Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst and Investor update call Q3 2025. I'm Sargin, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a 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 the screen and then click the raise your hand button. 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 turn over to Rob Smith. Please go ahead. You can go at Mr. Smith.
Second. Rob, last year introduction, have you got a switch lab now?
You can go ahead, Mr. Smith.
Operator. Sir.
Can you hear us? Mr. Smith, we lost connection to the speakers. Please stay on the line.
Shanghai, China, where KION is at the CeMAT Trade Fair, which is currently taking place here in Shanghai, but I'll tell you more about that later. Please look for our update presentation on the IR website for today's call. I'm going to start with a summary of our third quarter 2025 results and several exciting business highlights, and then Christian will update you on the efficiency program before taking you through the detailed Q3 financials and our updated outlook for 2025, and then I'll be back for our key takeaways before we open the line for questions and answers, starting please on page three. The third quarter was another solid quarter in line with our expectations. Group order intake was EUR 2.7 billion, a 10% increase compared to the prior year.
Revenue was flat at the KION level, with the increase in supply chain solutions compensating for the anticipated decline in the ITS segment. Adjusted EBIT was EUR 190 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBIT margin of 7% year- over- year. While the SCS continued to improve its profitability, profitability in ITS reflected the expected negative impact of lower volumes. Both operating segments improved their adjusted EBIT margin sequentially. Free cash flow was a strong positive, EUR 231 million, and earnings per share was EUR 0.87, an increase of nearly 60%. On page four, I'll share with you some recent business highlights. In September, Linde Material Handling announced its partnership with the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus for the deployment of automated logistics solutions on the Jean-Luc Lagardère site in Toulouse, where the aircraft of the A320 family are assembled.
A range of robotic solutions designed to help optimize the efficiency and safety of Airbus logistics processes have been commissioned. These innovations include the R-Matic trucks, retractable mast, autonomous guided vehicles or AGVs for a much more reliable material flow management and improved working conditions, helping Airbus build the A320 family. Also in September, KION Group received the highest award, which is a Platinum rating from EcoVadis for the first time. This places KION among the top 1% of the more than 150,000 companies rated by EcoVadis. KION joined its well-established brands Linde Material Handling and STILL, which were awarded the Platinum award from EcoVadis again in 2025.
This positive group wide development highlights KION's steadfast commitment to our sustainability strategy, and here at the CeMAT in Shanghai, China, KION is showcasing an advanced physical AI-powered Omniverse solution as part of the large-scale collaboration with NVIDIA and Accenture to reinvent industrial automation. CeMAT fair visitors are experiencing how AI-driven industrial trucks and digital twins can transform supply chain operations. The showcase is a milestone on KION's path to an adaptive autonomous material handling standard for customers worldwide. Dematic unveiled the first demonstration of the FD system, showcasing its end-to-end workflow and innovative evolution of Dematic's multi-shuttle technology. It's ideal for a wide range of industries including third-party logistics, supermarkets, e-commerce, apparel, pharmaceuticals, and electronics. CeMAT is a truly inspiring experience for us, for me personally, inspiring for our board members, for our teams.
I'd like to share with you our mutual impression of an atmosphere that's very powerful here. Our supply chain solutions industry is an industry of the future, and we are all in the middle of the beginning of this future at this point, with lots of excitement still to come. CeMAT is a strong manifestation of the trends we at KION identified that are driving our business and our own innovation, especially electrification, the increased demand for warehouse trucks, e-commerce, automation, and robotics. Yesterday at the CeMAT we signed seven ecosystem strategic partnerships with highly innovative players that are outstanding in their respective fields of the supply chain solutions industry. With win-win partnerships like these, KION is enhancing its ecosystem focus on innovation, advanced robotics, and automation technologies.
With all what we've seen during these recent days, I'm very convinced KION is well positioned to shape the supply chains of the future. I'll hand now over to Christian, and he'll take you through an update on the efficiency program, our detailed Q3 financials, and our updated outlook for 2025.
Yeah, thank you, Rob. As promised over the last months, we are providing you now with an update on the efficiency program that we announced in February of this year to achieve a sustainable annual cost saving of around EUR 140 million- EUR 160 million from 2026 onwards. For the implementation of those cost saving measures, non-recurring items of approximately EUR 240 million- EUR 260 million were initially expected. I'm sure you have all seen our announcement last week. Following the constructive and effective teamwork with our Works Council labor representatives, we have made substantial progress in the negotiations in most jurisdictions, particularly in Germany, giving us a better view on program instruments, financials, and timings. We still have some jurisdictions in which we are still negotiating, which is why we don't have a final number yet.
We can now more precisely quantify the expected expenses and we are now able to lower them to between EUR 170 million and EUR 190 million in 2025. The savings target remains largely unchanged at between EUR 140 million and EUR 150 million. We are able to achieve almost the same savings with much lower expenses, mainly because many employees accepted our voluntary redundancy package. As a consequence, we don't need additional redundancy schemes. We expect the savings to start impacting the bottom line already in fourth quarter 2025 in a small amount and anticipate the majority of the savings to be effective in 2026 and the remaining will then support earnings in outer years. Of the EUR 197 million efficiency program related expenses recorded in the first half of 2025, we were able to release approximately EUR 34 million in the third quarter.
Many leavers have, for personal tax reasons, opted for the severance payment to be paid out in the first quarter 2026 rather than at the end of this year. Accordingly, this will shift a significant portion of the lower than initially expected cash out for the efficiency program from the fourth quarter to the first quarter of next year. Let's go now to slide seven for the key financials of the ITS segment. Order intake reached 60,000 units in the third quarter, which is a sequential decrease of 14%, a pretty normal seasonal development in the third quarter. Year- over- year, the increase was 17%, an acceleration of the growth rate seen in the first two quarters, which is also due to the lower prior year base. New orders in value terms increased 8% year- on- year, driven by a 17% increase in the new truck business.
The service business also showed continued growth at 1%. The order book reflects ongoing lead time normalization, and its margin quality is in line with our expectations. As reflected in our outlook, revenue declined by 3% year- over- year to EUR 1.9 billion. The 3% growth in service partially compensated for the expected 9% decline in the new truck business. Again, remember that in 2024 the new truck business revenue significantly benefited from the tailwind of a high order backlog. Adjusted EBIT at EUR 171 million and the corresponding adjusted EBIT margin at 8.8% reflected the expected impact from lower volumes, resulting in lower fixed cost absorption in a year- over- year comparison. The sequential improvement in the adjusted EBIT margin, despite the usually weaker summer quarter, is supported by a slightly higher gross margin.
I will now continue on page eight, which summarizes the key financials for SCS following the record order intake in the second quarter, which was also impacted by the favorable timing of some order signings. Orders in the third quarter declined by approximately 50% sequentially but still represented a 16% increase year- over- year. This year- over- year growth was once again driven by a 46% increase in business solution orders, while the order intake in customer services was down 12% on a strong prior year quarter. Remember, we had flagged in the second quarter update call to not extrapolate the record order number for every quarter going forward. While we may have passed the trough, we are still in a lumpy recovery trajectory, and we are also likely to see the next quarter below the EUR 1 billion mark again.
While last quarter's increase in order intake was very much driven by the pure play e-commerce vertical, their share in this quarter's business solutions orders was 24%, meaning that the growth was fueled by customers in other verticals. As a result of the growth in order intake, the order book increased 16% year- over- year, and that year- over- year increase would have shown an even higher growth rate of 22% without the adverse foreign exchange translation effects. Overall, revenue increased both sequentially and year on year and is starting to benefit from the recovery in the order intake, which increased the business solutions revenue by 15% year- over- year in the quarter. The adjusted EBIT improved strongly year on year to EUR 48 million, with adjusted EBIT margin increasing to 6.2% following higher revenues and improved project execution.
Let's quickly run through the key financials for the group now on page nine. Order intake benefited from the improvement in demand in the new business in both operating segments. The order book reflects the increased demand in SCS, partially offset by the continued lead time normalization in ITS and FX translation losses in SCS. Revenue in SCS is starting to benefit from the order intake recovery since the beginning of 2025, offset by the expected revenue decline in the ITS new truck business. Adjusted EBIT at EUR 190 million and the adjusted EBIT margin at 7% was impacted mainly by the lower fixed cost absorption in ITS, the normalized EBIT in the corporate services consolidation segment, which was partially compensated by the strong earnings improvement in SCS. Now, page 10 shows the reconciliation from the adjusted EBITDA to Group Net Income.
Non-recurring items in the quarter included approximately EUR 34 million release of provisions for the Efficiency Program. Please note that due to the overall lower than initially expected expenses for the Efficiency Program, we have revised our full year 2025 expectations for non-recurring items to between -EUR 210 million and -EUR 230 million from between -EUR 240 million and -EUR 275 million. You will find this information on the housekeeping slide in the appendix. In the third quarter, EA items were at the usual quarterly level. Net financial expenses improved year- over- year mainly due to the positive impact from the fair value of interest derivatives and the lower net interest expenses from lease and short-term rental business. We have also adjusted our expectations for full year 2025 net financial expenses to between -EUR 140 million and -EUR 160 million from previously between -EUR 170 million and -EUR 190 million.
Pre-tax earnings grew 9% to EUR 142 million in the quarter. Tax expenses of only EUR 23 million in the quarter corresponded to a tax rate of 16%, significantly lower than in the prior year quarter. The main driver for the lower tax expenses in the quarter resulted from a revaluation of the deferred tax liabilities amounting to EUR 38 million following a June 2025 resolution of the German government on the lowering of the federal corporate tax rate from 2028 onwards. The net income attributable to shareholders increased disproportionately by 58% to EUR 114 million, corresponding to earnings per share of EUR 0.87. Now let's continue with the free cash flow statement on page 11. Free cash flow in the quarter reached positive EUR 231 million, substantially driven by an improvement in net working capital. In contrast to the prior two years, we had a EUR 50 million cash out in the fourth quarter.
For additional pension funding, we funded EUR 15 million in the second quarter and EUR 35 million in the third quarter. Page 12 shows the development of net financial debt and our leverage ratios. We had a solid decrease in net debt to EUR 818 million at the end of the third quarter 2025. Consequently, the leverage ratios improved across both net debt definitions by 0.1x compared to the end of June 2025. Our leverage ratios continue to remain slightly lower than the level last seen post our December 2020 capital increase. This time we achieved the improvement entirely through self-help measures. Slide 14 now lays out our updated guidance for the fiscal year 2025. I will quickly walk you through it. Based on these three solid quarters, the first three solid quarters and our visibility for the fourth quarter, we have narrowed the guidance range for ITS, for SCS.
The good year-to-date performance, including the growth in order intake since the beginning of the year, allows us to increase the lower end of both the revenue and adjusted EBIT guidance. In addition to the above, the narrowed group guidance range reflects our expectations of more negative adjusted EBIT contribution from the corporate servicing consolidation line. This difference is around EUR 10 million in the midpoint, driven by higher expenses for long-term incentive programs resulting from the increased share price and for strategic projects. Finally, as outlined earlier in this presentation, we expect lower expenses and related cash out for the Efficiency Program in addition to a significant portion of debt cash out shifting from the fourth quarter 2025 to the first quarter 2026. Accordingly, our free cash flow guidance increased substantially to between EUR 600 million and EUR 700 million from previously EUR 400 million to EUR 550 million. As always, you will find a slide on the housekeeping items in the appendix. With that, now I hand back to Rob for our key takeaways.
Thank you, Christian. Let's move to page 15 where we have our key takeaways. KION achieved another solid quarter, completing the first nine months of 2025 in line with our expectations. Both the industrial truck market as well as the warehouse automation market have passed through their troughs and are on a recovery path. Amongst geopolitical challenges, KION is growing order intake in both operating segments. Following the constructive and effective teamwork with our Works Council labor representatives, we have made significant progress in implementing the Efficiency Program, with most jurisdictions having completed their negotiations. We were able to reduce our expected costs for the Efficiency Program meaningfully while delivering the targeted savings. A significant portion of the associated cash out is shifting from fourth quarter 2025 to first quarter 2026, preserving cash in 2025.
With nine months of 2025 behind us and increased visibility on the fourth quarter, we have narrowed our guidance ranges for revenue and adjusted EBIT. We've also increased our outlook on free cash flow for fiscal year 2025. Due to the lower expenses for the Efficiency Program and the shift of the related cash out, our outlook remains subject to no significant disruptions to supply chains as a result of trade barriers, especially tariffs and restrictions on access to critical commodities. This does conclude our presentation. Thank you for your interest so far. We look forward to taking your good questions. Back to you, Sergey. Let's open the line.
Thank you, Mr. Smith. Do you hear me? 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 webinar.
Sergeant, we can't hear you.
Can you hear me, Mr. Smith?
Now can we hear Sergeant .
Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the line. We will continue with the Q and A shortly.
I trust everyone's heard Christian Harm for the last 15 minutes, but we don't hear any.
Can you hear me, Mr. Smith?
Input on the other line yet?
Do you hear me now, Mr. Smith?
Okay, Raj is writing us the question. We are answering to that.
It's an outstanding solution.
Okay, we'll start with the Q&A. The first question comes from Sven Vaja. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I hope you can hear me, Rob and Christian.
Please ask the question. We will forward it. It will take a bit.
Oh, okay.
Actually, now you do hear.
You can hear me. Okay, great. Hi, Rob. I have two questions, please. The first one is a more short term question, and obviously you had a great order intake development on the truck side in Q3 against what were, I guess, tough economic circumstances in Europe. I am wondering if you could see a continuation of that also in the fourth quarter so far. That's the first one. Thank you.
Sir. I'm sorry, I hear your voice, and there was some feedback on the line. If you would be so kind as to repeat that, maybe we'll get a better chance a second time.
Of course, yeah. I hope you.
Will order intake continue? Like this in the fourth quarter.
Yeah, sure.
Let's talk about that, Sven. I mean, maybe we look at both segments historically. The fourth quarter is a very strong segment, probably the strongest segment for order intake in the ITS segment seasonally. The third quarter is usually a little lighter, and the fourth quarter is a strong fourth quarter. I anticipate that'll be a similar situation this year. No reason not to think it would. As we say in both segments, we're past the trough, we're in a growing. We're back into growth mode in the markets, and our order intake is certainly in growth mode. We have expected we got a better third quarter this year than we did last year in SCS. As we described, we expect certainly a stronger second half this year than the second half last year, and we're looking for a good fourth quarter here. Sven, I trust that answers your first question.
Yes, I could hear you really well, so that's fine. Thank you. The second question is a little bit more looking forward on.
Said you had a second question as well.
Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Rob? Operator, can you pass it on?
Please ask your second question and we will forward it to Mr. Smith.
The second question is around the general sentiment among your clients, both in ITS and in SCS, in terms of their investment plans going forward. Do you sense they want to grow CapEx and it's just politics preventing them to do so? Meaning that if there was any clearance on the political side that this investment is released, or what's the kind of general investment sentiment among those client segments? Thank you.
The general sentiment among clients in ITS and SCS, do we sense they want to grow CapEx in our geopolitics? You know, let's talk about that. I think it's pretty exciting. I think everybody thinks it's exciting that President Xi and Trump came together today, shook hands, and it looks like there's a significant de-escalation of tensions there. No one's seen any effect of that yet, but I do feel that that's a very good step in the right direction. I think all our customers are going to feel that way too, in all markets. I think it was positive. I think it was already priced into the markets, but I think it'll be a positive thing for our customers, especially on the SCS side, that the Fed has reduced the rates now again.
With 2% in Europe and the lowest rate in America over the last three years, that has to be a positive thing. Our customers have been very active with us in the pipeline, and it's just a matter of going through and converting those into orders. We've talked about that being lumpy, but the trough's behind us, we're in an upward slope, and we're expecting to have a second half stronger than the second half last year. We think we'll have a seasonally adjusted, good fourth quarter as usual on the ITS side. I think the sentiment is clearly much more positive post the meeting with Trump and Xi today than has been in the lead up to that over the last several months.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, please shorten a bit your questions since we are forwarding them to Mr. Smith. The next question comes from Akash Gupta from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. I have two as well. My first one is on the phasing of savings. If you look at the savings, it translates to EUR 35 million-EUR 37 million per quarter and you want to achieve fully in 2026. Maybe if you can give us some indication on how we shall think about phasing and by when do you expect the full run rate to be achieved? The second question is on lower interest rates from lease and short term rentals.
From the efficiency program.
Okay, so the question was on the phasing of the savings for the efficiency program. Right, let me take this one. As I said, we will have a small part of the savings already in the fourth quarter of this year, and then the far majority of the savings in 2026, actually very much forward loaded in the year. There will be a small remainder potentially in the following year. We will have a small part right now and the majority in the beginning of 2026.
My second question is on lower interest rates, lower interest from lease and short term rentals. Your rental revenues were up 2% in the quarter. Maybe if you can elaborate, what is driving this lower interest from lease and short term? Is this due to lower interest rates or did something change in the way you do? What shall we expect going forward in terms of the sustainable interest from lease and short term rentals? Thank you.
That's actually. That's actually a consequence of the low and negative interest that we had against the prior year. We don't change the way we do the lease business. There is no structural change in how we perform the lease business or the short term rental business. We have actually just a lower, negative, lower interest against the prior year, and that's the consequence of that. I mean, that will potentially continue in the fourth quarter as a development, but then over next year, that effect will then actually disappear as the rates actually align themselves again.
Next question comes from Tore Fengmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Perfect. Trust. Operator, you can hear me. Thank you for this. One question would just be what is the reason for cutting down the upper end of the savings range from EUR 160 million- EUR 150 million? I'll take the second question afterwards. Thank you.
Okay. I think cutting down the upper end is pretty harsh wording actually on the adjustment. Right. When we defined the efficiency program, we basically targeted the entire EMEA region and all the countries in the setup. Now the EMEA region actually does not have a consistent level of personnel costs, nor do individual jobs and functions have all the same personnel costs. On the implementation now, as we are finishing the execution of the program, the mix that we have between countries and between functions as we have come to the end of that is slightly different to the mix that we had planned initially. That's the background of that slight adjustment. I would call that rather.
Understood. Thank you. Second question would be on the higher gross margin in ITS. Is this a question of mix or is there some pricing in there or is it just more efficient production? Thank you.
The question on the gross margin in ITS. It's basically a mix. I mean, we did not have issues in production throughout the year. We have been reporting in the past that production is actually running overall quite well. There was no impact on that. When we look at the gross margin impact there, that's mainly mix.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Martin Wilkie from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yes, Martin from Citi. My question was on the pipeline in supply chain solutions. There's been a lot of debate across the industry as to whether the interest rate environment has prevented some projects going ahead and we are now seeing rates coming down.
Appreciate the question. You're asking on what's the pipeline in our Dematic business, our supply chain solutions business, very healthy pipeline, continued very active discussion with our customers and I've been sharing that it stayed healthy, it stayed quite active pipeline. Now as we've been talking for the last couple quarters, customers are coming in and starting those projects. The difference I think now to previous times is we see ourselves as in the market is clearly with the trough behind us and on an upwards order intake trajectory now. The pipeline is good, the pipelines continue to be good and it's very active with our customers.
Great, that's helpful. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Gael De Bray from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks very much. My question relates to SCS and I was wondering why the gross margin was down so much sequentially in Q3. I think it was down 300 basis points.
The question was on ITS, why. Is the gross margin down? We have been talking about closing out the legacy projects over the recent months, right? Closing out legacy projects as we close them still comes with the costs. Right? We had some costs in the third quarter that we had to reflect for the legacy projects in the business solutions margin. That's reflected here in the gross margin development sequentially for SCS. Now on the legacy projects, maybe just overall, we are, as I've said, continuously closing out those projects. Also, in the first quarter we will have a further closing out of legacy projects. There will be a very small number remaining for the next year. As a reminder, that's also not new. There will be one large project that we have that will last into 2027. We are closing the legacy projects out as we speak. At times that comes with costs. We had to reflect some in the third quarter.
Could you perhaps quantify this cost in Q3 and maybe in the first nine. Months so far.
Quantify the cost of the separate out the legacy cost development in the first nine months?
Next question comes from Lasse Steüben from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. Could you please share the verticals and regions in SCS that are driving the orders from the non e-commerce side? Thank you.
Sure. Let me try it a little bit differently because orders are up year on year in all three regions. What I'd call out is if you want to talk verticals, the order intake in SCS shows some good growth in the non-e-commerce verticals of third-party logistics, also food and beverage, and we also have in durable manufacturing. Those three really stood out.
Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the line. We lost the connection to the speakers. We will shortly continue with the conference. The conference will shortly continue.
Can you hear us now?
Mr. Lasse, you can ask a question.
Now you're answering your question again. You were asking where are the pickup year on year in non e-commerce? Matter of fact, all three regions are having good growth on a year on year basis. The strongest is in the Americas. All three are making good year on year growth. The verticals that are non e-commerce pure play verticals that are picking up in a good way would be the third party. The three plus vertical food and beverage has a good pickup and durable manufacturing as well, hope that you got all that.
The next question comes from Timothy Lee from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. I would just want to ask about the guidance for ITS. The full year guidance is reduced in range, and if we look at the midpoint of the guidance for the revenue number for ITS, that would imply in the fourth quarter revenue number could be down quite a bit, something like 8%. If we take a midpoint of the full year guidance as a reference, that is a bigger decline compared to previous quarter. Is that something you see to be fair or you're probably a little bit conservative on your guidance for ITS revenue.
The question is whether the midpoint Q4 for ITS implies lower year on year. Is that fair? We had this development for three quarters now in a year, right? The fourth quarter will not be an exception to that, right? I said we will have small impacts from the efficiency program kicking in the fourth quarter, but that will not be sufficient to reverse that trend. That will not be sufficient to reverse the trend already. Therefore, the fourth quarter in that respect has to be seen, you know, in the context of the entire year. Yes, we consider that actually fair.
The last question comes from Alex Hauenstein from DZ Bank. Please go ahead.
Mr. Hauenstein, your line is open. You can ask questions. Mr. Hauenstein, please unmute yourself from the webinar tool. Mr. Hauenstein, can you hear us? Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rob Smith for any closing remarks.
Sargan, thank you for helping us do the best that we could in the Q&A session, and thank everyone for your patience during the Q&A session and your interest during our call. We're looking forward to continuing this dialogue with our investor conferences in November and early December. We'll be back in February for our full year results and our guidance for 2026 at the end of February. Obviously, the Q&A session wasn't as easy as we expected it would be and as it normally is. Our IR team will be clearly available to everybody that has a question they'd like to get a little bit more detail in depth on in rest of today and the days to come to make sure that the messages that we've got are well understood and the results that we've brought are well appreciated. Thank you for your interest and we wish you all a good weekend. Goodbye now.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing KION Group and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect the lines. Goodbye.