Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your patience. Welcome to the NORMA Group Q1 2026 results webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.
To ensure that the session runs as smoothly as possible and is easy for all participants to follow, we kindly ask that you raise your questions one at a time. In other words, if you have more than one question, please wait for the answer to the current question before moving on to your next one. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Birgit Seeger, Chief Executive Officer of NORMA Group. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Very warm welcome from my side to all of you listening to this call. This is actually the first full quarterly report as the new CEO of NORMA, together with the new CFO, Okan Celiker, today. As usual, after the presentation, you will have the opportunities to ask your questions, and we are very happy to answer them.
We will share some of the results we have in our Q1, and also share some of the changes we have introduced since the start of new NORMA, which we see some effective already in the Q1 results. Here you see our usual disclaimer. Please pay attention to this one. As we have done in the full earnings call from 2025, we will differentiate between new NORMA and former NORMA. The focus is on new NORMA.
In some topics we still talk about the former NORMA, and this is highlighted in the presentation. Now we have a look at the Q1 milestones and achievements. First of all, I have to say I'm very happy that we see a very good improvement in our profitability, which is 3.1 percentage point year-over-year improved. This is basically coming from a cost discipline in all cost areas, and a big thank you to all of our colleagues who made this happen with us. We see also secondly from the pricing efforts we have taken in positive effects, which is also of course contributing to the profitability. We see in our sales still some slight issues which we are working on.
Debt repayment are very positive based on the water divestment, so we are net debt-free currently, so a very good basis for new NORMA. The transformation program is progressing exactly as we have planned and as we have communicated and announced to you. We are simplifying, streamlining our organization, and the cost measures are well underway according to plan and committed.
We will share with you in a moment some new business wins. Just some examples we see also in M&E, strong contract. I will share one example from our Industry Applications business area, what we could win, which is just an example from several wins in this area. We confirm our guidance, our outlook for the financial year 2026, also based on the results we have seen in quarter one. Of course, we are still careful with the year going ahead.
We are confident to confirm and to see the financial year guidance. Now let's move our attention to our business win. This is an example from Mobility & Energy. We see a very nice sale here, what we could achieve actually with a very nice profitability for one of our customers, a major contract. SOP is in 2029. Now you may say, well, this is only in three years. This is important for us. This is the nature of our business. This sale is quite in 2029, and some of the sales we see in SOP in 2027 and 2028 already. The duration is for seven years, it gives us a very nice and stable business.
The fluid lines we have sold to our customer are improving the emission regulation and are used in internal combustion engine and in hybrids. This is very nice and very important. I think we are all aware hybrids are gaining traction and will stay in the market, so the forecast for quite many years. With this, we move on to our Industry Applications area where we have several industries in focus. Actually we have seven focus industries where we are working on. This is one achievement of our sales team, which we have really positioned in a different way now. We have sold to a company building machines to basically clean bottles. Our FGR, what we call it, so a very nice sale. We could actually win this because our service is really better than the competitor.
Our price was acceptable, and we have a fantastic relationship and could give technical advice which convinced our customer that we are the right partner for this kind of business. This is actually a product, the FGR, what you see here on the slide, what we have on hand. This proves again that we have the right products. In some cases, we will work on adaptations. This is a nice case where we have the product on hand, and we can use this in this industry, and there are several other industries which are out to sell these kind of products. Let's move on now to the new NORMA, to the industrial powerhouse. What I shared last time with you, this is basically a reminder and giving some more insights what we have achieved so far. The pillar number 1 to the left is the restructuring.
This is a transformation project. We have simplified the organization in a first step. We are not done with this, but we have started and see first achievements. We want to have SG&A which are competitive, which fit to new NORMA, and this is what we are working against. The new organization will be really oriented against the performance. We have done this in the sales organization already, and the whole organization will be also measured against business KPIs and the one NORMA business will be the focus. The second pillar is the footprint. We reported already that we could close our footprint measures in China already very successfully. In North America, in Mexico, we are on the way currently as we speak, and we are evaluating currently what is the right footprint set up for plants and for sites for the NORMA Group.
We will, in the second half of this year, also present our targeted operational and structural measures to come up with a new NORMA footprint. The third pillar is the sales push, as you have seen already. We confirm already this measure that we are having a bigger order intake. We could improve here. Just share these two examples. We will increase also our plant utilization, which is very important to use the capacity we have, to use the assets we have already, and to have a strong customer focus. Here I want to give you some insights in what we do. Actually, in February, we have brought together our sales team here and had a start of the year with clearly identifying what is the new way of selling, what is our pricing strategy, what is our calculation methodology.
We need to be fast. We need to be competitive. Of course, we need to be really profitable, and we have seen already the first results of this. Actually, I was two weeks ago at a customer, and they really confirmed that they see different behavior, and they have given us now additional business and really show and give us more RFQs so we could gain more business. The fourth pillar to the right, which is called growth, this is currently running on a low key. It's more for the midterm, which could include an M&A transaction, so we are building the pipeline currently. However, because we have a lot of homework in pillars one, two, and three, which is the focus this year, and this is what we are focusing on. With a little bit of resources, we are also working on the fourth pillar.
From this one we go on to give you a concrete example what we have delivered already in the transformation. We have implemented the SBU structure or more the business-oriented structure as focus on the SBU, giving more responsibility there. We will change our reporting as of the year 2027 to a business unit segment reporting, which follows the steering we are currently implementing in NORMA Group. Secondly, the shared service center, and you see a photo from Novi Sad in Serbia. What we are expanding, we have about 80 people working there in different functions, from HR, from sales, from supply chain and various other functions, where we are bundling our resources and sharing really also processes, making use of digitalization and run this shared service center where we see very positive results. SG&A improvements we have seen in the U.S. and in Europe.
Headcount reduction with voluntary leavers program, which are running according to plan a little bit better, and we foresee that we go ahead as planned and communicated to you already. Performance orientation, this is basically the sales push based on the agreements with our sales team. We see really that we can build on the very strong gross margin we have in NORMA and really fix our top line situation. To give you the key KPIs, our net sales in the Q1 2026 is EUR 208.6 million, slightly lower than one year ago. The basic effects are exchange rate effects, also some organic or some volume effects. Lucky enough or it's a good message, is that we are having an organic growth in Industry Applications, which is of course our focus in the growth areas.
Adjusted EBIT with EUR 6.3 million, a significant improvement towards last year's Q1, this translate into the adjusted EBIT margin of 3%. This is really the big step forward we have made. Of course, we are careful for the year ahead, we are also very careful at managing the cost situation and of course also the sales side. Net operating cash flow negative. This is former NORMA. Very important to notice, we will later on explain how this comes together here. With this, I will hand over to Okan to give us some more insight in the key financials.
Exactly. Here on the next slide and also warm welcome from my side, everyone. Very happy to be here and very happy also to engage with you for our quarter one results. Let's deep dive a little bit more into the financial development of Q1. As Birgit mentioned earlier, a quite solid quarter in 2026. In terms of sales, we reached EUR 208.6 million, which is a year-over-year development of -5.7%.
As already mentioned by Birgit , main driver of this decline is attributable to FX headwinds we saw globally, of EUR 9.7 million, of which EUR 6.8 million were related to the US dollar development and EUR 1.9 million to the renminbi in the China region. In terms of volume and pricing impact, we managed to reach an organic growth of -1.3%, which represents EUR 2.8 million. That means on a volume basis, the business declined. However, we could offset this by positive pricing impacts, which led overall to the -1.3% year-on-year.
Let's move to the next slide to deep dive in a little bit more into the performance of our business units, starting with the Industry Applications business on the left-hand side. We ended the year with EUR 66.3 million in Q1. This represents a decline of -0.6% year-on-year. And the main drivers here have been again the aforementioned currency impact, which basically impacted the development by -5.4% year-on-year.
In terms of volume and pricing impact, important to emphasize here, also mentioned already by Birgit , we've been able to increase our performance in the Industry Applications business organically, with 4.9% year-on-year, which was mainly driven by a stronger demand in the APAC region and a ramp-up of a major project in specifically the APAC region again. Let's look at the Mobility & Energy business. Here we achieved EUR 142.3 million in the first quarter. This represents a decline of -7.9% year-on-year. Main drivers here have been a softer automotive demand, which led to a decline on volume and pricing side, represented by -3.9%.
A currency impact, also in the Mobility & Energy, at -3.9% year-on-year. On the next slide, we see the regional development. Starting on the left side with the Americas region, Q1 2026, we achieved EUR 65 million sales in the Americas region. This represents a decline of -10.9% year-on-year. Mainly driven by FX and also by the softer automotive demand, as already mentioned.
At the same time, we've been able to improve our EBIT margin by one percentage points year-on-year, and with that reach 4.6%, which is mainly due to positive pricing impacts in the Americas region in the first quarter, as well as tight cost management in the region. Moving over to the EMEA region, here we reached EUR 114.1 million in the first quarter, compared to Q1 2025. This represents a decline of -2.9% year-on-year. Also here, we achieved a very significant improvement of our EBIT margin, 4.6 percentage points, compared to Q1 2025. Main drivers here have been operational improvements and also a tight cost management. Next is the APAC region.
The first quarter sales are at EUR 29.5 million, which represents a decline again, compared to Q1 2025 of -3.8% year-on-year. Also here, we've been able to hold the strong EBIT margin that we saw in the full year 2025 above 10%, which is a very solid performance, again, underlines the fact that we've been able to sustainably improve the operational situation in the region and at the same time are very disciplined with our spendings and cost structures. Let's move to the next slide. On the next slide, we see more details on our adjusted EBIT development. We already saw the EUR 6.3 million of adjusted EBIT, representing 3% EBIT margin in Q1 2026.
From left to right, we see basically the main impacts or the drivers that supported this improvement, a significant improvement from an adjusted EBIT in Q1 2025 at almost 0%, which was mainly impacted, let's say, on a volume and price basis, by the weakening demand that has been mentioned. This basically led to a reduction of EUR 7 million in terms of volume and pricing impact. At the same time, we can see that across the material, personal costs and other OPEX elements, we've been able to offset this negative impact from the volume reduction. Starting with the material cost, the impact year-on-year was at EUR 8.7 million.
Main driver here have been a positive mix or favorable mix, and at the same time also an improved material cost ratio compared to Q1 2025. In terms of personnel costs, we could achieve an improvement of roughly EUR 3 million, EUR 2.9 million, mainly a consequence of a lower headcount and improvement in the personnel cost area. Other OPEX, EUR +2.5 million. This underlines again the aforementioned disciplined cost management across the organization, and basically helped to support the improvement of our EBIT globally. D&A and FX, largely stable compared to Q1 2025. And just to round up what Birgit Seeger already described in terms of the Transformation Program.
In the first quarter, our transformation program contributed another EUR 3.8 million to our results compared to Q1 2025. On the next slide, I will briefly walk you through the Q1 operational adjustments and outlook for year 2026. In the first quarter, adjustments were limited and fully in line with our expectations. On EBITDA level, we basically had an adjustment related to transformation, severance and project costs of EUR 0.6 million. On EBIT level, we had an adjustment in total of EUR 1.9 million, which includes an additional EUR 1.1 million amortization of PPA. In terms of net profit, the adjustment is at a total of EUR 1.4 million, and this is post-tax.
For the full year, this means basically that our expectations remain unchanged. We are still expecting a total of approximately EUR 24 million of adjustments on the EBITDA level and EUR 29 million adjustments on our EBIT level. Here on the next slide, we will give you some more details, as mentioned earlier, on the Q1 2026 cash flow development. First of all, it's important to emphasize that on the left-hand side, our adjusted EBITDA in Q1 2026 is re-representing former NORMA. EUR 20.7 million adjusted EBITDA includes the water management business.
This is in line with the provisions of IFRS 5 that we applied, let's say, in context with the water management sale that took place in the beginning of this year. Our net operating cash flow ultimately ended up at minus 19.7%, and the main driver of this negative development was the trade working capital impact with minus EUR 33.6 million, of which the significant impact was again related to the sale of the water management business.
Here, particularly, we basically had to adjust for or could adjust for the supply chain financing program that have been reduced in the context of the sale, as well as a seasonal inventory related effect out of the water management business, which is also part of the EUR 32.7 million that you see here on the page. From our net operating cash flow, if we then also deduct the interest and the tax, as well as the proceeds from the repayments of the derivatives, we get to our external free cash flow of minus EUR 29.2 million.
Again, important to emphasize this here, without the one-off impact out of the water management sale, our net operating cash flow would have been positive, which underlines that new NORMA has a positive cash generation also in the quarter one 2026. On the next slide, we will briefly recap on the balance sheet reset and initial shareholder returns.
Starting with the water management divestment, which has been concluded according to the time plan and schedule. We could basically get the net proceeds as planned of approximately EUR 650 million post-tax in full year 2026. With that, also according to our plan and previous announcement, we parked basically or earmarked a debt repayment of up to EUR 300 million.
In the first quarter, EUR 290 million were already repaid, and with that we are basically very close at the communicated EUR 300 million. The remaining debt is basically consisting of promissory notes with different maturities.
Also included in the EUR 98 million are basically leases, around about EUR 20 million. In terms of shareholder return, we've communicated that we are committed to return to our shareholders a total of EUR 260 million, of which EUR 53 million have been returned already in early Q2 2026 via public share buyback offer, as you know.
With that, we can basically conclude that all in all, we are on track to reach the EUR 70 million-EUR 90 million net cash position by the end of 2026, and again, also confirm what we've shared with you within our communication in 31st March this year.
So-
With that, Birgit, back to you.
Thanks, Okan, to giving us this insight.
Thanks
Into the key financials. You heard it was an encouraging start for NORMA Group in the year 2026. We have clearly defined actions on our transformation journey to build new NORMA, to build an industrial powerhouse, and we are fully engaged to make this happen.
The year 2026, we have a quite volatile external surrounding, but we are working fully on our homework to make this a successful complete year in 2026. Given the situation, we confirm our guidance. Just to remind you, the net sales is in the range of we foresee in the range of 0%-2% growth. The adjusted EBIT margin we see in the range of approximately 2%-4%. The net operating cash flow we see approximately between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million.
We have promised, and we still keep this, that in the second half of this year we will invite and give a strategy update with more insights on our target vision for the year 2028. With this, I say thanks for the attention, and we open up for questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To ensure that the session runs as smoothly as possible and is easy for all participants to follow, we kindly ask that you raise your questions one at a time.
In other words, if you have more than one question, please wait for the answer to the current question before moving on to the next one. We will now take our first question. One moment, please. Our first question today comes from the line of Nikita Papaccio from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on your guidance. I mean, with your EBIT margin, you're already in line with your guidance range, while net sales are significantly down compared to the 0%-2%. What are you seeing going forward this year? Do you expect H2 to be stronger, for example, compared to H1 due to orders kicking in and structuring measures, or what should we see here?
Yes. Thanks, Mrs. Papaccio, for this question. Yes, we see the next quarters actually to be somewhat stronger. We have some measures in our hands which we are working on to ensure that we can meet the guidance of 0%- 2%.
As you have seen in the Q1, we are quite lower. Of course, the exchange rate was not playing in our favor. Also without exchange rate and with the EBIT margin, as you said, we are in line. We are, of course, also working on this to keep this. For this reason, we keep the guidance and we confirm the guidance.
Thank you. If you think about your adjusted EBIT bridge for the next quarters, should we expect a similar tailwind for material and personal cost as we saw in Q1?
Should I take that? Well, in terms of material costs, as of now, we expect a similar situation. However, due to the, let's say a very volatile situation, in terms of geopolitical crisis and also economic impacts out of that, it's hard to predict, as of now, let's say, what will happen.
With everything we know as of today, we don't see any, let's say, immediate impact on our material costs. In terms of personal costs, I've mentioned the EUR 3.8 million for the full year. We've communicated EUR 50 million incremental sales out of the transformation program. We are here fully in line with our quarterly performance, if you will.
Here, I would assume then, that this will stay more or less, the same. There will be a ramp-up, let's say, towards the end of the year. Also here we confirm again the EUR 15 million, that we have communicated earlier.
Thank you. My last question, I mean, we have already May. How is Q2 evolving so far? Are you seeing any signs of improvements in the environment in a specific region or business segment?
I couldn't get the first part of the question.
Q2. Sorry.
How Q2 is evolving?
Okay, well, currently we don't see any specific improvements of the situation. But at the same time, we also don't see, let's say, any negative impacts that will, let's say, have an impact, let's say, on our performance. But again, getting back to what I said earlier, it's a volatile environment we are in as of today. So far, I think we proved that also with our Q1 performance. We are basically in line with the expectation. As of now, as of today, this is basically what we can confirm.
Thank you very much.
That also means without any, let's say, a dramatic or significant changes, we would basically expect or assume that the situation would more or less stay in line with our expectations.
Understood. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. That is star one and one to ask a question. We will now go to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Yasmin Steilen from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello. Many thanks for taking my questions. I have also three FMA, and I will take them one by one. The first one on the net operating free cash flow. I just try to get my head around the net operating free cash flow guide. According to the slide in the presentation, their cash out is almost solely attributable to the water management. Adjusted for this, the net operating free cash flow was already around EUR 13 million in the first quarter. Even assuming the cash out relates to restructuring measures, the EUR 10 million-EUR 20 million guidance looks not very ambitious. Could you please walk me through your assumptions there? Thanks very much.
Sure. Thank you for the question, Yasmin. Also here, as of now, we are fully, let's say, in line with our expectation. We, when we came up with our guidance on our financial KPIs, we try to incorporate, of course, the situation with everything that we can predict in terms of external factors. As of today, we can basically just underline and confirm that we are very comfortable with our guidance for all the three elements. Net sales, EBIT, and net operating cash flow. As we don't know, let's say, how the situation will develop, globally and also for us then as NORMA. The first quarter might look positive.
Yes, as you mentioned, there is also, let’s say, another impact out of the transformation program. As of today, with everything that we know, we feel comfortable with that guidance also in terms of net operating cash flow.
Okay. Thank you. The second one is on the new pricing strategy. Could you share more color on the measures by segment? What is your target in terms of volume price? Maybe is it more geared towards Industry Applications, or do you also focus to increase the prices on the M&E segment?
It's actually for both segments relevant. Maybe starting with M&E. M&E is, of course, a highly competitive market we are in. We have actually the right products, which our customers are confirming. We have capacity, we have the assets installed, we worked very diligently through our numbers, what pricing we can offer to have the right market share and to work on our top line. As we have seen also in Q1, we are not where we want to be. This is on the M&E side. On the Industry Applications, it's a little bit different, it's also different industry by industry. We have currently seven focus industries, plus, of course, our distribution business. We do the pricing following each industry. What is the competition? Where are we competitive? Also following our cost basis in our plans in our company.
Based on this, we have worked out very individual pricing strategies that we are covering our costs, of course, that we are profitable, and that we are competitive in the market. We see here actually the first results that we can achieve nice new business in different areas. However, pricing is very different if you talk about data centers, if you talk about white goods, if you talk about aviation. It's for each industry, it's a different pricing, what we are applying, basically.
Okay. Perfect. I know it's very early stage, but after your discussions, the first discussions with customers, in the Industry Applications segment, how should we think about the midterm growth trajectory in this segment? What is possible also based on the order intakes you have realized already? That's my last question.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for this. We worked out really focus industries, seven focus industries. They have different growth potential. Sort of in terms of numbers, of course, we will share more in our strategy update. To give you a first flavor, the addressable market we see in these focus markets for Industry Applications is significantly bigger than we have in M&E.
The next question would be: Do we have the right products which fit for this application? We can broadly say yes, there may be normal adaptations required, and we have the right engineering capabilities in-house to make this happen in a right, actually in a really good timing, which also our customers appreciate a lot that we have this. There is really very nice growth potential in this Industry Applications industries.
Okay. Thanks very much. I'll step back into the line.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. That is star one and one to ask a question. There are currently no further questions. This means this concludes today's Q&A session and today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.