Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the publication interim report January to September 2026 Analyst and Investor Conference Call. I'm Sergen, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mike Pinkney. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us for this HOCHTIEF nine months 2026 results call. I'm Mike Pinkney, Head of Capital Market Strategy, and I'm here with our CEO, Juan Santamaría, and our CFO, Chris Andresky, as well as our Head of IR, Tobias Loskamp, and other colleagues from the senior management team of HOCHTIEF. We're looking forward to taking your questions shortly, but to kick off, our CEO is going to give us an overview of this strong set of HOCHTIEF numbers and provide us with a brief update on the strategy. Juan, all yours.
Thank you, Mike, and the team, and welcome to everyone joining us for this results call. HOCHTIEF's strong growth trajectory has continued during the first nine months of 2026 with an acceleration in profits, cash flow, and new orders. This has been accompanied by further significant progress in our strategic positioning and delivery as we harness a global investment super cycle, which we firmly believe is still in its early stages. HOCHTIEF sales growth accelerated to 14% year-on-year, reaching over EUR 32 billion in the period. Supported by further margin expansion, the group's operational net profit rose strongly by 40% to EUR 752 million, or 42% on an FX-adjusted basis. This growth is at the top end of the group's full-year 2026 guidance range, which was raised in July to an operational net profit of up to EUR 1.1 billion, an increase of approximately 40% year-on-year.
Operating cash flow during the first nine months of 2026 showed a very strong year-on-year increase of over EUR 620 million pre-factoring, highlighting an outstanding performance in cash generation. Over the last 12 months, operating cash flow pre-factoring stands at EUR 2.7 billion, almost EUR 700 million higher. Net debt shows a strong improvement of EUR 960 million year-on-year and is after the third quarter dividend payment of EUR 497 million and net investments of EUR 540 million. Considering the last 12 months and adjusting for capital allocation, net cash would show a EUR 2 billion year-on-year increase. New order growth continued to accelerate, increasing by 33% year-on-year, with significant wins across our strategic growth verticals. This lifted our order book to a record high of almost EUR 90 billion, up 29% year-on-year, providing a strong and diversified foundation for continued growth.
The AI, digital, and tech backlog increased more than 90% year-on-year, and our other strategic growth sectors that include defense, critical minerals, energy, and nuclear collectively grew at 65%. Let's take a brief look at our performance on the segment level. Turner delivered another outstanding performance. The business maintained its high level of sales growth with a 24% FX-adjusted increase year-on-year to EUR 22.4 billion, driven by data centers, semiconductors, defense, airports, and pharma. Operational PBT rose by an outstanding 47% FX-adjusted to EUR 891 million, with a margin increase of +60 basis points to 4%. This is supported by Turner's end-to-end strategy, including supply chain, modularization, and increased self-perform capabilities. Turner's strong new order momentum continued with a striking 39% increase, resulting in a record order backlog of EUR 48.9 billion, up 42% year-on-year.
This strong increase was driven by several growth verticals, including semiconductors, where the order book more than doubled, data centers up 84%, airports and commercial both over 50% higher, and solid growth in defense, 14%, and healthcare, 15%. Next, we have CIMIC, which delivered steady performance with solid margins. Sales of EUR 8.2 billion rose 9%, with rising contributions from strategic growth markets, particularly data centers, energy, and defense, more than offsetting the winding down of large transport infrastructure projects. Operational PBT of EUR 355 million was 12% higher year-on-year, with operational net profit of EUR 193 million, up 21% year-on-year, due mainly to the Thiess transaction impact.
New orders increased 8% to EUR 9.8 billion, with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.1x , helping to drive an increase in the order backlog to EUR 24 billion, up 13% year-on-year, adjusted for divestment of the UGL Transport stake. Moving on, we see strong growth at our engineering and construction business. Sales are accelerating with 20% third quarter growth driven by a ramp-up of larger projects. Engineering construction is seeing very strong growth in operational PBT, which is up 35% to EUR 83 million, in line with the full-year 2026 guidance and underpinned by rising margins. The outstanding 80% rise in new orders to EUR 7.1 billion is driven by large-scale project wins in Europe, including a major Sellafield nuclear award and rail projects in Sweden and the Czech Republic. The period-end order backlog is up 38% to EUR 16.8 billion. Turning now to Abertis.
Revenues and EBITDA were up 4% and 5% respectively, with the Abertis results contribution after PPA amounting to EUR 52 million. The company's cash flow replacement strategy continues to advance. Earlier this year, Abertis acquired the remaining 48.8% it did not already own in the French motorway A63 and also managed to extend its largest concession in Mexico. These transactions further strengthen the business in its key markets and increase its average portfolio duration from 12- 15 years. Let me briefly update everyone on the group strategy and long-term growth opportunities. We will, of course, be providing you all with a much more in-depth evaluation at next week's Capital Markets Day. We're strengthening HOCHTIEF's position as an end-to-end infrastructure solutions provider. This is enabling us to deliver high-quality growth while building a more resilient business for the long-term.
In the artificial intelligence, digital, and tech sector, the group continues to expand its presence in the rapidly growing data center market, where surging demand for compute capacity and exponential adoption of agentic AI are expected to underpin multi-year growth. Our ability to grow in this market is supported by an integrated operating model that combines scale, innovation, supply chain, and industrialized construction capabilities. This competitive advantage, together with our focus on talent development, enables us to expand capacity while maintaining execution certainty. Working closely with our clients, predominantly blue-chip hyperscalers, we are helping advance increasingly standardized design and delivery models, enhancing our productivity and execution capacity. In the first nine months, we secured approximately EUR 22 billion of new data center orders, up over 80% year-on-year.
Recent awards include our participation in Meta's expanded $50 billion data center investment in Louisiana, a major data center win in Berlin through an integrated team comprising HOCHTIEF Infrastructure and Turner & Townsend, and project wins across Asia, including Thailand and India. Our strategy to develop a network of sustainable edge data centers in Europe continues with the commercialization of our first facility well underway. The second German facility will be operational shortly, with two more under construction. In the U.K., Blackpool Council announced its intention to award HOCHTIEF a highly sustainable 6 MW data center project. Alongside data centers, investment across the broader digital infrastructure ecosystem is also experiencing significant structural growth. In Europe, the group secured new work on a semiconductor manufacturing facility, and in the U.S., we have approximately $1 billion of semiconductor project wins year-to-date.
Energy, including nuclear, is a key long-term growth market for HOCHTIEF. Investment is rising across power generation, energy security, and the transition to lower-carbon systems. We are responding by expanding our specialist engineering and self-perform capabilities across networks, generation, and storage. During the third quarter, the group won a series of major renewable energy and transmission infrastructure contracts in Australia. We also secured a major project for National Grid in the U.K., and in Germany, we have further strengthened our engineering expertise in the sector. In Q4, we completed the acquisition of power transmission specialist Autmatec, which delivers end-to-end services across the overhead transmission line value chain, serving major networks operators. The transaction strengthened HOCHTIEF's position in Germany's transmission grid market, where investment is accelerating to support electrification, renewables, and energy security.
Nuclear infrastructure is a crucial long-term energy growth market, where we have 70 years of experience and are currently working on several projects. These include a global delivery partner role on the Rolls-Royce SMR program as it scales across the U.K., Czech Republic, and Sweden, where it has contracts to build a total of nine facilities. Following on from last year's 15-year award for nuclear and civil works at Sellafield, HOCHTIEF has secured as well an additional major long-term nuclear framework contract worth up to EUR 1.8 billion to support the decommissioning process of the U.K.'s largest nuclear site.
Furthermore, HOCHTIEF is developing its presence in the European nuclear fusion market, including initial engineering contracts at two sites in Germany, and it is well-positioned to capture significant future opportunities. The group is also capitalizing on the accelerating global requirement for critical minerals, driven by clean energy technologies, digital infrastructure, and defense.
HOCHTIEF, through the combined capabilities of Sedgman and Thiess, has built a global position in minerals and sustainable mining services. Sedgman has won over 500 projects in critical and precious minerals since 2024 and secured several significant project awards during the period across rare earth, copper, and lithium. The group is expanding its European presence, where it is a key partner in the construction of an integrated lithium and geothermal energy project in Germany. Thiess, where the group recently completed the acquisition of a remaining 40% minority stake, continues to execute on its commodity diversification strategy and has secured several gold and critical mineral projects in Australia during the period. Public investment in defense infrastructure is set to substantially increase globally.
At the end of September 26, the group had a defense order book of over EUR 2.3 billion, and we are leveraging our strong civil engineering capabilities, proven project execution record, and long-standing presence across key defense markets. We have recently been selected as one of the contractors for a potential $800 million in defense contracts for the U.S. Air Force, and early this year, HOCHTIEF was awarded a major contract for the German Armed Forces. In biopharma, health, and education, Turner was recently named the nation's top healthcare construction manager for the 25th time.
In transport and sustainable infrastructure, we were awarded several major projects, including a $1.9 billion dam modernization project in California, up to EUR 900 million of work for a 26 km section rail link near Stockholm, the next phase of the Prague Metro Line D for around EUR 1.2 billion, and a major rail infrastructure project for Melbourne Airport. In Germany, the group's order backlog has doubled over the last four years. Furthermore, the country's EUR 500 billion infrastructure fund is starting to be deployed. HOCHTIEF is very well positioned to benefit due to the scalability of its business model and its core expertise in bridges, tunnels, rail, and transmission lines. As part of our capital allocation strategy, we regularly assess strategic M&A and bolt-on acquisition opportunities. As I mentioned earlier, we acquired the remaining 40% interest in Thiess, and in Q4, we completed the Autmatec acquisition.
An essential element for our capital allocation approach is to maintain a solid investment-grade rating. During the third quarter, S&P upgraded HOCHTIEF's credit rating to BBB with a stable outlook, acknowledging the successful implementation of its growth strategy. On ESG, I would highlight that HOCHTIEF earned an A rating in the CDP's climate change assessment, while Engineering News-Record named Turner the top U.S. green builder for the 19th consecutive year. Let me leave you with a couple of key ideas. The group's strong growth trajectory is underlined by this strong set of results, which show an acceleration in the growth of profits, cash flow, and new orders. Combined with a strong balance sheet and backed by selective capital allocation decisions, we have created the necessary conditions to pursue further growth opportunities. I look forward to discussing them in greater depth at next week's Capital Markets Day.
Thank you, Juan. Thank you, operator. We are ready to take any questions that you might have.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may queue up now. We have the first question coming from Dario Maglione from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. One second, Mr. Maglione left the queue. We have the next question coming from Luis Prieto from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. I had two today. The first one is, what is your reading of the changing government in the U.S.? Could it affect regulation and therefore impact order books and pipelines on the data center front? The second one, Juan, I already asked you in this same venue three months ago about the derating of Turner's U.S. comps, which has continued to be quite marked over the recent months. What is your view on this sharp change in long-term growth expectations in the space to the market's eyes? Thank you.
Thank you, Luis. Let's start with the elections in the U.S. Basically, the way we look at the elections is that this election has crystallized a trend that we were already planning for a long time, and everyone was, right? The regulatory scrutiny of data centers has been increasing, and basically, the election reinforces an existing situation or trend rather than introducing a new risk. What is the practical impact? This is the main question. The main question, and again, it is not new from yesterday, it is new from the beginning of the year, is where and when the future capacity is going to be built. Most likely, we are going to have many more off-grid data centers. That has been a trend up to now and in more remote locations.
And in fact, most of the planning we do with our clients since, I would say, last year, it's already taken into consideration all these things, right? We've seen that through the regulators, through the scrutiny, through the selection of the land plots. All of that have been taken into account. Now, there's another question about demand, which is not related to the elections per se, but it's important to understand the market. We believe, and we're not the only ones, right? There's consensus in the market that the long-term demand outlook is unchanged, right? This is not just me saying. The AI adoption continues. Right now, the question is that short-term regulatory-driven impacts, which as I said, it's going to impact primarily location shift and the timing dynamic, but it's not a structural demand issue, right? So how it affect us?
Well, right now, our backlog, it's quite tangible, right? The three buckets that we always speak about, and they continue not only intact, but they continue growing, right? So right now, our backlog, our work in hand in data centers at the end of Q3 is $26 billion, which is up from the $22 billion in Q2. So we have increased $4 billion in one quarter, right? And $14 billion since a year ago. The second bucket, which is the project that has been awarded to us, but not yet secured, have gone from $20 billion in Q2 to $23 billion in Q3. And the on-campus, pretty much visibility, likelihood, the planning part, right, that it hasn't been awarded, but we're planning, it has increased from the $15 billion- 17 billion. So in terms of size, we continue increasing.
In terms of the type, in terms of the energy solutions, in terms of the off-grid complexity, in terms of the permitting, that's what is changing. But, and this is what I believe, it's positive for us, because the more complex, the more off-grid, the more complexity of the planning permits, the more remote it is, the more you need to be very dynamic because you don't know where you are going to end up having the location, the more we can provide value. Because we have the ability to mobilize quickly, we have a geographic reach that is second to none, we are very agile, and that's what we're seeing that is playing to our favor to some extent, right? Clients want quality, clients wants to make sure that we can plan different, completely different solutions. Why? Because there is scrutiny about the locations.
Now, when you look at, especially in the U.S., our data centers, we're working more than 16 states, right? So we're quite diversified. Our top two, I would say, it's Indiana and Louisiana, and there hasn't been any change in the political environment on those two. In Texas, so between Indiana and Louisiana, I would say that we have like 34%, 35%. In Texas, we have 13%, and in Ohio, 10%. And in those two states, there has been a change. But in those two states, there were already a lot of regulations that were forcing us or our clients to pretty much move away, get off-grid solutions, all of that, and we've been working for some time on those. So I believe that in those two places, we're going to be fine because our backlog first has all the permitting, our backlog, right?
Our backlog is not going to be exposed, but the future backlog, it is already considering a lot of that, right? There is no doubt. I mean, all these regulations. On the other side, these are very. I mean, we understand these regulations. There are two things behind the regulations or the future scrutiny. One is no one wants a data center in their backyard. They want far away. And two, on-grid data centers increase the cost of energy. So everyone is looking for a sustainable data center and, if possible, off-grid. So there is nothing illogical in the debate about data centers. So I believe that, I mean, specifically, there has not been anything in the elections that we are concerned about. Now, on the second one, which is the market derating of peers, right? Now, I would say the following.
The first one is, I think that there is a lot, okay, and it is more of a disclaimer. There is a sentiment right now driven because everyone is talking about this right now, okay? And everyone is having an opinion about the bubble. Everyone is looking. Even a lot of the big AI firms, they are looking for regulations to protect closed source organizations versus open source. So that is relevant. The big players, right? And that includes all of us, each one in a different sector. In our case, from engineering, construction, and EPC perspective and joint solutions. In our cases, from a client perspective. But what we are all seeing is that there are thousands of players and a lot of speculation. And everyone wants to reduce that because it does not make any sense, because it is not good for the market, right?
All of this is playing its part, together with the rise in interest rates, in addition to the political headwinds, in addition to a demand in the long-term that is uncertain, and the profitability of the investment. So, there are a lot of talks and there is a lot of sentiment, okay, about this. Now, what is important for us? What is important is that right now, with all what we are considering, we are quite diversified. At HOCHTIEF level, our full digital AI strategy in data centers accounts for 28% of our backlog. And in all our perspectives and the high growth areas, we are pretty much in all the sectors. We continue with our core business that is growing significantly.
We have all this energy, water, industrial, including nuclear, that is going to grow significantly, and we are expecting huge growth, and we will talk about that, about all these sectors in our Capital Markets Day next week. We have defense growing significantly, critical minerals growing significantly, biopharma, transport. I mean, all our backlog is growing in different areas. So we are quite diversified in geographies, we are quite diversified in the different sectors.
Now, and we love the assets. When you look at our peers, the obvious answer is, what peers? Our peers for our 28% data centers, our peers for our entire energy, industrial, water strategy, our peers in critical metals, our peers in biopharma, our peers in transport, or our peers in asset, in concessions, and long-term assets, right? That includes energy, that includes PPPs, that includes highways, that includes. So what peers? And this is the complexity, right?
Now, to me, this is a strength, being a growth company that we have tremendous growth within the next years, and we are going to materialize it, versus having the resiliency of our diversification. So it is a very defensive, with low-risk contract that protect us from inflation. How many companies in the market you see that? Now, those that compare us with a specific firm, mech and elect in a few states that they do data centers, and they derate us because they derate them, I mean, I don't believe that that's reasonable, in my opinion, right? I cannot talk about why my peers have been derated, but what I can say is, first, let's understand which are our peers, right? Because at the end of the day, we need to make sure that we compare every single sector in our backlog with the right peer, number one.
Number two, let's look at our growth versus other projections, which I, again, I cannot talk about. I don't know. That's the way I see this.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Dario Maglione from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks. Can you hear me? Hopefully well. I have several, but start with two. Specifically for Turner, can you disclose the revenue and order intake in Q3, as well as the size of the backlog? Then in terms of the margin for Turner, the profit before tax margin, which was 4.1% in Q3. If I look at Q4, it looks like a tough comp. It increased a lot at the end of last year. Should we expect something similar also this year? Thanks.
Thanks, Dario. Starting with Turner backlog, in Q3, it came up to EUR 55 billion, almost EUR 55,457, which represents a growth of 37% year-on-year. Out of it, the new orders in the data center space grew in the Q3 121% in the data center space. Q2 did grow 23%, just to put in perspective, right? But overall, the high growth areas have continued growing at Turner. The second question on the margin, yes, Turner margin reached 4.1% in Q3, and we expect that to continue growing. The plan, and I will talk in the Capital Markets Day, is that there will be continuous growth in the margin of Turner.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Marcin Wojtal from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, on your U.S. business, could you comment on what growth rates you are actually seeing in Turner, but outside of data centers, please? Because it looks like the vast majority of the growth is from data centers, but maybe we could get some color. Okay. Maybe question number two, just following up on your exposure to the states where the control has slipped, so Texas and Ohio. What measures are you planning to take to mitigate the risk of any potential delays? We have been reading about requirements around audits of data center projects, longer permissioning process, et cetera, et cetera. Do you actually see some risks of delays, or you would argue that you are well-prepared with the current setup?
Okay. Starting with the Turner growth. Airports grow 52%, commercial grew 51%, semiconductors more than 100%, healthcare 15%, defense 14%, sports 7%. The rest, I think that the rest, I would say, education came down a little bit, but from 2.6- 2, so it's 27%, but over a low volume. Hotels came down from 1.9- 1.5, so that's 33%. The rest, biopharma and industrial manufacturing flat. That's the backlog, okay? I'm talking about backlog. Now, in terms of Turner and what are we going to do, let me put one thing in perspective, okay? The work done expected by Turner at the end of the year in data centers is around EUR 18 billion, right? This year in Q3, we did achieve EUR 5.2 billion, right?
When you add up the buckets, right, that we were talking before, we are more or less around the EUR 66 billion-EUR 67 billion visibility of backlog, right? Just to put in context, okay? When we're talking about how it's going to affect us the short-term, all these regulations, it's not, right? It won't affect. We have visibility over a strong backlog that has all the permitting in place. Now, long-term. Long term, we will go through all of these for the future ones. We are already going because we've been working with clients for the last 12 months in going through all the permitting in the data centers, right? Which already took into account the scrutiny, the opposition, and all the things that I mentioned before. This is an approach that starts right now, already started. Let me take an example, Texas.
Texas, there was a change in government yesterday, but ERCOT and Oncor has been pretty much going through the process of BAT0, BAT1 for one year already. Out of that process, they gave us the chance to go off-grid with much more potential megawatts and getting only a portion of the grid, versus just trying to achieve BAT0, which we did achieve subject to a few other documentation that we need to provide. But they offered us the possibility of increasing without grid and decreasing on the grid. We started that process at the beginning of the year. That's in any case a long-term option, like many other places, right? But this is not new, and it's not going to impact our short to medium term.
We just need to make sure that the future one, the future backlog for 2028, 2029, 2030, and most likely 2029, 2030, we take into account all those things. The good thing is that the minute you go off-grid, the minute you need transmission lines, the minute you need power plants, the minute you need completely different solutions for water, for taking all commodities to the site, then it places Turner, or us in general, globally, in a better position. Because you need to start planning from the very beginning, and you need different type of firms. You don't have the tiers one, the two, the three, and the 4s. You go directly to the ones that can help you in the entire process from the very beginning. We are seeing a much more demand for potential planning than before.
When the project is very simple, the client says, "I do everything, and once we have it ready, I do a lump sum. I call three, four potential mechanical tier threes, and I go for the cheapest price." When the things get very, very complex and you do not even know where you are going to be able to get the land plot, the final, you want a different profile of company. That is why we are seeing our backlog increase. And that is why in Q3 increased, as I said before, 121%, and Q2 23%. Because the market, the clients are seeing all of this in the same way that we are.
The next question comes from José Manuel Arroyas from Santander. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon. I have three, if I may. First on the PBT margins, the E&C and CIMIC units. Perhaps it is not the right way to analyze the businesses, but I noticed some sharp slowdown in the margins in both units. Could you give us some sense what may have happened, if there is any one-off element in the cost base that we need to be aware of? Then, on the European data center side of things, I wanted to ask you how Dornan is doing within Turner. Could you give us some measure of the sales or orders? And also in Europe, I wanted to ask you about the potential involvement of HOCHTIEF or the ACS Group in the European Union AI gigafactories. Could you explain, Juan, what the benefits of these initiatives could be for the ACS Group?
And lastly, and sorry for taking too long, in Germany, could you tell us if year-to-date HOCHTIEF has secured any project related to the infrastructure and defense plans in the country? Thank you.
Okay, José Manuel. Starting with PBT, there's some effect of consolidation of JVs in E&C, so there's two things to take into account, and that's probably where you see variations in EBITDAs and PBTs and all that. One is that, from an accounting perspective, in the U.S., in Germany, in many jurisdictions, the accounting is for corporation, full consolidation, non-consolidation. There's no proportional consolidation. So, depending if you do have more than 50% or less than 50%, the margins change. So, it's not an effect on the final impact. It's effect that sometimes you look at different margins and look at different things. Let me take as an example CIMIC, right? CIMIC, you see a variation on EBITDA. The PBT remains unchanged, but there's a variation. Why there's a variation? Because some projects are very capital-intensive, like underground projects, tunneling projects, et cetera.
The EBITDA comes up significantly, but you have higher amortization of the CapEx on the project. So PBT is same percentage, while others are no capital-intensive, so therefore, the EBITDA rate is lower, but there's less difference versus PBT. So, there's a lot of different things that you can't really explain. Construction is not like a machine, right? That every piece, every margin, there's different mixes, there are different risk profiles. There's important things to continue seeing the increase that we're having in the PBT. We continue meeting the guidelines we gave, and we continue having very good prospects of growth. Sometimes it's difficult to get into the mix. Now, if there was any one-off or there was any problem, I would, of course, let you know, which is not the case, or anything that is really changing materially or non-materially, I would explain.
But in this case, it's just the mix, right? You cannot really analyze things, "Oh, the margin is going down, therefore there's a trend here." No, it's just different mix at different times. You were asking about Dornan. So, Dornan has behaved very, very, very well. New orders, in fact, are up 66% year-on-year, right? The backlog has increased over, I think, about 20% year-on-year. We continue seeing that growing. In fact, we're seeing new orders not only in data centers, but a lot of the semiconductors in Europe, which is one of the areas of expertise of Dornan as well, on top of data centers and biopharma, right? Everything that is making a lot on those fields. There was a third question, the benefits of the AI factories.
I mean, when we talk about our development assets, and I'm going to refer to HOCHTIEF right now, you realize through the presentation that we commercialize the first two. We always have a goal to get between 50 and 60 small data centers by 2030, and we have already commercialized the first two. Most likely before the end of the year, we'll have commercialized the next two. We have been awarded a fifth one already with an offtaker, and we have good prospects in terms of reaching that ambition, right? So, between 50- 60, between 2030 and 2032, right? So it's part, and we are seeing that these projects are giving us good IRRs and good EBITDA, right? We're seeing the demand. I mean, there are small ones, so we don't do anything until having the offtake, and we go little by little.
These are pretty much equity play, right? We are not raising debt for these projects. The gigafactories are part of this strategy of building a network of data centers. We are not expecting in Europe to have the big ones of the U.S., right? We are expecting in Europe to have a hybrid between medium size and small size for everything, right? For data storage or for inference. Then some big ones potentially for training, but not as big as the ones in the U.S., because it will be more. Everything falls in the same strategy. We are submitting an offer as part of the tender. I think that December the 3rd is the day that all these bids are going, and we are putting a consortium together for it. But in order to continue reinforcing that strategy, that is going well.
The next question comes from Isabella Baxter from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon. First of all, thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two, if I may. So first one would be, what are the laggards that you see on your backlog growth story? You mentioned biopharma and industrial manufacturing flat in Turner backlog, but I was just wondering if you are seeing significant softness or negative growth in any other particular segment. My second question would be around the German infrastructure bill. Do you see any more tangible signs of recovery in the German construction market, and how is that further affecting your business? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Bella. Starting with the backlog. The high growth areas, right? We have the core business that continues growing, transportation, and I touched before, when you look at transport and general building, transport was growing 18% and general building was growing significantly as well, right? We see the core business continue to grow. The reality is that there is going to be a lot of work in new infrastructure, traditional one associated very much to all what we are talking about, high growth areas, but also in the maintenance of existing assets, which is a huge topic these days, and we are seeing a lot of that work. Then, overall, when I went before through the different sectors, the biopharma, data centers, et cetera, so we see some growth.
Then, there were a few non-material areas that went down, and I mentioned when I was going through the ones in Turner. But getting the example of Turner, the ones that were coming down was education, that went from 2.6- 2, or hotels from 1.8- 1.5, biopharma from 0.9- 0.8. I mean, so we are talking about really small amounts. And some of that is more timing issue. We do not believe that there is a trend of all these things going down, right? We do not see, and we will talk more on the Capital Markets Day next week, any slowdown in any particular area. We see that we are in the era of infrastructure, right? And we see a lot of infrastructure investments everywhere. We see infrastructure investment in highways, in railways, in defense. We see infrastructure spending in energy, in water, in industrial.
We see in defense. We continue seeing data centers despite what everyone thinks, right? Again, it is 28% of the backlog of HOCHTIEF, and the rest are growing at a much higher pace. So, we are not seeing any concern or challenge in that sense. Now, it is true that the data centers are growing more than 90% year-on-year, but the rest of the areas, the high growth areas, are growing at 80% growth. So, we are not very much concerned. What is coming down, it is a lot of small things that are non-material, right, which is what compensates, but we believe that is more timing, right? And because we have such a small participation that you cannot really get to the conclusion that it is a trend or it is not a trend. Now, more specifically about Germany.
We expect the first incremental larger infrastructure work to start coming into the market by the end of 2026, right? This year, I believe that HOCHTIEF and HOCHTIEF in Germany, I believe that we are going to double at least, if not more, the profit from last year. It is growing significantly, right? Now, the ramp-up will come in 2027, 2028, right? That we are seeing a lot of that. Our growth in Germany is not so much dependent on infrastructure fund. Our growth in Germany is more on the defense spending that will be almost tripling by 2029. It is growing from data centers as well, and we are expecting that, yes, probably more towards the next years because we are going through all regulations in all different areas, but we will go.
But the acquisition of Autmatec gives us access to all the transmission lines, substations, everything that Germany has a huge market, and also on the fiber side. So, we continue seeing growth in Germany, and we believe that it is going to be one of our higher growth areas within the next years.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Elodie Rall from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I was just wondering first if I could ask on Abertis and your estimation of the higher transportation infrastructure tax at 12.2%, what it does to your estimates? Second, I know you did not change your guidance. You confirmed it, you outperformed Q3, but consensus is already at the top end of the guidance, so I was wondering how you feel about that. Lastly, if I may, might be more a question on ACS, I assume, but the HOCHTIEF share price performance has been declining, obviously, in recent months. So, was wondering at what point you start to see an attractive opportunity to reduce the minorities there and increase the ACS stake. Thanks.
Okay. Starting with Abertis. Well, it is currently in the legislative process, so the details will come at the end of the year. So, it is early for conclusions, but let us assume that that moves forward, right? We are legally challenging, through Abertis, the introduction of the tax, and we believe that the concessions are protected by a contractual tax stability mechanism that was signed, and it was signed not a long time ago, right? The first instant judgment is expected the earliest second half of 2027. Now, putting that aside, the potential additional level of tax is relatively small compared to the free cash flow it is generating, so it will not impact its ability to keep paying the dividends. The operational model performance is quite solid, and we keep the guidance of Abertis for 2026.
Now, one of the things, and we will explain more in detail during the Capital Markets Day next week, is the change of Abertis from 2018- 2021 versus now. And how much we have increased EBITDA. I mentioned in our last presentation that the EBITDA backlog versus net debt by 2018, 2019, was around 3.7x net debt, 3.7x . Now, we are around almost, I mean, close to 10, close to 10x EBITDA backlog versus net debt. That in the last four years. The EBITDA post-France in Abertis, it came down back in 2018 projection and 2019 and 2020, came down to less than EUR 1 billion. Right now, the projection with the current backlog, it is around EUR 4.7 billion, post-France in 2023. So, we have been working a lot in Abertis, a lot of big part of that is organic.
It is renegotiations, a lot of growth in tariffs, in traffic, escalation, et cetera, and also the acquisitions that we have been working on for the last year. So, it is quite resilient. It is quite resilient. We are not expecting any impact on us. Guidance, well, we are in line with the guidance we gave in the last time. We thought that it was better to speak on this Capital Markets Day next week about the prospects and the growth and the long-term. We upgraded the guidance last July. We do not need to be upgrading every quarter, especially when we have a Capital Markets Day next week, and we are going to discuss areas of growth and all of that.
I am not allowed to talk about ACS topics in the HOCHTIEF one, but right now, there is no plan or whatever reason between ACS and HOCHTIEF is pretty much, in any case, opportunistic. I can mention, we can speak about that in the ACS call.
Understood. Thank you.
Okay.
The next question comes from Dario Maglione from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Sorry. Just a quick follow-up one. You mentioned the order intake in Q3 being up 121% year-on-year. Can you give us maybe a rough number in terms of USD? Because it looks to me, could be quite a material step-up in absolute amount compared to Q1 and Q2, but I'd like to check with you what kind of absolute amount of intake we're talking about, if you can disclose that information. Thanks.
In Q1, Turner, the order intake was $6.7 billion in data centers. In Q2, it was $6.9 billion. And in Q3, it was $9.3 billion.
Okay. Perfect. That's what I suspect. That's all good. Thanks.
There are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to the company for any closing remarks.
Thank you so much, everyone, for your time. See you next week. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over, and you may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.