Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO, and Alexander Kocherscheidt , our new CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the third quarter. Alexander will then cover the business and financial review before Stefan takes over again for the Outlook 2025. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session. As always, 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 very much, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you again to our conference call today. The biggest highlight of the quarter was clearly the DAX entry on 22nd of September via the fast entry procedure. Now we are officially belonging to the 40 largest and most valuable stock-listed companies in Germany. This marks a significant milestone for the company. Since 2019, we delivered quarter- by- quarter and year- by- year, and we did it on our own without any tailwind. I'm incredibly proud of all employees at GEA. The dedication, engagement, passion, and performance are the reasons for our success. Exactly for this reason, we celebrated the traditional opening bell ceremony at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, not only with the executive board and members of the supervisory board, but with over 100 GEA employees from different countries and business areas and levels.
With the symbolic ringing of the opening bell, GEA opened a new chapter. We are now playing in the Premier League, and we believe that there is more potential in the company and that it's now also the right time to take the company to the next level and to become even better. We made the decision to reshape the organization to accelerate growth and to become even more agile. Many of you probably saw the corresponding announcement, and some might have had the opportunity to listen to our call. To ensure that everybody is aware of the changes we are making, I would like to run through the key facts in the next couple of minutes. Just as a quick reminder of what our organization looks like today. As you know, we have an executive board consisting of three members, and we have the Global Executive Committee.
This committee comprises the five division heads, the four regional heads, as well as our Chief Sustainability Officer and our Chief Human Resource Officer. All these people report to me. The full P&L responsibility lies solely with me. The company is very focused and concentrated on my person. This organization is a matrix organization with quite high complexity. We introduced it in 2019 to have a smoother transition from one GEA. I would like to give you some additional insights here. Every year, we conduct an employee satisfaction survey to check what is going well and what are the areas for improvement. I can share with you that the matrix organization and its complexity have continuously been an issue over the last years. The question was twofold. First, how can we eliminate the complexity of the matrix organization?
Second, how can we make the company a little bit more independent? For me, the answer is, in our view, the replacement of our 14-member Global Executive Committee by a new six-member executive board. That means we are taking out several top leadership positions by dissolving the GEZ and are basically eliminating the regional matrix organization. Regional CEOs and regional CFOs are not part of the future operating model and will thus leave the company. From January 1, the regional operations will be managed out of the divisions. This new setup reduces complexity, decreases costs, and finally contributes to our Mission 30 G&A saving target of EUR 100 million by 2030. From January 1, 2026, the executive board will look as follows. Three divisions will be elevated to the executive board level.
The COO department will be dissolved, and its functions will be integrated into other areas of responsibility. A new role, People and Sustainability, will complete the setup of the new executive board. After two years, Bernd left the company by mutual consent at the end of October. Alexander has been his successor as CFO since 1st of November. I will share some further details about Alexander in a few minutes. Let me just mention here that he has been one of the key people shaping the company since 2019, and I remember he was, I think, one of the very first people I personally hired even before it was clear that Marcus become our CFO. Nadine will take over responsibility for People and Sustainability.
Many of you know her already as she played active roles in our past capital market days and is conducting dedicated ESG roadshows together with our IR department. Four years ago, Nadine took over the responsibility for sustainability. Since then, she and her team positioned GEA extremely successfully as a sustainability front-runner. We were the first company in the DAX index family with SAON Climate at the shareholders' meeting last year, and we see that our sustainability efforts are also relevant to our shareholders. We have many more ESG investors than two or three years ago. Kai is also one of our very successful managers. He started his career in 2004 in the business unit valves and pumps, moved to China for GEA for several years, took then over responsibility for the homogenizer business unit before becoming CEO of Heating and Refrigeration Technologies almost five years ago.
As you all know, this division developed very well under his leadership. Kai will be the CEO of PureFlow Processing, which is the old Separation and Flow Technologies division combined with the business unit components from HRT. Klaus, who will take over responsibility for the new division, Nutrition Plant Engineering, is also very experienced and extremely successful. He made Separation and Flow Technologies to our crown jewel. A big success story during the last years. The new division consists of the old Liquid and Powder Technologies division and the business unit solutions from Heating and Refrigeration Technologies. There is a simple logic behind this combination of the two. Many customers are the same. They did a lot of projects together, so it's a perfect fit from the customer's point of view. Finally, Peter. Peter started in farm technologies.
The impressive journey of farm technologies with good margins and strong growth rates was his achievement. Last year, he took over the responsibility for Food and Healthcare Technologies and managed successfully the turnaround of this division. He will remain at the helm of this division, which will be renamed into Pharma and Food Applications with an unchanged portfolio. To sum it up, I will have three extremely experienced colleagues now in the Executive Board managing together with me the operational businesses and sharing the P&L responsibilities. All three are part and very successful contributors to the big success of GEA during the last years. The CEO of Pharma Technologies, Andreas, will not have a seat on board but continues to report directly to me. The reason behind this is simply the size of the division. It is too small.
Its technology is also very different from the rest of the businesses. There is no strong business logic to integrate it into one of the other divisions like we are doing it with Heating and Refrigeration Technologies. Therefore, Pharma Technologies will be kept separately and, as said, reporting directly to me. A very important change belongs to Johannes' organization, which will be dissolved with a transition period through mid of 2026. Johannes is an extremely successful colleague, and together with him, we achieved this impressive journey of GEA since 2019. He did a fantastic job, especially in procurement, where he centralized all global purchasing activities. His organization has significantly contributed to the increase in value of GEA in recent years.
However, in this new setup with three strong divisions and given the meanwhile established strengths of GEA, we feel that the divisions are now mature enough to manage the excellence programs by themselves. A centralized procurement function will be retained and will report directly to me. The other key functions of Johannes will be integrated into the businesses of the other executive board members. Johannes was closely involved in developing this new organization setup and will stay with us for the transition period to ensure an orderly and smooth handover. The other big organizational change which we will make refers to China and India. These are fast-growing and strategically important markets, which will also report directly to me in the future. The new setup enables them to become more independent and entrepreneurial in order to act faster, simpler, more agile, and without long decision-making processes.
This should lead to an acceleration of growth in these countries. To sum it up, the new organization will enable us to reduce complexity in the matrix. This was one very important topic for us. At the same time, we can decrease costs. We will save immediately EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million in 2026 by reducing the 14-member Global Executive Committee to a six-member executive board. These savings will grow to EUR 20 million-EUR 25 million until 2027. This new organization setup is an important contributor to our G&A saving target of EUR 100 million by 2030. We will have a more focused and streamlined organization, which will support us on our journey to Mission 30. As you know, it is always important to take your people with you on the journey to make it a successful one.
In the first week after the announcement, my current and new board members and I spent a lot of time to explain the new setup and the reasons for it in many internal meetings. Only two weeks after the announcement, we conducted an anonymous pulse check with our managers, by the way, more than 2,000 managers, to see what they think about the organizational changes. Amongst other, we asked them the question, "Do you think we are going in the right direction with the organizational changes?" The absolute clear majority, an overwhelming 94%, answered yes. This is an outstanding result, and it proves once more that it is the right time to dissolve the matrix organization and to reshape our organizational setup. Now let's change topics and have a look now at our third-quarter results.
After a successful first half of 2025, GEA continued its positive development in the third quarter. We have accelerated growth in order intake and sales and have once again improved our profitability. Order intake rose strongly year- over- year by 5.5% to EUR 1.4 billion. Please note that this figure is not yet including the signed Balatna order. Alexander will give you an update on the status in a few minutes. As expected, sales growth accelerated in the third quarter due to the conversion of large orders, which we received in the fourth quarter of 2024 into sales. Consequently, sales grew organically by 4.5% year- over- year. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by 6.7% year- over- year to EUR 232 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved from 16.1% in the prior year quarter to a new record level of 17.0% in the third quarter of 2025.
Return on capital employed had again a strong development, rising significantly by 3.1 percentage points year- over year to 35.4%, even slightly exceeding the remarkable ratio of 35.3% of the second quarter. Net liquidity decreased year- over- year by EUR 102 million to a minor net debt position of EUR 36 million because of the share buyback program, which was completed in the second quarter. Without the share buyback program, the net cash position of prior year quarter would have further increased. Now, I would like to introduce you to our new CFO, Alexander. Alexander has taken over responsibility, as said, for all functions from Bernd with effect from November 1st. He has more than 20 years of experience in finance and investment banking and knows GEA extremely well. He started together with our previous CFO, Marcus, and me in 2019 as head of Group Finance.
Both Marcus and Alexander worked together in creating financial transparency and bringing down networking capital significantly. I'm quite sure that some of you still remember how the situation was. He's a man, together with Marcus, behind our networking capital success story. He has been one of the key people since 2019 in the finance department. In the last two years, Alexander has worked as a divisional CFO in our largest division, Liquid and Powder Technologies, where he did an excellent job in steering the division through a tougher environment and could also have more touch base to the real life outside. Dear Alexander, welcome onto the Executive Board. All the best for a new role, and I'm really looking forward to shaping with you our next chapter.
Thank you very much, Stefan, and a warm welcome from me, ladies and gentlemen.
As you just heard from Stefan, I'm deeply familiar with GEA. Since joining the company in 2019 as Head of Group Finance, I've had the privilege to gain comprehensive insights into our business. In my role as Head of Group Finance, I worked closely, as Stefan mentioned, with our previous CFO, Marcus Ketter, on all major finance projects. Over the past two years as CFO of Liquid and Powder Technologies, I gained an even deeper understanding of our operational business or real life, as Stefan just said. Now, as Group CFO, I'm excited to continue to successfully achieve our Mission 30 and create value for our shareholders. I'm very much looking forward to my new role at GEA and to closely working with you, the investor and analyst community.
I will now provide you with an overview of our business and financial performance in the third quarter, starting with order intake. While all order intake brackets have contributed to the strong year-over-year organic growth rate of 8.4%, mid-sized orders between EUR 5 million and EUR 15 million showed a particularly positive development driven by Food and Healthcare Technologies. We have received three large orders, so orders above EUR 15 million, with a total value of EUR 64 million versus only one large order of EUR 59 million in the prior year quarter. As Stefan said, the large order signed with Balatna has not yet been booked in the third quarter, but I can share with you today that we have received the down payment now, which means the order has been booked already and will be included in our order intake figure for the fourth quarter.
Please note that this order is split into two contracts, one with Liquid and Powder Technologies and one with Pharma Technologies. Hence, both divisions will show their share of the order in the fourth quarter results. As you can imagine, Liquid and Powder Technologies will hold the lion's share of this order. From a customer industry perspective, pharma, food, and dairy farming were the main growth drivers in the quarter. On a reported basis, order intake was negatively impacted by a EUR 36 million translational FX effect this quarter. After an organic sales growth of 1.2% in the first half of 2025, Q3 delivered the expected acceleration in organic sales growth to 4.5%. Year to date, we are now at 2.3%. Organic new machine sales turned into growth territory after two quarters of year-over-year declining sales, while the service business reported another quarter of strong growth.
This marks the 20th consecutive quarter of year-over-year organic service sales growth, an impressive performance. On the back of that growth, the service sales share increased year-over-year from 39.2% to 41.1%. The service business has been and continues to be an important pillar of our Mission 30. The initiatives and measures are bearing fruit. Within the last three years, the service sales share expanded by more than 5 percentage points. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 15 million to EUR 232 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 90 basis points to 17.0%. This is an outstanding profitability improvement, marking a record EBITDA margin. Now, I will continue with the figures of Separation and Flow Technologies division, which reported another good quarter. All major key performance indicators, order intake, organic sales growth, and profitability improved again.
Order intake increased organically by 14.9% year-over-year, to which a large order of EUR 16 million from the pharma industry contributed. Please note that even without this large order, the order intake would have had a strong year-over-year growth rate underlining the strength of the business. This order intake strength has been broad-based, as almost all customer industries have contributed, especially pharma, dairy processing, beverage, and food. When looking at the order intake development on a reported basis, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 13 million needs to be considered. Organic sales grew by 0.8% year-over-year, driven by a 4.1% increase in organic service sales. New machine sales declined by 2.4%. As a result of this development, the service sales share increased on a high level further from 48.7% to 50.4%.
Despite slightly lower reported sales volume, EBITDA remained on prior year's level, while the corresponding EBITDA margin improved year-over-year by 70 basis points to 27.8%. Driver of the margin improvement was the better gross margin, mainly resulting from the higher service sales share. Let's move on to Liquid and Powder Technologies, my home turf and my division for the last two years. Order intake for the quarter was down organically by 6.8% year-over-year, mainly driven by a lower total order volume in orders between EUR 1 million and EUR 5 million in size. Two large dairy processing orders with a total volume of EUR 48 million were booked in the quarter, while the prior year quarter contained one large order of EUR 59 million from the dairy processing industry. From a customer industry perspective, the positive development in food and pharma was not enough to offset the decline in the other industries.
Of course, the order intake performance would have looked completely different if the Balatna order had already been booked in the third quarter, but as I just said, in the meantime, the order has been booked in October. This quarter, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 9 million needs to be considered when looking at the order intake. Sales rose by 6.6% year-over-year on an organic basis, which was driven by both new machine and service business. While the service business continued its growth trajectory since Q4 2021, new machine sales rebounded after reporting a decline in the first half. As mentioned in previous calls, we expected an improvement in new machine sales in the second half of this year. The large orders which we received in Q4 2024 are starting to be converted into sales.
EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased from EUR 50 million in the prior year quarter to EUR 52 million in the third quarter of 2025 on the back of higher sales volume. The corresponding EBITDA margin of 12.4% remained almost stable at last year's level of 12.5%. Moving on to Food and Healthcare Technologies, which reported a strong set of numbers again. Strong organic top-line growth coupled with continuous sequential margin improvement and a record service sales share. A very successful turnaround story. Organic order intake increased significantly by 16% year-over-year, to which both major customer industries, pharma, and to a lesser extent food contributed. As in the second quarter, mid-sized orders with a volume of EUR 5 million-EUR 15 million were the main growth drivers. Sales grew organically by 4.1% year-over-year with contributions from both new machine and service business.
New machine sales showed an organic growth rate of 2.0%, while service sales grew stronger by 7.9% organically. As a result, the service sales share increased from 35.4% to a new record of 37.0%. The EBITDA margin continued its quarter-on-quarter improvement since its low point of 6.1% in Q2 2023. This marks the ninth quarter of sequential EBITDA margin expansion, an impressive development. EBITDA before restructuring expenses reached EUR 33 million with a corresponding margin of 13.3% in the quarter, significantly up from 10.1% in the prior year quarter. Main driver behind this profitability expansion is a significantly better growth margin. Continuing with Pharma Technologies, whose recovery continued this quarter, but let me give you some more details here. After an already significant order intake organic growth of 19.2% in the first half of 2025, the third quarter reported another extraordinary growth rate of 31.2% year-over-year.
The new machine and service business benefited from the strong demand for conventional and automated milking systems in the quarter. The market recovery, which started at the end of last year, continued and is largely driven by robust milk and favorable feed prices, as well as the introduction of new product features. This environment contributed to the notable increase in order intake, which is expected to remain on a high level for the remainder of the year. While organic sales declined in the first half, reflecting the low starting order backlog at the beginning of this year, they rebounded in the third quarter. Sales increased organically by 6.0% year-over-year, resulting from strong growth rates in new machine and service sales. New machine sales experienced an organic increase of 6.2%, which was even stronger than the organic growth of 5.9% in service sales.
As a result, the service sales share declined from a high level of 49.0% to 48.3% in the quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 4 million to EUR 36 million due to higher sales volume and an improved gross margin. The corresponding EBITDA margin increased by 180 basis points to 18.0% in Q3 2025. Finally, let us turn to Heating and Refrigeration Technologies. This division delivered solid sales growth combined with further EBITDA margin expansion. Order intake declined by 7.1% organically year-over-year due to missing mid-sized orders with a ticket size between EUR 5 million-EUR 15 million. While in the prior year quarter, orders with a total volume of EUR 18 million were reported in this order size bracket, no orders were booked in this size bracket this quarter. Base orders showed stable development. When looking at the customer industries, main declines were experienced in distribution and storage, food, and dairy processing.
Sales rose by 3.2% organically. New machine business showed another quarter of organic sales growth, the fifth in a row, of 4.1% year-over-year. Service sales grew by 1.8% organically, so that the service sales share decreased from 37.8% to 37.1% in the quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by 7.1% to EUR 21 million due to an improved gross profit resulting from volume and margin effects. The corresponding margin of 13.7% showed an expansion of 70 basis points compared to the margin in the prior year quarter. Closing the divisional chapter with the overview on the EBITDA growth contribution in the first nine months and in the third quarter of 2025. There are two important messages. First, we have considerably increased our EBITDA before restructuring expenses in both time periods, even though operational costs were stable or higher in most cases.
This considerable increase is driven by all divisions except for Pharma Technologies in the nine-month period. A broad-based improvement. Second, we have managed to improve or at least to keep gross profits stable across all divisions despite facing declining sales in some cases. This resilience is driven by GEA's price and cost discipline, as well as the savings we have achieved through our procurement and production optimization efforts. Coming now to another important topic, net working capital. In a year-over-year comparison, net working capital declined by EUR 27 million to EUR 466 million. This reduction resulted mainly from higher trade payables and lower contract assets, which more than offset the increase in trade receivables and the decrease in the contract liabilities. On a quarter-on-quarter perspective, net working capital went up from 7.8% of sales in the last quarter to 8.6% in Q3, which is within the guided corridor of 7%-9%.
While we received more advanced payments quarter-on-quarter, higher trade receivables combined with higher inventories have triggered the uptick. Free cash flow has been solid for the third quarter, but let's have a look at the details. Operating cash flow of EUR 120 million this quarter is below prior year's quarterly figure of EUR 180 million. This decline was driven by a combination of higher net working capital outflow, higher cash outflow for taxes on the back of a higher tax rate, and others. The pickup in CapEx-related outflow of EUR 68 million is in line with our full year 2025 guidance of around EUR 255 million. This implies another step up in CapEx in the next quarter. As a result, free cash flow stands at EUR 52 million, leading to a net cash flow of EUR 30 million after deducting lease payments and interests paid.
The solid net cash flow reduced the net debt position to EUR 36 million at the end of the third quarter. With the share buyback program completed and no longer impacting this position, and given our typically strong cash generation in the fourth quarter, we most likely will return to a net cash position by year-end. Free cash flow generation over the last four quarters has been solid, reaching EUR 394 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 47%. With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.
Thank you very much, Alexander. Before talking about our 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 predict when orders will be signed and booked. For example, last quarter, we announced that we signed the largest single order for GEA to date, Balatna. We also explained that this order would be booked in the second half of 2025 once the respective down payment will arrive. The down payment was not transferred until the end of September but came in only after the cut-off date, like Alexander also said. Therefore, this order will be reflected in our order intake in Q4. This is a perfect example of how the timing of signing or booking of large orders can be difficult to predict. Most importantly, this does not affect GEA's overall performance.
Therefore, it makes more sense to look at our order intake development on a rolling last four quarters perspective, which you can see here on the chart. Here, it becomes clearly visible that we have seen good order intake development since the low point in the second quarter of 2024. This positive trend continued in the third quarter of this year, and we are very optimistic that it will carry on in the coming quarters. As a result of the positive development in the first nine months, we confirm our guidance for the fiscal year 2025, which we have upgraded in July. Organic sales growth 2%-4%, EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses between 16.2%-16.4%, and return on capital employed in the range of 34%-38%.
Finally, our roadmap for 2025 and also 2026, so that you can already save the date for our reporting dates in 2026 in your diaries. From beginning of 2026 onwards, we will report our results on Mondays. The next important date will be the release of our full year results on March 9th. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming roadshows and conferences. Alexander, the Investor Relations team, and I will be meeting investors until the end of January. That concludes our presentation for today, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&As.
Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. Yeah, let me hand over to the operator. Please open up the lines for the Q&A session.
Thank you so much.
Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Mr. Bell, we'll compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Hi, Stefan and Alexander, Klas at Citi. My first question is on the margin at year-end. I mean, obviously, very solid margin again in the quarter, but you're keeping the full year margin guidance change.
It looks like the upper end, i.e., the 16.4%, is now likely, but if that would play out, the forecast margin decline is now at the same level as the upper end, i.e., around 16.4%, at least according to the month. That's down 60 basis points quarter on quarter. It's obviously not unusual to see a margin decline at year-end quarter on quarter, but still quite meaningful slowdown. Can you talk, Stefan, if this lower margin machine sets itself at a backlog at year-end relative to service, or did some decisions, thinking about pharmaceuticals in particular, be some very positive mix effects in the quarter that will not repeat? Thank you.
Okay. First of all, Klas, I hope that the investment in your new headphone paid off, but it doesn't seem like that. So the voice quality was again a little bit weak here, but I think I got the point.
The question about the margin development, I mean, look, if you look at the rolling last 12 months, this is 16.3%. We also need an improvement in the fourth quarter compared to last year's fourth quarter, where we are very optimistic, but we feel comfortable with that guidance. That is what I would say here. As you can also see, there is no risk to underperform here on that guide.
Are you okay? I hope you can hear me better now. Are you getting a higher margin?
It's getting better. It's getting better, yeah.
Yeah. Are you getting a higher margin when you ship, for example, automated milking systems in Fantech? Obviously, your service share is down a bit, but you still do it at 18% margin. I'm trying to understand if you've got a bit better product mix for automated machines, and that will not repeat.
I'm just trying to understand what could effectively slow into the fourth quarter. Yeah. I mean, you're also referring to FT division. If we look at the year-to-date margin with 15.2% on the FT side, we are well in the guidance range of 14%-16%. That's why we confirm the overall guidance, as Stefan said. Okay. My final one is on end markets. I'm thinking about the recovery in pharma. It seems to be broadening out across more divisions. You even got the larger orders there in SFT. Could we talk a little bit about the outlook, what's going on? It seems like when I look through what has happened over the previous quarters, started in SFT, but now it's almost in every division. I'm curious in terms of what you see on the pharma side and the outlook.
I'm not sure if I got your question right because the voice quality is not so good anymore. I think the question was also about the markets, how we see the development also in pharma. I can see and I can confirm that we are really seeing interesting good pipeline, interesting order activity. Q4 will be a very good quarter also for order intake again. Everything we see looks really good. I mean, if you look at the order intake growth we have so far this year, it is also very clear that you can expect for next year a significant acceleration of growth. Without giving any guidance, let's say for next year, it is very obvious that with that, we will be clearly in the range of what we promised as a KEGA for our Mission 30.
Thank you.
Thank you, Klas.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes to the line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. Actually, on SFT, I've got a couple of small questions. Looking at the developments on the margin side of things, obviously, Q2 was an outstanding quarter. I just wanted to have from you some statements on what has changed on the mix and is that a kind of margin normalization that we should accept also going into the fourth quarter? Having said this about Q4, should we expect actually organic sales growth to slow a bit as we saw in Q3?
Also with respect to the base business order intake, which seems a bit soft, just wonder if there are kind of trends we should take into account here. I have two more, but maybe let's stick with SFT first.
Yeah. Let's start with the SFT question. The Q2 margin was extremely strong. I think that's, and it also needs to be said that we are there on a very high level anyway. The decline quarter on quarter mainly resulting from a less favorable product mix within the service business, I would say. That's the driver for the development on the SFT side. Sorry. I'm just recapping. The sales development, we do not see a reason to believe that this is going to continue to slow down.
On base business order intake, is there anything we should be aware of in SFT? No. Solid development, I would say. Okay. First of all, again, welcome also, Mr. Kocherscheidt, by the way.
Thank you.
Yeah. Absolutely. In general, I mean, obviously, I think in past investor meetings and conference calls, I think you mentioned as a guidance for the whole group, something 5% growth. I mean, Mr. Klebert, you said something should expect something in line with the mid-range of what we should take into account on the top line. I was wondering, is that, I mean, on the other hand, that should probably mean that besides the Balatna order, we should also expect some at least mid-size, but probably larger orders to be booked in Q4.
I just wondered if you could share any kind of thoughts on the pipeline and what you think you are going to convert. The last one that I have is on the free cash flow. Actually, I mean, solid overall. I would say agree. Year-on-year comparison is a bit tough. I guess the base was quite high last year. It looks down in the third quarter. I was wondering, should we assume that you're already, is there also some preparation in for the Balatna order, or is it just kind of phasing on how working capital components moved, and what should we expect for Q4? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for your question. Let me first take the question about the potential order intake we might see. Balatna is not the only large order we have or we will book in Q4.
We are very optimistic that we can see others also quite significant. As I said, and as I repeated many times, sometimes it's very difficult to give a clear statement what is the quarter when we can book a large order because this might be easily postponed for three, four, or five weeks, and then it falls into the next quarter. If I would need to bet today, I would say Q4 will become another really great quarter. What is even more important to mention, the pipeline we have, the pipeline we see is not only a very solid one in terms of base business because you also might remember last quarter, Q2 was a quarter where we achieved a good order intake without any large order, and the large order begins in our terminology with EUR 15 million.
We really, really have a solid fundament of pipeline. We are very well positioned in interesting markets. We are becoming even more agile now with the new organization. We put a lot of activities in sales also during the last years, which you see now, which is helping us. I mean, you always have to consider the overall situation in the world. I mean, these are not the most bullish times worldwide. If you look at other machine-building companies, they are significantly struggling and decreasing staff and declining the second or third year in a row. I would say when you look at our business and how our pipeline looks like, we see a very interesting and bright future also 2026 and beyond.
I then pick it up with the free cash flow question.
Yes, the free cash flow in Q3, as shown, was negatively impacted mainly from the net working capital outflow and also higher taxes that we paid. Also, the CapEx number was, compared to last year in that quarter, higher. As you also know, the quarter four free cash flow is always the strongest quarter in terms of cash generation. We also expect that to continue in the year 2025. Q4 should be also a strong one, and that is our expectation.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we are going to take our next question. The next question comes to the line of Sebastian Quenn from RBC. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, the 15-25 million restructuring or reorganization charges, this is still coming in Q4.
It's just a yes or no answer, really. That's my first question.
Yeah. It's not a yes or no answer because it's a yes. Parts of them will come in Q4, but also some parts might go into next year. But you're right. They will come. Yeah.
Okay. Then the Balatna order. I know the delivery spreads out over a couple of years, but with these large orders, to what extent does it impact the gross margin? Because I recall as soon as you go into project business, the profitability might drop quite a bit. Can you maybe tell us a little bit about the earnings profile of these type of orders?
Yeah. I mean, there's not a significant difference. We would not do any business, let's say, which does not meet our profitability targets.
Okay. Thank you. Final question for the cash flow again. You paid higher cash taxes.
Just for me to understand, is this related to the tax you expect this year, or is this already the German tax authorities asking for prepayments for your expected tax budget for next year? Are we already seeing a kind of more optimism on next year's earnings, basically? Thank you.
The cash flow, of course, is based on the actual payments, and also it's not only related to the German taxes we pay. Of course, we have to pay, fortunately, taxes in some other countries worldwide. The free cash flow that we are showing is based on the payments on actuals.
Actual meaning what exactly? Already reported earnings or expected earnings for 2025?
Reported. Actual payments.
Okay. On historic earnings. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Yes.
That's all. Thank you.
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 your name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. We are going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Laris Wormkleff from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Two questions remaining, and I would ask them one by one if I may. The first one most likely for Mr. Kocherscheid. Looking at the current and prevailing FX headwinds and then taking into account that your nine-month revenue so far is only up 0.6% on a reported basis, do you currently see a risk that you might have to report negative revenue growth for 2025 as a whole?
No. No, we do not see that risk.
Okay.
Perfect. Maybe one for Mr. Klebert. I mean, we appreciate that you're currently reducing the complexity of the organization as well as the number of divisions, at least on the executive board level. Can we expect this to also cascade down in your organization rather sooner than later now and lead to a market reduction of the overall complexity with your more than 200 subsidiaries? Is that step rather still closely linked to you proceeding with the running SAP implementation so that we should not expect major changes here before, I don't know, 2027 or so?
I would say that both things have not necessarily something to do with each other. I mean, the changes we intend to do now is a change on the top and how we steer the countries and the question of how many legal entities.
This is a program we started and we are running so-called ELSA, where we are also very well on track, but this is not linked to each other. At the end, the change which we do is now that we found out that the value of the regional coordination was, in our understanding, creating a lot of alignment efforts. Like always, maybe we overestimated the synergies coming out of this kind of organization while the costs have been always there. This is what we take out, and we believe that the divisions can really directly steer the business worldwide. We also have in place some coordination on country level, but this is something where we will continue to achieve some more savings in the future as well.
That's also, I mean, if we look to 2027 for this year, I mean, in 2026, we expect EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million savings immediately simply because of the changes in the top, top management. Until 2027, we also can expect an additional EUR 10 million more savings on top of that, let's say. This is an interesting saving potential. At the same time, we believe that it will help us to become more agile, more dynamic. Yeah. The ELSA program where we are going to reduce the number of legal entities is not necessarily linked to that.
Very helpful. Thank you very much. I'll go back into the line.
Thank you, Lars.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our last question for today. It comes to the line of Uma Samlin from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for taking my question. First, a follow-up on the cost saving front. I see that you're planning to have like EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million of savings on the new organizational change. We're also supposed to see a bit of a staff-up in 2027. Can you perhaps give us a bit more color on what is the reason for the staff-up on the cost saving there? Also, would you be able to clarify? It sounds like from your answer to the previous question that this is not part of the EUR 100 million COGS plan you have for Mission 30. Would you be able to confirm whether this is included in that or not? That would be very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Uma. Thank you.
I mean, the first, let's say, bucket of savings, which we can see already next year, is very clearly coming out from taking out top management people, actually four regional CEOs, four regional CFOs, and people working closely together with them. So assistants, there's a kind of very close people working with those top management level, like you always know. On the other hand, also, I addressed it in my speech, we're dissolving the COO organization. We will also include the vast majority, but not all people from COO will find a new home. We will also have savings here. I fully believe in the power of a P&L. Now we reduce the number of organizations which do not really own a full P&L and give their responsibility to others. The COO organization, for instance, we had no P&L in the COO organization.
We now integrate it to a vast extent to the divisions. Therefore, we will see here also savings coming up during the next years simply because of synergy, simply because we do not substitute everybody who is leaving, things like that.
Yeah. That is super helpful. Thank you very much. Just another question following up on your comments earlier on the potential sales growth into next year. It seems like you are alluding to that we will see a bit of a step-up in terms of sales growth next year. Is that what you meant? And if so, then what is the driver for that, please? Thank you.
You mean the driver for the sales growth next year?
Yeah.
It's potentially to be more in line with 5-6%, in line with your CMD Mission 30 guidance, rather than the 4% or 3-4% we're probably going to see this year.
I mean, our Mission 30 guidance is that we want to grow with a CAGR of minimum 5%. My message is that next year we will definitely have a year where we will see minimum that. How much it will be, this is something we will give out as a guidance once we have closed the year and we have even more transparency. If you just look at the sales we did this year at the phasing of the large projects, and if I look at the pipeline, I'm extremely confident that we will see next year a full-fledged Mission 30 year, let's say that.
Despite all the issues which are around, and I think that's maybe also important to mention again, you know that we are, I mean, sometimes we are like a bulldozer. Since some years, yeah, we are walking the talk. We are delivering despite corona crisis, despite supply chain crisis, despite the war in the Ukraine, despite the conflicts we see in the Middle East, despite tax or tariff things. Nothing stops us.
That's super helpful. Thank you, Stefan. Just if I may squeeze in the last one. I see that you have taken a lot of roles, well, perhaps a bit new roles, the role to lead from tech, India, China, and procurement. Would you be able to give us a bit more color on the rationale there?
I mean, it seems like GEA has made a lot of progress in procurement, for example, especially in the past few years. What are you thinking that you would do differently than your previous COO on these fronts? What are the opportunities that you like to pursue in China, India?
Yeah. Yeah. In procurement, I will do nothing different. It is simply that this person will report to me to make sure also in the organization that we will keep a strong centralized purchasing organization. Purchasing alone is not, let's say, is not justifying to have a seventh board member, let's say like that. That was the reason why we said we need to take it on a different organizational setup. By making sure that it is the right structure, this person will report to me. India and China, it's different.
In the existing or current organization until the end of the year, India and China are both reporting to a regional CEO. If we look back, let's say, the last five or ten years, and we ask ourselves, could we have been a bit more dynamic in China and India? The answer might be yes. This is simply also, let's say, I would say quite typical for European machine-building companies. Everything which has to do with localization is still too much depending on Europe, on Germany, and it's not going in a speed which might be more helpful. The idea is, and that's also the message I gave into the organization, we want to leave China and India from the hook. We want to make them much more speedy, much more independent.
We give them more resources to build up their own R&D teams. They, of course, will be coordinated and also influenced by the divisions and business units. We want to make them more independent. They will have the right to do more decisions in the future simply to speed up the growth and the development because both are very important markets. That is also the reason why we are now anchoring them on the CEO level and why they are reporting to me.
That's super helpful. Thank you very much, Stefan.
Thank you, Uma.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Louis Belong from Alpha Value. Your line is open. Please ask the question.
Hi. Good afternoon. My question is about food and healthcare technology.
The KEGART is a pharma in your presentation, but in the report, you also mentioned new food. I want to maybe have an idea of to what extent new food is driving your order intake in that region. Also, could you give us more color on what is the current environment for new food and what kind of order intake you expect for the full year?
Yeah. I mean, the vast majority of new food business is reported in today's LPT division, in the future Nutrition Plant Engineering. Of course, we also see some of the components from SFT and sometimes also FHD going into that business. I mean, if you would have asked me four years ago, then I would have said the development in new food will be faster. It's picking up a little bit slower.
However, you also know that we built the first world largest factory for cell-based meat in the United States for Believer Meats. Believer Meats has now all the approvals they need. They will start beginning of next year with their production. This is an important milestone for the whole industry. We are also in touch with and very strongly associated with other very promising companies like Solar Foods, and I could mention much, much more. We see that new food is picking up. It takes a little longer than originally expected, but we strongly believe that this is a big growth driver of the future. We are definitely extremely well-positioned in that industry.
Okay. That is clear. Thank you.
Thank you. The speaker turned over the questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Stefan Klebert, for any closing remarks.
Yes.
Thank you, operator. Thank you, everybody, for listening and for your great questions. Let me sum it up. I think it is important to mention that we have delivered, again, a very strong set of Q3 results with an acceleration in order intake and sales growth, as well as a further improvement in profitability. We remain very positive for Q4, especially with regard to further strong order intake, baseline, and also large orders. For 2026, we expect an acceleration of organic sales growth and a further margin improvement. We fully confirm all our directions.