Good afternoon and very warm welcome to our conference call today. Andreas Klein, our CEO, and Thomas Dippold, our CFO, will give you a detailed overview about our business development in the first half of 2025 and our expectations for the upcoming months. We will also comment on the successful restructuring of our Carbon Fiber business unit. After the presentation, you have enough time to say your questions. Now I hand over to Thomas Dippold for the financials.
Hello everybody, this is Thomas, and it's a pleasure for me to guide you through the figures for the first six months of 2025. Maybe as a headline, we can say that our H1 was very much impacted by the very low demand. It's really the market side that's hitting us from semiconductor in particular, but also from the automotive industry where we simply suffer very low demand. You can see that on the next slide, slide number four, how we did on a group level. We, to a certain extent, anticipated that also in our budget and also in how we handled our resources. Our sales went down compared to the same period last year by 15.8%. That's hardly any effects in there.
We now reach EUR 453.2 million in our top line, whereas last year we had EUR 85 million more, achieving EUR 538 million in the same course of the year. Our EBITDA pre, however, also suffered from this weak market demand that we see. We now reach EUR 72.5 million as EBITDA pre in the first six months of the year, whereas last year we had EUR 86.5 million, which is a drop by EUR 14 million in between or 16.2%. How our most important KPI really shrank, and this is certainly affecting us. The sales split, however, remains very much the same. You see a little bit that Graphite Solutions is now again a little bit below 50%. It used to be 52% in previous quarters. In principle, I think the ratio stays more or less the same.
We have Graphite Solutions with roughly 50%, and the other 50% are somehow split between at equal shares more or less between Composite Solutions, Carbon Fibers, and Process Tech. As I said, the drop mainly comes from Graphite Solutions, from the semiconductor industry, and there in particular, and this is very unfortunate, the high margin Silicon Carbide business is the business which went down the most. This is certainly affecting our bottom line as well. When you see, and I think this underlines our achievements in the first six months of the year, having such a big market impact at such profitable products, and our EBITDA pre-margin remains more or less unchanged at 16% or 16.1% as it used to be in the same period last year.
I think this is a very strong sign that our ambitions and our achievements to adjust our cost structures, despite being so fixed cost heavy and having such a high capital intensity as we have, but that we can still adjust our costs according to the sales downturn. I think that's a marvelous achievement that we see here. Coming on the next slides to our business units, slide number five, Graphite Solutions. This is the business unit which is affected the most. First of all, this is the biggest business unit that we have. Secondly, they have this high profitable Silicon Carbide business in their portfolio. When you see, we now reach in the whole business unit EUR 221 million top line and used to have EUR 284 million last year. It drops by more than EUR 60 million or 22% in relative figures.
You can see on the right side where we describe where it comes from, EUR 63 million. In fact, the total drop comes from the loss of the business line, as we call it, semiconductor and LED. To a large extent, it's a Silicon Carbide business in this business line, which is dragging down the top line figures. Subsequently with that, this also pulls down our profitability, which drops by 43% or almost 44% or EUR 31 million, now reaching EUR 40.8 million in the first six months of the year 2025. Where does it come from? We have significantly lower contribution from our high margin businesses because of the missing demand. We have lower utilization of our fixed cost there, which we can't do anything about because we are so capital intensive in particular in Graphite Solutions. Therefore, just as a consequence, our EBITDA pre-margin decreased from formerly 25% to now 18.5%.
Still, 18% margin is nothing to hide in this business, but 25% was, of course, exceptional. Andreas will elaborate later on a little bit on the Silicon Carbide market, how we see the current status, but also the way forward. The other business segments I can say are more or less flat, which is, by the way, also an achievement when you look at the current market conditions, the uncertainty and the volatility. We still don't have any growth in Germany, hardly any growth in Europe, and all the obstacles that we have now with tariffs and everything. I think having a constant steady, yeah, you can also say stagnating sales and profitability in all the other businesses, be it industry, be it automotive and Graphite Solutions and battery, I think this is really an achievement.
Apparently, we can manage it that we also adjust our cost according to the demand. Of course, you can't compensate for everything with such high margin products, but I think we did our homework all in this business unit. The usual suspect who is exceeding the expectations or the development also in the current quarters, years, maybe is Process Tech. I think they've proven that again, that they're really outperformers. They have rather stable sales in a difficult environment when you look at, in particular, the chemical industry where they are supporting and selling their product. We see a continuous good development, which is just following on the good development that we had last year. Apparently, the growth is coming to limits because the market itself for this product is also not infinite.
I think Process Technology has a very good market position there, and they show it by penetrating the market and EUR 70 million top line. Even exceeding last year's six months a little bit is definitely a good achievement under the circumstances that we are working in this industry. We benefit really from our global network. We have footprints in the U.S. We have footprints in Asia, in China, but also in Japan. We are a stronghold in Europe. With that, I think we are really able to serve our customers in a very good way. We see a little bit declining order book or order intake. That means we are eating up our order book at the moment to a certain extent. This is really coming to a certain deterioration also in our situation. This is normally what is affecting us in six to nine months.
This is normally how long the order book goes. We will see a little bit of a sluggish development maybe later on in this year. We are, of course, looking very much on the order intake for the upcoming months, how the start and subsequently in 2026 will look like. We also see a little bit of price pressure coming from our competitors, mainly from China, from France, from the U.S. and India. So far, and you see it in the profitability, our customers apparently treasure and really value our quality and our support that we give. We are able that we can increase despite constant sales, our profitability coming from EUR 16 million to now EUR 19.9 million EBITDA pre in the first six months of the relevant year. I think that's a marvelous development.
When you can increase the profitability by 24% with constant sales, that normally shows you're doing a lot of things right. The margin now reaches 28.3%. I think I know the one or the other remembers that we normally said 20% is the maximum. I know what I've said in previous calls, 28% proves me definitely wrong. Is this sustainable for the future and forever? I have my doubts, but we are enjoying the moment and we're doing our best and we're trying to convince our customers with the quality that we have. Apparently, it gets valued and people pay for it. Coming to Carbon Fiber, I think this is the first time since 2022 that I can show and announce and publish, and I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the team who's responsible for that.
My colleague Stefan Müller , but also the team in the business unit, are doing a marvelous job there because they really turn Carbon Fibers around. You remember that we tried to sell it last year. We were not successful. We informed you at the beginning of the year that we are restructuring Carbon Fibers. The benefit or the result of this restructuring is what you can see here. Yes, you see declining sales, but this is not a surprise to us because we stopped immediately with any loss-making product, which we were not tied up in long-term contracts where we had some obligations, some contractual ones. We terminated these contracts. We terminated the production of that.
Apparently, we also made so last call effective means we somehow asked our customers, if you still want to buy something, now the prices have increased, but this is your last time because we will stop production by any date. For example, our Lavradio site, just to mention that, has been closed down end of June. We laid off more than 180 people there. They really had to go home. They got a, as we call it, severance payment, but we really stopped our production. We're now really dismantling the site and trying to return it to the harbor authority, which is the owner of the land there. This is where we are. To a large extent, this also affects, and I'm sure we come to that, our one-off costs in this year.
You don't see that in our EBITDA pre, but you see it, of course, in the net profit because we've made some provisions for the cleanup there, but we come to that later. Coming back to the business, with the decline of all the non-profit or the termination of all non-profitable sales, our sales now reach EUR 93.5 million, which is a drop of 15% compared to last year where we reached EUR 110 million in the top line. It is because of the mentioned reason. The market itself, we really stick to the decision that we made. There are profitable niches which we continue to live in and which we even try to increase in there. We have long-term contracts, which of course we do respect and fulfill, and we respect that. Apart from that, we leave everything behind us, which is not making money, and therefore the sales decline.
When you look at our profitability in EBITDA pre, however, you see you can't even give a % for that because you see plus and minus in the figures. You only can see a change in the profitability. We're coming from - EUR 4.4 million loss last year to now EUR 5.2 million in the first six months of this year 2025. As I said, this is the first positive result in Carbon Fibers since 2022, where we still had the wind market and the very favorable BMW contracts at that point of time. This is what I really call a turnaround, and the team has done a marvelous job there. An increase of EUR 9.3 million, EUR 9.6 million, sorry, million with a sales drop there.
You see the positive effect from the cost reductions on the right side where we comment on that with operating costs that we took out, personnel costs, which we don't have anymore. Of course, less energy, but also cheaper energy that certainly contributes to that turnaround. In the EUR 5.2 million, just for the accountant experts amongst us, we have the equity consolidation of our BSCCB JV with Brembo. This contributes with EUR 4.7 million in the EUR 5.2 million. If you deduct this kind of additional equity result, our business unit would have an operative result of EUR 0.5 million. This is exactly what we call a turnaround with any external influence. Next slide, slide number eight. Last but not least, it's always our Composite Solutions business unit. There we see, same as in Graphite Solutions, declining sales and also declining profitability because of more or less the same reason.
I think the major driver in Graphite Solutions was automotive, especially the electric vehicle market, which is the underlying end market, which is boosting the Silicon Carbide penetration for the SiC chips there. In Composite Solutions, it's also in particular the automotive market. In the end, you know that we make a lot of products, especially to protect the batteries for electric vehicles. There we see termination of contracts. We see delays when new models are really being designed. Of course, less demand or lower figures, how many cars are being produced. You know all the troubles that our automotive OEMs, who are in the end the customer also there, have at the moment. We are suffering also from this very low car sales, especially when it comes to electric vehicles there. We also have a certain uncertainty in the market.
We don't know when the products are really being launched, if they really reach the amounts that they're at least indicating to us. You know how automotive contracts with their tier one or tier two suppliers really go. You are simply dependent on what they call off and just have to produce. This is just the market rules and how it works. In the end, our sales dropped by 11.7%, now reaching roughly EUR 60 million in top line in the first six months of the year. Last year it was EUR 67 million. Bear in mind that in last year, especially in Q1, there was still this automotive contract with a U.S. American SUV manufacturer, which got terminated end of Q1. For three months in the half year of last year, you see also a certain sales, but also bottom line contribution of that.
EBITDA for that reason, or largely for that reason, dropped from EUR 8.1 million- EUR 5.4 million in the first six months of the year. This is just a ratio and a consequence, mainly because of this terminated project and the lower volumes, which I just described. Our margin now reaches 9.1% on an EBITDA pre level. It used to be up to 15% if you remember previous quarters or previous investor calls that we had. Still, 9.1% is, given the market turmoil, still something where we don't have to hide. My personal last slide that I can show you and that we have prepared for you is, as usual, a couple of bottom line, but also cash and balance sheet figures where we at least give the highlights. You know that on our website, you see the full H1 report, which gives you all the details on that.
Our net result is heavily negative with - EUR 31 million where it used to be -EUR 29.4 million compared in the same period last year. Where is the difference or why is this drop of roughly EUR 60 million? Where is the swing coming from? You can see it in the comment on the right side. We have made mainly provisions in H1. EUR 35 million are just provisions that we made for the restructuring to a large extent for Carbon Fibers. There is the dismantling of the site in Lavradio. There are severance payments and so on and on and on that we have in there. There is also a supplier contract that had to be terminated. For that, we made provisions. This is not cash out yet, but this is going to be cash out.
You probably remember in our communication when we said that we are going to restructure Carbon Fiber, we quantified the cash effects of this restructuring with roughly EUR 50 million over the next three years. I think we can stay in this frame as we announced that. If you take out this EUR 50 million and add it to the EUR 31 million, the normalized figure I would say is +EUR 20. I don't want to make any naive calculations now. The real figures, and there's no pre and net result, this is -EUR 30 and this is where we are. Free cash flow is positive as so many quarters also in the past. Q1 was positive, Q2 was also positive.
We continue to make money, which is on the other hand also a strong signal how robust and resilient our business model in the various markets and business unit is that we are really generating money. Now, especially Carbon Fibers, if you leave out the restructuring efforts, is also again contributing to that. Last but not least, when you look at our net financial debt and equity ratio, where we at least comment on that, net financial debt or the leverage ratio is stable in very good terms at EUR 0.8 million. This is a super investment grade equity ratio. Despite all the restructuring provisions, it remains in the 40% area, which is also super solid. Last but not least, our ROCE with 10% is in double digit figures. That also shows that our businesses, despite the low demand, are really intact and how robust we are.
Having said that, I hand over to Andreas, who explains a lot more in detail how our markets do and how they're going to do.
Thanks, Thomas, and welcome also from my side. I will now update you on our two focus topics at the moment, managing the SiC situation and restructuring our business unit Carbon Fibers. We already explained to you, you know that graphics also from previous calls, the EUR 60 million drop of sales in our key segment, semi and LED, in this first half year compared to a very strong first half year, 2024. You know that this is due to slower than expected EV development in 2024 and corresponding inventory buildup. Looking ahead, we expect higher sales for that segment in the second half. That's supported by positive underlying current developments, especially some kind of return of battery electric vehicle growth with more than 30% half year one compared to half year one 2024.
This effect on our business, on SGL's business, is delayed and dampened at the moment by the inventory in the chain. That inventory destocking, that digestion mode needs to continue. Nevertheless, talking to our customers and also reading recent publications of players in the chain, we see that inventory destocking happening. This gives us some positive momentum looking forward. Also, we talked a lot about delayed new EV models, which have an above-average share of SiC components. These models are now more and more kicking in, more and more hitting the market. The pipeline rollout continues. That in total, yeah, will increase SiC and hence Graphite Solutions sales. The SiC importance for electric vehicles is even increasing from our perspective. It is indeed the technology of choice. Most of the new EV models, if you scan the pipelines, they contain SiC.
Also, we see a higher penetration rate also in lower price electric vehicle segments, which overall means semiconductor sales in SiC are set to recover. That's good news looking into the future. The second topic, Thomas called it a marvelous job of the team. I can just repeat that. The successful Carbon Fibers restructuring is ongoing. You know it's our target to focus our capacities on the profitable core and hence take out associated costs wherever that is possible. The closing, the successful closing of our Lavradio production in Portugal in June was the first very important step. We have just last week announced and meanwhile executed the idling of our production in Moses Lake in the U.S. With that, we take out another loss-making plant from that Carbon Fiber business and go the next important step, improving the situation further.
At the same time, we took various adjustment measures in sales administration, R&D, especially in our headquarter location for that business unit in Meitingen. These activities working on our overhead structures are ongoing and remain to be a core activity taking out costs. Overall, we have achieved a EUR 14.9 million cost saving for that first half of 2025, which then feeds into the positive, yeah, business performance development Thomas has just explained. In the focus for the future, the profitable businesses will contain our textile materials activity, the activities around pre-impregnated materials, both very important for lightweight construction in automotive, but also in high-tech applications, in medicals, for example. We focus on short Carbon Fibers, which more goes into an additive for reinforcement into various industries like injection molding. As a result of the two focus activities, we are able to confirm our EBITDA pre-guidance for this year.
Due to the reduction in sales from the running business, but also from taking out activities, restructuring Carbon Fibers, we adjusted our sales expectations. For the sales expectations from a guidance previously calling a slight decrease of up to 10%, we adjusted now to a 10%- 15% reduction range. The EBITDA pre-guidance for this year remains unchanged in the range of EUR 130 million- EUR 150 million. To close the call and to summarize what is our focus at the moment, where we stand and how we look into the future, I think it's fair to summarize that the current sentiment for SGL , also for many other companies, is indeed challenging. Most of our key markets, automotive, chemicals, industrial applications in general, are struggling or remain weak. At the same time, we have a very, very high level of uncertainty still from trade barriers and tariff developments.
Of course, that's difficult for value chains to adjust to that if you have that high level of uncertainty. It's difficult for our customers and their customers to take necessary and especially long-term decisions. Nevertheless, we might be at some kind of turning point where a battery electric vehicle goes back into a more significant growth mode, and that will help to digest the inventories in our chain, in our core business. The countermeasures we are taking, we summarize them in the restructuring for the Carbon Fibers, but also beyond, the cost reduction measures are extended to the entire SGL organization. That also includes very relevant personnel adjustments, both in the businesses and in the corporate structures. We steer, we continue to steer our CapEx, linked to the market demand and the opportunities we see to grow our business.
In sum, we target and we manage to maintain the positive free cash flow and a strong balance sheet structure. We think this is a very good result in this current phase, managing the big challenges around us. The future trends I mentioned as far as Silicon Carbide is concerned, increasing EV sales kick in, and we have a rising demand for Silicon Carbide also in lower price EV segments. The penetration of Silicon Carbide in the semiconductor market overall is progressing very well. Besides that, we are working on new applications in all our business units at the moment. That includes big potentials like the defense industry where our materials can create significant value for these applications for the requirements.
We continue to tap various opportunities in digitization, and we develop additional solutions with our customers in the field of alternative energy, just to mention a few of many development activities we are pushing forward at the moment. With that outlook, we close our H1 update call and are happy to receive your questions. I hand over to Claudia.
Yes, thank you. Now we have time for your questions. [Matilde], maybe you can explain once more the technical measures and what to do.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the 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. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Lars Vom Cleff from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much. Good afternoon. Tons of questions, so maybe I'll have two or three rounds and in between go back into the line again. Firstly, cash effective restructuring EUR 50 million you confirmed, and then through the P&L you already booked EUR 50 million during the first half of 2025, roughly EUR 50 million. Are you able to give us a hint which restructuring costs we shall expect to burden the P&L in total once you are finished with all the restructuring?
Hi Lars, this is Thomas. We have had out of the EUR 50 million restructuring in H1, there are EUR 6 million which we have already digested, I would say, in our figures. Our free cash flow, there is no pre, also cash flow is already affected by that. We have a free cash flow of EUR 7 million, and if you add the EUR 6 million, then it would be EUR 13 million, so much better. This is what we have already. We stick to the EUR 50 million, and this will be, yeah, somehow spent over the next, yeah, two years, I would say. In the second half, there will also be another roughly EUR 10 million, mainly the severance payment that we have in Portugal. They are being paid out in the second half of the year.
Maybe also a little bit of the restructuring and the dismantling of the site is starting depending on the negotiations there. In total, until end of 2026, let's phrase it in this way. I think the -EUR 40 million cash effective restructuring costs are conservative calculation, and we stick to that from today's perspective.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. You mentioned various times that you already saved EUR 14.9 million in the Carbon Fibers division. I assume you're restructuring other divisions and other parts as well. Could you tell us how much you saved with the recent restructuring measures on a group level?
Yeah, a little bit more. We have a kind of a volunteer program that's also kicking in there. We offered a double voluntary measure, mainly in corporate, also to get down from our indirect cost or indirect corporate function costs as well, because our sales are declining and therefore also our fixed costs need to be adjusted. People, of course, we introduced them and told them that we consider them as part of this program, but they can also raise their hand voluntarily. We also have the chance to say, no, we need you and we don't want you to participate in that. In total, we see our savings in H1 a little bit more than EUR 20 million, but the big chunk comes, of course, from the restructuring as we just discussed.
Thank you. Maybe one last one before I temporarily go back to the line. I mean, Graphite Solutions revenues - 22% in H1, momentum even gaining pace - 27% in Q2. You already said that you're expecting H2 revenue to be above the H1 level. Looking at the group, this will be your third year with negative revenue growth. How or what's your plan? How to grow the business again? In which division, of course, understood Silicon Carbide, Graphite Solutions will be a major driver. I hear that during the last couple of years, some of your competitors have also narrowed the gap to you when it comes to synthetic graphite production.
Lastly, Andreas here talking about the midterm outlook strategy looking into the future. Absolute fair point. I guess you will understand that for today, we comment on these two activities, which are the key activity at the moment, restructuring Carbon Fibers and Silicon Carbide. I touched a little bit the topic of new applications already, and there is more to come, which will also feed then into the more strategic and positioning question you are raising. Bear with us for a little moment, and we manage the situation and the Carbon Fiber at the moment in terms of discussing it here today.
Last, maybe also as another comment from somebody who sits five years in this company. I started in SGL when we had EUR 900 million something top line. Out of the EUR 900 million, more than EUR 350 million at that point of time was Carbon Fiber, just to mention that. I mean, Carbon Fiber once stood for more than one third of our top line. Look where it is now. It is less than EUR 150 million if you take it for the full year, how this business is developing. Now with this closure of Lavradio, this is also one of the reasons why we had to adjust our top line. I've never in my life had to adjust in an ad hoc message our profitability in a negative manner. We had to adjust slightly our top line because we were so fast in our restructuring of our sites.
All the unprofitable sales that Lavradio would have made in the second half of the year, which we budgeted, by the way, are gone because we were so quick and so fast and maybe also so, so strict in closing down the site. This is affecting our top line. On the other hand, the bottom line benefits from there. If you take this over, when you see the overall transformation of SGL being one third, and by the way, at that point of time, a growing company in Carbon Fibers, to now restructuring Carbon Fiber and took a very strong focus on the growth of Graphite Solutions. Yes, we have to take that hit, by the way, as everybody in Silicon Carbide. You probably have heard the call from our French competitors, which we respect very much, and we acknowledge the job that they're doing.
They are in multiple businesses, but we very much concentrate on Silicon Carbide. Especially in this business, where we are much stronger than our competitors, declined so heavily, but we promise we'll be back in that. That's for sure. This is the overall transformation when you look back at least five years, how SGL is doing, and I think this was not so bad.
Perfect. Thank you. Fully understood.
O nly three questions. You had tons last.
I thought I'd go back into the line.
Okay.
Give others the chance to answer questions, ask questions, and then I'll be back. I promise.
You back. Okay, that's good.
I'll be back.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Sven Sauer from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first is on FX impact. I'm wondering why it is so low. You're considering your SGL generates more than 20% of sales in the U.S., and we're seeing a lot of companies, which are exposed to the U.S. having an impact. Just wondering why there is no FX impact. Second, I was wondering if you could, or if it's possible to quantify if everything that you are producing or everything that you are selling in the U.S. is also produced in the U.S., or do you also import some of your products into the U.S.?
Hi Sven, Andreas here. I will comment on the second question because it gives a feeling for the structure of the business first. Yes, indeed, we have, and we consider this a strength, a global network, which means that we are sending back and forth product in between the regions because we have various value chain steps close to our customers. That means there is a relevant internal also product flow into the U.S. and out of the U.S. again. At the same time, the U.S. is both supplying the local market, but also our global sites. We can be close to the customers in automotive, in Silicon Carbide, in Composite Solutions too. That's the setup.
Sven, this perfectly answers also the first question. This is why we started with the business description first. When you send products from both regions in both directions, that certainly also offsets the currency effect. That's the reason why this is the point.
Great. Thank you.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We now have a follow-up question from the line of Lars Vom Cleff from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Let me know again. You're paying taxes on a negative pre-tax profit at the moment. I guess that's something we should also model for the full year, or shall we expect any changes in H2?
With our consolidation of our JV with BSCCB, we ask you to be accounting experts. Now you're asking a question for all the tax experts of this world, and maybe also accountant experts. I try to explain it. When you have losses carried forward, and we have a lot of losses carried forward in the United States, and you have a profitable history of three years and a positive profitable outlook of three years in the country, then our auditors or your auditors will normally discuss with you in making a tax asset. That means you have your losses carried forward become an asset under taxes. If your outlook changes, then you have to release this tax asset, and then it gets a tax expense, so to speak. This is exactly what happened.
In the last two years, we have built up tax assets of up to EUR 70 million if you follow our balance sheet or P&L in this particular case the right way. You see it also in the balance sheet and the asset. This has been, on the one hand side, eaten up in this year, and also the exit sales will be lower because the profitability outlook waits for the budget, but at least the year 2026 won't be the same 2026, same as 2025 is not what we have expected, to be honest, when we started in this year in Graphite Solutions and especially in the U.S. American Silicon Carbide end market. This will affect us.
The release of this tax asset or the impairment of this tax asset, I know that 50% of the participants in this call, and I'm sorry for that, won't really can't follow my comments. If this is important to you, give us a call and we explain a little bit more in detail than in a bilateral discussion. This is in the end the effect that we had to revert or release a part of the tax asset in there. In the end, nothing happened on that. That's the point. It's just, yeah, it's just a technical tax effect according to the rules.
Fully understood. That was done in H1, and H2 won't be affected that much anymore.
We have done a little bit in H1 because we saw already, and Andreas has mentioned that, that we will, that we are idling or we're about to idle our site in Moses Lake. That was EUR 10 million, and the future contribution of this EUR 10 million would have been the according taxable profit of this site, at least according to the previous business case. Now, as we see in the budget, how Silicon Carbide, especially in our U.S. American market, is developing, there might be the need for another adjustment on the tax asset as well. Again, this is just bottom line, rock bottom, net profitability, net loss and something. This is non-cash, nothing, nothing that's affected there. Just the technical tax effect.
Perfect. Switching from the tax expert to the accounting expert, the Brembo JV. I won't be very active in your talk. I can only lose in that regard. What I can see as a humble sales side analyst is that the EBITDA pre-contribution from your joint venture came down from EUR 7.9 million- EUR 4.7 million. Are these ramp-up costs for the capacity expansion? I was under the impression that this business is still running on.
It can't be the depreciation. When you're talking about EBITDA, sorry to correct you, it can't be depreciation because that would be in EBITDA. You don't have the depreciation there. You're right. By the way, it's a net profit of equities. Always a net profit where 50% or your share gets what you get. The net profitability of this JV used to be EUR 7 million and now it's EUR 4.7 million. You're right with this effect. In the net profit, you see higher depreciation for the machines that they bought. You see, of course, the rent that they pay to us in this contribution because they have a new site on our Meitingen site, and they really have a new production facility there with over 10,000 sq m where they can produce. The problem now is the factory itself. This could easily go up to 100% in production load.
The problem just is that also the demand for those luxury cars and sports cars who are using these carbon ceramic brakes are also at a very low and sluggish development. This is also affecting us in this business. The growth of the business is still there, but not as strong as we anticipated it when we built up the factory. Therefore, they have higher fixed costs, and this is affecting also the contribution to us, unfortunately.
Understood. Thank you. With regards to your new divisional guidance, I'm trying to square the circle. For Process Technology, you're guiding for unchanged revenue and a slight decline of EBITDA pre. That would imply a margin dilution after 23.9% last year, which is acceptable, but you reached 28.3% with flat revenue in the first half of this year. This implies a significant margin dilution for H2. Why is that?
We look at absolute figures, and when you see EBITDA in Process Technology last year was EUR 23 million. Yes, I know we are at EUR 19.9 million so far after six months. I mean, you are the expert and you look at every quarter. You also know that the second half of the year was a little bit lower. Maybe our sight on the business. I'm also optimistic, and I'm always telling them, you can do better, you can do more. This is what I always tell them internally. They are just precautious and say, yes, because order intake is so poor and so low, maybe the second half of the year is maybe not so ambitious, and we should be a little bit careful. This is what's reflected in there.
There might be a slight chance that they also reach in this area, and maybe we don't have only a low deterioration in there. Let's wait and see.
Okay, perfect. The last one, I can't let you get away with that, mentioning defense applications and the growth you're expecting. Unsurprisingly, I'm hearing that from almost every company I cover currently. I would be very interested to find out what revenue are you currently generating with this customer sector, and how do you expect that to grow?
Lars, it's so far a smaller revenue below 3%. Exactly as you describe, it's a big opportunity. Of course, also the approach to defense applications has changed a lot in the last one, one and a half years. We have for both graphite-based products, but also carbon and glass fiber-based composites, great opportunities because our products can add real value to the applications. We are now, on the basis of the established business and contacts, digging even further into that network and that opportunity on the basis of the business and the customer relationships we had already established in the past.
Okay, perfect. I'll keep a close look at that. Thank you very much. I'll get back into the line.
Thank you, Lars.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from the line of Sven Sauer from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thanks. One more question on a Carbon Fibers segment. Now that the restructuring is done, I was just wondering, is it too early to give a kind of like an outlook where you are anticipating in the long or midterm to be in that segment margin-wise with a new profitable niche business that you're focusing on?
Sven, we would like to comment today not on that question because from our perspective, it's not done yet. As I said, this Moses Lake idling has just taken place, and we are still in that restructuring mode. It's now getting clearer. This is why we mentioned the applications, what the profitable core for the future is. We would like to ask you for some more time, and we will detail that once the restructuring is really done.
Okay, thank you.
For sure, the progress so far is really good and promising, with a very relevant impact on H1 and the whole calendar year 2025. That's clear.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Claudia Kellert for any closing remarks.
Yeah, thanks for your participation today. You will find our presentation and the half-year report on our website. If you have additional questions or need more information, please call the Investor Relations Department, Juergen Reck or myself. Thanks a lot. Have a nice afternoon and a fantastic summertime. Thank you. Goodbye.