Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Sorry, good afternoon.
I'm Peter Stadelmann, and happy to give you a short insight into what I think one of the best companies on that planet. Our purpose is to help the people that work in commercial kitchens. Commercial kitchens are canteens in hospitals, in schools, wherever you go and buy warm food, and we help them heating up food. We are very focused in two ways. First, we only have one customer group, those people working in commercial kitchens, and we only help them with heating up food. They need to do a lot of other things, cleaning, making coffee, storing food, cooling food. We are not about that. We are just about bringing energy into the kitchen. As I said, we differentiate four customer groups among that group of people working in commercial kitchens.
One is the catering, schools, hospitals, stadiums, cruise ships, airports, where you produce food that will be delivered to you in the plane. The second one is restaurants with service. Downstairs you probably saw the RATIONAL in front of the food. The smaller groups are retail, supermarkets, gas stations, and the smallest segment for us, restaurants without service. So what we call fast food or quick service restaurants. Those are the four customer groups. We have one main product. This is a combi steamer or a combi oven. That's 60% of our total sales. Total sales is EUR 1.3 billion. 60% of that we make with producing and selling combi steamers. A combi steamer is a big box like that one here. Different sizes, different energy sources. We have two, electrical energy and gas-driven, and you can prepare in there almost everything.
From croissants in the morning to fish and broccoli at lunch, and steaks and pizza in the evening. You also can do sweet dishes, pies, whatever you like. We think that 95% of all possible covers can be prepared in a combi steamer. It is very versatile. If you only do pizzas, you will probably go for a pizza oven, but if you do pizza and fries and steaks and fish, fries you can do there also, air frying. Most of you probably have an air fryer at home. None? Some do. Our founder also invented air frying 50 years ago, so every combi steamer can air fry. It is not known, but that is the case. Our second product is complementary. It is called iVario. Instead of using the climate to heat up food, here we use a medium.
It is either hot water, hot oil, or we use the pan where we put the meat, sausage, or whatever you like on the iVario pan. So this one replaces all kind of different appliances. As it is with the combi steamer, we also replace different kind of other equipment with just one single appliance. Our latest breakthrough was the iHexagon. We launched that in 2024. It is the first cooking solution using hot air, steam, like a combi steamer, those two, and in addition, microwave. So we have three sources of energy to heat up food, which makes the cooking much, much faster. Sometimes 10 times faster, in average, 30% faster.
Wherever peak time is an issue, the iHexagon is a big help because you can produce fresh food instead of producing before holding, which is not helping the quality of the food, or cooling down and reheating, which is also fine but is not good for the food at all. We have a digital platform. It is called ConnectedCooking. With that, you can check your unit, you can download the newest software, you can download recipes. So if you want to know how do I do the broccoli, or how do I do that? What temperature setting do I need? That is all in that library, so you can use that. We have more than 190,000 users, and we have 130,000 units connected. Nobody in our industry has that much units connected. You have to know that the commercial kitchen is not a digital place. It is working with paper.
It is working very It is not a place where everything has to be digital. Not at all. We are quite proud that we already have 130,000 units connected. All of those unit, of course, deliver data, so we have a huge data lake where we can put our AI models on and use that to create other solutions for our customers, or help them in using our units. We also offer a great deal of after-sales services, most of them for free. We are often asked, "Why don't you monetize that?" If you remember, we want to help our customers to prepare hot food, and we don't think we need to sell them everything. We sell our products, and with the product comes the ConnectedCooking for free, comes the after-sales services for free. That means, for instance, a chef line.
Seven days a week, 24 hours, our customers can call somebody, and that somebody is not an AI chatbot, it is a chef that can help them with questions about how do I prepare that special kind of fish, or whatever they might ask. We have trainings we offer, so if the hotel downstairs in the restaurant or in the kitchen, they have a new person, which is very untypical but could happen, not familiar with RATIONAL equipment, they send that person to us, and we train that person for free. We offer starter trainings, so once we have, for the first time, a RATIONAL equipment piece installed in the kitchen, one of our chefs will visit that kitchen later and train the team on-site with their menu. How do they now use our unit for their best usage?
RATIONAL technical service, we do not deliver the technical service by ourselves. It is delivered by independent companies. You find them everywhere. They are also maintaining the fryer, the coffee machine, the fridge, whatever else is in that kitchen. We train them. We train 6,000 service engineers every year, so they deliver best maintenance for our product with our customer. Because if they do not work properly, it also falls on our brand. That is why we heavily invest in training of those independent service companies. They buy our service parts and then charge them finally to the end customers. We are constantly upgrading our digital tools here. That is a digital tool which is sold. We sell a solution that the service partner can remotely fix the unit, and this is sold to the end customer then by the service partner.
Looking at our revenue, 60% roughly is units, thereof. Sorry, 70% is units, 60% is combi steamers, as I said, 10% is iVario, and the rest is recurring after-sales, non-unit business, 31%. It has three equal parts. One is cleaners for the iCombis. All iCombis nowadays have a self-cleaning function, and you need either taps like you have at home or cartridges where the cleaner detergent is stored. 10% is the service parts I was mentioning, and 10% is accessories like different trays for grilling or the big trolleys which you need to load and unload the floor units which are available. Altogether, as I said, 70% unit and 30% or 31% non-unit business. That is the most important slide because it shows what we have ahead of us. A big, big piece of work. On the left side, you see the combi steamer market.
For us, from roughly 20 million professional kitchens on that planet, 4.8 million are addressable for our RATIONAL equipment combi steamers. They have the purchasing power, they have the menu, and they have the technical requirements they need. Power, gas, water, air. Power or gas. That is what we need to install a RATIONAL combi steamer. From those 4.8 million addressable for us, only 25% already have combi steamers. 75% still need to be informed, convinced, and then educated that combi steamer is a much better way to do what they do today with stoves, pans, fryers, steamers, convection ovens, whatever they might use. Fire, open fire sometimes, a grill, or what else? From the 25% already penetrated, you see that we roughly have 50%, so that is our global market share. In Western Europe, it is much higher.
It's probably 70%, and in other regions, we are a little bit lower. On the right side, you see the same thing for the iVario. Potential smaller, penetration even smaller. So only 8% so far are using modern, versatile Contact Heat Technology appliances, and the rest is using big kettles, big tilting pans, which we are all going to replace in the future. It takes time. As you see, it took us 50 years to get to those 25% so far. Why? Our equipment lasts forever, and the equipment is bought for a very long time. If you are not present when the kitchen downstairs is changing their equipment, you will have to wait 15 years again, and that's then the next opportunity to either step in or not.
We are constantly informing our customers what is there, how it could help them, and hopefully convince them to change to RATIONAL combi steamer technology or iVario technology. A few minutes on numbers. That's our half-year result 2026. We are at EUR 642 million in total sales. We grew organically 8%, which is our mid to long-term target. After FX, it was only 6%. You see the regional split here. We, as a German company, we display Germany on its own. We had a wonderful growth of 9%, which is, I would say, not typical. Typically, Germany is a lower single-digit growth. Nine was wonderful. In Europe, all ex-Germany, we also had a growth rate of 9%. If you look to North America, it was low due to the FX. Without FX, it was 10%+. Asia is minus due to China. In China, we have two effects.
One is our largest customer by units is Yum China or KFC China. They run more than 12,000 RATIONAL units, but they decided to step by step now source units from local manufacturers. We are no longer the main deliverer, main source of combi steamers. They use Chinese models now steady, and also in the future. The second reason, of course, is China's economic situation right now. The rest of Asian markets grows high single digits or low double single digits. Latin America, +18%. Rest of the world, that's mainly Australia. In Australia, we have a license partner. The ordering behavior of that company is a little bit volatile. It's not in the market. It depends on whether he's ordering large volume or not in that month or in that month. Here you see the two products I was mentioning.
On the left side, again, the big elephant, the combi steamers, iCombi, grew by 5%, and the iVario grew by 14%. That's what we want to see. We usually expect the iVario business to grow double the speed of the iCombi growth. That's our EBIT in absolute numbers, EUR 170 million in the first six months, +11%. In there is a EUR 14 million tariff refund for the last year and some months of this year. That's why we are very high at 26.5%. After that, we are somewhere in the 24-ish percent. That's what our forecast is and our expectation is. All in all, we confirmed our forecast for the rest of 2026. That means we will have a mid to high single-digit growth in revenues. Our gross margin will be slightly lower. We have the tariffs remaining. We have some higher input costs, electronic parts.
As you see, the AI boom is also hitting us there. Operational costs are rising slightly faster than sales revenues, so we should end up at an EBIT margin at the end of this year, somewhere between 25%-26%. Our investment story is still, I think, very attractive. On the left side, you see some opportunities. All factor prices for our customers go up, energy prices, food prices, minimum wages, real estate, and if that goes up, our unit is more favorable for them. They need to rationalize their production, and what else could you do than buying RATIONAL product to rationalize? We have a lack of skilled workers. Nobody is becoming chef these days, or at least not in Europe. I think you don't ask your children to become a chef for many good reasons.
Our iCombi Pro has chef knowledge inside, so you don't need every operator. He doesn't or she doesn't need to know how long do I need, what temperature to make fish, to make broccoli, to make croissants. That's all in the software, and you can use that at the fingertip. Hygiene goes up, the requirements, the demand for healthy food goes up. That's combi steamer. Combi steamer is the best way for food to make it hot. On the other side, you see our strength, high untapped market potential, high brand awareness. People call a combi steamer RATIONAL even if it's not a RATIONAL. That's what we created in the last 50 years, working hard for our customers. We have highly profitable business fields, we have highly satisfied employees, and we have highly satisfied customers. That's it. three seconds, two seconds, 20 minutes gone. Swiss timing.
Please. Swiss timing, yes. Term timing.
Thank you.
We have 10 minutes left for questions. Who wants to start?
You said something a little surprising, I guess, in China, what Yum Brands, KFC, decided to basically go with some local product. Can you talk about maybe the comparison, how you're still differentiated versus the local products in China? Then obviously they must be going with a lower price. Is there a way for you to fight back and basically have maybe potentially local production in China to be able to still address that market? Or we will see a continuous decline in share for you from this point on in China?
Yes. Yum China started to source locally, I would say five, six years ago, and step by step took in more local manufacturers. Interestingly, they gave us twice the amount of volume in 2023 and 2024 to beef up their high-frequency stores. That was not done by the local manufacturers, but us. That's why we understand probably also the political pressure behind that. Yes. They go more and more or fully now for local. The local manufacturers are price-wise a little bit below under the price of our new locally produced iCombi One. Since March this year, we sell our China-built iCombi One, which is lower than the iCombi Pro, 30%-35% below the list price of our premium model, which is still built in Bavaria, in Landsberg. We will see how this goes on.
You see that it's not only, I would say, it's not only RATIONAL objective reasons for that decision. Let's wait two years, three years. They might come back to us. We will see. We had that case earlier. Sometimes you lose a customer, sometimes you win one back or win another. That's the business we are in altogether.
And maybe just a follow-up on that. Is there a risk that those Chinese players come out to play in Europe?
Yes
North America or probably Latin America, where you have high growth? From a competitive standpoint, I guess again, trying to understand, is it so far off in terms of the feature set that those products have versus yours, or they're really the same as your low-end model?
Yes
Of ability?
Yes. May I repeat whether the question is also do those local competitors tend to go outside China, and how are their products? Their products are comparable to our entry model. They are not reaching, let me say, the features we offer in our top-end product, and also not what other European combi steamer manufacturers offer with their top-end products. Not yet, but we are, of course, prepared to see that they are coming closer. Price-wise, as I said, are they cheaper so far? So far, those main competitors, if talking about Yum China, Yasta, and [Nopen], they are not expanding into other markets. But we see first Chinese manufacturers going to North America, which is strategically, I think, the right thing because that's, for a combi steamer and for modern equipment, that's the biggest market. You have one language. You have Western cuisine. It's almost the same.
Not a lot of regional cuisines. Slightly, yes, but not in a big part of the market. You are welcome.
Amazing equity story. Thank you for the presentation
You are welcome. Thank you.
My question is, isn't it possible to develop these kind of products for the consumer world?
That's something we get as a question often. Of course, there are combi steamers for the consumer world. The iVario, I don't think that this is something that you would probably put in your residential kitchen. We clearly do not address this market. All our marketing, all our research goes into mass feeding. Yes. At least 20 meals per serve. If you would like to have one at home, I mean, you get it. Yes. We do not hinder any dealer to sell you a RATIONAL Combi Oven. The Kardashians have two in their TV house, in their kitchen, as a residential kitchen. But it's not the focus we are working to. Very important. Completely different industry, production costs, distribution, price point, functionality, completely different. Only a few players are on both.
Usually, the brands in the commercial kitchen are not known to a normal consumer, and the consumer brands are usually not selling into the professional kitchen. There are some exceptions. The Thermomix is one thing you often find also in commercial kitchens.
Okay, then we have another question from the chat. The question is, can you give some first impressions how market has accepted the iCombi One?
Yes. The iCombi One is well accepted. We are still in the phase of presenting it to the dealers. We're also finding new dealers with that. That's helping us. We have a first completely new key account ordering the iCombi One. He said RATIONAL was out of his price scope before. Now, with the iCombi One, he choose us. I think the customer has more than 700 outlets, so that will be helping the next month and next years to fill the need. So far, we are very happy, but we didn't disclose any exact figures.
Could this dilute your margins?
No, it shouldn't. I have to say, we have an entry model, which is called iCombi Classic, produced in Germany. That was no longer in good figures sold in China the last years because it has a very small display, and we all know, yeah, if Chinese customers, one thing they want to have is a huge display. The car should be filled with displays, and also the combi oven should have a big display. That's now solved with the iCombi One. We don't think that this will help or damage a lot of our own sales. Cannibalize. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for.
Okay.
Can you talk about your capital allocation decision or process? You generate a lot of cash flow, but there's no M&A really.
No.
That's not the strategy. You invest in a lot of people, so there's a lot of cost to build up understanding of the story, and you have these salespeople. I understand that part that's needed. What can you do, I guess, to maybe re-energize the share price, for example? That it's a tough world where AI is sucking capital and consumer stories are not really favored at the moment, but you have a special story, clearly, and it's always been the case. But sentiment about the story has fluctuated for a lot of great companies, just because AI is robbing attention.
Yes. We do not intend to buy shares back. That is clear, no. We will not go into M&A, at least not in our product world. If there is anything very helpful for our ConnectedCooking platform, yes, but that would be, I think, a minor deal. That would not be very expensive. We do not need a lot of CapEx. We had our biggest CapEx ever with the new service parts building, which will go into operation next year, early next year. Then we will have a new office building next year starting in Landsberg, so maybe EUR 30 million again. Whatever we don't need, if it's in excess, we give it to our shareholders. We did that with a special dividend this year. Usually, we pay out 70% of our annual profit. Because as I said, if we pile up too much, we don't going to risk anything stupid.
We will just pay it out to our shareholders. With that, I hope that also the, yes, the sentiments might go better again. We hope to see a better share price.
It will be time for last question. One more.
Maybe. No one else?
AI, a lot of companies are using it to make themselves more efficient. Extreme example would be firing 50% of your workforce. That's probably not so easy in Europe or in Germany. Talk about how much you're investing in AI yourselves, what it's used for, how you can maybe make things more efficient. Like for example, people can increase productivity on lines, for example, with AI-enabled cameras, or to lower any mistakes in the manufacturing or anything like that. Just talk about how AI can make your business even more efficient.
Yes.
Maybe improve margins. You control your margins. You could print whatever margins you wanted. I know.
Almost. I would make two different kind of AIs. The one is around our product, and there again, I think we are leading. We are using those 130,000 units, collecting data, analyzing the patterns, and seeing, okay, there is an indication that this unit might fail within two weeks. So we can let our customers know, or his service partner, better go there in a peaceful period in the afternoon, no business, and replace a pump, replace a relay, replace the ceiling. We even see that, if the door gasket is no longer proper, so we see more energy is used for a certain energy input, so we can send somebody there and help him save energy. I think that's where we are leading, that's where we are already offering customer solutions, and that's, of course, the thing we will focus most.
Is that free or is-
No, that is not free. That is included in that technical service monitor we are selling through our service partners. Still early stage, as I said. In our industry, you just have to add 10 years to get to the normal level in other industries, because it is very slow and very conservative. Nobody wants to change anything if it is working. Do not touch it. Please do not. Just let it. That is the normal attitude we see. That is one thing. The other thing is, how will we use AI for our own administration? That is where we wait and see. That will be off the shelf. Of course, we are testing. Everybody is using AI to summarize documents. That is already in place. But so far, we do not have a target to, let me say, increase margin by 1% yet. That will come with the time.
But I think also there, we are quite up to date.
Thank you very much-
You are welcome
for the insights into your business and the interesting discussion. The next company to present here is HomeToGo.
Thank you