Good morning, and welcome on behalf of Mutares. Thanks for attending the call. This is the investor update following the report published in connection to the short attack last week. With us today is Mark Friedrich, CFO of Mutares, and Johannes Laumann, the CIO. Management will present, and afterwards, there will be a Q&A. You may use the Q&A chat function on the top bar to enter questions. The schedule allows for up to one hour. Let's get started, and over to you, Johannes.
Thank you so much, Max, and a very warm welcome also from my side to our investor update call on this Friday. Together with Mark, I will present to you an update of the business, of the outlook. There will be quite a bit of repetition what we have said before and confirm. And at the end of the day, we also want to line out again the strategy, explain the strategy, and then be open for question at the end of the day. So Mutares, as a financial investor, and we have summarized it in six bullets, which you will find throughout the entire presentation, here as well. We have started a successful growth strategy in 2022. Under the wings of, we delivered what we promised, and this is still the case.
So you see the same people operating, the same people acting, and we are on that growth path, on this growth success path since 2020 , and the path will continue, and this is something we would like to present to you today. So the six main points, addressing also a bit the report of the short attack, I would like to highlight in the beginning, and then we go into details in the further slides. The first one: Mutares financials are independently audited, fully compliant, and without irregularities, period.
Second, we have started our growth strategy, which we have executed, which also means a strategy to expand our footprint, which also means a strategy to buy and build and make larger groups, such we have did in the automotive spot, we have did on the engineering technology spot, which we have did with Terranor, for example, in the goods and service spot. So the growth strategy continue because we firmly believe that growth, at the end of the day, will bring value to us and to our investors. In order to execute that growth strategy, we had to do strategic investments. Strategic investments can be that we, first of all, have to pay purchase prices in a buy and build setup because we want to acquire certain markets, we want to acquire certain customer bases, we want to acquire certain technology, we want to acquire maybe market density here.
By doing this, these strategic investments were done through equity, through loans, but also through consulting services, which we provided, where we led the cash in the company in order to give them the growth and strategic investment part. Portfolio is now diversified, underlying assets of €4.4 billion. Nothing to add here. We have just executed, also together with the colleagues from Pareto and Arctic, a financing structure where Mark will elaborate a little bit more on that, serving the de-risking of the entire growth strategy. Last but not least, we have a strong previous track record on the exits. Our communication is we wanna grow. A typical holding period is three to five years, and we have invested significantly into the growth.
Taking that into account, I think in 2023, 2024, we've already proven significantly with the exits, for example, of SMP, with the exit of Frigoscandia, with the exit of Repartim, that the strategy pays back, and the investments we have done into these companies pays back, and the growth strategy, at the end of the day, will add significant value for our shareholders, for our stakeholders, and at the end of the day, also for here, the entire team. We are very happy to go now with you into details, and before I hand over to Mark, I think the promise we gave to you and the promise we always give to you, that we deliver what we tell. This is what our entire team here works day and night.
I was up until 4:00 A.M. to negotiate a deal last night, and my French team is on it right now as we speak, and we will conduct a deal very soon here. So we are working that promise, and stick with us. We will deliver. We have delivered, and that's the kickoff now for the deep dive.
Thanks, Johannes. Looking at the agenda, so we have clustered our presentation today in the four topics that you see here. We want to address first, the H1 financial error that was published in comparison to the signed financials. Then we want to talk about strategy and value creation and the consequences out of this. Then I will dive into the financing strategy and explain what we had in mind when we issued the second bond, and Johannes will sum it up with our sales side activities and the final slide, and then we are at the Q&A session.
Starting with the financials of the half year that we published, and we need to apologize here, because we prepared financials and signed financials that were in total correct, but we published financials that had the editorial error in it, due to a mistake in the process that we did here, because we sent over to the designer that makes the financials look nice a preliminary draft of our financial statements, and changed it afterwards, due to the continuous work on the financial statements. And the change was not entirely incorporated in the version that was already in preparation at the designer, and therefore, we published something that is not the one that we signed. And what we show here is that we actually had the right balance sheet signed by the board members.
We also gave this to the analysts, showing that the signed financials were the right ones, and that this was just a purely editorial error that we did here with the published versions. But I want to point out that there are no irregularities at all in the financials, and this becomes even more important when you go into the second page. We had and have an unqualified audit opinion in all our financial statements for the years until 2023. Mutares is a listed entity in the Prime Standard, and therefore, we have the pleasure to be under the highest standards of a Big Four audit firm, which is Deloitte for us, that is possible.
There are certain expert reviewers, independent reviewers within Deloitte, that even challenge the work that the auditors is doing on our auditing of the financial statements that we even don't know. They have nothing to do with us. They do not show up. There is no relation at all. That's why it's so important for a big firm like Deloitte to have these kind of independent reviews of their work. In addition, after the Prime Standard uplisting that we accomplished in 2021, the BaFin, the German Supervisory Authority, executed an audit of the work done and our group financials of 2022, because this is something that is kind of standard after an uplisting in the Prime Standard, that the BaFin checks quite detailed over months, the group financial statements that we published, and they closed it with no findings.
Coming to the Mutares strategy and what we did, and Johannes mentioned it right away at the beginning. We said all the time, have a growth strategy, quite an aggressive growth strategy, with a lot of acquisitions in a very short period of time. And this with the target to reach a critical mass as a group, and especially in the automotive and mobility segment, to be a partner for the consolidation, which is ongoing, so that the OEMs come to us for some of their problems and ask us to take over. This strategy obviously required some cash deployment into the acquisitions, but also into the portfolio. All with the target to reach a certain diversification and number of assets in the portfolio, in order to be able to also generate exits in the future, and also what we did in the past.
So here it was, for us, clearly something that we wanted to do. And we have reached now almost €6 billion of group revenues. We have reached more than 30. We've built up more than 30 portfolio groups, and spent, in 2023, on average, for acquisitions that we signed there, €7 million. As purchase price or into the target as part of the negotiation with seller, part of the dowry, we gave numerous examples in the past where we did something like this. For example, Efacec, the state-owned company in Portugal, where the state gave approximately €130 million into the company, and we had to give €15 million. So all is in the average of €7 million that you see here in 2023. And this has already come down to approximately €3 million in 2024, on average, for the acquisitions.
Because we want to leverage on our position that we have reached now, the relevance that we have reached now in the niche that we are operating in, and especially also in the automotive segment. You might have noticed that we only signed and announced one buy-side transaction in Q3, which was the takeover of Zenitel, supposed to be closed by the end or the beginning of November, but nothing else. Yeah, it was a summer break, for sure, but we could have signed transactions, but we pushed back because we wanted to renegotiate the transactions in order to improve the deal for us. And this is ongoing and will be the way forward that we see that the initial investments, on average, will come down because we have reached already a relevant size and do not push for aggressive growth anymore. On the right side-...
You see that we started the geographical expansion with our opening of offices in China, India, and the U.S. And for the opening of China, we invested for the office team, ramp up, and so on, $2 million, and that's all. For now, and in the future, the team has built up an operations team in the country because we have numerous portfolio companies in China that are under the supervision and the guidance of the operations team there. So nobody needs to fly over from Europe, and this should be then support the self-financing of China. India is the next country here in Asia, where we believe it's a big opportunity for the Mutares in the future.
It's one of the biggest economies in the world, and we have so far invested approximately EUR 500,000 in the ramp up, hiring people, finding an office, and so on. And this will be most likely another EUR 500,000 in the next couple of months. The U.S. is something that is founded, and we have dedicated people to the country. We have found an office, not rented yet, and therefore we actually have not invested anything from Mutares in the ramp-up of the office. This will come soon, most likely, once we sign the contract, most likely at the end of the year. And then I assume for now, an investment of around $1-2 million in the beginning.
I want to elaborate also on the point here at the bottom right, the strategic add-ons that we do in the automotive sector, so you have seen that we have built up two big automotive groups, Amaneos and FerrAl United, where we also did a couple of add-ons, and we have currently the situations that the OEMs consider as clearly as a partner, that they come to us and say, "Please, we have here another distressed supplier that we are dependent on, and we would like you to take it over, to make- to ensure the sustainability of sustainability and the supply chain for us in order to get this off our table," and we are willing to do this, but only in cooperation with the OEM.
So we also ask for their support in order to enable these add-ons or these new platforms to be profitable from day one. And we do not want to take over all the time, the distressed suppliers. We also, at one point in time, want to just take over existing projects and platforms and transfer them into our footprint and facilities in order to improve and uplift our utilization of our existing facilities. And that's what exactly happens when I look at part of SFC or part of Amaneos, where exactly this happens, the OEMs come to us, say, "We have here something that we want to transfer to you," and capacity fills up for us, and that makes the companies more profitable.
Something that is mentioned in the report, and where I want to also go into details here, is that we invested in equity loans and receivables in the portfolio. We have built up approximately EUR 600 million of assets on our balance sheet, where you see here the distribution, and loans means also that we structure sometimes an acquisition in a equity and loan structure, which is around one to three, and that's why you see the loans, even though that might be purchase price or an investment into the target as part of the acquisition. Looking at the receivables, where we have EUR 153 million at the end of June 2024, we have in here also consultancy services, and you see at the top that we say we finance turnarounds with consulting services.
It sounds strange, but it is like this. It happens when we are blocked by the SPA, so by the agreement with the seller, that we are only allowed to get paid a certain amount of our services. With this, the seller wants to make sure that we pretty much also have an increased skin in the game, that we continue to do it, even though we do not get paid all the time. The best example, and the one that we also mentioned a couple of times in the past, is Lapeyre. We have a limit of EUR 2 million cash payment per year until the end of 2024. That can be deployed to consulting services from Mutares or any Mutares group member. And therefore, we have built up a receivable against the company, which was, at the end of June, approximately EUR 10 million .
It happens, but we have not impaired it because we believe that we get this paid in the course of 2025, and latest with an exit. And we have other examples, especially in the automotive segment, where we have these kind of situations. We have situations where the portfolio company cannot pay the consultancy fees, but we are still convinced that this is in the right asset, that the market is there, that we can help the companies with our services, and then we get paid later on. We have examples in the group, and I just want to show or mention here a couple of these examples where exactly this happened.
First one is Keeeper, where we had a maximum amount outstanding for consultancy service of more than €3 million, and this has been reduced by the end of June to €0.5 million, because continue to support, we changed management. The company is now at the profitability level that we expected and is going quite well, so that they reduced the debt towards us. Another one is Guascor Energy, an acquisition from Siemens Energy, where we also had a big team in there, and sometimes it doesn't work out as planned. It can happen, but we still believed in the company and in the product, in the market, changed the structure of our team, changed management, brought in somebody else from Spain, and had a peak of €4 million outstanding, and this has been reduced to €2 million now at the end of June, and further reduced in Q3.
Last example, Gemini, the company in the U.K., in the refurbishment business of trains, where we had a peak of consultancy fees of EUR 4 million, that has been reduced now to EUR 2 million. And so I could continue with this and could also give examples. Obviously, there are ones where we build it up, and we believe we will get paid in the future, and have actually, based on the portfolio that you saw, of approximately 30 portfolio groups against half of it, no or only little receivables. So they are quite sound and good. And we need to work, obviously, on the other ones, because we are responsible as Mutares for these kind of assets, and we believe in these assets. And the majority is clearly in the automotive segment, and we believe in this market and want to be part of the consolidation.
Therefore, it is like this, but we believe that we get this paid at a later stage. One last figure here for the receivables, because it's something that we track. We are aware of this. We track the payment ratio in relation to the revenues of the Mutares Holding, and this ratio is approximately year to date, 24.8%. So out of 10 million revenues, 80% are paid in cash to the holding. We obviously want to increase this to actually more than 100%, because for the new acquisitions, we do not want to build up receivables, and we want to get paid the old receivables from the existing portfolio. So quarter by quarter, we want to increase this ratio to more than 100% throughout 2025.
Also, something that we looked at, the investments across the different segments, and we consider this as balanced, but you see that we had kind of a focus on the automotive segment, where we also have the majority of revenues of the group. So therefore, it was not a surprise at least for us, that the majority of investments is also in the automotive and mobility segment. But you see on the left that also the other segments actually provide for a diversification here. And then we have other assets in goods and services, engineering and technology, and retail and food, that are closer to an exit than the automotive segment. There, we might need to work on a bit, but for the other ones, we have also made investments that provide for for exits in the near future.
On the right, you see here that these assets are under or are subject to the year-end audit procedures executed by Deloitte. This was, as long as I'm here, always a key audit matter for Deloitte in the past. It may be also in 2024 a key audit matter that they look at the valuations of our balance sheet assets. This brings me to the next point, to the financing strategy, along with the growth strategy. We issued the new bond instrument, five years maturity until September 2029. We had actually a demand that was twice what we initially wanted, and nevertheless, we said that approximately €125 is enough.
We do not want to take on more debt than what we actually consider as right and enough for our needs, and have no plans to increase the total level of debt for the whole year. We actually wanted to have this bond, obviously, to execute on the opportunities that we foresee in the next 12 months until the end of 2025, but we actually wanted to have a diversification in order to be in a position, smooth road, between the bond that is outstanding until February 27 and the longer one until 29. So that we can, and to be honest, we go into detail in a couple of minutes, we execute on our strategy, on our exit pipeline over the next couple of quarters, be in a strong position in twelve months from now in order to actually provide a reduction of debt...
Not an increase, no plans at all to increase debt at holding. This was the idea behind the second bond instrument for Mutares for the first time. And in addition, we also want to profit, obviously, from the lower risk premium and the reduced interest rate, and that's what we actually exactly achieved. For the new bond, the margin was 6.25 instead of 8.5 with the one that is until 2027. So that was actually the strategy, and Johannes will show also one thing that shows that it was not our growth was not only financed by debt, but instead also financed internally. Johannes?
Thank you so much, Mark. I will give you, last but not least, an insight on the sales side activities of the past, but also, as already done in other investor calls verbally, now on a slide, also a little bit looking into the future. When you look at our sales side activities from 2021 to 2024 , and we look at the entire period here, you see that we had 28 exits, with exit proceeds close to EUR 400 million. And the majority of these exit proceeds, besides dividends, were going into the growth financing of the business. And growth financing of the business, of the Mutares business, can mean that we pay a little purchase price for it.
It mean that we invest into the companies, because we believe in their story, and we see a clear payback of it, either during holding period or at the end, in the harvesting, in the exit, in the exit proceeds of this. So when you look at the exits of the last 12 months, and we took September to September, you see here eight exits. Let me take out three of them. Number one, you see Special Melted Products. I think you're all aware of this. SMP was something where we invested money in the acquisition. We had to pay a little purchase price for it, and we had to take over off-balance guarantees.
I think turning around this company and making the profit we made, selling it for more than €160 million two years later, you all agree with me that it was good to take the risk of an investment in this business, that it pays back. Second, let me emphasize Plati. When we acquire companies, and you know, we acquire companies in difficult situations, we acquire companies when results are unstable, results are, most of the time, loss-making. Management maybe has already changed or walked away. The product is maybe not good, the quality is not good, customers are unhappy. So when we buy companies, there are always a little bit uncertainties, and we have our plan, we have our operations team, which assess the plan in the due diligence.
But one or the other might not work out like we have planned it in the beginning, and Plati was one of them. And I think with Plati, because we didn't have the right focus at the end, it became small. Accursia, and Accursia took Plati back on track. They did the necessary things, they focused much more from their top management on the asset, and at the end of the day, Plati is a company running properly today. Actually, it's one of the suppliers still of part of our automotive supplier base. They operate out of Poland and the Ukraine, and the company is today alive, successful, and I think Accursia is not complaining of having the company. And last but not least, it's Frigoscandia.
Frigoscandia, it's also where we have invested, a purchase price, where we have taken on guarantees, but we didn't do it for any price. So in the first negotiation of Frigoscandia, we lost the deal. We lost the deal against a competitor of ours, because we were not willing to take that size of investment which was asked. And they came back to us, because we were seen as the more reliable partner, and for a significant discount of what the competitor asked, at the end, we got a deal. But selling it off for more than 30 times cash in two years, I think we can agree this was a good investment we took on with Frigoscandia. It was also good that we stayed firm when we were asked to increase at that point in time.
Let me give you also a little bit an outlook, and obviously, I cannot disclose to you the names of the companies, as it would also have an impact on the process as such. However, as I said before, we started this growth journey in 2020. We have a holding period, what we believe is the right to have, of three to five years. It can be maybe six if the market is not there, if we have bought a lot as add-ons, and if we still want to consolidate the group. But this is a little bit our focus.
Starting 2020, three to five plus years of holding period brings us to a very, very attractive pipeline on the exit side in 2020 until end of 2025, where we expect exit proceeds in the range of at least EUR 200 million. And they are also spread over our four segments. So they are spread over engineering technology, retail, food, goods, and service. And yes, we even believe in this circumstances of the market, that we can have an exit until the end of 2025, of an automotive asset we have in the portfolio. In summary, then we are very happy to take your questions. Financials are duly audited. Our aggressive growth story is still there and is successful.
We have a diversification in our financing setup, and last but not least, given the strategy we applied of growth, the exit pipeline, where we proved already last year, on the last twelve months, and the outlooking exit pipeline looks very promising and proper, and with the great team we have, we work on that, and we will deliver. We'll deliver what we promise, so thanks a lot for your attention here from Munich, a real city with proper people, and we are now very happy to take your questions, a few of them, and with that, I'll give back to the moderator.
Thank you, Johannes. Thank you, Mark. So we have received a few early questions already, which also have been answered already, which is good, I think. I'm continuing with a few which seems still open. One is a more, let's say, technical question on how the dowry works in relation to what Mutares invests. So basically, when you disclose the figure, whether this is a net amount or whether the investment is a gross amount with or without dowry.
Maybe I start with clarification, because this has been also coming up to our attention, that there's sometimes is a bit of confusion. The legal entity, Mutares Holding, that is a listed one, has no gains from any acquisitions with the acquisition right away. Whenever we talk about goodwill or dowry, we talk about the group financials. And the cash or liquidity that we talk about, that we ask for, is always in the target. It doesn't flow into Mutares. There's no balance sheet hit in cash, positively with an acquisition. So we provide, and let me take here the example again of Efacec. Cash through the target of Efacec, in this case. And when we talk about this dowry and the goodwill, the goodwill is the difference between the equity acquired and what we paid. That means that when I take again the example of Efacec.
We have EUR 135 million, to make it easy, from seller that provides it. Let's assume for now, as equity in cash, and we provide EUR 15 million in addition. It means that we still have an equity dowry of the EUR 135 million, which is the goodwill, because we pay EUR 15 million for EUR 150 million of the cash that we acquire. So to answer the question, you are asking gross or net? So when we talk about a goodwill, it's normally a net number, because we subtract from the equity that we acquire, what we pay for it. I hope that answers the question, even though it's quite technical.
Thank you, and there's a follow-on question on what is called the Dowry pipeline regarding the acquisitions you are planning. How much volume do you expect for the Dowry pipeline on the planned acquisitions to be completed by year end?
Well, so first of all, as you can imagine, the dowry is a little bit linked to the situation of the asset we acquire. Okay? So, the pure number of a dowry pipeline doesn't bring you a lot when you don't know how much cash draining the companies are doing. What we certainly have in the pipeline and the acquisitions we do, also, the one I have negotiated last night, where we are close to sign, is a dowry deal. So we will always have a goodwill with the transaction. Doesn't necessarily mean, and the one from yesterday or the one from tonight, and the ones which we are have ahead of us. All of them, to be clear, will have a Mutares holding. This the entity.
Equity and cash contribution into the company, because that's the skin in the game that sellers ask from us. The dowry, it's a little bit a rule of thumb. The dowry is eight-10 times this, and then we have to work. We look, for example, on a company which we have last week negotiated and made, I think, a big step forward. The company doing roughly €400 million in sales, losing 10%, and there we will have a relation of 1-to-10. 10% of the dowry we get is the skin in the game we, as Mutares, have to give in, into the deal. I hope this answers the question.
So overall, if you look at the five transactions, we talk roughly a little bit larger than €1 billion in sales. Talk about €20 million of equity from our side. So if you take times 10, you come up with €200 million of dowry pipeline.
Thanks, Johannes.
Max, let me ask you one thing, because I think it fits quite well here. I mentioned in my presentation that we, in the growth phase, had to accept limitations in the way we get our work paid, because without the work of our team, the company has no future, and that's why we actually have the perception that it's necessary, and this is transparently negotiated as part of the restructuring expenses with the seller, and the transactions that we also included in the press release, where we said we want to sign four or five until the end of the year and need to spend approximately up to EUR 20 million for this.
We have, in these acquisitions, no, or low limitations, which are really duly planned along with the ops team, so that we actually do not foresee any build-up in receivables for these new acquisitions. And this is, I think, quite important looking forward, that we clearly have also seen that the receivables have grown with the growth of the group. Now is the time clearly to consolidate this and to reduce it, and it starts with the acquisitions. And that's why it's so important that we really use the opportunity and the size of the group to negotiate a deal which is sound from the very first day. And that's exactly why it might take a bit longer and why it all sums up now in Q4, but then it is like this.
Thank you, Mark. Then there's a two-part question going back to the receivables. The first part is, maybe you could mention again, the 80% you talked about and the example you gave with the EUR 10 million in revenues. That's the first part, and the second part is whether you could give an idea on the concentration breakdown of the receivables, i.e., if you looked at the top five companies, for instance, how much would they account for of the total?
Yeah. Starting with the first question, and maybe also explain this in greater detail. So when we provide continuous consulting services, this results in revenue and receivables. As soon as, and I take here the example that I took in the presentation, Keeeper, where we actually have built up receivables, that was revenue, that was not paid, but the team has done the job, and Keeeper is fully on track and pretty much is only under supervision of just one person, and it's not building up big receivables anymore. It's rather the supervision of the group that we supported here and there, but these are not significant amounts. So the company is actually not providing substantial revenues anymore on a running basis, but is able to reduce the old receivables that we have built up in the past to, as of today, zero.
I said in the presentation until June 2024 it was €500,000, and they reduced the rest throughout Q3. Then we have the other situation where the team is still working on the project, so we still build up receivables, and we have revenues. I said that the payment ratio, so the amount of inflows in cash on holding level for receivables towards the portfolio, is 80% year to date. Year to date, August, in this case. We make this relationship all the time. Nevertheless, we know that it's a bit... It, it's not sharp, right? Because I have maybe inflows that are not relating to this revenue in August, like with Keeeper. They pay old receivables, but nevertheless, the total needs to work out.
That's why I say year to date, so 2024 needs to work out, and total holding period, that needs to work out. And for the future, like I said, I want to see this number above 100%. That needs to be the case for a one point in time, because old receivables are paid that are not contributing any revenue, and the revenue that is current running consultancy services, is paid by, for example, the new acquisitions, where we then are, from day one, in the money and do not build up receivables. And I hope that answers the question and gives some clarity about this indicator that I talked about in the presentation. And basically. So, Janice just said to me, the second question, top five receivables, that we have from a group company perspective.
So I said that against approximately half of the portfolio companies, we have no or only little receivables. Means against half of it, we have substantial, partly substantial receivables, and the majority is against the automotive segment. I do not have the number on hand right now. Would assume that taking out Lapeyre and so on, so these other big shots here, I would assume that something around 70% is against the automotive segment. And this is due to the size simply that we reached, and we believe in the size that we have reached with this portfolio group. So FerrAl United, more than €1 billion, Amaneos, more than €1 billion revenues. So these are relevant companies. We expect them to reduce the outstanding balances over the next couple of quarters.
Thank you.
I hope that answers the question, so with top five, out of my mind, I would say that three or four in the top five are automotive.
Thank you very much. There are two further questions regarding the automotive sector. The first one is a more general one, asking, regarding the actual crisis, in the European automotive sector, how this may influence, the results, of the, automotive business at Mutares. That is the first one, and the second one then, relates to, the, the press release, you did, regarding Steyr Motors, in the sense how, how, invested Mutares will stay, in that, going forward.
Let me start with the second question, because that's an easy question. The clear answer is we don't know. Because we need to hit the market within the next couple of weeks, and then we will see how the demand is. We, as a team, believe that the time is now. That's why we have prepared the process for now in the course of October, and we will see how much demand is out there for an asset like this under the current circumstances, and then we will see how much remains with us after the initial listing. The second question was regarding automotive segment?
Yeah, and the current market of the automotive segment. So for the next two hours, listen. Now, I think the crisis at the moment in the automotive. I think it's as the question said, in Europe. But there are other markets, for example, like India or also like the U.S., which operate good. And building up these groups with FerrAl, with Amaneos, for example, this is exactly why we have built them up. We want to be diversified when it comes to the performance. We want to, you know, benefit from a good market and cover it a little bit with a bad market. And we want to be a global player for the OEMs. We want to be a real partner for them.
This partnering goes to a way or to a point where they come to us and say: Listen, Johannes, here is a company, here's a supplier for us. It's important, we are in the middle of a series, or we are in the beginning of the ramp-up of a new platform. The supplier is in trouble. Can you buy them? We will finance. We will help you financing it. We will stick to it. We will give you agreements, we will give you commitments. This is exactly the level we wanted to be. We wanted to be the solution provider for the OEMs, for components which are always there, but which are not so sexy. So we want to be on the plastic side. We want to be the go-to guys in Europe for the OEMs with a global span.
We want to be on the casting and machining part. We want to be, you can say, the last man standing. We want to be the solution provider for the OEMs globally, with a massively good footprint, for example, in Eastern Europe. And this is how we approach the situation. Does the situation currently in Europe have an impact? Yes, of course. I mean, the Volkswagen's, the Porsche parts for the Porsche Taycan, that's not going according to plan. So obviously, Porsche is also not ordering from us. So yes, yes, yes, we see it in the turnover, we see it in the calls, we see it in the outlooks in our suppliers.
But on the other hand, countries like the U.S., when you take the Mexico part or others, or you take the India part for Amaneos, it's going very well. So there we have the compensation then to it. But yes, we feel the European automotive crisis. I think you, as I said in the beginning, you can speak hours and hours on that, and if you have five people in the room, you have six opinions. How to overcome and when to overcome, and if to overcome, but we feel it, but we also feel very well prepared in our portfolio for this kind of negative trend.
Thank you. There's another question on the, exit proceeds. You mentioned a figure of some two hundred million, and the question here is whether you expect any of that to materialize by the end of 2024 already?
I mean-
We work on it. I would say we work on it, and once you see something materialize, and it was quite a discussion to put in a number here, and what number? But to say here now, until 2024, we work on it. That's why we also here in the presentation showed it until the end of 2025, because sometimes we do not have it under control, and sometimes it could put a lot of pressure on us when we need to do something in a quarter instead of doing the right thing, maybe two months later, for an even higher price, and that's what we here do not want to elaborate on, because it would not be helpful for the value creation.
Maybe to give you an example, I recall right after the acquisition of Frigoscandia, I think we could have sold Frigoscandia a year earlier. The price ticket was €20 million. So we believed in our operational plan. We believed to bring Frigoscandia up to the next level, and as, as published, it paid off because, I think a good year later, we sold it for, for three times what the, what the offer was, after one year. So that, that's the beauty of being listed and not being in a fund which needs to be rolled over or which has a duration. But we can decide what is the right moment. The exit plans, which we showed you, are the ones which we are in preparation or already in execution, right? An exit needs to be prepared.
Whatever you do, if you do an IPO, you need to have a certain readiness. If you do a trade sale, you need to have a proper management in place, you have the contracts in place, you need to work on the change of control in main contracts. You potentially inform your top two, three customers or your suppliers, or you inform the unions. So, you know, there are a lot of stakeholders, the insurance companies, potentially banks, which you need to take on your journey of an exit.
So it's not that, you know, I wake up in the morning, meet Mark at a coffee corner, and we decide, "Let's sell a company." So there's a lot of preparation work and thinking when it comes to momentum, when it comes to market, when it comes to selection of advisors, when it comes to expectation of valuation, when it comes to the timeline. So these are a lot of ingredients at the end to the meal.
Thank you. Then there's another question, on, your expected developments in 2025 regarding the currently largest investments in the group. Is there any idea you can give us on sales and EBITDA expectations?
The largest investments, then we start obviously with FerrAl and Amaneos. For FerrAl, we have now acquired a lot of entities, and the team needs to cluster them together, needs to kind of put the offering in a different manner and go to the customer. That's what already happened and ongoing, and we expect them to. Since we haven't had the budget meeting yet, we expect that they will show us something which is more than a billion of revenues. I would assume for now, haven't seen anything, that they show something of an EBITDA margin between 7% and 10%. But that is what I would expect based on the current trading and what we talked about it with the team all the time. But let's see.
The other one is, the Amaneos, where we have included, LMS, SFC, and MoldTecs, right? This is under the umbrella, and, Elastomer is part of the SFC group. Here we have actually seen quite a good development, all the time at Elastomer, in terms of also profitability. They closed one site, transferred it to the other sites or transferred it to other SFC plants. Also SFC themselves, they have China and India in their scope, and also Mexico and North America, is going quite well. Profitability is already around 10% of EBITDA. We expect this to continue in 2025. Then we have MoldTecs, that are actually also doing okay and well in Europe.
Actually, not as planned, but on a positive manner, because they produce for the combustion engine still, components, and that goes more well than the electric part. So we expect that this continues, and they have ramped up something in China, and they have, or they are in the process of putting up something in India. Now we need to find a solution for the U.S., that is hopefully provided by M&A. And then we actually are also quite positive for this group. I can't say any profitability level, because we have substantial investments to be made, in especially the U.S., and we don't know yet, where the 2025 profitability will be. And the last one is LMS.
They have a year 2025 in front of them, which is kind of a bridge year, because they have won a lot of the new platforms that will ramp up in the course of 2025 or in 2026, so that the profitability we expect from LMS in 2025 will be actually low and will increase then 2026, 2027. So that's a plan that we have seen from LMS, and means overall, Amaneos group is quite diversified in terms of where they are standing. Overall, again, also more than a billion of revenues. Profitability, I would expect a bit lower than what I said for FerrAl. These were the two big, and then I think we already come down in terms of revenues to Lapeyre or the NEM group and so on.
So these are, when I look at NEM going really well, and then it comes down and we diversify. Also, Terranor would be already then on the list. So there are others that have a profitability which is, goes quite well, and I think are closer to an exit than the automotive segment. All right. All right.
Thank you very much. I think there's one. We can take one further question. You mentioned the expansion and also the investments you did in expanding the offices internationally. And then here's the question regarding China that it is probably difficult to withdraw money from China, and how this affects your business and how you think about that?
Yeah. That is actually one, or was one of the key questions we discussed extensively with the head of China, that was actually in Europe, at that point in time, 'cause he lived in the Netherlands, before we set up China. Because it doesn't make any sense to have an acquisition in China if we cannot transfer this to Europe. And the way he entered and prepared Mutares China for this is, that differently to Europe, China needs to be self-financed with the operations team in China, with providing services to Chinese local portfolio companies that pay to Mutares China, so that we, as Mutares holding from Europe, do not have to transfer money all the time to China, and then we get paid three months later, maybe. That is not the case.
So self-finance on an operational basis, and when it comes to the acquisitions or exits, this is something that takes longer, but it's not impossible, and that is the way forward that our head of China showed to us, that it needs a bit of preparation time. You need to fill in a lot of documents, for sure. There are controls, but it's not impossible. It just needs... It takes time. It's longer, that's for sure, but we are actually feeling quite comfortable with our head of China, that this will paying off in future.
Thank you very much.
All right.
It's 11 o'clock. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Johannes. And obviously, thank you very much to all investors and the various questions you asked. This concludes our call. Thank you, and bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.