Markets update. The conference will be recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Max Westmeyer, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much, and welcome everyone to our Capital Market update. Today's call is hosted by our CEO, Christian Kötz, and also our CFO, Roland Welzbacher, is joining us for the Q&A session in the second part of today's call. As we have already indicated during the Q2 earnings call, we are going to make the next step in our company transformation that is visible to the outside, a change in the reporting structure. From Q3 onwards, we will shift to regional reporting. That means you will not see a tire segment anymore starting with Q3. The continued operations for Continental will consist of three regions instead. And with this call, we want to explain those regions in a bit more detail and provide a platform for potential questions around this change.
The presentation of today's call, as well as the accompanying data sheet with four quarters of historical financials, are now published on our website. You can also find a direct link to the data sheet in the backup of today's presentation. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call is for investors and analysts only. If you do not belong to either of these groups, please kindly disconnect now. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session for the sell-side analysts in this call. To give everyone the opportunity to ask questions, we kindly ask you to limit yourselves to no more than three questions. And with that, over to you, Christian.
Yeah. Thank you, Max, and welcome to everyone on the line also from my side. Thanks for taking the time to dial in. As you all know, we have taken important steps to reshape our company. Following the successful sale of our Original Equipment Solutions business, the so-called OESL business, and the signing of the ContiTech transaction, we have set the strategic course toward becoming a focused tire pure-play company. The agreed enterprise value of EUR 4 billion for ContiTech, supplemented by up to EUR 250 million of performance-based components, from our view, reflects the quality of the business and creates value for our shareholders. This is an outcome we are certainly satisfied with. As we communicated earlier, the expected cash proceeds of approximately EUR 3.1 billion allow us to deliver attractive shareholder returns of around EUR 2.5 billion while strengthening the balance sheet through deleveraging at the same time.
This provides a solid starting point on our path towards achieving our leverage ratio target of around 1x by 2029. All according to our plan and to our earlier communications. Most importantly, we will emerge as a simpler, more focused, and more transparent company. While the major transformation of Continental is nearing completion, we will continue to optimize the business, as you can see on slide three. We remain committed to continuously optimize both our portfolio and our cost base. On the chart, you see some recent examples. These recent examples include the sale of our French retail operations and the planned closure of our textile production facility at Aldora Mills in the U.S.
Talking about the French retail operation in France, we successfully preserved the Vergölst network as a franchise platform and distribution channel for our tires, while at the same time removing the associated fixed costs and assets from our books. This allows the business to operate with greater agility while maintaining our market presence through the franchise network. We are also working on some additional improvement projects in parallel, further solidifying our strong premium tires business. These actions reflect our continued focus on profitability, returns, and strategic fit, and this approach will continue also as a pure-play tire company. Therefore, our commitment remains unchanged. You can expect the same disciplined and pragmatic approach that has guided our transformation in recent years. Let me start with a closer look at the future Continental set up on slide four.
What will change moving forward is that the tires result will become the Continental result. However, we will also have to include the central line item that so far has not been part of the result. In 2025, these items amounted to EUR 151 million and reduce a pro forma margin by approximately 1 percentage point as a consequence. As indicated on the slide, a reasonable assumption for the upcoming quarters is a run rate of approximately EUR 30 million- EUR 35 million per quarter. However, just to make this clear, this is the status quo and not yet an optimized holding structure for the future Continental. The objective is straightforward: to build an efficient SG&A structure and continuously improve our cost ratio. Becoming a pure-play company also increases transparency, as shown in the bottom half of the slide, and as Max indicated and explained before.
Starting today, we will provide additional information on the profitability of our business areas, which are our regional segments. As you can see, Europe is the key foundation of our success. Our strong positioning in EMEA reflects the effectiveness of our strategy. Customer proximity, long-standing relationships, and continuous investments in supply chain capabilities. We have created a moat that will allow us to also overcome future obstacles in the business. The numbers also highlight why the APAC region and China in particular remain important growth markets. While APAC, as you can see on the chart, contributes a smaller share of total sales, it makes a strong contribution to adjusted EBIT and therefore to the group's overall profitability. In North America, our priority is clear.
We want to return the business to its former strength by improving operational performance, digesting the impact of tariffs and currency effects, and increasing profitability in what remains a challenging market environment. More once I come to the America details. The key principle of our operating model is a globally local approach. Global steering of R&D, manufacturing, and supply chain allows us to achieve high levels of efficiency while simultaneously supporting strong local customer relationships. Our regions are responsible for those customer relationships and the commercial execution of our business. Our global functions ensure that decisions are made based on overall value creation rather than regional optimization. This balance between global scale on the one side and local proximity on the other side is, from our viewpoint, one of Continental's most important competitive advantages. Cutting-edge tires with benchmark availability are the result. Turning to page six.
Our products have been, are, and will be at the heart of our success. The global development and industrialization of top-quality tires, technologies, and materials for all regions and segments drive our exceptional product lineup and reinforce our premium brand position. On top of this continued success in the global industry, achieving technical approvals in all application fields at basically all major OEMs, our products continue to perform strong in independent tests around the world, while our brand remains among the leading tire brands globally. This combination of technology leadership, product performance, and brand strength creates a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate. Our globally managed manufacturing footprint, and we talked about this again and again, which you can see on page seven, is another key pillar of our success. Some details. Today, approximately 80% of our production is already concentrated in highly standardized mega plants.
That means in just eight of our 19 plants worldwide, which makes us one of the most efficient players in the industry. Our 13 largest plants even account for 95% of the output, and around 75% of our tires are produced in best-cost countries. Another benefit of this footprint, the standardized mega plant layout and technology allow us to manufacture virtually any tire in multiple locations around the world, maximizing flexibility and scaling benefits, mainly in replacement. On the other hand, smaller specialized plants primarily serve local market requirements or targeted product segments, balancing required scale and customer proximity. Going to slide eight. The success of our manufacturing system, however, is also built on standardization. Standardized plants create flexibility, as I mentioned before, improve productivity, lower costs, and strengthen our supply chain resilience.
At the same time, our global presence and our in the market for the market philosophy brings us closer to customers while enabling efficient sourcing and production. These strengths have been developed over decades, and we will continue to invest in them. We are enhancing manufacturing capacity, increasing standardization, expanding flexibility across plants, and are further optimizing our supply chain to ensure we remain well-positioned for increasing demand and rising product complexity. Before we move into the regional discussions, let me briefly connect the dots. What we have shown over the last slides is the foundation of our competitive advantage as a tire pure-play company. A highly efficient global manufacturing footprint, industry-leading supply chain capabilities, strong customer relationships, and a premium technology and brand position. At the same time, becoming a focused tire company also brings greater transparency.
As mentioned before, for the first time, we are providing a more detailed view of the performance drivers of the new Continental AG, giving you greater insight into where earnings come from, how value is created across the business, and where we see opportunities for profitable growth. Let's page nine with EMEA. As I said earlier, our powerhouse and largest contributor to our earnings. Within the challenging European market environment, EMEA continues to deliver strong profitability. 16.7% in 2025, to be precise, which is more than EUR 1.2 billion of adjusted EBIT. In H1 2026, the adjusted EBIT margin even improved to 17.1%. In particular in Q2, we saw a clear step up with an adjusted EBIT margin of 17.5%, driven by a healthy price mix, thanks to the strong UHP performance and lower raw material costs.
Just like for the other regions, and we talked about this, however, raw materials will turn into a headwind in H2. The resilience in the EMEA region is driven by the structural strengths of the business. The region benefits from a high share of PLT replacement business, a premium-focused brand mix, and a broad customer base across Europe. While the UHP share in Europe is structurally lower than in North America or parts of APAC, the quality of the business remains strong. Our profitability demonstrates that success is not driven by a single product category, but by the strength of the overall business model. The foundation: we are close to our customers, maintain long-term or long-standing relationships across the value chain, and operate a responsive and efficient supply chain.
These capabilities allow us to deliver high service levels, respond quickly to changes in the demand, and create value for our customers in volatile market environments. Looking ahead, we see attractive opportunities to further strengthen this position predominantly by growing our UHP business while maintaining the right balance in our brand portfolio. Furthermore, we are well-positioned to grow with the Chinese OEMs entering the European market. We already maintain strong relationships with a growing number of these customers, and we do see potential to expand this business in the years ahead. Overall, EMEA remains a key foundation of our group's success, and I think demonstrates very obviously the effectiveness of our strategy of customer proximity, operational excellence and premium positioning. Turning to the Americas on page 10, the picture is somewhat different. The region operates in an environment that has become ever more challenging throughout the last years.
We have built a solid Tier 1 position, particularly in the premium passenger tire segment, and in many markets, we are already outperforming the industry from a commercial perspective. Our premium products continue to gain recognition, and our market position is sound. However, 2025 was affected by a combination of factors that clearly weighed on profitability. Geopolitical developments, tariff-related uncertainties, foreign exchange effects, and subdued market demand created a difficult operating environment, which is also reflected in the 8% adjusted EBIT margin. At the same time, weak demand in the truck tire business resulted in insufficient capacity utilization and weighed on the earnings as well. In the first half of 2026, we already saw some improvements. Although sales remained below the first half of 2025, profitability increased to an adjusted EBIT margin of 9.4%.
Also here, the second quarter was encouraging with an adjusted EBIT margin of 10.5%, back in the double-digit margin area. A step-up mainly due to the mitigation measures we have implemented in light of the U.S. tariffs. However, pressure on volumes and insufficient capacity utilization, predominantly on the truck tire side, are expected to remain challenging within 2026. While these challenges are significant, they are well understood and come with clear priorities for action. First, we want to continue growing our premium and Ultra-high performance business. We already have a strong product offering and attractive profitability. Yet, we have multiple product launches upcoming to further increase our 4x4 and light- truck presence, where we are currently still underrepresented. Second, we are focused on improving manufacturing efficiency and increasing the productivity of our existing footprint.
With this, we intend to strengthen our market position and to gain share in the United States and Canada. Finally, we will maintain a clear focus on cost efficiency and disciplined capital allocation. With these actions, we are convinced that we will improve earnings quality back to the double-digit margin levels Americas is capable of delivering. Let us take a look at APAC, which you will find on slide 11. From a sales perspective, APAC is our smallest region. At the same time, it is one of our most attractive regions. The 16.9% adjusted EBIT margin in fiscal year 2025, an impressive 18.8% in H1 2026, and the premium passenger car business mix shown on this slide underline the quality of our positioning in the region. Consequently, APAC contributes disproportionally to earnings.
Nevertheless, we also expect APAC profitability to remain below H1 2026 in the second half of the year. Given the strength of the region, we intend to continue expanding our presence and investing in growth opportunities across the APAC region. Our first priority is to fully capture the potential offered by established OE customers throughout the region. We have built strong relationships over many years and see attractive opportunities to further deepen these partnerships. At the same time, we see substantial growth potential with fast-growing Chinese OEMs, particularly as they continue to expand their export activities globally. As mentioned for EMEA, their growing international footprint creates opportunities not only in China, but also in other regions where these manufacturers are gaining market share. That said, our objective is not to pursue growth at any cost. We will remain selective and disciplined.
Our focus is on attractive premium segments, particularly UHP tires, where our technology, product quality, and brand positioning provide a competitive advantage. Combined with our premium reputation, OEM relationships, and localized manufacturing footprint, APAC offers attractive long-term growth opportunities within the new Continental. I can say I am really excited that we are now able to share more details around our premium tires business with you moving forward. Again, this is just a starting point. Therefore, I would like to reiterate my key takeaways from today's presentation. What stands behind our performance is a resilient and difficult-to-replicate business model, built on premium products, an efficient global manufacturing footprint, leading supply chain capabilities, and strong customer relationships. These advantages create meaningful differentiation, and we are convinced that these limit the impact of lower tier competition.
Talking about the regions, EMEA remains the foundation of our earnings profile and is well-positioned to sustain industry-leading profitability. In the Americas, as explained, our focus is firmly on executing the operational and commercial measures required to restore earnings quality and unlock the region's full potential. In APAC, we continue to build on a highly profitable foundation, capturing attractive growth opportunities while maintaining our disciplined premium positioning. Taken together, we believe these strengths position Continental well to deliver profitable growth, sustainable value creation, and long-term competitiveness as a focused tire pure-play company. What's next? First Q3, which by the way, is progressing as planned. Even though the volumes continue to be challenged, especially given the tough comps from Q3 last year, we are doing very well in terms of price mix and also in terms of profitability as a result.
Q3 margins should once again move more towards the upper end of our full-year guidance range. Of course, with our Q3 2026 results, the new segment structure for Continental will become effective. Already today, you have plenty of information to prepare your financial models accordingly. This is just the beginning. In the upcoming year, presumably in H1, a little bit dependent on the closing date of the ContiTech sale, we plan to host a Capital Market Day dedicated to the future Continental and an even more detailed view into Continental as a pure-play tire company and our ambitions and targets. With that, I would now like to hand over to the operator for the Q&A, for which Roland Welzbacher will join us as well, and would like to thank you for listening and spending the time with us.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star nine and pound key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to revoke your question, press star three and pound key. You can also use the dial-in function in the webcast and raise your hand if you would like to ask a question by phone. I repeat, to ask a question, please press star nine and pound key. The first question is from Monica Bosio from Intesa Sanpaolo. The floor is yours.
Yes. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just on Americas, where the profitability was well below the average. I was just wondering if you can share with us what is the current capacity utilization, and if you have a target, maybe in two, three years' time in term of better saturation. I'm just wondering if you can share with us also if you have a target in 3 x within your tire margin guidance, specifically for the Americas. My second question is just a check. I'm sorry, but I didn't catch what are you expecting for the APAC market in term of margins by year-end. I didn't catch what were the margins for the APAC in the first and second quarter? Thank you.
Okay, Monica, then I think I go first. Capacity utilization Americas was the question, I think. As said, we clearly have a different situation between PLT and truck tire. In general, I would say, and I mentioned this in the past, we target for a healthy or we see a utilization rate of 90%± as a healthy targeted utilization rate because it gives you then enough opportunity also to respond to changing customer demands, while at the same time, you are running at a level where you can optimize efficiency. On the PLT side, we are not far below that target level. This is true for the Americas as well as for Europe, even though we are below this 90%.
Whereas on the truck side, globally, we are running roughly at an 80% utilization rate, and in the Americas, especially North America, we are even below this 80%. This is one of the reasons, and you have seen the chart, that in North America, we also have a higher share of the truck tire business of the total business, and we also in the U.S. have a lower capacity utilization rate even on the truck than in the global average or in Europe. It is part of the reason, but only part of the reasons why you see a lower profitability level in the U.S. What are our targeted rates? That was then the question. Obviously, to get back to the 90% for PLT. We are very confident that we maintain this healthy utilization rate levels and will slightly improve once again from where we are today.
On the truck side, it is much more challenging and obviously getting back to this level depends very much on when do markets recover, how much will they recover, and we talked about, I think, the U.S. market situation a couple of times. Margin targets then was the second question for the U.S. or for the Americas.
Yes, the Americas.
No, that was the second question. Let me start with a little bit of a historic view. If you go to times before Corona, and really the Corona pandemic left the biggest marks in our operations in the Americas. There was basically hardly any difference in profitability between the three regions. The Americas has the potential, we are convinced, to get to similar and comparable profitability levels than the other regions, but definitely above the two-digit level. Part of it is under our control, and this is what we are working on. Part of it is not under our control. Tariff situation, FX situation, raw material supplies, and so on and so forth. But we feel confident that, let me say, if everything remains stable as what it is today, we should be definitely able to get back to the at least two-digit level within our midterm timeframe.
Midterm for us is always latest 2029, and that is clearly our target. Your last question was, I think, on APAC. There you also had two questions, I think, if I got it right. One was our current trading and performance, and the other one was our outlook for the total year. I start with the second part. We are not providing an outlook on a regional level yet, so this is why I also didn't mention the targeted profitability for APAC for the total year. But obviously, with the Q3 reporting, we will also then need to provide and will provide regional guidance that will be part of the change. But current performance, what I mentioned was 16.9% adjusted EBIT margin in 2025 and 18.8% in the first half of 2026. I hope I covered all of your questions.
Yes, thank you.
The breakdown for Q1 vs Q2, we had 19.1% margin in Q1 in APAC and 18.5% margin in Q2. Okay.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Welcome.
Ross MacDonald from Citi. The floor is yours.
Yes, thank you very much for the detail. First question, just an admin question, but trying to download the Excel, the historicals, can you maybe give us an update on how much history we should expect to receive for these divisions or these new divisions? For the group, I am just trying to get a sense of how we should think about seasonality in these divisions by quarter and maybe peak vs trough margins vs history. It would be great to understand how much of that data you will give us. The second question, just on EMEA. If I look at the EMEA data that you have given us, it looks like you have very high Conti brand share, but still quite low penetration with the UHP tires. That would imply there is a lot of upside potentially on mix in Europe over the midterm.
How should we think about that, given you are already making quite a strong margin in EMEA? How should we think about long-term margin potential for Europe from here? My final question, just on North America. Can you maybe help me understand the very high OE share? I know this is 2025 data that you are presenting, but how should we read that? Because obviously the margin is low at 8% in 2025, but on a very high OE basis. Would it be fair to assume a long-term 25% OE share, and how to think about that going forward? Thank you.
Okay. Roland, you will jump in.
I will.
I think first question was how much history we will provide. The data will show four quarters per region?
Exactly. Yeah.
That's the level of history we are able to provide. Your second question was around EMEA and the correlation, I think, between UHP share, brand share, and based on that, if your read of additional UHP opportunity or mix opportunity is correct. I would say your read is correct. Be a little careful, obviously, in Europe. You know in Europe we have this historic brand portfolio as well. We have, yes, a high share of Continental, but compared to the other regions, actually, also the highest share of other brands. And in these other brands, we are not as UHP-heavy, let me say, as we are in Continental. But clearly, there is additional mix opportunity. What we always said, and I think the numbers do show that there is or where this potential lies.
Americas, and I hope I get all of your questions, was the question on the relatively high OE share. That's a correct reading. If you compare this also to APAC, we also have a relatively high on over proportional OE share, so 28% in the Americas, 32%, Europe only 19%. A couple of things to mention. Number one, in the Americas as well as, and especially North America and in APAC, we are consciously targeting a slightly higher OE share also to provide the foundation for profitable later replacement growth. But in the long run, once we are more equally exposed in the individual regions, there should not be really a difference in terms of balance between OE and replacement share in the different regions. And there's one America-specific subject. You have seen that in the Americas, we have the highest exposure to the truck tire market.
On the truck tire or in the truck tire business, the OE share is even bigger of the total business than on the PLT side. This also drives a relatively higher share of OE business of our total business in the North American region.
Thanks, Christian. Can I maybe just sneak in a quick follow-up just on North America? You were saying previously prior to COVID that the margin profile by region was fairly balanced. Has something changed beyond the obvious tariff headwinds? Has the purchasing power of your customers become stronger? Is it reasonable to assume that North American margins can get to mid-teens? Level like the other divisions. Thank you.
No. If you take a look at the underlying mix, if I start on the positive note. On the underlying mix, the mix opportunity, especially in North America, is at least as positive and healthy as it is in the APAC region, and definitely even better than on the European market. I mentioned our under-indexation on the AT and 4x4 side, where we definitely have additional profitable growth opportunity. What has changed in the Americas? Tariff is one element, no doubt about that. The other part is the operational performance in our plants. Corona, I mentioned this also in other meetings and discussions. We had the biggest impact really in our North American operations in terms of fluctuation rates, difficulties to replace the workforce.
This has really led to inefficiencies and operational, or a deterioration of the operational performance, which we are now reestablishing step- by- step. There is also a third element, which is really significant for us, which is the exchange rate effect. As you know, before the corona, or if I go back to the 2018/2019 days, the dollar, especially for us, the dollar to euro exchange rate was very different to what it is today. You know we are still producing, especially on the PLT side, quite an amount of tires in Europe, which we sell in the U.S. So we complement our portfolio produced in the U.S. with production from Europe. This has led also, or this is weighing on our performance as well. Let's see what the exchange rate will do in the long run.
But this is also an impact which has clearly changed the pre-Corona vs today's world.
Thank you.
You are welcome.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Thomas Besson, Kepler. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions about this. I understand you are just going to give us four quarters of history. But is it thinkable to have a view about the five or 10-year average margin for each of the region with peak and trough? Or is that not something you consider sharing with us? Second question. I think you have talked during the CMD about potential acquisitions in Asia, in specialties, and so on. Could you talk about the cash uses, the pace of deleveraging vs acquisitions, also integrating eventually some comments about the EUR 2.5 billion that are going to be returned from the Continental acquisition. And lastly, can you explain why FX is such an issue today, while at the same exchange rates over the last 20 years, you have had higher margins in the Americas? Thank you.
Thomas, thanks, first of all. The first question, I was not 100% sure. So what you asked for-
I repeat it if you want.
Sure.
I am assuming it is possible to have from you either a five- or 10-year average margins for each of the three region. I understand you are going to give just four quarters of history. But could we get a kind of range of five, 10, 20 years, whatever period you want to choose, so that we have a little bit more understanding about the range of margins by region, if it is possible. That was the first question. Average margin because.
Thomas, you may remember that I talked earlier about reorganization. So we reorganized our business fields starting January 1st, 2026. Before we had five different business fields, three regions plus OE and specialty tires. We integrated the OE and specialty tires business fields or business areas into the three regions now. This is why we have no comparable historic data in the long term. Nevertheless, what Christian said is true. So we have been double- digit in the Americas, in general, because the biggest portion was replacement business, and it is not that difficult now to add a little bit of specialty and OE and try to approximate this. And we want to get to this as well. This is part of our midterm plan. We always said we want to get to 13%-16% return on sales until 2029, clearly targeting 15%-16%.
Americas and the turnaround situation is part of it, but of course, it's just one part of it.
At the CMD, just to add in, I mentioned that we are planning a CMD where we are planning to provide even more insights. We will need to show you more details on what we are planning to do per region. Then we will obviously also provide in more detail margin targets per region. Maybe as part of it, we can also and we will need to take a look what type of indications we would be able to provide in order to substantiate, let me say, for the lack of better words, these targets. But as Roland said, to provide numbers which are really then comparable, we don't really see to give you this dataset.
But clear, at the outlook, at the CMD, we will need to substantiate our targets and obviously historic data would be helpful to better understand the targets and our ambitions. Fully understood. Your second question was M&A, and I think the utilization of the proceeds. To be honest, no news vs what we've always said. No change in the plan. Out of the to-be-expected roughly EUR 3.1 billion of proceeds, EUR 2.5 billion we plan to generate direct shareholder return as a combination, most probably of a special dividend and a share buyback program. We still have not decided how we will structure this in detail. EUR 600 million will be used to deleverage the company in order to achieve our 2029 targeted leverage ratio. Nevertheless, we continue to be always open to evaluate M&A opportunities in case they arise.
I think the data we provide here right now do also explain why we always said, from a content standpoint, regional footprint Asia and from a product viewpoint, specialty tire would be subjects or assets which would complement our current portfolio nicely. But again, it needs to make financial sense and it needs to be available and no difference to what I've said and what we've communicated before. That's not the priority item for the time being, but it's an opportunity moving forward. Your last question was, I think the question on why is FX for us such a big issue. If you take a look over a longer period of time, we also have different FX rates. I was living in the U.S., and I remember days when we were at 120 or even at 125 to the euro.
The level which we have experienced then prior to Corona for a couple of years is not something which we have seen for decades. But it's fair to say that has helped us to create a certain profitability, and we've lost, let me say, to a certain extent, this tailwind. Because we always said we are self-sufficient in North America, if you include Mexico for PLT by roughly 45%. 55% we complement of the tires we sell from other sources, and Europe is our main supplying region to complement what we can't produce locally. Producing nowadays in euros and selling in dollars simply became much less attractive compared to where we were prior to Corona. In the long run, yes, and I don't want to say that this is an unfair exchange rate or that we should assume that things will change.
It is just a matter of fact that from where we have been prior to Corona to where we are today, this has weighed on our results in the Americas significantly.
Very clear. Thank you very much, Kötz.
Thank you, Thomas.
The next question is from Stephen Benhamou from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a follow-up regarding your last comment on your production. If I am not mistaken, you want to increase your local production in the U.S. vs your historical, I would say, mutualization strategy with mega plants, notably in Europe, that are producing tires sold in the U.S. What does it mean in terms of potential investments in the future? To what extent you are able to increase your existing utilization rate that could prevent you to do a significant investment in the U.S.? The second question is regarding your guidance. You are comfortable with an adjusted EBIT margin for Q3 at the upper end of your full-year guidance. This would mean that over the past nine months, adjusted EBIT margin would be also at the very end of the upper end of the guidance.
My question is simple: Why you did not raise your guidance? Does it mean that we should anticipate a decline in Q4? What are the reasons to explain that your conservatism, I would say? Thank you.
Okay. Roland, you joined in as well. First question on our U.S. setup. Yes, we are planning to increase production capacities in North America to improve self-sufficiency. But obviously it needs to make financial sense, and it is also dependent on what we are able to operationally execute in an efficient way. Just investing significantly more, building up significant capacities, which you can then not ramp up efficiently is really waste. We have seen that specifically on the workforce labor side, to maintain the necessary workforce, get the plants back to an efficiency level is already a challenge, and this is the other, let me say, limiting factor.
We do believe, to be honest, from today's perspective, the growth which we are targeting on the sales side in North America, we hopefully will be able to cover with additional capacity locally, but not significantly more to reduce our dependency on European supplies as well. From an invest standpoint, we feel comfortable that with our always communicated CapEx rate of 7%, roughly, this year probably a little bit higher because of some of the major investments we are currently doing in the APAC region, so we always said 7%-8% in this year. But the 7% in average is a healthy number to cover all of these subjects and topics, so we do not really foresee and believe we will have an investment wave in front of us in order to cover this hole.
Our U.S. plants, especially Sumter, is designed to grow into a, or at least has the space, the general setup, the infrastructure to grow into a mega plant. If we have the locations ready to invest into additional capacities, we do not need new locations, which makes obviously also then the investments more efficient. On the Q3, and full year guidance, obviously today the purpose is not to talk about 2026 and this year's guidance, but obviously my statement on Q3 raises this question. We said at the presentation of our Q2 results that we consciously took a conservative approach with all of the uncertainty, volatility, and I think the last two months clearly once again prove the volatility and the uncertainty is extremely high. What will happen to the Iran war? What will happen to the raw material costs? Will this stabilize, yes or no?
I think, we have probably never lived in a level of uncertainty like we have it today. This has guided us to take a consciously conservative approach. July and August, as I mentioned, continues to be challenged from the volume standpoint. Our anticipation and prediction here was correct, but it continues to be very strong on the price mix side. To be also honest, July and August are small volume months and small impact months in Q3. The decisive month in Q3 is September, so we will need to have now September in the books to really have, number one, more certainty, and number two, also obviously more visibility for the rest of the year. If we see a reason to adjust our guidance, we will do that, but it is simply for the reasons I mentioned too early today.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Yep.
Question. José Asumendi from JPMorgan. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much. It's José from JPMorgan. Thank you for making the call. Very interesting. A few questions, please. Can you comment on, or further please elaborate on the structural measures you want to undertake to improve the profitability of your truck tire product or division? Are you thinking strategically for partners within this product or subdivision? Is this a product you would like to keep in the longer run, or do you think there could be also maybe a future of Continental without truck tires? Second question, not related to this, but can you comment on the price delta, price difference between your products in China and your products in Europe, just to get a sense of magnitude of the price per unit, what we should be thinking about when comparing both businesses? Then final one, on your shareholder return.
I'm just thinking, obviously all the options are open, but in case you will find a suitable M&A target in the medium term, would this alter the EUR 2.5 billion shareholder remuneration you're applying to shareholders, or do you still plan to stick to this shareholder remuneration even if you include an M&A target? Thank you.
Hey, José. Thank you. Let me try to cover again the questions. I'll start with the last one, because it's the easiest one. We have no plans to change our commitment. We want to be reliable. We want to deliver what we promise, and we've communicated, we've promised that this is the plan to use the proceeds. I don't see, at least within the timeframe we are talking about, any reason why we should deviate from what we have committed to and what we've communicated. Structural measures for truck tire and is there a world without truck tires? What about truck? Truck is, on the one side, the overall demand, and I'm only talking about Europe and North America. As you know, we've basically withdrawn from the Asian market with the closure of our truck tire production in India.
If I take a look at Europe and North America, which are our key regions, we are on historical low demand levels. There should be at a certain point in time, and we've seen the cycles specifically pronounced on the truck tire side in the past. We are hopefully comparing now, let me say, the worst case demand scenario with hopefully years to come where at least a certain recovery of demand to be expected. Structural measures. On the one side, truck tire business is really not just truck tire. It's really very diverse in terms of route to market. Is it traditional retail business? Is this fleet business? Are retreads included? Yes or no. A major part of the retail operations we run are dedicated in the U.S., basically, more than 90% of what we do on the retail side is dedicated to support fleets.
From a structural standpoint, we really need to, and that is what we are doing, flip or turn every stone, in order to really improve beyond, hopefully, a demand recovery, the performance. That is why we already started to, as an example, retail footprint, we have already reduced our exposure and turned equity shops into partner shops. We will continue to do that. We have just decided to close our retread production in Mexico to optimize our retread profitability, and we are working on additional measures in order to improve specifically the truck tire profitability in North America. No details to share yet. Once we have more details there, we will communicate. The last topic then on future, without truck, to be honest, I do not think so. We need to optimize our portfolio.
Is every truck business then a business we are striving for, or do we need to be even more consequent in terms of what truck business do we do and what type of truck business do not we do? This is where we need to become, and this is what we are working on, even more consequent. A business of Continental Tire business without truck, I can at least not imagine. We always talked about economies of scale, efficiencies, and we need to find the right balance and the right sweet spot, having the right product portfolio. For me, if you want to be a globally leading tire manufacturer, a truck tire is an essential part of your overall business portfolio. Did I cover all of your questions? Our price difference between China and Europe.
I ask for your understanding that we are not going to provide this level of details, but it is also beyond our willingness to do that. It is also potentially very misleading because products are very different, product portfolio is very different, costs of production are very different. If you have a North American 4x4 AT tire, which is very material-heavy, vs some of the other products in the other regions, it is very difficult to provide a meaningful price comparison.
No problem. Thank you so much.
Thank you, José.
There aren't any questions on the line. Thank you very much for your participation. With that, I would like to hand over to our host, Max Westmeyer, for the closing remarks.
Yes, thanks a lot. Thank you everyone for participating in today's call. As always, the Continental Investor Relations team is available should you have any follow-ups. This is, of course, especially true this time should you wish to discuss more background information on the regions and the historical financials that we've provided, especially once you had a bit more time to digest the numbers that we provided. So feel free to reach out. With that, we conclude today's call. Thank you very much and goodbye.