Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft second quarter 2021 conference call. At this time all participants are on listen-only mode after the speakers' presentation there would be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during a session you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that todays' conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach, Head of IR. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Sharon. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. With me on the call today are Stefan Klebert, our CEO, and Marcus Ketter, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the second quarter 2021, and Marcus will then cover the business and financial review before Stefan takes over again for the outlook 2021. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session. As always, I would like to start by drawing your attention to the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today. With that, I hand it over to you, Stefan.
Thank you very much, Oliver. Good afternoon to everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference call today. After a strong start into the current fiscal year, the positive momentum continued in the second quarter. Order intake grew strongly by 30.2% year-over-year in organic terms. It is worth noting that this growth was achieved without a strong large order inflow. In fact, the volume of orders above EUR 15 million was with EUR 18 million, EUR 4 million below last year's Q2. When looking into the order intake development by order size, the trend from Q1 2021 has continued with strong growth in small and medium-sized orders. Sales increased by 3.4% year-over-year in organic terms. Reported figures declined on the back of negative currency effects and the disposal of GEA Bock in Refrigeration Technologies and Houle and Japy Farm Technologies.
EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by EUR 14 million to EUR 145 million, and the margin improved by 1.2 percentage points to 13.3%. As in the prior quarters, better execution contributed to that increase, but also an overall lower operating cost ratio. As you know, we had a great fiscal year 2020. The management board therefore decided to pay a special bonus to our employees as a sign of gratitude for the extraordinary work during the COVID pandemic, and this bonus payment of in total EUR 10 million was included in our EBITDA before restructuring. Finally, return on capital employed improved by 6.6 percentage points to 21.4%, driven by higher EBIT before restructuring expenses and lower capital employed. Once again, we achieved a strong improvement across all our financial KPIs.
The combination of record order backlog, which is at EUR 2.65 billion, and a highly attractive order pipeline, allows us to raise our guidance for the current fiscal year, which I will discuss with you in some minutes. Let me elaborate on our share buyback program, which we announced yesterday evening. Our plan is to buy back about EUR 300 million or about 4.3% of our outstanding shares. Half of that volume will be executed during the next six months. The entire program runs until the end of next year. What will we do with the shares? Well, as you know, we are interested in growing the company by acquiring other companies. However, during the last quarters, we experienced that it might have been useful if we had the opportunity to finance a deal at least partly with our own shares.
This is now the main intention to buy back shares. We might also use the shares to offer a scrip dividend. Whether we will cancel the shares, we would like to leave this decision open for now, as this step is dependent on whether we can strike a deal and how much might be needed for a scrip dividend. Let me now present you further highlights of the quarter. As you can see on this slide, our progress in ESG is also recognized by external agencies. In the ISS ESG Corporate Rating, we are now ranked prime status, meaning we are among the leaders in the ESG performance in our industry index group, which is a great achievement. We are not yet done to become an even more environmentally friendly company. On June 17th, we have already disclosed our ambitious and in our industry, unique climate strategy.
First, by investing globally in gold standard certified projects to generate clean energy from wind, sun, biomass, and waste gases. GEA's own operations are already climate neutral since the beginning of 2021. Second, we have set science-based targets to reduce our GHG emissions from own operations, which is Scope 1 and 2, by 60%, and from the customer's use phase of our product, Scope 3, by 18% until 2030. Third, we are committing ourselves to net- zero GHG emissions along our entire value chain by 2040. With these targets, GEA is pursuing an ambitious path in the mechanical engineering industry.
As of today, out of the 52 European machinery equipment manufacturers, which form the STOXX Europe TMI Engineering Index, only eight other companies have so far adopted science-based targets, and I think we can say that we are, with our challenging targets, rather at the forefront of this development. Our climate strategy is, however, only the first building block of a comprehensive environment, social and governance strategy at GEA. The ESG strategy will become a foundational element of our new corporate strategy, Mission 26, and will be presented to you at our Capital Market Day in September. As part of our commitment to sustainability, we have signed the UN Global Compact, agreeing to conduct business in line with 10 universal sustainability principles, encompassing human rights, labor standards, the environment, and anti-corruption.
In addition, Refrigeration Technologies has joined the Cool Coalition of the United Nations Environment Programme in order to share its experience in the transition towards climate-friendly cooling and heating solutions. To put that into perspective, as the planet heats up, the International Energy Agency estimates that we will require 3.5 times more cooling by 2050 than today, and that the refrigeration and air conditioning system already consume around 15% of global electricity production today. There's a clear need for action in the transition towards net- zero. The Cool Coalition is a fantastic opportunity to be able to contribute our part. Regarding our manufacturing footprint, the cornerstone for our new climate factory in Poland was laid on May 21st. Our target is to complete this factory this year and to start shifting production hours at the beginning of next year. Finally, our portfolio optimization.
We took another step within our portfolio planning process and signed the agreement to sell the refrigeration contracting business in Spain and Italy. The portfolio optimization process is almost completed and leaves currently just minor assets on the list to be disposed. Let me now turn to a topic which we already addressed on our prior call, cost increases. Due to our close monitoring of raw material prices within our new procurement structure, we were able to react early enough to take actions to mitigate the effects. Regarding raw material prices, we are passing on price increases to customers where possible. In some divisions we are currently conducting second price rounds in this year. On the supply side, we extend the delay material price increases into the future, though the situation has not eased and we expect further price increases in the short term.
During the last two quarters, we have implemented countermeasures to mitigate the price inflation. Some of them, such as design-to-cost measures where it is possible, will be permanent. Moreover, we tackle supply chain obstacles and shortages. In some areas, such as semiconductor-based supplies, we do see the lead times are further increasing. We are mitigating this effect by temporarily increasing inventory levels for such products. However, in the short term, we expect that lead times will further increase before they will decline again. Coming to logistics. Prices for logistics services are currently increasing, partly strongly. Where possible, we pass the increased cost for transportation, but also packaging, onto the customer. Mitigation was especially possible for packaging costs, whereas for logistic costs, the mitigation effect was a mix of passing on and saving from changes from the optimization of supplier structures.
Looking forward, the situation for logistics is comparable to raw material costs. Further increase in prices must be expected. To sum it up, with our new procurement organization, we are much better prepared than we used to be when I joined GEA. Developments are recognized much earlier and we can therefore also react much faster. The situation is currently tense, but if it does not deteriorate significantly, it remains well manageable for us and the impact should be limited. We quantify the impact on EBITDA level to a maximum of EUR 25 million based on the most recent development of raw material and freight costs. The impact could amount to up to EUR 25 million. This potential headwind is, however, already reflected in our upgraded EBITDA guidance of EUR 600 million-EUR 630 million.
Okay. Thank you, Stefan. Also welcome from my side. As Stefan has already highlighted the development of order intake, sales and EBITDA before structural expenses, I will focus on the additional KPIs of this chart. The higher profitability and the very strong year-over-year reduction of net working capital resulted in a higher return on capital employed of 21.4%, making a new record level and already exceeding the upper end of our prior guidance for the current fiscal year. On net liquidity, the sustainable reduction of net working capital was the main driver for the increase in net liquidity, including financial leases, rising by EUR 277 million to EUR 203 million now. The improved processes to manage net working capital enabled us to keep the net working capital to sales ratio basically flat. I will explain this topic in detail a bit later.
To sum it up, Q2 2021 was a great quarter with solid organic sales growth, further increase of margins, and significant improvements of capital efficiency. Coming here to GEA Group. Order intake increased organically by 30.2% year-over-year, and all divisions reported an organic growth in the double digits. As Stefan stated earlier, this growth was not driven by large orders. The large order volume was actually down by EUR 4 million from prior year's level. The growth came from small and medium-sized orders. Sales were up by 3.4% year-over-year on an organic basis. Our service sales continued its growth path with an organic improvement by 6.3% and accounting now for 33.8%, the highest level ever recorded in a Q2. EBITDA before restructuring margin reached 13.3%, which is also a record level. The improvement was driven by higher growth margin, especially in the new machine business.
Let me continue with the figures for Separation & Flow Technologies. Order intake reached a new record level with EUR 356 million and increased by 28.3% organically year-over-year. All major customer industries grew year-over-year. Sales grew by 2.3% organically year-over-year, despite the starting backlog in the quarter was almost on par with last year. Sales was driven by solid development of our service business, which grew by 9.8% organically. EBITDA increased strongly from EUR 64 million to EUR 74 million. The EBITDA margin increased by 3.4 percentage points to 23.8%. This development was driven by better new machine margins as well as a higher service share. To sum it up, momentum at SFT remains strong. The backlog is at an all-time high, indicating further growth in the coming quarters. Let's move to Liquid & Powder Technologies. Order intake increased organically by 28.2% year-over-year.
As mentioned before, this was not driven by large orders, but an impressive development of small and mid-sized order sizes. The large order in the current quarter amounted to EUR 18 million and was booked in the customer industry Food. Speaking of customer industries in Q2, especially Beverage, Food, and Chemical grew. Dairy Processing was down compared to prior year-over-year level as negotiations take a bit longer in the current pandemic environment. Sales developed flat year-over-year with a growth of just 0.1% organically. At a first glance, this growth looks uninspiring. However, when considering that COVID-19 restrictions still weigh on order execution and the starting backlog of Q2 2021 was significantly below prior year-over-year level, the flat sales development is quite an achievement. Service sales were up by 1.4% on an organic basis year-over-year.
You might wonder why the service sales share is down by 1.9 percentage points to 20.1%, despite being now above the divisional organic growth rate. The reason lies within the topic which we have explained in more detail in the prior conference calls. It comes from the split up of those entities which included businesses related to two or more divisions. This means you will see in some divisions a visible structural impact like here. EBITDA before restructuring expenses declined slightly to EUR 36 million, while the margin increased to 9.5%. This development was due to another remarkable improvement in gross profit. As in prior quarters, better order execution in combination with better backlog quality were strong contributors. The four-quarter trading margin already now stands at 8.5%, exactly in the middle of the guided range of 8%-9% for next year.
Let me now talk about Food & Healthcare Technologies. Order intake increased organically by 32.7% year-over-year and was driven by significant growth in the food as well as the pharma business. Growth was broad based and came from small and medium-sized orders. Sales declined on an organic basis by 5.7% year-over-year. This is related to the order intake development in the second half of 2020. Also, starting backlog for the quarter, as well as COVID-19 related restrictions are reasons for that. Reported sales developed almost flat year-over-year, despite the organic sales decrease. The reason is the same as for LPT, the changes in the internal structure of our report. EBITDA before restructuring declined by EUR 1 billion and the margin grew to 9.2%. This development was driven by a very solid increase in gross margin, as well as a higher service sales share.
Moving on to Farm Technologies. Farm Technologies even accelerated with a strong growth momentum from the first quarter. Order intake grew organically 36.1% year-over-year. Order intake was once again driven by a solid demand for automated milking systems in the European markets, as well as for manure equipment in North America. This was the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit order intake growth. The strong order intake of the prior quarters resulted in a record order backlog at the start of Q2 2021. As a result, sales momentum is now picking up. Sales grew by 14.6% organically year-over-year, driven by strong new machine business. New machine sales grew by 20.4% year-over-year. As service sales grew by just 8% organically year-over-year, its share of total revenue actually dropped.
If you wonder why reported sales is just slightly above last year's Q2, the internal structural impact is the reason again. EBITDA before restructuring grew by EUR 1 million and margin grew by 10.9%, driven by higher volume and better margins in the new machines and service businesses. Four consecutive quarters with very strong order intake growth result in an order backlog which is currently at a record level, indicating further sales growth going forward. The four-quarter trailing margin now already stands with 11.5% at the lower end of the guided range for next year. Farm Technologies is very well on track. Let us turn to Refrigeration Technologies. Order intake increased organically by 28.9% year-over-year, also here driven by smaller and medium-sized order.
The organic sales declined by 1.1% year-over-year, was due to the lower backlog at the beginning of the quarter. This is a result of the weaker order intake, especially in the second half of 2020. On a reported basis, the sales decline is explained by the disposal of GEA Bock. EBITDA before restructuring increased by EUR 3 million and the margin increased from 7.9% to 10.7%, resulting from a higher growth margin in both new machines and service. The improvement is a result of our restructuring and efficiency measures as well as the portfolio optimization process. Closing the divisional chapter now with the overview on slide 16. The strongest driver for EBITDA was clearly Separation & Flow Technologies. Across all divisions, a better growth margin was behind the margin improvement.
On the right side of the chart, we have added back the translation FX effect coming to EUR 3 million. Excluding this FX effect, as we have defined it in our full year guidance, our EBITDA would have improved by EUR 17 million to even EUR 157 million. Let's now continue with the net working capital on slide 17. On a year-over-year view, we reduced our net working capital by EUR 247 million to EUR 383 million, while the respective ratio improved by 4.7 percentage points to 8.3%. All divisions contributed to that positive trend. The strongest improvements were at LPT, Refrigeration, and Separation & Flow Technologies. The strongest improvements in net working capital were achieved in trade receivables, followed by net contract assets and inventories. To sum it up, as you can see in the chart on the left, since Q4 2020, net working capital remains stable.
The increase from the most efficient quarter in terms of net working capital, the fourth quarter, is more than modest. Thus, our net working capital is well under control thanks to the new processes we have implemented since two years ago. This leads us, as always, to another important topic, cash generation. Operating cash flow came to EUR 108 million, which is below last year's number of EUR 197 million. This decline is due to a significantly lower contribution from net working capital. Last year's contribution was an inflow of EUR 64 million. This year it is an outflow of EUR 21 million, as we are since Q4 2020 at the lower end of our guided range for net working capital. Instead of a decrease, we had a slight increase since then. Taxes and restructuring related cash outflows came to EUR 13 million and EUR 7 million respectively.
CapEx related outflows, EUR 5 million higher than last year, and totaled EUR 23 million. The disposal of the refrigeration contracting business led to a cash inflow in the bracket others. This results in a net free cash flow of EUR 78 million. Due to our dividend payment of EUR 153 million, our net financial cash position, including lease liabilities now, declined in the quarter from EUR 270 million to EUR 203 million. Let me now talk about our financial headroom. On the left, you see our available cash credit lines as well as their respective utilization and maturity structure as per end of June 2021. Since then, there were some significant changes. Of the EUR 281 million cash credit facilities due in 2021, EUR 81 million constitute evergreen credit lines, of which are currently only EUR 12 million utilized by subsidiary companies abroad.
The remaining syndicated credit facility of EUR 200 million, which was solely set up due to uncertainty from the global pandemic, expired at the beginning of August and was not prolonged by us. This has also an impact on the financial headroom in the table on the right side. It was EUR 950 million at the end of Q2 2021. Due to the expiration of the EUR 200 million credit facility, which was not replaced due to our excellent liquidity, the financial headroom now stands still very high at EUR 750 million. Of the EUR 750 million maturities due in 2022, EUR 650 million constitutes a syndicated credit line, which was replaced by an equivalent credit facility this week, which is due in 2026. The remaining EUR 100 million consists of a credit line with European Investment Bank, which had an expiration date July 2021, but was also extended till end of January 2022.
Continuing now on the right side of the slide. The only KPI, which slightly weakened compared to last year's Q2, is the absolute equity position. The decrease in absolute equity is a result of the dividend payments. Last year's dividend payment was split into two single payments. EUR 76 million were paid in Q2 2020, and EUR 78 million were paid in Q4 2020. This year's dividend was entirely paid in Q2 2021. Thus, the total burden on equity from dividends is then EUR 231 million since the end of Q2 2020. Nevertheless, our equity ratio went up from 33.8% on January 1st to 35.2% end of Q2. All other KPIs in this table have improved, partly significantly, compared to last year's Q2. Especially the positive trend of our net liquidity, including lease liabilities, has continued improving by EUR 277 million year-over-year.
As I mentioned earlier, we have added further information for the calculation of net liquidity by disclosing the amount of lease liabilities. With that, I hand back to Stefan.
Thank you, Marcus. Let me now come to our upgraded outlook for the fiscal year 2021. The general positive trend of the customer industry has continued. The recovery of value-added output is still gaining momentum according to the data of Oxford Economics. Compared to our last presentation in May, growth expectations for all customer industries have increased. Only for food, the assumptions are now a bit lower, with an expected growth rate of 4% year-over-year. However, this is still a very solid figure. There are several important growth drivers one should bear in mind. First, the reopening story. An increasing number of countries are reopening again. Take the U.K. as an example. It seems that the reopening scenario is increasingly sustainable, and this seems also to have an impact on categories with a stronger dependency on food service businesses, including breweries. Second, the category new food.
We are very confident about the growth prospects of this category. Most recently, we won an order to build the world's first pilot plant to produce krill protein. This is just the beginning. Based on data of Euromonitor and several other institutions, the market for new food is expected to grow from 2021 to 2025, at least twice as fast as those of traditional food. Depending on the segment, the growth rate could be even four times as high. This is also what we see in our pipeline. In feedback from our customers, negotiations, and so on, the demand for new food-related products and projects is increasing. This all together allowed us to raise our guidance for the current fiscal year, which I will discuss with you in the next slide.
Due to the very good development in the first half, the promising order pipeline, and the highest ever order backlog, we upgraded our guidance for all three KPIs. We now expect an organic sales growth of 5%-7%, an EBITDA before restructuring expenses of EUR 600 million-EUR 630 million, and a return on capital employed between 23% and 26%. Please bear in mind that the guidance for EBITDA and for ROCE is based on constant exchange rates. I'm not going to discuss the divisional guidance at this point, but would like to refer you to our half-year report available on our website. This brings me to our roadmap for 2021 and 2022. The next very important event is our Capital Market Day with our Mission 26 on September 28th and 29th in London.
If the pandemic situation will not worsen again, we will meet you at the Landmark Hotel opposite of Marylebone train station. At the evening before, we will invite you for dinner at the hotel. You will meet the entire Executive Board and the IR team. With that, I hand back to Oliver for the Q&As.
Thank you very much, Stefan and Marcus. Back to you, Sharon, and please open up the lines for the Q&A.
Thank you. Your first question today comes from the line of Arsalan Obaidullah from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is just on the service share and obviously the progress you're making there, which has obviously been very positive and you've highlighted in the past active strategy within each division to appoint a Chief Services Officer, which is clearly paying off. I just wanted to get a feel for whether you have sort of targets in mind, whether sort of to where you want to get to, whether at a divisional level or at the group level. I think, the sort of figures for the last 12 months now is looking about 34%, and where you sort of see that going? That's my first question.
In terms of my second, that's to do with in terms of, again, the margin progress has been very strong across divisions with most of those now sort of hitting your targets for next year. I was just wondering whether your thoughts on sort of whether you're going to look or whether something for the Capital Markets Day look to sort of potentially reconsider those and they've come under review or whether you sort of do see still some uncertainties there, which means you don't necessarily want to sort of become too aggressive too early on that front? Thank you very much.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you for your comments, and for noting that we are improving our service share. It's right, like you said, that we made some organizational changes with the corporate organization and to strengthen the service. When it comes to targets and what our ideas, how to develop the service further, I would like to postpone this answer until the Capital Market Day to keep it interesting, to come and to join us because this is a part of the Mission 26. That is, let's say the answer I would like to give at that stage. You can expect that we have a clear intention to develop that further.
Okay.
With the margin goal for next year, it's also, we are not about disclosing already any guidance for next year. I would also like to invite you for the Capital Market Day to learn more about our targets for the next years. I hope that this is understandable for you.
No, that's fine. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Lucie Carrier from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions. I will go one at a time. The first one maybe is a bit of a follow-up on Arsalan's question around service, but maybe from a different angle. I was just wondering how much visibility you have around what I would call the pipeline of your service business. I'm just wondering, how much of the strength you've seen now is really a resumption of activity by a lot of your customer and the sustainability of that in the future, or whether the strength you are seeing is simply because you are able to leverage more your install base.
Okay. Maybe Lucie, I take your first question about the service. Of course, the service pipeline is not as long-lasting compared to our pipeline, which we have in new installations. That is about, I would say on average, maybe two to three months, what we see here. We also see, of course, growth opportunities when the lockdowns are disappearing, when the pandemic comes to an end. We have more opportunities that our service technicians can travel again. We see rather a upside potential than any downside potential. Also the numbers we delivered during the pandemic also shows that we have a quite stable service business, which is mainly driven by spare parts. Like I said, if all the lockdowns and travel restrictions are disappearing, we might also see additional uplifts here.
My second question was more around the capital allocation and some of the comments you've made around the buyback and perhaps the need of the buyback for M&A purposes. I remember exactly a year ago, actually, you were talking about doing large M&A. Nothing really has happened so far, and you now seem to suggest that maybe there's something more imminent where you would actually need the share. I was just curious to understand here a little bit, the strategy, whether you're more heading towards merger-type deals. As usually, a lot of targets when they are acquired, they tend to prefer cash rather than share. Just to understand the rationale there of what you were trying to allude to earlier.
Yeah. Let me comment on the question of M&A. Nothing changed to what we said 1 year ago. Preferably, we would like to do any acquisitions of larger sized companies. However, you know how it is. It always takes two to tango. You need also actionable target and this is, at the moment, not so easy. If there are targets, prices are quite high. We also see that we have a lot of potential within GEA to continue with our self-help story, to create additional margin quality, to grow. We do not need to acquire if there is no meaningful acquisition. However, as said, we are very much open. We are looking out. I'm personally spending a significant amount of my time to come in touch with other companies, to find out what kind of opportunities are there.
It is not that we are saying we stop any ideas to do acquisitions by doing this buyback program. It's simply that we believe in our equity story, and we think it makes more sense to invest in our shares instead of having the money at the bank account where we are sometimes even obliged to pay negative interests for the money. This is the rationale behind, but it has nothing at all to do that we changed mind concerning M&A strategy.
Thank you. That is very helpful. My last question was a bit more ESG oriented, and thanks for the details you have provided, and I guess we get more at the CMD. Just for now, I was just curious to know if you could give us maybe a bit more visibility in terms of how much you expect your portfolio to benefit or to qualify, rather for under EU taxonomy criteria, if you already have a number in mind?
For EU taxonomy, we are of course, preparing for ourselves for the reporting, which is necessary. Therefore, we are in the midst of working the requirements out which we need to fulfill. We don't have a number yet. As we said today, we want to be and we will be on the forefront here of net- zero. Therefore, we are also going to provide sufficient reporting then for EU taxonomy. Our products will actually also support the target that we will help the environment, and sustainability.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Richard Schramm from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I have a question concerning this topic, new food you mentioned as an interesting structural growth driver. Could you be a bit more specific what you define in this respect as new food business? How much was this in your incoming orders in the first half? If you can give here a number or a share of the incoming orders. Can you also tell us a bit about the customer structure here? How much of this business is really coming from new customers, or is it not so that also the well-established customers do invest in this area a lot because they see that there is a change on the consumer side they have to follow? Thanks.
Good. Thank you very much, Richard, for this question. This is a very interesting topic, and it will be also a topic where you will learn and hear much more during our Capital Market Day. However, to try to answer your questions, new food will be in a short term, I would say definitely a EUR 3-digit million business for us. We have a mix of new customers, mainly startups. We also have traditional customers who are starting with new food. When we talk about new food, what is it? It is mainly alternative proteins. It's cell-based proteins, it's plant-based proteins. It has a lot to do with precision fermentation, I would say there is no other company as good prepared as GEA to serve this market.
This is simply because of the fact that we combine in our organization a lot of competencies which are necessary for this production of alternative food. It's not about mixing and grinding only. It's about precision fermentation, where we have a lot of knowledge coming from our pharmaceutical business. We have, of course, all the experience in the separation homogenizer and decanter business. Last but not least, we understand cooling and heating techniques and how to combine it to create sustainable solutions with optimized energy consumption. We really own all the technologies which are necessary. We also have the extrusion technology when it comes to plant-based proteins, with our company in Italy. We have really a full portfolio of technologies which we can ideally combine. We will also invest heavily in that sector.
We have a lot of very interesting offers out where we expect also interesting order intake for the Q3. By saying so, I also and that is of course not only something to do with new food, for the third quarter, we are very optimistic that we see an order intake in the range up to EUR 1.3 billion. We also see interesting, large projects coming closer to a decision where we feel that we are positioned quite well. This is what I can say to this topic, I of course also invite you again to the Capital Market Day to hear and learn more about this very, very interesting topic, new food, because this is really a key driver for GEA in terms of growth for the next years.
Okay. Thank you very much. Coming to another point you mentioned here. You mentioned also the reopening of economies as a positive factor for the good development you have seen, especially in Q2. However, we have seen over the recent past that there are also, especially in Asia, some tendencies to, yeah, turn back this status and to become more restrictive again. What do you see in your business here on a global scale? Where are the points you would be a bit more cautious than, let's say, one or two months ago? Thanks.
Thanks for that question. When I made the comments with the lockdowns and opening and services was more directed to the future. If lockdowns are releasing more and more because Asia, many companies in Asia are in a lockdown. It is very difficult to travel. It is very difficult to bring specialists from abroad into many different countries. There are still a lot of restrictions going on. We hope that the fourth wave will not be a large one and a strong one. We also do everything in our company to motivate people to go to vaccination. We had a lot of investments made also for vaccinations for our staff. We are encouraging our people also by different means to go to vaccination because this is of course necessary that lockdowns will be avoided in different countries.
We rather are optimistic that once the world hopefully got rid of the coronavirus, that then there is a kind of additional potential coming up in service because we can bring in top specialists in different countries, which was not possible in the last months.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, one last reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Daniel Gleim from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I actually got two of them, also taking them one by one. The first one is on the COVID-19 restrictions that hold back order execution, as you mentioned on your group slides. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit how this development was sequentially within the second quarter and how this has developed into the third quarter. That is my first question.
So far, we've found in the majority of the cases good workarounds to manage our sites. We had at the very early beginning of the COVID situation, large installments in the U.S. where welders were planned to fly in from Eastern Europe, which was not possible, which we then had to rearrange and reorganize by using American welders. Normally we find some workarounds, but I would say there is no difference what we see now between Q2 and Q3. I don't expect any, neither positive nor negative impact by travel restrictions. Let's hope that there are no other lockdowns or additional lockdowns in Europe and North America are coming. This is, of course, our assumption, yeah.
Realistically, this is going to stay a topic with us until the middle of next year, probably.
Yeah. Hopefully not, yeah. I hope that the majority of the people are clever enough to go to vaccination. We are struggling, especially here in Germany, and let's see how it evolves. Yeah, of course, when travel opportunities are coming back, we will also have a chance to accelerate sales growth and also service might pick up again.
Very clear. My second question would be on the large order developments. There's a certain disconnect in between the small and medium-sized orders and the large order category. Maybe you can elaborate what the reasons are for that. There's no clear trend. If I see at the second half of past fiscal, we had a kind of recovery of large orders that has now winded down again. Can you maybe give us a little bit of a hint how this is going to develop in the third quarter? Are we seeing the resumption of the large orders here? If not, what the rationale behind it is? Maybe you can put a little bit more color on the large order trends. That would be very helpful.
The majority of the large orders, normally you can find in our LPT division. This is the division where we normally see the bigger orders, the larger orders. If we compare this year, the first half year with last year, we are even slightly below last year with the large orders. This is a good signal, I would say, because the order intake and the improvement of order intake, the growth is not coming by one, two, three, or four large orders. It is really coming from a broad base. We saw that during this coronavirus pandemic, customers are, of course, a bit more cautious when it comes to investments of EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million, EUR 70 million because this has simply something to do with the fact that this is not a machine you buy, which is delivered out of a factory.
These are always installments where you need people traveling in from various countries, which is, as I said, always a problem in the coronavirus situation. We have, as we always had, a very good pipeline. We think and we are quite optimistic that now in the third quarter, we will see more larger orders coming in addition to a very good, solid ground. Therefore, we are, as I said, also very optimistic that we can see another very good quarter in terms of order intake, which might be another improvement, compared to the other last quarters. As I said, EUR 1.3 billion order intake for the third quarter is not unlikely.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Will Turner from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I want to just go into a little bit more detail on your slightly higher raw material headwind guidance. I wanted to ask is, when do you expect this EUR 25 million headwind to impact you? At what quarter during the year? The second question related to that is, could you just explain a little bit more of the mechanics of the increase? When I look at your procurement bill, it totals up to about EUR 2 billion. Obviously you had a EUR 20 million headwind at 1Q, which is only really a 1% increase in that year. Now you're obviously increased that to EUR 25 million, but it's still a 1.25% increase on your total EUR 2 billion procurement bill.
When I look at most components, most steel, and most capital goods equipment, the price increases in the last year have been much greater than 1% on average. Yeah, those are my two questions. Thanks.
Hi, Will. Let me answer this. The raw material price increases, which we expect with EUR 25 million, is going to be in the second half of the year, and it's included in the guided range we give for this fiscal year. The calculation you did, well, you need to see when we look internally at the raw material, especially steel and so on, it's just a very small part on our products. That's A. B, we have a new purchasing organization in place. We have diligently renegotiated in the last one and a half years contracts, and we are still doing that. At this time, when the prices are going up, actually, we are bundling our demand on the supply side, renegotiating contracts, and this is of course the countermeasure why you're not seeing these kind of big material increases.
There was a lot of opportunity actually also on the purchasing side here at the company, till we get in. That's why we also have a new colleague here on board, who is really focusing now on purchasing and the manufacturing side of our business. That has not been done since years before. That's the reason why the effect so far has been quite limited of price increases.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. I would now like to give the call back over to Oliver Luckenbach. Please go ahead, sir.
Over to you, Stefan.
Okay. Stefan is speaking here. I try to make some closing remarks. Just to sum our call up, we had a very good Q2. We had the fourth consecutive quarter of order intake growth, and we expect, as I said, this positive trend to continue. EUR 1.3 billion order intake are not unlikely for the third quarter, and we also might see larger projects kicking in in this third quarter. Secondly, we proved again that we can improve profitability and liquidity. Thirdly, we raised our outlook for the full year 2021 and announced a share buyback program. This is, in a nutshell, what is important to say. I would like to thank you for your interest in GEA. With that, I hand back to Oliver.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Stefan. Thank you to all of you for participating in our call. Within the next few days, we will send out our save the date for our Capital Markets Day. Yeah, would be very delighted to meet many of you in person in London for the pre-evening event, and then also for the CMD itself. With that, thank you very much. Stay healthy, and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.