Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the JOST Werke Q1 2025 earnings conference. I'm Moritz, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question from the webinar, you may click the Q&A button on the left side of your screen and then click your raise your hand button. For written questions, please click the Q&A button and the text button to type in your question. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. For operator assistance, please press the operator assistance button on the bottom left side of your screen or star zero on your telephone keypad.
At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Joachim Dürr, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much and a warm welcome to the JOST Werke SE earnings conference for the quarter one 2025. You will see Oliver and myself today separated. There is about 16,000 km between us because I am speaking from the Brisbane Truck Show, but I hope that technology will not let us down and can give you a good overview of what we think was a good start in the year 2025. Going through like Q1 highlights, we were closing the Hyva transaction on January 31, 2025, and we were able to get already some positive contributions off that merger on an adjusted EBIT earnings per share level in the first quarter. The post-merger integration is fully on track. The identified adjusted EBIT synergies of EUR 27 million are identified, and we have a very high confidence that we will be able to implement them.
We had very positive customer and market response to the Hyva acquisition, and that supports our synergy plan. On the market side, we see some slight positive signs in market demand. The market seemed to be stabilizing in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and as well in Asia Pacific. The U.S. market, as we all know, has been quite hesitant due to the uncertainty of the tariffs and the trade regulations. We also prepared in Q1 the refinancing of the bridge facility that we took to pay the purchase price for the Hyva acquisition, and we were able to close that meanwhile in April 2025. We have fully refinanced the EUR 320 million that we had in the bridge. Let's go to the Q1 results. As I said, we think we had a quite good start despite the ongoing market weakness. Sales were up 25% to EUR 374 million.
That was supported by two months, February and March of the Hyva M&A effect. The organic sales decline was 9% versus the Q1 2024, and that was mainly a result of the weak markets. The adjusted EBIT increased by 3% to EUR 36 million, and the adjusted EBIT margin ended up at 9.6%, which was slightly better than we had anticipated after the consolidation of Hyva. Free cash flow, excluding obviously the M&A payments, went up 26% to EUR 44 million, and that was supported by the Hyva consolidation and a proper working capital management. The leverage after the financing ended up at a multiple of 2.45 after the debt financed acquisition, but remained below the 2.5 multiple that we had announced and planned in October of 2024. Hyva contributed already positively on adjusted earnings per share, partially offsetting the organic sales-driven decline that would have been 9%.
Thus, with the Hyva positive effect, the adjusted earnings per share was only down 3% at EUR 1.65. Next slide, please. Yes, this is the market view. I already mentioned that we see a little bit of improvement for the rest of the year for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. What you see here for this region is that the truck market was still down because we are comparing here Q1 versus Q1, and the Q1 was for trucks still a very strong quarter last year. This year we see the bottoming out effect and see a little improvement, as I said, for the rest of the year, but we will come to that later. The biggest surprise you will see in Americas, there we had a decline over the last year of 15-20% on trucks and on trailers and on ag.
Ag was weak in Europe and in North America. In our hydraulic business, we also saw a weaker quarter, slightly weaker quarter, between 5-10% below last year's Q1. For Asia Pacific, we have the bottoming out effect, some stabilization for trucks, especially in the Chinese markets. India was also stable. The trader markets more or less on the same level, and on tractors, a slight improvement, and the same is true for hydraulics. Next slide, please. We also were able to improve our resilience after the acquisition. Now we have a wider range of applications, and that you see on the right side of transport applications are 55% of our turnover, ag 17%, and hydraulics 28%. Also in the regional split that you see on the left side, we see a more balanced view.
Europe, Middle East, and Africa is at about 50%, and the rest is evenly distributed between Americas with 26% and Asia Pacific of 24%. Next slide, please. I think for more details, Oliver will give you a more detailed view of the financial numbers.
Thanks, Joachim. To down under, let's, as usual, go first into the regions before we come to the group and balance sheet and cash flow items. Looking here into the EMEA region, obviously a big contribution in terms of sales regarding the consolidation that happened also in the other regions, and I will not mention that several times. That means 15% more sales, EUR 188 million versus EUR 164 million last year's first quarter. However, organically, you see a decline of roughly 6%, and as Joachim mentioned, that was both because of transport and agriculture had a weaker start compared to last year's first quarter in terms of organic sales. Positive is here at the moment. We see a stabilization and order intake for both for truck business, but also for agriculture business gained a little bit of a momentum.
We need to see how sustainable that is, but at least at the moment, it looks more promising than the weeks and months before. That means we are quite confident with our outlook for the EMEA region going forward. FX effect this quarter had not much of an impact. If you look into the EBIT margin for the region, it declined from 9.1% to 6.1% and absolute EBIT from EUR 14.9 million to EUR 11.4 million. This is fully in line with our expectations that we had in our internal models when consolidating Hyva. There is nothing special in there, so to speak. I mean, I mentioned that in all the various investors' conferences that we had, that we have this business unit grains in Hyva, which is dilutive, and a big portion of that sales is reported in the EMEA region, and that explains also the deterioration of the margin in EMEA.
Good signs here from the operations is that short-time work that had been in place until February and March in our transport plants in Europe, but also in the agriculture plants in the Nordics, that has been ended. Yeah, the hours that we are producing now, the shift model has been now following the increased demand, and that should give us tailwind over the next months. Yeah, next slide then. Going to Americas also here, an organic effect from the consolidation, although that's not as big as in EMEA, as Hyva is not so much present in the Americas region than like in EMEA or Asia Pacific. Reported growth was 8% only, and the organic sales down was minus 16%, as Joachim mentioned. Two big topics here is definitely the truck business is suffering from the whole geopolitical and tariff discussions in North America.
On the other side, the agriculture business in North America is again really down versus prior year's first quarter. Regarding profitability, you see despite that we have absolute rise to profitability increased and also slightly the margin is now up again to close to 11% of EBIT. There is here strong backwind from the aftermarket business. We had almost 40% aftermarket share in North America and US, which comes with very solid margins, and that definitely supported us. You might remember that we finished a planned consolidation in North America in the second half of last year. That helped us to create efficiencies on top. Next slide, please, is then Asia Pacific. There is a really boost in sales reported wise as Hyva is so much strong in China and in India.
It is almost doubling the sales from EUR 44 million last year's first quarter to almost EUR 90 million. That is on the one side nice. On the other side, we also see here a slight organic decline of -7.5%. This comes mainly from India. The Indian economy is not bad actually, however, what we are still facing here is that even one year after the election, the government spendings in terms of infrastructure programs, economy subsidiation is still waiting and still extending its impact into the economy. We need to see how that goes forward. The China business itself is robust both in JOST and in Hyva. We are happy about this. JOST is strong here, especially in the export business, and that helps to keep our sales and margin in the Asia Pacific region.
In the quiescence region, also here we see a, let's say, consolidation-driven decline from almost or from 19% last year to 15% EBIT margin this year, which is driven by the incorporation of the sales of Hyva and totally in line with our internal expectations. Yeah, then let's go into the group. What we see overall is the 25% reported growth from EUR 299 million last year's first quarter to EUR 374 million. The split into the application slash business line was just mentioned by Joachim. So Hyva contributed EUR 104 million. And keep in mind, this is just two months. So it would have been like for like around EUR 150 million and then contributing almost one third of the sales. Organic sales decline is overall on average -9% versus last year at constant currency. And just repeating here, we see first signs of stabilization, especially in and in APAC.
The outlook here for the second quarter is promising. We need to see sales impact in terms of FX was low. Also, as Joachim mentioned, overall the profitability was good, better than we, slightly better than we expected, almost EUR 36 million EBIT, 9.6% margin, partially driven by what I mentioned in North America, nice aftermarket and resilient aftermarket margin. It is over there. Also, you might remember we have TRIDEC, a mechanical and engineering systems provider in our group, has an exceptionally high order book at the moment. Volume is not so much low, but it comes with a very high EBIT margin, and that boosted that a little bit above our internal models. I think that is it for the group. Then we can jump into our net earnings bridge. The reported net income is EUR 13 million for the quarter.
If we then add back taxes, interests, and the adjustments that we do for PPAs and purchase price allocation amortizations, as well as other exceptionals, and I will come to that because it is a little bit special for this quarter in a later slide, we end up with that adjusted EBIT that we are mentioning of EUR 36 million. Then correcting by an adjusted finance result and adjusted tax rate, we end up with EUR 25 million adjusted net income, resulting then in an adjusted EPS of EUR 1.65, which is almost the same level that we had in the first quarter. That means despite the organic size decline in the business lines, agriculture and transport, we were partially able to offset that net earnings decline with the result that Hyva already contributed to the overall group.
Regarding the exceptionals and the PPA, I will come to that a little bit later. What we show here is the preliminary purchase price allocation. Overall, we have acquired and closed a balance sheet by end of January of EUR 671 million. What you see here is the balance sheet that we are incorporating now in our numbers for the first time, asset side and liability side. These numbers here already include a preliminary status of the purchase price calculation. That means we revaluated the assets, the intangible assets, PP&E assets, as well as inventories. Also on the liability side, there were certain minor adjustments. You also see the equity. There was also a recapitalization of the group directly with closing. You can see here what has been incorporated.
This in a nutshell means preliminary purchase price at the moment, preliminary because there is still a final settlement mechanism outstanding with the seller. It should be only minor regarding the situation of, let's say, opening working capital accounts and so on and so forth, was EUR 327 million in cash. This purchase came also with an operating receivable of Hyva against the former shareholder. That has been immediately settled with closing. That means the net cash receipts have been EUR 309 million. Now, if I add then back the debt and the IFRS leading positions, deducting then the cash that we get or got, we are ending up at the moment with an EV calculated by EUR 373 million.
When I adjust that for the changes of the US dollar euro rate over the past weeks and months, this is more or less in line with the purchase price or EBITDA that we always communicated. It is even a little bit less. In US dollar, it is roughly EUR 10 million still less than the $398 million that we communicated. The main intangible asset groups that have been identified of EUR 276 million are for trademarks, so the trademark Hyva, as well as customer relationships. Hyva has strong customer relationships all over the world, like most have, and those relationships will be capitalized. I just want to mention here again, these valuations are not yet final. We are still in discussions with the auditors and experts. There might be changes. I do not expect any material changes at the moment.
However, I just want to mention that the final goodwill amount, and especially the amount of the trademark Hyva that is incorporated here, might change a little. Goodwill at the moment stands at EUR 37 million. Just keep in mind, these numbers can always fluctuate a little bit, especially at the moment when USD and euro rate fluctuates more because the original balance is a USD balance and not a euro balance, like shown here. Let's go to the next page. This is then the P&L look into the PPA, so to speak, and the exceptionals of the first quarter. You see here we report overall minus EUR 14.2 million adjustments versus minus EUR 7.1 million last year's first quarter. We have grouped that in four groups. You see the dark blue group, that's the roughly EUR 6 million, let's say, legacy PPA that you have. No major changes here.
We report minus EUR 3 million exceptionals. Last year were minus EUR 1 million. The increase is predominantly driven by integration costs, restructuring costs that are fully related to the acquisition. We have separately marked here out, which we would consider that's the core new PPA topic. With the CIFA number one and the CIFA number two, CIFA number one minus EUR 2.8 million, that's the PPA from Hyva itself, including also order backlog depreciation. A portion of that EUR 2.8 million, so excluding the order backlog, will continue then for the next years. I will sum that up in a moment. We have on top built a fair value step up for 2025 in inventory. That's a usual process through a purchase price allocation. That amount is for the total year 2025, roughly EUR 40 million. EUR 2.5 million have been already consumed in the first quarter.
Just again here to mention, you cannot just multiply by four because Hyva has only been incorporated by two months and not three months. What does this mean for the net income in 2025? We expect from the PPA as well as from the inventory step-up amortizations, a negative net income impact between EUR -21 million to -25 million on reported net income and reported earnings, which will be adjusted in adjusted EPS for sure. Going forward, from 2026, as then the inventory step-ups are already fully phased out, as well as the order book depreciation, from the normal PPA of Hyva, we will expect a net income effect of between EUR -9 million and -13 million per annum. Finally, depending on, as I said, the valuation, especially for the trademark Hyva and for goodwill, is not yet finalized. Next page, please.
Coming then back to a balance sheet and later on to cash flow. We see a decline in ROSI from 17% to 13.5%, also fully expected and in line with our internal margin. No surprise. That is a deterioration driven by the consolidation. Again, we are adding EUR 670 million balance sheet. We need now to work with deleveraging and with working capital measures on keeping that balance sheet some lower. On the other side, increase our net earnings. That will then step by step bring the ROSI back into our mid and long-term guidance. Equity ratio, basically the same story. No surprise. We had expected around 23.5%-24% equity ratio driven by the financial liabilities that have been put on the balance sheet to finance the acquisition.
Net debt, Joachim mentioned before, we were always striving for having not a leverage above 2.5 initially after the consolidation, and we managed that successfully. Net debt is EUR 451 million. This is despite the fact that the LTN EBITDA just by market-driven decline of sales volume and EBITDA, also in the old US world, have been lowered. We are still below that threshold and are quite happy with that because that also gives us a benefit in terms of our interest margin. Let's go next page. Joachim mentioned that at the beginning, we already successfully refinanced the bridge financing. The initial amount that we draw down was EUR 350 million. We managed to immediately after the closing paid back already EUR 30 million of the bridge facility. It stands at EUR 320 million. As you know from the press, we were launching a Schuldschein, a promissory note loan.
It was highly oversubscribed. We at the beginning would have not expected to fully refinance the bridge facility at once. However, finally, it came out through the process that despite attractive margins from our side and a nice mix in terms of terms, the appetite from credit investors was so high that we increased somehow the volume to the full amount of bridge facility. It is fully done. We are just making the technical procedures of replacing the bridge money with the Schuldschein money. What you can see here then on the left side is from our side, we see now we have a very nice maturity profile over the next years. That is important for us because now we can concentrate on really the operational work and the synergies. This is also work for the finance organization.
Having that stability in terms of the finance profile now in our back, that gives us freedom to look for the potential going forward. Next page, please. This is then our cash flow KPIs. Cash conversion rate has been 1.8 and reported free cash flow EUR 44 million. A nice increase, partially supported by consolidation effects of Hyva. As I mentioned, there was an old receivable. It was an operating receivable that has been immediately settled. On the other side, working capital measures and also a little bit of an increase in factoring support that nice cash flow figure. CapEx, as always in the first quarter, has been a little bit under the expectation for the full year with 1.8% or absolute wise EUR 6.7 million. That is because normally the project started a little bit slowly into the year. Also here you see no major impact from the Hyva consolidation.
We always were mentioning that the CapEx profile is very similar to the US one. Net working capital, that's indeed something quickly to mention. Yeah, the balance sheet of Hyva comes with an inherently higher working capital ratio than in the old US legacy. That's predominantly driven by the Asia Pacific region. So Hyva is strong in the Asia Pacific region. In the Asia Pacific region, let's say the business model comes in the whole supply chain that Hyva has with a higher amount of accounts receivable and a higher amount of accounts payable. That ties into that picture. Nevertheless, we are very confident that we will by end of the year be back into our corridor and our guidance that we gave for 2025. I believe Joachim will mention that at the end of the presentation. Next page, please.
I think that's from my side, giving back to down under.
Yeah, thank you, Oliver. Let's look at the market for the full year now. That's a full year expectation. What you saw before is the Q1. That's a little bit tricky to look at the Q1 because we had a partially very strong quarter to compare with. This is now a better comparison. You see the effect of bottoming out that we expect for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, where we see the markets for truck go up slightly between 0-5% for traders, 5-10%. Also in tractors and agriculture, we see a slight improvement as well as on hydraulics. The big unknown obviously is Americas, highly dependent on the very volatile communication on tariffs and economic boundary conditions. I think there we probably have to wait and see.
Our flexible business model allows us to respond very quickly in our local for local setup. It also allows us to not have too big of an impact out of the tariffs. We expect that we can manage that a bit better than most of our competitors. Of course, the best would be if we would have stable conditions. Right now, this is what we see from the market expectations. As I said, that depends highly on the tariffs and the tariff communication. Right now, we probably see that a bit more positive after the tariffs between China and the U.S. have been, yeah, agreed for a certain time at least at a lower level.
For APEC, as I said earlier, we also expect the bottoming out effect, slight improvements in the Asia-Pacific region on trucks, on trailers, but also on agricultural tractors and on hydraulics. Next slide, please. Yeah, that is the outlook then for the entire year. We confirm the guidance that we have given. We expect sales to be up 50%-60% versus prior year, mainly the M&A effect from the Hyva acquisition. The adjusted EBIT we expect to be up 25%-30% versus prior year, which was at the level of EUR 113 million. Also, adjusted EBITDA we expect to go up at the same rate, 25%-30% versus the EUR 148 million that we had last year. Our CapEx ratio, as usual, below 3%, 2.5%-3%. We expect to be at 2.9% of sales. The working capital ratio, we will bring down below the 18.5% of sales.
Yeah, let me give you a little insight of the post-merger integration. When we talked about the Hyva acquisition, we promised that we will have an accretive business on an adjusted EPS base from the start, which I'm very happy to confirm that that was already the case in Q1. We also said that we will implement synergies that you would see in the run rate until Q4 2026. We said we would need about EUR 20 million of synergies to come back in our margin corridor. This is the current planning right now. We have identified EUR 27 million of annual savings that you can see in the run rate of Q4. The majority, I would say a bit more than a third, we expect from purchasing, just better negotiation, better supplier access, higher volumes, bundling effects with our supply base.
Sales, that is additional margin that we generate out of additional sales. I mentioned already customers are very positive. We have a lot of new leads, and we expect also that we will have a very positive effect out of that. Cost reduction in shared services, typical SG&A cost, about the same %. I would say sales and shared services is probably together maybe half of the entire synergies that we expect. The rest would be between production, improved production, consolidation, or producing in-sourcing even some of the components that we can produce in our existing facilities and improve logistics and other costs. That adds up to the EUR 27 million of potential that we have. Out of that, we would today say EUR 17 million is we have a very high confidence level already that we will be able to implement that.
On 10 million, we rate as high confidence. And 10 million, we are in the process of identifying and confirming that potential. In total, we have 30 post-merger integration teams working. 270 people are involved worldwide. We expect one-off integration costs, redundancies, closing costs, and others between EUR 12-24 million. We see strong R&D potential on top of that, and that will lead to new products in the long run, especially for the digital solutions that Hyva has already and now brings to the family. I mentioned it earlier, we have very positive customer feedback. Also here at the truck show in Down Under, we get very positive feedback and interest from our customers, and that confirms the sales synergies.
To sum it up for this year, we had a good start to the fiscal year 2025, supported by the consolidation of Hyva for the two months starting February 1st. The PMI integration for Hyva is well on track, strong synergy potential, and that supports our midterm targets. We have a very robust financial development boosted by a strong free cash flow and a well-managed leverage. Oliver explained in detail the refinancing that we have closed now in Q2. The local for local approach and the strong market access worldwide limits our direct impact from the tariffs. Everybody suffers, but we have, I think, a very good setup with our local for local production. The markets are bottoming out, and the demand is picking up in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and also in Asia Pacific. In Americas, we'll have to see.
It all depends on the tariffs discussion. We confirm our outlook 2025. Our resilient business model offers strong opportunities to continue the profitable growth path that we've had in the last years. With that, that's the summary, and we're eager to hear your questions and to answer them.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question from the webinar may click the Q&A button on the left side of your screen and then click the raise your hand button. For written questions, please click the Q&A button and then the text button and type in your question. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue.
If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press the lower your hand button from the webinar or press star two on your telephone. Anyone who has a question may queue up now. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Jorge González from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning, Joachim and Oliver. Thank you for taking my questions. If you do not mind, I would like to do them one by one. The first question is in regards to the guidance on Hyva. The Q1 was quite strong. With this run rate, obviously, of margins that you have delivered, the guidance looks quite conservative now in EBIT.
I was wondering if you can first give us more or less the profitability for Hyva in the first quarter, and maybe if you can indicate us more or less what you are expecting for the year. Also if you can comment on decisionality, if there is a reason for expecting margins to decline a little bit for the rest of the year, or if in fact if there is no further deterioration in North America, you are on the right track to beat your own guidance. That will be the two first questions, please.
Maybe I start with the Hyva question and you can take North America. Regarding Hyva, indeed also Hyva. Also your response slightly better than we expected. Always keep in mind first quarter is our strongest margin corridor.
That we need to always incorporate when it comes to seasonality topics in the second half. Answering your question directly, also Hyva was definitely better than we expected and better than the run rate that we have seen of Hyva in the last months before we closed transaction. There is one effect in there, and this is why we are still a little bit cautious, to be honest, and do not want to change the guidance at the moment, and it is not necessary because we are fully in, is that you remember that there is this business unit, Cranes, which is a dilutive business unit, and we are sorting any option at the moment still. This is a task for 2025 to make a strategic decision here.
However, immediately when JOST took over the business, yeah, we settled topics in the supply chain of that business unit, et cetera, et cetera. There was pressure, obviously, before under the PE ownership. That immediately released a little bit of margin pressure they had in the past, not because they could eat up their backlog and so on and so forth. That had a positive impact on Hyva. We need to see how sustainable that is. For sure, we are working on.
Yeah, and maybe just to add to that, we think it is according to plan. You have to keep in mind that if you look at the recent years, we have always had the strongest margin in the beginning of the year and then weaker quarters after that.
I think it is within expectations, so we do not see any reason to change it for now. Oliver explained the one-time effects. North America is a profitable region for us. It is usually helping the overall margin quality. We have not seen our margins go down in North America with reduced volume at this point in time, but there could be some effects, and therefore also we may be a little more cautious. We were able to offset the volume effect by the improved situation in our plant in Michigan. The plant consolidation there has helped our cost basis, and we see that positive effect more or less ironing out the negative volume effects that we have.
That is a very high aftermarket share.
Yeah, correct.
Might be also impacts from the tariff topics, not that dealers buy the stock to have stock whatsoever, but that might have been a little bit of an extra support. Normally, we have in North America aftermarket ratios of around 30%, and they have been up to 40% in some months.
Interesting. I could not read through all the report, but can you share the aftermarket share for the group in Q1?
We do not disclose this really on a quarterly basis, but it should be around 30%, so definitely up versus the run rate over the past months before.
Okay. Do you prefer to not guide us for the Hyva's margin in Q1, I understand?
If I understand correctly.
Okay. For the year, maybe?
For the year, I think we mentioned before, we come out of 2024 and the numbers with around 6%.
We want to be close to 7% by the end of the year for the year. I mean, that's definitely a target.
Okay. Two quick ones. On the one-off cost, I think the range is quite large. I'm wondering, does this mean that you are expecting this EUR 24 million between two years maybe, or is it really that you see potentially this one-off cost coming only at EUR 12 million in the long run?
I mean, the run rate at the moment would be then EUR 12 million if I just multiply, or even a little bit less. If topics come like the carve-out of a Crane's unit and so on and so forth, like you mentioned. Also, it's only two months.
Yeah, I think at the moment, the fair guidance, and from a timing point of view, I would expect that the biggest portion should be in 2025.
Okay. It is not like you are targeting 2024, and you do not know if it is all in the first year and then some in the second year.
We do not expect that we take a lot of one-off integration costs into 2026.
Yeah. I would also say the synergies will mainly be in 2027, 2026, but the one-off cost will mostly be in this year because closing costs, redundancy costs, and potential carve-out costs, that will mainly be in this year.
Interesting. Maybe a last one from my side. In terms of the market outlook, I mean, the highlight is that you see some improvement in EMEA and Asia Pacific or some stabilization, let's say.
Do you see this for both truck and trailer, or is it more clear in one of them? Can you give us a little bit more detail on that?
Yeah. No, the trailer market responds typically quicker than the truck market. We see it more in the trailer market than in the truck market. Even though we see our OEM customers in their planning, they have added some volume recently, so they are more optimistic than they have been. In trailers, we kind of see it already happening in the orders, whereas in the trucks, we see it more in the outlook that we have. We will also see already a little bit in Q2.
I would say, as usual, the trailer market is a bit quicker in responding, so it is a bit faster going up, but we also see it on truck and also gladly in agriculture.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much. I go back to the line.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Yasmin Steilen from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello. Many thanks for taking my questions. I have four, if I may, and I will take them one by one. The first on your guidance, again, coming back to this. You mentioned an assumption of a deteriorating business in Americas for the remainder of the year.
Could you please elaborate a little bit more on the impact of the changes or of the regional assumptions, and what are the offsetting factors of the US weakness that gives you confidence in keeping the guidance unchanged? Are we talking about market share gains, pricing, or the slightly better than initially expected development in EMEA? That is my first question, please.
You want to do?
Yeah. I mean, the market expectation that we have and the assumptions for North America is quite low, but there are effects, as you state, that would partially compensate that. The one is typically when the OEM markets go down, we see the aftermarkets be a bit stronger because vehicles are being used longer, and then that is when dealers prepare and when they increase their stocks for potential spare parts.
That gives us a profitability boost, and that can help compensate some of that. Also, we see some potential in North America in agriculture, and we do not see South America, and the numbers that you have seen are for the entire Americas region. We do not see South America as much under pressure. Brazil has not been strong in the last half year, I would say, but we do not see the same negative effect in the other parts of the region. It is merely, you could say, a U.S.-American effect, and the southern part of the continent will not be affected as much.
Yeah. Probably just adding, that is an important comment for you, Yasmin. We have in Brazil, we have a huge business, and the exposure here is construction predominantly, and that is running okay.
Plus, on top, we have gained here a substantial customer share, and that business is going to ramp up in the second half of the year. That is then incorporated in our guidance, but you obviously do not see this in the market overview slide. Yeah.
Okay. Perfect. That is very clear.
The next question on agri. We have seen general business climate index moving upwards also in May. You mentioned already that order intake was gaining some momentum. Could you update us on the current discussion with your customers? Is de-stocking kind of finalized, and when should we expect the first really meaningful impact on your order intake?
Yeah, I think we could say that the de-stocking is finalized.
It was happening a lot at the dealer level because in the ag industry, the dealers are not as connected to the OEMs as they are in the transport industries because they are typically private dealer groups. What happened in late 2023 was that the OEMs were selling to the dealers, the dealer stock was very high, and the dealers just did not reorder. In the truck industry, since the dealers are mainly captive, or a lot of them are captive, there is better coordination than we had there. We see the dealers reordering implements, tools, but also loaders to fit existing tractors with loaders. We will also see that at the OEM level. Yes, I would say that the stocking at the dealers is coming to an end. They are preparing for the season, and that is reflected in the sentiment of the industry.
Perfect. A question on cost synergy. Many thanks for sharing the post-merger integration dashboard. The transparency is highly appreciated. Could you provide more insight in the 10 million kind of work in progress part? What is reflected there, and what could change your assumptions on the likelihood of the realization?
Yeah, go ahead, Oliver.
To be honest, this is not that this is then a different kind of category. This is also topics that might impact or come from purchasing synergies or logistic synergies. I would say that the degree of implementation level is just so premature that we are not confident enough to put it there.
It's mainly filling up a bucket, which we can always use in case even in the bucket of high confidence, some ideas might fall out or reduce with the final impact that we can fill up the pipeline again back to the 27. Again, it's all over the P&L and the balance sheet topics.
Okay, perfect. I just wanted to make sure we're not talking about kind of a single project and a very—
It is just this A here, so to speak, is more a classification in terms of degree of implementation.
Okay.
It goes more or less through all the five buckets that you see on top. I would say a big part is probably purchasing because they are the ones that are implemented the quickest together with the logistics. You can say the high confidence is just a part of all of the five.
Each category has a part in that high confidence, in the very high confidence, and also in the in progress.
Okay. Many thanks. Very clear. Finally, just a housekeeping question. The around EUR 10 million realized FX gains, are they solely related to the hedging of the Hyva purchase price, or does it also reflect other effects?
No, it is more or less the purchase price.
Okay. Perfect. Many thanks. I will step back into the line.
Just a comment to that. P&L-wise, net income-wise, this effect has been already incorporated in 2024, if we are mentioning the same. Probably you can reach out to Yasmin Romi, sorry.
I will definitely do. Thank you.
The next question comes from Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank . Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. It is Nicolai from Deutsche Bank. Thanks for my question. Well done in Q1.
Know that the capital market appreciates that with share price reaching all-time high. A couple of questions from my side. Maybe starting with the US tariffs. Trucks are so far not that much impacted by tariffs, just probably one on the steel and aluminum. Are you confident to pass it on to your end clients?
I want to— No, I can go ahead. I'm not sure if I understood the question, but are you saying we are not impacted or our customers are not impacted? Our customers are quite impacted, actually, because their supply chain goes across the Mexican and the Canadian border and other borders, and sometimes even three or four times until the part is actually in the factory.
We have seen them taking out volumes in those uncertain times because I think they, at least that is what they tell us, have a hard time even understanding the cost at which they produce these trucks that they are producing today because there is so much tariffs effect, and it is unclear when it goes across the border three times if there is three times the tariff or if that gets compensated. Therefore, that uncertainty is something that led them to reduce the volume. For us, we have calculated our effects. The primary effects we have calculated are not as relevant. Because we are not buying so much from outside of the U.S. for our transport customers, we do not have a huge effect.
The secondary effects could be more or less at the same level, for that is when we get secondary effects from our U.S. suppliers when they claim cost increases. We expect, and with some customers, we have agreements. With others, we will negotiate. We expect that we will be able to compensate a good portion of that in the price to our customers because it hits everybody. In the end, the products will be more expensive, and our customers have already raised prices, which they are now partially taking back with the new agreement.
Okay. Yeah, my comment, tariffs was regarding to trucks, mostly heavy trucks, which are so far not part of the tariffs, but they are looking into that. Understood. Thanks. Maybe on the probability side, we understand why you are a bit more cautious on North America and the markets there.
Also with Asia Pacific, because we see higher dilution, right, with Hyva coming in for the entire quarter in Q2 and onwards. On Europe, is there upside potential, just given that you stated the market is coming back, and that is something that is happening in all segments, right? Truck, trailer, agriculture.
Yeah. If you are seeking for upside, I think there might be on top dilution effects going forward because it is only two months, also in EMEA. We need to see how the grains business develops. In general, I would say yes, for sure. In the European region, we are suffering more than compared to other regions when capacity utilization is lower, and that has been over the past months. When especially the truck business starts to pick up, which we see, at least let's be a bit cautious at the moment. This is sustainable.
We will have a scale effect. That is clear.
Okay. Makes sense. My final one on the leverage. Any target by when we should expect leverage to be below two times again?
I mean, we set for this year the clear target to be below 2.5. I mean, we have now to digest the dividend and so on and so forth by end of 2026. If economies are really picking up and 2026 is expected to, at least in the moment, be better infrastructure programs, blah, blah, blah, then close to the 2.0 by end of 2026. I would guess so, yes, at the moment.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Nicolai.
Thank you. I think there is one text question from Pierre Castella. I just read it loud. Can I assume that the EUR 44 million of free cash flow of the first quarter is a low point going forward?
Oh, it is positively impacted by one-off topics from the Hyva consolidation. So the run rate is potentially lower. You cannot just multiply by four times. You should make a cushion.
As there are no further questions at this time, I would like to hand the point once back over to you, Joachim Dürr, for any closing remarks.
Yes, thank you very much for your interest and for your questions. Very glad to hear that you are happy with the results. I am happy that not only we get good feedback from our customers, we also got good initial feedback from the capital market. With that, we will continue the path. As I said, we are very happy that we are performing according to plan. That looks like a stable development.
With a little bit of support from the US tariffs situation, I think we should have a continued good year. With that, we would like to close the conference. Thank you a lot for your interest in JOST Werke. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye.