Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Q1 2026 results call from Bilfinger. My name is Martina Kalkhake, and I'm here together with our Group CEO, Thomas Schulz, and our Group CFO, Matti Jäkel. As usual, we will start with a presentation of our quarterly highlights and then open the call for your questions. Also, as usual, you can ask your questions via telephone by pressing star and one or via chat on the webcast. During the presentation, everyone will be on a listen-only mode, and the event will be recorded as usual. I now hand over to Thomas. Thomas, please.
Hello, everybody, thank you, Martina. Let's start directly with the highlights. We had a slower start into the year and predominantly based on the severe weather conditions, what we all enjoyed and which makes it quite difficult for us then in snow and ice to make the necessary work on our customer sites. When we look into the orders, it's minus 5%. Revenue is up, despite the weather conditions, by 4%, and our EBITDA margin is on 4.6, which is a 5% improvement on EBITDA. The earnings per share went up to EUR 0.99. The cash flow is EUR 21 million. The outlook is definitely confirmed, the midpoint, as we always highlight, is actually our target for the revenue as well as for the EBITDA margin. On strategy execution, we are well on the way.
We closed on the 1st of April, the acquisition in Turkey with Teknokon. Before we go further into the market and into the financial figures and into any other thing related with our group in the first quarter, something about the safety performance. Safety is an indicator of quality, and again, we had a fantastic good start into the year. We had a very good year 2025, and the start into this year was very good with a TRIF with 0.69, which is of course calculated on 1 million working hours and shows a fantastic performance. Our ambition is, of course, to have zero here. Despite the geopolitical trouble as well as the weather conditions, our organization showed a fantastic good performance. Out of that, into the industries.
As you know, on the left side, we show the production index, one of a lot of different KPIs what we use to forecast our business and, in that case, to forecast our four main industries. You see that we have here four graphs starting with 2023 indexed and going up to 2030, which is our midterm target and guidance, what we gave on the 2nd of December on the Capital Markets Day last year. When you look on the graphs, you see that the chemicals, petrol chems are the lower performer ones, then oil and gas, then energy, and then pharma. Biopharma is the shining star.
All are growing, some more, in a kind of a slow sideways with a little bit of pickup with oil and gas as well as with chemicals, petrochem, the others more aggressive with energy as well as biopharma. We then look to the right side, let us start with the chemicals and petrochems. We have, as we already say, for several quarters, if not years, significant regional differences in expected growth and in activity level. We see positive North America and the Middle East despite the Iran war, we see more on a consolidation, more on a restructuring, more on a getting back to more profitability, business in Europe.
The outsourcing potential, the potential what we see as Bilfinger to take over more maintenance work, more asset performance improvement work from our clients is, in that part of the industry, very good because we see a part of customers expanding and, of course, a part, especially in Europe, contracting, and they actually ask for a lot of workload and a lot of input, and we can offer with our outsourcing potential good solutions. The revenue share is 20% on the top line, and the demand is, as you see, more on a sideway based on the regional differences as I explained before. The second industry we would like to talk is energy. The increased demand for generation, storage, and transmission of energy is actually giving the industry a positive outlook. It makes already 26% of our revenue share and with a good outsourcing potential.
We don't see, as you see on the left side with the production index, which is in line with that how we forecast that industry, we see a further positive development in that part. For the ones who follow us a longer time, you see that actually before chemicals, petrol chem was up once 30% of the top line, now down to 20, whereas energy is now up to 26%, which shows that with all the work that we do, as we always say, more than 80% is the same no matter which industry we work in, and we are able to go into industries with a good growth trajectory versus the ones being with a slower activity level. We have oil and gas. Of course, an impact short term through the trouble in the Middle East. It is 20% of our revenue share.
The outsourcing potential is good. The demand is good. What we see with all the trouble and the horror what happened and what is partly still ongoing, of course, higher oil and gas prices increase the willingness of that customer group to invest more, especially into improved asset performance, brownfield investments. We see here an increased demand, and especially for LNG, especially in the U.S., where we clearly see that they are now the main energy supplier into the world. Last but not least, our pharma, biopharma with the typical growth drivers to localize the business very quick in the market with new IP, which helps the industry to grow and to develop. Outsourcing potential good because they are not used to build that much in that short time. They need partners to do so. The demand is good, and our revenue share is 11%.
If we then go from the industry into selected orders, this time three orders again for left the segment Western Europe out of the area asset performance. It's in the area pharma, biopharma in the U.K., and it's about integrated services regarding enhancement of the asset performance for a biopharma production site. In the middle part, you see an order from Germany in the segment Central Europe, again in the asset performance business unit. Here it's about improving performance, doing engineering and installation services to optimize natural gas production in Germany. On the right side from the segment international and Czech Republic, basic detail and site engineering out of our construction management service within consulting and engineering. It is actually to a big sub-supplier to a larger customer of us. From these selected orders into innovation.
Innovation for us is a driver of growth, it's a driver of reputation, it's a driver of customer reliability. Here we have, together with our customers, the challenge on sites with multiple installations of scaffolding to have an optimized operating and handling, not only on the scaffold itself, actually on the necessary people and of course the timeline, so that the next companies, for example, us with insulation, painting, and so on, can go into the right spot at the plant. This is what we do in a updated version of our Bilfinger Client Portal 2.0, where we are able to have an online data mobile device, which is using artificial intelligence to risk-detect and to have so-called proactive decision-making, speak where to deploy scaffolding in the next 24 hours, 96 hours, and so on.
This helps to reduce the necessary time to do the work by up to or around 40%, which is a cost reduction for the customer and of course for us of around 30%, and actually is for us in that case, significant more competitive as well as more profitable for us. Out of that innovation into the group demand. When we look into the opportunity pipeline, which is now indexed on the quarter 1 2024, you see that we had in the quarter 1 2024 between 100 and 105 indexed as an opportunity in front of us. This is business index where we can bid on and where we know it will go on.
A year later, in the first quarter of 2025, you see the figure between 103 and 116, which is quite up versus the year 2024. We then look into what we had this quarter, it is actually 102 to 106 and not on the level as it was a quarter before. What's the background of that? Of course, severe weather conditions have a slight impact in that. Mainly the uncertainty, what we saw in the geopolitical situation and of course at its peak with the Middle East turbulences, which is not stalling or taking away possible order intake coming, but it's actually putting it on a timeline in a slower decision-making. That is typical for these kind of crises. Why is that the case, especially in the process industry?
Because the Middle East part has an impact on the energy cost, which is a big part of the product cost, what our customers have. Decision-making is slowing down, but the decisions are not that they go away or that the investments are not needed. It just takes a little bit longer time. That had an impact on our order intake, which is then down 5%. When we look into the order backlog, there we see a slight movement, a slight up of 1%. When we then give some further input into the different areas of the order intake, of course, on the positive side, we have energy, we have pharma. We actually see oil and gas. On the more depressed side is of course with chemicals because they are heavily under cost pressure.
We sell a lot into that area, but the size, the average size of these orders is significantly smaller than it was two years ago because they have to see how is energy cost developing in the next few days, weeks, and months. Out of that, I would like to give to Matti, our CFO.
Yes. Thanks, Thomas. Good afternoon. Just a quick look into the numbers and some details from the segments. Revenue achieved EUR 1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026. That's plus 4%, that's a nice growth rate despite all the issues that Thomas alluded to. On the gross profit, the margin is slightly down from 11.2% to 10.8%. That's mainly driven by the weather impacts that we had. When you cannot work at full speed, you have some underutilization to deal with. On the contrary, we further improved our cost structure. We reduced our SG&A expenses by about EUR 3 million compared to the first quarter 2025, the SG&A rate is now down to 6.4% for the quarter.
As a result, our EBITDA margin went up by 10 basis points, 4.6% over 4.5% last year. The trajectory is in order. Taking a look into the segments and what we can say is that we see a bit of a mixed picture inside the segments. That's true for Western Europe, Central Europe, and also International. In the different regions, for example, here in Western Europe, in the U.K., order intake and revenue is up, while in the 2 countries, Netherlands and Belgium, orders received and revenue were down compared to the first quarter 2025. Growth came from energy, and even though the chemicals and petrochemicals industry has its challenges, we saw some growth there, but a little bit of a decline in oil and gas on the orders received side.
The EBITDA margin here went up quite nicely by 50 basis points from 6.3% to 6.8%. That is due to more efficient contract execution, but also to the successes in integrating our acquired businesses, be it the former Stork business or nZero Group in the U.K. Off to Central Europe. Also here we saw a mixed picture. We saw growth and in order intake and revenue in Scandinavia, in the Nordic countries. While Germany or the DACH, the German-speaking area, was lower than the year before, both in orders received and in revenue. If you look at book-to-bill here, we're almost at 1.0.99. Not too bad actually for the segment Central Europe in a difficult first quarter. Profitability is on the same level as in the prior year.
Here we have seen more impact from the, from the weather conditions or adverse weather conditions, that's something that we had to deal with. In the end, EBITDA is up by 5% from 2025 to 2026. Segment International, an interesting picture here, where the absolute growth is less than the organic growth. That has to do with the dollar movement between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. International contains North America, the Middle East. Both geographies are dependent on the U.S. dollar. We have Eastern Europe, which is less dependent on the U.S. dollar. On orders received, we did see increases in North America with additions to our large framework contracts. Obviously, the Middle East was impacted by the beginning war late February.
On the revenue side, similar picture, where we did see increases in North America while we saw declines in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. From an industry perspective, we have seen additions in oil and gas industry in the International segment. Profitability went down from EUR 6 million to a break-even position. That had to do with both the geopolitical uncertainties or, to name it clearly, the war in Iran or against Iran, which has affected our operations in the Middle East, and the adverse weather conditions were more severe in Eastern Europe than in other places. Taking a look at the net profit increased from EUR 32 million to EUR 37 million.
That has mainly to do with an increased EBIT, but also we had a favorable one-time tax effect in the U.S., so that the tax rate decreased a few percentage points, and that has helped us. The earnings per share went up by 17% from EUR 0.84 to EUR 0.99 per share. If we look at the adjusted net profit, which then at the end of the year is relevant for the dividend, that went up from EUR 0.94 to EUR 1.04 per share between the two quarters. The free cash flow is a lot lower than in last year's first quarter. As you may remember, we had a one-time effect of mid-double digit million EUR from a legal proceeding in the U.S. That money came in in the first quarter of 2025.
In our own plannings, budgets and forecast, that was included. What happens when the weather is not as good as we had expected it and other uncertainties come into play, then it slows down the process on site. Which means the invoicing and the billing process, it takes more time to get our work certified. When it takes more time, then it takes more time to issue and raise the invoices and then get paid. When you look into a little bit of the details, you see that our work in progress increased more than what we would normally see. The result is also to be seen in the Net Trade Assets over Revenue, which went up to 9%.
Both the free cash flow and the working capital will improve in quarter 2 and quarter 3 when those seasonal effects come to rest. Not much to report on net liquidity and leverage, which is fine. One thing that we are going to do is you see we have financial debt of EUR 178 million, which includes a promissory loan note that will expire, or a part of it will expire by the end of June, EUR 120 million. Then there is a variable interest component of EUR 30 million, so a total of EUR 150 million will be refinanced. We went to the market today, so I'm sure some of you have seen the information already. With that, I hand it back to Thomas.
Thanks, Matti. When we look into the outlook, of course, the outlook is confirmed. It is confirmed on the revenue, and as you know, we always target the midpoint, and that is what we will achieve. 5.4 to 5.9 in the revenue, 5.8%-6.2% EBITA margin, and a free cash flow between EUR 250 million and EUR 300 million. The weather conditions are postponing decisions of customers. That gives us, as Matti rightly said, some time-limited under absorption. The geopolitical situation actually makes customers a little bit more hesitant. They wait then a week or 4 weeks longer to see that things settle and that they know where they go. It's for them, for our customers, not always easy to make the announcement for an investment when just the oil price goes through the ceiling.
Out of that, we have full understanding for that, and we see that we will get that back and that we will have a successful year as we have the outlook confirmed. Out of that, the highlights, it was an interesting quarter one. We had, since quite a long time, a real winter, especially in Eastern Europe, but partly in Belgium and the Netherlands too. Of course, the not nice at all war against Iran, not in Iran, against Iran, with all the trouble up and down and promise up and down, actually impacted decision-making on our customer side. That led to a minus 5% orders received. Revenue, despite the weather conditions, is 4% up. The EBITA is 5% up. It moved 10 basis points up from 5.4 to from 4.5 to 4.6.
Earnings per share up to EUR 0.99. Cash flow, EUR 21 million, which is a result of the weather conditions too. Outlook confirmed and strategy execution is well on track, and we are proud to get the colleagues in Turkey from Teknokon on board since 1st of April. With that, I would like to give back to Martina.
Thank you very much, Thomas and Matti. Ladies and gentlemen, you can now ask your questions. To remind you can ask questions via the phone by pressing star and 1 on your keypad or via the chat in the webcast. I'm already seeing that we have a few people lining up. The first question is on the phone from Craig Abbott. I'd like the operator to open your line, please, and we should be able to hear you.
Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Yes. Hey, Craig.
Loud and clear.
Hi. Hello, Thomas. Hi, Matti. Thank you. First of all, clearly we got your message that you're still guiding toward the midpoint of the guidance range. Obviously, it's quite encouraging. I'd just like to dig in a little bit deeper on that, please. This does imply, if we take the midpoint of the EBITA, that you'd have to grow year-on-year, that EBITA number around 14% year-on-year to hit that midpoint. I know you saw an acceleration last year as well- Does this mean that you're already seeing, you know, those, that order rate pick up already, you know, in recent weeks? I'm just trying to get a little bit more color on what gives you that confidence in this environment.
The second question also is more structural. Looking at the quality of the order book, are you still seeing an underlying trend of the, you know, the quality of the orders that you are booking as being higher quality, i.e., structurally improving the profitability as those orders feed through? Thank you.
I start actually with the second one because that's easy to answer. Yes, we see that, and we are very confident that we have good orders. We did the Capital Markets Day at beginning of December last year, actually to say, to show you when we make these multi-year contracts, which is a big part of our business, that we already have that in mind. If we would only guide on a year or two years, it would be impossible for the organization to know where we have to be in two, three, four, five years with the profitability. The whole setup, how we do it, the whole way how we work with these frame agreements, with these longer term orders is of course, on a significant improved profitability.
Regarding the midpoint of the EBITDA and the 14% what you calculated, when you look into the start of last year versus the start of this year, it's roughly the same ratio what we had regarding the EBITDA, and we of course, hit the midpoint in 2025 too. Where does it come from? The crisis in the Middle East is not a crisis in the areas where we operate, like in North America and Europe, and of course, down to the Middle East, which is stopping or taking away or canceling orders or possible orders what we saw. That's not happening. What happens is the time element came in. They slow down. We had a lot of customers meeting, and they say, "Look, the energy costs are going up.
We expect next week they go down. Maybe they go up again. We don't know because we can't trust what comes out of Tehran. We can't trust what comes out of Washington. We need a little bit more time until we realize it. For us, the visibility is very important because we order and organize the amount of people, what we need to do to exercise the orders, of course, in a yearly planning. We have quite a good visibility in it. What is the positive in it? The positive in it is that oil and gas actually will invest more. We heard that already. The positive in it is a sad reason, is the Middle East.
They will over-invest to get more reliant or re-resilient, is maybe the better word, more resilient towards any negative military effect or supply chain effect, which normally triggers, and we already discussed that in the Middle East. I was there myself a couple of weeks ago. We are reassured that they will over-invest to be prepared better for if something like that is happening too. Of the more negative side, of course, is with the chemical industry in Europe, they are overly sensitive on the energy cost. The overly sensitivity gives us a lot of smaller orders to improve efficiency on their side. They are not the same scale as we saw it 2, 3 years ago. That makes the difference.
We had, we said that in the quarter four, actually in 2025, the largest amount of single orders in the last few years. The average order size was smaller. That is the visibility what we have. That is the reason why we confirmed the outlook.
Okay. You just Sorry. Let me just follow up on that, and then I'll get back in the queue. I appreciate that. I mean, you know, the energy costs have been come down and who knows? I mean, none of us have a crystal ball. We don't know how quickly they'll be resolved or not resolved. I'm just curious. I mean, are you already seeing someone that hasn't lift, they've kinda learned to live with the situation and move forward or, you know, because we're now in mid-May, right? I'm just if I could just dig a little deeper on that. That's all. Sorry.
Yes. We see that things are moving better than in the 1st quarter. Definitely, we have not the weather conditions. That helps, of course. The confidence in that volatility is a little bit back. You know, when the war started, that was a big surprise for each and everyone. It was up and down. In March, you saw that in the opportunity pipeline, I think it was 106 versus 100 at the beginning of 2024, which was very, very low for a March, which is normally quite active. That shows that situation. That got postponed in the 2nd, but mainly 3rd and 4th quarter.
We will have, as I know from my background in the past in construction equipment, when you have a wintertime or crisis at the beginning of the year, the second half of the year will be the big part of the business. That is what we expect. I have to raise that. On top of it, when you talk with the European chemical companies and processing companies, they actually stepped into some of the supply what Asia was not able to supply based on the Strait of Hormuz closure, based on the Iran conflict. That gave. It's not a long-term thing, but it shows them that if something happens in the world, they are actually back on quite a good business, which gives them confidence back to do more on their assets, on their existing assets.
We will not see out of that situation up to now that they now start to reinvest hugely in Central Europe or so. We don't see that. Some of the confidence of that Europe can perform if the others struggle and they're struggling, that volatility we will see more often from our point of view, and our means the whole industry. From that point of view, high volatility, but a kind of a confidence in that high volatility.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Greg. We have a further question on the telephone line. The question comes from Olivier Calvet from UBS. Olivier, your line is open.
Yep. Can you hear me?
Yes, perfectly clear.
Great. Good afternoon. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, just, you know, in the prepared remarks, you know, you, I think, didn't mention lower refinery demand, which was something you mentioned Q4. Just wondering if, you know, that has improved a little bit. Just now, you know, you were kind of alluding to European chemical companies, you know, seeing some potential benefits. Is that materializing in, you know, at least the opportunity pipeline that you see maybe in April? Just 1 question for you, Matti. Can you just discuss the sequential development you expect for working capital this year?
Okay. I start with the regarding the refinery. The timeline is a little bit too short that they really increase a lot. What we see is, what we hear when we meet them is, "Look, now the world is in trouble, especially Asia, because they get a lot of oil and gas from out of the Middle East, and we can step in. Some of the components are quite expensive because you can't get them, because supply chain is not working. We can step in." You see a little bit broadness coming back. With that, of course, what can we do to increase further the asset performance of the existing assets what we have in Europe?
It is not that negative touch as it was a few months ago, where everyone said, "Oh, this is looking horrible for years, and the government is not doing anything." There is some confidence back, and we heard that from some of the announcements of chemical industry and petrol chem-related companies. Is it a turning point, as I said before, into bigger growth and so on? No, we don't see that. We are at the bottom, and we will walk on that bottom for a while. When we look into the part what you had, Matti?
On the working capital, Olivier. We'll see some improvements in quarter two. You know, as you may know, that our payment terms are 45 to 60 days, it takes a while before things will improve when we get the invoices out and get them paid. Largely, quarter three, we'll see improvements in quarter two. By the end of the year, working capital should be where we expect it anyway.
Okay. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on that first part of the question. You know, just before you were mentioning the European chemical companies as well, you know, has the picture changed slightly, at least in, you know, in your terms, sort of opportunity pipeline very recently?
Not on the chemical part, for Europe. That's not what we see. It doesn't get worse. It doesn't get better. The mood got a little bit better. The willingness to discuss investments to have a fast and a better return on that investment is actually improved, definitely. Better than the last two years, to be honest.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Olivier.
Thank you, Olivier. Just a reminder, you can ask your questions via telephone, by pressing star one on your keypad or via chat in the webcast. We have a further question from the webcast, from Stefan Westphalen from Westphalen Asset Management. The question says, is there a new share buyback program planned? I will hand over to Matti.
Yes, Stefan, nice to meet you here. When we look at our capital allocation, we have priorities, and I think we were quite clear on them for quite some time, but we repeated them at the Capital Markets Day in December. We pay dividend, and we want that dividend to grow from year to year. We fund our organic growth. We fund our M&A growth. If the opportunity presents itself, then we look at other ways to give money to our shareholders. Share buybacks are part of the toolbox, but we don't have programs in place. There is no new program planned at this point in time.
Thank you very much, Matti. I currently do not see any further questions, neither in the telephone line nor in the chat. I suggest to wait probably for a few seconds for giving everybody the chance to ask your remaining questions. I see further questions coming in in the chat that I will read out. The first one is from Egor Sonin from AlphaValue. The question says, "Hi. Sorry if I missed it. I want to come back on working capital. I caught the comments on invoicing timing, but I'm trying to understand the DPO side. DSO jumped from 61 to 74 days and DPO from 67 to 82 days. Both moved together. How much of the receivables stretch is genuine invoicing timing that reverses in Q1 versus customer payment behavior changing?
On the payable side, is the DPO extension a deliberate offset, or are you seeing your own suppliers' negotiations shift?
Okay. Igor, thanks for the question. I start with the customer payment behavior. The only place where we saw a change in behavior was in the Middle East, where the administrations of our customers pretty much shut down and they did not process anything for obvious reasons. They sent their people home or into their home office, and things just slowed down. I don't see that as a payment behavior change, but I see this as a part of the crisis management that these companies have to do. Other than that, there is no change in customer behavior that we have noticed in the last few quarters. Obviously, our customers are always trying to negotiate and discuss with us payment terms, but as a high-quality supplier, they also value our services, and usually we try to avoid that discussion.
The increase in DSO is really related to the slowdown in the invoicing that was driven by weather mostly, and that will pick up in quarter 2 and then should be resolved by quarter 3 at the latest. On the DPO side, that is mirroring our receivables side. When we don't get paid or we see there's a delay, then we also take a look at what we do with our suppliers at the same time. We're not shifting the negotiations. What we typically don't like to do is that we shift payments from quarter to quarter just to sort of improve our KPIs. We pay on time. That is our philosophy.
Thank you very much, Matti. We have one further question on the telephone line. The question is from Andreas Wolf from Berenberg Bank. Andreas, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. It's Andreas Wolf, Berenberg. I hope you can hear me well. I have a question on the contract award disruption, especially in the process industry. Would it require a normalization of the political situation, or would, in a certain point in time, the customer more or less have to move, as the outsourcing decision is a strategic decision for the client? I'm just trying to understand how the political situation has to change. Thank you.
The industry leaders react actually on confidence more than on real decisions, especially in the Western world where or especially in Europe, where political decisions can take ages or never. It is more about the trust what will happen than really about the decision. If the trust is there that the trouble, that the war in Middle East is sorted out, then the industry will go on as before, no matter what you hear then out of Washington, Tehran, and so on. That is the confidence part within a volatile situation. When you look in general into crisis times and crisis locations, the industries and the companies acting in that, when something happens out of the dark, as we had it in February, then it's a big impact. Companies get introvert.
They check what is our security and safety procedure. We stop to do this and that and that until we have further information. It was end of February, which made the March a very quiet month, to make it like this, and on decision. A lot of talk what we can do and how to move. Second, if in the industrial service part, maintenance predominantly, if you postpone things, everyone in that business, especially our processing customers know, if they don't do it, if they delay it 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, the cost at the end is 2, 3, 4 times higher than to do it earlier. Next part in it is, of course, we have a delay out of the wintertime, we have a delay out of the Middle East decision-making process.
With that, we go back to our clients and say, "You see, we have now to change the time set up, how we do the work a little bit different, because we don't have all the people all the time available for each site." This kind of interaction between customers and us is more important than any political decision in the Middle East. We see that customers are quite willing to go on and to do so. The last thing is about the outsourcing. The outsourcing is an offer for clients, for specific clients, that we take over. Their maintenance crews, their maintenance management teams, and integrating that into our business because we do that 1,000, 1,500 times per day. We are definitely more efficient than if you have your own crews in a producing company on three, four, five sites.
We have digital products. We have a significant bigger workforce. We have a very mobile, well-educated workforce, and we can act in hours. Actually, in the Middle East situation, we were able to offer immediately on the same day when it happened in the morning, on the same day, so-called task force teams to our clients, if something happens that they can move in and to limit the damage, which was done very quick. That was highly positively received. It helped us definitely in the customer relation. As I said before, I was there on my own a couple of weeks back and talking with multiple customers, and the feedback was very, very positive in that way.
It will give us, together with the M&A growth, what we see in the Middle East, what we reflect on for quite a while, quite a good lift up for the group in out of that area, what we call then, the segment international, the Middle East part.
Thank you very much for the insight. Thanks.
Thank you, Andre.
Thank you very much. We have further questions on the chat. The next question is from Gerard O'Doherty from Bankhaus Metzler. A follow-up to Olivier's question on working capital for Matti. Can you also sequence the free cash flow, cash conversion this year?
Well, as we said, we are confirming the outlook of EUR 250 million-EUR 300 million for the free cash flow. Yes, the first quarter was a bit slow, but as I said, this will reverse itself in quarter two and more so in quarter three. By quarter four, we should be well on track. Certainly for the full year, we maintain the guidance.
Thank you very much, Matti, and also thank you, Gerard, for the question. We have further questions on the chat from André Böttcher from JMS Invest. There's two questions from André. The first one: Is any positive impact from German stimulus program yet? The second question: When will the Teknokon acquisition be included in the 2026 guidance?
Andre, let me take the second question. We will give an update on the guidance when we release quarter two, which will be on the twelfth of August, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah.
With quarter two publication, we will include the Teknokon acquisition in our 2026 guidance.
If it comes to the German stimulus program, actually programs, we have a defense investment and we have an infrastructure investment where, especially we as Bilfinger on the infrastructure are indirect impact, positively impact. You saw that the announcement last year in the start of the program, of course, a politician-led program takes always quite a while until it gets into execution, had a positive impact. We see things will happen. That is what you can see in the media in Germany a lot, the disappointment about the decision-making process and, yeah, the very, very long time to do something. On the other side, to talk everything up and down, is of course everywhere in the media. Be careful, the money will come. The current government, we can complain about them as much as you want.
They recognize we have to do something. They recognize we have to do something in energy. We have to do something in infrastructure. I will not talk about defense, which is only a little, actually touching the area where we are in, but we see that positive. If it would come faster, it would be great. We think, what we see at the moment, an impact for us should be in 2027. It is hard to see that we really have an impact in 2026. We said that already at the Capital Markets Day at the beginning of December, but we are a little bit more optimistic for 2027 because things like the new power plants, gas-driven power plants, that progress, there is some progress in it, which we think we will have a part of it.
Overall, positive, marketing and communication capability of the German government, let's say a kind of an area of improvement, and speed would be quite nice.
Thank you, André, for the question and the two of you for answering it. There's currently no further question on the line or the chat, let's probably give it a few seconds for giving people a chance to ask further questions. As there is no further question coming up, this concludes today's Q&A session. Thank you very much for your participation into today's call. If there's any further questions you may have, feel free to reach out to the IR team. As we are doing a bit of road showing and conferencing the next few days, we hope to see a lot of you on the road. Thank you very much and goodbye.