Dear ladies and gentlemen, we would like to welcome you to the KSB earnings call on the half-year results 2024. My name is Sonja Ayasse, and I'm Head of Communication. As always, I have our CEO, Dr. Stephan Timmermann, and our CFO, Dr. Matthias Schmitz, at my side. Stephan and Matthias will report to you on, in detail on the first six months of this fiscal year, 2024. At the end of this call, we will host a Q&A session, so feel free to send in your questions anytime during this event. And if you want to speak to us directly, just raise your hand, and I'll ask you or invite you to open the microphone. We will end this call after one hour, and any question that remains open will be answered afterwards.
As usual, we will provide a recording of this earnings call on our KSB.com website. Now, enough said, I would like to hand over to Stephan.
Dear Sonja, thank you so much. Dear ladies, dear gentlemen, it is an extreme pleasure on my side to say the introductory words for our half-year's earnings call in 2024. I do this expressly in the name of all of my colleagues. Matthias, you saw, is on stage. Ralf Kannefass and Stephan Bross are in the background. We all welcome you, and the results that we are going to present, Matthias and me, are, of course, the results of the complete management team, and we look forward to share these with you. Before I get started, a normal housekeeping rules. The past is the past. This we can report on without blushing. Everything which concerns the future is, of course, a pure prognosis that we make.
It is the best estimation that we can make at the time, but for sure, as you know, it cannot be guaranteed. And, thus, all liability for the past we take. For the future, we hope that it comes as we predict it today. Our agenda, basically short and sweet. I will start with an introduction where I recap on a very high level, the development of KSB in the first half of the fiscal year 2024. Then Matthias will go into a deep dive into nearly all fiscal figures, at least those which are really crucial to understand and to follow up the company. And then I will wrap up, with a short, short summary and an outlook on how we see the second half of 2024.
Having said this, I take out all tensions out of the presentation by summarizing what we are going to report. We are going to report our company, KSB, is following our course, the course that we have basically taken for us and our management team to follow for this year. You know it in terms of our forecast corridor. Here you see it again. We have the lower values, we have the higher values for order intake, turnover, and the EBIT. A rather broad corridor, where I say without blushing and without taking any of the suspense away from what Matthias is going to present in a few minutes, we are more on the upper part of the corridor than the lower part. Now, you might ask yourself: Why was this corridor made in the first place? Why is it so wide?
Why do we have such a lot of rocks on the lower side, especially in comparison to 2023? And why is the sunny side where it is? This is very easy to answer, because we are, again, in the fourth year after the beginning of Corona, in a world which is not easy, at least not in terms of growing and the profitability and the turnover of a company. Why? Because the global environment is still rather on the rocky side. From all that we predict today, what we see, based on the more than 100 companies that we have spread over all continents, the global economies in general so show no strong signs of resurging. If I look at China, China is for sure in a slowdown. We notice it in our own plants.
There are a lot of reasons which go into this downturn, and unfortunately, no recipe which brings the swing back into the Chinese market at short term. Luckily, we can say in those areas where we are extremely strong, the energy, but also the petrochemical market, the slowdown has not arrived so far, and we are still riding the wave in China. In India, a major part of our business today, we had elections in the middle of the year. Elections, you know, always have an impact on economies, and if 2024 stands for something, then it stands for worldwide elections. Never have there been so many elections all around the world in one year. And India, as you know, was impacted in the middle of the year. Now, the new government has been elected, and now the economy starts to pick up again.
A lot of major orders, especially in infrastructure, are given by authorities, and latest three months before election starts, authorities, and be it for compliance reasons, start to restrict from giving orders. And this is what we saw in India, and now we also see that the market is picking up again. We also see that the monsoon season is very strong. This is good, because if the monsoon is strong, the farmers are happy. If the farmers are happy, they need a lot of pumps, and this is where KSB steps in. Middle East, Africa, a very big region, all in all, normal in growth, with chances, potentials that we have, especially in Saudi Arabia, and these we are picking up. Europe, I've written stagnation. Yes, do we see a further downturn? No. Do we see an superb upsurge? No.
We are basically having somewhat of the feeling that we have hit the bottom, and that slowly but surely, the economies might pick up. For us, of course, the major impact comes out of Germany and France. Lately in the summertime, we have seen that there's a certain light on the horizon, but not the big upswing, which we would really all like to see. USA, due to the Inflation Reduction Act, a good market, a lot of funds going into the market at the time. We are taking that part of the cake, which belongs to us, but unfortunately, as you know, up to now, our footprint in the U.S. is rather small, so a lot of energy is now going into growing our U.S. organization. And last but not least, South America.
South America, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, have been performing superbly, especially in these last four years, where the rest of the world was rather sad. We are taking our part of this cake. South America is really something which is fun to watch, and our business that we are doing there is good. The overall situation on the global level is still more on the rocky side. Is this all? No. If I were to continue those boundary conditions, which make life a little bit difficult, then I would continue with saying material prices are still on a very high level, and personally, I do not predict that they will fall.
In comparison to 2020, so beginning of Corona, we are still at a level round about as a mixed basket over all our commodities of 40% more than in 2020. So you see a sizable impact. Then, of course, we have the increase in salaries and wages, based on inflation. We have cost drivers of all kinds, in administration, and I think for us, the EU regulation, concerning the CSRD regulations, is one big one which I should mention. Of course, we follow these regulations. We prepare for what we will have to report on latest beginning of next year, but to be honest, it costs money. A cost driver is also IT. Basically, everything connected to IT, be it cloud services, be it licenses, have risen in price, and of course, these prices have to be paid.
A big driver of cost will be SAP HANA. This will be a major investment which we will make this year, and Matthias, in the words that he's going to say, is going to pinpoint how important strategically this project is for KSB. Then, of course, we have sanctions. We have all kinds of problems in terms of global logistics. Latest, the war in Israel and Palestine has led to a very fragile logistics situation in the sea room of Yemen. This means that ships need roughly 10-14 days longer. Prices for containers have surged. If we paid $700 at the beginning of the year, now we're paying more than $5,000 for exactly the same freight.
And last, not least, as an important boundary condition, we have strong competition, good competition, and none of these competitors have so far given up. They are there, they are bullish, they are aggressive, and they are trying to get their part of the share. And this is fair, and we are fighting this competition, I think, very successfully. Now, you might ask, what is this success based on? To begin with, the easiest is sticking to the plan, riding the wave, means having people, having passion, having performance, which is world-class, and this we have. Today, if I look at KSB, I think our size is ideal for the waters that we have to maneuver. The company is big enough to withstand major storms, but it is not so big that it becomes complex.
We maneuver fast, we change fast, and we adapt fast. This necessity is based on people who have the according passion. Of course, underlying, you see the projects that have driven the change. You know them. Growing our SupremeServ business, our after-sales business, by a foundation of KSB SupremeServ. I think Matthias will pinpoint how important this part of our business is. Then we introduce the market orientation with CLIMB 21. We have KSB Voice as a possibility to put the pulse on the engagement of our people, because these are the major assets of the company. Every company which was not performing as we would have liked it to see, we put back to profit via our back to profit control projects.
And last not least, somewhat as a summary of all of these activities, but also as a differentiation in the competition, we launched our Mission TEN30 last year. Two years of work having gone into this as the summary of the success factors to make this company grow. All of these things are projects, and projects might have the meaning that they have a start and then they have an end. If you were to ask me, when is the end of KSB SupremeServ? When is the end of CLIMB 21? Then I would say these are projects which take at least 10 years, and the impacts, the fruits, the benefits we will see in the course of the years. So there's a lot to come. And the summary of all of this, as you know, is Mission TEN30.
Mission TEN30, it is our project to differentiate ourselves from that rough competition. It is our projects to grow via our market areas, and it is our project in order to excel by having really clever investments into our infrastructure, but of course, into IT, SAP HANA, as, Matthias will show in a few minutes. Do we have any possibilities to grow beside the market? Of course, we have. We still have a lot. We have quite a few burning platforms, just operational things which have to be fixed, which burn money at the time. If we extinguish those fires, then we are up in our terms of our profitability. We have, via our market orientation, a lot of new fires that we can put out, but positive fires in that play, in a sense. We can plant a lot of new seeds.
These market areas are so fascinating because they give us the possibility to take up new business opportunities, to implant our competence, technology, new technology, wherever it is necessary, and be it hydrogen or everything which has to do with sustainable technologies. Then we have the possibility to grow our standard business, that part of our business where we really have economies of scale. KSB SupremeServ, as I told you, we are not even in the middle of the journey of growing this important part of our company. Then we have the possibility to expand. Yes, I have mentioned Saudi Arabia, another possibility. There is a lot still in the bucket of global expansion. And last, not least, we can utilize those mega trends from population growth to the change in weather, because everywhere you need pumps and valves, and even more, a very good service.
I do not have the time today to go and deep dive into all these subjects. The only one which I have put on a slide is KSB SupremeServ, because KSB SupremeServ is really essential for the growth of our business. Matthias will show what the impact of this part of our business, the aftermarket, the after-sales business is. I can only show that I am growing together with a team of really ambitious and motivated managers, this part of our company, in all kinds of aspects. Be it in terms of pushing the re-engineering business, really being able to duplicate via 3D printing or whatever means any part which goes into pumps and valves. By SupremeServ Efficiency Consulting, by SupremeServ Rescue, a new program which just targets to help customers when there is flooding.
SupremeServ Monitoring, our clever solutions, IoT-based, in order to monitor if the pumps are working, if they're healthy, or if there's a necessity to look after them. Our academies for doing the qualification part, it's a people's business in the SupremeServ world. We really need the best people all around the world. And last, not least, spare part logistics. The money comes from spare parts, and in the spare part business, presence, having the spare part on stock is the essential part. A lot of exciting chapters. With this, I would like to summarize my introductory remarks, and now hand over to Matthias. Matthias will now take up these words and really put flesh onto the bones by presenting the according figures. Matthias?
[Foreign language] . So again, warm welcome from my side. I'm happy I have just asked our assistant. Actually, we are nearly 50 people in the call, 50 people who are interested in the figures of KSB, and I know, I think all of them, thank you for your interest in KSB. We really feel honored that you participate here in this call. With the presentation of Stephan, I think this was the perfect framework to give you now an insight into the figures of KSB. Let's take a look in this chart, and you have your figures of KSB. As I have discussed with you in a lot of personal meetings, it is our target for today to increase order intake, sales, as well as EBIT, more to be better than previous year.
I can tell you, even if you take a look at the half-year figures, we are fulfilling what you promised, what we promised, and you can read our lists. Let's take a look at sales revenue. With an amount of EUR 1.4 billion, we have increased sales by 3.7%. EBIT increased by 3.7%, up to a level of EUR 160 million. There, we also have to take some special things into account. I come to that later. The equity increased up to a level of 46.2%, so this means we have a very, very solid balance sheet. We have a very solid balance sheet, also with a good net finance position. Again, I come to this later.
One of the reasons is, as Stephan just has pointed out, our strategy to put SupremeServ in the focus of our growth and EBIT ambitions was absolutely the right decisions, and it worked out in the last years. Or even in the last, in the year 2024, up to now, KSB SupremeServ was able to extend its position as the backbone of the business, and the outlook says it will be also the case at the end of this year. And don't forget, our strategic ambition is that we have 40% of sales as a target in our Mission TEN30 for SupremeServ, and we are on our way to fulfill what we have promised.
Thank you to everybody who has bought shares, because all the things we did, the profit, the growth, all the things, they are really reflected in the share price. You can really can see there's a proxy of the EBIT to the share price as well, and within the last twelve months, we could outperform the SDAX. While our share price has increased by 27%, the DAX has increased by 17%. One thing, and Stephan also has highlighted this, it, and that's the reason why I say this is the perfect framework for our presentation here, is we have started a transformation project, SAP HANA. And if you take a look at the EBIT of EUR 116 million, this already includes expenses with an amount of EUR 2.3 million. And these expenses are non-operational expenses.
What does this mean, SAP HANA? We are not just implementing an IT system as the fundament of our house of strategy. You see it on the right-hand side in the chart, investments, SAP for HANA. This is the fundament of our strategy. We are improving our IT systems, we are streamlining, and we are harmonizing and standardizing our business processes. For us, it's a business project, it's not an IT project, and this is a strong support for the Mission TEN30. But it will take some time. It will take some time, and we have started the project, and the last of our companies that will go live with SAP HANA, this will be in December 2027. So we are talking about a project from 2024 to 2027, but this is the time we need.
By the way, we are faster than a lot of other companies with that. You have to bear in mind, implementing SAP HANA means that we are representing with this implementation about 70% of the sales of KSB. One thing we have to take into account when we talk about the P&L, and what does it mean for our financial figures? SAP HANA is a cloud system, and the contract is a software-as-a-service contract. It's a so-called SAP RISE contract. That means the contract will be treated like a service contract. What does this mean? There is no capitalization of the implementation cost. The expenses are included in the income statement. You can't say it's good, you can't say it's bad. I say it is as it is.
The beauty of this is, once we have implemented the system, we do not have further depreciations anymore afterwards. On the other hand, we have to take these expenses into account, and in this year, in the year 2024, it will be approximately some EUR 15 million-EUR 16 million. Nevertheless, I would like to underline, we will stay to our budget, we will stay to our forecast, and of course, this is again crucial for our strategy to do so. This was an explanation I really wanted to give you. Again, it's a major investment for our strategy, and once you analyze the figures, take into account these are non-operational expenses. Here's an overview about the performance of the half year key indicators, and if you take a look at them, you see, as I said before, order intake, sales revenue, as well as EBIT.
Starting the first half year of 2022, they are growing year by year. Earnings after tax are on the same level. Operating cash flow still is positive. If you compare KSB with 5 years before, I can say now we are able to have a positive cash flow already in the first half of the year. If you go back, it was quite normal for a KSB that, of course, when I asked why, of course, we were generating cash beginning, or let's say, at the end of the third quarter. KSB really has extended its capabilities to generate a stronger cash flow starting earlier in the year. How does this-- How is this reflected in the EBIT? What do we have to take into account there?
First of all, due to the high order intake, our orders on hand are on an extremely high level. We're talking about EUR 1.744 billion, and if you say we roughly have three years, EUR 3 billion order intake, you can say that more or less 7-8 months are covered by of sales, are covered by the orders in hand. The change in the order intake compared to the previous half of the year is EUR 36 million. Here, if you deduct the FX effect, which is about EUR 25 million, then you must see, yes, the real order intake, with the same FX rates compared with previous year, is about EUR 60 million. It's about EUR 60 million.
The growth in KSB SupremeServ was triggered by a strong spare part demand, and we had a strong demand for a new pump in the energy market, and it nearly compensates the weaker standard markets. Stephan has mentioned it before, yes, we could not escape from the weaker standard market, but if we compare ourself with our competitors, we are still happy with the order intake under the circumstances of the economic we did so far, and we are looking forward to the end of the year, 'cause first signals are there that we will improve coming to the next year. Invest, we have increased the order intake, and as you can see here, KSB SupremeServ has increased its order intake by EUR 37 million. In terms of order intake, in terms of profitability, this is the financial backbone of the company.
The order intake we do will be, of course, converted into sales. We had EUR 52 million more sales than in the previous year. Again, also here, the FX effect from 2023 to 2024 is about EUR 20-EUR 25 million. So if you really calculate this in, the growth was some EUR 70 million. We had the sales revenue increased by pumps as well as with valves, and you see here with EUR 34 million, it is obvious that KSB SupremeServ is the main sales driver up to now in the first half of the year 2024. Strong sales are converting into a strong EBIT. We show EUR 116.3 million EBIT. This is a return on sales of 8.1%, so we are on almost the same or we are on the same level as previous year.
There is one thing you have to bear in mind, and take a look at the wealths, and in a lot of discussions with you in this investor relations meeting, we really worked it out. Take a look at the wealth segment. In the year 2023, the wealth segment included EUR 9.2 out of EUR 10.2 million reinsurance reimbursement, which was a positive X effect. This is not the case in 2024. So if you see the - 0.3 in wealth, the operational improvement in the wealth segment is EUR 4.5 million. In the discussions, face to face I had with you, I said, "Yes, we have some problems in the wealth business, but we do not have them in the wealth business.
We actually have them in the La Roche-Chalais. And here's the first signal that you see that all the measures we put in place, they are working right now. We start to improve, and this result will be even better until the end of the year. What does this mean? If we go a little bit deeper, let's go to the EBIT. We show from EUR 112 million to EUR 116 million, an improvement in the EBIT by EUR 4 million. Again, and I come a little bit back to the previous slide, take into account, we had in the year 2023, a one-time reimbursement of EUR 10 million. We had in 2024, SAP HANA, with expenses, non-operating of EUR 2.3 million. If you add it up, it's EUR 12.5 million.
If you then put on top the EUR 4 million EBIT from 112 to 116, you can say that our operational performance, without extra effects, has improved by EUR 60 million. Really, this is from our side a very good improvement, and we are happy with that so far. Of course, we will further improve in the second half of the year. There are two things I'd like to point out. One is the cost of materials development with 41%, we could further improve. Why could we further improve? On the one hand, the cost of materials as a percentage of total output of our operations, they are reduced. They are reduced because our purchase department has a worldwide responsibility for all the cost of materials.
So this allows us, despite the effects Stephan showed, that we really can bundle volume and are doing a great job here in negotiating contracts for the whole world of KSB. Secondly, we also have to take into account that the sales of our Supreme Serv business have increased. Here we have a good margin, and this also has a positive effect on the 40.2% of the development of material cost. Let's take a look at the earnings after tax. The finance income, or in this case, the finance expenses, are more or less on the same level. The taxes of income, with EUR 38 million, have increased. Nevertheless, the earnings after tax is more or less on the same level than previous year, and we will improve until the end of the year.
Let's take a little bit deeper look into the finance income as well as in the taxes. The finance income, the finance income and expenses are -8. We put round numbers here. So we have an income of EUR 6 million, and on the expensive side, there are two effects I'd like to mention or to highlight here. On one hand, we have interest expense for pensions, EUR 7.5 million, and we have two countries, two legal entities in a hyperinflationary area. This is Argentina, and this is Turkey. So the effect of hyperinflationary countries here is EUR 6.9 million. Taking a look to the tax ratio, the tax ratio at the moment is 35%, which is higher than in a normal or in the ordinary course of business.
In the ordinary course of business, and that also belongs to where are we making sales, in high tax regions or in low tax regions? We are talking about, now here, about a level of 35%. And the non-tax deductible adjustments, they contribute to this high ratio of, with 2.4%, and we have some one-time adjustments of 1.7%. At the end of the year, we expect the tax ratio to be lower, but it will be higher than 30%. Balance sheet. Some minutes ago, I mentioned we have a very, very solid balance, balance sheet. Yes, you can see on this chart here that our total balance sheet sum has increased by EUR 56 million, EUR 41 million out of this is equity. We have increased our equity ratio. First, why did the balance sheet increase?
The inventories exceeded the 2023 year-end level by EUR 35 million, and also the receivables increased, and this is due to the higher sales. Nothing that frightens us. This is the effect of the good profitability and the increase in sales we're doing. The equity has risen up to EUR 1.258 billion. This is a level of 46%. Take a look back, we came from 44.8%. We are increasing the equity ratio, although the balance sheet total is higher. Also, we are paying EUR 60 million in dividend, and the reason is that our earnings after tax was EUR 70 million, plus some OCI effects, some positive ones we had, and we will further increase our equity until the end of the year.
Once you grow, there's a kind of rule that says, when you grow, your working capital shouldn't grow faster because we want to generate cash. The next chart will show you that we have a strong operational cash flow, and this chart here, it shows you that our working capital is stable. It is stable in relation to the increasing sales. We are also improving here. Our working capital initiatives that we are undertaking, they are paying out now. If you go to the right-hand down corner, you see we have a cash-to-cash cycle of 129 days. This is absolutely stable, and here we are absolutely happy with the development we are doing, and we are going on, that we can really finance the growth out of our own cash flow.
Just to give you an idea, what does this mean, we finance the growth out of our own cash flow? There's a key indicator I really like, which is not shown here, but maybe we do it the next time. This is a so-called self-financing growth rate. It says, how far can you grow without going to the bank and ask them for loan? We can grow by minimum 20%, and we can finance this growth out of our own cash flow. So cash is not a limiting factor for our growth. That's the message I want to put here. Here you see an overview, the strong operating cash flow, cash flow from operating activities, EUR 83 million. We have a net finance position of EUR 279 million. This is about EUR 100 million more than previous year or so.
We paid a high dividend of EUR 26 last year, or the dividend amount, at all the ones we paid up to EUR 60 million. The year-end net finance position was at about EUR 325 million. We will have a higher net finance position at the end of the year than at the end of last year, and we will need this cash for all the things we bear in mind. Let's come to my third to last chart. The order intake, that is increasing, the sales are increasing, EBIT is increasing, solid balance sheet. We are generating cash. All this is a proxy to the share price. And if you take the last year, June 2023 to June 2024, our price per preference share has increased. It has increased by 27%. The SDAX has increased by 7%. That's a development we are happy with.
Nevertheless, with the actual share price, we still see that our share price is undervalued. We see a share price, a fair share price, that is much higher than the approximately whatever, EUR 650 where we are. It really, and when I had discussions with you, some of you said, "Well, a share, a fair share price should be at about EUR 1,000." So you see there's room for improvement. Be sure, from the financial side, we do everything that we really can close this gap, and we are absolutely convinced this is an undervalued share price, and the share price, we're doing everything to give support that we will increase, and we also will increase the value of your company. Thank you very much so far.
Now, we come to a kind of summary and outlook, and I'd like to hand over to Stephan.
Thank you, Matthias. It's great to work together you, with you. Thank you for the details, or the figures. It's now my pleasure to wrap up our session in order to give a little bit of room for the questions, and according answers. I would like to conclude what Matthias has just told you, with just highlighting the key points once more. Order intake up, despite the fact that the markets are rough. The global economies are shaky, and there is little perspective that we really have strong load locomotives which will help us. So all of this comes out of new ideas and a lot of energy, of our troops on the ground.
Sales revenue up by the 4% that Matthias mentioned, EBIT up, strong operating cash flow, which is just security, especially in rough times, and last not least, a really solid balance sheet, which just helps us to also tell you how stable we as a company are. In terms of where are we heading the company to our corridors, they are as they are. As I told you at the beginning, we have the rocky side, we have the sunny side. We love sunshine, and we are heading for that sunny side. And, this sunny side is just one little milestone in our plan to grow this company to a 10% plus ROS company, latest by the year 2030. This is our Mission TEN30 .
Those things which accompany this voyage, you see in this slide, growing our order intake to over EUR 4 billion, getting that ROS above the 10%, growing SupremeServ above 40% of our turnover, because it's just that big muscle for a lot of useful things. Being in terms of competition, always amongst the first three of whatever we do, be it mining, be it water, be it energy. Being really wherever the customers are, worldwide coverage, and using those potentials which we still have, like, for example, the USA to grow. Putting intelligence into our products, this is the digitalization which Stephan Bross is pushing. Latest in the year 2030, all of our products, here we have written 50%, will be intelligent. They will communicate with you, and this, of course, is extremely important.
It's a point of entry for our KSB SupremeServ business. Pushing standard business, being perfect in the engineered business, being quality leader, this is what KSB stands for. And last not least, very important subject, really excelling in terms of sustainability. This is what we are targeting for. And we do it with pride, we do it with joy, and we do it with somewhat of confidence and self-esteem. And that's why pitching that we want to be global champion in whatever we do, be it pumps, be it valves, be it in the KSB SupremeServ business, this is the overall summary of our targets. And with this, I thank you for your attention, for your patient listening. And now, Sonja, I think it's time for questions and answers.
It is. Thank you very much, Stephan and Matthias, for your deep dive and for your insights. Now we will move to our little Q&A corner, so just bear with us the next seconds, and we'll be right back. Please use this opportunity to send in your questions, leave just one for the time being. You can challenge us more. Okay, so here we are. I would like to start with the first question: What are the priorities for capital allocation and free cash flow utilization for the next three years? Matthias, would you like to take that one?
Yes, I would. Yeah. So, of course, when we talk about capital allocation, the first thing that, of course, comes to mind is the dividend. As you know, we have a dividend policy that says we want to give you minimum 30% of earnings after tax as a dividend. And, in the last year, we paid out some EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million as a dividend, so this is what we bear in mind. Secondly, of course, we are looking for acquisitions, and the free cash flow we have and the cash we have will be needed for acquisitions if we find one.
But I'd like really to outline, we do not have a target now in front of us, so I think, Stephan, it will not be the case this year, but once it is next year, we take this also, this cash flow, M&A.
Thanks a lot for that. Then we have a question on the SAP implementation. What will be the costs over the whole timeframe until 2027?
Yeah. The costs we are talking about, I really want to underline this again, these are non-operational costs. It will not affect our operational business. We talk about external costs, we talk about some EUR 16- EUR 17 million this year, and for the whole timeframe, until 2027, it will be around EUR 17 million.
Thanks a lot for that. Regarding the achievement of the EUR 4 billion order intake, what are the main levers?
Maybe I'll take that great question, Sonja. It's a lovely question. Luckily, I can answer. There are not two or three or four levers, there's a multitude of levers. And, why do I say that I'm lucky? Because, this gives me the security that we really have a basket of measures, in order to grow the company. And if I were to structure it without wasting too much time, we have six market areas, in the pump business: energy, water, the general industry business, the mining business. We have the valve business, we have the KSB SupremeServ business. Every one of these six market areas in the pumps, then the valves, and then the SupremeServ business, have dedicated plans of growth until 2030.
If you were to look into these, then it's basically picking up new opportunities in terms of geographical location. There are a lot of countries in this world where our water business is still rather weak, but where we have the all possibilities. Nothing will stop us to put our foot onto the ground there. As just growth out of geographical expansion, and this is, of course, connected to founding new hubs. The latest that we are now starting is a small setup in Cambodia, just to give you a flavor there. Wherever we are not present as KSB, we do it, and we have eight hungry market areas who are then trying to make money there. The next is, of course, technology.
There are a lot of new technological changes where KSB profits, and one of the biggest is probably the change in energy production, from fossil-fueled coal-fired plants to, in the world, best case, hydrogen-fired gas plants. In between, you have the nuclear power plants. The nuclear power plants are complete new generation, highly efficient plants or small modular reactors. So downscaled nuclear power plants in modular concepts, which can be built much, much quicker than the Hinkley Points of this world, and in terms of risk, are on a completely different scale. Hydrogen as a subject, let alone there, we are number one in terms of the references.
Worldwide, there's no other company compared to KSB in our field of valves and pumps who can say, in this young business, we have put such a lot of references into place, and this will be a growing market. SupremeServ, growing it to 40%, that is just growing our SupremeServ presence. I believe they are finding new people, qualifying these people. There is no limit, basically. We just have to do it. And the key asset, of course, in order to get there, and I would say this is, for me, the most important lever of them all, have employees all around the world which are just engaged, which are excited, which believe in this growth story, and which make it happen, and this we have.
Thank you very much, Stephan. So now I have a question for you. Why don't you simply report a recurring EBIT numbers, so investors can more easily track the underlying operating performance, Matthias?
To answer that, but first, I want to add something to what Stephan said. That's something I really want to outline. When we worked out a strategy, the Mission TEN30, all the things Stephan just mentioned are underlaid by more than 200 measures. So these are concrete measures. We know measure by measure, what do we expect in terms of order intake, sales, as well as EBIT, in order really to be sure we can make a follow-up. That's something I really want to outline. That's not a wish, it's a plan. Coming to the EBIT, why not showing a recurring EBIT? Yes, we did take this into account. We decided not to do in the first half of the year, as the EUR 2.3 million in the first half of the year do not matter that much.
We take this into account for the whole of the year, but you can be sure in some,
Overview.
In some overviews, we really will differentiate between the operating performance and taking the recurring EBIT also into account. If you take a look then in our half year report, as well as our yearly report, there it will be explained further.
Thank you, Matthias. There is another question on the SAP introduction. You mentioned EUR 17 million this year-
Yeah.
-for the SAP implementation, but only called out EUR 2 million in the first half. Does this mean you expect EUR 15 million-
Yeah.
Euro in the second half of 2024? And is your guidance for 2024 EBIT considering these costs?
It's a two times yes question. So first of all, it might be surprising to you that we have so many costs in the second half of the year. The reason is that we now have finished the preparation phase, where I do make a lot of pre-thinking how to organize the project and how to do all the things. Now, we go a little bit more into the implementation phase. This is the reason why the cost in the second half of the year will be some EUR 15 million, around, maybe a little bit lower. And yes, in our guidance that Stephan has mentioned and myself have mentioned, we did consider these costs. We will be, for sure, more on the right-hand side of the EBIT than on the left-hand side, and we confirm what we said.
The next question is also related to that topic. Is the EUR 17 million cost for the SAP implementation a gross figure, or do we have a lower depreciation from running out licenses to compensate? What would be the net effect then?
There will be no net effect now during the year 2027. The EUR 17 million cost for the implementation, yes, they are a gross figure because we have to pay this for consultants, for SAP, and so on. But again, the business model is a different one. We do not have the licenses in that case anymore. We rent the whole of the system, and there will be no real net effect until 2027. A net effect will be after the year 2027, because then the old system will run out, and the new one only will start.
Thank you. There is another question that just popped in: Would you consider doing a split and, or merging the share classes to improve liquidity?
Yes, we are considering this, but we do not have any decision yet, and it will for sure not come this year. So it's an open issue which is under discussion.
Are the potential acquisitions included in EUR 4 billion order intake aspirations, or will they add to it?
I think, yeah, I would say they will add to it. We don't depend on mergers and acquisitions. We put a little, a lot of focus on finding possibilities, because as Matthias showed, the liquidity and the trust of our banking partners is there. But it has to be a right fit. And, in terms of what is a right fit, in the past, we have bought a lot of small companies. Buying the company is easy, integrating the company is a little bit more work. And, taking into account what integration resources we need, today, we do not target for small companies but bigger acquisitions.
With the exception, of course, if it's technological niches or startups, where we can gain, basically, resources, capacity or qualification, that's the difference. All of this has to fit into our mindset, it has to fit into our culture, it has to pay back. We are rather conservative. We don't do mergers and acquisitions to create a story, but we do it in order to earn back your money, our money. And all of this taken into a basket, in the light of the companies which are for sale at the moment, that has not led to a success so far, but we are following up.
Thank you, Stephan. I think that almost answered also the next question. So could you expand on your M&A strategy? What kind of size of acquisitions are you targeting, and what approximate IRR will you seek to underwrite? Is there anything you want to add?
No, no, basically, it would just be a repetition. We are offered a lot because KSB has a very good reputation also in terms of acquisition. We scrutinize every one of these possibilities. We have a very structured way of analyzing these, but few pass the second or third filter, where we really then go into deep dive. Have there been deep dives this year? Yes, of course. We have undertaken quite a few due diligences, so up to the due diligence stage, where it really costs money. But then, having drawn the very big line and really going back to this question: When, with what risk, will we get back our money?
We then said, especially if it is, in markets or countries where politics are shaky, internal growth is the safer option, the easier option, the one that you can handle better, than trying to acquire. But as I said, and this is repetition, we are bullish, and we are screening every opportunity that we have. And maybe you, Matthias, say something in terms of our internal rate of return, no?
Yeah, well, I think you mentioned it more or less perfectly. We do not have a target that says we will make an acquisition only with an IRR of this and that. I think this is too early. You have to see what is the opportunity, then you make a calculation, and then we make the decision. To talk now about a possible IRR of an acquisition we do not even know and we are not close to, is by far too early.
So thank you very much, Stephan and Matthias. It looks like there is no more question for the time being, so we are coming to the end of this call. We would once again really thank you for participating. You can already mark the 27th of March next year in calendar, because that's when we host the next KSB earnings call. It's a long time to go, but of course, our investor relation team around Matthias and his support, they are always at your disposal, and of course, they will keep close contact with you. So that's it for today. Thanks a lot, and see you soon.
Bye-bye.