Up next is Dafne Sanac from INDUS Holding AG. I just promoted her to the stage. Let's see. Okay, there she is.
Hello, everyone.
Hello. How are you?
I'm good, thank you.
Awesome.
Hi, Mario. Hi, Matthias. Hi, Julien.
Yes, you can start sharing the screen.
Immediately, exactly. We are running short. Let me just pull the presentation and share my screen. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'm going to use a bit of a dynamic format and play out movies as well in between to give a bit more insight on the empowering Mittelstand strategy. Let me just go through one second. My name is Dafne Sanac at INDUS, responsible for Investor Relations. Now I'm going to present the strategy, empowering Mittelstand, for the ones that haven't heard the update in March and a bit on the H1 numbers and a bit of the outlook. Let's just go into the presentation. Basically, first of all, we need to make clear what's INDUS. INDUS is like a Mittelstand holding.
Basically, INDUS is buying companies in the small and medium-sized sector with a strong engineering focus, meaning that all of the companies have an engineering value chain. This is structured around three segments: Engineering, Infrastructure, and Materials. In contrast to maybe other holding companies, INDUS is not a finance holding, so to speak. Most of the majority of the Management Board is consisting of engineers that know their businesses and know how to identify these niche companies that have promising growth prospects for the future. Long-term, sustained growth, focus on engineering, that's like empowering Mittelstand. As I just indicated, you can see some pictures on top, the Management Board. In the financial markets, you use the terminology evergreen financial investor listed on the SDAX, exactly looking for succession plans.
Basically, there are a lot of companies in Germany looking for a successor, and maybe there is not a son or a daughter that wants to take over the business. INDUS wants to become the number one haven for these companies. It's also about strengthening the brand. INDUS for these small and medium-sized companies that basically are looking for a successor. It's very important, as I said before, to understand the business. That's why we emphasize operating in niche markets. INDUS wants to grow, wants to grow to achieve EUR 3 billion in sales in 2030 and thereof EUR 600 million through acquisitions. A small view on the numbers: EUR 1.7 billion sales was generated in 2024. INDUS is present in 30 countries, why we want to strengthen also our international footprint. That's the Board of Management. When I play the movie, you might also identify the pictures of these Management Board members.
COO Engineering is Axel Meyer, who has been with other manufacturing companies beforehand. COO Infrastructure is Dr. Jörn Großmann, who has a PhD in engineering. Material Solutions is Gudrun Degenhart, who has a history also from Thyssen. The central functions are managed by Dr. Johannes Schmidt and Rudolf Weichert who have both over 10- 15 years' experience at INDUS. This is just an overview. What do the segments inherit? What does it actually mean? Engineering covers from software solutions to mechanical engineering, from building components to structural solutions, is Infrastructure. Material Solutions includes from microoptics to wear tools, which is very important because Material Solutions is not only consisting of metals or materials processing, but also a small amount of companies are anchored in the medical field, but they're working on materials like lenses or formerly on fabrics. These are the three segments.
In revenue size, nearly equally big, but in margin size, also dynamic and different seasoning. I'll go further into detail when I talk about the numbers. We talked about the numbers. EUR 1.7 billion sales. It's just an EBITDA of EUR 154 million in 2024. INDUS is also putting a strong focus on its balance sheet, around keeping the leverage between 2 and 2.5x EBITDA. Important to keep in mind that INDUS is strongly free cash flow generative and has generated nearly EUR 200 million of free cash flow in 2023 and EUR 135 million in 2024. The guidance for 2025 is over EUR 90 million. For the previous presenter, Matthias or Mario, you've asked, why should you invest in the stock? This is like a, I'll let you read maybe the long sentences, but maybe look at the red highlighted key buzzwords. This is basically, why should you buy an INDUS stock?
You have the diversified portfolio and access to sophisticated industrial engineering. The portfolio is resilient as such as it's geographically and in terms of its segments diversified. INDUS is ambitious to acquire and is acquiring very successfully and attractive companies. It has an active portfolio development, meaning that we have, I call them in-house consultants. We have like three or four experts that look at operational excellence, market excellence, innovation, sustainability, and also new venture clienting, which is all this active portfolio development to grow the businesses. Profitability and solid free cash flow as a guarantee for regular dividend payments. Important to point out, INDUS has never not paid dividends. There was always a dividend payment, and INDUS will continue to do so. Obviously, you will not have access to these niche companies via the capital market. Instead, you have to invest in INDUS or a holding company.
Otherwise, you might not get the access. This is the overall investment case. Why should you buy an INDUS stock? This is what you have to look at. Now I want to go into detail about what does it mean, empowering Mittelstand. That's the new strategy, new March. I'm just talking to the people that might not have had the opportunity to look at the materials. It's based on three pillars. Beforehand, it was parcours perform or parcours. Now we've renamed the strategy into empowering Mittelstand to actually distill the growth drivers, which is empowering internationalization, empowering M&A, and empowering technology. Obviously, INDUS wants to grow, but organically as well as via acquisitions. International growth can go via two ways.
Either we want to grow on portfolio level, meaning that one of the companies, one of the companies we own, might want to expand in a certain market, for instance, the U.S., and itself will identify an M&A target. This will be fully international. On holding level, we expand towards Europe. We're also thinking about, basically, and I will talk about this in more detail, to divest maybe here and there if companies do not match the growth prospects anymore of INDUS. Keeping in mind internationalization on portfolio level, international holding level, more towards Europe, not only Germany focused. Empowering M&A, I just talked about, this is just the budget, investing around EUR 500 million until 2030 to come to the EUR 3 billion. Empowering technology, I initially said something about venture clienting. You can also look at the topic of AI.
Basically, AI is also included in the value chain of the one and the other company, for instance, Siemens and BTEC, in terms of recycling processes and in terms of identifying reusable material, for instance. All of this should happen without a capital increase, just financed by free cash flow and additional net debt, but keeping a ratio below 2.5x EBITDA. This is just, I'm just looking at the clock there. This is just basically an example of what we did: expansion of capacities in the U.S. through acquisition of MetFab HBS subsidiary. I would recommend that you look at our companies online and look at the website, and then you get a better grasp of what each of the companies will do. These are just some examples that we've highlighted here in the presentation. We've already done five add-on acquisitions that have been particularly small.
The spending was only EUR 22 million, I think, in the first half of the year. There will be some acquisitions coming on portfolio level and on holding level. Here you can see what I've initially talked about: Sweden, obviously, and increasing the footprint there for our portfolio companies in the infrastructure segment and also expanding the footprint in the U.S. via MetFab and HBS. I talked a bit about Venture Clienting. This is something new. We have someone that's actually from Gestalt Robotics, the Managing Director or the Interim Managing Director. She came to the holding company to actually support with setting up a venture clienting program, which helps startups, obviously, to launch their ideas in a cooperation process and a collaboration with the portfolio companies without any M&A transaction. It's more a collaborative space.
I think now maybe it's important to get a bit of a grasp of how actually INDUS works. Play a movie one second of this works. One second. Let's just play this movie.
We have no sound. I'm sorry about that. Have you clicked during the sound?
There's no sound, you said?
No.
No. Okay, we leave the movie out, then it doesn't work.
Let me try to do it. I have it prepared. It's the first one.
All right.
Let's see.
Yes.
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This stage is yours again. Shall I start the second movie?
Fantastic. I'll continue with the presentation. One second. I'll share my screen. Now I'll go over to talk a bit more about the financials for everyone to estimate how the first half of the year has actually developed. Let me just go into detail of the first half of the year. It's quite a long way back, right? Because now we have October and now it's the fourth quarter. Let's just summarize the highlights of the first half going until the 30th of June. Obviously, it's a tough environment. Nevertheless, the H1 sales have been at previous year's level despite the continuing weak economy. Q2 has even been stronger than previous year. Obviously, challenges at that time have been the U.S. tariffs and Chinese export controls, and the weak dollar weighs on the adjusted EBITDA. To finance further growth, INDUS has placed a promissory note of EUR 125 million.
We've recently confirmed the forecast, which you can see below because we've lowered it earlier in the year. Let me just quickly go through the segments. Overall, to incoming orders, I will just do a summary and then maybe you can look at the slides overall. The order backlog looks very good, with the 5% increase. This is basically due to the good development of the segment engineering. Nevertheless, this is an outlook that goes towards the next year as well and not particularly towards the fourth quarter because if you monitor how the sector is developing, engineering is actually not a dynamic sector at the moment. I just want to indicate that the order book development looking forward to the next year, and because contracts are planned long forward, is positive. Nevertheless, we are hesitant to say the same for the entire year.
Next slide, maybe we have a look at what I just pointed out about the revenue of the first half year that was nearly stable. The guidance and the adjusted EBITDA obviously dropped 24%, but we are expecting a recovery in H2 because most of the segments are more backend loaded. That's the terminology you usually use. To look at the free cash flow, that's important because we are saying that we basically want to achieve over EUR 90 million in 2025. The free cash flow has been at - EUR 8 million at the half year. This is due to the working capital dynamics and to the course of the business. You have to keep in mind that businesses are not running at their highest capacity and not at their highest, well, opportunities.
Basically, in the end, you can also withdraw some investments and therefore steer out a free cash flow to achieve the over EUR 90 million in 2025. Balance sheet is in good shape because, as you see, net debt, I mean, equity ratio, obviously, net debt has gone up because here and there we've done some acquisitions. We've taken out or we refinanced. The equity ratio is still at 38%. Overall, leverage is still between 2 and 2.5x EBITDA. I'm not going to talk too much about the details of each segment because this is going to take too much of our time. What you have to keep in mind is let's look at the outlook. Basically, the guidance, this is a good picture to look at because engineering, as I said, is a bit, it's a difficult environment.
Overall, we confirmed our guidance, but we changed a bit each of the segment parts. Consistent, meaning we lowered it for the adjusted EBITDA. For material solutions, we increased the sales and we increased the adjusted EBITDA assumption because this is also due to, if you follow the ad hoc messaging, to being in trouble about the tungsten supply, which has now been solved for 2025. Obviously, conditions are tough. Overall, confirming the guidance with different components, engineering, I mean, challenging environment, infrastructure, we left the guidance as it is, and material solutions slightly improved. One nice illustration about our dividends, I talked about our dividend policy that INDUS has never not paid dividends. You can have a look at this. The dividend yield has been 5.9% in 2024, but also due to share buyback programs we've done, yeah. This is the shareholder structure, a very stable shareholder structure.
Around 50%, I'd say, is free float because you don't see everything that's here on this picture. Overall, it's a diversified shareholder base in its free float by the countries of Scandinavia, U.S., and Germany. What I think is a good opportunity, if I could ask you, Matthias, just to play the second movie about the financials quickly.
All right. Yes. Give me a second. Can you hear it?
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No sound? There's no sound, but it's okay. Maybe we go over to Q&A. Thank you very much, Matthias. I think this has been a good conclusion to the presentation. If you have any questions, please send them to investor.relations@indus.de. I'm also happy to answer questions just now.
Perfect. Thank you so much. The first question was regarding the dividend. Is there a minimum dividend? Have you ever decreased the dividend?
There is not a minimum dividend, so to speak, but we want to pay out up to 50% of the net income of the so-called Einzelabschluss, the net income of INDUS Holding AG. We slightly reduced the dividend from 2021 to 2022 from EUR 1.05 to EUR 0.80. Basically, there has never been a year where there has been no dividend exactly.
You have expanded now to the Scandinavian region. Will that part of the world remain a focus area? Will you expand over there? What have you learned from it?
Yes, definitely. I mean, like in the end, the Mittelstand idea is also very present in Scandinavia, which might be surprising if you haven't done your research. It will definitely be a target area. What have you learned or what have we learned? I think INDUS has a very professional M&A process with paying attractive multiples from our point of view, obviously. Therefore, I think it just confirmed to continue on that path. Yeah.
With so many international companies and subsidiaries, how do you manage to maintain this Mittelstand culture?
Yeah, exactly. It's very important to maintain this culture in the end that the Management Board isn't aloof of the daily business without interfering too much. That's the art of the science, so to speak. In the end, they cultivate the exchange. They have each of the Board Management members that look out for their segments, have segment meetings, want to cultivate the exchange between the subsidiaries, but don't intervene too much in the daily business to keep the Mittelstand character or Mittelstand features, to not interfere in daily business, but keep the eye on the general development, on the future, on the perspective until 2030, yes.
Okay. It's already 11:30 A.M. I will already promote [Tobias Bodermeier of SDAX] to the stage. Maybe, Dafne, you can give one last summary of INDUS Holding. What can you say to the investors?
Yeah, exactly. INDUS, I think, is very interesting if you're looking for a dividend-paying company and a story that's basically long-term, like looking at long-term growth and prospect towards 2030.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.