Ladies and gentlemen, welcome also from my side, and thank you for joining our today's conference call. Our prepared slides are available under the Investor Relations section of our website, r-stahl.com. Shortly after we will have finished this call, a replay of the entire conference will be provided for download at the same place. Please be aware of our disclaimer statement, which you find at the beginning of the desk slide. Now I'll pass on to Dr. Mathias Hallmann, our group's CEO, who will walk you through our presentation. Please, Dr. Hallmann.
Thank you, Ms. Schäuble. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Warm welcome to our Q1 2025 investors call. Yeah, I start with a summary, as always. We had a pretty interesting quarter, Q1. On the one hand side, we had a record level of orders. We achieved EUR 98.8 million of orders. Prior year was EUR 92.3 million. The former all-time high was two years ago with EUR 97 million. We saw rising demand from LNG shipbuilding, from the petrochemical and oil and gas industry. That was very positive. On the other side, we had a significant drop in our sales due to the very, very weak demand in the second year 2024 from the order side, where we could not book almost any projects due to high uncertainty in the markets. Our sales declined by 13.4% to a level of EUR 73.3 million.
Consequently, EBITDA pre decreased by EUR 4.8 million to a level of EUR 3.7 million. That was mainly driven by the lower top line and some higher personnel costs. Free cash flow remained stable on a level of negative EUR 4 million. We will comment on that in detail later. Net profit fell to EUR 2.5 million, and earnings per share ended at EUR 0.39 per share. When we look into the regional distribution, we see weakened sales in all regions, - 8% in Germany, - 10% in the Central Region, - 20% in Americas, and - 26% in Asia-Pacific. That basically represents my former statement that we could not book any projects. In Americas and Asia-Pacific, we are very much depending on projects as we do not have that position in the market we have in Europe. Those projects were not decided in the second half of last year, and consequently, we could not turn them into turnover.
We have similar effects in all regions, also in Germany and the Central Regions, but not with that heavy impact as in Americas and Asia-Pacific. If we then look in profitability, operating sales came down to EUR 73.3 million from EUR 84.7 million. Operating performance fell from EUR 92 million to EUR 80 million. Cost of materials were very well under control. Our cost of material ratio decreased to 34.2%. Prior year, we had 35.9%. That is a good indication of a very healthy product mix, certainly also influenced by the lack of projects. Personnel costs went up 3.5%, mainly driven by wage increases. Operating expenses also came down EUR 2 million from EUR 16.4 million to EUR 14.2 million, so also good cost control. Nevertheless, we ended with a negative EBIT of - 1.3, where we had a + 4.1 one year ago.
Financial results a little bit better than last year due to the reduction of our net debt. That all drives down to a net profit of EUR -2.5 million against EUR 2.1 million last year. Cash flow, we have basically two effects: a negative net profit against the positive last year, which gives a difference of EUR 4.5 million. On the other side, we have a much lower build-up of working capital, EUR 2 million versus EUR 7 million last year. All the other items are basically not really changed, so that we result in a free cash flow of EUR -4 million against EUR -4.3 million the year before. Negative result, but much better control of working capital, less than to a stable free cash flow. When we look into our outlook, before we come to the numbers, we have a similar situation like in the second half of last year.
Again, we see extreme uncertainty in the marketplace. We do have very stable baseload business from maintenance and repair and from some smaller brownfield projects. What we are missing at this point of time is big investment decisions. Nobody is taking decisions at this point because of, as I said, huge uncertainty driven by political conflicts, the general economic development, and all those trades and tax discussions which are in the market at this point of time. Nevertheless, we started with good order intake. We see ourselves in a strong position in the market. We are gaining market shares. We consequently implement our strategy so that we are still positive and think we can remain on the same level as we had in 2024. We sailed somewhere between EUR 340 million-EUR 350 million.
EBITDA pre in a range of EUR 35 million-EUR 40 million, positive, mid-single-digit million euro amount for the free cash flow and a slightly increased equity ratio under the assumption that the interest rate level for the valuation of our pension stays stable. Again, overall, we are still positive, but there is one but. We see huge uncertainty in our markets, which makes any guidance for the running year difficult. That is from my side. I am sitting here with my colleague, Tobias Popp, and we are now open for questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Klaus Schlote of Solventis AG. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have, for the time being, two questions. One is you mentioned that you gained market share. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that, how you got to this Aussage, yeah?
To this statement.
Statement. Sorry. I'm blocked. The other point is you got this almost EUR 100 million order intake in Q1. You mentioned this huge uncertainty developing over the last month. These uncertainties were not that present in Q1. Is that right? How is it in the current quarter developing? I mean, we are almost now, we have one month in the current quarter.
Yes.
Is that coming down, your order intake, due to this uncertainty, or are you able to stay at that level we saw in Q1? Thank you.
Okay. Market share, it's a valid question because there are not many reports, or there are almost no reports available, which gives solid numbers for our industry. I mean, we are in the market. There are some competitors like Pepperl+Fuchs, which communicate their annual reports. There are other competitors where we have relations when people talk to each other. Then we have customer feedback where we see us winning or losing. Overall, we do have the impression and strong indication that especially in the DACH region and in Europe, we gained significant market share over the last two, three years. You may remember that we were stable and growing during the corona phase, which was a strong indication that we gained market. Yeah, and we see the behavior of our competitors.
We are pretty sure that this statement is valid and that we in the DACH region and in Europe, as I said, significantly developed our market position. Second question, we got one big order in January from the Middle East, or two big orders with an eight-digit number volume. January was strong in total. Also, besides that, there were some decisions which were not taken in the second half of 2024, were moved into January. Since then, it is slowing down. It is slowing down. The point which is positive and which helps us to stay positive is that there are many, many investment decisions which have been taken in the last months for big projects across the world. Even though those decisions have been made, nobody is really pulling the trigger. The projects, even though they are decided, are delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed.
We would expect even and very, very clear orders are coming down from January to April. We see a very, very healthy project pipeline. Now somebody has to unlock this pipeline. We have to see when and whether it happens.
Okay. The BASF was reporting and saying that the Americas and Europe is growing weak, and they are concentrating more on Asia. On the other hand, they still keep to their outlook. They have not downgraded the current year yet. Obviously, chemicals is an important customer for you. Is that what kind of environment you also can confirm, that Americas, Europe in the chemical industry is still slow growing or no growing, and Asia is in a better shape regarding this?
If I look into the DACH and the Europe region, I can confirm chemistry is weak. When we look into our numbers, then we remained stable last year. Also, in the first quarter, we only came 10% down. That again indicates that we are winning in the chemical industry. Also, the industry is weak. We can confirm that Asia is more interesting, and we just had the groundbreaking for our new plant in India two weeks ago. We follow a similar strategy like BASF. There is much more activity in those markets. We have to admit we need to do our homework as still 70% of our turnover is in Europe. This is something we are going to change, hopefully in the next couple of years with our internationalization strategy. Basically, we share the same opinion like BASF.
Okay. Thank you so far.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from Harald Hof of MWB Research AG. Please go ahead.
Hello everybody, and thank you for taking my question. I just have got like two questions. You've mentioned the increased personnel cost. There's a question if it's a permanent effect because I saw other companies had one-time payments related to the tariff upslips in Germany, or it is a general increase which will occur also during the course of the year. The first question and the second question is also regarding the two major projects which came from Asia. Could you provide us some further details regarding these orders? Is this a one-time effect? Is there also a recurring effect coming in the next quarters and years? Maybe you can share some more details. Thank you.
Yeah. You're absolutely right on the first point. We had some significant impact from the time payment from the changing labor agreements. We are on the break. Yeah, we are heavily on the break when we look at the development of our personnel costs. I think we will see a positive development, meaning hopefully a negative development of our personnel costs in the coming months. With respect to those orders, I would hand over to my colleague because he was working on those orders already, I would say, 10 years ago when I wasn't in the company. He may comment on that.
Yes, with pleasure. Good morning, Mr. Hof. For about these major projects you are referring to, this is a special solution which helps to solve a dedicated customer problem. To do so, this is part of our sales strategy, what we are executing since a couple of times. It is content-wise about a UPS, uninterruptible power supply system, which helps to drive, for instance, an oil gaining platform in an autonomous mode. This is the problem because flying over there people by helicopter or carry them over by boat is a nightmare for the operators. Therefore, they are looking to get that autonomous operated. Our solution helps to get there. Yes, we are, of course, looking for referring business. That means there will be more of those.
You may have heard about the digitalization of offshore platforms, which is an initiative in the Middle East as well in the North Sea around Norway and so on. We are looking for more of this business. First of all, we need to prove that we can fulfill our promises by execution. This is happening now from order intake to sales cycle. We will, of course, refer those in much more orders over the time.
Maybe one comment from my side on top. There are roughly 3,000 platforms in the sea worldwide. Between 1/3 and maybe 50% of those qualify for these kinds of systems in the next 20 years because the strategy of all the oil and gas companies is to get the people off the platforms. You need to guarantee stable operations and stable power supply. This is what we delivered. These are engineered solutions because every platform is different. We were developing those solutions over the last couple of years. We were doing specification work even 10 years ago. We think it will pay off in the coming years and in the coming decade. That will be a very nice business for us.
Okay. Many thanks for answering the question. Just to confirm, you mentioned 3,000 platforms are globally in place. And how many could be in the market volume? I didn't get the number.
I'm guessing now between 1,000 and 1,500 may qualify for that in the next 20 years. Then we have roughly 50-75 per year. I would say a platform is somewhere around EUR 0.75 million.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Now it's installed for the first time on one platform, or is it like several platforms?
It's several.
Several.
Several. It's not the first time. We had smaller orders. We already had an order with a volume of roughly EUR 4 million last year, EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million. Now we have an order by EUR 10 million or two orders by EUR 10 million for a number of platforms. We have some more. We have some more in the pipeline.
Okay. Sounds great. Many thanks for answering the question.
Welcome.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Schäuble for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Sabrina. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our today's conference call. On June 3rd, our AGM will take place here in Fehlbach near Waldenburg. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to meet you. However, our half-year report is scheduled to be disclosed on August 7th. We are looking forward to talking to you again latest on this occasion. Have a great day and goodbye.