Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Montega, welcome to the MBB SE earnings call regarding the Q1 results of 2022, which will be presented by the CEO, Dr. Constantin Mang. The floor will be open for upcoming questions following the presentation. Having said that, I hand over the floor to you, Mr. Mang.
Thank you for joining us. My name is Constantin Mang. I'm CEO of MBB, and I'm looking forward to guiding you through our quarterly results today. Before we start, let's recap quickly what makes MBB special. As you know, MBB offers long-term succession solutions to sustainable Mittelstand companies. In doing so, we differ significantly from typical financial investors and private equity companies. That's because on the one hand, we are a family business ourselves. Our two founders still hold the majority in our shares. On the other hand, we are fans of the capital markets. That's why we are here today, and that's why three of our subsidiaries, namely Delignit, Aumann and Friedrich Vorwerk, are also publicly listed. We have a long-term focus, meaning that when we buy new companies, we buy them with the intention to hold them forever and to grow them over time.
That's very important for business owners that look for a good home for their business. Last but not least, we have a focus on sustainability. Our largest subsidiaries all benefit from sustainability trends such as the energy transition or e-mobility. When we look at the Q1 , I think there are three figures that really stand out. These are my favorite figures of the quarter. The first one comes from Friedrich Vorwerk, and the figure is 90%. That's the percentage increase of the order intake that Vorwerk booked in the Q1 of 2022. Now, last year was already a strong Q1 in terms of order intake for Vorwerk with EUR 65 million in orders. This year, the company was able to win substantial contracts in the district heating field and as you might have read yesterday, also in the cable field.
That led to an order intake of EUR 124 million. My second favorite number from this quarter is 63. That's the percentage increase of order intake at Aumann. Aumann had a tremendous run for the last 12 months after two more difficult years, and this was also been the case in the Q1 where the company won very complex, technologically interesting orders to automate the production of battery packs in electric vehicles. My third favorite number of this quarter comes from DTS, the IT security specialist in our portfolio that was able to increase revenues, so that's a revenue figure, by 40% from EUR 18 million in the Q1 last year to EUR 26 million in 2022. If you only take home three numbers, please make it the 90, the 63 and the 40. I think that really is the highlight of this quarter.
As always, there's much more to the story, and that's why I would like to dive in to some of our other portfolio companies a little bit more in detail. You know, we have seven companies that we broadly categorize in three segments: our service and infrastructure segment, the technological application segment, and the consumer goods segment. In the service and infrastructure segment, Vorwerk did not only post very good order intake, but also grew revenues by 11%. Compared to the order intake number, you might think that 11% revenue increase is not that impressive. Vorwerk really had ramp ups of three large orders, especially the district heating orders I was just referring to. In these ramp up phases, Vorwerk usually doesn't recognize much of the revenues nor of the profits in these orders.
If you take that into account, I think the number is pretty impressive. Also, Vorwerk made big progress in integrating the Puhlmann Group, which they acquired at the end of last year. Integration costs of course were lowering a little bit the profitability here as well as the ramp ups of the new project. Overall, the profitability I think is still very impressive with a 16% EBITDA margin. Coming to DTS, I was just referring to the revenue increase, and as you all know, IT security has become more important, even more so in the last weeks, given the new geopolitical situation that we have. Therefore, I believe that the company will continue growing at a significant rate.
Even though the supply chain bottlenecks, especially the chip shortage, is an issue that DTS has to manage very closely, it is not easy to get the hardware for IT security at the moment. Luckily, DTS also has lots of software revenues, and that is a segment which grows very strongly in the company at the moment. Coming to Aumann, I was talking about the order intake, but also revenues increased by 23%, which is pretty impressive.
At the same time, the company was able to grow its EBITDA margin and having all three order intake revenue and EBITDA increases, I think is very good news for the company. Delignit, on the other hand, had some challenges in the Q1 since there were lots of production stops from automotive customers, and of course, these stop and goes are not very beneficial for neither revenue nor EBITDA. At the moment, though, the company runs very smoothly, and I think we will be able to catch up some of the revenues and the EBITDA which we were not able to achieve in the Q1 over the course of the year.
OBO, the last company of the technological application segment, was able to increase both revenues and EBITDA, even though the rising raw material costs have presented a challenge, but the company was able to pass that along to the customers. The same holds true for Hanke Tissue in the top right corner here of the slide. The company felt the energy price increases. Actually, Hanke of all of our companies was most affected by the increase in energy price. Nevertheless, the company was able to pass it on to their customers, so we will see some recovery in profits over the year. CT Formpolster, a producer of mattresses, especially for e-commerce, has felt the generally weaker e-commerce business in the Q1.
Nevertheless, we are quite convinced that also now in the Q2 , we are going to see some catch-up, and hence we expect the company to grow year over year. When we're looking at the combined figures in these three segments, we see that all three segments grew quite significantly. Services and infrastructure grew by 19%, technological applications by 10%, consumer goods by 14%. At the same time, profitability was a bit lower than last year, but we believe that much of this effect is more temporary and that we see an increase in profitability over the course of the year. In total, this leads to an increase of revenues by 15% to EUR 172 million in the Q2 , with an EBITDA margin which is a few percentage points below previous year and slightly below our expectation, which was around 10%.
That's what you are seeing on the next page. Our forecast that we published a few weeks ago. Now, looking at the Q1, I think that the 9% revenue increase looks pretty conservative, and the EBITDA margin of more than 10%, I think, is still very much achievable, taking into account the increase in profitability which we expect in the coming quarters. Our balance sheet is still very, very strong. In the whole group, we had EUR 546 million in cash, out of which 465 were net cash, out of which EUR 375 million of net cash are attributable to the holding MBB SE. This shows that we are very solid and are, I think, ideally positioned to grow over the year, both organically and through further acquisitions.
We are planning to propose a dividend of EUR 1.98 to the annual general meeting, which will take place on the 13th of June this year. It will be a virtual meeting. As you see on this chart, the dividends of MBB have been increasing every year since our IPO in 2006. We are planning to pay a double dividend actually in 2022, consisting of a base dividend of 0.99 plus another 0.99 on top, leading to this EUR 1.98. In total, since 2006, we have paid out EUR 154 million to our shareholders through dividends and buybacks. In 2022 alone, we will have the dividend plus the already now acquired own shares of EUR 17 million in total.
Of course, the current market environment is pretty volatile, and I think there's absolutely no shortage in risk factors. You know all of them. You know, the supply chain disruptions that we are seeing, the risk of a recession, the war in Ukraine, volatile energy prices, the availability of raw materials, and also the rising inflation. I think, you know, there's a multitude of risk factors, and we are monitoring them very closely of course. Nevertheless, we believe that our group is quite well positioned to tackle these risks. If you take a look on the right side, we believe that some of our companies, like Friedrich Vorwerk and DTS, might actually benefit from some of these disruptions that we are seeing. Right? Also, Aumann with its more than full order books is actually, I think, not that prone to the influence that these risk factors have.
Other companies from our group, like CT Formpolster, OBO, are a bit more affected by rising raw material prices. I've mentioned before that also Hanke Tissue is quite affected by rising energy prices. Nevertheless, we are not very worried because these companies are also able to pass on the prices to the customers. We might see a temporary dip in profitability, but we expect the profitability to recover as these prices are being passed on. We have lots of risks, and we are keeping track of the risks that we have in our group. We are also quite confident that our group as a whole is quite resilient, and I think that's really good news. You might ask what all of that means for the M&A market. I think there are basically two sides, right? The first is the financing environment.
We all know that interest rates are rising, and that means the cost of debt increases, and that actually helps MBB. It helps MBB in two ways. On the one hand, companies need more equity going forward, and we are happy to provide this equity for them. On the other hand, private equity firms and other financial investors that use a lot of leverage, they become more price sensitive as the cost of their debt is increasing. On top of that, companies at the moment are looking very much for a safe haven, and that's exactly what MBB can provide for them. Of course, we need to take into account the other side as well, right? The economic backdrop means that we have to be very sensible in analyzing the risk factors. All the risk factors I've been talking about on the last slide as well.
The supply chain, the COVID-19 effects, inflation, energy and raw material prices. That means we have to be more careful and more sensible to all of these risk factors than ever before. I think we can handle that, and we can make good assessments of these risks. It increases the overall risk of any M&A transaction, that's for sure. Last but not least, I'd like to show you the value that we believe our group has. A large part of this value is actually quite transparent, right? If you take the sum of our shares in the publicly listed Friedrich Vorwerk, Aumann, Delignit, you're gonna end up with something about EUR 350 million. Actually today, it's slightly above that. If you take the 375 million of the holding cash and put that on top, you're already above our current market cap.
That means all the private companies are basically not included in the current market cap. With that, I would like to end this little intro presentation, and I'm looking forward to receiving questions.
Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Mang. You have now the chance to ask your questions either via chat or by audio line. This is done by raising your virtual hand. If you have dialed in via phone, please press the star key followed by nine and then the star key followed by six to unmute yourself. We already received some questions via the chat box. I suggest we start with those. The first question is, which new business areas are the focus of acquisitions or which sectors are excluded?
Now, that's a very good question. Generally speaking, we are quite broad, right? We are not narrowed down to a handful of industries. Of course, there are certain trends which we like, right? We are not looking for restructuring cases. We really look for companies that have growth potential, that are well-managed, and that already excludes, if you're turning the question that way around, a few industries at the moment, right? We are not looking for industries or areas that have obvious problems in growing in the future because, for example, they have very high exposure to combustion engines or which are very energy intense, right? I think these kind of companies will have a hard time going forward, especially when they are based in Germany. We really like the sustainability trend. I said that at the beginning.
Not so much because we are hippies, but we believe that sustainable companies might really benefit from the trends that we are going to see over the next years, like the energy transition or like the transition towards e-mobility.
All right. Thank you. The next question is, what is the long-term strategic positioning of Hanke Tissue? Are you looking at divestitures?
No, we are not looking to divest Hanke Tissue. I mean, Hanke Tissue is focused on tissue products, especially printed napkins. This printed napkins niche is a quite interesting one. Tissue products generally like toilet paper or something like that is more of a commodity. This printed napkin niche is actually quite interesting. For many years, Hanke had very high double-digit EBITDA margins. Right now, of course, the energy prices hit the company. As I mentioned before, Hanke is also able to increase the prices to its customers, and hence we expect this profitability to recover. We are not looking at a potential divestiture of Hanke. Not at all.
All right. Thank you. We're coming to the next question. Will you continue to invest a large portion of excess liquidity in equities even as interest rates rise for risk-free investments?
Well, I think we will always have a part of our liquidity in invested, right? Also invested on the capital market. At the moment, interest rates are rising, but to be honest, we also pay still negative interest on the cash we have in the bank, right? You know, it's not that the interest rates have no effect on our decisions of how much of our cash we are willing to invest on the capital markets, but I think right now we are still in a position where we think it makes sense to have the excess liquidity invested to some extent.
All right. Could you please give an update on the development and plans for an IPO of the sub-subsidiary DTS?
Yeah. At the moment, as you saw and as I mentioned before, DTS is doing pretty well, and I actually think that the, you know, war in Ukraine and also the increasing tensions with China will increase the demand for IT security solutions. Therefore, DTS, in my opinion, is in a very, very interesting spot at the moment and therefore also quarter, right? We have to be a little bit cautious about getting all the hardware. You know, supply chain disruptions are also something that to some effect, you know, influence DTS developments. But besides that, I think there are lots of opportunities for DTS. For now, to be honest, we would like to benefit from this development ourselves. I don't see any need to IPO DTS at the moment.
I think that an IPO might be interesting at some point for DTS, but first of all, I think it is good for DTS to show a little bit more growth, right? To grow the company, maybe also in the three digits million euro revenue ranges, right? Maybe then at some point we can think about a potential IPO of DTS.
All right. Thank you, Mr. Mang. Could you, to answer the next question, give some color on how much of the increase in the revenue and EBITDA of DTS IT is a catch-up from the lost revenue in the second half of 2021? A follow-up question on that, what is your guidance for revenue and EBITDA for 2022, if any?
Yeah. So that's a good point. Actually, DTS was not able to finish as many projects as it wanted to finish at the end of last year, right? Some of this has been actually shifted into the Q1 of 2022. This is part of the effect, no question about it. Let's say maybe half of the growth in the Q1 . Nevertheless, you know, the growth and the momentum at DTS is pretty remarkable, and that also has to do with the increased sensitivity for IT security that only started to increase further in the Q1 of 2022 due to the conflict in Ukraine and so forth. The other part of the question was basically forecast for the full year.
We don't really give forecasts for our single non-listed subsidiaries, but with EUR 25 million in the Q1 , I think it becomes clear that the company might be heading towards EUR 100 million in revenues for the full year.
All right. Thank you for explaining. As of now, we have one more question left in the chat, so if there are still open questions, please let us know. The next question is: would you or in how far would you buy more shares in Aumann if the share price were weak?
Yeah, that's also a good question. You might have seen that we bought close to 5% in Aumann shares in the Q1 , simply because we are very convinced that the company has a great position in the market for battery automation, and I believe that Aumann is still very fairly valued at the moment. We are not buying any Aumann shares at the moment. We have said many times before, we see ourselves definitely more as buyers than as sellers in the market for Aumann shares.
Is there any visibility on acquisitions, either standalone or strategic?
Yeah, of course, there's some visibility. I mean, we have a significant pipeline both for bolt-on acquisitions and also for standalone acquisitions, right? At the moment, I think we have quite a lot of very interesting bolt-on targets, especially for Aumann and for Friedrich Vorwerk. These are really companies where I would expect to see further bolt-on acquisitions over the course of the year. We also have a good pipeline of standalone acquisitions. I think none of the potential standalone acquisitions is going to close in the next couple of weeks. We are looking more on sort of a summer time window where this might realize, and not so much on Q2 anymore. There are lots of opportunities.
As I said before, at the moment, I think it's pretty important to be very sensitive, right, and do your due diligence and try to differentiate what is a COVID effect and how much is the exposure to raw material and energy prices and all of these things. Nevertheless, we have interesting opportunities, and I would love to see a nice standalone acquisition over the course of the year as well.
Could you, as a next step, please comment on your cash position as MBB is involved in securities and gold in Q1?
Yeah. I'm happy to do so. You might have seen that our cash position has decreased slightly from the end of last year to the end of the Q1 due to the buyback of Aumann shares that I just mentioned. We also bought back MBB shares, and we also had a reduction in the value of our publicly traded shares. We are at the moment, from the end of the Q1 to now, we're seeing a bit more of negative effect in the value. Nothing very surprising, but maybe the effect is another EUR 5 million. That's about the range.
Thank you. There's another question: Would you consider to buy back your own shares more aggressively if you think the current market capitalization is so far below the fair value?
Yeah. I think we're gonna continue our share buyback programs. I don't know what more aggressively really means, right? We will definitely. At the moment, we are not buying back shares because we want to wait until the annual meeting at the end of June. In my opinion, if the stock prices are as they are at the moment, we would definitely consider buying back our shares after that. More aggressively is a bit difficult simply because of the liquidity in the MBB share. Until now, we have bought back a bit over EUR 5 million in MBB shares, and I could imagine that at that pace, we might continue later this year if valuations are still that attractive.
All right. Thank you. It seems that for now all questions are answered. We did not receive any further ones, so we're coming to the end of this earnings call. I would like to take the chance to thank you all for participating and your interest, especially to you, Mr. Mang, for taking the time and answering all the questions. I wish you all a great day ahead, and hand over to you for some final remarks, Mr. Mang.
Yeah. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to have this call. I think we all know that at the moment times are very volatile and there are lots of risk factors out there. I'm quite happy that MBB was showing so much resilience so far, and I think that underlines our positioning. The Q1 figures also underline this resilience. Therefore I'm quite confident that despite all the risks and despite all of the volatility that we see at the moment, we're gonna have a good year 2022. Thank you very much, and I hope to see you soon. Thank you.
Thank you.