Good afternoon, and welcome to RATIONAL's earnings call for the fiscal year 2025. Following the balance sheet press conference which was held earlier today, management would like now to give you a run-through of last year's results. That will be done by the CEO, Dr. Peter Stadelmann, and the CFO, Jörg Walter. Thanks to everyone who submitted their question in advance. They will be answered after the presentation. To avoid duplication and for your convenience, I will post a list of the questions that have already been submitted. You will find them in the chat box on the lower right-hand corner in a few moments. Should you have additional questions, please feel free to enter them in the chat. We're looking forward to an insightful exchange, and I now hand it over to Dr. Stadelmann. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We can celebrate again. It's 50 years of combi ovens that we celebrate in 2026. We started in 1976 with the first convection oven, where at that time also steam was included, which made it a very multifunctional device with a great future to come. You know our history a little bit, some of you. 1979, we started to clearly focus on combi steamers only. We stopped producing and selling convection ovens, which at that time made up to 40% of our total sales. The company doubled several times in the following years. In 1986, we were celebrating the 100,000th iCombi oven, and shortly after, in 1987, we introduced ClimaPlus Control.
That was the globally first Combi-Steamer with a very precise control of the humidity in the cabinet. Oops, that was a little bit too much. 2000, as you know and as we celebrated a year ago, was our IPO. 2004, we celebrated the launch of the SelfCookingCenter and the VarioCookingCenter, our two first intelligent devices which are able to cook on their own, so we don't need any chef's experience or knowledge in order to bring out high-quality food in high volumes. In the following year, we constantly improved our existing product range. 2017, we added ConnectedCooking as the platform for our units to be connected. 2018, also a milestone, we integrated the sales and brand of FRIMA, which was taking care of the, at that time, VarioCookingCenter, into the RATIONAL brand and into the RATIONAL sales force.
Later on, we built our 1 millionth combi oven, which then helped the Hofbräuhaus in München to feed its many guests. 2020, we launched a completely new series of iCombi and iVario. Every unit, every product at that time was completely redeveloped and reassessed. As you also might know, 2023, we had a big anniversary. We celebrated the 50 years of RATIONAL. A year later, we launched the next revolution after the first combi steamer and the first iVario. We launched the iHexagon, the world's only and first cooking solution which combines three sources of energy to heat up food, convection, steam, and microwave on 6 levels in high quality and high volume. Also, in that year, we started the production site in Suzhou, China. If I'm going on to the last year's, 2025, brought a new plant in Wittenheim.
Everybody attending our Capital Market Day last year, not yesterday, was there. We produced the 1.5 millionth combi oven in February, and as we will tell you later, we came back from our product launch in China, where we introduced the iCombi One last week. Let me add one more slide here. Our 1.5 million combi steamer was donated to a health institution taking care of severely ill children here in the neighborhood and was very well received. Let me add some pictures to the iCombi One. It is a perfect fit for Chinese kitchen, and we demonstrated in a spectacular show last week to more than 160 dealers, kitchen planners, and key accounts the new unit, and I'm happy to show you some more insights in a short movie.
Please let it roll. Yes, you saw that this is a perfect fit, as I said, for Chinese customers. The iCombi One will be sold through our existing sales channels with our existing dealers. We do the same kind of selling approach as we do for the iCombi Pro, which is still also, of course, on sales in China. It will be sold only on China mainland. We do not have any plans to export that unit to other countries. Its languages on the display are Chinese and English only, so already this is a clear focus on China. How do we do all that? As you know, we pay a lot of attention to our employees. So also last year, we could honor 133 UIUs, as we call them, for 10 or up to 40 years of service with the company.
We usually do a wonderful dinner with them, where some of our best chefs are proud to serve whatever they are wishing to have on the menu. Another interesting thing I would like to show is a competition we won. We are the number one company in machinery with employees that share information and news about their own company on LinkedIn. That also shows the pride and the ambition of our staff they have with the company. Let me finish with some interesting information on sustainability. We are happy that we did our first CSRD sustainability report for the fiscal year 2025. Much more, we had last year a great study done in one of our customer's kitchen. That was the AXA Versicherung AG in Germany.
We installed a lot of meters for energy consumption and water consumption, and we were measuring the consumptions before the complete redoing of the kitchen, and also afterwards. You see what was installed in the kitchen on the slide here. When we measured after the completion of the rebuilding, we could see that water consumption was down almost 50%, energy consumption was down 24%. The load, the connected load that you need to, the size of the cable, as I explained it usually, was down 20%, and also more than 20% of peak times were reduced compared to the old kitchen. All in all, we could prove together with the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences here, which did the research and the analysis, that our equipment is helping our customers to get more sustainable every day.
Also on everybody's news is the topic of artificial intelligence. Just an example how we use it at RATIONAL. We have several tens of thousands of units connected, and from that we gain a lot of data. Using AI tools in that data lake, we can now monitor and identify preventative maintenance needs, or our service partners are able to tell their customers there is a pump not working properly or your sealing is not working properly. Let's repair it while your kitchen is not down and not being affected by an unplanned downtime in busy hours. That's something we offer to our service partners. They then sell it to their end customers and would provide those customers with a digital service report, which also gives them advice how to improve their sustainability or how to improve the usage of their equipment in total.
Let me finish with some new geopolitical risks. Both of them are coming out of the White House, the Oval Office. One is the U.S. tariffs. As you all know, some of those tariffs are unlawful. We are in the process of asking those unlawful tariffs back through our customs broker. That's still in process. We can't say actually what the outcome will be as so far, no other company also was successfully claiming some money back. The impact on our cost and income situation is still quite difficult to predict. The second issue is the war in Iran. Currently, we don't see any interruption of supply and logistics. Of course, delivery routes to Dubai are uncertain. We have higher container rates with surcharges, and there are risks of higher energy costs and higher material prices.
Also there, so far, it is quite difficult to predict the impact on our cost situation. With that, I would like to hand over to Jörg Walter for the second part.
Yes. Thank you very much, Peter. Also, a warm welcome to this call from my side. We published our preliminary figures for this year or for last year on February 5, and with this publication, we already commented on the most important KPIs regarding sales and earnings. With this call, we would like now to take a little bit a deeper look into the financials for the last year. Before we start, let's have a look at our sales reach. As a product-wise focused company, we are active worldwide. This is because we have customers, we want to reach customers all over the world and bring them our benefit. This is important for our growth on one side, but it's also a very important element for our risk management.
We can actively achieve this only if we are close to our customers, if we know their needs, and we can actively help to overcome their challenges. The free market potential, you know that remains high. 4.8 million worldwide addressable kitchens in the world. 75% of them still use traditional devices. 25% only have a Combi-Steamer or an iVario. There is lots of opportunity for us, and that is important why it's very important for us to have a high sales reach. You see that we are active in 100 countries of the world. We have 22 sales companies worldwide, and we are actively working on extending our presence. This is also what we did last year. Last year, we hired 102 new employees.
Of these, over 80% were located in our sales organizations, and 60% are in the direct sales team. Our sales force now has a worldwide strength of 630 employees, and this is an important factor why we can again present good figures with new records. This is once again, we can prove that our business model is quite resilient against economic fluctuations or geopolitical tensions in the different regions of the world. Now, let's start with the sales. You can see the sales development 2019 to 2025. Despite the challenging situations in individual regions of the world, we continued our growth path. We achieved a new sales record of EUR 1.26 billion, and we were able to exceed the previous year's figure by 6%.
Now our growth rate was lowered by the unfavorable development of the currencies. Our foreign currency share is currently at 53%. The US dollar alone accounts for 20% of our sales, and in particular, the development of the North and South American currencies above all the US dollar slowed our sales growth. Adjusted for currency effects, we were able to increase our sales by 8%. A look at the business performance during the year. We are very proud of the last quarter because we closed the fourth quarter with a new quarterly record of EUR 341 million and a quarterly growth of 7%. I just talked about the currency effect that was most noticeable in the fourth quarter. Before this currency effect, the last quarter growth was even higher at 11%.
That's on top of a previous year value that was already very high. When you look at the different quarters, you see that we come back to our normal seasonality. We start with a lower first quarter, then we have two comparable quarters with the second and the third quarter. Then typically, we have a new sales record in the fourth quarter. You see that this trend after we were out of this trend during Corona, COVID, and during the supply chain crisis in 2024 and in 2025, the normal seasonality applies. Let's have a look at the business development by region. Europe, excluding Germany, and North America, they are our largest sales regions. Together, they account for 67% of our sales.
These two regions have had a significant impact on the group sales development with sales growth of 9% in Europe and 8% in North America. Now, the growth in Europe was, first of all, possible because we had a good normal sales development in the major, the biggest markets we have, that is Great Britain and in France. In addition, we achieved double-digit growth rates in Sweden, in Italy, in Benelux, in Austria, and in the Eastern European markets of Poland and Hungary. We are very, very pleased that we have been able to consistently exploit the opportunities that are available in Europe, close to our home markets and far away from the geopolitical conflicts. Now, in North America, our growth was 8%, and that was significant, once again, reduced by these exchange rate effects.
Adjusted for the currency, we grew by 14% in this region, and this is even more positive because our competitors, they have reported low single-digit growth rates at best. We see this as a confirmation of our strategy not to compensate the unexpected tariffs through quick price increases on the market, but that we rather waited a little bit and we go for efficiency gains, among other things, in all areas of our company. Looking at Germany, we see that with EUR 129 million sales, we were able to achieve a new sales record, and we doubled our growth rate from 2% last year to 4% this year. It's typically because it's a penetrated market a little bit on a lower level, and with the 4%, we are quite content.
Now, we come to the one critical factor I would say at this slide. It's the sales development in the Asian region. We recorded here a sales decline of 11%. Also here, it's important to have a closer look. There are especially two reasons for this sales decline. This is, first of all, we had a significant decline in sales with our largest Chinese chain account after the record sales that we had with them in 2023 and 2024. The second effect was a decline in sales with our Japanese OEM partner that placed in 2024 special stock orders, and that wasn't repeated in 2025. Excluding those two customers, we were also able to achieve a sales growth in Asia of around 6%, so in the general growth development of the group.
On the positive side here, I would like to mention that we were able to stabilize our street business in China. We had a double-digit growth rate there. Also in Korea and in India, we were able to achieve double-digit growth rate. Now, the two smallest regions you see here, Latin America and the rest of world, they showed also the same growth rate as the group as a whole. Both were growing by 6%. Here, I would like to highlight the Brazilian market. That is the largest market in Latin America, and we increased sales by 18%, and we were able to continue now a very positive development that we have here since 5 years in a row.
To summarize this chart, we see that we continued to have good growth opportunities in our so-called established markets that are the markets where we are active for many, many years with our own sales force, with a higher sales team. We are also able to find new customers in North America with our customer proximity and our offering, despite the difficult condition caused by the unexpected tariffs. Overall, we are, with the sales result, quite happy. Coming to the sales by product groups, typically, we say that the iVario, because it has not the same time in the market as the iCombi, can grow with double the growth rate, and that was true also for last year. You see that iVario in euro was able to grow sales by 10%, iCombi by 5%.
If you look at the units alone, the growth rate of the iVario was 12% and the iCombi was 6%. Also here, this double growth rate is true. Also here, I would like to mention again, North American market and the South American, Latin American market that was particularly pleasing for the iVario because we were able to achieve growth rates of 30% and 40% here in these two areas. Now coming to earnings before interest in taxes that reached a new all-time high of EUR 333 million in line with our new sales record. We were able to increase the EBIT in line with sales development by 6%. As a result, we stabilized the EBIT margin.
It's slightly above the good previous year figures and in line with our earnings forecast in the beginning of 2025. Now, looking at the P&L in more detail, we look especially at the gross margin. Despite additional burden of the U.S. tariffs, we were able to stabilize the gross margin at 59%, and this is only 0.2 percentage points below the previous year's figure. This was possible because we saw an improved efficiency in production and also we again saw positive FX effects from lower raw material and purchase prices. These two factors weathered the additional tariffs that we had to take on our account. Looking at the operating costs, they rose slightly faster than the sales with a rate of 7%.
Again, here you see that we have the highest increase in the R&D costs, where we increased by 15% and thus continued to invest into the future of RATIONAL. We also invested slightly over proportional in the sales area. Here you see on the slide the sales and service at 6%. If you only look at the sales numbers, it is by an increase by 8%. This is in respect of the additional workforce that we expanded in our sales team. On the other hand, we had savings. First of all, you see the administration costs. They are lower than in previous year, in 2024, and also we had positive effects from lower logistics costs.
Overall, in light of the unexpected challenges due to the tariff situation and also due to the unfavorable exchange rate development, we are the management, Peter, myself, but also our other colleagues, we are quite satisfied with the EBIT development. Now let's have a look at the balance sheet. We improved our balance sheet again last year. Total assets grew by EUR 77 million to EUR 1.185 billion. This is due to an increase in the equity of an amount of EUR 84 million, and this is due to the good earning situation in recent years and in respect to their comparatively lower dividend payout. As a result, we see that the equity ratio has increased from 77% at the end of 2024 to now 80% at the end of 2025.
On the asset side, you see additional higher working capital for inventories and receivables. That's mainly due to this positive fourth quarter that we just talked about earlier. The main effect on the active side is certainly the high level of cash and cash equivalent. That is bank deposits and the short-term investment combined of now just under EUR 540 million. With this liquidity ratio of 46%, we are now in a very, very robust position and this gives us in particular flexibility when we come to the dividend proposal later in this call. Looking at CapEx, you see that our business model has a very low investment CapEx intensity. In comparison of the growth of our business volume in the recent years, we have a very constant CapEx in the range between EUR 30-35 million.
Also in the last year, we are in this range, EUR 34 million. It was primarily for our construction projects we already talked about earlier in calls about those. I would like to quickly give you the last status. We start with our largest investment in the history of RATIONAL and our youngest investment project. We started the planning for a new service part distribution center in the beginning of 2023. Last year in January, we had the groundbreaking ceremony. You see that in the picture on the lower left. Now you see on the picture that all the buildings are already standing and the interior work and installation of the warehouse technology that has begun.
We are quite confident that we will be able to celebrate the opening in spring 2027. Now we can also report the, let's say, the finish of two important investment project. On the one hand, we have the new plant building in Wittenheim. Peter already talked about on the timeline about it. You all know that we had problems with our concrete floor for the production hall, and this quality problem was totally solved in the last year, and we had the move in the relocation of the production in October last year. We can now say that this project is fully completed. The second completed project, also we talked earlier in this call about, is the build-up of our production for the new iCombi steamer for the Chinese market.
We had the opening of the new plant in March 2024. Last year, mainly we worked on the build-up of the production facility, of the welding machines and all the assembly lines. Now we had the start of production in January. Also here, this CapEx project is fully completed. Now we come to the dividend proposal. Typically, we distribute out 70% of our earnings per share. We looked earlier at the balance sheet, and we saw the very positive cash development and the very positive business development of the years 2023 and 2025 that led to these high liquid funds. This is the reason that for the financial year 2025, we are proposing a regular dividend of EUR 16 plus a special dividend of EUR 4 per share to the annual shareholder meeting in April.
This represents now a payout ratio of 90% and is a dividend increase against previous year of 33%. Of course, after the payout of the dividend, we still have enough liquidity in these challenging times to keep our flexibility and invest in the future of the company. Now we come to the end. Finally, to the outlook for this year. The economic outlook for the commercial kitchen industry remains positive despite all geopolitical uncertainties. The out-of-home catering is growing, and due to the shortage of skilled labor, automated and efficient solutions such as our Combi-Steamers or our iVario are in a very high demand.
We therefore expect sales to be sales-wise 2026 to be another year of growth and to continue our long-term growth trend with a sales growth in the mid- to high single-digit % range. Now, the raw material prices and the logistics prices, they have stabilized in recent years on a low level. Currently, Peter already mentioned it, currently we have a trend reversal of steel prices and also electronics prices. They have risen since the beginning of the year. In addition, there is the burden of the full year effect of the exchange rates and still the unclear customs situation for our exports in the USA. Overall, therefore, we expect that the gross margin will be slightly lower below the previous year's figures. This year again, we will intentionally increase some of our operating expenses.
These are especially all expenses that are connected with our sales process that brings us more closeness to our customers. On the other hand, we will keep all non-related sales expenses stable, and we will continue our efficiency program that we started in the mid-2024. We still have the same policies in place, especially the very conservative hiring policy here in Landsberg am Lech at the headquarters. However, overall, also we expect the OpEx to increase a bit more than revenue. With all these three factors, sales, gross margin and OpEx, we are expecting, compared to sales, a lower increase of the EBIT, and with a margin, EBIT margin between 25%-26%. With this, we are at the end of our presentation, and we are opening now the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for the insights and, congratulations again on a great fiscal year 2025. We're now diving into the Q&A, and we have indeed received quite a few questions already, some prior to the event and some during the event. Without further hesitation, we're gonna dive right into the first one, which reads: How does the removal of US tariffs affect your pricing decisions, competitive positioning, and expected fiscal year 2026 growth? And have you seen any pricing moves from competitors? This question is for you, Peter.
Thank you. Tariffs right now have not been removed totally, so we still have to pay the new temporary tariff of 10% for our units and the remaining tariffs on the value of stainless steel within our products, which is at 50%.
We do not plan any changes of prices, and we did not see any moves from competitors so far. Given the fact that we raised prices quite late in early 2026, but later than everybody else, we think that we improved our competitive position.
Thank you. Staying with the same topic, were tariffs the major reason for lower gross margins? To continue with this, what tariff levels do you expect for 2026? How much of the 2025 tariffs could be refunded? Is the cost of goods sold increased tariff-related? Last but not least, are any potential refunds included in the guidance?
Major impact on lower gross margin in 2025 was from tariffs. We compensated that by lower raw material, logistics, components costs. Expectation for 2026 is also difficult, as I said in the presentation. We will claim refund up to $15 million. The decision and the timing of that is completely open.
Switching to China, could you outline the commercial and production ramp-up of the iCombi One, including customer reception and strategic fit, as well as the expected impact of China-related investments and operating expenses drag on margins, P&L and fiscal year 2026 EBIT?
We launched the iCombi One a week ago on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we had very positive feedback on-site from dealers, from key accounts, and from kitchen planners. As I said, 160 were on-site during two events. We do not disclose yet more details on volumes nor capacity at the moment. As usual, we do not expect any margin dilution by that new product. The strategic fit in my eyes is high since we really tailored this unit to be perfect for Chinese meals.
Could you please explain what performance or order activity you see in the iHexagon, how you do see the further rollout, and what management has learned about the market potentials since the launch?
Yes. We still see good growth from, of course, a low level. No major impact on our financials expected for the short-term view. We focus still on creating awareness, broadening the scope. We've, since 2026, more countries now and customers group. We included France, Sweden, Spain, and Italy. I think those are the European markets we added to the former existing three markets, U.S., U.K., and Germany. We have a broader market base now and see more and more, I would call them normal customers buying the iHexagon for their special need of high speed in high volume.
Great. Can you please give us an update on the iVario?
Yes. After crossing the 10,000 unit mark last year, we see continued growth, this year. The ambition is still to grow approximately double as fast as with the iCombi, product. Last year, major growth drivers were the Americas and Europe.
Thank you. Going to the issue of energy costs, and this is a question for you, Jörg, effects from increasing energy costs for you and your customers, including effects from the Iran war or potential future effects of the Iran war.
Yes, certainly. We are also looking at the development of the energy prices. We typically have quarterly contracts, so for one quarter we are fixed, and then we renew this. The volume is quite low, so we have EUR 3 million here, just to give you a number, in Landsberg am Lech on energy costs, and in addition, around EUR 2.5 million for the fuel for our company cars. I think the change and the increase, yes, will hit us, but it will not be significant. For our customers, I think that is very relevant because energy is a very relevant part of their total costs, and that will be even, as you know, beneficial for us as efficient cooking in a closed climate with an iCombi is beneficial then for them.
Great. Coming to the next question. In 2025, R&D costs increased by roughly 15%. Can you give us more background on the reason for that?
Well, first of all, we invested in more people in R&D. We now have over 300 people in the R&D area on these three sites. The biggest team here in Landsberg, but also we have a team in Wittenheim and a small team in Suzhou. This is an increase. We have some external development costs that are connected with our projects. What is important to mention, we had due to the new site that we have in Wittenheim, we changed the allocation of our overhead costs, and that also had an effect on the cost increase that we are showing here. If we take that effect out, the cost increase would have been at 11%.
Thank you. Staying with the P&L tax rate in 2025 increased to 25.6%. Where do you see 2026? Should we expect a further increase?
No, we don't expect a further increase. Typically, we calculate with a tax rate of 24%, and last year, in 2024, we had a positive impact through the capitalization of deferred tax assets. In last year, during 2025, we had a special depreciation of that asset, and that's why if you look at the P&L, the tax rate looks a bit higher. Going forward, we are expecting to go back to 24%.
Thank you. Got it. CapEx, do you have any programs, investments remaining in the coming years? You've briefly touched on that, but could you give us some more insights?
Yeah. Well, we will stay with this low CapEx intensity that we saw. We will typically further invest. Well, we will continue certainly with the service parts center, so this will be part of the CapEx in 2026. We have plans. We have currently in Landsberg part of our UIUs that are working in rented offices, and we have plans to build a new office center here in Landsberg, but this will start in 2027.
Thank you. Looking at the dividend, is the expectation that the normal dividend will rise significantly so that some of the four-year or special dividend you've paid before becomes part of the normal dividend?
Well, first of all, we expect rising EBITs, and that means that we will also have rising dividends. For the time being, we keep our policy that we dividend out 70% of our net earnings. Depending on the liquidity situation and also the general current economic situation, we will then decide on these special dividends. That is now too early to do so for the next year. Yeah.
Thank you. Coming to the next question, which is, for you, Peter. How does management assess the potential of the key account activity in the US for 2026?
Yes, we have an unchanged positive opinion on key account business in the U.S., which is, of course, much more important compared to other markets. The pipeline is full. We are with so many brands. I need to get back to my list. Hooters, Denny's, Albertson's, The Cheesecake Factory, Holiday Inn Express, Freebirds World Burrito, Moe's Southwest Grill, Schlotzsky's, Walmart, Sweetgreen.
Mm-hmm
Wawa, just to name a few, and there is much more to cover, so we are very positive. I also would like to express that our main growth contributor, also in the U.S., remains the street business.
Understood. Talking about guidance, can you put some more concrete color around your fiscal year 2026 growth guidance and the trading momentum you are seeing at this early stage of the year? What are the key factors that will determine where you will ultimately land within the 25%-26% EBIT margin range in fiscal year 2026? Last but not least, how much of the current external uncertainty is already reflected in that guidance?
Oh, yes. As you know, our growth is always organic, and we produce our growth by hiring new salespeople. Simple and easy as it is, and we are definitely back on track since last year by adding new sales colleagues in almost all our markets. Organic growth, we expect in the upper single-digit % area. Negative FX leads to somewhat lower levels for reported earnings growth. Nor the impact of new tariff developments are included, neither those of Iran war and impacts. Region-wise, like long-term growth prospects, more from overseas, less in Europe as we showed last year. We didn't publish any guidance on Q1 yet, but for more general trends from the last quarters, that is continued. As I said, some insecurities through tariffs and Iran war remain.
Thank you. Next question regarding cash flow is for you, Jörg. The cash flow was rather low. Can you give us some more background on where that was coming from?
Yeah. There are mainly two effects to that. First of all, we had higher tax payments that we did in 2025, and then also we had a change in working capital, especially due to the very, very high sales in the last quarter. In the last quarter, we had very high sales in December, and that brought us to this very high receivable position, and that is the reason why the cash flow was a little bit lower.
Thank you. Coming back to the Iran issue, how is your business doing in the Middle East? Can you give us an outlook on which element of the supply chain would become the first problem with regard to the Iran war? That's a question for you, Peter.
Yes. Total sales in Middle East is just around 3% of our total revenue, so it will not have a major impact.
On sales, it didn't so far, and we don't expect it to have for the near future. Also within the Middle East countries, we don't see a major negative impact. Supply chains are not interrupted. We don't expect it. Higher costs for energy and raw material are expected, but the magnitude is so far difficult to forecast for the time being.
Thank you. Coming to operational expenses, which measures did you take to stabilize the administration costs in 2025? Can you give us an outlook on your cost development, especially on wage and logistics costs expected in 2026 and beyond? I guess that's a good question for you, Jörg.
Yes. Well, first of all, we invested quite a lot in our digitalization during the years 2022, 2023, 2024. That is the reason why it was quite easy for us really to establish this efficiency program mid-2024 that we just said, "Okay, we have a hiring stop in order to gain this efficiency." That was, let's say, the most important measures, and I think the reality showed us that we were not suffering from in any respect implementing this measure.
This is what we continuing, and then certainly we have the normal processes in terms of our budgeting process that we have very restrictive now and that are the most, let's say, elements we are using in order to keep the costs under control like we had done so in 2025. When we look at the wage development, we just announced that we will have in Germany in this year a wage round of 3.5%.
Mm-hmm.
That is a little bit above the average. We did so because our earnings are quite well, and we want to, let's say, participate the employees, especially also from their commitment to go the efficiency measures with us. 3.5%, that is what we do in Germany. Worldwide, it's very country-specific, market by market. It would be too early to announce that now. When we look at the logistics cost, that's a hot topic right now. Typically when we did our planning, we expected logistics costs to be a bit on the higher side. Now, with the Iran war, we said that they are skyrocketing. We have special fees per container, and it's very difficult to say now how that plays for the full year.
Right now we have a quite special situation when it comes to logistics costs, especially all for containers for the overseas shipments going into the East.
Thank you so much. Let's look at productivity. Can you give us a feeling of how much productivity increased in your production in 2025? Do you have a target for 2026?
Yes, there is a number that we keep fixed since many, many years. Our productivity target is 5%-6% per year. That's what we overall achieved last year, and that's also what we have as a target for 2026.
Great. Looking at sales and regions, sales decreased by 11% in Asia in 2025. Can you give us some more color on why that happened?
Yeah. I already explained in the presentation it's really due to the two customers that we have. That is this Chinese key account that we do have on one hand side. On the other hand, it's our Japanese OEM partner, Fujimak. Taking those two accounts out, then our sales increase was at 6% on a FX-neutral basis.
All right. Looking at the forecast, can you please give us a bit more color on cost management, ahead of 2026 in order to support margin and partly offset the impacts that may arise from the geopolitical conflicts and ongoing tariffs? What are the main lever to leverage?
Well, I think there is nothing special to say. Though we are watching the situation. We are hoping that we can weather the higher input costs through efficiency gains. We always say that we are not planning for price increases just for the sake of price increases. But on the other hand, we are also able to do so when we think that these effects are getting a too big magnitude. Yeah. Other than that, it's a normal process. I talked earlier about it's restricting hiring in the headquarters. We expect our sales force in the R&D area to be also stable and not to increase it any further.
The only build-up that we really plan is in the sales force, and I think that is quite also directly and bringing a return on that investment quite quickly.
Thank you. The next question is for Peter regarding pricing. Would you expect additional price increases in 2026?
No, we do not plan any major price increases. We just heard that's for us the very important-
Statement
A statement that we want to offer highest customer benefit for a reasonable price. I would like to add here that our prices are not higher than the best units of our best competitors. We are on the same level, but offer much more, especially also a lot of services for free, like the ChefLine, like our academy or the on-site instruction after the first unit, for instance, has been installed.
Thank you. Jörg, if you could tell us the fiscal year 2025 non-unit business. What's the share of non-unit business?
Yeah. Last year, the share of the non-unit business was stable. It's at 30% and so you could say 10% is accessories, 10% is spare parts, and 10% is cleaners.
Thank you. You briefly talked about the positive outlook for the gastronomy industry, the hospitality industry in your markets. Can you give us a more specific outlook for that? The question goes to Peter.
Yes. Our outlook also for the gastronomy industry is positive. Out-of-home sector is growing globally. We have more and more people living on that planet. My first granddaughter, Bobby, was born yesterday evening, so she also will need some food later on. All the people living on this planet are getting older. The standard of living is growing, which means that the money spent on food out of home is increasing. There might be a shift, of course, between the different sectors. From typical restaurants to quick service restaurants or from restaurants overall to food bought at a retail supermarket. That's happening. For us, that's not a challenge since we serve all of these customer groups all together.
Thank you. The margin beat in 2025, can you give us a little bit more granularity as to what were the driving factors behind the beat versus the previous guidance that you had put out? That's a question for you, Jörg.
Yeah. Well, I think in the presentation I also showed that, looking at the gross margin, it was quite stable. Also, looking at the OpEx development, although there are no big fluctuations. I think it's a bit of everything. First of all, it's a higher productivity in the production process. That was important. Also, the variable input costs for material, stainless steel, they were really on a low level last year, but also logistics, components. Then on the OpEx-wise, it is our pro-productivity improvement program that we initiated. All these factors together. It's not the one building block, it's rather a little bit of everything.
Great. Thank you. Regarding sales organization, to what extent is your growth driven by underlying demand versus continued expansion of sales capacity? And how should we think about sales force productivity and scalability going forward? That's a good question for you, Peter.
Yes. It is not either/or. For us, the demand is given. We know the potential, which is still huge. Jörg mentioned that only 25% of RATIONAL Addressable Kitchens are already using combi steamer technology. There's a huge number of customers we need to inform, so they know there is something like a combi steamer and inform them about the many, many advantages they serve to them compared to traditional equipment. What we need to do is we need to increase our salespeople feet on the street, as we call that. If we do so, we are very confident that growth will come from that. We demonstrated that especially last year. We do another sales approach than most of our competitors. We go to the end customers. Almost none of our competitors is doing that in the same way.
They usually only work with dealers. Productivity of sales force is, of course, increasing. The more experienced the salesperson is, the higher the target we set for its annual units to sell and for the customer activities we expect from a single person. That's for us completely normal daily business and scalable, of course.
Thank you, Peter. With which measures did you successfully counteract the weak market environment in North America?
Exactly what I just said.
Exactly.
We increased our people, the number of salespeople in the field. We increased the number of activities, so that means more customer visits, more invitation or not invitation, more participation of customers at our RATIONAL Cooking Live and so on. By increasing the number of activities, finally that will lead to more order entry.
Great. Thank you. Jörg, could you give us a feeling on U.S. and European organic growth?
Yes. We saw in the presentation that the growth in Europe was 9%, and when we look at the organic growth rate, it's also very close, 9%-10%. It's really only the British pound that is in there. US, I mentioned that earlier. The FX effect is quite high, so we reported 8%. When we really look at the FX effect or the organic growth, we were around 14%.
Great. Looking at organic growth, volume growth, you're looking at a 6% volume growth in 2025 and organic growth of around 8%, meaning that you have roughly 2% coming from price mix. Is that a correct assumption?
No, that is in that respect not correct. We didn't have any big price changes, decreases. We only had 1 price decrease that was quite low for cleaners in the beginning of the year for our cartridges. That is a minor effect, but then we weathered this effect by 2 or 3 minor FX related price increases. The total price change was nearly zero. The difference really between the 6% and the 8% is all currency.
Okay, great. Thank you. Peter, have you seen any changes in regards to the competitive environment recently?
No, we didn't see any major changes in the competitive landscape. We expect to gain market share since we outgrow most, or I would even say all of our competitors organically.
Thank you. Jörg, the EBIT margin in Q4 was very high, 30% in constant currency, I guess this is what it means. Can you give us some more background on that?
Yes. It was basically very much related to a very positive sales development in the last quarter. I commented that with EUR 341 million in the last quarter, it was very high and we had a record December. That certainly with a normal cost base that is more or less fixed for a quarter, that led to that nearly 30% EBIT margin in Q4.
Operational leverage, basically.
Yeah.
Great. EPS in Q4 was down by 1%. Can you shed some light on that too?
Yeah, that is in relation to the deferred tax asset that I also commented on earlier. We activated a tax asset in 2024, and that was due to a tax calculation of the earnings distribution between the different companies. A part of that effect, we had to reverse in 2025, and that was booked in the course of the year-end closing accounts. Yeah, that's why it was, let's say, 100% attributed to the Q4. That is why earnings per share is, there is a decline, but I think it's not a Q4 effect, it's a full year effect.
Okay, great. Looking at Q4, the effective tax was rather high, and the cash tax was rather low.
Yeah.
Is that related to what you just were talking about, or is there another reason behind that?
No, no, absolutely. That's what I was talking earlier about it. Yeah.
Great. CapEx was rather high in Q4 as well. Can you give us some more background on that?
Well, we are making good progress, especially we are in the hot phase. You saw that on the picture for the service parts distribution center. Many invoices came in in Q4, and that is the main effect why we had this high Q4 number.
Okay, great. The next question reads, "In 2016, gross margins during the quarters were near 62%. They have reached back to 59% during 2025 quarters despite price increases. Gross margins have not reached the 2016 level. Why?
Well, first of all, we introduced the SelfCookingCenter XS in 2016, and that had a significant effect roughly 1 percentage point on the gross margin, so we're coming down. Also we had a reclassification of some service spare parts related with our warranty, and that is basically a fact why you cannot fully compare today's figures with 2016 figures.
Okay, understood. Looking at China and the iCombi One, can you give us a bit more understanding as to how many units and what sort of margins you would expect looking at capacity that you have in China built up presently or planning to build up? And whether the version that you're selling is basically just a simpler iCombi version, and if you have started selling. And also, what's your planned timeline to reach 60%-80% roughly of capacity utilization in that country?
Yeah. Well, at this time, we do not disclose the capacity or the sales figures for the iCombi One. We are just in a very early process. Well, it's a simpler combi steamer that is specially designed for China. It has a lower selling price. The price difference to the iCombi Pro is around 25%. We can say that when you look at the COGS or at the manufacturing costs, the margin is comparable. We also have lower COGS obviously in China. That is very much depending on the capacity utilization. In the beginning years, we still expect a negative effect on the overall P&L, and then for the coming years, it will be positive year by year.
Understood. One question for you, Peter. Looking at North America, and we've touched on that partly already. Question reads: You had strong sales in North America, 15%-20%+, especially in the periods 2016-2019 and 2021-2023. What were the drivers at those times for those rates, and what growth rates would you expect over the next three years, and what will you do to achieve these targets? What are the drivers of strong growth in Europe last year in 2025, and how sustainable is that?
Yeah. Somebody was looking back into past figures, I see. As I said, our growth is produced by hiring more salespeople. Again, very easy and simple, sometimes boring. That's what we need to do. If we add more salespeople, we have more activities, we have more customers informed and finally convinced to buy modern multifunctional equipment from RATIONAL. Even in markets that are more penetrated, we condense the sales territories by just adding maybe one new colleague and adapting the existing sales territories. In North America, we expect double-digit growth to continue organically. Currency might dilute that, as we saw last year. Also in Europe, we expect to have continued growth, so that is sustainable.
I would not take the years 2021 to 2023 to compare since we had the pandemic first and later on the supply crisis, the shortage with many electronic components, which to be honest, really got volumes and prices completely out of order. We also had to increase prices at that time, which we usually don't do. Figures from 2021 and 2022 to 2023 might be not much helping in a comparison.
Thank you. You've already issued the guidance for 2026. Can you give us a feeling? I know that's probably difficult, but maybe a gut feeling how well the 2026 year started for you so far.
Yes. We commented on that a little bit, but we will not disclose until, I think, early May Q1 figures.
All right. Can you explain the impact of higher energy costs within your business? I know we've touched on that briefly as well, but being more specific, looking at direct costs and costs that you can pass on from suppliers and maybe pass on to your end clients. If that's a question for you, Peter, as well.
Yes. The typical share of energy cost in gastronomy might be 10%-15%. With our gas units, it would be around 18%, it would be higher. Of course, higher energy costs make it even more important to switch from traditional equipment to modern iCombis or iVarios. I just would like to state again those savings we demonstrated with the AXA case, 50% of water, 24% of energy, that's a big chunk in the P&L of any restaurant. It is, sorry to say so, all factor prices going up. Rental costs, wages, energy, and raw material help our business because it's even more economic than to switch to modern multifunctional equipment.
Great. That also addresses most of the next question, but can you give us a sense of the share of addressable kitchens that work with gas versus electricity? What the split is?
Oh.
Probably it depends on regions as well, but just.
Yes
As a rough estimate.
The biggest gas markets are the USA. Do we have some numbers somewhere?
America is 50.
In the U.S., it's roughly 50%, so half of all the kitchens are running on gas.
Great. Jörg, how much pre-buying did RATIONAL observe in the fourth quarter ahead of price hikes in the region in early 2026?
Well, as we did not increase the prices as of 1st of January, nowhere in the world, the increase or the spike was very limited. However, I have to say, as I said earlier, we had a record December, and I estimate between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million. That was maybe the year-over-year shift that we had, especially in the U.S. market and also in some Latin American markets.
Thank you. We've talked a lot about how relevant sales people are for you, the feet on the ground, as you said. You have 1,134 people in sales and marketing, the question reads, how many of them are working in sales? As a comparison, 2024, there were 605 is the number that the question gives us.
Yes, we are now at 630, and we have some hundred freelancers in addition with which help us at trade shows or unit introduction. The 630 are on our payroll.
Thank you. Peter, we've talked about capacity in China, which we don't wanna talk about, but what is the units capacity for iCombi, iVario, iHexagon overall, and how will that develop over the next three years?
Yes, we have 120,000 units capacity in Landsberg. We can easily add another 30,000 with doubling the last expansion we did in Landsberg, so there is space left. Capacity increase presumably will start in the next years. We have 25,000 units capacity in Wittenheim. Also there we can double that and then add another 25,000 in the third period. Additionally, info on other questions, units are up 12% with the iVario and 6% in the iCombi.
Okay, great. That would be.
Next
Another question. iCombi, iHexagon, iVario, okay, we're not talking about. What's the average price per model? Can you give us that in 2025? That's probably a question for you, Jörg.
Yeah. Well, we have EUR 9,000 for a Combi for the starting model and EUR 13,000 for an iVario, so that is the average selling price overall. The smaller, as you know, let's say the iCombi starts from EUR 7,000-EUR 8,000 and then goes up to EUR 30,000, and the same is the variety we do have for the iVario.
Okay, great. Looking at, and we've talked about this as well, so this is a little redundant, but in case you want to add any color. Question is regarding the Middle East and the potential impact on your sales, customer behavior, or your supply chain.
Yes. I think also, Peter, you mentioned it earlier. Our staff right now, they are working from their home office. The normal sales process in Dubai, basically in Dubai, we are also in the course of setting up a warehouse, a local warehouse in Dubai. That process is stopped so far because basically, the ships are not coming there. The total impact, it's around 3% of our sales. For the overall company, we do not expect a real major impact.
Great. Following up on logistics and basically the Iran war as well, you do produce mostly in Europe and then ship overseas, I assume? How much would be transport costs of the overall costs of the end product in the US? Can you give us a feeling there or in other overseas markets?
The overall, so the cost per unit is around 3%-3.5% of sales.
Okay, good. Thank you. Last but not least, do you see any hesitation of gastronomy customers to replace their ovens or buy new ones, or rather wait due to the Iran war and its potential impact on inflationary costs? Do you see an acceleration of electric ovens versus gas ovens?
No, we don't see any major trend right now. As we said earlier, the markets, they are quite stable. U.S. market, 50% gas, electric, that is quite stable over the years.
Great. I don't have any more questions for you, and I appreciate you being so forthright and answering them quite well. Once again, congratulations on your fiscal year. All the best for 2026. Congratulations on your granddaughter. That's good news as well.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time and your insights. Of course, thanks to everybody else who participated and also contributed very interesting questions. All the best. Have a great afternoon. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.