Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q3 2025 earnings conference call. I am Mathilde, the course 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 and 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 Stefan Dräger, CEO. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon and thank you for joining our conference call on our financial results for the first nine months of 2025. I have with me today Gert-Hartwig Lescow, CFO, as well as Tom Fischler and Nikolaus Hammerschmidt, both Investor Relations. We would like to take you through the results of the presentation that we made available on our webpage this morning. Following the presentation, we will open the.
Floor to your questions.
Let's get started on page five with the business highlight. With a significant increase in orders, noticeable growth in sales, and very good earnings, we delivered a strong business performance in the first nine months of 2025 despite difficult economic conditions. Demand for our technology for life rose to around EUR 2.6 billion. The last time we had such a high order intake after three quarters was in our record year 2020. Growth was driven by both divisions and more. The same is true for net sales, which increased to around EUR 2.3 billion. Earnings before interest and taxes almost reached the prior year level at around EUR 77 million despite the positive one-off effects which we reported last year. As a reminder, last year we had divested a non-core business in the Netherlands, unused property in the United States, and a building in Spain totaling around EUR 30 million in one-off effects.
Similar effects are missing this year. In addition, this year we need to compensate for some quite strong headwinds. Currencies and tariffs had a substantial negative impact on our earnings. Without these headwinds, our EBIT would have been significantly above the prior year level. Our business in the third quarter made a substantial contribution to the strong overall performance in the first nine months, as sales were significantly above the prior year level in Q3 while EBIT more than doubled. In addition to our top line, we were able to improve our operating cash flow in the first nine months with a considerable increase by more than EUR 35 million to around EUR 93 million. This development has also been recognized by investors. Until the publication of our preliminary figures, our preferred shares had already increased by around 45% year -to- date.
On the day after the publication, they rose by 12%, resulting in an increase of around 63% in the current year. Our common shares have shown strong performance as well, with increases of around 41% year-to- date. Ladies and gentlemen, as communicated two weeks ago, we now tend to expect the net sales growth and the EBIT margin in the upper half of our forecast range. I'll come back to our outlook at the end of our presentation. With that, I turn over to Gert-Hartwig Lescow for a review of the financials. Gert-Hartwig, please.
Thank you, Stefan, and welcome everyone. Please turn to page seven for a group overview. As usual, all growth rates are quoted on a currency-adjusted basis. As Stefan Dräger said, we continue to see strong demand for our technology for life in those divisions. In all regions, order intake rose by 9% to around EUR 2.6 billion in the first nine months of 2025. The Americas led the growth with an increase of around 19%, followed by EMEA and APAC. In Germany, the order volume was slightly above the prior year level. In the third quarter, orders grew by roughly 7%. The slight decline in Germany and APAC was more than offset by an increase in the other regions. Our net sales development has further accelerated in Q2. We are well on track to compensate for the slow start in the year caused by some supply chain disruptions.
Net sales rose by more than 10% in the third quarter. In the first nine months, they increased by roughly 4% to around EUR 2.3 billion. All divisions and regions contributed to growth in the respective reporting periods. Positive development in the third quarter was driven in particular by a significant increase in the EMEA and Americas regions. I'll point on that when we get to the divisions. Our gross profit margin increased by 0.7 percentage points in the first nine months to 45.1%. Despite currency headwinds and higher tariffs, the margin improvement was stronger in the Medical division than in the Safety division. Operating costs rose only moderately, reflecting disciplined expense management. Our financial expenses increased around 6% in the first nine months, but mainly driven by the absence of last year's EUR 30 million of income.
Excluding the positive one-off effects mentioned above, the cost increase amounted to 2.4% in the first nine months and to 1.5% in the third quarter in nominal terms. However, functional expenses were on a slight decline in Q3 due to the only moderate increase in costs and the significant growth in net sales. We more than doubled our EBIT to around EUR 57 million in Q3, coming from around EUR 24 million in the prior year quarter, which had been still supported by the positive one-time effects amounting to EUR 10 million. In the quarter, our EBIT margin rose from 3.6% at 3.1 to 6.8%. Strong earnings performance in the quarter. Over the first nine months, EBIT came in at around EUR 77 million and a 3.3% margin, slightly below last year's EUR 80 million and a 3.5% margin. Again, the positive one-off effects from the prior year are now missing.
In addition, headwinds on currencies and tariffs strained our EBIT as the euro appreciated sharply against key trading currencies. Carefully monitor the development of foreign currencies and manage those risks proactively through hedging and price adjustments. Having said that, FX still had a negative impact of roughly EUR 22 million. Our operating performance improved year on year and that improvement nearly but not fully offset the absence of one offs and the FX and tariff drag. Thus, our EBIT declined slightly. Finally, our rolling 12 month BBA improved significantly from roughly EUR 30 million to around EUR 49 billion. Let us now take a closer look on page 8. We grew order intake by almost 12% to around EUR 1.5 billion in the first month 2025 driven by high demand for ventilators, anesthesia machines, services, and consumables.
In the second quarter, the mid double digit million euro order for hospital infrastructure from hospital further powered our growth in the Americas. Even without this large order, demand in the medical division rose year on year. In the third quarter, order intake in the medical division increased by more than 5%. The decline in APAC was compensated by the significant growth in VR and by the positive development in the other regions thanks to EMEA and the Americas. In particular, net sales rose significantly by more than 10% in the third quarter after a slight decline in the prior year period. Looking at the first nine months, net sales increased by around 5% to EUR 1.3 billion driven by all regions. In APAC, growth was driven mainly by India and China, with business development somewhat uneven in China.
After solid growth in the first six months, demand has cooled considerably in the third quarter. Although the resolution of our Q1 supply chain problem had a positive impact in Q3 as expected, these effects were offset by the overall weak business in China resulting in a decline in net sales compared to the prior year quarter. Our gross margin expanded by nearly 3 percentage points in Q3, by 1.1 percentage points in the personal margin thanks to a favorable product and country mix and lower quality expenses from field actions. Functional expenses rose by 6% the first nine months of 2025 and by roughly 8% in the third quarter. Excluding the proportion of proportionate positive one-off effects from the sale of real estate in the prior year, the increase amounted to roughly 4% in the first nine months and also in the third quarter.
Earnings in Medical returned to positive territory in Q3 as we are making progress in improving the profitability in the division. Our EBIT grew considerably from -EUR 4 million to +EUR 11 million, lifting the EBIT margin from - 0.9% to 2.3%. For the first nine months, EBITDA amounted to around -EUR 23 million after around -EUR 28 million in the prior year period. As I mentioned before, one-off effects in the prior year's period played a role. Our EBITDA improved significantly by around EUR 22 million to around -EUR 45 million. I will now turn to our Safety division. We are on page nine. In the first nine months, order intake rose by roughly 6% driven by gas detection, respiratory and personal protection products, and engineered solutions. Orders for occupational health and safety normalized after last year's large order for NBC protective filters, leading to a lower demand.
Germany, EMEA, and the Americas delivered strong double-digit order growth while APAC remained almost stable. After a somewhat slower development in the second quarter, order intake accelerated in Q3 with orders rising by roughly 9%. In addition to the significant increase in EMEA and the Americas, growth in APAC also contributed to this development. Q3 net sales rose significantly by roughly 10% driven by EMEA and the Americas. In particular, in the first nine months, net sales increased by more than 2% thanks to growth in all regions. That said, our Safety business is back on track after its slight weakness in Q2. Our gross margin expanded by 1 percentage point in Q3 and was stable in the first nine months thanks to a favorable product mix. Functional expenses rose about 5% in the first nine months.
This was mainly due to other operating income in the prior year period from the sale of our fire alarm systems business in the Netherlands and the sale of real estate. Higher marketing expenses also had a negative impact on functional costs. Excluding the other operating income of the prior year's period, functional expenses decreased slightly by 0.3% in the first nine months of the year and by 2.4% in the third quarter, so good expense management in Safety. Q3 EBIT improved significantly to roughly EUR 46 million after EUR 28 million in the prior year quarter. The EBIT margin increased to 12.6% after the first nine months. The EBIT came to just under EUR 100 million, down from EUR 108 million. The EBIT margin was just below 10%. Rolling 12 month BBA decreased slightly by roughly EUR 3 million to around EUR 94 million, coming from EUR 97 million in the previous years.
That concludes the safety division revenue. This moves on to the development of our cash flow and other key figures on to slide 10. In the first nine months, we significantly improved operating cash flow by around EUR 35 million to roughly EUR 93 million. This was mainly due to effective working capital management, especially better development of trade receivables, trade payables, and other liabilities. Outflows on investing activities more than tripled from euros to about EUR 76 million, resulting in a free cash flow of around EUR 17 million after around EUR 35 million. Among other things, the significant increase in outflow was due to a base effect in the prior year, the sale of the fire alarm systems business in the Netherlands. The sale of the property in the U.S. had led to a considerable inflow which is now missing.
On the other hand, Dräger added an investment to one of its holdings in the first quarter of 2025, which has contributed to a higher outflow year to date. Looking at our net financial debt, we had a modest reduction, keeping our leverage at a healthy 0.7 net financial debt to EBITX. Our 12 month return on capital employed rose from 10.9% to 12%. This was due to the significant increase in our rolling 12 month EBIT, which was much stronger than the increase in capital employed. The considerable growth of our rolling 12 month EBIT resulted from the good performance in 4Q 2024, which had delivered much higher earnings compared to Q4 2023. Net working capital was around 3% higher than in the prior year at around EUR 721 million. Our equity ratio as of September 30 stood at nearly 50%, remaining at the year end level of 2024.
Now I'm back to Stefan Dräger for our outlook on page 12. Please.
Ladies and gentlemen, Q3 was a strong quarter for Drägerwerk . Our excellent order development and the increasing sales momentum make us optimistic about the further course of the business for this year. Therefore, we now expect the upper half of our previous guidance. We now tend to expect net sales growth of 3.0%- 5.0% net of currency effects and an EBIT margin of 4.5%- 6.5%. EBIT is now expected to be in the range of EUR 10 million-EUR 80 million. So far, business development during the year has given us a good basis to reach our targets. We are in the most important quarter of this year with our typical seasonality. In the next coming weeks, we will remain focused on execution to deliver on our promises.
With this, I would like to end the presentation and hand over to the operator to open the line for your questions, please.
We will now begin the question -and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You'll 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. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Oh yeah, thanks very much for taking my questions. I would have three and probably take them one by one if possible. The first one would be on the ventilator market, if you just can discuss the dynamics there. I mean, I assume the whole industry has benefited from the exit of GE and Medtronic. There have been some kind of voices who claim that Getinge and Hamilton have gained most from these kind of changes and Drägerwerk somewhat less. I mean, I assume everyone has seen significant growth. Trying to get a kind of feeling.
Do you feel that's fair, or do you.
you believe you have captured your kind of fair share in this kind of market development? To what extent, if we move into next year, is this kind of challenging base effect or will this kind of market consolidation support further growth next year?
That would be question number one, please.
Yeah, this is Stefan Dräger answering your question, Mr. Reinberg. I believe that all market participants that are still there get a fair share, including ourselves, of the opportunities that come from the withdrawal of the three players. For me, I couldn't understand why they made this withdrawal with three players. I see that, for the times to come, it is very beneficial to be in the market. As you know, we have the longest tradition and experience and the greatest production capacity of all players. As we invented the ventilator in 1907, my great-great-grandfather, and I still see it for the future as very beneficial to be in there. I see that both Mr. Hamilton and myself address our customers personally with a video message to let them know that we will be there at their side in the future.
It is not a secret, for Hamilton it's a challenge. Although it's a U.S. owned company, operations are based in Vaduz in Switzerland, the tariffs for the U.S. are 39%. That led to some extra effort to cope with that, which we don't have. It is beneficial for other European ventilator manufacturers, including the one in Sweden.
That makes sense. Do you believe you can still grow from this kind of base next year, or is that a kind of demanding base of which we would expect a kind of decline?
No, I would not expect a decline. I think overall market has the opportunities and over growth as the medical technology and the environment, the general positive trends, they're still there, continue. Despite maybe some single countries drop out, the global trend is still there.
That's helpful.
The second question is just on supply chain. I mean there's obviously the kind of discussion on next period, the kind of Dutch company where the conflict with China. I think largely people focus on the automotive industry, but I think they're also a major supplier for chips for the medtech industry. I'm just wondering is any kind of risk factor that you face here in particular, as we move into the kind of key of Q4 now.
There's not a big effect. We do use some of these chips, but only to a small extent. We have larger inventory that we keep on stock as the automotive people do. From what we can see, luckily these are used for applications that are not so regulatory dependent, so it's easier to replace. There are alternative suppliers. We may see some smaller effect, but not in Q4, maybe in the next year.
That's super. That's very assuring. The last question, just, I mean, obviously it's a bit too early for next year, but just to get any kind of flavor, we are making nice margin progress in 2025. At the midpoint, we would probably run 50 basis points ahead of the kind of normalized run rates toward a 10% EBIT margin in 2030. I'm just wondering, looking at the pulls and pushes for next year, I mean, is there any reason why you should be below the kind of 6% EBIT margin which would be implied by this run rate for next year? In particular, can you provide any kind of color what incremental margin headwinds you expect from currency next year?
Please.
Thank you.
Yeah. I give you the first part of the answer, Mr. Reinberg. You know, we keep reiterating the business cannot be judged by the quarter. It can always be a bad quarter. That does not mean that the world is bad. The same holds true if we have a very good quarter like this. If we look at figures and analyze where we are, we see we had an exceptionally good margin in Q3. In addition, we had an exceptionally good margin in Q4 last year. If we go back on an average margin for this coming Q4, there is reason to assume that it's not so extraordinary. You might probably first think at first glance, and going back to the margin to normal, that's partially fueled because there are some large tender businesses that start delivering in this current quarter.
It's better to be a little bit cautious with the forecast and development of the future. The effect of the currency I hand over to Gert-Hartwig Lescow.
Yeah, given current average rates, there will be an additional FX headwind. We're in the final steps of finalizing planning and currency adjustments, but it's possibly in the range of another 1% margin. We will provide more clarity on that with the publication of our guidance for 2026.
Okay, Stefan, that's very helpful.
Thanks so much indeed.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Virendra Chauhan from AlphaValue. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. For now, just one question around your margins. Q3 was fairly strong margin and like you pointed out in your notes as well as presentation that it came from the strong net sales growth that you saw in this quarter. Now with, of course, the sales growth guidance as well being upgraded, is there a chance that we see a similar year-on-year margin expansion in Q4 as well? Q4 of last year was also very strong, I think close to 12% if I remember correctly. That's my question around your EBIT margin.
As I just explained on the question from Oliver Reinberg, indeed Q3 was a very good margin that resulted from a favorable mix in the product in the portfolio. It is safe to assume that will normalize and decline slightly for Q4 and for the future.
Please keep in mind that Q4 in 2024 was also a very good margin if you compare the quarters. Keep that in mind and think about this. You should not be too over optimistic for the good margin to persist. As I explained in Drägerwerk, we do not think in quarters because in symbols a single quarter can always be a little bit up or down versus the others. As much as we appreciate the current good result and the general outlook on the single quarter and the margin, I expect that for Q4 there could be a slight decline. The EBIT margin overall, that is the focus. That is as we said in our guidance, it is the upper end of the previous guidance and it is in line with what we said earlier that we strive for a continuous improvement of the EBIT margin.
That should be about the same figure as the calendar year. For this year it's 25. We said that already a couple years ago. Then it should be plus minus 5%. Again, 2006. There you can see. Think about the ballpark figure of 6%.
Okay, sorry, maybe. Can I just ask one more question? I just came back. On your Connected Care “Silent ICU” launch that you had talked about on the previous call and it was scheduled to be launched in H2 2025. I have two bits on that. One is what is your early customer feedback? What is that? Secondly, when do you expect in terms of a timeline that this, you know, this entire project or focus could translate into meaningful revenue generation for the firm?
The customer feedback from the first projects, it's very exciting. We're very happy to observe that.
We look very much forward to taking off. We just these days started our market campaign where we.
Toot the horn.
More explicitly for this approach. I expect that from the next year on that can be a sensible effect to the business from these kind of projects.
We now have a question from the line of Jean- Marc Mueller from JMS Invest AG. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. First, I would like to congratulate you.
On very good Q3 results, quickly on Q4.
You spent quite some time when we spoke about the numbers, adjusting them for one-offs. It's fair to say that in Q4 last year, albeit the numbers were good, it was actually worse by roughly EUR 10 million than what it should have been.
Because you had an impairment charge last year in Q4, right?
The underlying number would have been EUR 124 million, not EUR 114 million.
Yeah, that is correct.
Okay, when you now saying that Q4 might be maybe a little weaker than last year, are we talking about adjusted numbers or reported numbers?
There is a range, and what we try to emphasize is, I think you're iterating that Q4 last year was also operationally a strong quarter. Depending on the delivery, and given that it is just by the total number of net sales, there's a higher, if you will, sensitivity to variations in net sales variations. There is a chance that we also get at the lower end when it comes to reported figures, even not that we are striving for that, but the discussion was we just wanted now that the Q4 was operationally and also nominally, in spite of the charge, a relatively strong quarter.
Okay, I understand. Maybe ask a little differently. I mean it's the most important quarter. I understand that. It's typically a big number when it comes to full year results.
The range of the guidance is still very wide.
We're talking from the lower end to the upper end. We're talking about roughly EUR 70 million EBIT range. Maybe you can help us a little bit. You know what would need to happen that we really hit the lower end of the range and what has to.
Happen that we get to the upper end of the range. There is a couple of factors and obviously, firstly, I mean, let me just. That's not what we're planning forward. I think you are asking what risks we have seen, FX turning against us, and this could certainly be a risk going forward. We do see that in spite of the good development overall, we do see some areas where our business is developing not as nicely, if you will. We talked about China in particular in the Q3 where we saw a bit of a. We also see that our safety business, while very robust overall, is in Germany, for example, being put under pressure due to the general market trends for the.
Industry customers in the chemical industry.
We also see that in the U.S. for different reasons, many customers are reluctant to fully engage in investments. To the degree that we see some of these risks to materialize proportionally and perhaps not see the support or a bit of a slowdown in the support, we see a risk that we also get the low end. Let me also reiterate, we would be disappointed if our margin falls below the 5% but at this point we wouldn't rule that out either.
Okay. The upper end would just be flawless execution of all the projects. Exactly, exactly. Flawless execution would clearly lead to the upper end.
This is what you're good at, no? Flawless execution.
You can keep the fingers.
Thumbs pressed and I'm sure it will help us. Maybe we get an FX development that for a change is not running against us, but in our favor, as has happened.
No, I know. An add-on question quickly on the cash flow. I mean, also Q4 last year the cash flow was pretty solid, despite that the working capital movement in Q4 was actually negative. What should we expect this year? I mean, obviously we should still expect the positive free cash flow, I would assume. The magnitude, I mean, you.
Lowered your investment.
I would assume that also cash flows in Q4 should be fairly strong. Is this a fair assessment or do you see things which go against the strong cash flow in Q4?
I would support that. That leads in our range of possible net financial debt. We expect in the normal course to be at the lower end, more positively for us, since there's no underlying risk for our Q4 cash flow situation. Okay, understood.
Thank you.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from the line of Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Oh yeah, thanks very much for taking my follow up. Probably also two or three. I mean the first question would be on anesthesia. There was some kind of news in the industry obviously. Yetting now has lined up with Philips and in fact also GE has introduced and called out the kind of launch of a new workstation which is more meaningful apparently. I'm not sure if this is a kind of normal industry development or is there a certain risk that may provide a kind of headwind for anesthesia going forward?
That would be the first question, please.
I would say that's a normal industry development. There are discussions all the time, and we also have discussions, and that's an enormous thing. They're not afraid of this development, right.
When you're also having discussion, that means you also are generally open to more different new ways of distribution.
Is that the way to understand that?
That's correct. There are obviously the companies like that do not have certain modalities, and they're seeking and contacting the ones that have, because they want to become a full service, say, supplier. That's a normal development, and that has its pros and cons. As I said, we are not.
Afraid of this.
Setup.
Okay, perfect.
On China, I mean we've seen improvement in the first half. Q3 looks like a kind of a larger change to the opposite. This is larger volatility or because you're calling that out. Is there any kind of specifics that.
Happened here, and why has it happened?
If you have any visibility here?
Oh, that's basically, I would say, that's nothing new. It's very fragile from where we ended last year, and so far it's, say, stable, but at a modest level. It's not likely that it comes back to where it was for various reasons.
Understood.
Is there any update on the defense related demand in Germany in terms of what have you seen so far? Is there any kind of acceleration being seen at the moment?
Thank you.
Please keep in mind, Mr. Reinberg, that last year in Q1 we received a large order for this Muscat 2000 for the army of roughly EUR 15 million. That obviously did not repeat this year. Despite this not repeating, a single order effect from last year, our orders are currently having a double-digit growth of around 25% year -over- year for the defense business. It is eventually picking up and we do expect to receive more than EUR 100 million in orders in the current year.
Perfect.
Thanks so much for taking my questions.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stefan Dräger for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much to all of you that are with us today for your time and your interest in Drägerwerk and I look very much forward to meet you again and hopefully sometime in person in the future. Have a pleasant afternoon and evening.
Goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over.