Recording in progress. Will speak in a moment and guides us through the presentation and the results. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly to him. And so with this, we are looking forward to the presentation, and I hand over to you, Mr. Mang.
Thank you, and good afternoon from Berlin. My name is Constantin Mang. I'm CEO of MBB, and I'm looking forward to presenting our Q3 figures to you today. Before we jump into the figures, let's start, as always, with a very quick recap on what makes MBB special. First of all, we are a family business, and that means we share the DNA with the companies that we are looking for acquiring. Second of all, we are fans of the capital markets. That's why, by the way, this afternoon, we already have the Aumann management presenting their Q3 figures at 2:00 P.M., and the Vorwerk management presenting their figures at 3:00 P.M. Now, last but not least, you see the MBB figures.
I think this setup is quite unique in the German Mittelstand, that you have a group of companies that is so transparent and so open to the capital markets. Third of all, we have a long-term focus. That means that when we buy new companies, we really want to buy them in order to develop them for the long term. And fourth of all, we benefit from sustainability trends. Trends like the energy transition or trends like e-mobility. And these trends were also quite important in the current fiscal year. And as always, I would like to start with a few positive highlights. Of course, there were not only positive highlights, there were also figures that we wanted to be higher, but we have some very impressive statistics here.
As you see, Vorwerk was able to grow its order intake in the first nine months to over EUR 1 billion. This is really quite an achievement, and we are very proud of this approval we got here from the market for energy transition solutions. In the middle, you see the revenue growth of Aumann, which was at 33%. Aumann improved the revenues to EUR 200 million just in the first nine months of the year. That is also something that we believe is quite a remarkable achievement. Aumann was also able to do an acquisition a few weeks ago, the acquisition of LACOM. Why do we think that the company LACOM is a good fit for Aumann? Well, Aumann provides laminating and coating technologies.
That's by the way, where the name LACOM is coming from, laminating and coating machines that are needed to produce battery cells and fuel cells. So the market here is quite clearly e-mobility solutions and upstream processes from what Aumann is already doing in these two markets. So in the field of battery system, Aumann is already producing machines that automotive OEMs use to produce their battery packs on and their battery modules. And now, together with LACOM, Aumann will also be available to produce machines that are used to manufacture the electrodes. On the fuel cell side, LACOM is really quite an important addition to the Aumann technology portfolio because it rounds it up completely. Now, Aumann offers basically the entire value chain, from the coating to the stacking and final assembly of a fuel cell.
What that looks like can be best seen in a very simplified picture here of the major production steps that are needed to produce a fuel cell, and on the right side, a battery cell. If you look on the left side, Aumann has been offering stacking and final assembly automation solutions, and now with LACOM, is also capable of offering machines for the production of the single components that are needed for a fuel cell, and by the way, also for electrolysis. That's basically the same technology. On the right-hand side, you see a simplified version of the battery cell manufacturing value chain, and here you see that Aumann has always offering modules and pack assembly. But now with LACOM, it is able to broaden the addressable market by also offering machines that are needed to manufacture electrodes.
Why is that interesting? Well, at the moment, we have quite a few battery plants that are going to be built in Europe. And despite of all the bad press that Germany gets at the moment, the by far largest number of battery production plants is actually going to be built in Germany, both in terms of the number, but also in terms of the capacity, which is here, visible as gigawatt hours. So this is quite an interesting market, and LACOM will hopefully provide Aumann the capabilities that are necessary to get a foot in this very interesting developing market, and that's why we are very happy about this acquisition. So far, LACOM is a relatively small company, and of course, we have bigger companies in our portfolio, and that's where I want to turn to next.
And of course, the biggest numbers I really have to get used to, even pronouncing the billion, is Vorwerk, which has not only order intake of more than EUR 1 billion, but also has an order backlog now of more than EUR 1 billion. And the majority of this order backlog is for one very interesting project, a project that has EUR 600 million for Vorwerk, it will be completed until 2026, so it spreads more or less over a 3-year period. And it's the so-called A-Nord electricity line, a very important project for the German energy transition because it will deliver renewable energy from the north of Germany to the south. There will be further projects very similar to that.
A-Nord is actually the smallest of the ones that are currently being planned. The structure of the project is also quite interesting because Aumann will realize the A-Nord electricity line in a very special construct that basically assures that the potential effects from material or personnel price increases are contained. We are talking about a kind of cost-plus setup here, which we believe is a very interesting setup for Vorwerk. Nevertheless, in the third quarter, the profitability was still impacted by a couple of older projects. These are projects that have been negotiated one or two years ago, and they are very heavily impacted by some of the price increases that we currently see on the material and personnel cost side.
Vorwerk is in the process of, let's say, cleaning these projects up a little bit, and within this process, Vorwerk also built a precautionary provision of more than EUR 7 million in Q3 in order to avoid any negative further impact in the coming month. So, we really want to get done with these older projects, and I think the chances that they are going to be completed in the next few months are very high. Then Vorwerk can really focus on the newer contracts, which are on much more attractive terms and are much safer in terms of the protection against price increases.
Overall, Vorwerk had a revenue of EUR 275 million in the first nine months, which corresponds to a growth of 6%, and the EBITDA margin in the first nine months has been 7%. Now, if you look at the EUR 7 million in this provision, and you set it in relation to the revenues in the first nine months, you see that the margin could have actually looked much better, but we really wanted to be on the safe side here to avoid any future negative effects. On the right side, you see our company, DTS, an IT security specialist in our portfolio. And after a rather weak start into the year 2023, DTS finally had quite a strong third quarter, actually. This high momentum is expected to continue in Q4 as well.
So, we expect DTS actually to have a very strong second half of the year. Of course, it will be quite a challenge to catch up with the previous year, which set an unusually high benchmark, and since the start of this year was also a bit weaker, we are still below the previous year, but I think all the momentum is really showing in the right direction. And on top of that, DTS has introduced a couple of new IT security software products to the market, and these are really gaining market traction this year, so we expect also a positive margin effect through that in the coming year. Looking at the figures of Aumann, we've talked about LACOM already. We've talked about the order intake and the revenue growth.
Aumann is currently looking at an order backlog of EUR 309 million, and combined with a stronger profitability, the company has decided to raise its forecast for the current year, 2023. They previously expected EUR 250 million in revenues now. They now raised this target to EUR 280 million in revenues, and they expect to actually reach the upper end of their forecast EBITDA margin. So that's a very positive development, and you see on the bottom, again, EUR 200 million in revenue in the first nine months. That's really cool.
A 7% EBITDA margin, that will probably increase further over the next month, and we are quite excited of what is still to come for Aumann. On the right side, you see Delignit, and Delignit had a very strong first half of 2023, and that strength was mainly driven by a rebound of the light commercial vehicle market and also the caravan market. Both markets were impacted last year due to the supply chain bottlenecks. Now, these bottlenecks were relieved in the first half of 2023, so the growth was really exceptional for the company. You still see below that in the first nine months, they had revenue growth of 29% to EUR 68 million. But in the third quarter, we saw a bit of a normalization.
So, the growth has slowed down back to, I would say, a bit more moderate levels, and that also has to do with the large backlogs that we had in certain parts of the automotive industry at the beginning of the year. And these backlogs are now melting a little bit. So we will definitely see a slowdown in the second half. Nevertheless, Delignit has prepared for their next expansion steps and, therefore, they had a capital increase in the first half of the year. The capital increase amounted to EUR 8 million, and we believe that this will be a great base for Delignit to tackle new markets and also to grow in their existing markets.
Last but not least, our two companies in the consumer goods segment, Hanke Tissue and CT Formpolster. Both companies have had a pretty difficult year, 2023, and the third quarter was actually not very good for neither of them. Hanke Tissue experienced a decrease in revenues that was mainly driven by price effects, and CT Formpolster was impacted by the weak market demand in the mattress and furniture industry. So the third quarter was definitely not great for the two companies. We expect, however, the fourth quarter to become much better, and then for next year, I think the outlook is already much more like what we've seen in previous years, namely good profitability and strong growth. But this year is a bit difficult in this segment that the two companies operate in.
If we look at the overview of our segments, you see that in the service and infrastructure segment, we have this decrease in profitability from EUR 56 million in EBITDA last year to EUR 31 million this year. On the other hand, in the technological application segment, you see an increase by EUR 10 million. So to some extent, the two effects compensate each other. But then you have the consumer goods segment, which is only break even this year in the first nine months. So overall, the negative effects of the service and infrastructure and consumer goods segments outweigh the very positive development in the technological application segment, and that leads to the aggregate figures that we see on this slide.
The MBB group was able to grow its revenues by 8% overall to EUR 691 million in the first nine months. But EBITDA has gone down quite significantly, and with it, the EBITDA margin from 11%-7%. As I've mentioned before, we believe that this is a temporary effect. We think that both Q4, but then especially next year, will be considerably better when Aumann is able to deliver the profitability level that their projects are pointing at, at the moment. And also, Vorwerk will have completed these legacy projects that are currently really burdening their overall profitability. So we think that this low EBITDA margin is only of temporary nature. What do we expect for the full year, 2023?
Well, on the revenue side, we think that our forecast of EUR 850 million-EUR 900 million will be easily reached. You can see that by the line indicating the nine-month result. Also, the increase in the forecast of Aumann will definitely help here. But on the EBITDA side, we expect to probably end up on the lower end of the forecast range of 8%-10% EBITDA. We do expect a margin improvement in the fourth quarter, but this will probably not raise us significantly above the 8% EBITDA margin mark. Let's take a look at our balance sheet. As always, we have a very strong equity position.
We have more than EUR 450 million in cash in the group, which corresponds to EUR 392 million in net cash in the group, and out of that EUR 321 million is net cash in the holding MBB SE. This is, of course, after all the distributions we did to our shareholders this year. We paid a dividend. We also bought back 7 million of our own shares, and more importantly, in the last month, we were also able to increase our shareholdings in both Friedrich Vorwerk and Aumann, because we believe that the prices of both the Friedrich Vorwerk and Aumann stocks were very interesting. I think they still are. Therefore, we decided to increase our shareholdings by 4 percentage point each, more or less.
But of course, we have the aim of investing the cash of, on our balance sheet into new companies. And I think the acquisition of LACOM is a small acquisition, but it nevertheless shows that, valuations are becoming a bit more interesting. I think it might be, tipping of the toe into the M&A market again. We have a strong, M&A pipeline at the moment, and, I think LACOM is a proof that, we are still able to find very interesting, very complementary companies at attractive valuations. And the position of MBB is only improving with the rising interest rates, because, the rising interest rates create a more level playing field for companies like MBB, that purchase new companies mostly with cash, and, companies like private equity firms that use a lot of leverage.
Getting this leverage is not so easy anymore, and it has become quite expensive. So we see really our relative position in the market improving further and further, further. And that's why we believe, and I would be very happy to also do further acquisitions in the coming months. Last but not least, let's have a look at the sum of the parts valuation of MBB. You know that I always like to show the parts of our group that are quite transparent in value. First of all, the cash in the holding, which is at EUR 321 million at the moment, then the sum of our parts in the publicly listed companies, Vorwerk, Aumann, and Delignit, which is at EUR 230 million.
Then we are already above our current market capitalization, without taking into account the DTS, Hanke, CT Formpolster. And I think this shows that our company is still at quite an attractive and extraordinary valuation at the moment, also, historically. And, that's why I think, MBB is in a very interesting position with lots of positive developments, that we are expecting for the coming quarters, and at the same time, still quite attractive, valuation levels. And with that, I would like to conclude and are happy to receive your questions.
Thank you very much, Mr. Mang, for your presentation and the results. We will now move on with the Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to ask your questions. We kindly ask you to ask your questions in person via audio line. To do so, please click on the Raise Your Hand button, and if you have dialed in by phone, please use the key combination star key nine, followed by star key six. If you're not able to speak freely today, you can also place your chat, your question in our chat box. So, and this is what Michael Wilkens has done. So he has a couple of questions to DTS. Let's start with the first one. Can you give some more color on the three months performance of DTS, particularly on the EBITDA margin compared to the previous year's quarter?
Yeah. So as I mentioned, the quarters have become better step by step for DTS. The start into the year was not exceptionally good. That has to do both with the market sentiment, but also with the benchmark that the previous year set. Against this benchmark, the first quarter was not so great. It has improved then in the second quarter and in the third quarter, we have really seen growth again. The question of you, Michael, also points into the direction of margins, and it is true that the margin is a bit lower than what we have seen last year. So we have around 14%, a bit over 14%, actually, in the first three quarters of 2023.
Last year we saw something in the direction of 16%. Nevertheless, this is nothing I'm very concerned by. It is more a matter of the composition of revenues, and also the fact that DTS was expecting a higher growth in 2023 than what we have actually seen in the first two quarters. So the operating leverage was not as strong as it has been last year. DTS has adjusted and slowed down a little bit its growth in the first two quarters, especially head count growth, and is, I think, now heading again for a margin that is more comparable to what we have seen last year.
Nevertheless, I think 14%, 15%, this is something, you know, that we should be expecting, and the long-term trend is definitely pointing upwards.
All right, thank you for answering. There's a follow-up question for DTS: Relating to DTS IT, how much percent of current revenue consists of software?
Yeah, we don't disclose this revenue breakup in that detail. The I think we First of all, we have to distinguish between software that is produced by DTS and software that is produced by other vendors and that is implemented by DTS. And the most interesting part is obviously the software that DTS develops itself. But there we are talking in terms of revenue, only about a small million EUR number. Nevertheless, in terms of profitability, it delivers quite a contribution.
So especially if you look at ISL, the company that we have acquired a few years ago, which produces software in the area of network access control, it has actually shown quite a quite a good margin also this year and contributed significantly to the EBITDA and EBIT of the company. But in terms of revenues, this is a relatively small figure. And then we have software that DTS implements, a third-party software, for example, Palo Alto software. Often this software is then served to the client from DTS infrastructure, so in the DTS cloud, so to say. And here we see lower margins compared to the software that DTS produces itself, but still very interesting margins. And here we are talking also in terms of revenues about a higher digit.
But as I said at the beginning, we don't really disclose the detailed breakup here.
All right, then there is an additional question: How does the DTS IT order book look also compared to recent periods?
Yeah, I think the order book at the moment, especially for the fourth quarter, looks pretty good. DTS generally doesn't have an order book like Vorwerk or Aumann that covers several years. This is more sort of an outlook to the next maybe six months, three to six months. That's mostly kind of the visibility that DTS has. And when I look at the next three to six months, the order book looks pretty good. Also, the sales pipeline looks pretty good. I think it is actually stronger than last year. The slightly weaker start into the year 2023 was already starting to get visible at the end of 2022. So I think that everything is pointing in the right direction.
The order book is good, the sales pipeline is good, and I really believe that we have some nice quarters of growth ahead.
All right, thank you. And then we just have Mr. Boehringer in the queue. Mr. Boehringer, you can unmute yourself now to ask your question. Okay, unfortunately, it's not working. So with this, we will just move on with the question from a chat, because Mr. Boehringer has written a question in the chat box as well. So what are your decisions to improve the results of Delignit and Tissue Products in quarter four this year, next year, and in long term?
Yeah, so I'm not sure if the question refers to Hanke Tissue and CT Formpolster. Usually, these two companies are like put together in the same sentence. But I can also say a sentence about Delignit in a second. For Hanke and CT Formpolster, it is, I think, important to understand why the year 2023 was not so good. The reasons lie mainly in the energy and material price volatility. CT Formpolster has not as much exposure to energy prices. But CT Formpolster is exposed to the demand in the furniture industry, because many people buy mattresses when they buy a new bed.
This year, the focus of consumers was not in furnishing their flat or their house, but in traveling, and there were just other priorities for many consumers. The whole furniture industry was not doing so well. We believe that for both companies, the market will turn more favorable. Already in Q4, we are seeing that both revenues and profitability are picking up again. And that's something we expect to continue for next year as well. But the weakness, if you want, of these two companies, will remain that they are exposed to these price volatility, and we have to manage it as well as we can.
This year was challenging, but we have done everything we could, and the management team, so Hanke and CT Formpolster have done anything they could to make sure that the next year is becoming better, and so far it is looking good.
Thank you for answering, Mr. Mang. Then we just have another follow-up question for DTS Software. So, DTS Software is just successful. What are the next steps? What are the probability for the success?
Well, the probability for success, I think, is pretty high, and I think it's high because DTS has done many years of work that prepared DTS for the position that they are at right now, right? And with that, I mean, the development of own software products, for example, but also own services, like a large security operations center that DTS has built up both in Germany, but also increased, 'cause increased it is easier to get security specialists. So all these things have been cooking up over the last five years, I would say. And we have seen last year, I think for the first time, when DTS was able to also surpass the EUR 100 million revenue mark, that this development is paying off.
Now, this year, the demand in the market was not as high as we would have liked it to be. Some companies postponed their investment decisions into new IT security infrastructure. But nevertheless, I think that the long-term demand for IT security is only going to increase, and then the good positioning of the company in this market for IT security should lead to success, and therefore, I'm quite optimistic for the future of the company.
Great, thank you. And then there is another question. So are you getting closer to doing a standalone acquisition, and what does the M&A market looks like?
Yeah, we are not, you know, just before signing anything, you know, otherwise, I would have told you. But the sentiment is getting better. The sentiment is really getting better. The number of opportunities that we are seeing in the market is getting higher. And, and, I think to be honest, right now, we have the strongest pipeline of M&A transactions that we've had for the last years. Not only because there are a lot of interesting transactions, but the transactions that we are seeing are currently being more reasonably valued than they were in the years before. And what we're also seeing is that some of the transactions that we saw last year, for example, that in the end didn't come to a signing are coming back now.
Because after a year, some of the business owners realized that the world is not going back to 2019 anytime soon, right? Where interest rates were 0 and we had a different economic environment also here in Germany, but also in Europe, more generally. The time is not going back, it's going forward. And the key reasons why people want to sell their company, first and foremost, the age of the business owner and executive team of a company. They are not going away. And therefore, many of the companies that we've had conversations with in the last 2 years, but in the end, they weren't successful because of diverging prices.
So basically, the sellers wanting a much higher price than what we were able or willing to pay. This is a great opportunity, and we think that we will see more of these companies now coming back on the table, but at more attractive valuations. And therefore, we are optimistic that LACOM was only a small but first step back into the transaction world, and maybe we see a standalone transaction in the coming months.
... Thank you for answering. Then we have another question: How do Friedrich Vorwerk wants to process the order? How to get manpower also with acquisitions?
Yeah, I think manpower is really, really key for Friedrich Vorwerk, and it has become a bit better, and I think Friedrich Vorwerk has improved its position a little bit in the market as an employer, but there's still a long way to go. We have to really focus a lot of our energy on securing enough talents, enough engineering manpower, in order to have Friedrich Vorwerk grow in the coming years. And we also have to be more creative, probably, in the way we use external manpower and also continue to look for M&A targets that could provide additional capacity. But when we talk about M&A, I think we are more talking about, you know, kinds of acqui-hires.
So, not an acquisition like Friedrich Vorwerk did a few years ago with Bohlen & Doyen, which was quite a sizable one. But more, you know, smaller acquisitions that are really focused on getting talent on board and securing the manpower and the capacity for the large projects that we are going to see in light of the energy transition.
Thank you so much. So we just have one question left. So if there are still open topics you would like to discuss, just feel free to raise up your virtual hand or place your questions in our chat box. So by now, the last question would be: Can you provide some more details as to what equities you own within the liquid securities portfolio? Will you perhaps publish a top 5 or a top 10 in the annual report?
Yeah, we typically don't do that. We don't disclose the individual positions, but the equities we invest in basically have the purpose of providing at least a bit of return on the EUR 320 million of cash that we have in the holding. And we are not trying to do something crazy there. We invest in blue-chip companies. You would expect a lot of the names, if you look at the S&P 500, some of these top positions, you will also find in our portfolio, simply because we are trying to you know benefit from broad market movements. But we don't want to publish really single positions here because our focus is on using the liquidity for the M&A transactions.
And the investment into stocks is more of a, yeah, temporary aim that we are having while our cash position is so high, and we want to, of course, have some return on it.
All right, thank you. In the meantime, we have received no further questions. We therefore come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you, everyone, for joining, listening, and your questions. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Mang, for the presentation and the time you took to answer all these questions. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact investor relations or us. With this, on behalf of MBB and Montega, stay safe and healthy due to the autumn season, and have a lovely remaining week. See you next time, and bye-bye.
Thank you very much.