Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Jenoptik AG conference call regarding the results of the first nine months 2018. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dr. Stefan Traeger.
Thank you very much and a very warm welcome from us here in Jena to our Q3 earnings call. With me today, as always, is Hans-Dieter Schumacher, our CFO. As usual, we're going to start the call with a quick look into the recent developments of the Jenoptik Group. We're going to give you a quick current trading update. We will discuss later on the individual segments of our company, have a closer look into that, and we will round up the call with our outlook. You will have seen that we have raised our forecast for year-end on sales and the absolute profit targets, and we will discuss that at the end of the call. Let me first of all, though, take you through some major events that have happened in the last few months, or actually in the first nine months of this year.
Just relatively recently, we have launched the new brand for our mechatronic defense business. That has been a major milestone for us. In fulfillment of our new strategy, we brought to light the new brand for this business. It has been received very nicely, both in the marketplace as well as within our own organization. Our associates have been very positive about that. For us, very, very important milestone, and we delivered on a, if you want, a promise of our strategy. We have made two acquisitions this year thus far. Earlier in the year, we have acquired Prodomax. Prodomax Automation has been the largest acquisition that Jenoptik has done in the last decade or so, and it's developing pretty nicely, and we're going to talk you through some of the backdrops and backgrounds of Prodomax later in the call.
Recently, we've also added the OTTO Group, OTTO Vision Technology and OVITEC, to our business. It's more of a local acquisition here in Thuringia, and we explain that in more detail later on as well. We don't just invest into new companies that we acquire. In addition to the portfolio, we're also investing into expanding and modernizing our own locations and facilities in order to improve our own business and prepare ourselves for even more growth in the future. We have today raised our revenue forecast, as you will have seen. We kept our margin target now at the same level, based on the higher sales. In return, that does mean that the absolute profit targets are now higher for the group. We do that despite the fact that we have substantial PPA effects, which we are going to detail later on in the call.
If we had a quick look at the results itself, financially, the first months of 2018 had certainly been very successful for Jenoptik. We're proud of what we have delivered thus far. Revenues are up 12.6%, and if we exclude the acquisitions that we just mentioned, organically, we have seen sales growing by 8.5% to now a total of EUR 593.4 million after the first three quarters. We managed to expand our margins pretty significantly. We added around 110 basis points to our EBITDA margin, which is essentially a plus of 21.7%, and that equates to EUR 89 million on our EBITDA line. Overall, the first nine months of the year have been very, very promising, and we're going to go into more details, as I said, in the call.
Let me just take you to the next page and have a real quick look on the two acquisitions that we've made thus far. Both of which developed very, very promising in the first weeks that we have them with us in the group. Firstly, Prodomax. We've discussed that in the last call that we had together. Prodomax has been the largest acquisition the company has made in recent years. With Prodomax, we basically continue down the road that we have started to sort of explore with the acquisition of Five Lakes Automation last year already. Prodomax is a machine integrator and helps us to expand our business in the process automation, particularly on the automotive industry.
In a business, in a segment in our industry, automation of production processes, where we are very convinced that it's going to grow in the years to come, and we're very pleased to have our colleagues up in Barrie, Ontario now with us. Prodomax has about 180 employees, as I said, headquartered in Barrie, Ontario, in Canada. We bring to them, obviously, is number one, our local or global sales channels. Prodomax is thus far acting predominantly in the Toronto and Detroit area. They are selling to the big OEMs and Tier 1s in Detroit and Toronto, so really at the U.S. automotive industry. We bring to them, as I said, our global channels, and we want to and are going on, hopefully, are going to expand that business around the globe. We're also bringing to Prodomax, though, our financial power. In this segment, pre-financing of larger deals often is required.
We have the financial power and the willingness to invest into that business, to grow that business and to enable that business to participate in larger deals, and therefore enabling them to grow their own business going forward. Thus far, as I said earlier, very pleased with the acquisition of Prodomax. It contributes quite a lot already to the figures that we're discussing here. There is a consolidation effect and an IFRS 15 effect, which we have detailed in our reporting. As I said, thus far, actually very pleased with how Prodomax develops for us also operationally. The OTTO Group that we've acquired more recently is a smaller and local organization and local acquisition. They're based here in our headquarter, or near our headquarters here in Jena and Thuringia. They do bring to us very interesting technology.
Otto comes with an optical 2D and 3D inspection systems for quality assurance and process optimization. They are selling currently predominantly in the automotive industry, and we are going to integrate that business into our automotive division, which is going to be called Light & Production. Otto doesn't, though, just sell to automotive. They're also seeing a good potential in neighboring and adjacent segments, in particular in the electronic industry. We're pretty convinced that this type of production metrology and industrial imaging for process applications is an important step into what we call Industry 4.0, an expansion of our business into that direction. With that said, I'll hand over to Anton, who is going to take us through the numbers in more detail, and later on we will give more color around our segments. Anton?
Thank you, Stefan. A very warm welcome from my side as well. Here you see now the slide concerning our revenue development over the quarters and the first nine months. In total, you see the increase of 12.6% to the highest revenue in a nine-month period in the last years of EUR 593.4 million. Without the acquisition impact, so to speak, in the revenue, we have an organic growth of 8.5%, meaning that the acquired companies contributed around about EUR 22 million in revenue. We had a business increase in all three segments, stronger demand, in particular from the areas of semiconductor equipment, health care and industry, which is still on a very high level, and we see no downturn in the near and middle timeframe from now on. Stefan will explain it to you later when he talks about the segments.
As well as Traffic Safety Solutions, we have talked to you about our toll monitoring system with our partner Toll Collect in Germany, which we have shown in our figures already in the first six months. It had not have an impact in Q3 anymore, no major at least, but we have seen a very positive development in the first six months. This has been the positive toll winds in the businesses. If you then follow me to the page six, you see the regional split of our revenue. In the meantime, our foreign part of the revenue has reached almost 70%. If you see it on the world card, you see that Americas has 24.7% increase. Not only driven by the acquisition, but obviously very supported by our acquisitions there with Five Lakes Automation in U.S. and Prodomax in Canada. You see Europe, an increase of 15.7%.
There you see the main reason is obviously our ongoing good business in semiconductor area. You see Germany with 19.4%, where you can see the positive impact from the Toll Collect business. You see, on the first few, minus development, minus in revenues in Asia Pacific of 15.8%. This is due to the fact that we could not gain the follow-up project in Australia, but we are working hard to cover this in the months to come. This is the development in the regions. If you then look into the profit figures, EBITDA and EBIT, you see that they even stronger developed on a sales increase. EBITDA, Stefan has already mentioned, increased by 22%, roughly 21.7%. With 15.0% margin, we have now a substantial improvement of 110 basis points compared to prior year, where we had 13.9%.
In these EBITDA figures, we have already booked an impact of the Purchase Price Allocation effects of minus EUR 4.8 million. You can ask the question, why do you have some PPA effects also in the EBITDA, not only in EBIT? This is coming from the inventory side. We have the impact from an inventory step up, but it means on the other side that they are turning around the inventories in the sales figure, and now we took the negative hit. There is another, approximately, before you ask me the question, approximately we foresee another EUR 1 million to come to the year end. All in all, we will have booked then roughly EUR 6 million in the EBITDA margin to the year end, and we still keep our 15% EBITDA margin as a target. Then the acquisition costs.
We have to have lawyers and auditors on our side to be very precise and have a sure basis that everything is done well. We have booked costs for the acquisition of EUR 1.8 million. Both of these impacts you also see in the EBIT, but on top, you have Purchase Price Allocation impacts, mainly on the sales cost, sales functional cost coming from the customers, valuation, depreciation. All in all, we have an impact in the EBIT of minus EUR 6.3 million, but despite this impact, we have an EBIT margin of 11.2%, which is also a very, very good and strong EBIT margin for the Jenoptik Group for a lot of years. It's clear above prior year with 9.9%. We have shown it to you here very transparent.
The acquired companies contributed to this EBIT figure of EUR 66.7 million or to the EUR 23.9 million in Q3 alone, only minus 0.2%, including this PPA impact or effect. The calculation is then lying on the table. If you take out this, then you can take the message with you that the operational EBIT of the acquired companies has been around EUR 6.1 million, linked to 21.8% gives a-
Hello?
Yeah. What a fun one. Sorry.
Just continue.
Gives you a clear indication how profitable our acquired companies operational are on the operational side. You see on the next page the P&L in a little bit more detailed. I think a very important message from this slide is the clear improvement on the earnings per share, meaning the net figure, taking into account even our tax side. The earnings per share increased from EUR 0.77 per share to EUR 0.94 per share, which is also a very strong development and above the sales increase, clear above. You see it here, it was driven by relatively low functional costs, only an increase of EUR 3 million, roughly EUR two-point-something million, but it's mainly an increase in R&D and selling expenses and the opposite is the case in the administrative expenses side. We have reduced them, which is one of our targets.
It's working out already a little bit. The gross margin was influenced by the PPA impact on the one side, and the other side is that the acquired business on the Prodomax side has, in the business model, a little bit lower gross margin than the rest of the Jenoptik Group. Because they have relatively low functional costs, they have such a high EBITDA and EBIT margin. You see it here. The financial result, I'd like to explain with one sentence. It has a development from plus EUR 2.3 million to minus EUR 2 million, and this is a deviation which is only linked to one-off income from the disposal of a non-operating financial investment we hold last year, and we sold it to a new owner of the company.
This is the only impact there, the cash effective tax rate is still relatively low with 14.5%, which is due to the U.S. tax reform, which helped us here. All in all, even if you look in a more detailed side to the bottom line, at the very bottom line, it's a very strong development of our company. I'd like to look with you all my view together with you in the future of the development. You see here two very important KPIs. On the one side, the order intake, on the other side, the order backlog of the group. The order intake, I'd like to highlight that recently, I think yesterday, today, we have published two major order intakes we have received in our Traffic Safety business. These big orders are not in the figures here.
We will show them in Q4, Stefan Traeger will explain it to you a little bit later when he goes through the segment development. We'd like to address here that in the Q3 alone, we had a plus of 11.9% on the order intake side that we ended up now after nine months with a plus of 2.1%. With this very strong Q3 in mind, we think that the rest of the year will also develop very positive. I think we can switch over to the order backlog. The order backlog is a plus 6%, reached now EUR 480.9 million. A good basis for our commitment to you concerning our revenue target till the end of the year. We assume that we will have 48.1% converted into revenue in this year, which gives us a strong basis for our guidance for the rest of the year.
It's, by the way, also influenced by the acquired companies, of course. My last slide before I'd like to hand over to our CEO. I love this slide. It always comes with me as the last slide because it's all about my favorite issue, that free cash flow. I think we'd like to give you together a strong signal that Jenoptik is able to finance the investments and the acquisitions from our cash and cash flow. All in all, we ended up after nine months, including the payouts for our investments and acquisitions, with a net debt of only EUR 16.6 million. A year ago, we have been at, so to speak, plus EUR 69 million. We think that till the year end, it should even improve in the direction of a zero balance, probably. All in all, a very strong development. You see it here.
Cash flow is approximately double as high as in the prior year from EUR 32 million to EUR 57 million. We have obviously increased our working capital in absolute figures because of the strong sales development. The trade receivables and inventories are high. The ratio is with 29.5% still better than the year ago with 31.3%. All in all, we are in good financial shape. This is, I think, the key takeaway from this slide. Then I'd like to hand over again to Stefan, who will explain to you the performance of our segments and the outlook.
Sure. Thank you. You know what? Let's dive right in into it and start with our Light & Optics segment. In Light & Optics, we have seen continuing very positive performance and development, driving growth and expanding profitability. There always have been a discussion, particularly in the last few weeks and months about semi and SEMICON and the development of that market. I keep saying we don't have a crystal ball, none of us has. The only thing we can tell is how our own funnel is looking like and what we see in the marketplace and from our own customers. Quite frankly, that continues to be strong. We have not seen any indication for a real downturn in that business, at least, as I said, not from our customers, not in our funnels.
As you can see, as a result of continued strong demand from the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry, as well as our customers in healthcare and the life science area, we have seen order intake growing by 4.8% to now EUR 233.4 million after nine months, which is, I guess, versus last year, which already had been very strong, a real positive development. You do see that sales have been growing even harder. We managed to grow our Optics & Life Science business by 10.4% based on the strong demand, ongoing strong demand, and also based on the good performance of the business, our associates and the like. We have seen, as I said, very strong growth. We work hard to ship as much as we possibly can out of this segment. Nevertheless, the book-to-bill rate is still above one.
We have a book-to-bill of 1.11, which again indicates the ongoing strong demand and quite frankly, the ongoing tailwind that we get out of this business. With the even higher volume and the positive product mix, we have seen EBITDA stepping up significantly. Our margins are very positive. We have seen EBITDA coming to now EUR 51.1 million for the segment after nine months, an increase of 18.9%, and the margin has stepped up to 24.2% after the first nine months. If it comes to Optics & Life Science, as I already indicated, we are very positive about that business. We do see the current trading developing very nicely and at least for the foreseeable future, the next weeks, months, and into the early part of 2019, we do not see any signs for a significant downturn here.
With that said, let me go to the mobility segment, which has been influenced by one-time effects this year quite a bit. Order intake in this segment is now up by 5.7%. Hans-Dieter already pointed out what is not included in the EUR 212.3 million are the large orders for the traffic solutions business that we have received and communicated yesterday. We have discussed those orders a number of times in the past, so I think I have said a number of times that there is something in the funnel, but we were not quite sure when it will land. Now it did land, and we are very positive and very pleased with the fact that we could bring home that business. It will show up, though, in Q4 in this segment. Revenues have improved even more significantly, organically as well as via M&A in effect.
From an organic point of view, the rollout of our traffic solutions Toll Collect project has helped us significantly in the first half. We have communicated that and discussed that in the past already. We have made good organic growth from our Toll Collect project in Q1 and Q2. We also see ongoing demand in the automotive industry for our existing projects, so that overall and all in all, excluding acquisitions, the segment could bring in 11.6% of organic growth. If we add to that the contributions that we have got from our acquisitions, OTTO and Prodomax, have seen, as I said earlier, revenues growing by 23.7% to now EUR 223.4 million. It has to be said that in particular for Prodomax, we have seen some consolidation effects from the translation from local Canadian GAAP into IFRS 15, which had an additional positive impact on our sales figure here.
With the higher sales number, with the higher volume, and the positive mix effects, we also see the profitability expanding very nicely in that segment. The EBITDA figure that you see here of EUR 25.4 million already does include substantial acquisition-related negative effects. We have had around EUR 1.8 million of one-time costs related to the acquisitions that we have made. We have seen PPA effects of EUR 4.8 million in the EBITDA and EUR 6.3 million in the EBIT figure. Those are, of course, estimations at this moment in time. That is what we have booked. I think Hans-Dieter already pointed out what we expect for the remainder of the year. Nevertheless, the EBITDA margin of this business, including the acquisition effects, including the PPA effects and the one-time effects, came to now 11.4% EBITDA. I think that is a very positive development for us.
From mobility, let me go to the defense and civil systems. The colleagues there have, as I pointed out earlier, launched the new brand of our defense business. We are now going to market under the name Vincorion with this business. Very positive development. As I said earlier, the new brand has been received very nicely, actually, in the marketplace. I think it helps us to commercialize products in this arena and in this area better going forward. I have said in the past, and I am continuing to use this sort of phrase or the line here, let me point it out one more time. We do not have an active process at the very moment to sell this business. However, we explicitly do not want to exclude that for any future developments.
Revenues in the segment, in the defense and civil systems, have grown by 3.8% to now EUR 160.9 million, as expected. We have seen our EBITDA number, our profitability, rising quite a lot actually here as well, which is attributable to a profit mix effect, but also to some operational cost savings that we could achieve in the business in the first nine months. EBITDA margin of the defense and civil systems business or the Vincorion business is now at 11.6% versus 10.2% in past years, and the EBIT margin improved to 9.6%, which I believe in this business is a very good development. Nevertheless, we think there is a positive development that we have seen here, and we are certainly going to work hard to improve the stats and figures of this business going forward. Quick look to the order intake in Vincorion or the defense and civil systems business.
You do see that the order intake declined versus the first nine months of last year. Please let me point out again that we have had a very tough comparator here in the first quarter. Essentially, in the second and third quarter, we managed to close the gap here and to get closer to the last year's order intake. That is pretty normal in this project-driven business. At this moment in time, we are looking with quite some confidence in the order intake development of our Vincorion business. With that said, let me switch gears somewhat and go to the outlook, to our guidance here. This morning, we have raised our guidance, actually the second time this year.
Following the acquisition of Prodomax and the OTTO Group and the application of IFRS for these companies, we now expect revenues to be in a range of between EUR 820 million and EUR 830 million. We still anticipate an EBITDA margin of around 15% at this higher sales level, which obviously translates into higher absolute profit numbers. Included in our margin targets are already, as we've discussed, around EUR 4.8 million PPA effects in the EBITDA figure and around EUR 6.2 million PPA effects in the EBIT figure from the acquisitions. We have already digested one-time effects from acquisition effects, as Martino pointed out, the payment of lawyers and the like. Overall, we are very pleased with the development of the group in the first nine months.
We look with, quite frankly, a lot of confidence towards the remainder of the year and for the remaining weeks and months. We have a good basis for strong growth and revenue expansion for our business. We do see, at this moment at least, the start in the new year to be pretty strong. We do monitor very carefully the recent political developments. In this call we have discussed that a number of times. We do depend on global trade. We do believe in global trade. We monitor potential political effects very closely, in particular when it comes to trade wars between different jurisdictions. At this moment, we don't see a major impact into our own business, but we monitor it very closely. It does come with sort of a disclaimer that who knows what's going to happen in 2019.
I said earlier, we don't have a crystal ball. All we can do at the moment is look into our own business funnels and our own pipeline, and that does continue to look pretty strong at this point in time. With that said, we would like to close our presentation here and look forward to receiving interesting questions from your end.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press nine star again. Please press nine star now to state your question. The first question comes from Mr. Craig Abbott, Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. I have two questions, if I may. First of all, just getting back to your outlook statements regarding your semi activities, obviously very positive. I'm just trying to get a better feel for why the outlook situation for your customers in semi remains so positive when we've seen so many companies in that space obviously warn and see very real and very sharp declines in their order intake figures going into the fourth quarter, as a number of the same producers have implemented quite significant cuts in their CapEx over the short term. Is this because your customers are still benefiting from upgrade trends and in particular conversion to EUV? I'm just trying to get a better feel for why there is a sort of special situation that your customers are still seeing, have good pipeline and are seeing such good demand there.
Secondly, on the defense and civil system, I noticed in the report you mentioned that there is an arms freeze being considered for Saudi Arabia, which could also potentially include deliveries of equipment that have already been approved. I just wondered to what extent this has been taken into consideration in the revised guidance on whether or not this could represent a potential sizable risk in that business over the next months should that come about. Thank you.
Craig, thank you very much for your questions. Let me start with the Saudi Arabia question. At this moment, we don't have a large exposure to Saudi Arabia. We have had in the past deals with Saudi Arabia. We did make business there in the past, at the very moment, our exposure to Saudi Arabia is next to none, actually. Sorry, next to zero, actually. It's a better way of saying it. Next to zero, actually. It has been included in our figures, in that we don't see an impact for our current business. On the semi one, to be honest with you, that needs a longer explanation, because quite frankly, we were asking ourselves a number of times in the last few months how come that we don't see it, whilst a lot of other market participants indicate and actually do see sharper declines there.
We came to the conclusion that, for a start, this whole business, this whole industry really has changed in that the end customer exposure, if you want, diversified so much. Whilst in the past, semicon was pretty simple, the more PCs are sold, the more the industry goes up or down. Nowadays, one has to look just so much more careful and closer, and dissect the marketplace so much more diligently. We do sell essentially into two segments of the whole semi space. We sell into optical lithography, and we sell into optical inspection businesses. If one dissects the optical lithography, which for us is the biggest semicon sector, we sell into machine builders of optical lithography machines.
There are a few, less than a handful of real players in that segment left, if you want, two of which have their own optics business, a significant optics business. I think we can talk about these days. In this segment, there is ASML, there is Canon, there is Nikon, and a few other much smaller players. Canon and Nikon essentially have their own, if you want, their own products. You all know that we sell to ASML. If you follow what ASML has communicated, actually just recently in their capital markets day, I think that is a good explanation. Actually probably the better explanation than whatever I can come up with of how come that we don't see it in terms of a downturn and the like.
I guess the best way for me to answer the question is to point to their communication, to be honest, because it's very nicely explained there.
Okay.
I guess that is why it predominates that we don't see it. We do also sell into the inspection arena, an important segment for us as well. In the inspection, things are also still strong, not as much as in the lithography space. There are some companies in the inspection that sort of are a little bit more cautious there. Overall, the impact for us is predominantly driven by our large customer in the Netherlands. I don't want to raise sort of the perception that it's just that. I think it's just because essentially, in a way, we're lucky that we sell into two segments that don't seem to be as affected as, for example, the vacuum industry. I think essentially, that's the explanation.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Malte Schaumann, Warburg Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon. The first one is on your gross margin in the third quarter. Would it be a fair view to strip out the EUR 4.8 million charge for the inventory step-up and then arrive at a 38% gross margin in the quarter?
To be honest with you, we don't publish too poor gross margin figures. As I already tried to explain to you, we will see another inventory step-up PPA impact in Q4, roughly roundabout an additional EUR 1 million, so that we will end up with EUR 5.8 or roughly EUR 6 million. On the EBIT side, you will end up with additional EUR 3 million. At the moment, we are foreseeing roughly EUR 9 million in the EBIT, coming from EUR 6.3. All in all, there are some negative impacts to come in the Q4 as well, but they are not as big as they have been in the Q3.
Yeah.
With the strong development in a regular Q4, we will see a strong gross margin. Yeah.
A very short answer to the question is probably yes.
Okay. Then on that, was it just product mix, or were there specific drivers that then led to the high thirties margin, which is clearly above the level seen in the prior quarters?
I guess here the answer is really mix.
Yeah.
It's mix. It's product mix. The more we sell in certain highly profitable businesses for us or segments for us, the higher, of course, our gross profit. I would like to point out one thing. Maybe I use the opportunity, or we use the opportunity to just discuss an effect from Prodomax in particular.
It's not that big thus far, but Prodomax or the automation business per se, the integration business per se, has not the highest gross margins because there's a lot of third-party items that are essentially marked up and get pushed through into the channels. We can discuss that in more detail if we want to, but just to give you a full colorful picture here, there's a number of effects that we see that will impact our gross profit margin going forward, partially because of the dilutive effect, and of course, the positive mix effect that we've discussed on the opposite hand. Going forward, though, as I said, integrating businesses like Prodomax inherently have lower gross profit margin because of the effect of marking up and pushing through a channel third-party items.
It's a very profitable business because the bottom line effect is very positive.
Yes.
Gross profit margin isn't affected there.
Okay, good. On G&A, that came down from the nine months 2017 figures, probably minor currency effects played a role here, but you significantly gained in G&A efficiency. When should we expect G&A to start rising again? How long can you maybe keep that level stable, or I maybe would not expect to come that further down, so what is your view on that item?
Look, we will continue to work hard to reduce our G&A expenses in terms of % of sales. I think your anticipation of, at some point it will, shall we say, find a bottom and it might even rise again at some point, is certainly not wrong. We will work hard to keep at least the ratio in % of sales at a lower level and improve there going forward.
Yeah. Okay. Your guidance hike was more or less a technical reason due to higher contributions from Prodomax and OTTO Group. Is that the right view? Consolidation driven?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay. On your automotive business, especially the project pipeline, there was a lot of noise around the automotive industry, et cetera, recently over the past, let's say two, three months. Do you see changes in your project pipeline with regards to the industrial metrology and the automation business and laser business?
That's a very good question. As you said, there has been a lot of noise in the industry. About a year ago or so, we were sitting here scratching our head, quite frankly, even a bit worried about the impact of e-mobility and all of that, and what does that mean for us, and so on and so forth. In the last few weeks, I've continued to say that this discussion, the tone of the discussion has changed, at least in our company, actually quite a bit. If you think about the underlying trends in the automotive industry, there is certainly a trend to more hybrid-type cars. If you think about a hybrid car, hybrid between combustion engine and an e-mobile or electronic engine, then these hybrid cars, they need downsized, yet way more efficient combustion engines.
In order to make that happen, companies need our metrology equipment, which drives sales for us. In addition to that, we can also participate and profit from the trends to more e-mobility, both in our metrology business, but also in our laser processing business, because quite frankly, whilst the uncertainty in the automotive business is still very high, one thing becomes ever clearer, the complexity for the industry rises. In other words, they have to provide more and more different models, and the lifetime of a particular model becomes smaller and smaller. When do we sell? Essentially, we sell when there's a change in the production street or in the production environment. Whenever there's a change, that helps us actually. Our view at the moment is the more change in the automotive industry, the better for us.
However, it does come, of course, with the caveat of the uncertainty that certainly is in the industry. What we see is that there's a lot of pressure on payment terms, not necessarily holding back investment. As a matter of fact, we're actually convinced now that the automotive industry cannot hold back on investments. They have to invest if they want to survive. If they want to face that trend to changes in the industry. What does show up, though, is a lot of pressure on payment terms, on pre-financing of deals, if you want. That we've discussed that already when we talked about Prodomax. We are lucky enough to be in a position to at least be able to deal with that, and therefore actually taking share of it at the moment.
Okay. Sounds promising, you just don't seem to be too concerned about the shorter-term prospects or your more immediate project pipeline.
Actually, on the contrary, we have been a bit concerned last year. If you would have asked me the same question a year ago, I would've been more concerned than I am at the moment because of that effect. Of course, we don't know really what the future is going to bring. I said earlier, we don't have a crystal ball. We do monitor the whole trade war effects and all of that, but short-term in our own pipeline, we don't see a negative impact here at all.
I'd like to say only one sentence because I'm acting as the head of the division in addition to my CFO.
For a couple of weeks.
Since the beginning of the year and now to the year-end, probably, or the beginning of the next year. Everything Stefan said, I'd like to underline because I am with the business, I talk to our colleagues and potential customers, and I can see a lot of promising contacts to customers. There's an ongoing demand for projects. We are busy. The division is busy.
Yeah.
Okay. Last question in that regard, that is then my final question is again, what do you see in that respect development, especially in China, discussion with Chinese, maybe more Asian clients, especially with Chinese clients?
Mm-hmm. Okay. Maybe that is the one thing where we should be a bit more cautious here. We are a bit more cautious. The ongoing discussion, in particular between the United States and China, they could have an impact on our business. We don't know at this moment. Certainly, we do ship stuff from the U.S. into Asia, partially into China. Also, the tariffs on both sides, they could have an impact going forward. That's why we're so cautious here on this end. We don't see a major impact at this moment, but how that is going to develop in 2019, we don't quite know.
Yeah, sure. Understood. Thanks.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Richard Schwam, HSBC. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Two questions, please. One concerning the PPA going forward. As you mentioned that this year it's mainly driven by this inventory item, but this should then purposely fade out next year. Is it a fair assumption that next year on EBITDA, never we should expect more or less no further impact and on EBIT, there remains this around about EUR 3 million per year going forward?
May I answer? Okay. Hello, Mr. Schwam. I think it's on me to answer your question. We'd like to be a little bit cautious because it's concerning the next year, but we can give you an indication. Our intention is, and as I already stated, it's an ongoing process. It's a work in process. This purchase price allocation workflow, we are still undergoing it. Today we think that at the year-end, we should be fine with the impact in the EBITDA for this year. Next year there should be no or at least no impact in the EBITDA anymore. We will still have impact in the EBIT, significantly. A little bit lower than in this year, obviously. We come to a regular basis in the years to come with a certain amount.
I think we will talk and this amount is not so big that we have some feelings of sorrows or bad feelings.
We can handle it. All in all, we think that there will be two years, this and the next year. Next year only in the EBIT.
The years after it's coming down, and then we have a certain main amount, which is not so huge anymore. He can talk to you a little bit in detail when we have finished this exercise till the end, maybe in the beginning of the next year.
Maybe just to add to that, let me answer the point that if we see the EBITDA effect this year, there will be a remaining EBIT effect next year. We are a bit careful about next year because there is a lot of calculation in the background and we want to be clear and certain before we commit on anything for next year. For this year, let's just say we have digested it. We're very happy with where we are for this year and on the EBITDA figure, no impact next year, but some on the EBIT figure and then some more simple.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. Another question on mobility or not precise on traffic solutions and the contracts you just published yesterday. Can you shed more light on the timeline? It was said that already Q4 with the deliveries here, but it should stretch into 2019. The volume we talked about was only roughly, I think, a low double-digit million EUR amount. What should we think here? Something between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million, or is it still more? Also the margin quality would be interesting. Will this help to further brush up on margin development in this business here? Thank you.
Sure. Look, we will see some impact this year, Q4, but the majority of the sales will materialize and be booked next year. Some this year, but the larger part next year. You're right, we have said the numbers that you quoted in terms of Sorry, I should be more precise here. We have said in our communication that it's a lower double-digit figure. It's certainly not as big as the total Toll Collect project. It will not compensate everything from Toll Collect, but it's a substantial figure. It's a very substantial figure, double digit. We're happy that we have it. In terms of margins, we don't comment on the margins of individual projects, which I think you will understand.
Yeah, you should be able to give at least a kind of indication if it's, let's say above average or if it's just average here. Is it even dilutive because it was a very competitive process and you had to more or less buy these contracts.
Well, I don't think that we have ever communicated that we are buying projects. Certainly not. We're happy that we have those businesses. Again, we really do not want to disclose and discuss margins of individual projects. I will say that we have certainly not bought the business. I don't think we've ever said that. It has been a competitive process, that's always the case in this industry. We're not the only ones that participate here. Some we win, some we lose. We lost one in Australia. We won one in our local, in North Africa and the Middle East here. I think we won this time because we have made a very good offer from a technology point of view. I think the customer liked our technology and overall liked the package that we put together for our customers.
Again, we have certainly not bought it. Yeah, we're happy to have it.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Stefan Maichl, LBBW. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, Stefan Maichl from LBBW. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I have three questions. I will start with the first one. I was really astonished by the EBIT margin of your acquired businesses in the third quarter, if I take out the PPA. Is that a normal level going forward, or is this somewhat disturbed by seasonality or someone else? That's my first question.
I'll try to address that really quick. I'll give you a qualitative answer, and then Hans, if you want to add to that. If it comes to the figures of the acquired companies, again, it's very important to point out that we had a consolidation effect here. Ongoing business of the acquired company, and let's face it, we're essentially talking Prodomax here. That's always important.
Not this year.
It's not this year. The ongoing business of Prodomax or the underlying business is very profitable, and we always said that. The business is strong. It's developing strong, it has strong demand. In addition, essentially, Prodomax's last quarter or this quarter, used to be Prodomax fourth quarter of their fiscal year. Often, for many companies, for whatever reason, that is a strong quarter. There, as I say, driven by market demand. No, it's been a very strong quarter for Prodomax. Again, it's essentially their last quarter of the old fiscal year.
On top of that, we have the consolidation effect. I'm not an IFRS 15 expert, but in simple terms, my understanding is by translating from Canadian GAAP to IFRS 15, certain revenue recognition rules kick in, which essentially mean that we revenue recognize projects that have been within the pipeline beginning of the year already. Prodomax used to work on the beginning of the year already, that are now finalized. We can revenue recognize it in our third quarter. It's a multitude of effects. It doesn't take away from the fact that Prodomax's underlying business is very profitable, and we have two additional effects. The one effect that I mentioned in terms of seasonality, it is their essentially last quarter of their fiscal year is reduced. They'll change that.
We have the additional top-line effect, which of course comes with a strong margin from the IFRS 15 consolidation.
Yeah. To this, I may add some sentence, Mr. Maichl. This IFRS 15 issue is relatively simply explained that local GAAP, Canadian GAAP, was handled in that way that they recognized the full sales and profit after 70% of the project has been closed. Under IFRS rules, this is not allowed. We are now ending up with the decision of our auditors and our head of group accounting and taxes, which is a very good IFRS expert, that we will account it followed by the multi-component rule. This means we have now a different realization of cost and profit in the P&L, which is coming from three months before we acquired them. This is, so to speak, a little bit a shift over.
I'd like to highlight this once again, as Stefan has already explained to you, the real bottom line, the underlying business model of Prodomax is high profitability, above group average. What we will see in the months to come is clearly some costs we have to integrate them into our group and follow our IFRS accounting, planning. You know what I mean, this monthly report, quarterly report. They will have some additional costs, but we have done a business case and a projection in the case. We talked to them and prepared ourselves for our supervisory board meeting. Looking forward, we will still have an above-average margin. Taking into account that from today's point of view, the negative EBITDA impacts will disappear next year. They will be already helping our group margin from the next year on. EBITDA margin for the group.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
You will see positive impacts in our EBITDA margin from the next year on.
I think that's a very important point. Profitability and the effect next year. Obviously, we really don't want to go into forecasting 2019 here. I think it's just fair, though, to point out one other effect or to clarify another effect on the top line. As you just said, with the conversion from local GAAP to IFRS 15. I'm the physicist here, so layman's view on.
Please believe me.
consolidation effect is essentially, it is as if we have more months of the year 2018 already. The effect is as if we would have acquired them a few weeks or months earlier. Why do I even mention that? I wouldn't want you to take the number and roll it forward 12 months into 2019.
Yeah.
Yeah. Because of that consolidation effect. Because it's a one-time effect.
Yeah.
It's not an effect that we're going to have next year as well.
Yeah.
I think that's very important. It doesn't water down the message at all that we have acquired a very profitable business and we're digesting related expenses this year. We will have some PPA effects next year, as we pointed out, but the majority of the costs we have had this year already, or will have had this year already.
Yeah.
Okay. Thanks for that. Would you be willing to quantify that positive consolidation effect in the third quarter on EBIT we have seen?
EBIT.
Boosting margin probably to around 28% EBIT margin, which might not be sustainable.
Look, I think it's wise if we say, look, this is a very complex territory, and we would like to discuss those things very carefully with our auditors.
Yeah.
Group average is 11.2, and they are above group average.
Yeah. That's for sure.
20 is probably a little bit too high, probably, yeah.
Yeah. That's our additional effect.
Yeah.
Okay. Let's move forward to the next point. Cash flow, congratulations, good figures in the third quarter. Your outlook given for net debt or net cash for the full year EUR 0 would imply a rather weak Q4 free cash flow versus last year. Maybe could you give us the moving parts for free cash flow in the last quarter? I'm aware that CapEx might go up, but working capital and all so forth, it's hard to project particularly.
Yeah. Stefan, if I may take over from my CEO. I give you the answers. First of all, yes, we will see the major part of our yearly investments in Q4. We are actually at EUR 26 million all-in investments after nine months, and we will end up clearly above EUR 40 million, maybe in the region of EUR 45 million at the year-end. There is a strong investment coming up in Q4. That is one point. The other point is we will have a strong Q4 in terms of sales. This means we have a working capital increase in terms of trade receivables and probably also inventory, because we are already also preparing Q1 next year. What our customers, especially on the semiconductor and optic area, are forcing us is delivery. We have to be able to deliver because our customers need our products.
We have to check and balance the pure working capital cash flow-driven CFO versus business support, which also is highly appreciated. Obviously, we don't like to hinder our business to make our customers satisfied. We will handle this, and as we are in a strong financial position, we can finance and support this because the money will come in then in Q1. Our biggest customer, like ASML, he has ever paid us. We have no single EUR, they will pay. This is clear. This is why I'm saying probably we can end up even better than EUR 0. Maybe it depends what is happening. If I say it's a minimum target.
Okay.
If there's happening some other spendings, then it's different, but we will explain to you. From the today's point of view, we should end up even cash positive at the year-end.
Okay, understood. Next on tax rate. You've given us some guidance some months ago for the full year, higher than the figure we have seen in 2017. After nine months, we've seen 16.9% versus 18.8%. For the full year, is still a figure of 17%, 18% feasible estimate?
I would say no. From the today's point of view, it's lower. I have talked yesterday to my tax expert about, from the today's point of view, foreseeable tax rate. It's influenced by our actual running planning of the next five years. We will have then the fifth year. If we look into this planning, we will see that we will again make a huge usage of our carried forward losses, which means that we have to show in the year-end procedure a certain amount of the realizing of this carried forward losses, meaning we will have to book deferred tax assets. Then we have the operational tax rate, which stays at the level we have discussed. We have the positive impact on the deferred tax asset side. Probably our tax rate will be below prior year.
This is what we can estimate as of today.
Below the 9% you have booked in 2017.
No, I don't think we have booked. Do we have booked 9% all in? That was the operational tax rate. In all in, it was a higher rate, wasn't it? We will check it.
Okay. Maybe a follow-up.
Excuse me. We cannot say at the moment exactly where we are now concerning the tax rate.
Okay.
At least the tax side is not an issue in a negative sense. You know what I mean?
We will still have a very comfortable tax situation because we will consume more and more our carried forward losses tax-wise.
Okay. Maybe one follow-up. Have you confronted this with any supplier bottlenecks in the third quarter reducing your sales potential, or do you anticipate anything like that in the upcoming months?
I mean, that's an ongoing battle in the industry at the moment. I keep saying our biggest sort of hurdle for more growth or preventing more growth is number 1, to get skilled personnel and number 2, to get supply from our supply side. It is an issue. A follow-up question could be to what extent do we see that showing up in our COGS? Not material at the moment because we have these long-term contracts and the like. I want to use the example of, I think a specific optical material, calcium fluoride, which becomes ever harder to get. Even if it becomes more expensive, it does have the relatively little part of our BOM. I think the short answer is it is an issue. It continues to be an issue.
We negotiate and try to get deliveries faster as much as our customers want to have deliveries faster. It's an issue. It is limiting the ability for us to achieve more growth in the fourth quarter.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you for all. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Thank you.
At the moment, there seem to be no further questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star now. There are no further questions left.
Thank you very much for your attention. Thanks for the participation in the call. There is little we can add from our end, other than to say or to reiterate that we look with a lot of confidence into the remainder of the year, and we believe that we're going to have a good start into the new year. With that, I'll wish you all a good rest of today and rest of the week. Thank you very much.