343 million EUR, an increase of 106 million. Regarding EBIT, I would like to stress that in the first half of 2026, we achieved numerous milestones with an impact on revenue and profit, which had originally been planned for the second half of the year. This was possible due to the tremendous efforts of our employees and requests from some customers to deliver projects earlier than planned. The result was a shift in revenues and earnings the first half year of 2026. EBIT improved to 15.6 million EUR compared with minus 4.3 in first half 2025. This is only the second time since the IPO in 2019 that we have reported a positive EBIT in the first half due to our seasonality.
The last time was during the pandemic when travel bans were in place, and the shift from the second half to first half can't be considered sustainable as our current estimation. The equity ratio was at 38.1%, a slight decrease of one percentage point, and at the end of June 2026, we had a net cash position of 107.4 million EUR. 79.9 million EUR or 75% of this came from advance payment from customers, which is a very usual methodology, a lower ratio than a year ago. Some order intake and project highlights from the first half year. Our business in the U.S. is going pretty well. The APC program, the digitalization of air-to-ground protocol converters made big progress in the first half year 2026. The production of 15,000 APC gateways was completed and the biggest revenue part of the entire program.
Now the rollout and maintenance phase is underway. Also, the voice communication system program is currently being developed by the customer and Frequentis, and it is on track. Several milestones need to be completed in the various phases as a precondition for further progress. The certification process for the remote tower technology has been ongoing now for several years, so we are not particularly concerned about the delay we currently face from the FAA. To the best of our knowledge, we remain the only company currently undergoing the certification process. It remains to be seen how long we will remain the sole provider. Nevertheless, we envisage a market potential of around half a billion US dollar for the U.S. national airspace over the next few years for remote towers, split between civil and military. In Qatar, we secured several high-level orders for voice comm system and integrated displays.
In Brazil, we are working on expanding the large-scale ATM network coverage into the Amazon region. Now to defense. We are really happy to have secured a large contract to modernize the military communication system of the Austrian Army. In Germany, we achieved the validation of a unified drone air picture to support the integration of crewed and uncrewed aircraft in the airspace. Let me share a few thoughts on recent drone incidents in Europe and on the role Frequentis can play in this market. Frequentis solutions are designed to provide a unified air picture and to integrate drone detection and monitoring sensors from multiple vendors. Key challenges for operators of critical infrastructure are not simply selecting the right technologies, but also integrating systems from different suppliers and keeping pace with rapid technological developments in the drone sector.
However, European governments need additional time to find the right way to address this issue. Another topic we are making progress in the Middle East is with defense communication collaboration agreements like that one in Saudi Arabia with the U.S. government companies. As part of our strategy to expand our mission-critical services portfolio, we have increased our shareholding in the Spanish company, Nemergent Solutions, to 51%. Nemergent, I think I've presented that already a couple of times, plays a really crucial role within our MCX ecosystem and significantly enhances our ability to deliver a comprehensive suite of mission-critical communication solutions to customers worldwide. I would also like to highlight the fact that we are making targeted investments in the PST segment, specifically in MCX and FRMCS, the Future Railway Mobile Communication System, even though this is currently weighing on EBIT.
These upfront investments are necessary to reduce technical depth for our first projects and also to enable us to offer our customers market-ready solutions in a timely manner and to tap into future business potential. Both markets will be very huge, but it's too early to quantify them, but we see already the first tenders coming up in MCX for rail and for national safety-critical infrastructures. Slide number four shows that order intake grew again, this time by 17% to a new half year record of EUR 362 million. Air traffic management posted a rise of 65%, and public safety and transport, a decline of 35% against a very strong half year 1, 2025 baseline.
We are confident about the progress of public safety and transport, and see this entirely as a cut-off date effect. In line with our policy, the order intake shown comprises confirmed orders only. Looking forward, we have a well-filled order pipeline and good opportunities for the rest of 2026 and beyond in various regions, especially in Europe and the Americas. The book-to-bill ratio was higher than one, 1.07, and we continue our growth path. Orders on hand increased by 9.3% to more than EUR 800 million for the first time, EUR 835 million to be exact. For more financial details now, I would like to hand over to Peter Skerlan, our CFO.
Thank you very much, Norbert. Here is Peter. I'm the CFO of Frequentis. Let's jump to slide number five and go into the details of our first half year. Revenues were up 44.8% to EUR 106.1 million, setting a new record of EUR 343 million for the first half year. This increase fills the need for additional employees. But we are happy because we are still able to find enough qualified employees around the world to handle this growth, as we are an attractive employer. Historically, revenues have been weighted towards the second half of the year, with an average split of 43% in first half and 57% in second half in the past five years. In 2026, however, we expect the distribution to be much more even, reflecting the successful completion of several major project milestones in first half year that were originally planned for second half year.
Both segments contributed to the revenue growth. ATM grew by 59.4%, while PST grew by 11.2%. Supported by strong demand in the civil ATM market, the revenue mix shifted towards ATM, resulting in a segment split of 77% ATM and 23% PST. Defense-related activities represented less than 15% of total group revenues in first half 2026. I am now on slide number six. Revenues grew at double-digit rates in all regions, underscoring the group's broadly based strength. Europe is still our biggest market, accounting for about 50% of the total, followed by the Americas region, which accounts for 39%. We are pleased that revenues in Americas region more than doubled, driven primarily by strong growth in the United States.
Next in line, following the strong performance in the Americas is the Australia, Pacific, Africa region, which achieved the second highest growth rate at 19%, ahead of Asia, 16%, and Europe with 15%. Slide number seven shows the temporary positive shift in the seasonal pattern on EBITDA and EBIT from second half 2026 to first half year 2026. As already mentioned, this was due to earlier than expected recognition of revenues and profit. A big thank to all our colleagues involved. The two segments contributed differently to the half year EBIT. Air traffic management posted an EBIT of EUR 18.9 million in comparison to EUR 7.4 million to half year 2025, while public safety and transport reported -EUR 3.3 million in comparison to EUR 2.9 million in the first half year 2025. May I comment on the earnings situation in the PST segment.
On the one side, we invest in MCX and FRMCS in the PST segment, as already mentioned by Norbert Haslacher before. Alongside these investments, the development of earnings in the PST segment was affected by cost increases in some projects, especially in the public transport business domain, and delays in order intake. As in the past, the second half will therefore be far more relevant for full-year profitability in the PST segment. Nevertheless, the EBIT margin within public safety itself, that's the PST segment, excluding public transport and maritime and MCX investments, remains in double-digit figures for the full-year and demonstrates the successful transformation to a software-centered business model. Let me also comment on three positions from the P&L statement.
The cost of materials and purchased services increased by 88%, which was higher than the 45% rise in revenues. The increase was mainly attributable to more material-intensive projects in the Americas and Europe region. Personnel expenses rose 15%, which was below the relative rise in revenues. Other operating expenses were 36% higher in the first half of 2026. This was mainly due to the following items: impairment losses on receivables and contract assets, +EUR 5.3 million year- on- year, and the change in project-related provisions +EUR 4.9 million.
The increase in impairment losses on receivables and contract assets was mainly attributable to the impairment of past due receivables relating to a project in the air traffic management segment. We are continuing to work towards securing fair compensation for the work we have already completed. However, I cannot provide further details. The project-related provisions contain, among other things, project costs for which provisions are recognized as estimated future expenses exceed revenues. This is normal for a project-driven company like ours. For the strategy outlook, let me hand you back to Norbert.
Thanks, Peter, for walking us through these tremendous results. I am on slide number eight now, which focuses on our strategy of becoming the number one in control center solutions. You know we have that vision since our IPO as a very clear guidance for all of our subsidiaries. On the right-hand side, you can see that our current product portfolio can address a market of EUR 3.8 billion annually. According to our research, the global market for control center solutions, including equipment, is EUR 14 billion a year. Our strategy is based on three main aspects. One is R&D, new deployment models, and M&A. R&D results in new solutions and products for critical communications, such as mission-critical services known as MCX.
Drone management, which is the integration of drones and support of detection and defense, and the future communication and power infrastructure that can run in virtual and cloud environments, and systems supported by artificial intelligence. MCX, drones, and remote digital towers are focal areas for growth in the next years, and you may find detailed slides in the appendix. Regarding M&A, the proactive search for interesting M&A opportunities remains part of our strategy. When making acquisitions, we focus on parameters such as expansion of the product portfolio, profitable business model, cultural fit, and of course, the acquisition price. We will continue to consider which technologies and products we develop ourselves and which we buy in to gain a better time to market. We want to shape the future of control centers, so we are not passengers there.
We are in this business since 80 years now, and our place is in the cockpit. We drive that market forward and, of course, open standards and true interoperability so that emergency services can work together across systems and also national borders. Let me conclude with the outlook for 2026 on slide number nine. I think we will be quite busy the next couple of months due to the order intakes, projects, R&D investments, and also the upcoming orders we see still coming in till the end of the year. We are working on a very good level of capacity utilization already, and we expect that will continue till the end of the year. We aim to increase our order intake further, and it is too early to quantify the increase, but the sales pipeline for 2026 and beyond remains really well filled.
Revenues are set to increase by about 15%, and the growth and profitability, inflation, and now above all shortages, long delivery times, limited commitments from suppliers on the IT hardware market will weigh on EBIT in 2026. We do not see any changes there currently. Temporary shifts in milestones, revenues, and potential startup costs at the beginning of projects are common challenges for a project-driven company like ours. Overall, we expect to report a group EBIT margin of about 7%, what we have already announced at the beginning of the year, which is above the 6.7% margin we achieved in 2025.
If we exclude the claim settlement of about EUR 8 million, what we have already reported last time. Capital expenditure, mainly for notebooks, office equipment, and production machinery, will be about EUR 15 million only. Company-funded, that is self-financed R&D expenses, will amount to around 6% of revenues in 2026 as expected. To sum up, we are really very energized for another year of growth in 2026, and we are now ready for your questions. Thank you for listening.
Thank you very much for your presentation and the transparent insight. We apologize for the technical difficulties on [inaudible] end while you were only able to join via phone today. The issue is fixed, and you can join from your laptops now if you like to. Otherwise, you are welcome to stay via the phone line. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now move on to the Q&A session. To place your questions via phone line, please press star key nine to raise your hand. If I call your name, please press star key six to unmute yourself. Having said this, Mr. Wolfgang Specht, the first question is yours.
Yes, hello.
Hello, Mr. Specht.
Yes. Good morning. Wolfgang from Berenberg. I would start with two or three questions and then go back into the line. First, on the order book, you stated 9% up to more than EUR 830 million, which is outstanding. But we learned in the past that there is also a shadow order book. Can you give us an idea what you expect to be on top of this, let us say, call it hard order book? Then on the U.S. remote tower certification process, we all hoped, and I guess you also hoped for a certificate already in the first half of this year. Now you are saying somewhere in 2026. So any details what your U.S. colleagues told you why it has not happened yet and what U.S. is missing here? Thanks a lot.
Okay. Thanks, Wolfgang, for your question. First, the shadow order book is, maybe to explain that to other investors who are new to that topic. Frequentis only shows orders in the order book where we have 100% commitment and the contract in-house signed by the customer before we put that into our backlog. So the EUR 835 million we show on our order book are committed orders signed by the customer. Nevertheless, usually a customer is preparing and making available a budget overall for a program where part of that are ordered piece by piece. What we estimate usually is a factor between 1.7 to 2.0 factor on our orders on hand as an available budget for our running programs. A good example is the APC program was budgeted, that is official figure you can see in the internet, with $500 million U.S.
Up to now, we got orders of around $200, $250 million out of that. So that is a good, I think, example. Same applies for other programs. So factor 1.6, 1.7 to two is what you call the shadow order book. Concerning the U.S. remote tower, I said it before, the certification process in the Atlantic City Tech Center of the FAA now lasts more than three years. So we are the only vendor in that tech center since more than three and a half years applying for that with documentation, safety cases, hard tests, recordings. So it is a very, very long process. We expect it based on commitments from the FAA, the certification by end of Q2 2026. Nevertheless, I think the FAA is currently very busy with all the programs they have started, so they apologized for the delay.
We still expect a certification till the end of this year as they want to go forward with that digitalization of their tower infrastructure. We are not concerned. For us, it's a question of months. Another vendor is also searched by the FAA to start a new certification process because I understand the FAA position. They want to have one alternative to Frequentis for that technology over the time. Nevertheless, that will also be a long-term process for the new vendor to follow the procedures and rules set from the FAA in the Atlantic City Tech Center to gain certification then as a second supplier. Will it be two years? Will it be three years? We do not know now.
Thanks a lot.
Do you have any follow-up questions? Otherwise, I would move on.
Thanks. I am fine for the moment. I go back into the line.
Okay. Thank you very much. Next in line is Elias Mew. Mr. Mew, you should be able to speak now. Yes. I see your line is open, Mr. Mew. Can you hear us?
Yes. Good morning. Yes, I hope you can hear me.
Yes.
Thanks for taking my question. My question is really on the H2 margin outlook. Now we consider your guidance for 15% revenue growth in 2026. That would imply revenues for H2 slightly below H1 revenues, but would require a significant margin step-up in the second half to around 9.6% for you to reach the full-year margin guidance of around 7%. I was just wondering if you could help us understand what gives you the confidence to reach that full-year margin target of 7%, given the slightly soft H1 margin of around 4.6%. I mean, I know raw materials was a headwind in H1. Do you expect that to reverse or what's the tailwind in H2 on the margin side?
Hello, it's Peter. Thank you, Mr. Mew, for the questions. We stick to our outlooks, so we are sure that we can achieve this 15% revenue growth. Yes, of course, due to the strong performance in the first half year, it seems that the second half year is a little bit weaker, but that's according to the EUR 100 million increase of the first half year revenues in comparison to last year, which is a lot. Concerning the margin, I think we have enough chances to cover the risks that are ahead of us to see also this margin improvement in the second half of the year. So we are confident concerning our outlook.
Okay, great. Is it just, if you could talk a little bit about the raw material headwind you saw in H1? I mean, the moving parts behind soft H1 margin, I guess, and why you expect the H2 margin to be so much better even though revenues are roughly on the same level? I guess that's what I'm asking. Perhaps on that, if you could also talk a little bit about this negative PST margin in H1, which came as a bit of a surprise. I know you mentioned investments there, but is there anything else to flag as well on the big PST margin?
Yeah . Okay. Concerning the second half of the year, when we look upon the past performance, we normally had always in the first half year a - EBIT. You can clearly see from the past that the margin is We do it in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter. That's due to our project business, where a lot of change request claims as well as approvals are done in the last quarter. So that's not unusual that margin is created in the second half of the year. The other questions that you had was concerning PST. As we tried to explain, it's a mixture of different things.
One is these new market opportunities around MCX, where MCX will replace, in the future, TETRA in the public safety segment for public safety maritime customers, and where FRMCS is the new technology for railway communication will replace GSM-R. But that's, I would say, a mid-term, long-term topic where we cannot expect profit in the first phases. Then we have to cope with two other things. One is cost increases, especially in public safety and transport project, where the execution of the long-term program needs more funds that what we have expected.
Also in PST, we expected some mid-size orders which we couldn't win. So we try to compensate that in the second half of the year. I would say these are things normal to project business. Whenever something happens like that, we try to compensate it with other programs, project claims. I think that's part of our business. Overall, with the chances that we see and with the risks that we have to get rid of, we want to achieve this EBIT margin of around 7%. We are confident.
Okay, great. My final question from my side is just on how to expect seasonality to evolve going forward into 2027. I mean, would you expect the skew towards H2 to be less significant going forward, or should it be on the same level as we have seen in previous years?
Yeah. Thank you for these questions. What we think is that that is an extraordinary first half year in 2026, and it will not be a change of the back-loaded second half that we normally saw in the past. We do not think that will change in the future. We will watch it carefully, and we will report on it if it happens like that. Today, we do not expect it.
Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Mew. Ladies and gentlemen, please be reminded that if you have any questions, you may use the star key nine to raise your hand. Before I hand back over to you, Mr. Specht, I will go on to our two questions in the chat box from Steven from Australia. Congratulations on an incredible result. Will the first 63 X10 systems in the U.S.A., due for delivery in early 2027, result in a similarly strong first half for 2027?
I think here we depend also on the program on customer side, because we cannot only deliver as we want. It's a difficult program where a lot of things had also to be done from customer side, and we depend on milestones and the rollout program plans from the customer. From today on, we plan how to roll it out, but there are still some questions ahead of us.
Thank you very much. The second question from Steven: how many X10 systems do you believe Frequentis will ultimately be delivering to the FAA over the extent of this program? Can you quantify this opportunity?
Yeah. I think for us, it's not so much important on how many systems. For us, it's important how big the systems are we deliver. The FAA's ambition is to change the whole voice communication infrastructure in towers, TRACONs, which are the approach control centers, and ACCs, so the area control centers, and they have plenty of them. The towers are very small systems with three, four, five working positions. The TRACONs and ACCs are large installations with hundreds of working positions each. We got the first waterfall from the FAA showing their plan, how fast we should deliver those systems. We think it's very challenging, but the overall budget the FAA has reserved for delivering those systems and maintaining those systems over the next 15 years then, is around $1.4 billion.
They have a dual vendor strategy. One of those vendors is Frequentis, so we expect to address around half of that $1.4 billion ceiling they have put in. If they need more money, as you know, the IDIQ contracts in the U.S., they have a ceiling. It's currently $1.4 billion, but that can be extended, of course, if they need more installations or more maintenance from Frequentis. We are very confident that we can address a large amount of that $1.4 billion.
Thank you very much for your questions, Steven. We will move on to the follow-up question from Wolfgang Specht. Wolfgang, you should be able to speak now again.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes. Hello again. Three follow-ups from my end. First, you mentioned the impairment losses and provisions you took. Is this referring to the same project or are these separate projects? That would be interesting. Then on the progress of, let's call it SaaS enablement of your ATM solutions, which you are undergoing since a while, can you give us an update what the status is and when you expect that large parts of the ATM portfolio will be SaaS-enabled? The final question, on personnel, we see a disproportionate low growth of employees versus your current sales traction. Is this sustainable? Can you lean on economies of scale or let's say, a higher share of standardization here? Or can you simply currently not onboard more personnel? It would be interesting. That's it.
I want to use this chance for the last question. You said low growth of what?
Employees.
And employees. But the low growth of what?
The low growth of personnel versus sales, 14 against 45. Is this sustainable because you are generating economies of scale or a higher degree of optimization standardization, or is it simply because you cannot onboard more personnel?
I think I will start with one question because the other two are for Peter, then I don't interrupt him. Just for clarification, we have no SaaS strategy in ATM. We don't think that the ATM market, and especially our governmental ANSP customers, will go towards a Software-as-a-Service model. What they go for, and what's also driven by the European regulation, is that they want to buy software. Classical software license business, where we sell software licenses instead of hardware, which was the past, where we have delivered embedded software in a hardware element. They would like now to buy software, what they can deploy in data centers and virtual cloud environments.
From a commercial point of view, we don't think that these customers will go towards a Software-as-a-Service commercial model. How far are we? I would say, as mentioned also in our last meeting, Wolfgang, we are on the way in changing our core release eight voice communication system for ATM into a software-based replacement, which is called X10. We invest around EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million net every year to create that software. It's a very complex, high scale program. It will take another two years, two and a half years, as I've mentioned also last time, to finalize that investment. What is really good and accelerates and hardens that X10 development is our contracts we have with NAV Canada and Norway, and Austro Control, and also now with the FAA.
I think it's a very good sign that that new software has found customers helping us to harden that software to make it mature for other markets. The other products we currently have in ATM are beside our network equipment, which will probably stay hardware, is already full software-based. I think the transformation process we have started in ATM is good underway and will last another two and a half years as already indicated last time. For the other two questions, Wolfgang, I will put my mic towards Peter.
Okay. Thanks, Norbert. There are two questions that I would like to answer. One was this question with impairment and project loss, and the second one was concerning our people stuff. Let's start with impairment. The thing is that we have normally quite low impairments concerning our accounts receivables. Here is one larger deal. It is one larger deal with one customer where we have difficulties in collecting the money, so we had to impair it. We do not give up. We still fight for the money. We always fight till the end. That is totally clear. But towards auditors, we have a weak standpoint due to the fact that the invoices are already very overdue. To be on the safe side, we had to do that. But we will fight. I cannot answer if we are able to collect it this year or next year. We will see.
Sometimes a fight takes a little bit longer in certain countries. The next question was project loss. The project loss, yes, there is one a little bit larger, but there are also several smaller projects where we have to make these provisions. I think that is normal in the project business. With some projects we win and with some projects we lose. In this special case, due to the larger one out of the public transport segment, the amount looks a little bit larger than in the past. But we will also fight here in this case. Will we be able to improve it this year? No, concerning that, the larger project, we will probably not be able to improve it this year, but on the long run, it is important for us to keep the customer, to keep the relationship, and to improve the project with change requests.
That is a midterm, long-term approach. The last question was, what about people? I think that depends on the tenders of our customers, because if the customer wants to buy 15,000 pieces of hardware, then we have higher material costs, and that is what you will see for the first half year, higher material cost. If the customer just buys services, then we need people. Normally, the payroll costs are approximately between 50% and 54, 55% of our total revenues. That is when the business is as usual. If the customer asks for extraordinary high hardware, if the tender is IT equipment or proprietary hardware or whatever the customer wants, then there is a change. If we cannot hire people in time, sometimes we need experts, and then we have to procure them, and then you see an increase on the procured services. It depends what the customer tenders.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you for your questions, Wolfgang. We will move on to our two more hands up. The first is from Miro Zuzak. Miro, you should be able to speak now.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Great. I have a couple of questions. I would like to take them one by one, if I may. First of all, congratulations, of course, to the super strong margin. Regarding these shifts of projects into H1 versus H2. Usually, you have the 45%-55% split between H1 and H2. You initially guided for 10% growth. If I do the math, then the projects that have been pulled forward into H1 were in the range of EUR 40 million-EUR 60 million. It is all in ATM and U.S. probably, right? If you look at the regions and the segments. The question I have, is this really a one-off move or is this just a faster execution than planned of these huge orders that you have from the U.S. in the ATM business?
Okay. Hello, here is Peter. Thank you for the question. I think what you are explaining is exactly as usual concerning your comments, is exactly how it happened. It is always a question how fast we can execute the programs. There are also things like pending approvals or if customer is on site not ready for the delivery. There are always things that can lead to postponements of milestones. What we have also achieved, apart from these largely U.S. things, we have also achieved several projects in Europe where we could do the execution faster than originally planned. It is always, if there is a delivery date in the contract, do we believe in this date or do we think that it will be postponed? That is then the question, how we plan it. This year we could achieve it faster than we assumed.
The question I am trying to answer is then H2 really lower than originally planned, or will you still execute on H2 like you usually do, 55% of sales? If you take the original 10% guidance, that would still be more than the-
That is the reason why we think of a 15% revenue increase.
Oh, yeah.
That is the reason why we increased our forecast.
The 55% of the original guidance would still be more than a 20% increase for the entire year. So 350 in H2.
That is not what we expect today.
Due to delays somehow or so?
Yes. Due to uncertainties and due to the fact that we do careful planning.
Okay. Then secondly, in the report, you mentioned two special effects, the impairment, as you just explained, and you write that this was in the ATM division, the EUR 5.3 million. Two questions. Was this booked in revenues or cost of material, or was it booked in other operating expenses, the EUR 5.3?
It's other expenses.
Other. And also, the EUR 4.9, the-
Other
basically, this is both in other.
Yes.
The question there which I have, is this really, and I am talking now about the 4.9. Is this really a project which is not going wrong? Because if I go back 10 years back, you have never had a negative margin in PST in the first half. It is really the first time. And this is really a project which runs sour, or is this more like a because I also see the top line was a bit weakish compared to the rest, right, in this segment. Is this a program not going to plan, or is it more like a general cautious view that you take and you make the special provisions because also in this very strong H1, it is probably a good time to be more cautious where you can be.
I think that we are cautious concerning this project, and we see this cost increase has nothing to do that the first quarter is a stronger one. We had even done it if ATM had not been so strong. That is clear. We are forced to do so. If the future costs of a project are not covered by the future revenues, we have to do so, and also in the future. Why is it like that? We hope that that is a one-time effect in this larger program in the PST.
So it is really one contract which turned sour, so to speak.
Yes.
Is it finished by now or is the project-
No
still turning more and more sour?
If it had been like that, we would make a higher provision. We hope and we expect that that is enough to execute this program.
Okay. Peter, in your comments to the PST segment, you mentioned before that public safety, excluding the transport part, remains double digit for the full-year. Does that imply that for the full-year, the margin, specifically the reporting margin, will be single digit, will be below double digit?
I would comment on that. We say public safety, that's the PST segment without public transport, maritime, and MCX. The question is, how do these three parts develop in the next months? And how fast the MCX market will develop. If we see nice tenders covering all the costs, if we see trials, if we see further research and development programs, I think that's something where we have to watch the future carefully. If the customers tender nice programs where we can achieve a marvelous profit, then we are fine.
But if the customers just go on like they did in the past, giving nice little trials where you have to show a lot and are paid less, then that could harm our profitability. But concerning public safety, the public safety part, we expect that we have these nice profits. It depends really on public transport, maritime, and MCX. What we say overall, we stick to the around 7% EBIT margin. That's clear that we want to achieve. If one of these things is weaker, then we will fight harder on other parts.
Okay. I have two more small questions. The first one is, how many employees are you planning to have at the end of the year? Roughly.
Very soon we will celebrate the 3,000 Frequentis employee, quite soon. FTE, the 3,000 FTE. Quite soon. Then it depends on the order intake for the second half. As I mentioned before, do we have more material-intensive contracts or do we win the people-intensive contracts? But as I mentioned before, the figures concerning the people, I estimate between 50% and 54% personnel costs as in the past, depending on our contracts. We are sure that we will win enough contracts, but in detail, if it's the one with a lot of material or the other one with more people, that's depending on the tenders of the customers.
Okay. And the last one is, given the strong development in ATM, is there any reason why you believe that this year, in particular in the second half, the margin should be below the usual margin that you post in H2?
Yeah, that's according to the extraordinary output of the first half year. So we don't expect the same thing in quarter four. And if we do so, and if we can expect it, we will inform.
Okay. Thanks a lot for taking my questions.
Thank you, Miro, for your questions. And we will move on to the question from Daniel Grossjohann, please. You should be able to unmute yourself now.
Hello? Hello?
Daniel, can you hear us? Now your line is free. Daniel, we cannot hear you right now. We will come back to you, Daniel, again later. Maybe you try again, and if the question is still there, please raise your hand again. I have one more question in the chat box. Has the FAA confirmed a rollout schedule for the digital towers? Can you provide any details on the size of this opportunity? Is budget currently available within the existing ATC modernization program?
Yes, the FAA has not committed and confirmed a rollout schedule for the digital towers. The market size we have estimated together with our researchers is around half a billion for civil and defense, locally, national, U.S. I think within the next couple of months, maybe beginning of next year, they will provide us with a waterfall for the airports they would like to deploy remote tower. Do they have already budget available? I think for this year, very low double-digit million EUR amount is available for digital towers, but the larger will come over the next 2027, 2028. But now the first step now is to get the certification and approval from the FAA. By the way, that program is not part of the $12.5 billion the Congress has approved. It is an additional program outside of that modernization.
Thank you very much. In the meantime, we have received no further questions, which brings us to the end of today's earnings call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation and your shown interest in Frequentis. Should you have any further questions at a later date, please contact investor relations, Stefan Marin. A big thank you to the gentlemen from the management board for your presentation and the time you took today. I wish you all a successful business around the world. With that, I hand back over to Stefan Marin for some closing words to end our call today.
Thank you so much for hosting it. We look forward to engaging with you at the upcoming conferences. There are a lot, Hamburg and then Stockholm and so on. Of course, a lot then also in Q4. They are all listed on the financial calendar at our investor relations website. The full-year results of the next analyst and conference call like this will be on April 8, 2027. In the meantime, you can at any time drop me an email at investor@frequentis.com to stay engaged. Thank you, and take care.