Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO, and Bernd Brinker, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the second quarter. Bernd will then cover the business and financial review before Stefan takes over again for the Outlook 2025. Afterwards, we open up the line for the Q&A session. Please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today. With that, I hand over to Stefan.
Thank you, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference call today again. In the second quarter 2025, GEA has once again delivered a very good performance and continues to improve all major key figures. Order intake grows year-over-year by 5% in organic terms to EUR 1.3 billion. Sales rose organically by 1.5%. As already mentioned in the previous quarter, the slower sales generation in the first half of this year is due to the order backlog composition at the end of 2024. We expect an acceleration in sales in the second half of this year. EBITDA, before restructuring expenses, increased by 8.1% year-over-year to EUR 217 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved significantly from 15.2% in the prior year quarter to 16.5% in the second quarter of 2025. This marks a new record level.
Return on capital employed increased strongly and exceeded the 35% mark for the first time. We have achieved an outstanding ROCE of 35.3% in the quarter. Due to the very positive operating performance in the first 6 months and confident expectations for the remainder of the year, we had to raise our guidance for the financial year 2025, as announced last Thursday. We are now guiding organic sales growth to be between 2% and 4% for the full year 2025, up from the prior range of 1%- 4%. EBITDA margin is expected to be in the range of 16.2%- 16.4%, considerably up from the prior guidance of 15.6%-1 6%. The new guidance for return on capital employed is between 34% and 38%, clearly above the prior range of 30%- 35%. We are also having another reason to be optimistic about the second half of this year.
As most of you have seen, GEA signed one of its largest single orders to date. We expect to book this order in the second half of this year. Together with Baladna, we will construct the world's largest integrated dairy farm and milk powder facility in Algeria. The new facility will significantly enhance food security and drive economic development in Algeria. The project will contribute to producing about 50% of Algeria's national milk powder needs. GEA will cover the entire value chain of milk powder production, from dairy farming to processing to packaging of the final product. Milk powder production is scheduled to start in late 2027, with gradual ramp-up of production over subsequent years. Once completed, the facility will have the capacity to produce 100,000 tons of milk powder per year.
The largest share of the order is assigned to our Liquid & Powder Technologies and Farm Technology divisions. Our other divisions will also contribute to this project. This lighthouse project underlines the attractiveness of GEA's integrated state-of-the-art technologies under one roof. We are not only making progress in our traditional food markets. Three weeks ago, GEA opened its new Food Application and Technology Center in Janesville, Wisconsin, right in the heart of the Midwest in the U.S. I had the honor of cutting the ribbon at this state-of-the-art facility, which focuses on alternative proteins and sustainable food. Here, we are offering an infrastructure for leading-edge food technologies, such as cell cultivation or precision fermentation. This center is a launchpad for the next generation of food and a major step towards our commitment to sustainable food solutions.
This new facility expands the food technology hub at GEA's Janesville campus, which has served as a site for production, repair, logistics, and training of our Separation & Flow Technologies division since 2024. With this campus, we are strengthening our North American footprint, where demand from our U.S. customers for local testing and development is growing. The center will give startups and all food innovators access to industrial-grade equipment, and together with GEA experts, they learn how to efficiently scale their processes. After the test phase, GEA will be the first choice for helping customers produce sustainable food on a large scale. Our sustainability efforts have been recognized. The Time magazine and Statista identified the world's most sustainable companies of 2025. Over 5,000 companies were evaluated globally to identify the top 500 companies.
GEA not only made it into the top 500, but we are now ranked number 12 globally, up from rank 33, which was already a fantastic position in 2024. In Germany, we are even number two. This achievement underscores our position as a frontrunner in sustainability. Let me also give you some updates on the U.S. tariffs. We already provided an overview of how U.S. tariffs are affecting GEA in the last quarter. At this point, I would just like to add that we are even more confident than before that we do not expect any material impact from tariffs. First of all, we were able to pass through the additional costs to our customers. Secondly, all of our relevant competitors are also based in Europe and mainly produce outside the U.S. Therefore, GEA does not have any competitive disadvantage here. With that, I hand over to Bernd.
Thank you, Stefan. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let's start with order intake. Order intake rose organically by 5.0%, although we had no large order this quarter, a clear indicator of the robustness of our business model. In comparison, the prior year quarter contained four large orders totaling EUR 98 million. Organic sales growth of 1.5% in Q2 was an improvement versus Q1 and was driven by solid growth in service sales, while new machine sales saw a slight decline. EBITDA before restructuring margin increased considerably by 130 basis points to 16.5% because of higher gross profit. The higher profitability also supported the return on capital employed development, which further improved to a new record level of 35.3%.
Net liquidity decreased year-over-year by EUR 92 million to a minor net debt position of EUR 60 million, mainly due to the cash outflow of EUR 415 million for the share buyback program and the dividend payment. As the share buyback program has been completed, it won't have any further impact here, so that we would expect ceteris paribus to return to a net cash position in the second half of the year. Looking a bit deeper into the group performance, order intake rose organically by 5.0% year-over-year, particularly on the back of a continued positive development of base orders and mid-sized orders between EUR 5 million and EUR 15 million. From a customer industry perspective, dairy farming, dairy processing, pharma, and oil and gas were the main growth drivers. Other customer industries contributed as well, indicating a broad-based positive development in order intake.
On a reported basis, order intake was negatively impacted by a EUR 31 million translational FX effect this quarter. Sales grew organically by 1.5%, driven by solid organic service sales growth of 4.6% year-over-year, to which all divisions contributed. This marks the 19th consecutive quarter of organic service sales growth. New machine sales declined slightly by 0.6% year-over-year in organic terms. As already mentioned before, new machine sales are expected to accelerate in the second half of 2025. The service sales share increased year-over-year from 38.9%- 40.1%. When looking at the sales development on a reported basis, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 27 million needs to be considered, mainly driven by the U.S. dollar and the Chinese renminbi. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 16 million- EUR 217 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 130 basis points to 16.5%.
This is an outstanding profitability improvement, marking a record EBITDA margin. Now, I will continue with the figures for the Separation & Flow Technologies division, which reported strong order intake growth and a record EBITDA margin. Order intake increased organically by 8.2% year-over-year, which was mainly driven by base orders below EUR 1 million in size. From a customer industry perspective, Dairy Processing, Pharma, and Oil and Gas were the main growth contributors. Other customer industries, such as environmental applications, contributed here as well. Overall, a quite broad-based order intake strength. When looking at the order intake development on a reported basis, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 10 million needs to be considered. Organic sales grew by 2.9% year-over-year, driven by a 5.7% increase in organic new machine sales. Organic service sales remained flat year-over-year due to a base effect.
As you might recall, service sales in Q1 last year were impacted by a change of our logistics provider, leading to a one-off catch-up effect in Q2 last year. Given the pronounced impact of this catch-up effect in the prior year quarter, the flat development this quarter is a very good achievement. As new machine sales grew stronger than service sales this quarter, the service sales share decreased slightly on a high level from 50.6%- 49.2%. A better gross margin resulted in a significant year-over-year improvement of the EBITDA margin by 300 basis points to 30.3% in the second quarter, exceeding the 30% threshold for the first time. Let's move on to Liquid & Powder Technologies, where we have expanded our service business and further improved the EBITDA margin.
Order intake for the quarter was down organically by 10.7% year-over-year, as no large order has been booked this year. In comparison, three large orders totaling EUR 83 million were booked in the prior year quarter. As two out of these large orders came from the customer industry beverage and one from chemicals, it is not surprising to see that those customer industries showed a decline this quarter. Despite the positive development in the customer industries food, new food, and dairy processing, they could not offset the decline in beverage and chemicals. As Stefan said at the beginning of this call, the large order signed with Baladna recently is expected to be reflected in the order intake in the second half of this year. This quarter, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 11 million needs to be considered when looking at order intake.
Sales declined by 6.6% year-over-year on an organic basis. Service sales continued its growth trajectory since Q4 2021, growing organically by 2.4% year-over-year. At the same time, organic new machine sales decreased by 9.7%, resulting from the lower order intake in the first half of 2024. As already mentioned, new machine sales are expected to improve in the second half of 2025 due to the higher expected conversion of large orders into sales, which have been received in Q4 2024. EBITDA before restructuring expenses declined slightly by EUR 2 million year-over-year to EUR 40 million. However, EBITDA margin increased by 40 basis points to 10.6% in the quarter due to an increase in gross margin because of the positive product mix and better project execution. Operating costs remained stable year-over-year.
Moving to Food & Healthcare Technologies, which generated strong top-line growth and continued its sequential profitability improvement. Organic order intake increased by 10.0% year-over-year, although no large order was booked in this quarter. The prior year quarter included one large order of EUR 15 million from the Pharma industry, which led to a decline in this industry this quarter. However, growth in the customer industries food and new food were able to offset the decline in pharma. When looking at the order size brackets, mid-sized orders between EUR 5 million and EUR 15 million showed a strong development. Sales grew organically by 12.2% year-over-year, with contributions from both new machine and service business. New machine sales showed an extraordinary organic growth rate of 15.3%, while service sales grew also well by 6.9% organically.
The service sales share decreased slightly from 35.8%- 34.5% on the back of the strong increase in the new machine business. The EBITDA margin continued its quarter-on-quarter improvement since its low point of 6.1% in Q2 2023. EBITDA before restructuring expenses reached EUR 35 million, with a corresponding margin of 13.2% in the quarter, significantly up from 9.8% in the prior year quarter. Main drivers behind this profitability expansion are a significantly better gross margin and higher sales volume. Continuing with Farm Technologies, which recorded significant order intake growth this quarter. Let me give you some more details here. Order intake increased organically by 34.3% year-over-year. This marks the highest growth rate since Q2 2021. The pickup in the new machine business, and here especially in automated and conventional milking systems, were the key drivers behind this remarkable growth.
The market improvement, which began in December 2024, continued steadily throughout the first half of 2025. This was largely driven by robust milk prices and the introduction of new product features. This favorable environment contributed to the notable increase in order intake, which is expected to remain on a high level for the remainder of the year. Organic sales decreased slightly by 1.6% year-over-year, still reflecting the impact of a low starting order backlog in the new machine business at the beginning of this year. New machine sales experienced an organic decline of 8.9%, which could not be fully offset by the strong organic growth of 6.3% in the service sales year-over-year. As a result, the service sales share rose from 47.7%- 51.1% in the quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses declined slightly by EUR 2 million- EUR 26 million due to lower sales volume.
The corresponding margin decreased by 50 basis points to 14.4% in Q2 2025. Finally, let us turn to Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. This division delivered strong sales growth combined with further EBITDA margin expansion. Order intake declined slightly by 2.2% organically year-over-year, mainly due to lower volume of orders in the ticket size between EUR 1 million and EUR 5 million. The customer industries beverage, energy, and oil and gas were the end markets with the strongest demand development, which was however offset by the decline in food. Sales rose strongly by 5.8% organically, mainly driven by a significant organic increase of 12.8% in service sales. The new machine business grew by 1.4% organically at a lower rate than the service business, so that the service sales share increased from 38.2%- 40.8% in the quarter.
EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by 13.4% to EUR 20 million due to an improved gross profit resulting from higher sales volume and a positive mix. The corresponding margin of 13.6% showed an expansion of 110 basis points compared to the margin in the prior year quarter. Closing the divisional chapter with the overview on the EBITDA contribution in the first half and in the second quarter of 2025, there are two important messages. Firstly, we have been able to increase our EBITDA before restructuring expenses in both time periods considerably, despite facing stable or even higher operational costs in most cases. Almost all divisions contributed to this positive development. The very strong performance of Separation & Flow Technologies, as well as Food & Healthcare Technologies, were the main contributors in Q2 and also in the first half of 2025.
Secondly, we have managed to improve, or at least to keep, gross profits stable in most divisions. This is due to a strong service business and better margin quality in the new machine business. It also reflects GEA's price and cost discipline, as well as savings from our procurement and production optimization efforts. Coming now to another important topic, which is net working capital. In a year-over-year comparison, net working capital declined by EUR 64 million- EUR 422 million. This reduction results from the continuous focus on working capital optimization and includes structural improvements showing a positive impact in the quarter: lower inventories, higher trade payables, and lower trade receivables. The reduction in contract liabilities was partly compensated by lower contract assets. The resulting net working capital-to-sales ratio of 7.8% puts us comfortably below the midpoint of our guided corridor of 7%- 9%.
Free cash flow has been solid for the second quarter, but let's have a look at the details. Operating cash flow of EUR 82 million was driven by a net working capital outflow of EUR 42 million and a EUR 64 million outflow in what is summarized as the bucket others, which mainly results from miscellaneous balance sheet movements like VAT and non-cash translational FX effects. Main reasons for the net working capital outflow were higher quarter-on-quarter inventories and trade receivables. The CapEx-related outflow of EUR 59 million has been in line with our full year 2025 guidance of around EUR 235 million. As a result, free cash flow stands at EUR 38 million, leading to a net cash flow of EUR 14 million after deducting lease payments and interest paid.
When looking at the quarter-on-quarter net cash development, the cash out for the recently concluded share buyback program, as well as the dividend payment, need to be considered. As a result, the quarter ended with a minor net debt position of EUR 60 million. This leaves us plenty of headroom to do M&A once we identify the right targets in terms of strategic fit and value creation potential. Free cash flow generation over the last four quarters has been strong, reaching EUR 468 million. The corresponding cash conversion ratio, which indicates how much of the EBITDA before restructuring expenses has been converted into free cash flow before restructuring expenses, landed at a solid 55%. With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.
Thank you, Bernd. Before talking about the fiscal year guidance, let me share with you our view on the current order intake situation.
As you know, large orders can be lumpy and we cannot perfectly forecast when orders will be signed. This quarter, we saw a perfect example for this. Although we negotiated several projects, we did not even book a single large order in Q2. However, 4 weeks later in July, we signed one of the largest single orders for GEA to date, and there is more to come. Therefore, it makes more sense to look at our order intake development on a rolling last four quarters perspective. Here, it becomes clearly visible that the second quarter of last year marked the lowest point and that we have seen good order intake developments since then. This trend also continued in the second quarter this year, and we are quite optimistic that it will persist in the coming quarters.
As already mentioned at the beginning of today's call, we have increased our guidance for 2025 based on the very positive performance in the first half of this year and the promising expectations for the second half of 2025. Despite the volatile environment, GEA's positive journey continues. Our improvements are broad-based, supported by a healthy order situation, accelerating revenue growth and margin improvements across the group. Also going into 2026, once again, we are proving our strengths in executing our plans. Finally, our roadmap for 2025, the next important date will be the release of our third quarter results on November 6. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming roadshows and conferences. Bernd, the Investor Relations team, and I will be meeting investors until the end of September. This concludes my presentation, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A session.
Thank you very much, Stefan and Bernd. We will now start the Q&A session. Please, operator, open up the lines.
Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. System BAR will compile the Q&A queue. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. It comes to the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Hi, Stefan and Bernd, Klas at Citi. First, I just wanted to check if you can hear me okay.
It's a little bit better than last.
That is good. That's good to hear, Stefan.
Thank you for that.
My first question is on SFT, and I'm trying to understand if you see more cost coming back into the business to deliver on the solid orders. Otherwise, I struggle to see why the new machine sales growth here into the second half shouldn't improve the margin further into year-end. I mean, you're growing orders nicely, and the lead times in SFT are pretty short. You've raised the SFT margin guide for the year, but it largely reflects the strong second quarter performance. The margin guide looks a bit conservative. I will start there. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is what you can see. We are improving performance further. SFT is, like you all know, one of our brown jewels, and there are many, many activities going on which lead to this situation, which you can see here now. Let's see where it will end at the end of the year, but SFT will remain an important contributor.
All right. Okay. Yeah. Fine. Yeah, it looks conservative. Fine. My second one is on the comment you made on 2026 in the pre-release data that you expect to significantly accelerate your revenue growth while further increasing profitability. You probably expected this question. I'm going to ask what does significant mean. You're going from two to four. Is it perhaps over six, i.e., doubling at the midpoint? Is it just timing of deliveries out of the backlog, including the very big order from Algeria in LPT and FT? Do you see that the pipeline is strong enough to perhaps drive quarterly orders here back to above the EUR 1.5 billion level? If you could comment on the order pipeline by end market, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for this question, Klas, as well. What we see is, first of all, Baladna is not yet booked. You know, this will be booked. This will help us significantly also to accelerate our growth next year. As I indicated, we have some more interesting, really large projects in the orbit where we are quite optimistic and hopeful that we can close some of them. That will also help us. Like you also could see in Q2, we have a very good base load business. Despite we did not book any single large order in Q2, we could exceed the Q2 order intake from last year. This all makes us optimistic. It's too early to give a clear guidance for 2026 in terms of sales growth. You know, our Mission 30 target is to grow above 5% with a CAGR of more than 5%.
I'm very optimistic that this is also from today's perspective. Also, if we have to catch up a little bit, let's say from 2025, we will make it.
Good. My final one is on the margin progression into 2026. Obviously, Stefan, I'm not expecting you to give a level, but you alluded to continued margin expansion. I get the better utilization from higher machine sales like we have here in SFT, but SFT is a product business. When you look at those larger orders that now sit in the backlog and upcoming orders, I'm trying to understand to what extent perhaps the gross margin should level off here if the margin expansion into next year should come more from the G&A savings. At the CMD, you said that G&A savings are back and loaded to 2030. My math here, unless your COG savings are greater than planned, it sort of could be that the gross margin starts to level off. I don't know if you could comment on that. Thank you.
There might be different effects. Of course, larger orders normally have a lower direct margin compared to smaller ones or medium-sized ones. On the other hand, we are doing a lot in terms of COGS programs, optimizing further our efficiency in production and in manufacturing costs and material. I'm very optimistic that we can also improve further our direct margins. On top, like you mentioned, and that's also what we promised, we are working also on our G&A costs, and that altogether will help us to improve further, like promised.
Got it. Thank you, Stefan.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes to the line of Max Yates from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you, and good afternoon. My first question is around the services growth and not really focusing on the quarter, but focusing on kind of the journey since you started talking about this. I remember at the Capital Markets Day, you talked, I think it's the prior one, sorry, you talked about getting a higher share of the install base on service contracts, kind of increasing the revenues per machine. I just wanted to understand kind of where do you think you are in that journey. Are you still finding kind of parts of your install base that you can attach to service contracts? Are there still more opportunities, and are you still able each year to drive kind of more revenues per machine? What I'm trying to understand is you've had some pretty kind of outsized and very impressive service growth rates.
Would we expect those to normalize down to low single digit, or do we think we can keep seeing these sized, maybe mid to high in services?
Understood. Thanks for your question, Max. Also, with the latest Capital Markets Day and with our Mission 30, we are guided that we expect the growth in service, which is above the growth of new installations. That also means very clearly we see still a lot of potential how we can outperform in terms of sales growth in the service organization and service department. It's a mix of many, many activities which are going on, starting with mobilizing install base, which is not buying from us today. It also has something to do with intelligent pricing models we applied. It has something to do with more and more digital products we are releasing, introducing with different pricing models for digital solutions, and, and, and. To sum it up, I'm very optimistic that the growth rate of service will remain an above-average driver for our total growth.
Okay. Perfect. Maybe just a follow-up. I guess when you gave your Mission 30 targets, implicitly, there wasn't the assumption that margins would be going up 100 basis points every year. If I look at last year and I look at this year, effectively, we are seeing margins going up around 100 basis points per year. You're doing it on organic growth rates that are below what you thought. I guess my sort of question is, firstly, what is actually going much better than you thought? I assume if you're doing more margin expansion than you planned on lower growth, something specifically is better. Secondly, when you look at the makeup of the business and look forward, it doesn't look to me, and maybe us from the outside, like there is any reason why that margin progression should slow down.
Is there anything particular that's unique to these years that we should maybe think about as not repeating or that's not normal when we think about the business moving out on a 2-to-3 -year view?
You are right. We are now in the second year where it looks like we can really improve margins by 100 basis points, which is really, I would say, outstanding because we are not coming from a kind of turnaround or restructuring. We have been on a quite high level where a lot of machine-building companies would be more than happy to have this kind of level, which we had 2 years before. What we always want to do, we always want to deliver what we promise. That's very clear. Failure is no option for us. We want that you can trust on what we promise. This is the situation how you should see also our guidance for mission 30. We have no doubt to believe that this is not achievable. If we are lucky, we can achieve it again earlier than originally expected.
I also have to say, of course, it will not continue 10 years long that we improve year-by-year by 100 basis points. Sometimes it will slow down. I think it's natural. We are really very active here. We have a lot of things we do. This is how you have to see it. We will continue, but it's not a God-given, let's say, that we also might improve during the next 2 or 3 years with 100 basis points.
Sure. There is nothing in the last couple of years which has massively flattened the margins, which is strange, and we should be very conscious of going forward. It's just good execution, better pricing, better services, a number of different smaller things rather than one big thing we should be very cognizant of.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's a lot of activities and measurements, which we always talk about. A lot of operational efficiency, a very clear performance-driven culture, a lot of great teams, good project execution. We also consolidated some footprints in the past, which are now kicking in in the full-year effect. There are many, many things, but there is not one single item where we would need to have some fear that it might collapse. It's really on a very broad base, and I also would say extremely sustainable meanwhile.
Okay, that's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes to the line of Akash Gupta from JPMorgan . Your line is open. Please ask the question.
Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, and thanks for your time. I got a few as well. The first one I have is on SFT, and I wanted to dig a bit deeper on the margin surprise we saw in the quarter. We had 2 years of decline in new equipment revenues, and I think you did see growth in Q4, but we saw new equipment revenues returning to growth in the quarter while aftermarket was flat. Despite somewhat weaker mix than last year, and sequentially, your margins improved quite significantly. I mean, is it fair to say this is all driven by pricing in new machines where the market structure is quite consolidated and you have high market share? Is this driven by any other factors?
I wanted to get your thoughts on what led to this strong margin beat when the mix was less favorable and why we shouldn't expect the same going forward.
Yeah. I mean, thanks for the question, Akash. SFT is also a mix of different products. It's not only separators, which are normally in mind. It's, for instance, also the Kanda business where we invested heavily during the last 3 years to improve the performance. We moved things to India. We consolidated production. We upgraded, invested in production. There are many, many shades of gray within SFT where we optimized production, where we optimized engineering to have a kind of better modularization. We developed new lines for valves, for instance, which we exclusively sell to Asian markets. Many, many things are going on. We also now see that all these effects are kicking in. Of course, it always depends also on the mix of the projects you have, and this quarter was really a very good one.
What you can see, the underlying trend is not based in the new equipment, not based on pricing. There might be a little impact, but not significantly. It's more in the new installation coming out of a lot of measurements which we did during the last years here.
Thank you. That's very helpful. The second question I have is on the geographic split of your orders in the first half. I wanted to ask particularly if you saw high growth in one particular region like the U.S. ahead of these tariffs kicking in. On the U.S., you said that one-third of the revenue there is imports. Can you tell us how much of that is spare parts and how much of that is new machines?
I mean, first of all, when we talk about region, it's always, especially when we talk about a quarter, it's really risky because you can imagine if we now book a project like Algeria in Africa, it doesn't mean that the market in Africa is booming because this is simply based by one large project. Therefore, we always have to be very cautious in thinking about or interpreting that there are special trends in special regions or segments just because we booked a bigger order in some segments. That's what I would need to say. If I would make a need to, if I want to make a general statement, of course, Europe is nothing where we expect the biggest growth rates. We see large growth rates also in the medium to long term.
I already want to avoid to focus on a quarter only in countries like India or in Asia. We also think that the U.S. is an interesting area for us. This is what we see. As I said, it's very often depending on larger projects. If you would book tomorrow a large project in the U.S., it does not necessarily mean that the U.S. has a booming economy. That is always what we have to consider. All in all, if I need to summarize it, we are very well positioned in many of our market segments. We see interesting activities in many fields. If you ask me about the regions, but this is also not a surprise, Europe might not be in the medium to long-term run at the forefront of the growth in the world.
Just to double-check, there was no pre-buy or anything you saw in the U.S. in the quarter.
No.
Thank you. My last one is for Bernd. When I look at your free cash flow chart, you have a big EUR 64 million negative line. Can you elaborate how much of that was translation effect and how much is VAT? I'm particularly surprised about translation effect because I see you also have a very large item in your comprehensive income statement, some EUR 97 million in the quarter. Normally, these translation items are part of EBITDA. I'm just a bit confused why we have another line in cash flow. It should be any items that you have in comprehensive income on exchange rates. Usually, they are non-cash. I'm a bit surprised why you have this other line in cash flow from your EBITDA. Thank you.
Akash, what we can do, we can have a follow-up on this very specific element. In general, the feedback is out of the EUR 64 million, which we have summarized under the bucket others, we have roughly EUR 40 million as an FX translation effect. The majority of the remainder goes into VAT.
Okay, I'll follow up separately on this EUR 40 million. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one. We are going to take another question. It comes to the line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks for squeezing me in. Actually, first of all, two quick ones. One is on the CapEx outlook that you increased by EUR 20 million. When I saw this correctly, I was just wondering where you saw additional need for investments and how should this pay out. Second question is on FX again, more on a general basis. The effect that we saw in the segments and for the group in the second quarter, is that something that we should also expect to reoccur in Q3 most likely, or maybe for H2? Mr. Klebert, you were saying in your presentation that the order trends should persist, pointing to the nice chart with a curve on how order intakes have been moving. Just to get more kind of qualitative statements on the customer sentiment.
I mean, now after, let's call it the first wave of tariff discussions is over, how has that influenced, or maybe some customers have become more positive, your client base? A question a little bit linked to that, just to get an idea or an example. Obviously, you have been talking about Baladna quite a lot, and congrats to this nice deal. Can you give us a sense on how long has this been in the making and if that was kind of not influenced from any kind of tariff discussions, or have there been some postponements on worries about global macro? Thank you.
Adrian, let me start with the first two questions. On CapEx, our CapEx spending for Q2 is fully in line with what we indicated for the full year of EUR 235 million. We've just updated our guidance to EUR 255 million, and this predominantly reflects additional capitalization related to our ERP project, which is running full steam. The second question on foreign exchange impacts, whether we and you should expect the same pattern in Q3 or even beyond Q3 as we've seen in Q2. I can only give the question back to you, so we might start to guess. We don't have the crystal ball here. You are aware of our profile in terms of footprint in different countries, but honestly, we don't have a clue what will happen.
What we can clearly state is that we continue to communicate FX translation and that we continue to hedge FX transaction in order to mitigate risk. The last question, I think we'll hand over to Stefan.
Thanks. Concerning the tariffs and the overall situation, I think even if nobody likes the tariffs, and if we have now this 15% here, it is at least, I would say, something where our customers know what they expect. It was the most horrible thing when all the discussions were going on and nobody knew what will happen because you know that all contracts we are signing, it's very clear that the customer is in charge of the tariffs because we can't take that risk. That's also clear in what we can achieve in 99.9% of all cases, I would say. Therefore, I think it's because our customers, they can now rely on something, hopefully, and they have a clear picture. I think it will rather help compared to the last month. The question, how long does it take to close a project like Baladna?
In that case, it's about 2 years since we have been working on that project. I personally was in a discussion and negotiation with this customer 11 months ago where we had the feeling we are very close to sign. I can tell you that we originally expected to book this order already last year, which did not materialize. This is a clear example and a very good example how things are sometimes delaying or postponing. In that case, it's also that the Algerian state is involved in all the business, and some things take a long time. We also hoped to book it in Q1, which did not materialize. We were optimistic to book it minimum in the first half year, which we did not do. We have now, meanwhile, the signed order. We had the celebration. We wait for the down payment, and then we will book it.
We hope that we can get the down payment in Q3, but it also might be that it is postponed and comes somewhere in Q4. If I tell you this story, it gives you maybe an example of how long projects of this magnitude are sometimes into negotiation and discussion. What I wanted to point out, Baladna is not the only large project we are talking to. We have some others which also can materialize in 2 weeks or in 3 months or in 1 year. This is the nature of our business. What is important for you to understand and what my message is clearly, we have an interesting pipeline, and therefore, I'm quite optimistic also about the remainder of the year and also next year.
All right. That was very helpful indeed. Maybe to also ask a follow-up on how the business is going short term. I mean, one of your peers gave an example that at least when those EU-U.S. discussions led to this 15%, as you rightfully said, hopefully staying where they are, this triggered the release of some larger orders. Is it something that you would agree on in general? Also, following up on the comments from Bernd , actually, I just wanted to make sure the question, maybe I wasn't precise to say, are there any kind of subsequent effects or different phasing of FX effects in the quarter? Saying that on the Ceteris Paribus level with same rates and obviously same exposure, should we see something similar in Q3 compared to Q2? That's it then from my side. Thank you.
I will address the last letter element to you and ask again. There is no structural thing which we expect to change in the course of the second half. Therefore, this should be basically the same level or same methodology without any surprise given the underlying currency environment.
All right. On the order trends again?
Yeah. I think there's nothing specific I can add here. As I said, if I understood you right, the tariff I feel will make it rather more likely that customers are now doing larger investments than before because now they can clearly calculate what they might expect. I don't see such a spontaneous impact, let's say, because all the big orders are normally discussions which go on many, many months or years for our customers.
All right. Thank you.
What I can stress again, our big advantage is that the vast majority of our main competitors are based in Europe, mainly Germany or north of Italy. This is typically the cluster where you can find the excellent machine-building companies for food, pharma, and beverage. You know them all. Also, the typical German Mittelstand is here involved, and they all have no production in the U.S. They produce all out of Europe, and they will, I'm quite sure, like we, add all the tariffs which come. Therefore, if customers in the U.S. have a clear and solid base of calculations, they know now it's 15%, they can make the business case, and then they make a decision. The most horrible thing is if it is every week in a discussion, might it be 15% or 50%? We have an environment where customers normally postpone decisions.
Fully agree. Many thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make any comment, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Dear speakers, we'll just give a moment to our participants. Dear speakers, okay, just give us a moment. We have one person come through. The question comes to the line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Let me use the time to ask another one. On Farm Technology, just to understand, obviously, you have increased your revenue guidance for this segment and also the margin guidance by 1% on low end and high end. Nevertheless, the increase in the segment itself that you did was quite substantial, and you have been talking about the effects there. Shouldn't we have assumed that there could be more potential from this change on the top line for the margin side of things?
I hope so too. We guide always where we feel comfortable, what we can achieve. That's what I said. This is our general sentiment. Of course, especially in Farm Technology, when we have volume, when we have a big workload in the factories, that will help us to overachieve our targets because then we have all this overabsorption in the factory, which kicks in. Let's see. We believe in what we guide.
Okay. Conservative again, probably. All right, thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Stefan Klebert for any closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank you, everybody, for listening and for your great questions. Let me try to summarize our situation, our state of the union. I think it's important to mention again that we improved all major KPIs in Q2 and in the first half year, especially in the light of the overall economy. If you look at other machine-building companies, I would say this is really remarkable. GEA walks the talk. We are performing. We are delivering quarter-by-quarter. This is, I think, and I hope what comes across. Given the overall strong performance, which we had in the first half year, and also the positive outlook and expectations we see, we are very optimistic for the remainder of the year.
That's the reason why we increased our guidance for the full year, which also brings us at the end of the year to, again, a different level than we had already last year. On top, we continue to see a very strong order pipeline, which makes us very optimistic, not only achieving a good 2025. We also expect that there is a good 2026 ahead of us. With that, I close the presentation and the discussion. I thank you very much for your continued interest in our great company. Have a nice summer and talk to you later in November.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. We will now all disconnect. Have a nice day.