Welcome to the Dürr conference call. Dr. Jochen Weyrauch, CEO, and Dietmar Heinrich, CFO of Dürr AG, will present details on the acquisition of BBS Automation, followed by a Q&A session. I will now hand over to Mathias Christen to begin.
Thanks very much. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, or good morning for those of you who joined us from North America. My name is Mathias Christen, don't worry, I welcome you instead of Andreas Schaller, who is traveling to see investors in the United States at the moment. He's somewhere in the air. From last night's press ad hoc releases, you could see that Dürr entered into a major M&A transaction, acquiring 100% of the shares in Germany-based BBS Automation. Our CEO, Jochen Weyrauch, will now explain to you the details and the strategic rationale of this acquisition. Jochen is also joining us from the U.S. today. He shouldn't be a problem. I'm now handing over to him. Jochen, please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks, Mathias. Let's see whether it becomes a problem or not. Yeah, welcome you from Chicago. Actually, good place to be right now because one of the subsidiaries of BBS Automation also plays in the area here. Very interesting to see that we have a nice spread of participants today from analysts to investors, banks, and even customers. Glad that you all made it, and happy to explain to you why we believe that this is the right move forward at the right time. If we look at our chart number two, that we have distributed or published, I'm going to give you some of the reasons why BBS is the right player for our company.
By doing the acquisition, we're actually creating one of the global players in high growth automation business. This is a highly fragmented market, but there is a bit more than a handful of very relevant players, and that's why we're glad that one of those has become available to us, and that we've been successful in signing the necessary documents last night. We've already also said that we intend to close the deal somewhere in the third quarter, beginning or fourth quarter, probably. BBS Automation is expected EUR 300 million business for this year. By doing this acquisition, we more than double our current business after we started basically our automation journey in 2021 by acquiring Teamtechnik and consequently Hekuma.
Those businesses, I think about EUR 200 million, with the EUR 300 million of BBS, we're forming a EUR 500 million player, which is one of the leading companies globally. Having said that, by doing this, we're reaching also the target that we've published latest during our last Capital Markets Day last fall, by saying that we wanted to form an automation business of EUR 500 million in 2030. We've already reached that today with the opportunity of having signed an agreement with the sellers of BBS. What we see is, and what we expect, is significant efficiency gains. BBS has highly efficient engineering and production facilities, not only in Asia, yes, with a strong focus on Asia, but also in Europe and North America.
What we of course also do is that we leverage our customer base with this acquisition, and I'll come back to that a few times later in the presentation. What we do is, we broaden our portfolio in high growth sectors. Especially during the last Capital Markets Day, and also during the general assembly, we said that we wanted to give more focus on businesses that not only offer higher growth potential, but also offer more potential in terms of increasing our overall profitability. With this acquisition, we actually achieve critical mass, too. All this follows our, I believe, well-established M&A strategy. This page has a teaser, if you will.
If you then look at the fundamentals on page four, the transaction summary, the enterprise value will be EUR 440 million-EUR 480 million, depending on an earn-out, which is related to the final outcome of the year. Consequently, the pro forma leverage, as currently Dürr is more or less debt-free, the combined businesses will then generate a net debt of around 1.3 x of EBITDA for the year, or actually for LTM March 2023, which we believe is still within a conservative range.
We show attractive synergized forward-looking multiple of 8.5x-9x EBITDA for the year 2023, based on the synergies that you see on the right side of overall about EUR 10 million that we want to achieve latest in the next two-three years. Estimated closing, I mentioned that before, either end of Q3 or beginning of Q4. We have meanwhile, during due diligence, already organized financing.
We have committed a line of the number that you can see by a number of banks, so it's fully committed, as we want it to be safe for the bridge facility, which then at a later stage will be transferred in a longer term tool of financing, and Dietmar is happy to comment later if there is questions regarding this. I mentioned already substantial cost synergies and additional revenue potential. I shouldn't say this is still a bit Swabian, but I believe this is a significant number, but this is a number that we definitely trust to achieve.
Part of the synergies is the full run rate synergies in terms of revenues, which we believe, again, the EUR 50 million is not a too aggressive number, which we have built in the plan. If you look at about a EUR 500 million business, 10% I believe is a fair number, especially when looking at this very complementary picture between geographies and customers that we can use to leverage the business going forward. Financial targets for 2026, revenues of EUR 400 million-EUR 450 million, and an EBITDA margin of 13%-15%, where the 13% already today is pretty much in the ballpark. Financial impact, there will not be much for 2023.
For 2024, it's going to be EPS accretive, and obviously revenue and margin are partially accretive today already. If you look at page five, what are the highlights? I was partially touching them already. We are creating a global assembly and testing automation player with a strong footprint now across Europe, Asia, and North America. With Teamtechnik and Hekuma, we had pretty much a strong position already in Europe, now with BBS being much stronger in North America, I will see this later today. Also especially in Asia, with a strong footprint, especially in China, we have really now a well-balanced player where we can play many more cards than before.
The high efficiency due to global engineering production, again, so far, we're well-established players in Europe with a high share of the employees being based in Europe. We can now very well balance the business through different regions and obviously different cost levels. Very similar, actually, to the way we've been successfully running the traditional Dürr business as well, where we're leveraging engineering resources and production resources around the world. Company founded in 2013 by Josef Wildgruber. Founded in 2013 doesn't mean the company started from scratch, but it started basically as a buyout organized by Josef Wildgruber of the former ixmation business from the Schmid Group in Switzerland, already in 2013, with a relatively strong base.
Company is currently headquartered in the suburbs of Munich, in Garching, pretty close to the Munich airport. As I said before, we're expecting around EUR 300 million of revenues for 2023, and definitely double digit EBITDA margin for the year. The company, meanwhile, employs actually a status of end of last year, so a few more meanwhile, but end of last year was about 1,200 net employees. It focuses on high quality, tailored solutions, but on defined modular approaches and full operations capabilities and service support, especially in mobility and med tech. Mobility, of course, with strong opportunities right now, and med tech already strengthening together with our existing business med tech, which we see as the longer term strong growth opportunity.
If you look at page six, you see the footprint. If we start in the west, Chicago, you see the darker blue dots is the facilities from BBS. The lighter blue dots is our existing facilities through either Teamtechnik or Hekuma. Chicago is one, is the center for North America for BBS, and we already have a smaller, a much smaller facility through Teamtechnik in Lawrenceville, which is close to Atlanta. There's also a facility in Guadalajara, in Mexico, and we are about to expand that significantly now with a lot of business, especially in e-mobility, starting up with OEMs or Tier 1s in Mexico. We have a number of facilities in Europe, not touching them all in detail, but what you see is...
that we also have already with Hekuma, a facility in Hallbergmoos, which is close also to the Munich Airport. There is the two acquisitions that BBS had made in the last number of years. One is Poggibonsi for the winding business, and Caravaggio, Kahle, especially in the med tech area, that also was acquired, like, three to four years ago. If you move to Asia, so far, Teamtechnik and Hekuma only had a small facility in Suzhou. Through the acquisition of BBS, where more than half of the workforce is in the area, we have a strong footprint now in Kunshan, Suzhou, both, if you will, suburbs of Shanghai.
We also have a facility now in Penang, which serves the local South East Asia market, but also serves as a, if you will, extended workbench for some of the components that are used in BBS systems. There is a further facility in Pune, not so large yet, but also with the potential to follow the development of the Indian market. On page seven, you can see the distribution of the business by industry and by geography. Again, as we were touching geographies already, let's first look at the bottom. You see that BBS has a strong position in APAC, 45%.
2/3 of this, roughly, is in China, so strong relationship to Western OEMs, Western Tier 1s in China, but also, and that's very important, also to Chinese OEMs, using especially, and you can see then up in the pie chart, the potential in e-mobility, but not only. Further, in terms of distribution around the world, Europe makes up for about 30% of the business of BBS, and North America 20% with a growing trend. If we look at the industries, e-mobility has become very much important.
You see the E's in brackets, because not all is purely electric, but of, if you will, the mobility business, about two-thirds is really regarding e-mobility, be it components of, on the battery side, like inverters or complete e-drives. There is also components that are related to the production of vehicles, but which are not related to any ICE components, which is relevant. There is no substitution risk, but we also produce, for example, or we build systems that produce components for seats, for example, or chassis components or air conditioning.
Relevant to mention, also more and more for sensors that are used in the vehicle or in terms of user experience, those new dashboards, curved displays, et cetera, which are not directly connected to e-mobility, but are part of this trend regarding e-mobility slash user experience, we see this further as a big growth driver. The med tech business, especially strengthened with the acquisition of Kahle, who are, for example, involved in safety syringe assemblies and other components for the med tech industry, and like, dry powder inhalers, et cetera, surgical devices. A business that still, as you can see here, is 20%, but we believe that especially in the longer run, that offers strong growth potential.
I'll get back to that in some of the following charts. I think that's the main relevant parts here on page seven. If we move to page eight, is basically the reason why we've decided to open up a new arena for Dürr. As we were looking at various markets, you know, the where to play discussions, and decided that we wanted to be in automation, is because the end markets will continue to grow in the next future. I'll give some arguments which you can already read on the right side.
We've tested, we've done a very extensive market survey before we acquired Teamtechnik, and even though the seller provided some market information during due diligence, we have done our own updates, and could simply confirm that the market will continue to grow in the high single-digit numbers, if not low double-digit numbers, for the years to come. Why is this? Because we all see, and I think all of you in your businesses already see, labor shortages in many areas, which increases cost, and consequently drives automation. In countries like China, by the way, we see more and more automation because of either labor shortage or consequently, the labor cost increasing.
In addition, what we also see is, maybe especially in the medical area, is near- and onshoring to developed nations for various number of reasons, be it geopolitical, be it logistics, and that further supports the trend overall for automation. If we then look further in, for example, into e-mobility, we continue to see massive tailwinds by the trend to electro-mobility. If you just imagine that last year there's been about 6.5 million battery electric vehicles, this is still less than around 10% of the global production. You see how much potential is still out there.
Interestingly enough, more than half of the 6.5 million are currently produced in China. This is why China is so much of a driver and such an important driver also for us going forward. You might say, yeah, but if already more than or around 50% of the production there is mobility, where's the growth potential? Growth potential is actually as there will be more cars produced in China, whereas in the rest of the world, the overall production rate might not go up so significantly, but there, the rate of battery electric vehicles is still relatively low. This overall makes us believe that we will have many years to come for increased capacities. Then, of course, there will be bounty business, et cetera.
Also a main driver for automation business is MedTech, purely because we're all getting much older and less healthy. This will all drive the need for more medical devices. Those medical devices will follow stronger regulations, and some of those regulations can only be fulfilled through an automated production, because with manual production, you cannot increase the quality, hygienic requirements, et cetera. Just as a few arguments why we believe that this is the right horse to ride. Page nine, why do we believe this to be the perfect fit for our automation strategy? This means, of course, BBS. Because we get significantly improved growth opportunity in markets with strong fundamentals.
I think I've given you a few examples, especially when it comes to North America and APAC. We see a number of synergies. I'll explore on that also on the following page. Our footprint significantly increases global reach, highly efficient operations through the footprint, especially in China. Sales, increased product offering, and much stronger customer access. Also there, I'll give a few more examples. Supply chain, of course, we expect through the acquisition of BBS, for BBS, but also for Teamtechnik, and with the support from Dürr, economies of scale in the supply chain and efficient manufacturing footprint, especially driven by BBS, will help our automation business. Again, that touches what we call in the lower part of the chart, the know-how transfer.
There's still a number of elements and tools that Dürr can provide. For example, project management. We're very used to our larger projects to handle and execute larger projects in a very efficient way. Why is this important? We see in automation, the projects become bigger and bigger. In the past, especially, for example, when we were looking at project e-mobility, those were low single digit EUR million projects. Meanwhile, most of those projects are double digit and not just low double digit numbers, but higher double digit numbers. This is why it's so important to have the tools available to make sure that those projects are efficiently managed, and this is where I believe Dürr can also provide some support.
Let me just touch on the last one on the page, digital factory. As you know, Dürr is a driver for digitization for many, many years, and this is why we believe that we can further support our automation business to gain speed. If we just use one example, our MES business, we're one of the leading providers of software for manufacturing execution systems, and this is an element that we expect to use also in our automation business. Bit more of a deep dive in the same direction. e-mobility leverage of a complementary customer base and synergetic capabilities.
Just two examples without mentioning names, when we looked at our customer base for both Teamtechnik and BBS, we figured out that, interestingly enough, that customer base is very complementary. This offers us the chance, obviously, for cross-selling in terms of customers, especially when it comes, for example, to customers in, for Teamtechnik in China, where China has not been so strong yet for Teamtechnik, but BBS is very strong there. The opposite is probably true for Germany. If we then look at complementarity technology, Teamtechnik is today very, very strong when it comes to, for example, end-of-line testing of electric drivetrains. Today, BBS is one of the leading player for the assembly of the electric drivetrains.
Also there, you can probably understand why we believe that there's also synergies on the technology side. The med tech business, especially with a focus on the U.S. Why the U.S.? The U.S. is today by far the largest med tech market. Here, BBS is, I would say, okay-ish in the business, but now with the rollout, especially of the product portfolio of Kahle, we will gain much more momentum. Also, Teamtechnik and Hekuma have had their first wins in North America, but it's always a bit limited because some of the, you know, the customers in med tech are huge, and they want to work with the suppliers that are not too small.
That's been limiting some of our potential in the past, and we believe that we will gain much more momentum, especially in U.S., around med tech. I think that's the two main ones here. On the cost synergy side, of course, all, you know, through all the functions, we believe that we will have some cost synergies. Not necessarily means that, you know, we would have to adjust the capacity, but we believe that we can grow with the existing capacities much more than we could have had without this this acquisition.
I would move to page 11 to just reconfirm that we consequently follow the strategy that we have published also during our last Capital Markets Day, where a high-performance automation was one of the three main growth areas. We've made significantly move forward by already reaching this year the target in terms of size that we have set ourselves for 2013. Not touching the other areas today, as we're focusing on automation today. See that in a simple chart again that, you know, we will be, yeah, 3x- 4x the size if we compare this year, if we compare the business in to where we were in 2021. On page 13 to round up what is this acquisition for us?
It actually moves the needle. It is in terms of EUR 300 million compared to our, say, EUR 1 billion for the group, is less than 10%, but it's a significant move, in terms of moving this company on a different profitability level, and especially, of course, for automation, it really moves the needle because it's more on top than we had before. It become one of the leading global assembly and testing automation players. We believe, especially when we discuss with customers, they say that they want more and more reliable, larger global players.
When we've done the survey, for example, that consultancy firm confirmed us that some of the players that are just in the high double-digit EUR million turnover or low triple-digit EUR million are not so much considered anymore by customers because customers now giving projects that are in the mid double-digit EUR million numbers or even higher believe that those suppliers are just not strong enough to perform such projects. We will be, at the end of the day, one of a handful players who can play the piano globally. I hope I could give some examples why I believe that this is a highly synergetic transaction together with Teamtechnik and Hekuma, and we now really have an automation platform to leverage new technologies around the world.
Like I was mentioning, bringing our testing capabilities from Teamtechnik to China or the med tech technology from Europe to the U.S., and all of this based on a much more attractive cost base than we had before. Of course, improved access to the high growth markets with the momentum that we have now, and consequently for the whole group, a positive contribution for our revenue dynamics and our profitability targets. That's what I wanted to give as a number of statements, and obviously, we're happy to receive any questions.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you'll be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one if you would like to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Sven Weier from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the revenue growth that you outlined, Dr. Weyrauch. I can see that the EUR 300 million is a doubling in two years. I can see one third of that is potentially coming from the Kahle acquisition, but two-thirds organic, so it's a big number. Just wondering what specifically has driven that in the last two years? I can see in the filings of BBS, that they are dependent on some single clients, they say at least. Is it special OEM accounts that have been behind this organic growth, or can you elaborate a little bit more on that? That's the first one. Thank you.
Thank you, Sven. First of all, also, like some other businesses, BBS is coming out of the pandemic trough, if you will. The business has, I would say, half of what the growth is this year, in rough terms, has been the downside of the coronavirus pandemic. It sounds impressive, and it is impressive how this company grows for the year, and we can clearly see this from the backlog already. It's not, it's a significant growth, but it's not like, you know, it looks like if you just compare the two years. It is actually an overall growth.
there is nice business in North America, but especially there is very good business from the APAC region, especially also in China. I've been seeing the Chinese facilities three weeks ago, and I was really impressed to see how many projects we have, not only for, you know, the Western OEMs or Tier 1s, but especially also for the Chinese players, who, as we can all see, gain significant momentum. Actually, we continue to see this moving forward, so it's a mix. I would say, with a stronger focus currently on the potential around e-mobility, be it from the electric drivetrain, but also from the battery side.
Thank you for that. I was just also wondering, because you talked about the complementary deal with regard to the Teamtechnik clients, how is it maybe also with the paint shop, right?
Mm-hmm.
How is maybe the overlap with your OEM client on the paint shop side? Is this similar mix that BBS has?
It's a similar mix. What, of course, helps, we've been seeing this with Teamtechnik, for example, we've had in the last couple of months, the first successes with North American OEMs for Teamtechnik, where Teamtechnik never really had, with one exception, significant business. There, of course, the momentum that we have through Dürr and our proximity to customers, typically at a relatively high level, that helps, we believe this will help as well. Also in China, where I must say in China, BBS is well established, still, I mean, we as Dürr have customers that BBS doesn't have, also in other regions.
I mean, there is regions, if you talk about India, if you talk about, other parts of, the Americas, there I really assume, additional synergies, definitely.
Then on the EV, the EUR 440-EUR 480, the KPIs that the high and the low end depend on, is that consistent then also with the revenue range you see for BBS for the next three years, depending on the high and the low end of that? How should we think about the earn-out behind the range?
The earn-out is more related to the outcome of the year rather than the next two or three years, because it will be due with the year-end closing then somewhere next year.
The next question comes from the line of Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. It's Nicolai Kempf speaking from Deutsche Bank. Thanks for hosting the call. My first question would be actually on the revenue exposure of BBS. I mean, you did mention the last P&D to look more into names which are less automotive gear. Actually 55% of BBS are getting the automotive. I do understand it's e-mobility and a bit of other components and like, batteries, but still, it seems a high share of automotive. Can you just elaborate what's the reasoning behind this, or should this decline as well over next year?
Thanks, Nicolai, for the question. Yes, we've looked at this, of course. The acquisition is not the end of the story, potentially, when it comes to med tech. Why are we positive? It really is e-mobility, and it is very, it is to some extent, opportunity driven. It's quite interesting. Without mentioning a name, BBS has one significant, other player in the market, a competitor, who traditionally was stronger in med tech, and by definition, or as a decision, has now moved more in e-mobility. E-mobility will be a driver, where we believe that with the lack of enough capacity of good players, there will be a profitability potential that you normally don't see so much in automotive.
This is what makes us confident, even though for BBS, the automotive, share of automotive business is slightly higher than, or is to some extent, higher than it is for Dürr. It is an area that growth for the number of years, and that offers the profitability. This is why we said, despite the fact that technically, we wanted to reduce our exposure in automotive, on the overall scheme, it doesn't really make much of a difference in terms of percentage on one hand, and on the other hand, it offers us significantly growth and profitability potential. This is why also I was saying earlier in the presentation, in the long run, we believe that med tech then will start catching up, because this is the longer-term, stronger trend.
Not saying that e-mobility is over in five years, but med tech will then kick in stronger potentially than e-mobility.
Okay, understood. Thanks. My second one is more of a housekeeping question.
Uh-huh.
Do you already know in which division you will consolidate BBS?
Yeah, that's a good one. For the moment, we will do as it was before in PFS, and I don't expect that we change this shortly. However, once, you know, we've cleared the arena here, of course, we will make this business in a way, much more visible to investors and analysts, and set it up that way.
Okay, understood. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
The next question comes from the line of Felix Borchert from Amundi. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for hosting this call. Felix Borchert from Amundi. I just wanted to ask, I mean, to what extent does the acquisition impact your midterm targets that you presented at the Capital Markets Day last year? I mean, the margins that you seem to which seem to be in place already now, and, you know, the margin target that you set for 2026. I mean, they are above the midterm targets for the group level, and especially for the PFS segment. I was wondering whether we could expect any update there. My second question would be on the financing of the deal, how this deal will be impacting your net cash position? Thank you.
Thanks, Felix, for asking the question. At this point, we don't see any reason to adjust the midterm targets. You know, we've said our midterm targets would and could include acquisitions. Now, we've made one. We'll have to clearly figure out what it means in detail, but I don't see at this point a reason to adjust those targets. As Dietmar is on the call as well, Dietmar, you want to comment on financing and net debt, et cetera?
Yeah, of course, I can do, Felix, in that regard. As you're aware, we have a quite good net cash position so far, and at the time when the closing is expected to be done, and latest later on, then when the final refinancing is done...
Yeah
... we will not only look to how do we refinancing, but we will also have a look into our cash position, possibly use some of the cash position also for the acquisition. That's how it's currently set up with the bridge financing.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Alexander Hübner from Thomson Reuters. Please go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon. I've got just one question on your plans to refinance the acquisition. You've been talking about your debt level is rising. Would you rule out a capital increase for this acquisition, or could this also be part of a later refinancing?
Jochen, shall I answer?
Yeah, sure. Go ahead.
Yeah. Basically, we look at all capital market instruments that are available, but you could see that we did successfully transactions at the beginning of the year on the debt capital market side, so potentially we will be more on that side of the refinancing.
Yeah-
Okay.
If I may add, we don't see any capital increase. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Sven Weier from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, I have two follow-up questions, please. The first one-
Mm-hmm.
If you could just elaborate who you see as the most important direct competitors in the individual business lines?
Of BBS? Yeah, there is a company, for example, called ATS, Canadian company, larger and similar footprint. There is, for example, a company called JR. They've been acquired by Hitachi, as much as we know, for a much higher multiple. There is, for example, company PIA in China. Then there's also a number of smaller players, like, for example, a company called Mikron in Switzerland.
Okay. Thank you for that. The other question-
Mm-hmm.
I had was just regarding legacy issues, because I could see in the filings of BBS that there was an issue with software in 2021, where that was probably related to certain programming languages they had to be using.
Mm-hmm.
-by the owner. That was a, almost a EUR 20 million charge. I was just wondering if those software issues have all been sorted out in the meantime, and if you're buying this from a kind of a clean base?
Yeah, good question. Yeah, we've obviously looked at this in detail before and then during the due diligence. There is two or three projects that are at the very end of being sorted out. There, we've had minimal activity this year, and things are basically over. Yeah, consequently, we don't see any impact on this anymore. It's been a huge number of projects sorted out, just a few remaining reworks that are basically done, and that's why we consider this story over. We've looked at this, as you can imagine, from the magnitude in detail.
Is there an opportunity, given your software competence, for you to have synergies on the software side?
Yeah, absolutely, Sven. We don't see this so much on this control software. I'm not going too much into detail what there's been, what they've been doing, but we would in that respect, not never have gone into a proprietary solution as it is control software that, you know, you were just mentioning. However, where we see the synergies is really when it comes to overall digitization of the equipment, like through MES systems, manufacturing execution systems, where we have a company called iTAC who are very prominent in the market, and we will use those competencies obviously also for BBS.
Understood. Thank you very much, Dr. Weyrauch.
Thank you.
We currently have no questions in the queue. As a reminder, please press star one if you would like to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of Holger Schmidt from DZ Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. The first question is on the transaction cost. Could you give us an indication on the underlying transaction cost that you expect for the current year? Secondly, with regard to your synergy target, it's about EUR 10 million per year. If I align that with the underlying cost base of BBS of around EUR 350 million-EUR 360 million by 2026, this corresponds to only about, you know, 3% of synergies. I think that's relatively low. What is the reason behind this conservatism?
Yeah, good question, Holger. transaction cost to answer that first, we expect in the mid-single digit EUR million number, roughly, all in. On the synergies, the EUR 10 million, I was saying, I see this, you know, with Swabian company. I'm not from Swabia, so the EUR 10 million is yes, could be seen as conservative. However, what we've also factored in to be, if you will, safe, is some dyssynergies. Like, you know, we factored in for Germany, the potential of labor cost increases and a few other things that were. The net number that we've put in for the moment is the EUR 10 million.
... Okay, okay. Could you also share, a number around the expected integration costs?
Yeah. You know, also this has been factored in the run rate of the synergies. We might have more, you know, yes. Also, this, what we were assuming is maybe a number in the mid-single digit area. If you put all together, we believe that the synergies that we mentioned, yeah, have that factored in. To start with, maybe if you call this extraordinary cost or whatever, that would be a number in the mid-single digits again.
Okay, excellent.
The next question that comes from the line of Christian Kohl from Warburg Research. Please go ahead. Christian, please go ahead. Your line is unmuted.
Sorry, I was muted. Thanks for taking my questions. Now you have actually three automation subsidiaries, Teamtechnik, Hekuma, and BBS. Will you actually integrate and rebrand your automation activities, so that there will be one entity actually in the lead? Do you will keep actually multiple brands, and they will operate it separately from each other, but with an modified and unified approach? Secondly, have you been able, or will you be able to keep the local management team or the local management teams of BBS, and is this also contractually agreed? Thank you.
Thanks, Christian. On your first question regarding integration and branding, let me differentiate between the two, please. I don't expect us to give up the brands, and because they all have their position in the market, Teamtechnik, Hekuma, BBS. Even BBS not only is one brand at this point. For example, we have, as I was mentioning in the call, a very strong brand in the medical business called Kahle or Kahle, however you pronounce it. We will carefully play with those brands because to many customers, they have a meaning.
In terms of integration, of course, wherever possible, we will use the ways of integrating businesses in the back end, and create also cost synergies in that respect. We'll do this, I shouldn't say carefully, but well thought through. Most of this will more happen towards the beginning of next year, as we're still about to close for part of the remainder of the year. There we will of course look at our potential. In terms of the local management teams, we've had the chance to talk to them, to meet with them.
We have very good impression from all the teams, and we currently expect and hope, but there is good reasons to expect and to hope that those teams will stay on board, because we're really very positive with the teams that we've met.
Perfect. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
There are no further questions in the queue, so I will now turn the call back over to your host for some closing remarks.
Mathias, do you wanna close, or shall I close?
I can do the closing, and, actually start it, but.
Okay.
Unmute it again. Sorry for that. Okay, thanks a lot for your questions, ladies and gentlemen, and the discussion. We're sure that BBS Automation will be an important driver for just targeted growth in the automation technology business. If you have further questions after this call, please don't hesitate to contact Andreas or me. One last remark, our next regular call will then be on August 3, when we will be publishing the half year figures. Until then, we wish you a good time, take care and goodbye.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your line.