Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first half 2024 results conference call and live webcast. I'm Miruna, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing Star and One on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and Zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mark Schneider. Please go ahead, sir.
Miruna, thank you very much, and good morning to everyone from Cologne. Dear all, please note that this call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our website at deutz.com later today. Your participation in the call implies your consent with this. Joining me today are our CEO, Sebastian Schulte, and our CFO, Timo Krutoff . Sebastian starts with the operational and strategic milestones of the first half of the year. Timo will then provide a deeper insight into the financial data. Following this, our CEO will go into more detail on the most important points of our strategy implementation in recent weeks. As always, we conclude with a look at the forecast and outlook before we look forward to your questions. Please note that management comments during this call will include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties.
For the discussion of risk factors, I encourage you to review the disclaimer contained in our annual report and this presentation. All documents relating to our first half of 2024 reporting are available on our website. Having said that, I'm handing over to you, Sebastian, please.
Thank you very much, Mark, and from my side, good morning to all of you dialing in for our H1 results 2024. And indeed, I'd like to start giving an overview on what we achieved operationally. I'd like to mention a few words on how we see the market at the moment. And then obviously, after Timo will have gone through the numbers, we'll give some more details on the milestones of our strategic projects, because what's clear that in the last couple of months, we've done quite a lot on the strategic side, on the sort of rebuilding Deutz for a more resilient future.
Let me start with looking back really at the first six months, and I think it's always good to have that chance, have that opportunity to look back in a particularly challenging year like this one. Because before going to the numbers, let me emphasize that the dynamic of the market has changed significantly from, let's say, the years 2022 and 2023, where we were in a situation that despite that, these, the various supply chain challenges, demand coming from our customers clearly exceeded the supply we and also competitors were able to provide. And that tide's turned already, let's say, in the fourth quarter of last year, and it's a theme since then.
But we want to show you that, well, how well we manage this situation, because difficult situations always provide a good opportunity to become better, more resilient, in order to benefit even more when the tide's turning again. New orders, EUR 791 million, and if you compare that with the prior year period, that is down 18.1%. Clearly, reason coming from weak orders, particularly from construction, agriculture, and also Europe. I'll go to regions and industries in a couple of minutes. We do see on a positive side, a further growth of our service business, and service orders went up 6.5%. So, you know, that's, that's sort of the plus side on that.
Revenue, EUR 876 million, also down on a prior year comparison, down 12.6%. However, if you look at revenue, the decline is significantly smaller than the decline in unit sales, which is down almost 19%. And here, same picture as on the new orders, share of service business was up 5.2%. Now, our service business represents almost 30% of our overall business. So book to bill still are slightly below 1. That means trends not changed yet. EBIT margin at 5.7%, and that's actually, you know, quite, quite a, quite a good message that on a group level we clearly show how our business improved the resilience against this mentioned tough economic environment.
Also, needless to say that the margin is well in line with the guidance we provided throughout the year so far. If you look at our markets, both in the segment perspective as well as in the regional perspective, our core markets still represent really a mixed bag. You know, we are caught in the cycle. We are well, well in the situation like our customers, our suppliers, our competitors. We do benefit continuously from the strengths we see from the United States, also due to the fact that we grew that business significantly and successfully over the last years. But, but one after the other. So first of all, looking at construction, we're down, well, speaking on revenues, EUR 1 million, we're down 26%, EUR 212 million now.
Also, agricultural equipment down even 32%. Material handling, on the plus side, it's been almost up 10%. We'll see that, and you know that. Those who follow us more closely, there's a high correlation between our material handling sector and the United States, because our sort of largest material handling customers, JLG, Terex, they are U.S. customers. And the service business gone up 6% to now EUR 253 million after the first, say, for the first six months of 2024. And, looking where we come from, the 253 multiplied by two, we are now on a run rate of above EUR 500 million, and that is already, that is before, let's say, the Rolls-Royce Power Systems effects come into place, after the closing effect.
So here we are really on good track. Regionally, again, the mixed bag, Europe down 19%, mainly due to, you know, the high share of construction ag. America, on the other hand, still growing slightly, but growing to 240. China and APAC, both on, relatively speaking, low levels, China down 20% on a, as I said, from a low baseline already. APAC, excluding China, down 11%. So we see here, let's say, a similar picture like we see in Europe. So that clearly summarizing, ag and construction is still low, cyclical low, and U.S. and material handling continues to grow. If you look at profitability, look, on absolute numbers, and we see it on the top half of the picture, yes, true, we're down from previous year.
We went in the first quarter with EUR 27.7 million, now we're slightly below that, 22.4. But if you look at revenue, here you see really the large decline, and we'll see later, hear later from Timo on the numbers, you know, how structurally we are quite-- we're already benefiting a lot in order to ensure that on these, relatively speaking, low revenues, we're able now to generate a yield like margin above 5%. That's something, quite frankly, which, let's say, two, three, four years ago, would have been impossible on the revenue and cost structure and portfolio of Deutz. So, in the same way, we are not happy with only making EUR 55.0 million, even after six months on the... That's beyond, let's say, below our ambition.
But on the other hand, given the top line, it is showing very clearly that our performance initiatives, and particularly the expansion of the service business, stabilizes profitability on a level, again, which shows that we are on the right track. Speaking of performance initiatives, one of the things we put a very early focus on this year is material cost and purchasing. Because in the last years, 2022 and 2023, where demand exceeded supply, where we had, so to speak, really seller's market all over the value chain, for us, it was very important to fix several pricing issues we've inherited from the past.
We've done that very successfully in 2022 and 2023, and now with the tides turning towards more of a buyer's market, that means obviously the buyers have certain strengths, and on the price side, it means we're defending our prices quite successfully. But on the purchase side, we obviously need to really seize the momentum in order to generate savings. And on both on a direct as well as on the indirect side, on the spend side, we show clearly that we're quite successful here on the way. Let me go through it in structure. In direct spend savings, what we've realized in the first half is already a low double-digit million EUR amount. We put ourselves, we gave ourselves a target by the end of last year, based on what we think is possible.
The savings target, we did lower slightly, but mainly because we looked at a rather a bit more ambitious volume numbers when we entered the new year. But what we see now is that actually more than 50% of the targeted savings we have realized after six months. And on top of that, we were faced with a lot of supplier claims for partially actually quite significant price increases. We were able to fight back the vast majority of that. So we were able to reject more than EUR 30 million worth of claims, and that shows really a pushback ratio of almost 90%, or roughly 90%, and that's quite a good result. So here, the purchasing team's done a tremendous job in this difficult environment.
We also, we obviously don't want to expose individual suppliers or components here, but we did have a few situations where, let's say, critical suppliers, critical suppliers, meaning, serving critical components, approached us with, with really, really difficult, difficult claims, and we were able to fight back the vast majority of that. So that means we're not only stabilizing our supply base, supply chain, our costs, we're also, realizing here, cost savings, as mentioned before. More successful even, we have been on the indirect side, here as well, realized savings in the first six months, higher single-digit million EUR are more successful, I said, because the spend obviously is significantly lower, indirect compared to direct. Here we, did the opposite.
We increased even our target, because, with our, with our teams, we identified more potential than we initially thought there would be. And so that means we were almost able to compensate here our, let's say, slight target reduction from the direct side. And we were- we are even better on track. After six months, we are on track with having already achieved more than 70% of our target, so, that's good news, and we'll continue to work on that as well. One nice example is packaging. With packaging plays an important role for our products, for our parts, so for everything we sell and ship to the customers.
We looked here at benchmark producers, we looked at lower-cost country producers, and in the end, we managed to reduce our overall packaging cost by 25%. I mean, that's a great achievement, and that helps us significantly in securing and increasing profitability. But it's not only about cost improvements, it's not only about cost-cutting, it's also about getting our operations more modern, more flexible, leaner, and so on. So one of our highlights on the operation side is that we successfully started our new assembly line number six in April, here in Cologne, and that assembly line number six replaces an old assembly line, and this assembly line is much more scalable, allows more flexible production.
And we speak here about the assembly line to produce engines in the power range, in the displacement range between 4 and 8 liter diesel, and also our new hydrogen engines. For those who are more familiar with our production setup, we do have a fairly new assembly line, number five, that covers our sub-4-liter engines, highly automation, highly optimized, so very good setup. And now we have this sort of second state-of-the-art assembly line here in place, which, as I said, is enabling us to produce much more flexibly, and particularly in the time we're currently living in, of fluctuating demand, of fluctuating mix between the different engines. This greater flexibility helps us here tremendously.
On that assembly line, by the way, we are also going to start the serial production of our 7.8 hydrogen engine, the one which we currently apply mainly in power generation products, including the small serial order to be delivered to China. So that's going to start in September this year. Our prototypes are already built and have been shipped. By the way, we expect here the opening ceremony of the first four gen sets to happen in Beijing in September. So here we are well on track as well. Yes, it costs some money. We spend in total some fifteen, one five million EUR on that, but it's a really great, great achievement.
And with that assembly line number six, coupled with the existing assembly line number five, we really have a state-of-the-art engine assembly now here in Cologne. Before handing over to Timo, I want to just provide at least a, you know, a bit of an update of our strategic moves and the implementation of such. Afterwards, I will go through that in a bit more detail, but we did really achieve a lot of highlights in the last month. So end of June, we acquired or we signed the purchase agreement for the acquisition of Blue Star Power Systems just a couple of days ago. Beginning of August, the closing occurred.
Beginning of July, we also entered into a strategic cooperation with Tata Motors , the Indian ag company, and also last week, so just a couple of days ago, the closing of the transaction with Rolls-Royce Power Systems for the Daimler Truck engines, occurred. So we really are, in a short period of time, we've ticked quite a lot of boxes, and I will go through that in a minute. But before doing so, I'll hand over to Timo, who will lead you through the 2024 H1 numbers in a bit more details.
Yes, thank you very much, Sebastian, and also a very good morning here from Cologne from me. Let's jump directly into the first numbers. We're looking here now at new orders and unit sales and revenues. So as Sebastian said it already a little bit, new orders down 18.1%. That leads to a number that is just a little bit shy of EUR 800 million for the first half year. And, fairly much in line with that is also the unit sales of now roughly 74,000 engines produced and sold, and that is down 19%.
So just to give you an idea of what that means for us, we, if we look at a, I would say, normal two-shift production in our facilities, at least here in Europe, we would be at 80,000-85,000 engines at a normal run rate for the two shifts. So that's ideal, for sure, for us, not the ideal production point, but, luckily, and Sebastian said that on the example of the new line we have, we are now flexible enough to act accordingly. If we look now at revenues, the revenues is just down 12.6%. We see two effects here. The first one is a negative. If we compare unit sales to revenue, it's the product mix, so we're selling a little more smaller engines compared to bigger engines before.
So that's would lead to, of course, compared to unit sales, a little less revenue. But on the other side, and that's, what's very, very important for us, and now is that the pricing measures from the last year still have an effect for this year, and the other part is that the service business is still growing and therefore, pushing revenues and, making us more resilient also a little bit on the revenue side. The book-to-bill ratio is at 0.9, so a little less than one, coming in now in new orders, and that means we still have orders on hand of EUR 366 million. So that's something we can still work on and, deliver these parts then for the second half of this year.
One thing that needs to be clear, of course, or should be clear for everyone, this is, of course, without the new acquisition. So if you're looking at the second part of the year, then we'll have the effects of the two bigger acquisitions we've just closed. Okay, next slide, please. We're looking here at some details on the revenue split. The first is the breakdown by applications. So, service, I've said that already, but also material handling, if we look into the segments, is up. Up in total numbers, service 6.5%, material handling 9.2%, while on the other hand, and that's really not surprising, if we look at what's happening in the markets, construction and agriculture are both down.
If we look at especially agriculture, it's down 32%, but if you look what you hear in the market, we see a lot of numbers with competitors or customers, that's down more than 40%. So I think we're still holding up okay-ish in a very, very difficult environment here. Now looking at how's the split between the different application segments, then we can now say service is our biggest segment here, which is now super important. So 29% of our total revenue comes now from the service segment, followed by material handling with 27%, then construction with 24%, and our last, but not least, of the bigger ones, at least, agriculture starts to play a minor role compared to the others, with only 11% of our total revenue left.
Quick look at the market. Sebastian has already said a little bit about it. Yes, America's luckily still up, 2%. Everyone else is down. EU, without Germany, is now at, 36% of our total, share in revenues. Germany is at 19%, so total Europe at, 55%, and the Americas, again, and we've seen that over the last years already, is gaining an importance for us now, having a share of 27%. Asia Pacific, now at 14, so we also see a slight decrease or a decrease of 14 percentage points, at least, in this market. Looking at profits, especially EBIT here, Sebastian has said it, and I think it was phrased very well. We're not happy with just EUR 50 million EBIT in the first half of the year.
If we think about mid- and long-term targets that we have, we want to be significantly better than that. But at the same time, we, I want to say that, the margin of 5.7% is still acceptable in such a difficult environment and shows the resilience of our company. So we are very much in line with the, guidance we gave out of 5%-6.5%. So we are doing at least okay here. And, this can only be seen if we look at, well, sales is down, compared to the year before by EUR 125 million. EBIT is down by EUR 20 million, so we can say contribution margin-wise, it's, 16%, in normal manufacturing, environment.
You usually see higher contribution margin losses if the sales target goes down, and this is a clear sign of that our cost reduction programs work, that the flexibility in production works, so where the fixed costs are not so high, and of course, that the growth in service is helping us with a more stable EBIT. What we're still luckily able to do, because we are more resilient, is to invest in our future. We're not cutting costs here, at least not dramatically in any of the typical parts here. We see our R&D spending is actually up compared to year before, not significantly up. It's in a similar range, but we've now spent almost EUR 50 million in R&D, and this is true for our new segments, but also for our Classic segments.
So we're still investing here, in the future. And if we look at the capital expenditure, I would say it's now on a normal level here. You need to remember, if you compare the numbers with last year, that, the big, acquisitions of the licenses and the IP rights of Daimler Truck was included in the first half of the year. But I'd say EUR 45 million now, including leasing, is an okay-ish number. We are still gonna, look very closely into that in the second half of the year, to make sure that we achieve our cash flow targets. Working capital is up. You probably wouldn't have expected that. If you look at the market development, there's one special thing going on here.
We have an external logistics supplier that's handling a lot of our logistics things, and they need to do a very big maintenance in their part, which they haven't done for the last 10 years. So it's not something that happens all the time, but that's why they're shutting down for 3 weeks, and therefore, we also had to shut down production now in August for 3 weeks. Since we're still supplying some of our customers, we had to increase the stock levels and did produce a little bit more over the last couple of months than we've sold, but that was planned. So we see an increase here on the working capital of EUR 44 million. And that, of course, relates directly into the cash flow situation.
If we compare here our operating cash flow, it's down quite a bit. We're still positive, but remember, working capital, EUR 44 million increase, compared to at least to the start of the year. So, that has a big effect. But of course, the EBIT reduction also plays a part here. On the free cash flow side, including M&A, we're good. We're at EUR 31.2 million positive. Of course, here, the Torqeedo sale is included. If we then look at the free cash flow before M&A, you see the -EUR 34.5 million. Well, again, it relates to the operating cash flow and the build-up of the inventory and some of the reduction in EBIT. In the net financial position, not much happened.
We can still say that here we have an equity ratio, that is very, very solid at almost 50%, as of June thirtieth. In the different segments, we really have to say that the Classic segment here plays the absolute major role. I don't think I need to talk about new orders, unit sales, and revenue here, because it's almost exactly the same numbers I've already done. But you can see here the split in R&D expenditure, that we're still investing, as I said, quite significantly in the Classic segment, but also at the same time in the Green segment.
For us, the Green segment is more, has more the character of a start-up, where we now need to invest into the future, and we're therefore losing here EUR 17.8 million, which, but on the other side, also shows the stability of the Classic segment, which still has a fairly big profit contribution to what's going on. One last topic from my side, and it's not directly related to the Q- to the first half of the year, but we did do the capital increase with an accelerated book building in early July. From our perspective and for the funds we raised, that was a very successful one.
We were very, very happy with the interest of the investors, so a lot of people wanted to buy the part of the approximately 12.6 million in new shares, which we were able to place at the cost point of EUR 5.71. That led to gross proceeds of EUR 72 million, and that, of course, is very good if we look into our future, what we are still planning to do, but also for the financing of the acquisitions we've just done. So, in total, we can say that we are financially on a very stable position and that our financial firepower is still strong for everything that we want to do and need to do for the transformation of this company. Thank you very much.
That's all from me so far. Now, Sebastian, on some of the strategic things.
Thank you, Timo. Yes, let me guide you quickly through the progress of our strategic initiatives. Let me start with the acquisition of Blue Star. We did announce about 6 weeks ago the rationale and the main focus points of why we did that, and now we actually show that we've done it. Blue Star, one of the top 10 genset producers in the North American market, in the active, in the sort of small, medium, and lower large power range, up to 2 megawatts. So we're talking about 110 employees. Revenues this year, above $120 million, on a full year basis, of course. We signed on June twenty-seventh.
We closed last week, end of last week, and we did agree with the private previous owner on confidentiality on the terms, but what we can assure you is that valuation's been very much in line with usual parameters on deals like that. The founder, Doug Fahrforth , has agreed to continue to run the company for us as CEO until at least 2026. We're very grateful on that. We're very excited about that because Doug has really shown that he can not only build a company like that, but also develop it into a really, really profitable business with a fantastic reputation with their customers. So I was there for the closing. I spoke to some of the distributors, and they were really all up on the...
not only the performance of the products, but particularly the way Blue Star is treating the customers. So that really shows it fits so well to our value proposition at Deutz. In terms of numbers, seeing that we start, you know, we're close to the first of August, we expect a bit more, roughly EUR 50 million top line effect of that, and profit margin is certainly well above the Deutz current group level. So that's backing up significantly H2 this year for Deutz. And it puts us really, as said earlier, it makes us broader and more resilient, and it is only the starting point for building up the BU Energy going forward. And why is it good for us? I said it before, the energy business, the energy market is very attractive....
shows a very, very good, growth trajectory going forward, less cyclical as well. And we'll buy and build this energy business, on what we have with Deutz, and well, now with Blue Star on top of the existing operations in Morocco, Magideutz . We've got the first two building blocks in that, and we expect these to be added in the future. We do have a right to win here. We know the technology, we know the service, so that's good. And, Magideutz and Blue Star will be really the relevant, strong building block for that. It helps, it strengthens all our areas of Dual+ , Classic, but also Green. Because, even though so far power gensets were providing on a larger scale, power gensets are still relying on diesel and gas engines.
But with our hydrogen technology, our 7.8 hydrogen, where I said earlier, we're going to launch the first 4 gensets in China in a couple of months or within a couple of months. So that's really a fantastic, fantastic proof of concept also for power generation. And let's not forget, service business. We're good at that, not only in the U.S., but particular there. And yeah, continuing really to build our service business with genset supports yeah our growth strategy clearly. We gain size and relevance in energy, and yeah, as you probably hear from the tone of my words, we're super excited about that. Why is it get fast? Profitability, as said, it's more profitable. It's has a sustainably stronger growth than our core markets.
Although this has never been the main focus of that, it is—it represents an opportunity for Deutz engines as well, a distribution channel, but I said that is not the main focus of that. We want to be—We want to grow here agnostic of the engine product itself. It broadens our portfolio, broadens our business. We've become a solution provider rather than just a very, very successful tier one engine provider. Spoke about the hydrogen potential earlier. And last but not least, it really makes us more resilient. The market is less cyclical, less cyclical, and it strengthens, with the initial focus on the United States, our geographical diversification significantly. The other big project we announced a few weeks ago was our partnership with Tata, the Indian company.
We did sign a long-term cooperation with Tata. Tata will, for us, produce Deutz-branded engines in 2027. So not only Deutz-branded engines, but they're pretty much identical with the engines we're producing today out of Cologne. We'll talk here about up to 30,000 machines per year. When I mentioned that number, we speak about number after ramp up in 2030. So in 2027, the number is gonna be even smaller initially. I would talk about 2.2-liter, which is up to 75 horsepower, and a 2.9-liter, which is up to 100 horsepower.
And the focus is that Tata uses these engines in their own tractors to upgrade their tractors with a state-of-the-art engine product, but also give us the opportunity to market those state-of-the-art engines produced on a better cost basis in India itself, but also in neighboring regions, particularly in Asia Pacific. Engines were produced in a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Alwar, and it gives, and that's very important for us in terms of resilience. It also gives us the opportunity to expand our supplier base. Supplier base is a challenging field for all players involved in the internal combustion engine field. And we'll try to source as much as possible for the Indian production in India.
Not everything, but 75%-80%, we would target to source over there. And if we get components at, in our right specification, right quality, and competitive cost made in India, we may well use them also, in our German production assembly lines. So that'll benefit not only the market potential, but also, our own production facilities and positioning in Germany. And Tata is such a great partner. We're already talking on, additional opportunities to expand the cooperation, including also climate-friendly solutions. So India is a fast-growing market, and we're very excited to be part of that as well. Again, the benefits, profitability, I think it's very clear. Access to new customers, receiving their license fees for the production to be part- to be purchased by Tata.
And you know, India is not only a fast-growing market, it's also a market where the combustion engine, even in the lower power ranges, will, and that's our conviction now, will be around for probably much longer than what we already expect in Europe, America, and other of our core markets. So we can market our proven technologies even longer than what we currently see. And when it comes to the supplier aspect, it'll increase our resilience further and makes us also less dependent on other countries, other regions, particularly China. Next point, defense. We've spoken quite a lot about defense as a growth opportunity for Deutz. This is something we're at the beginning.
First of all, we are already in the market on a small scale, so we do sell engines into our Deutz engines into defense vehicles, but also for power generation. But we want to expand that much, much more structured, and that's supposed to become a new, a new, a new market for us, a new, new customer field for us, which is very interesting, very attractive due to the change to your political outlook, I think that is clear. We'll also look here into partnering where required to quickly gain scale and to quickly actually get access to existing products and programs.
I think it's also clear on both on all aspects, profitability, portfolio, and resilience, why entering defense ticks all those boxes to reduce the cyclicity of the business, but also to provide another long-term sales pipeline for diesel engines and even including the aftermarket. So also here, we are excited about that. We cannot announce more at this point in time, but there is more to come in the future. Final strategic milestone, and we are very, very happy to have closed to have concluded the transaction with Rolls-Royce Power Systems. Just to recap quickly, most of you are very familiar with that story, with that business.
We, well, now we know we took over an engine portfolio associated with a revenue of EUR 300 million on an annual basis for engine service. We'll talk about Daimler Truck, medium-duty and heavy-duty engines, for the off-highway sector to start with. And this EUR 300 million top-line business comes along with an EBIT margin above the current Deutz group margin. We did not disclose the purchase price, but it is in a higher double-digit million EUR amount. Revenue for this year, because it's only on a pro rata basis, is expected to be above EUR 100 million. And recap again, a couple of years ago, we concluded that transaction with Daimler Truck, for MDEG, for the medium-duty and the heavy-duty engine to start beyond 2028.
With that follow-up transaction with Rolls-Royce Power Systems, we filled, so to speak, that gap between now and 2028, 2029. We clearly showed that we can actually execute transactions like that. You know, combined, having Blue Star now part of our books, as well as the Rolls-Royce business, on a like for like basis, we grew Deutz significantly with that two closings on the first of August. It's more than just the immediate effect on numbers. It's a very, very strong proof point that we are not only talking about becoming an active part in the consolidation of the internal combustion engine market, but we're actually executing that. That's why there was some room for celebration when those two transactions closed a couple of days ago.
Just, you know, providing a few sort of pictures. You see here, these are the three top customers of that engine portfolio. We've got the South African mining and construction company, Bell, out of Richards Bay, South Africa. One of their sort of iconic products is a dump truck, and from now on, equipped with a Deutz engine. We've got Claas, a fantastic ag company out of northern Germany, with tractors, with forage harvesters, balers, and other great products. Also from now on, some of them equipped with Deutz engines. And last, but certainly not least, Ponsse, Finnish forestry equipment company. You see here, you see a forester in action, also equipped from now on with a Deutz engine.
I think when you look just at the sheer size and robustness of those great products, becomes very obvious why a state-of-the-art, modern, clean combustion engine is probably here the way to go, the way to stay to power those equipment. Despite obviously all important focus and activities to make the product, our product portfolio greener, but this is really what it's all about when it comes on the strong, the tough demands of the off-highway markets. With that in mind, let me conclude with view on the guidance. For this year, we came, and we heard it earlier from my previous words, but also from Timo's points, we came 2023 from almost 190,000 engines.
This year, we'll now see a maximum of 160 K engines to be produced and sold. We do confirm the revenue range between EUR 1.9 billion and EUR 2.1 billion. We also do confirm the adjusted EBIT margin range between 5.0% and 6.5%. We also do confirm our guidance in terms of free cash flow, mid-double digit million EUR amount. And it's important really that the closing of the agreements with Rolls-Royce and the acquisition of Blue Star Power Systems, they obviously have a positive impact on revenue and profit now from sort of Q3 or, you know, to be more specific, from August onwards. So that's great.
Obviously, the full impact will only realized in 2025, when we get the full year helping us here. We're growing, we continue growing the service business. We're working on pricing and cost cutting to really strengthen the resilience in this downturn cycle, where we are faced lower unit sales. But this is a description of the moment. And then going forward, you know, as soon as we are enjoying a slight recovery on the cyclical market, that'll help us tremendously. And that's also why we're not only confirming here the outlook for next year, this is our mid-term outlook, which we do confirm with this, with a couple of highlights.
Also, particularly now, we're bringing the service business to the next level of around EUR 600 million. We are well on track with that, so we're confirming those previous midterm targets. Why do I say previous? Because 25 is not midterm anymore. But also give us an outlook on the Capital Markets Day, which we'll host here in Cologne, in our headquarters at the beginning of October, October 8, where we will then guide everyone who's joining us in more detail through the strategy building blocks we've added to the company in the last months, and also it's giving a glimpse on, let's say, a new midterm and long-term view on the size and profitability of the company. With that in mind, thank you very much. And back to you, Mark.
Thank you, Sebastian, and now we are happy to answer your questions. With that, I give to you,
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to use only handsets and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question from the phone comes from Jorge Gonzalez with Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Bank. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. So, Sebastian, Timo, my first question is just a clarification on the cost savings that you mentioned were achieved in the first semester. If I heard well, you said in the low double-digit million EUR. Is this correct?
That's correct.
Okay. And then the rest of my question, because, well, it's one extended question, is related to the guidance and also the view for next year. And I know it's difficult to tell at this time. But, taking into account the order intake that you had in Q2, should we assume that Q3 is going to be at best as Q2 in terms of sales with the units that you have now in the backlog? Or is there any reason for Q3 to be in line or better than Q2, that I'm missing here?
Yeah, Jorge, if you look at, you know, if you compare like for like, so before the acquisitions, we expect it to be roughly similar on the top line. We obviously have a little bit of a seasonal effect that some of our customers shut down on, in August. So August itself is probably being a bit weaker, but that's always like that. But taking that apart, apart from that, well, I expect it to be, let's say, similar, on a similar level. And then obviously, we will see the positive impact in from both acquisitions, where let's just be careful, unit numbers become, let's say, less relevant, in after the acquisitions.
Because obviously, the Rolls-Royce Power Systems engines or the previous Rolls-Royce Power Systems, and we still need to get used to that they're our engines now. They're the larger and thus also more pricey engines. So, you know, the average revenue per engine is obviously gonna go up significantly. The same applies for the power gen sets out of Blue Star, well, which are no engines, but which are products. So you see here that, you know, also the unit sizes. We would put less focus on unit sizes going forward, and it makes more sense now to look in revenue. But to answer your question, August is gonna be seasonally weak as every year. Apart from that, we'll probably we're expecting still a bit of a flat development here.
Okay, perfect. Yeah, yeah, I did not really send you the right question because I forgot to mention without knowing the acquisitions. So then for the full year, I mean, well, in my model, even with this run rate, you can get to the EUR 1.9 billion with the acquisitions. But I'm wondering, you have not changed the midterm targets for next year, or you have also not commented much about them. And in my numbers, I mean, the EBIT margin and the consistency is also below, no? It is implying like a rebound of 20%.
I don't know if you still think that we can see a pickup of demand in Q4. Is there any Green shoots in this regard that make you still optimistic for the last quarter?
Well, we're cautious, let's say. We're cautious. We look obviously what our customers and competitors announce, and there's very high level of cautiousness on the pickup of demand. We do see very, very few customers who actually placed more orders now, but this is really sort of the silver lining so far, not more than that. And actually, Jorge, I was consciously not talking too much on the 25 targets because it's very difficult to make an assessment. We are very well able, let's say, to make an assessment on the service business for 25. We're very well able to make an assessment on the power gen business for 25.
But we are reluctant to make an assessment on construction and ag business for 2025 because the visibility is just not there. We do not expect it to get worse, that's for sure, than this year. But when the pickup is still a bit unclear, and that's why we're a little reluctant on that. And to be perfectly honest, I'm quite glad not having to make, you know, a prognosis for 2025 yet, because there's lots of dynamic just ahead of us. But that's why we're a bit reluctant on that. And please do not misinterpret that in being, let's say, pessimistic.
We're not like that, but we just wanna say there are certain blocks of our top line where we feel very comfortable, as said, service, power gen, and there are other blocks where we probably need to wait a few more months, in order to make a better assessment. That's also why I'm referring again to the Capital Markets Day in October. Not a promise how much we can say there, but then obviously the visibility towards 2025 is gonna be much, much better than now.
... Yeah, it makes sense. So then following up on your comment, so then the order intake in Q2, in Q3, it might be similar to Q2? It could be more or less at the same level, so with what you are seeing at this point, or we are still at a point that could worsen a little bit more because of the seasonality?
We do not see, we do not see a worsening order intake at the moment if we compare with the past months. So we see it, we see this sort of low level to continue for the time being. And again, the acquisitions obviously help us, but my, my, my answer was like for like.
Okay. And my very last one, also on some comments on the mix. The average price for Classic ICE it went down slightly year-on-year, but around 300 EUR per engine and compared to Q1. So for the rest of the year, in terms of seasonality, we suggested something similar to last year. And for instance, something closer to 8,500, or 400, something like that, or the prices that you are seeing now with the mix that you have now, are valid for the rest of the year with what you have in the backlog at this point?
Yes, I think, it's a very good observation. We do have a change in the product mix, that is also especially true because we are selling more in the U.S. market. In the U.S. market, we have a lot of, 2.2, 2.9 liter engines that go into the market, that of course, since they're smaller, have an, lower average price compared to the big engines. So that does have an effect. On the other side, profitability is not directly linked to the size of the engine, so, it doesn't really mean that just because they are smaller, we don't like to sell them as well. That's the one side.
If you were asking about the near future now of the next quarters, as Sebastian has just mentioned, we're gonna have quite a bit of a change in the product mix because of the Rolls-Royce power engines coming in, especially because they're significantly larger and therefore significantly higher in pricing. So I think the comparison in just average engine price in the near future is gonna be very difficult. Having said that, of course, then service and the gen sets will also play an even bigger role, so I don't think that's the number we can focus on too much in the future. But again, if you're looking back, you're very much correct. It's more smaller engines, especially for the U.S. market.
Thank you very much, Timo. Very clear. I go back to the line.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question from the phone comes from Stefan Augustin with Warburg Research. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, thank you very much. Maybe one follow-up here first on the development of the business. If you look at agricultural and construction, we clearly go through a destocking phase at the, at your customers. If you, if you would have to judge now, what would be your estimate what the current final demand is actually below the call- off rate or the production rate of your clients? So, what would you say is the underlying demand? I mean, the question is actually, when is the backlog, the clients worked off and when the pickup starts, but the question is here: do you have a feeling of, what would be... What would normalize anyway without the broader market finally improving?
It's difficult to say at the moment. Are we on? Yeah, we are. It's difficult to say at the moment, particularly now in the summer, in the summer breaks. So what we believe the best clarity we get on that is overall, once all the customers return from their summer vacation, summer closures, and then what is the rate of order placement there? We do, Stefan, we'll do, as you probably know, run a monthly process where all our sales force consolidates the signals, the demand from the customers worldwide. And we are very interested in what they bring back in the September session of that.
Currently, I mean, we have only rather anecdotal knowledge that we see that in some areas, the storage, the inventories are still there, but going down. But again, I'm sure, I know that this doesn't satisfy because it's a little wishy-washy, of course, but we really need to see what happens after the summer stoppages, the summer vacations are over, particularly in Europe and Southern Europe in particular, right? The U.S. is still, by the way, this is not ag, but this is still very constant. And here we've got better visibility because our main customers are also in our rental companies who have fairly transparent information as part of their capital market disclosures.
But the ag companies is indeed a little bit. I wouldn't call it the black box, but at least, let's say, the most limited visibility.
Okay. Thank you. Then on your genset deliveries, you said, let's say last year, you said you have roughly a signed order for around 100 of these gensets to China, and now we see a delivery of the first 4. Is that how I put the numbers correctly together?
...The first 4 is they're not only delivered, I mean, obviously, they're produced. The engines have been produced already months ago here in Cologne. We have assembled them as a genset also months ago in Ulm at a partner. They've been shipped to China. They're currently already assembled or on the site, on the demonstration site in Beijing. And we currently expect mid-September, the grand opening ceremony, most likely with high-ranking political representatives joining. I will also personally be there, so that's very important. That's then the proof of concept, so to speak. And there's a huge attention coming on that, and we are now working on producing the next sort of 996 on that, which we will then produce, assemble, and deliver over the coming months.
And these four are not yet somewhere in the revenue, right? This is something to be seen from Q3 on.
This is something, yeah, this is something to be seen. Exactly. This is something to be seen. We've got the order placed, and the first 4 are installed, and they're, you know, and that's. We're very excited about that. But look, Stefan, even, you know, even, once the 100 are completed, this is still, let's say, the beginning of it, right? It's, we talk about 100 gensets, not about, 5,000 or 100,000 or whatever. So, this is still, like, really for this technology, it's a milestone, which I don't think we see anywhere else. But in the grand scheme of things, you know, it doesn't move the top line yet significantly, like none of the Green products do, nowhere at the moment, in our field, of course, right?
If I look actually between Classic and Green, I would say that the performance in Green is actually really good in light of the number of lower engines you have to produce. And as Timo pointed out, the operational leverage is quite low to the downside. That brings me a bit to Green, where I see, let's say, the constant amount of EBIT. In light of your cost savings ideas, would you envision to be more prudent on the Green side and getting the EBIT loss per quarter still lower from the level where we are?
Yes, absolutely. We are, I mean, we are, and this is like, I don't want to tease too much, but we're going to go into more detail on the Capital Markets Day on our, on our Green, on our Green strategy. What we've done in the past two months is, is doing a, a prudent assessment of our electrification portfolio, and we're currently doing the same for our hydrogen portfolio, and we'll put a better, stronger focus on the market. So in other words, you know, we have now shown that we are able to develop a functioning hydrogen combustion engine, so that's great. Does it mean we're developing the next hydrogen combustion engine? Only then, it does only then when there is really a market demand and, you know, specific orders in sight.
If that's not the case, we're very happy to have shown that we can do it, right? And obviously, half of roughly 50% of the R&D expense in Green, we allocate it on the hydrogen combustion engine. So, in other words, this is going to be stretched in the future a bit more. Focus is much more, let's say, on, you know, what we need a signal from the market. On the electrification side, and then I will stop because I want to don't want to tease too much or anticipate too much what we'll announce on the Capital Markets Day. But on the electrification side, we also have our E-DEUTZ portfolio there. And, will we invest without market demand and more? Most likely, only on a very limited basis.
But on the other hand, we see also the positive signs, let's say, our Green business, which is, with a new CEO, Bert van Hasselt , we're doing a fantastic job in, you know, in hunting new customers. We're looking here into retrofit opportunities and so on and so forth. So we see the market on small series slowly go, ramping up, but we need to, we need to be more prudent, with the R&D expenses, which is generally a valid statement.
All right. Thank you. The final one is actually a small one. It's on the extraordinary costs incurred in Q2. Could you elaborate a little bit how that's actually split? And do we have to expect something in Q3 as well?
I'm assuming you're referring to the difference between EBIT and EBIT adjusted, correct?
Yes, the EUR 7 million, where this is partially for stock options, and then there is something for some programs.
Yeah, you mentioned one of the aspects, the deferrals, provisions for the LTI. I think that's fairly clear and, and, doesn't probably require additional explanation. The lion's share of the remaining amount really is related, are costs related to transactions, particular the acquisitions of the Rolls-Royce Power Systems business. Because we've, we structured that transaction as an asset deal, and, that's been not always easy to carve out, to carve out business out of a- out of a, let's say, long-built organization, such as Rolls-Royce, and then carve in an equally long-built organization. So it required quite some work on the IT side, and thus quite some cost, which we used, where we used external consultants on as well.
Then, of course, the typical transaction costs as legal fees and so on. But again, the lion's share to that, to that Rolls-Royce Power Systems business. We had pretty much, we were faced with a choice in taking more time and using less external support, or getting it done quickly. And then, as we have actively decided not to operate or not to entertain huge own resources for something like that, we rather work in a way that if there's a need, we outsource. And that, you know, keeps us a lean cost structure.
Given the fact that for several reasons, we wanted to have that business as quickly as possible in our books, not only for the financial impact, but also in order to allow us to start the marketing of the products with the customers as soon as possible, take uncertainty out of the market. We decided we, we front load here a little bit, and, yeah, that, that led to, that led obviously to cost. Coming back to your other question, we don't expect similar effects in Q3 because the transactions have been closed. There may be a little bit of, of cost related to the first months of Q3, of course, but the closing is done, and, there's no other, let's say, large-scale M&A project currently, which, leads to this.
Yes, this is it, and no, no, really, not a continuation expected.
All right. Thank you very much.
We have a follow-up question from Mr. Jorge González. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. A very quick one. On Blue Star, I noticed that the expected sales for the year are much better than the ones you presented at the time of acquisition, although you show with a graph now with potential to be above $100 million. But I was, I am wondering, so for next year, should we still assume growth rates of 15%-20% on top of these one hundred and twenty million euros? Twenty, sorry, twenty million dollars, that you are achieving with Blue Star, or we should be more cautious in 2025?
Let's be a bit cautious on that, because the company is developing so far better than expected for 2024, as you observed fully correctly. We've just taken the ownership 7 calendar days ago. And we don't, as I said, we don't want to intrude too much in order to keep the entrepreneurial spirit. But certainly, one thing we will do is we will get transparency on the planning for next year. Currently, we know that the order backlog of Blue Star is very good. We know they're sold out from now until March, and obviously, we have interest in expanding the business. We need to now carefully assess what is the capacity of Blue Star for next year. The market is good.
The market is good enough to fill up the existing capacity of Blue Star in a one-shift operation. That's what they - the way they operated so far. Whether next year is already the point in time to, you know, increase capacity going to two-shift, we need to carefully assess. Again, I will ask to be a bit patient until October, because then we'll have certainly a better view on next year. But what we can say is, we already received really a lot of interest from the U.S., but also from other countries. "Okay, can you help us? You know, can you provide us gensets made in America?" And now we need to really check, well, can we? You know, the demand is there, but let's check whether we get the supply up and running.
But even that, I tell you, even, you know, if we are on that level, as you implied before, that sort of light, slightly better outlook for this year, we're very happy about that because, it's profitable business, growing quickly.
Thank you for the detail, Sebastian. A very last follow-up on service. Is there any seasonality for service in Q3, Q3 to be considered, or the run rate you are enjoying at this point is valid for Q3 and Q4?
Run rate is fairly valid. It's always give or take EUR 43-44 million per month. It depends a bit on, you know, how many public holidays are in the country. So typically, I mean, the only seasonality is, let's say, Easter is not. The week, the month with Easter is typically not great. The months with Christmas is not great. It's very simple. If the workshops are closed, you wanna, we're not selling parts, but there's not this sort of typical summer seasonality, at least not as strong, right? Because often, even our customers use the summer breaks to service their equipment. So I would say this effect, to an extent, compensates the fact that other people are on holiday.
And here we are, like, on the service side, I mean, we'll obviously have also the ramping up business with the new products from Rolls-Royce Power Systems. That goes a bit delayed to the new equipment sales because it takes us some time to incorporate the products and the offerings into our workshops. We're also continuously working on other inorganic acquisitions, but it's too early to speak about that. But Jorge, let me tell, we are on track with our service targets for this year as well as for next year.
That's perfect. Thank you very much.
Gentlemen, there are no more questions at this time.
Thank you very much, then I would close the analyst call. Thank you for your interest and your questions. If you have further questions, please reach out to Rolf or me, and with that, have a good day, and hope to talk to you soon. Thank you.
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