Warm welcome everybody. My name is Henry Wendisch. I'm an equity analyst at NuWays, and I will be hosting and moderating a little bit today's earnings call of INDUS, that is presenting the H1 2025 results. With that I will hand over to Ms. Dafne Sanac.
Hello. My name is Dafne Sanac. Thank you very much Henry, and thank you NuWays for hosting our H1 conference call. Welcome to this call where the management board, Dr. Schmidt and Mr. Weichert will give some transparency on recent developments, strategy, M&A, as well as the six months developments of this year. At the end, there will be a Q&A. You can either put your questions into the Q&A button or raise your hand and I will successively give you the permission to speak or read out your question within the room of questions. Now I will hand over to Dr. Schmidt, who will start with the presentation and looking forward to an interactive discussion. Thank you.
Thank you, Dafne. Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to very welcome you for our earnings call for the first half of 2024.
Five.
2025. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. You know. I'm just playing with the slides. Just a second. Here we go. In the first part, Rudolf Weichert and I will talk you through the key information. In the second part, we look forward to discussing with you. I'll give you a general introduction about the first half of 2025, and then Rudolf takes over and explains the business and the financial performance of the group and the segments in detail. He will also conclude his section by explaining the guidance. I will then provide you with an update about our strategy, EMPOWERING MITTELSTAND, and conclude the presentation. Having said that, I hand over to Rudolf Weichert.
Okay. Thank you very much, Johannes. Warm welcome also from my side. We directly start in getting into the numbers and directly talk about the first half 2025. Just setting the scene a little bit, overall some key topics which we definitely want to discuss further during the call. First half 2025, we did five add-on acquisitions, but four in the first half and one directly after first half. We're talking about five acquisitions already. We can elaborate that a little bit further. We had H1 sales, which were almost at previous year level despite very continuum weak economy in the first half. We had Q2 sales, which were stronger than in the previous year.
We will see that when we discuss the segments and how. I think that's common sense. Currently, we have a huge uncertainty also in our businesses with respect to U.S. tariffs and Chinese export controls. We talked a lot about that in Q1 already. We had some impacts which we specifically see in the Material Solutions segment. A weak dollar had an impact. We have an adjusted EBITDA, which is in the first half lower than the first half of last year. Earnings per share are at EUR 1.13, which is slightly lower than last year's first half. We already talked about a positive tax impact in Q1 that played a role there. We have very successfully did a refinancing transaction in terms of our regularly refinancing of our loans.
It was way oversubscribed. The promissory note was way oversubscribed. We had to repatriate. It was a very successful transaction. Last but not least, on this key topic slide, basically, and I think you've all read that already, our forecast for the full year is confirmed. It's basically identically with our last forecast, and we come to that later when we talk about this in more detail. Okay. Let's see how that works. No. Okay. First of all, let's take for the whole group, let's take a look at incoming orders. We have already seen that, we had a slight increase in Q1, but a way bigger increase in Q2. Orders, incoming orders was really very promising, + 16% compared to last year, + 9% for the first half.
Also adding up to our order backlog, +4.5%. You can immediately see if you compare that with the sales numbers, which is, EUR 836 million, that the book-to-bill ratio is way above one for this first half. Really in Q2, we had a very, very promising order intake. All segments had their take in that, but it was mainly driven by the engineering segment, and we come to that later. Just a remark right here, these order intakes will have a larger impact on 2026 and 2027, not so much in 2025, but we will come to that when we discuss the engineering segment. However, it's a very promising signals what we get from the market there.
Order intake Q2 + 16%. Sales in the first half were pretty weak in our view. We talked about this, that we had a weak start last quarter in Q1 with -1.9% in sales in the first quarter. It was a little bit better in Q2, but still not at the pace or the right level what we originally thought. This all adds up to EUR 836.6 million for the first half in sales. If we look a little bit deeper into that for the whole group, then we have a 2.3% gain in sales from acquisition. That means that there is a slight decrease in sales organically, -2.6%.
That's overall not too bad given the whole economic environment. There's also one impact which impacted the sales number because we have the situation that the U.S. Dollar is constantly weakening since 25 January . I think it started at the beginning of the year. The exchange rate was roughly by 1.03. It's now up to 1.16 or maybe 1.17. There's a constant weakening of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro, and if we factor that in, there is actually a slight increase in sales if we carve the exchange rate losses out. That's kind of an overall picture there.
If we compare now the half year sales results with the full year guidance, then you see that in the last year we were at EUR 1.72 billion in sales, and our guidance is between EUR 1.7 billion and EUR 1.85 billion. The EUR 836 million which we reached in the first half is roughly 47% of the full year guidance, so there's 53% to come in that sense. That's kind of an overall theme which we will see in the segments that we currently see that the first half was slow as expected, but we see way more dynamic in the second half of 2025. We will add up sales and a little bit over proportionally adding up earnings.
That's the picture for sales for the group for the full year. If we now look into these adjusted EBITA earnings KPI numbers for the first half, then you can see that the picture, what we already discussed in Q1, that we had a significant decrease in this earnings, still at EUR 24.9 million and at 6.2%, but from an earnings perspective, a weak first quarter. The second quarter was actually better, ramping up and picking up from an earnings perspective, but still significantly below last year's earnings. I come to that.
If you look at the margin percentage, it improved 1 percent point from Q1 to Q2, and also the absolute numbers of earnings, adjusted EBITA improved from EUR 24.9 million to EUR 31.2 million. It's still below, significantly below last year. What specifically happened in the second quarter overall, still in the segments, Engineering and Infrastructure and materials, weak demand still. Specifically in the Material Solutions segment, we had some costs related to securing the supply chain. By the way, we believe that the local management was extremely good at it, securing the supply chain, and giving more security to the tungsten carbide export control topic, and we come to that when we talk about the Material Solutions segment.
We had some costs in Q2 for supplies to really secure the supply chain, to take a lot of measures, and ultimately that will count for the second half of 2025, and we come to that when we talk about the segment. All in, we are at EUR 56.1 million for the first half. If you look at the full year 2024, it will be EUR 153. It was EUR 153.7 million, and our guidance is confirmed and unchanged. We will come up with EUR 130 million-EUR 165 million in adjusted EBITA with a margin of 7.5%-9%. This is unchanged.
If you look at our half year results, it's EUR 56 million, there's a long way to go because this is roughly 38% from the full year guidance, there's 62% still to come. That's what we currently see and believe from order intake, order backlog, and from the dynamic in the segments. We will ramp up the sales in the second half, and this has a kind of an over proportional impact on earnings, that is the expectations. We will see in specifically also in the Material Solutions segment that we make good progress on the supply chain issue. That's kind of the overall picture.
There's a way to go, but we confirm the full year earnings between EUR 130 million and EUR 165 million with this range of margin. I think it's worthwhile to elaborate a little bit on the free cash flow number because that's also an important topic, and our guidance is still unchanged. Our guidance and outlook for the full year was above EUR 90 million, and on the left side of this chart, you see the development every quarter, cumulatively every quarter for 2024. There we started with EUR 6.1 million and then added up every quarter huge amounts of free cash flow. Specifically in Q3 and Q4, there was the more or less large impact on the free cash flow.
When you look into this year's numbers, we started Q1 with EUR -23.6 million, and then we added already EUR 15 million from Q1 to Q2. Of course, there are still a way to go to this above EUR 90 million. What actually are the main drivers for our confirmatory outlook of above EUR 90 million? I think, first of all, if you look at 2024, Q3 and Q4 had a huge impact on free cash flow. We had a weak start into the year. We expect way higher earnings in the second half, so this will add on our free cash flow. We expect in the second half a reversal effect from Working Capital development because if you look at our Working Capital, it now seasonal or there's some seasonality in it.
You know that we've ramped up the working capital by roughly EUR 40 million. Cash impact is EUR 33 million of working capital. We expect there a reversal effect in the second half, specifically in Q4. Additionally, we work with our companies on the CapEx numbers. We have larger amount authorized at the beginning of the year. We will see that first half was pretty weak, so there were some cutbacks on CapEx spendings, this will also increase our free cash flow number.
These three topics basically make up our assumption that we will reach our target of above EUR 90 million free cash flow, way better earnings in the second half, a reversal effect from working capital and lower CapEx spendings, so that we are quite confident that we can reach these numbers. It will be close deal, but currently we're confident. We thought it's worthwhile also to elaborate a little bit on the free cash flow number because that's always for us a very important, very important number.
Okay. It's a little bit slow in changing slides. Some KPIs together on one slide, which are important for us. The free cash flow number, we just talked about this, -EUR 7.9 million at the end or cumulatively at the end of first half, and our expectation that this number will go above EUR 90 million at year-end. You see the net debt development from the end of the year until now. You see a significant increase in net debt. That's kind of aligned with the working capital development, but not only. We had the payout of our dividend, which factored in. We have the working capital development. We have a little bit lower earnings.
We acquired non-controlling interests, which is, it's a part of this. That we end up right now at EUR 635 million. Our expectation for year, for the year-end is a little bit aligned with the expectation on the free cash flow because we expect that we lower this number significantly until year-end. We will expect somewhat in the range between EUR 580 million-EUR 590 million, going down this net debt number at year-end. Equity, which is fine, we think. Equity ratio is 37.8. This is a little bit lower than at the beginning of the year.
Okay, the main driver here is that we had the payout of the dividend, and we don't have that in the second half, so this earnings will make up. Our expectation is that we end the year between 38% and 39% equity ratio. That's kind of an group overview of the main KPIs for our group. I think, let's take a look or a closer look into the development of the three segments. We'll not spend too much time. Maybe that is a discussion at the end of the presentation. Maybe it's leave it to the Q&A sessions. What is the overall setting and the overall sentiment for this for the segments? What is the industry trend for engineering?
Of course, you know all that, the whole discussions, Engineering in Germany and machinery and
Equipment
yeah, equipment manufacturers, usually these are large industries, exporting goods, dependent on exports. There's huge uncertainty right now with tariffs. We have the weakening dollar. We are not even sure what is the agreement between the European Union and the United States right now. Is this handshake agreement valid and what happened? Huge uncertainties, and all the companies have to deal with it. Uncertainty simply means less investment decisions because they need some certainty to make investments. That all factors into the Engineering segment as an overall picture.
If we now take a look at what happened with engineering, there, yeah, there you see really great numbers in terms of incoming orders, +19% in the first quarter already, even more now in the second quarter +32%, adding up to a great 25% for the first half year and really adding also up to the order backlog. This is great. A little bit of downside is these orders relate mainly, but not all, relate mainly to high-tech applications with advanced inert gas glove box systems and also automated systems for vehicle assembly.
All these large projects coming in with orders, not all of them, but a majority I think is related to the U.S. because these are projects which will be then at the end built in the U.S. From a timing perspective, we have huge incoming orders now. It will only slightly impact 2025, but the huge impact will be on sales in 2026 and 2027 for these orders. We are very happy that we have this great order intake, but the main effects we will see 2026 and 2027. We still think that in the third quarter, we will also see a very promising order intake as an outlook. Orders are great for engineering. Sales in the first half, well, not so great.
We talked about the first quarter already with -4.8%. It was better in the second quarter, ramping a little bit up, picking a little bit up. As we already talked about in the first quarter, we see a huge market dynamic in the second half. Q3 will be, in our view, stronger than Q2, and Q4, in our view, will be the strongest quarter of the year. That's kind of the expectation. If we look at the full half year number, we had sales of EUR 259.7 million.
If you compare that to fiscal 2024 with a full year number of EUR 596.7, we have already accumulated sales of roughly 43%. 57% still to go. Our full year guidance is confirmed. If you take the 2024 number, our outlook is that this number will slightly increase for the full year with these ramping up dynamic in the second half. If we take a look at the EBITA for the segment, of course Q1 really weak. Q2 already same level as last year.
Expectation is that we will have an over proportional effect on earnings in Q3 and Q4 because ramping up sales just indicates that capacity utilization will be better, that there's a better fixed cost coverage and so on. We will have an over proportional effect on earnings. You can clearly see that because earnings for the full year or for the first half was EUR 15.9 million. If you look at the full year guidance of EUR 57.7 million, you can clearly see that we are currently at 28% of our full year guidance. There is 72% of earnings to come, which is what we believe will happen in the second half.
Our guidance is a consistent guidance in terms of EBITDA compared to 2024 and a margin range between 9% and 11%. Now we are at 6.1%. That's although indicates that we will have a significant improvement in margin in the second half. Engineering is probably the segment where it really counts, Q3 and Q4. Our expectation in line with the expectation of our businesses tells us that Q3 will way better than Q2, and Q4 will be the best quarter in for the year. That's where we based on our outlook with a consistent sales and 9%- 11% EBITDA margin for the segment.
Let's move on and take a look at infrastructure and also infrastructure in Germany, it's not a success story right now, especially, specifically not for the first half. There's a bit of mixed picture because residential construction is very weak. I think the companies report low order or insufficient order volumes. Still no dynamic in the first half in residential construction. The picture is a little bit different for civil engineering, which has a growth rate in the first half. I think what a lot of people expect is that the infrastructure package, the huge infrastructure package with EUR couple of hundred billions will kick in. The expectation is pretty clear. It will have a very positive impact. Everyone believes that.
We will see the impact beginning 2026. There's not much what we see from this decision, political decisions, what we see in 2025. Maybe a little bit more positive sentiment in investment decisions, but we believe that the main impact will be 2026 in infrastructure. There's also maybe a downside to it because in civil engineering, all these constructions have to be built. There's maybe a pressure on prices because already, you need skilled workforce for doing all these tasks. There might be some price pressure also kicking in currently as a sentiment for the infrastructure segment. How is our segment doing or how has the infrastructure segment performed in the first half of 2025? Weak first quarter, -8%.
We already talked about that. Different picture Q2, really ramping up and picking up, which is kind of clear. We have also a seasonality impact specifically in infrastructure where Q1 is usually pretty low. We have Q2, Q3, usually way stronger. It really depends if Q4 is a strong quarter, is a very strong quarter or not. That's usually a seasonality. However, the +10% in incoming orders, it's also a good achievement for the infrastructure segment in Q2, and that shows a little bit the direction that the sentiment is a bit more positive. I would not weigh too much on the order backlog side because there is a -8%, but it's just based on a snapshot in time.
When we look at July or so, I would not weigh in too much on the order backlog that it's -8%. It's already ramping up again. Sales more or less flat in the first half, and also there. Sorry, income, order income more or less flat, but with a good development in the second quarter. If we look at sales, a little bit of the same picture, but small increase in Q1, a larger increase in Q2. First half + 5.5%, it's not too bad. If you look at the full year, full year 2024, we have EUR 559.5 million in revenues.
Our guidance says moderately increasing this number, that means we have now EUR 292 million in sales. That's more than half. That's 52%. that is already factoring in that the fourth quarter has maybe some potential, right? Okay, let's take a look at earnings. In the Infrastructure Segment, earnings, well, the absolute number in earnings was really picking up from Q1 to Q2, from EUR 10 million to +EUR 16 million, the margin percentage is also picking up from 7.3% to 10.6%. If you directly jump to the full year guidance with a moderately increasing expected adjusted EBITDA, a margin range between 10% and 12%, sorry. We are currently at 9.1% for the first half.
There's a way to go, but not too much. With what we expect in the second half, I think we will easily achieve the 10%-12% and also this moderately increasing earnings numbers. The EUR 26.5 million earnings for the first half, it's 41%, roughly 41% of what we expect for the full year. We see a good, also good results coming up in Q3 and also Q4. In this segment. Maybe you should also note, and we presented it in the last year's report, I think we mentioned it in this year's report.
If you specifically look at the second quarter in the previous year, we had a one-off effect, one-off impact of EUR 2.6 million from the sale of non-controlling interests in an investment which gave us an extraordinary gain of EUR 2.6 million. You should factor that also in when you compare these two segment numbers. Okay. Now let's have a look at Material Solutions, you know that's a mixture of material solution. Well, it's all Material Solutions, it's metal-based and also medical technology based, the majority in the segment, it's metal-based.
I think that was a large discussion point last quarter when we had to lower our guidance in the last quarter, and the supply challenges in the supply chain played a vital role in it. Let's take first a quick look at the segment, at the sector for a whole. It's kind of like, a little bit like engineering, a huge pressure on industry activity, high uncertainty, specifically supply chain challenges with rare earths, I'll come to that later, and also price pressure and more or less the same uncertainty we have in engineering, tariffs, export controls, weakening U.S. Dollar and a weak demand specifically in Germany for type of these products.
That's kind of the overall view on this market. If we have a closer look at the Material Solutions segment, First of all, incoming orders also basically the same picture, that we have a weak Q1, but ramping up incoming orders in the second quarter, which is great. +7%, which also add up a little bit to the order intake for the first half. Still a slight decrease in order backlog, but same comment as with infrastructure. Don't put too much weight on this slight decrease in order backlog because the lead time in Material Solutions is pretty fast, as well as in infrastructure.
I mean, the most meaningful number to look at order backlog is for the engineering segment, not so much for the, for the Material Solutions and the infrastructure segment. Don't put too much weight on the order backlog side. We are still also there slightly increasing incoming orders. From a sales perspective, same picture, pretty weak Q1 with -3.8%. Also it looks like the same -3.9% also in Q2. The first half is -3.9% as well in sales. There's, let's say basically two effects which you also should note or take into account. We closed Emeco, the business of Emeco, at the end of last year.
Emeco had roughly EUR 10 million of sales in 2025.
Well, 24.
Yeah, 2024.
First half. Yeah, first half 2024.
Yeah, not first half. Full year.
When we take into account the Emeco sales, which we had in the first half of last year, then the -3.9% actually was an increase if we carve Emeco out, so it's not that bad as it probably looks. The main driver here was Emeco. That's one aspect. Another aspect here, because there are some sales, in dominated in U.S. dollars, we had also a foreign exchange loss impact here in sales. Basically the -3.9%, if you look at Emeco more closely and you look at the exchange rate gains, you can also make an argument that there's factually an increase.
Okay, full year number at EUR 564, and our guidance says it's slightly decreasing. We are currently at 50%, that's, I think, absolutely feasible to talk about this. We anyway have a slightly improved situation for tungsten carbide. If, you know, we made an argument, we had a huge and a real risk that in one company, production will come to a not to a halt for not completely, but that we have significantly a significant decrease in production based on supply chain issues, specifically with tungsten carbide coming from China, because China extremely tightened the export controls, and it was unclear if we receive enough material to keep production running, up and running.
I think management did a tremendous job in doing countermeasures and securing the supply chain. Currently, we believe that this risk is a little bit lower and that we are convinced that we can more or less deliver the products to all customers in 2025. From an earnings perspective, that's basically what I've already said in the beginning. We had a stable normal Q1, but then in Q2, you see a drop from EUR 16.6 million to EUR 10.3 million and a huge impact have all these countermeasures securing the supply chain for the remainder of the year. There were a lot of countermeasures and they costed also a lot of money.
The good thing is, we have more or less secured our supply chain at least for the remainder of the year, and we see how that turns out in 2026. That's why we increased a little bit our outlook for the materials segment. If you look at the full year and our guidance, we say the EBITDA will strongly decrease. Previously it was very strongly decreased, so we think they will come out a little bit better, but still with a unfavorable margin range between 5.5%-7.5%. Currently we are at 8.1%, so that indicates that we expect still some issues in the second half of 2025. And this is two-folded. We have weak demand in the metal sector.
We don't see as much picking up as we see that in the infrastructure and in the engineering segment, so it will stay weak, and we still cannot probably run at full capacity with based on the tungsten carbide issue. However, this risk is significantly lower than probably in the last quarter. That's why we increased our guidance there with adjusted EBITA a little bit. If we look at the guidance overall, I think I can probably skip this economic outlook for Germany. It might change anyway, but maybe it's worth to mention that Germany is kind of, has kind of the red light from all economies over the world. The global economy is much stronger. The U.S. might be stronger. Eurozone might be stronger.
China and Germany is not really strong overall. To summarize again the signals for the segments, if we look at Engineering, Q2 already showing significant improvement. Keep in mind we have really great order intakes. The business activity expected to pick up further in the second half significantly. We have a strong fourth quarter anticipated, and the segment guidance reiterated from moderately increasing to consistent. There's, we expect a ramp up and way more dynamic in the second half, but still lower than what we originally expected, so we lowered a little bit Engineering segment guidance. On the other hand, we increased or heightened a little bit the Material Solutions guidance.
Overall, for INDUS as a whole, as a group, the guidance is unchanged. We talked already about the infrastructure segment, where we really also expect the second half picking up. We put all that together in one slide, then you see the changes, Well, it's not anyway, it's not INDUS as a whole, which comes in the next slide. If you look into the segments, then you see what I've just tried to explain, that we lowered a little bit the engineering guidance on adjusted EBITA, that we increased a little bit the guidance on adjusted EBITA with Material Solutions, and slightly increased the guidance for sales for Material Solutions. The EBITA margin is expected to be unchanged.
If we look at INDUS as a whole, then we have a completely unchanged guidance compared to Q1 with slight deviations in the segment. I explained why we still believe that we achieved the cash flow number, the EBITA margin, EBITA between EUR 130 million and EUR 165 million, and sales between EUR 170 million and EUR 185 million. Yeah, that was a quick overview about the half year results for INDUS and the outlook for full year. With that, I hand it back to Johannes, and we'll have the Q&A session later.
Thank you. As promised, I will conclude this presentation with some remarks on where we stand on EMPOWERING MITTELSTAND . Just a short flashback to begin with, as those of you who were present at our capital markets stage probably still recall this chart very much. It shows the three growth drivers that we see from the implementation of EMPOWERING MITTELSTAND for the coming years. We have the internationalization as one big issue, we have Empowering M&A as the second issue, and we have the technology as the third issue. Let me just give you an update on what happened on these three specific topics in recent months. Let's start with the internationalization. Oh, sorry, the map I think is hardly to be seen.
That should be the world map, but
Sorry if it's
it's grayish. It's very grayish.
We're testing your geography.
Yes. Yes.
So
Okay. What has happened in the first half of 2025, I mean, we expanded our manufacturing capacities in the U.S. First of all, we acquired METFAB. That was an acquisition that happened in June. It's not yet really seen in the numbers for the first half. We also acquired a subsidiary of HBS that's called SUNBELT, which is also only acquired in June. Again, we don't really see it in the numbers. It's two more manufacturing locations that we added in the U.S. When we look on acquisitions further, we acquired ELECTRO TRADING. That's an acquisition for Auf in Sweden. I think that is developing very well already.
I think this is already included in the numbers because it is consolidated as of 1 January 2025. On top of that, if you recall the presentation of the Capital Markets Day, we are also expanding production footprint of existing portfolio companies in the U.S. When we met in March, we were still talking about the project that FS-BF is going to start a U.S. production in the facilities of AURORA. That has happened meanwhile. FS-BF has the approvals also from their customers, so they started to delivering out of the U.S. for U.S. customers. Being there, and having the capability to manufacture in the U.S. is also raising interest among other FS-BF customers from Europe who want to increase their sale. Yes.
Not their sales, their procurement from FS-BF in the U.S. That's happening. At Hauff -Technik, they are also working on starting the production. They are in the AURORA factory already, but the production has not yet started. I think this is going to happen in the second half of 2025. Then a strategic issue for the HORNGROUP , and I think we presented that also at, in the Capital Markets Day. HORNGROUP has joined forces with GSR and they have now founded?
Mm-hmm.
They found a new sales company for North America where they will have all the brands. Is it staffed already? This is a sales company that will increase the sales of the HORNGROUP in the U.S. further because HORNGROUP is already rather strong in the U.S. Let's look at M&A. I'm showing the acquisitions. Just to be very clear, four acquisitions happened in the first quarter, and the acquisition of TRIGOSYS that you see in the lower left corner only happened in 25 July , so it's not yet included in the half year report, and I think it's important that you see it. We had in total, as I said, as of today, five add-on acquisitions.
We have add-on acquisitions for Hauff Group with KETTLER, which is active in piping systems for public infrastructure. That business is running very well. They acquired ELECTRO TRADING in Sweden. ELECTRO TRADING is active in power grid and distribution networks, so they are supplying products and ELECTRO TRADING is performing well above expectations. Kettler is performing in line with expectations. These were the acquisitions for the Infra and then, as I said, in July, we acquired TRIGOSYS, which is somehow a completion to BETOMAX and ANCOTECH in the field of concrete reinforcements, and that should also see very positive market drive when the infrastructure projects come in. A lot of their staff go to big public infrastructure projects.
When we look on the Engineering segment, we saw the acquisition of HBS in the beginning of the year. That, I think has initially had some operational headaches, created some operational headaches because, as we reported when we bought it in Q1 already, we bought this out of insolvency and it's just an effort to if you make an asset deal and you start a new company to make it operational again, a lot of stuff to be sorted out. This has happened, and now the sales is running as expected. The fourth acquisition here is the fifth acquisition in my counting is METFAB Engineering. This is consolidated as of first of June. It's an acquisition from M BRAUN.
MBRAUN has a lot of interesting projects, and I think they have also largely contributed to the order increase in segment Engineering. A lot of the orders coming from the U.S. and METFAB is a key supplier to them. They have them in their network now, the first thing that they have to do now is to increase capacity at METFAB to meet the demand that MBRAUN has. This has happened. If I look forward, I can tell you we are active in a number of processes right now, and we are talking add-on acquisitions again, but we are also talking about growth acquisitions. That means acquisition in the, on the first level, and we expect to see further acquisitions in the second half of 2025.
If you come to the third topic, which is technology, what's happening there within the segments, the buildup of the technology fields continues to happen. As we reported already on the Capital Markets Day, m+p is now integrated in IPETRONIK and gets much more leverage to enter in new markets. HORNGROUP and GSR are now building one bigger entity under joint management, and they are in particular looking on new markets, and they started that with a new marketing or the new sales company in the U.S. What we also do, that's something new, we do that very actively now. We have also added a personal resource here at INDUS. We set up a venture clienting program.
Venture clienting, the ones of you who haven't heard about it, what is this all about? I mean, it's all about structured cooperation between well-established portfolio company of INDUS and startup companies, it does not mean that we invest in startup companies or that we buy startup companies, but it's a structured way of cooperation to use the technologies that comes out of the startups on the one hand side and to drive innovation in our portfolio companies. On the other hand, it's an possibility for the startup companies to test their product under real-life conditions. That's proceeding. The first three projects are running. Those are some major projects. I think that is something where we will report on in the quarters to come.
If I, if I conclude that, I tell you we are on track with the implementation of EMPOWERING MITTELSTAND, and we are proceeding as planned. To conclude the first part of this presentation, as Rudolf explained in much more detail, we are optimistic about the second half of 2025. The EU and the U.S. have at least reached an agreement on tariffs. That's what we all think. Let's hope that's going to be implemented as announced. On the one hand side, the tariffs, which will again be increased, represent an additional burden for our companies that export directly or indirectly through their customers to the U.S. On the other hand, at least, there is some clarity now, and everybody can start to prepare for the new world.
I think the second important thing also in relation to the information that you give you in the first quarter is that BETEK was able to secure enough supplies of tungsten carbides, so that has eased the pressure on BETEK's business a little, and I think that's the main reason for the guidance improvement in segment materials for the second half of the year. I mean, it also showed that the capabilities of BETEK, the recycling capabilities that they have, helps a lot in an environment that we see now. Overall, we confirm our guidance. I don't repeat the guidance right now, and I think that's the point to conclude the presentation. I hand over to Dafne again to jump into the discussion.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Schmidt, and thank you, Mr. Weichert for elaborations.