Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to the Nine- Months 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 this call implies your consent to this. I'm pleased to welcome DEUTZ CEO Sebastian Schulte and CFO Oliver Neu. Sebastian will begin the presentation with the key figures of the Nine- Months 2025 and then walk you through the progress made in the business units. Oliver then will provide you with the financial details of the Nine- Months Financials 2025, and Sebastian again will conclude the presentation with a look on the guidance, after which we will move over to our Q&A session. As always, please note the disclaimer, especially regarding forward-looking statements. Having said this, Sebastian, I hand over to you.
Yeah, thank you very much, Sarah, and also good morning, everyone, and thanks a lot for joining us for this 9 Months earnings call here. Let me say, let me start actually with a lot of confidence and optimism because our numbers show clearly that we as DEUTZ continue to deliver. Double-digit growth in revenue and new orders, rising profitability, EBIT margin now year-to-date at 5%, and I will show later quarter-by-quarter improving, and most importantly, a business that is proving more resilient and dynamic again quarter-by-quarter. Our broader portfolio is paying off, and the transformation towards really innovative and sustainable mobility and energy solutions is clearly gaining momentum. As I said right now, we went through this first three quarters of the year and actually the following the second half of last year, every quarter an improvement.
Let's bear in mind we came out of a very strong 2023, driven at that point by the strong demand in our sort of heritage core markets, construction, agricultural equipment. Then there was the slowdown in demand, which brought, which made our numbers in the second half of 2024 particularly going down. Since then, we are on an upward trend. First quarter, 4.3% margin, second quarter, 5% margin, and third quarter now 5.8% margin, which is actually even more impressive given the fact that typically the summer quarter, the Q3, is seasonally a little difficult because most of our customers have at least 2, 3, 4 weeks of vacation, and so do we in our engine factories in Cologne and Ulm. Clearly year-on-year improvement and continuous momentum in margin uptake.
If you look at the markets, and I mentioned earlier our sort of previous core markets, now we've been broader, we're becoming broader. We are talking about construction, agricultural, material handling, defense as the most recent addition, but also energy for our gensets. What we see here is in construction equipment in Europe, the activity is still somehow muted. In the U.S., the infrastructure demand is stable, but overall, yeah, the outlook, let me put it that way, is resilient. Agri, still in the short term, fairly weak outlook because inventories have been high, financing costs have been slightly negative on the customer side, but structurally it's very, very solid. Material handling, the mega trend is helping us, commercial logistics, e-commerce, that demand, quite stable activity in the material handling. Forklift CapEx remains robust. That's why we see also on the left-hand side positive projection going forward.
Defense, of course, very strong momentum in Europe, driven by the increasing budgets and also the NATO programs in the European Union. Energy, the gensets, I mean, this is another mega trend, growth in data centers, backup power application, and we here see a supporting expansion in all regions, but particularly the regions which are relevant for us in this segment as of now. The United States with our Blue Star business and also going forward Europe. In total, we see that. 9 months year-over-year, we've been growing at 15%. That's growing above all relevant markets here. Given that we are also entering into these new markets, defense and energy. If we look at, let me start with defense, I mean, here really the headline is that we have been strengthening our footprint in the defense tech ecosystem.
When we talk about defense tech ecosystem, I mean particular. Military drones, I mean military autonomous land vehicles. You will all remember our most recent acquisition of SOBEK Group. SOBEK is a leading manufacturer of electric drives, very high performance electric drives for not only military drones, but obviously that is. The factor which is growing most significantly right now. We signed and closed that transaction at the beginning of September, and the purchase price we financed by capital increase using the 10% ABB procedure, which Oliver will elaborate on later. The business has been developing pretty well since then. All expectations that we placed into SOBEK so far have been fulfilled. The momentum continues to be strong. We entered into a strategic partnership with ARX Robotics. That is a Munich-based defense tech scale-up.
Here we're not talking about drones, we're talking about vehicles, autonomous vehicles on the ground, as you see here on the picture also on that page. The idea of that partnership is that in going forward, we will on the one hand supply drive systems for these vehicles and also make our mobile energy infrastructure products and of course the global production network available because assembly of those products, I mean, that's something where we have with our facilities in this case in Ulm, in southern Germany, where we've got actually competency which help ARX Robotics in the scale-up of their production. Almost, well, as a nice side effect, we're also intending to participate as one of the lead investors in the next ARX funding round that's going to happen over the next weeks.
If we move on to engines, we are quite proud to be able to announce that we extended our product portfolio. We brought a new product to the market. It's the DEUTZ TCD24 V12 GDU-L engine. That's a large engine. It's the largest engine we now have in our portfolio. It delivers 780 kw, so really on the upper end of the portfolio. It's optimized for use in gensets. That's why it's future-proof in a way that the power gen market is expected to grow very, very strongly in the next years. Obviously, the diesel engine for backup power is a very crucial component in such gensets. We were able to develop that product very, very quickly using our international partnerships, our international supply chains.
Currently, this is the first product that is being tested by a pilot customer in Italy in a genset operation. We also already received the first small series order very, very recently. We planned a broader market launch of that 24-liter engine at the beginning of 2026. On top of that, partnerships are becoming more important for us on a broader scale as well, because we have, over the last years, engines, industrial engines also developed together with joint venture partners in Asia. These engines are currently undergoing testing in our test benches, our test center in Cologne, in order for us to allow these engines to be offered in the future on a global scale with a very strong focus on price and performance as well.
We want to develop, or we will develop a new 6-liter engine, the DEUTZ TCD 6.0. We will launch sort of the premiere of this very, very powerful six-cylinder engine at AGRITECHNICA, the leading trade fair for agricultural equipment, which is starting this Sunday in Hannover and then being there for the coming next week. We are pretty excited about this expansion of our engine portfolio, where we are broadening the portfolio. We are bringing, particularly on the upper end, more powerful engines to the market. Of course, also sort of in the mid-end, we are utilizing our global footprint to become also more cost-competitive on a global scale. If you look at service, very important background for our growth, for our very profitable growth.
Here we can also proudly announce that we continue, or we have continuously been growing our global service network over the last weeks and months as well. We concluded three acquisitions. Our long-lasting Turkish service partner, Çatalkaya Makina, we closed that acquisition beginning of October. On top of that, we widened our service network and also the capabilities in the United States most recently by achieving two mergers or two acquisitions. One is a company called OnSite Diesel, and it is a Texas acquisition happened in October 2025. With OnSite Diesel, we are offering, or we are broadening our offering to mobile and stationary full services, where the customer focus here is on waste management, construction, and rail. All segments where the combustion engine, the diesel engine in particular, will, particularly in the United States, be relevant for quite some time to come going forward.
That was the rationale behind the acquisition of OnSite. More recently, just a couple of days ago, we acquired a company with a fantastic name of Double Down Heavy Repair. It is in Nevada, and it is a service company which is extremely experienced and well positioned in the repair and maintenance of heavy equipment and engines in the mining, really gold mines and other mines in Nevada, also railway, construction, and transport industries. On top of that, we complement these anorganic growths with also our strong organic United States growth path, where we opened two new DEUTZ power centers in 2025. The plan, which is totally on track, is to open another four new DPCs throughout 2026.
On top of that, I mean, that's the footprint in the market, but on top of that, obviously, we need to really work on our backbone as well because all the parts that we deliver through our footprint to the customers, they have to come in time and in the right quantity and quality out of our very, very modern global logistics center in Cologne. We modernized that with an Autostore System, AI-driven Autostore System, which helped us really increasing the efficiency in the management of these parts. We're talking about more than 25,000 parts and increasing the efficiency of up to 50%. That means not only are we going to be faster, but we'll also have more space in order to grow and to really support our global footprint out of our global logistics center of Cologne. Let me continue then with our solutions business.
Particular energy continues with a very, very strong and solid performance. The business unit energy, driven by Blue Star Power Systems in the North American market. Market is continuing to be extremely favorable and there are more and more growth opportunities. Order intake strong, sales strong, bottom line most importantly, with a very high cash conversion is strong, is continued to be strong at Blue Star. We're also beginning to realize more and more synergies with our US business. The service operations, that's what ties it into what I said just a couple of minutes ago on our DPC growth path in the United States. Obviously, with Blue Star, we're bringing products into the market with our service center. Throughout the nation, we are serving them when they're in operation. And on top of that.
Our North African business, which operates under the name of Magideutz got a new managing director in play, a new team, and they're working quite successfully on really restructuring it and repositioning it. For Magideutz to be really one of the backbones for Europe. On top of that, we're looking, we're continuously looking here also at anorganic growth within energy. New Tech is increasing traction. UMS company we acquired earlier this year. The onboarding of the company is progressing pretty well. Lars Kohl, the former owner and one of the guys leading the business operationally, has also been named as head of technology at New Tech. We merged now the existing sort of the formerly known as eDEUTZ product portfolio with the product lines of UMS.
We have a very, very clearly defined product portfolio now, and we are following literally dozens of promising leads with very, very relevant customers also throughout the world. The momentum is increasing here, is improving here. There is more to come in terms of positive news throughout the remainder of the year and of course in particular the next year as well. With that, highlights on our operational and strategic developments, I would hand over to Oliver before I come back later to give an outlook for the rest of the year.
Good morning. Welcome also from my side to Oliver Neu. Let me start with the capital increase we recently conducted. As Sebastian said, we are in the execution phase on our strategy. We successfully conducted the capital increase to finance further growth. We have an exciting M&A pipeline.
We decided to do that capital increase even though an additional deadline would have been possible as well. Considering the exciting M&A growth and keeping strategic flexibility, we conducted a capital increase. We saw strong demand, very strong demand, investors from Europe, but also from the U.S. That shows that the equity story is convincing and investors are trusting in DEUTZ and our continuously improving performance. Books were filled after a few minutes. The capital increase was several times oversubscribed. It really was a successful event that made a lot of fun from a CFO perspective as well. Talking about execution, our Future Fit Program is absolutely well on track. Just to remind you, we are intending here to achieve at least EUR 50 million savings to 2026 compared to the 2024 baseline.
Structural cost reduction savings we are talking about, we are absolutely well on track with a good measurement pipeline, more than EUR 50 million in terms of ideas. We are expecting even an overachievement here of 10%-20% in terms of savings. That also applies to the current year, 2025. We will end up more than EUR 25 million, rather towards EUR 30 million on the savings side. Measures are implemented, measures are on track. Negotiations with the works council have been successfully conducted. Around 180 people already left the company. That is a good sign and a good example of a positive execution. Going a bit more to the details of the figures, we see an increase in the order intake, 11.8% year-over-year. That is basically driven due to the portfolio development. Book-to-bill ratio is around 1. Order backlog remains at EUR 470 million.
On the revenue side, even 15% increase there. We see that application areas like construction and agriculture have a slight increase. That is, of course, also driven by the fact that we have the Daimler Truck engines, which we acquired last year, which are mainly in those areas. The M&A activity is driving up revenue compared to the previous year. On the earnings side, cost savings are paying off. We are at EUR 75.5 million or 5.0% adjusted EBIT margin year-to-date. We see that the third quarter was the strongest of the quarters. Typically, the third quarter is, by simplicity, rather a weak quarter. That was very, very good and shows and proves that our portfolio measures, but also our cost reduction measures, are really paying off and that we see that continuously in our results.
Talking about the different segments covering here, firstly, the segment engines and services. We see here order intake increasing, revenue increasing, and especially good signaling that the margin is increasing from 6.1% last year to 6.6% this year. We need to keep in mind that last year, beginning of the year, we still were in a stronger market situation with the three shift operations. Overall, we see that volumes on the engine side, purely driven by market effects, went down a bit, 8% compared to last year. Production almost 10%, but nevertheless, we managed to increase the margin, which is a very positive sign because it means that our measures, our strategic measures, our cost measures are overcompensating the negative economies of scale resulting from a weaker production due to weaker market conditions.
Also, HJS, the emission after-treatment producer, which we acquired beginning of the year, successfully managed the turnaround, is profitable, is contributing positive EBIT as well. On the service side, revenue is year-to-date at EUR 406.6 million. That is a 9.4% increase compared to last year. Even in the current market environment, we are continuously growing both organically, but especially, of course, also inorganically via the acquisitions we recently saw. Coming to the segment DEUTZ Solutions, we see overall an increase in the revenue. This is due to the fact that we acquired Blue Star Power Systems last year in August, but also the adjusted EBIT improved significantly. In order to understand the segment, the figures, we need to keep in mind that we combine here two business units with a different financial profile. On the one hand, we have the business unit energy.
Blue Star , Magideutz, our smaller entity in China as well. We see here the business is absolutely well on track. Order intake is on track. It's not totally linear over the year, but it's absolutely on track. We just recently received another big order, which is not reflected in the figures here yet. Also, revenue is organically growing, a little bit offset by the U.S. dollar development compared to the former year, but organically with a strong growth rate and also the adjusted EBIT of the segment at EUR 11 million or almost 10%. With that, and you see that a little bit hidden in the footnote, but there is a purchase price allocation effect. If I take that out, my EBIT would even be at EUR 18.8 million or the margin level of 15%.
Operationally, the margin is even better than what we show you on the figures, driven by the technical accounting purchase price allocation effect. On the business unit New Technology, we are making progress as well. New orders at EUR 15 million, first time consolidating the subsidiary UMS in the Netherlands. In June 2025, revenue is at EUR 9 million. Still on a low level, but we are about to start and consolidating the product portfolio and good talks with customers. We are expecting some increase going forward there, of course. The EBIT improved. It is still negative, mainly driven by R&D expenses, but the run rate is getting better here as well. Coming to a few more KPIs, R&D spending, we had 4.3% of revenue. That is a direct consequence improvement.
It's a direct consequence of the Future Fit measures where R&D people are continuously getting out as part of the agreements we conducted with the works council. That is showing a very positive trend here. Same for CapEx. We remain on a low CapEx level of 3.3%, more or less as in the year before. That is showing that we are investing where necessary. Of course, we are also structurally targeting for continuously improved CapEx ratios, considering that the business profile of our group is changing towards less CapEx intensive businesses. Working capital, we see a slight improvement there. We are at 19.9%. So 1.2 percentage points better than in the year before. We are not overdoing it on the inventory side here.
We are pushing, but we are not overly pushing inventories down just to be prepared because we are convinced that the market and this engine's part of our business is picking up at one point in time. We want to be prepared with our restrictions on the supply chain. That is why we are still here on a 20% inventory or working capital level. Talking about cash flow, operating cash flow improved as well. Also here, good signals, direct development of a better cash generation capability, better operational performance. Also a lower increase in working capital compared to the increase we saw in the year before. That is positive. On the free cash flow before M&A, we guide a mid-double digit million EUR amount. That is absolutely on track here.
We are, even though Q4 is Q3 is typically the weakest quarter in terms of cash flow due to summer breaks and so on, we are here at EUR 2.4 million year-to-date. That is a EUR 31 million better development than the year before, also showing the positive effects of our transformation. That slightly increased, among others, due to the M&A financing. Last but not least, balance sheet remains strong, 49% equity ratio, and also solidly financed. Our leverage is at 1.4. That gives us sufficient headroom for the further M&A transactions we are working on. Only positive signals from this end of balancing balance sheet and financing figures. With that, I hand over to Sebastian.
Yeah, thanks, Oliver, for the update on the financial part. Let me give you an update on the outlook of the rest of the year. First of all, we.
Confirm with a small specification, we confirm our guidance for 2025. Just to bear in mind what was our guidance or what has our guidance been so far, we provided so far a range between EUR 2.1 billion-EUR 2.3 billion revenue. We're always assuming a bit of an earlier recovery of the market in the fourth quarter. That's not yet kicking in. That's why we are specifying to arrive at roughly EUR 2.1 billion or at EUR 2.1 billion at the lower end of that guidance. Good thing is we confirmed the adjusted EBIT margin range as well. We confirmed here to arrive in the middle of that guidance range. I think we've been showing clearly earlier that the path on profitability increase is well on way, quarter by quarter. We also confirmed the free cash flow prognosis, mid-double digit million Euro amount.
As Oliver said, particularly the margin is supported strongly by our cost savings for Future Fit, by the service business, and of course, by the ever-strong energy business as well as the portfolio measures. We are showing that we are actually very well on track and quite happy with the progress here. We also currently do not foresee any sort of significant impact from the semiconductor crisis because that is one of the things we are pretty good at, bottleneck management when there are issues with supply chain. I mean, 2021, 2022, we have been training quite hard on that, how to deal with difficulties in the supply chain, particularly when it comes to semiconductors. All these activities, which guided us back in the days well through the trough problems, are also helping us a lot so that we can actually say that there is no issue to be foreseen at this point in time.
All right. With that. Yeah, this is a confident outlook for the fourth quarter and, of course, also for beyond. Because I said it earlier when I talked about the outlook on revenue, it's true there is no tangible recovery in the engine demand and construction aggregate material handling. However, we are able to, or we have been able and will continuously be able to steadily increase our profitability from quarter to quarter. Now, the 5.8% in the third quarter is a preliminary high point, but we expect to arrive at a higher level in the fourth quarter as well. That is, of course, due to the Future Fit program, as we just heard from Oliver, the further savings to materialize in the coming quarters, EUR 50 million. We announced this EUR 50 million a bit more than a year ago. And we just heard it from Oliver.
We're very well on track. That is an important thing. We promise and we deliver the promises. Of course, DEUTZ is now more than just an engine company. The engine remains to be important, but we manage, we guide this transformation towards a much, much broader business model quite successfully. That is why we are now in a position that, despite still struggles in the former core markets, construction, aggregate, material handling, we're actually developing so well, particularly, of course, due to the business unit service and energy. Energy in particular, demand for gensets extremely high and strong. A good start into Q4, that we can already say. I mean, we are at 6th of November, so we know already what's happening in the first month. That has been very good and continues to support our expectation for a very strong last quarter of the year.
Revenue growth, which we expect to happen in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, supported by the latest portfolio additions in defense and service as well. Margin increase, I mentioned already, and our strategic transformation we continue to implement going forward. With that in mind, nine months in the books, three months to go. Thank you for your attention. Obviously now, as usual, we are open for questions.
Thank you so much for your presentation, Sebastian and Oliver. We will now move over to the Q&A session. To keep this conversation engaging, we kindly ask you to ask questions in person via the audio line. To do so, just raise your virtual hand. Kindly note, if you are dialed in by phone, you cannot raise your hand. I know Klaus Ringel would like to ask a question. Therefore, Mr. Ringel, I unmuted you so you can now speak.
Oh.
Or not.
Not. That is fine. We try again later. In the meantime, we will move on with the first virtual hand we received from Stefan Augustin. Please go ahead. You have now the permission to unmute yourself, Mr. Augustin. It is too early for the technical equipment.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah, great. That was a couple of buttons to press. I would like to then dive already quickly into the Q4 projections. I do not want to be really nitty-gritty, but we are looking for around EUR 100 million in higher sales versus Q3. Could you help us a little bit with how much of these EUR 100 million we roughly look for would be the additions from SOBEK and the purchased service businesses?
Where does, in the fourth quarter, otherwise come the demand in the verticals from? Into what vertical do you sell some more engines? Who gets more interesting? From that, would be the conclusion, can we keep this level going into 2026 roughly on the same level? Let's say. Or is there a one-time effect in sales in Q4?
Stefan, thanks for the question. First of all, when I go through the verticals in Rowland, when I talk about verticals, I mean, it's sort of our business unit. Obviously, the business unit engines. That will make quite a significant contribution in that fourth quarter. Typically, the fourth quarter is always a little stronger than the third quarter for two reasons. First of all, in the third quarter, we have that summer break. Maybe in August, end of July, beginning of August.
That's why we're always lagging behind a little bit. When it comes to the verticals within engines, it's pretty much across the three verticals, construction, aggregate, and material handling. There's no vertical which particularly stands out. As you rightfully said, I mean, the service is developing quite nicely. We obviously track that on a monthly basis. The last month has indicated that we're getting better month by month as well. The two acquisitions support as well. We don't disclose the very details of the acquisitions. They're sort of too small to provide exact million euro numbers for that. Obviously, they add up as well. Energy business, Blue Star , is expected to be a bit stronger in the fourth quarter than in the third quarter as well. Of course, the most recent acquisition, SOBEK , as well.
That's not like we don't talk about tens of millions. In short, it all adds up together. That's how we arrived at that outlook for the fourth quarter. Right. Sorry, Stefan, I forgot to answer. Of course, you asked, which is sort of the $1 million question for 2026. We are currently putting the plans together for 2026. The fourth quarter right now, I don't expect to be a one-off, to make that clear. However, to be able to arrive at a guidance for 2026, that's too early.
Sure. I understand that one, but that was already giving me an idea. Second is then this larger order at energy that has been hinted. Is that something we should look for in the scope of something like between EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million, or is that rather an annual big order of.
20, 30, 40, or something like that? That would be the second question.
This order, which Oliver hinted to. Is the first sort of. Let's say. The first third of the year order from our major customer in the United States. It came expected. Because they do not order on a weekly or monthly basis. They order, let's say, 3x per year, 2x per year. I believe Oliver will talk about. Something. EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million. EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million, yes.
All right. That is quite some. Scope here then. All right. Lastly. Maybe on the tax rate in the third quarter, this has been a bit unusually high, but. Is this something that has to do with the structural changes from where we generate the profits, or is it rather a one-time effect?
No, they are not typical one-time effects.
I mean, overall, the tax rate on a group level is at around 17%. That is mainly, in general, that's mainly driven because we have a significant amount of tax loss carried forward from the past, from the 1990s, basically, but we are benefiting from that still. In Germany itself, we are rather on 11% minimum taxation. There are no structural changes to that. The tax loss carried forward is going to last some years in the future still.
All right. Thank you very much then.
Thank you very much, Mr. Augustin, for your questions. Mr. Ringel was a bit surprised that I unmuted him, but he sent me his questions. I am happy to ask the questions for him. His first question is, is the adjusted EBIT margin level now achieved a sustainable cruise level that can be assumed going forward?
We want to improve it further. I mean, very clearly, we want to get better. Obviously, with the current structure of the company, with the current demand in engines, you may consider that as a cruise level, but we are not up for cruising. We are up for speed. That is why, obviously, with further expectation in market recovery in the next year in the engines business and further growth in the verticals which we entered into, we want to clearly depart from that cruise level towards a bit more of a full-throttle way of traveling.
All right. Mr. Ringel has two further questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please be reminded it is still possible to raise your hand. His second question is, what is your view on the expected recovery of the markets in the coming month, also with regard to the German infrastructure package?
Yeah. I mean, that's what I tried to say earlier when Stefan asked a similar question. We don't see it still. We don't see it in the incoming orders, as you saw it here in our numbers yet. We're still in our book-to-bill around or slightly above one. Yeah, we will see. We cannot say yet. That brings me back to what you just said before. It's good to have such a high cruise level now on this low occupation in the engine business. The good news is, obviously, we're bringing also some new products into the market. We're bringing the 3.9-liter engines into the market. The demand from our customers is quite strong. One thing is, how is the general market developing in the engine business? That's, again, the $1 million question for next year.
We do expect a recovery, but everyone expects a recovery, but it's just not materializing. However, we're working also quite strongly on winning market share with the new products that we bring into the market, 3.9, as I just mentioned, but also the 24-liter engine in energy and utilizing also our JV and partner engines from Asia in particular. So we're actually quite positive looking forward.
All right. His last question is, when will you be in a position to carry out larger M&A transactions again? Will the focus remain on the energy sector, or are they currently concentrating in particular on the defense tech sector? Both verticals are extremely interesting for us.
You will understand that there's not much more to say in a public earnings call on M&A strategy. Both energy and defense are very interesting verticals. We are.
Observing and pursuing a lot of different avenues. As we have shown very clearly in the last two and a half, three years, if we do M&A, we want to do it very successfully. I think the acquisition of Blue Star and the Daimler Truck engine business and all the others have shown that we are actually pretty good at it now. That is why we are very picky. We will only do the things which make a lot of sense. In order to arrive there, you need to follow lots of opportunities. We are pretty confident that we continue to work on that track.
All right. Thank you so much. Then we have the next question or raised virtual hand from Klaus Söer. You should be able to unmute yourself, Mr. Söer. In the meantime, we will move on with Mr. Jansen.
Same for you, Mr. Jansen. I have given you the permission to turn on your microphone. Now we have both microphones open. Mr. Jansen, please. We just take your questions after the one from Mr. Söer.
Okay. Good morning. Just one question regarding ARX Robotics. You spoke about the investment round. Just for clarification, you do not plan to have a major stake afterwards, right? Because there are so many other investors. And with SOBEK , you already had a big investment in the defense market, right?
Yeah, that is correct. I mean, we plan to participate in an investment round, but that would not turn us into a major investor. That is absolutely correct. Yeah. This is an investment which is rather underlining our ambition or our strategic partnership, but we do not plan a takeover or anything like that.
Is there an indication on how big the round overall could be?
Of course, there is an indication, but that is in the court of ARX Robotics. You will understand that I can and do not want to comment on an investment round of another company, right?
Yeah. Okay. No worries. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your questions. Now, Mr. Söer, I am not sure if you are able to speak. I hope so. Oh, great. We are happy to take your questions.
Oh, thank you very much. Just coming back to the announcement that you are introducing the large 24-liter engine into the market, could you be a bit more specific what your expectation is in terms of sales or market entry in 2026? Is this material or small size, big size units? Any indication what type of impact this might have? Yeah.
First of all, we do not talk about huge unit sizes here because it does not go into sort of serial mobile equipment such as, let's say, material handling, where sometimes we sell 5, 6, 7 thousand engines to one customer a year. We also talk about a significantly larger engine, so the unit price is a multiple of the average unit price of what we typically bring into the market. We do not talk about thousands per year. We talk about, after the ramp-up, probably hundreds per year, at least in the next year. From a revenue and especially also from a profitability point of view, there is sort of a rule of thumb in the engine business: the larger the engine, the more the financial attractiveness as well.
Okay. Thank you. If I may add one question on ARX.
In your statements and in the presentation, it always says you intend to participate. Is there still an open question if you participate in the financing round? No, we have decided to participate, but this is a cautiously, legally checked wording because we are one party to participate. As in the financing rounds, there are also other parties to participate. Typically, in these sort of investment rounds, the financing round is concluded when every investor who wants to participate signs sort of the legal agreements. That is currently, as far as I understand, being negotiated with many investors. It is more like a process point of view. That is why we have this very cautious statement. We are very clearly committed to do so because we are very convinced of the outlook of the company and also of the areas of cooperation between ARX and DEUTZ.
It's an amazing opportunity where DEUTZ can bring the industrialization expertise, scaling expertise, management of supply chain expertise to the fantastic technology expertise coming from this dev tech company.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr. Söer. Then we have a follow-up question from Mr. Augustin. Please ask your question.
Yes. Thank you. Just two smaller ones. I recall that you mentioned you had a new customer with comparatively higher amounts of unit volumes. Can you just remind me if there is the expectation that this customer should ramp up the business in 2026, or will that be a bit later? The other one would be, when do you expect the LOIs of UMS to materialize into orders? Is that also expected maybe for the year-end already or rather going into 2026?
Yeah. For the first question, that larger, I believe you referred to the larger.
Order for our 3.9 engine in construction. Yeah, for confidentiality reasons, we are still not allowed by the customer to announce who it is, but it is a very relevant construction equipment company. The ramp-up is expected to kick in in 2027, not in 2026. That is following the ramp-up of their respective products. With UMS, we expect first orders, or we are already gaining orders, but first larger orders potentially to kick in in 2026 already. We are still at the sort of smaller pre-series orders right now, but we are having very promising conversations, also particularly in the field of multinational construction equipment companies. I am pretty hopeful or pretty positive on good developments in use already early 2026.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Augustin. In the meantime, we did not receive any further questions. I see no further virtual hands.
That means we will come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for attending and your shown interest in DEUTZ AG. Also a big thank you to you, Sebastian and Oliver. We appreciate the time you took and for guiding us through your presentation and answering all the questions. From my side, I wish you all a lovely remaining week. All the best for you for the remaining quarter. Sebastian, as always, some final remarks from your side.
Yeah. Thank you very much also from my side. Again, still in some areas, difficult market environment, but we're doing well. Transformation is on track. The results clearly show that this is the case. We're looking forward to being in touch with all of you in the next touch points. Financial calendar here is very clear.
Uhm, 2025 annual results, end of March, Q1, May 7th, and so on and so forth. On the road to there, we'll be around in many investors' conferences and hosting a couple of road shows. Looking forward to being in touch with all of you. Thanks for your interest, for your confidence in DEUTZ. Yeah, we're happy to continue rocking this thing here. Thank you.