And a warm welcome to the H1 2025 conference call of DEUTZ AG. Please note that this call is being recorded and a replay will be available on deutz.com later today. Your participation in the call implies your consent to this. In Cologne, I'm pleased to welcome DEUTZ CEO Dr. Sebastian Schulte and CFO Oliver Neu. Sebastian will begin the presentation with the key figures of the first half year of 2025 and then walk you through the progress made in the business units.
Oliver will then provide you with the financial details of H1 and an update on the Future Fit cost program. Sebastian again will conclude the presentation with a look on the guidance, at which point we will move over to the Q&A session. As always, please note the disclaimer, especially regarding forward-looking statements. With this, I hand over to you, Sebastian.
Yeah, thank you very much, Sarah, and good morning here out of Cologne to everyone who dialed in for our half-one numbers presentation 2025. Indeed, we're quite pleased to look back on a sort of very decent start into the year 2025. Although we're all, as everyone playing in this industry currently, are certainly facing quite an interesting situation from an economic point of view.
You will see with our numbers that we're progressing pretty well. That's our headline as well. We have started into this year with a very, very profitable growth, and in particular, the development of our portfolio, in particular, the transformation of DEUTZ AG from a pure engine player to a solutions company is beginning or is increasingly paying off. What does it mean in numbers?
New orders were up 30% year over year, now yielding a bit above EUR 1 billion and are strongly supported also by the effects from our latest acquisitions, particularly in the business unit energy. These effects from the latest acquisitions did overcompensate the still fairly weak engine demand, which is still an intelligent situation. Revenue was up 15% year-over-year , a bit above EUR 1 billion as well.
Here also our M&A activities are supporting strongly, but also the service business, which we continued to grow if we compare to the previous year's number as well. EBIT margin: 4.7% after six months. Second quarter a bit up against the first quarter, still one percentage point down year-over-year . There is still some negative impact from the low production volumes in our heritage engine business.
As said, we see a positive trend in the second quarter and also the transformation of our business models with M&A. Also, as Oliver will point out later, the effects of the very successful cost programs supporting here the bottom line. Free cash flow was at EUR 14.4 million, significantly up compared to year over year. We have a bit of a normalization in the second quarter after a very, very strong quarter one.
But all in all, I think we can proudly say it's been a decent start into this first half year. If you move on to the next page, please. I want to give a couple of highlights in each of our verticals. Let me start with engines. A very good sign that, you know, one of our recent developments, own developments, has been the DEUTZ TCD 3.9 engine.
That's been an engine, or that is an engine, which DEUTZ AG co-developed with John Deere out of the United States. A very successful partnership. Both engineering teams and purchasing teams worked together and shared work packages. It's a brand new engine, state-of-the-art technical concept, one platform which ranges from 75 kilowatt up to 130 kilowatt and has a significantly better peak performance than its predecessors.
And we see now quite a good and strong demand from very, very good and strong international OEMs. We did also sign the first large-scale contract with a leading European construction machinery company. For reasons of confidentiality, we are not disclosing the name as of yet. That is filling the pipeline for the second half of the sort of next five years when the demand and then the production for the TCD 3.9 will ramp up as planned.
Another successful milestone or cooperation is regarding our cooperation with the Indian agricultural company TAFE. Just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the groundbreaking for the production line in Alwar in India. A group of us, including myself, was there in India together with the CEO of TAFE. We celebrated this groundbreaking, as I said. That means the project is very well on track for the start of production beginning of 2027.
This year, 2025, we concluded the supplier nomination because it's not only about assembly in India, it's also about sourcing of parts in India to realize cost improvements, but also resilience in the supply chain. Design approval processes have been concluded and we are now finalizing the IT interfaces because in the future, the production and obviously the supply chain for these engines will be fully integrated in our DEUTZ IT systems.
Next year, we're working on the C sample readiness, validating the engine, and obviously then also inaugurating the assembly line so that we, early 2027, will be able to start serial production out of Alwar, complementing our production footprint, which is then even more global than it is right now. If you move on to the next vertical, the service business. In service, as you all know, it's always been, yeah, I would say a cash cow, very successful in supporting the foundation of our business.
One thing is obviously bringing great engines into the market. The other thing is then to be able to service these engines reliably, fast, and really meeting the customer's demand because that's one of the aspects which distinguishes DEUTZ from its competitors. In this successful business, for us, it's about growing, including organic growth, of course, but also inorganic growth via mergers and acquisitions.
A couple of examples we brought today are our strengthening of the industrial fleet service in Spain. We have been appointed as the authorized technical service partner for JLG. JLG is one of our largest U.S. American customers, obviously with sales and equipment operating all over the world. JLG, as you may know, is a leading manufacturer of aerial work platforms and telehandlers.
We are accompanying their journey together also in Europe. The idea is that we're becoming a one-stop shop for all what their customer needs for the engine, but also beyond the engine. That means including the entire machine. On top of that partnership in Spain, we're also expanding our network together with JLG in the U.S., most recently in Nevada. The other aspect or the other milestone we'd like to share with you is that we have signed the purchase agreement for our long-lasting Turkish DEUTZ distributor.
We are able also in this growing and interesting, very important market to continue, but also grow our business in this region. We're not talking about a huge transaction or huge acquisition here, but it's a revenue of roughly EUR 10 million on an annual basis. As always, in service with a double-digit EBIT margin achieved by give or take 50 employees.
The application areas here in Turkey are mainly mining, construction, and power generation. These are all application areas where the combustion engine, the ICE, will become or will remain relevant in many, many years to come. Let me move on to the next vertical: new technology. Last time, we already mentioned the acquisition of UMS, Urban Mobility Systems, a Dutch specialist for the electrification of off-highway vehicles, but also increasingly working on the military space. The closing occurred at the beginning of June 2025.
We are following on here a fairly light integration approach, similar to what we've been doing with Blue Star Power Systems in the United States. We want to keep the entrepreneurial spirit and their strengths, whilst also obviously leveraging and utilizing what DEUTZ brings to the table: the scalability, competence, the network, customer access, financial strengths, all these sort of things.
The most important thing is we don't want to kill what made them very, very interesting and attractive for us. Their founder and previous owner, last call, he's fully integrated in our Business Unit Leadership for New Technology, and he's now leading the technology part in the Business Unit New Technology. We can give a couple of examples of what UMS has been doing since we acquired UMS. One nice example is an electrification of a Liebherr 916 E-excavator for a German construction company.
This Liebherr 916, it's a 24-ton crawler excavator, which when it comes out of the factory is equipped with a 115 kilowatt engine. It's on a sort of larger scale and it shows that electrification is not only a sort of a niche technology for very, very small and compact construction equipment, but also for medium-sized and potentially also for larger sized in the future. The other example which we like to share is a Hyundai HX85.
That is a compact excavator. That is an eight and a half ton equipment where when it comes out of the factory with an ICE, it's just powered by a 48.5 kilowatt ICE. Here it's a bit more obvious to use electrification, but we are showing here in UMS and we'll continue to show that this technology fits for a large area of applications.
As we write here, there is more to come and we will share more in the coming months and quarters. Let's move on to the next vertical: energy. Last year, a bit more, roughly one year ago, we closed Blue Star Power Systems and Blue Star is continuing their growth. They're very profitable growth. We're very happy with the development. Market demand is still strong.
Blue Star, under the ownership of DEUTZ AG, is continuing to acquire new customers. Profitability in the first half was roughly 20% operationally. That's really strongly supporting our P&L development. Blue Star secured an important contract with a major U.S. retailer, adding to the already very, very successful business with another very large U.S. American retailer. Obviously now it's about creating and harvesting synergies and further growth opportunities with our DEUTZ service network, which is in the U.S.
very strong and was still getting stronger there day by day. We're using our technicians from the various DEUTZ power centers across the nation and the U.S. from all over the country. They've been visited. They're visiting Blue Star Power Systems to be trained on the gen sets so that we do more than just bringing the equipment into the field, but also training it, servicing it, maintaining it.
That's a success story so far and we're extremely confident to continue this success factor. This is a success story. The other asset we have in our portfolio when it comes to gen set is Magideutz in Casablanca, Morocco. Here it's a transformation. We're developing here an asset which comes out of a fairly difficult situation, but we've appointed a new Managing Director early this year coming from a global state-of-the-art competitor.
There's a new Technical Director about to start and we're seeing great first progress here in developing Magideutz in the field of our energy business. We're also, which is not written on here, we're also continuously scanning the market in Europe, but also in other jurisdictions to see where we can realize further growth, including also M&A. Let me move on to the final vertical, our very recently established business unit defense. We have established that business because we, as an engine company, still, you know, that's where we come from.
We want to provide power for those who protect. I think that's a very strong statement which makes us very proud to be more and more active in this field. We created a business unit defense which bundles technology and offerings DEUTZ already had in the past years, but never really utilized for the defense sector.
The focus markets here are currently twofold. It's mobility and energy solutions, particularly obviously for the European defense segment, but also service spare parts business to ensure that these engines, this equipment remains operationally ready and stable when it's needed. It's our ambition here to merge our different technologies to deliver specific solutions for the customer needs and then become more and more like a recognized market participant amongst all defense stakeholders.
When a customer thinks about an engine in a mobile equipment or in a gen set, we want them to think immediately about DEUTZ and we feel we'll see over the last months more and more interest in that. For reasons of confidentiality, we cannot provide as many details as of yet, but what we can say is that we are engaged in a number of promising projects.
One is a V8 power pack, which we're developing together with Rheinmetall for the repowering project. Another one is that we are delivering quite a large number of engines for the power supply of very renowned air defense systems, which is in use by many, many NATO countries. We're also delivering engines for military vehicles, also in the sense of repowering, which are active in the Ukraine. There is also more to come. Let's move on, please. With that having said, I would like to hand over to Oliver as CFO, who will provide more details on the numbers. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Sebastian, and also good morning and welcome from my side to our H1 earnings call. Let me start giving you some more background and update on our Future Fit cost program. As you know, just to recap, our Future Fit cost program is targeting for at least EUR 550 million sustainable structural cost reduction by the end of 2026. Let me say we are very well on track there. We recently increased our 2025 target, the 2025 share out of that to at least EUR 25 million from originally EUR 20 million.
Measures are being implemented quicker than originally expected. We have almost 80% of the measures either completed or implemented and running and thereby delivering the united effects already. That means in euros, roughly EUR 10 million savings are already in our H1 results. Another EUR 15 million, at least EUR 15 million, is still to come in the current fiscal year.
One of the most important measures is the headcount reductions, so the 300 FTEs, which we are reconfirming. 225 out of that in Germany, 75 in the rest of the world, 90 left already, 120 will leave until the end of the year, and the remainder then in 2026. On the next slide, we see a bit more detail on the H1 business figures. The new orders went up by 30%, 30.7% precisely. That looks very positive. In fact, it is positive. It's a clear sign that DEUTZ is getting more resilient. EUR 250 million out of the new orders, roughly, are allocated to M&A transactions. That means the adjusted order intake, looking purely at the original core business, is being more or less flat H1 2024 over H1 2025. We are not seeing any downturn anymore in the market. We reached the bottom.
The question is more, when is the order intake taking up again? On the revenue side, we increased 15%. EUR 250 million out of the increase or out of the total order intake in H1 2025 is due to the portfolio measures we've taken, especially the acquisitions of the Daimler Truck engines and Blue Star Power Systems and the additional M&A transactions we had.
That means organically or adjusted for that, there was a decrease in the revenue reflecting basically the weaker order intake which we have seen in the second half of last year. On the EBIT side, in the big picture, you can see a slight drop of EUR 3 million, which is almost constant compared to H1 2024. However, what we need to keep in mind there is that both production volume and also sales volume of the engine segment have been significantly lower adjusted for the portfolio measures.
That is, of course, leading to a lack of fixed cost absorption. On the other hand, we compensated those effects clearly almost entirely by both the portfolio measures, but also our Future Fit cost program, which is delivering clear cost reductions. We keep the strict cost discipline and that is supporting our margins. Even in that, it's nice to see on a quarter over quarter view within the H1 2025, we see that the first quarter was at 4.3% margin.
The second quarter, we increased it to 5% so that we are year to date on that 4.7% margin. Let me move on to the segment view. Here, our segment reporting segment, DEUTZ engines and services. The combustion engine business and the service business for our classic engines. You see here that overall margin was dropping and that is from 7.8% - 6.1%.
That is basically a direct consequence of what I told a slide before. We see that there was a 12,000 unit drop in production volume, a 6,000 or 7,000 unit drop in sales volume of the classic engines, like for like, so contributing to the lack of fixed cost absorption. On the other hand, the positive measures, especially on the cost side, are coming into place more and more and that we're clearly supporting the margin view. HJS, the emission after treatment supplier, we consolidated since the beginning of January, so they are fully in our accounts. On the business unit service, we see a continuous growth that's 8% in a year over year comparison.
That is driven both by continuous organic growth, but also by the portfolio measures, especially the service business of the acquisition last year from Daimler Truck, which is since the beginning of January on the service side, also fully into our account. Service is keeping the strong momentum, is keeping the strong performance, and is thereby, of course, with these strong margins supporting our business.
Coming to the second reporting segment, which is our, the next slide, the solutions business, here we go. We see here the two, yeah, fairly different businesses combined currently under that segment here. That's our energy business with the gen sets, Blue Star Power Systems, that Magideutz , Sebastian mentioned earlier, and on the other hand, our new technology business. Those two businesses are driven by a completely different structure when it comes to earnings.
On the energy side, we see that we keep the solid order momentum in our H1 figures. The book-to-bill ratio was at 1.1, with new orders at EUR 79 million. The revenue at EUR 79 million, new orders slightly higher. The adjusted EBIT was at EUR 8 million, and it is important to mention that we have the purchase price allocation effect, which is already deducted here. You can see that in the footnote of that slide, it is adjusted for that. We have been almost at EUR 14 million adjusted EBIT with EUR 18 million revenue.
That's a very, very solid margin. We saw earlier that especially Blue Star Power Systems is running at an operational margin of around 20%. That brings stability and it's running very stable and growing. The business unit new technology on the other side is a bit more in the development phase still.
We saw new orders of EUR 12 million, but that is also driven by the first-time consolidation of Urban Mobility Systems in June. Revenue overall remained rather low at EUR 4.4 million on an H1 level. We are addressing that continuously. We are bundling the sales efforts and going to see improvements there over time over the next quarters. On the EBIT side, we see now year to date minus EUR 18.2 million.
That is basically what I mentioned also in the Q1 result. We had a front-loaded negative result in the Q1 of minus EUR 11 million, while Q2 was significantly better, minus EUR 6.8 million. Thereby, being on track on the new tech business where we also see the cost reduction and the more focused R&D efforts that are really focused on what the market is demanding. Coming to some more KPIs, basically all on track.
Starting with the R&D spendings, we had a quarter of 4.5% over sales, EUR 45 million reduction compared to first half 2024 is basically driven by our Future Fit cost program where R&D, as you know, is a significant area of savings. On the CapEx side, we are reducing CapEx to what is necessary. That means in figures, a reduction of 20% year over year in the reporting period, which brought us down to EUR 36.4 million in H1.
On the working capital side, we are on track here as well, 18.8%, the quarter improved. That's a bit driven by accounts payable this time, but structurally, it's completely on track and also showing continuous improvements here. Talking about cash flow, cash flow from operating activities, that's driven, that's improving.
That's besides reflecting the earnings development, of course, then also positively impacted, especially by working capital developments that we can directly translate and also in the free cash flow. Free cash flow before M&A activities at 14.4%, thereby significantly better than last year. Adjusted for the M&A activities, so free cash flow after M&A was roughly EUR 10 million lower, so even there on the positive side.
That debt is increasing, increasing slightly. That's partially driven to the M&A activity, but also dividend payments and also some cash out on the Future Fit side for redundancy payments. Still, debt level totally on track and nothing special on that end. Balance sheet financing dividend, just a few figures here. Our equity ratio is still on a very solid level of almost 46%. There are two effects why it's coming down a bit. On the one hand, the assets increased.
That's mainly driven by the acquisitions, especially HJS, which I mentioned earlier, but also UMS. On the other side, the equity is coming down. On the one hand, you have the positive effect of the positive net income. On the other side, you, of course, had also negative translation effects due to the U.S. dollar development, which had brought down a bit the net asset value of the foreign subsidiaries denominated in U.S. dollar.
Leverage at 1.5%, so completely within our target range. It came up slightly as a consequence of the net debt development we saw earlier, but also they are fully in line with all covenants. It gives us sufficient room for M&A activities. The balance sheet remains strong. We have debt capacity and are not limited here on the M&A side. Dividends, nothing new. The EUR 0.17, you know, which resided in a payout of EUR 34 million being paid out after the AGM beginning of May. With that, I hand over to Sebastian again.
Great. Thank you, Oliver, for running us through the numbers. Let me talk a bit about guidance and outlook before summarizing the call. First of all, I think the most important message at this part of the year is we're confirming our 2025 guidance. We do expect a bit of a recovery in the second half of 2025, particularly when we talk about our sort of core application segments and regions in the engines business.
We're expecting that after the summer break, we'll see a bit of an uptick when our customers and the customers of our customers return from their respective vacations. We heard it earlier from Oliver that particularly also the cost savings of at least EUR 25 million from the Future Fit cost program have become effective already. There were, of course, a couple of one-off program costs.
We classified them more in the first quarter as exceptional items, but that is strongly supporting especially the second half of the year 2025. We heard it earlier when Oliver talked about the availability of funds and other means. We are planning and working quite actively on scanning opportunities to further grow our business, including also M&A and obviously focusing particularly on the new business lines here. Guidance, as I said, is not unchanged. Revenue between EUR 2.1 and EUR 2.3 billion.
Margin adjusted EBIT between EUR 5.0 and EUR 6.0 and free cash flow mid double-digit million euros amount. Let me briefly summarize the key points on the next slide of this H1 presentation. First of all, I think the headline is extremely important. You know, we are transforming DEUTZ from a sort of engine pure play into a more broadly positioned and resilient company.
This sort of change in business model, the transformation, the development of this group, it's been extremely important that we kicked that off two years ago, two and a half years ago, because now in this difficult economic environment where a lot of other players are struggling, we are beginning to harvest the fruits of that. That's why I'm saying here with a bit of pride that we made very, very good progress in all our businesses, obviously strongly supported by the portfolio moves and the partnerships.
One of the, I think, important learnings for us was that in order to be successful on a global scale in this challenging environment, we need to get away from the idea and conviction that we need to do everything by ourselves or to develop everything by ourselves. It's about defining strong partnerships and also developing the portfolio.
As I said earlier, in the engines business, the cooperation with TAFE is progressing very, very well. Serial production to India to start 2027. Service business, we're continuing our growth paths. Another acquisition signed, the service player in Turkey, and more on the radar, so to speak. New tech, we acquired UMS, innovation leader, battery electric drives for off-highway in particular.
We closed the beginning of June. Lars is leading the technology unit and we're adding day by day new projects, new businesses here in order to make that segment also larger, greater, more relevant in the months and years to come. Energy, Blue Star Power Systems continuing to play out strongly and we're developing or preparing here more activities. Of course, then also the new business unit defense where we are strategically expanding our footprint using what we have, but also significantly thinking about adding new capabilities here.
Last but not least, it's not only about growth, it's also about cost control. With Future Fit, which we initiated in autumn last year, we are now ahead of plan, sustainably lowering the cost base by more than EUR 50 million at the end of the year 2026. You can imagine that's not been an easy journey because we're really reducing structural cost there where it's most expensive here in Germany.
Jointly with the union reps and the works councils, we found quite a good path. To cut a long story short, we are continuing to transform DEUTZ into something broader, something more resilient, and we're beginning to harvest here the fruits, even though the heritage business, the engine business is from a demand perspective still quite low.
That means, in other words, as soon as the demands kick off, we're going to grow at scale also on the bottom line on levels which we certainly haven't seen in the last years. In that sense, thanks for your attention on the presentation. As usual, we are now up for questions.
Thank you so much for the presentation to you, Sebastian and Oliver. As already mentioned, we are now happy to take your questions. To keep this conversation engaging, we appreciate it if you would ask your questions in person via audio line. To do so, just raise up your virtual hand. If you have dialed in by phone, you can use the key combination *9 to raise up your hand, followed by *6 to unmute yourself. Let's take a look in our line. The first one would be Jorge González. So p lease go ahead and ask your questions.
Hello. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Loud and clear, Jorge.
Oh, perfect. Thank you, Sebastian. Also, hello, Oliver. First of all, congratulations on the strong results. Very impressive EBIT development. My first question is on that front. Can you give us some further detail on the impact of the cost savings, specifically related to the reduction of the full-time employees in Q2? More or less what you are expecting as a run rate in Q3 and Q4, just to help us a little bit to adjust our model for the second part of the year?
Yeah, sure. I can do. Happy to do so. On the employee side, 300 FTEs in total. We confirmed, as I said, 90 already left, 120 are leaving until the year end. The remainder then in 2026. In terms of savings overall to model your financial model, it's a bit up to EUR 10 million on savings, which is already H1 in our result. That continues, of course, and the second half is expected to show at least EUR 15 million.
On a yearly basis, we're going to see at least EUR 25 million in our results. Majority of that coming, of course, from the FTE side, but also the additional measures on the structural cost reduction. Next year, the run rate is continuously increasing so that we have the full impact of at least EUR 50 million until next year.
Jorge, just to add one, we leapfrogged a bit in obviously taking out structural cost also outside Germany in the first half because their implementation time is usually a bit shorter. To then further reduce structural costs here in Germany, that took a bit longer, but still, I think we can probably say we moved on very fast. That's why sort of what explains the jump Oliver said in the second half.
Amazing. In terms of the payments that related, it was very clear that the EUR 25 million would be enough. How much of this have you already paid in the first part of the year, more or less?
Yeah, so we have that total provision, which you mentioned totally correctly, of roughly EUR 25 million. That will be sufficient for the entire Future Fit cost program. The cash already spent on the redundancy payments is in a magnitude of EUR 5 million. The rest is still to come once the people are leaving. That is still to come over the next one and a half years.
Okay. My second question is on the defense detail that you provided. Very interesting. I was wondering, Sebastian, if you can comment on when you think some of these projects are going to start contributing into results. Specifically, the partnership with (REC), is this new and complementary to these projects that you had for repowering some vehicles in Poland? Is it also related to that? I don't know if you can give us some view of this and if you now with these new projects, at least for us, if you see a greater contribution that you were seeing from defense, I don't know, three, four months ago, that would be very helpful.
This project, this is a new one or a different one from the repowering Poland. What we can say about all those three, which I mentioned on that page, without going into details, which I cannot disclose right now, we're talking about prototypes at shorter notice. The ramp-up is more likely to happen in the 2026 financial year. I think the one which will ramp up most quickly is the one for the defense system here.
The air-cooled engines we're bringing to the air missile defense system, that is ramping up in 2026 and spanning over 2026 and 2027 for this point in time. That's generally the statement. It takes a bit of time to, first of all, win the contracts and then to go from the sort of first sort of small series into mid-size series. We expect to ramp up here, particularly in 2026.
I think you're very interesting. A final one from my side. In terms of the demand or pickup timing, do you think it could still come after the summer, or are you expecting it to come even more backloaded? How do you see this, I mean, taking into account the conversations we're having with the OEMs? Also, even some positive comments you put in the presentation regarding the new engine that you developed with John Deere. Is some projects accumulated in the pipeline, but just waiting for crystallization? How do you see this going on?
Yeah, so there are two different things. The TCD 3.9 with that European construction equipment company, that is we just won the contract. We're mentioning that because it's a fairly large unit contract. It's more than 5,000 units on an annual basis. That will be delivered, I think, at the end of 2027, this will start. That's a bit of time. It's important when you bring in a new engine to the market, which we're now celebrating SOP, as we speak here with the pilot customers. When you win the first sort of large-scale contract, that's quite a big milestone. That's why we put it here also in the presentation. That's, as I said, a bit of a medium term. The short term, and that's what I believe your question addresses, is that when we expect the pickup. At the moment, it's still a bit of a shift.
Some construction players in Europe have increased orders. On the other hand, there are some others, particularly out of the U.S., who are still sort of on a bit of a cautious outlook. That's why we feel the sentiment is getting there. It's getting stronger, particularly construction in Europe, which is not a surprise because the sentiment has been actually pretty good since Bauma. As we often said, Jorge, when we met also on the different occasions, the sentiment has not yet translated into order intake. As I said, in some subsegments, this is happening. In others, it's still cautious. That's typical in this sort of summer break. We are now the first couple of weeks of August. We're here in Cologne.
The factory, the engine production is on a summer break, the same as with the majority of our customers, particularly the European one, very particularly the Southern European ones. The typical momentum picks up in September. That's why we're still a bit cautious, but with a positive sentiment.
Thank you very much for the call. I'll go back to the line.
Thank you so much for your questions. We move on with Annette Becker. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I have just one follow-up question on the defense plans you have. Is that you'd like to expand the footprint? If you would like to add new capabilities, maybe you can give us an idea of what you mean by that. Would you like to acquire something, or is it more partnerships? What do you think about that?
We are, let's say, we're starting or we have started our defense business unit focusing on the products we have already in our portfolio to bring them into defense applications. That's as much as we can very specifically say. On the other hand, we're also exploring a number of partnerships with industrial players, obviously always focused around the field of drivetrain of engines, partnerships. Sorry, there is someone, please could mute the line. We're exploring also partnerships on a continuous basis. You will know that obviously this always is in a very confidential range. We will announce if and when we can, but we're open to grow.
All right. Thank you. We hope this answers your question. We move on with live. Please go ahead, Mr. Arens, for your questions. Unfortunately, we cannot hear you. I can see you're unmuted, but maybe you have the wrong device. Maybe you can check on that. In the meantime, we come back to Jorge. He has some follow-up questions.
Thank you. Yes, I can request your further warning. Two regarding at least regarding tariffs and Daimler Truck. Now with the not totally confirmed, but with the 15% tariff level for the exports into the US from Europe, how do you see these levels, Sebastian and Oliver, how this works in terms of your competitive position with other players? Is it still a level that you think allows you to compete more or less with the same level with other players? Are you planning for some additional measures to compensate for this rumor and new tariffs? That would be my first question.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think the positive thing about that development is that there is at least clarity to an extent. I mean, we've all heard, obviously, the news this morning on the automotive part. We believe there is now a clarity. Is this great for our customers? Certainly not. 15% is more than the 10% we've had before. We are in a very close and positive sort of cooperation with our US customers. They understand that obviously this is something where we cannot sort of take the burden for that.
We believe still what we said in the past, that with our fairly unique positioning of our products, of our product portfolio in the customer's product portfolio, there is no short-term substitution threat. Obviously, and I think that's what everyone has to say, we need to continuously investigate going forward.
Will we then obviously change a bit of the business model? Yes, we are looking into all sorts of options. For the time being, I'm happy to clearly confirm that we continue to see the demand for the US customers. We actually believe that with a certainty now, which has been given by the recent agreement, that is certainly a positive thing for the business, right?
Thank you. I remember that previously you mentioned that you were maybe considering to expand your facility in North America depending on the final tariff. At this point, there is nothing new on this now.
No, I mean, we have been all waiting, obviously, for the announcement of the agreement, which is only 10 days old, right? When I see, you always need to think what would be the appropriate operational answer to a situation like that. We're investigating this, as always. Of course, we're continuously investigating also our production footprint. There's nothing you jump very quickly to in conclusion because you need to really look at it and evaluate it from all angles.
Okay. Just a final one to also have a better understanding for the second part of the year. Daimler Truck , looking to the numbers, I think it recently contributed quite positively in terms of margins and sales. I'm wondering if there is a higher seasonality in the first semester of Daimler Truck and we should be careful for the second part of the year. I don't know if you can give us some color here, maybe what are your expectations in a gross way for Daimler Truck in terms of units for the year or profitability? That would be very helpful.
Yeah, let me start. There is obviously a seasonality, but that's not primarily driven by the fact that these engines are Daimler Truck engines. That's more driven by the fact that we have a strong share of three sort of large customers. I think you know who they are. In particular, the one large customer is in agricultural. Typically, the second half of the year is not the strongest part in the agricultural business.
We may see a bit of a decline in volumes, half two versus half one, but only to then recover in H1 next year again. That's the top line. What we see at the moment, and that's quite encouraging, are the newly acquired business here with the Daimler Truck engines on the service side is actually developing more nicely than expected, both in terms of top line, as it is always in terms of bottom line. That's a plus. The profitability of the business is certainly also not below expectations.
Thank you. We can say that Q4 is normally the strongest for the Legacy Classic, but it is not the case for DEUTZ AG.
Yeah, but we're not talking about huge distortions, particularly in Q4. We need to, let's bear in mind that the whole sort of Daimler Truck business, that's somewhere between, what is it, 7,500 - 10,000 units, roughly, give or take. If there's 500 units less in one quarter than with the other, this is obviously in terms of units, it's not that much, but these are high-value engines.
That's why we see that obviously in the aggregated numbers then. It's nothing which concerns us. Typically, the seasonality is, of course, overall for the engines portfolio. I'm specifically speaking engines, not service and not new tech and not defense and not power. I speak for engines. Typically, the third quarter is in terms of top line, a bit of a challenge due to the summer breaks in Europe, especially.
The good news is, and I mean, that's what we try also to underline, that with our changes in the portfolio, more service, more power gen, and so on, we're becoming less and less dependent on that seasonality in engine sales. If you look back three, four years, you could immediately make the calculation engine units down. Now we're in deep trouble or engine units up. It's fun, right? That's less and less relevant. I think it's important for everyone following DEUTZ, that you know the KPI engine unit sold is still an important one, but it's not the predominant one.
Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for your follow-up, Jorge. Let's try again with Ralph. At this point, just a quick reminder to all of you, it is still possible to ask questions. Ralph, can you hear us?
I can hear you, but I'm afraid you can't hear me. Sorry, it doesn't work, but I asked the questions in the chat, so take these.
Oh, we can hear you loud and clear now.
Oh, great. It's a miracle. On the one hand, are there any news concerning the hydrogen business? Two more questions. How do the U.S. taxes affect your business? What do the currency changes mean for DEUTZ? Thank you.
Yeah, let me start with hydrogen and taxes and tariffs and then hand over to Oliver for currency. Hydrogen is still sort of early stage, right? We've developed the H2 7.8 engine and being really an innovator in this field, proudly one of the first to deliver an engine like that or to develop and deliver an engine like that. Demand is still on a low level. That's why we're also saying we are not doubling down on making sort of the next engine development here because one of the key findings also of our strategic realignment of the last years is that the market demand, I mean, is super important. We can't just say, all right, we'll have a nice product, but if no one wants to buy it, then we still spend dozens of millions of euros to develop that.
We are putting here the R&D down because we've done the job. Our new tech team in particular is obviously working a lot with customers all around the world. We've got interest, we've got the partnership in China, we've got interest from India, we've got interest in the U.S. and Canada and Europe and so on and so forth. It's still the situation that we are on sort of sometimes one or two or three units rather than hundreds or 200 units. That's the current status in hydrogen. I think we're in good company of a lot of other players who are not that sort of bullish on hydrogen anymore. That doesn't mean we're giving up on that, not at all. Certainly, we need to be realistic and see and say that demand is not where we probably saw three, four, five years ago where it would be.
On the tariffs, similar to what I said earlier when Jorge asked us on that. We do not see a direct impact on us because the customers in the U.S., they need our engines and the substitution possibility is fairly limited. I wouldn't say zero, but fairly limited. It takes time, right? We will find situations that we continue to deliver to them. At the moment, quite a lot is on the ships to the U.S. because customers ordered, of course.
That's a good thing. In short, I don't see a direct effect on profitability, but I do obviously still see the risk, of course, that a recovery of the demand in the U.S. may be a bit sort of delayed due to that situation. Having said that, that was a lot due to the uncertainty. Now with the certainty, 15% is not great, but at least everyone knows what the rules are now. Typically, certainty helps business, right? I would say that's answering the two first questions and handing over to Oliver.
Yeah, thanks, Ralph, for the question on the U.S. dollar development. Basically, with the current levels, we see $1.60, $1.70 in the dollar. We are somewhere in a range of what has been normal in long-term historical averages. I'm not overly concerned about that. If you look purely in our H1 figures, the U.S. dollar impact had a slightly negative impact of a low single-digit million euro amount. Nothing extraordinary here.
How is it generally affecting the business coming from the top line? If you take the like $550 million approximate business we are having in the United States yearly, Blue Star Power Systems is not that much affected. They buy, of course, a bit in Europe outside the U.S., but on the supply side, not that much affected.
If you take the DCA, so our lent operations, especially the like 30% of the revenue we have, we denominate in and charge the customers in euro. Another 15% of the revenue we have like currency sharing clauses, burden sharing clauses, which work in both ways. We work operationally with the customers to really mitigate the effect on the top line. The remaining part, of course, on the top line stays there. We are taking active hedging, hedging typically a few quarters ahead. Those are the measures we are taking.
Of course, typical translation risks remain. That is the same as every international company. With the measures mentioned, especially that a big part of the top line is denominated in euro or charged or invoiced in euro, we are not seeing any special impact on the U.S. dollar level we are currently seeing.
Of course, our engines, when the dollar is continuously devaluating, or in case it would continuously devaluate, our engines are getting a bit more expensive for the customers that are charged in euro. They are basically the same mechanism supply as for the tariffs. We are not seeing any negative impact on the demand so far.
To add, service, obviously, the service business is relevant, both top line and also bottom line. It's also one of our growth focuses in the United States. There is obviously no significant dependency to take out parts, particularly on the work that technicians perform directly in the equipment. I mean, that's all local. There's certainly an impact, as Oliver just pointed out.
Thank you. If I may ask one more question, it's a short one. How many employees do you have in Germany, especially in Cologne? Thanks.
I'll just dig out the exact number because I don't want to give a rough number right now. Currently, by the end of the first half, we had in Cologne 2,689 employees, to be very precise.
I have the same number.
Counting employees is sometimes a challenge, but we are well prepared for that.
All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for your questions, Ralph. At this point, a final reminder, we have the time, so we would have time for another question if there's still open topics you would like to discuss. It seems everything appears to be answered. With that, we will come to the end of today's call. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining and you've shown interest in DEUTZ. Also, a big thank you to you, Sebastian and Oliver, for your time, for sharing the presentation with us, and for answering all the questions. It was a pleasure to be your host today. Have all of you a lovely Thursday. I'll hand back to you, Sebastian, for some final remarks.
Yeah, thank you very much, Sarah. Thank you very much for all joining our call and for all the questions. If we just jump on the next page briefly, just to outline what's next on a regular basis, we will have in a similar format or the same format our third quarter statement call on the 6th of November. Obviously, 2025 annual report, that's time to go, a bit time, March 26.
On everything that happens sort of out of the ordinary, we'll keep everyone posted. As usual, we will, Oliver and myself, individually and jointly be talking to investors as part of various conferences and roadshows throughout the remainder of the year. Thanks to everyone for joining us and being interested in DEUTZ. And keep following us. Have a good day. Thank you.