Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Schaeffler AG Q1 2026 earnings call. I am Sergen, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference will be recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Heiko Eber, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to welcome you to today's call on Schaeffler's Financial Results Q1 2026. The press release, the following presentation, and our interim statement have been published today at 8:00 A.M. CT on our investor relations homepage. As always, we will provide the recording and the transcript of this webcast after the call. I am sure that you have all taken notice of our, by now, well-known disclaimer.
As always, Klaus Rosenfeld, our CEO, and Christophe Hannequin, our CFO, have joined the conference call to guide you through the key information in our presentation. Afterwards, both gentlemen will be available for our Q&A session. Now, let me hand over to our CEO, Klaus.
Heiko, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Q1 earnings call. You all received the presentation that Christoph and myself will share in the next minutes. Please follow me on page number three with the quick overview. I think you saw the numbers, and from our point of view, a good summary to say we started well into the year in an environment that is certainly challenging and in some areas, unpredictable.
Sales growth, FX-adjusted, 1% up. We'll share the details in a moment. The gross profit margin is at 21.6, so more or less the same margin like Q1 2025. Clearly driven by operational gains in E-Mobility, VLS, with a slightly negative development in PTC.
That should not come as a surprise. EBIT margin at 5%, clearly an improvement in E-Mobility, while PTC, VLS, and VLS contributed strongly to the EBIT, also supported by lower R&D costs. Free cash flow, seasonally, negative with -EUR 209. You know that in Q1 it was EUR 155. Christophe is going to give you more detail. This also includes higher restructuring cash out and some advanced customer payments in the prior year.
Yes, EPS is slightly positive, also impacted by the financial result. Page 4 gives you the breakdown of where we grew, where we not grew. 6% growth in E-Mobility in the Q1 is certainly pointing the right direction.
Powertrain & Chassis, as I said before, slightly down, and then moderate growth in VLS and VLS, certainly also driven by the environment. The strongest growth came out of region Asia-Pacific. However, that still has the impact that we explained several quarters now, embedded with a switch from a bigger project from China to Korea. More important, page 5, if you look at the auto powertrain OEM business, and that spans across E-Mobility and PTC, breakdown by powertrain type.
Quite interesting picture here. Schaeffler outperformed in all these 3 different powertrain types. 4% outperformance in the BEV segment, 16% versus market growth of 12%. We have also an outperformance of 1.5%, and even in ICE, where our sales drop was not as big as the market.
That is exactly what I hope for, that I can show you these pictures continuously for the next quarters, that all points in the right direction. Order intake, again, by powertrain type. We'll come back to the numbers per division. Also shows that in the important BEV sector, we are showing a book-to-bill of bigger than 1, while in the other sectors, in this quarter, order intake was lower than the relevant sales levels. Page 6, E-Mobility. As I said, order intake for the whole division is certainly bigger than just for a BEV powertrain solutions. It's EUR 1.2 billion, what leads to a book-to-bill of 1.0 times. You may question why that.
We showed you in the last quarters that we have an order book by end of the year 2025 of more than EUR 40 billion. We are adjusting also volume assumptions constantly. We are sure that with that order book, we have at the moment enough to do to deliver this. We are a little bit more selective on order intake. EUR 1.2 billion is a good result. It is also driven by the right projects.
Now let me go from there to Powertrain & Chassis. Also there, an order intake of EUR 1.4 billion, growth slightly below last year. Was driven by phase out and also by market development. As I said before, here the gross margin has suffered a bit.
It is also impacted by one of in facts that we can discuss in the Q&A session. Vehicle Lifetime Solutions, with a 1% growth that is less than before, but a further improved gross margin that then also leads to a superior EBIT margin. Here, we can say that, as you see in the highlights, that our platform business in particular in China, is growing, serving a increasing number of retail partners.
We are also proud to say that we won the Sustainability Award for the E-Axle repair tool. What again demonstrates that E&S is not just a PTC business, but also very active in the new powertrain solutions. Then last but not least, Bearings & Industrial Solutions.
A good sort of development, 1.6, good outperformance, and also a growing book-to-bill ratio with certainly a different time horizon of the order books. There, just to mention one thing that also points to the new businesses, we are proud that we were part of the Artemis II launch.
One of the most spectacular space activities in the last weeks, and we're represented here with some high performance turbo pump spinning bearings that have sort of highest quality at offer. Bearings & Industrial Solutions, as you see from the rocket, is definitely moving in the right direction in its repositioning and performance drive. 1 page on new growth.
We have selected here again the humanoid because that is what we, from all the questions we get, obviously the one that is most interesting to you. 3 points, just to put this in perspective, and give you a little bit more data how we look at this. This is a business that is in a situation where we are building the business. We are engaging today with 45 different customers. Engaging means active conversations, of which 30 prototype orders have resulted.
From these 30 prototype orders, five contracts have been secured. You will understand that I cannot mention here the names, but I can tell you that from the five, these are prominent names, both from China and the U.S. and from Europe.
We are in ongoing negotiations to further build the order book. If I look at what we have today and put our more conservative assumptions of 1 million robots in 2030 behind it, our best estimate at the moment is that this order book in total, order intake from the five customer contracts included, has a value of somewhere in a mid-size three-digit million range. For sure, that is further building, and we'll give you as soon as these numbers are more solid, we will give you more information how that develops. That's what I can say at the moment for Q1. Customer side, last point here.
We will see first SOP from these customer contracts in Q2 2026 and then also have scheduled further SOPs for Q3 and Q4 2026. You see the business is building. It is growing. We are part of the companies that is here at the forefront of the development and the number of inquiries also from German OEMs is interestingly increasing. What helped us was also the recognition for our products.
As some of you heard, we won the prestigious Hermes Award at the Hanover Fair. You see a small picture here that recognizes our rotary actuator platform in multiple sizes, in multiple sort of nanometers and other functions. That's a positive thing and as you all know, we will continue to expand our automotive know-how into this area.
Last point is on manufacturing. We are investing into that business not only for building the business, but also for making sure that we can scale what we need to scale. I finish on page 11 with my last page before I hand over to Christoph. Capital allocation continues to be driven by a very disciplined approach. Capital employed has been further reduced also through the project that we had explained to you in the Q4 results. We had CapEx in Q1 of EUR 237, more or less in line with previous year. The investment rate stands at 4.5 times, and the capital employed at the end of the Q1 was EUR 12 billion.
From an average point of view, Q1, over the last 12 months, this is a reduction of EUR 974 million. You see where we spent the money. I can assure you again, we are disciplined but also able to invest into the new growth areas. Businesses are based on our strong cash conversion. With that, I hand over to Christophe.
Thank you, Klaus. Good morning, everyone. As explained by Klaus, very solid Q1 for 2026. Taking a step back and walking you through a couple of slides on sales and gross profit and then EBIT. We see on slide number 12, the slight growth year-over-year, 1% of growth, FX adjusted, demonstrate the confirmed scale up of our E-Mobility activities.
The slight erosion as planned from PTC, especially as we disposed of some activities at the end of last year. Slight slow start from VLS, but nothing to worry about on the year to go. This is mainly driven by some negotiations with some of our key customers that impacted a little bit the sales at the beginning of the year.
We'll catch up, no issues whatsoever on the year to go for VLS. Last but not least, the INS also having an encouraging start at the beginning of the year for Q1. If you look at the makeup of our gross profit bridge, going from EUR 21.7 to EUR 21.6, so more or less stable. You see a strong contribution from price. A little bit of that is linked to compensating for the U.S. related tariffs, the rest is also the pricing policy that you see mainly in for us within VLS and INS.
The volume, slight decrease there, as I mentioned before, mostly related to PTC, and as a result of decisions we took at the end of last year. The one that I would like to draw your attention to is the EUR 67 million of improved production costs year- over- year. A combination of structural improvements year- over- year as the restructuring programs pay off as we continue to drive efficiencies in our plants.
Also happy to report a significant part of it is related to our purchasing performance and the evolution of our raw material prices or our purchasing performance in general. On the other cost of sales, some impact from the US tariffs. There's about EUR 20 million in there.
Then a not very helpful comparison to last year, from an inventory re-revaluation standpoint, where we had a very strong quarter last year. We changed the method this year in order to smoothen this out a little bit and make it easier to understand and steer. We, we took the hit there on the comparison. On a, on a full year basis, this disappears. Hopefully also will give us a more streamlined earnings and EBIT profile for 2026. I will finish on this slide by pointing out the FX impact on our gross profit line is still negative, mainly driven by the US dollar, the RMB and the Indian rupee.
We could have listed it as well, the Korean Won, which is impacting us quite a bit. On the next page, you see the EBIT walk, increasing by 0.3 points year-over-year. Already mentioned the gross profit evolution, which is very favorable for us. The other interesting news on there is the progress on R&D expenses, which is both increased efficiency in the way we conduct our development programs, as well as some of the benefits on some of the restructuring that we've been doing in this field. Again, the SG&A suffering a little bit from the comparison with last year. There's some timing impacts in there.
There's also the impact of higher costs this year related to our S/4HANA rollout and the fact that we are heavily investing in digitalization and AI and AI deployment within the organization. Our inflation mostly offset by our performance programs, which is what I like to see in a P&L. You see that at the EBIT level, FX switches back to a positive level. This is due to two main aspects. The first one is there is a natural hedge within the group between the different lines of our P&L, depending on where we sell and where we spend.
You also have in there the impact of some of the hedging instruments that are paying out favorably and protecting us against the evolution. Again, a solid 5 point 5% of EBIT, which puts us in a good shape for the full year guidance that we'll discuss a little bit later. I will go very quickly through the different slides, E-Mobility, clearly the scale up paying off, both in terms of production efficiency as well as the R&D. Driven the growth on the top line, driven mostly this time for this quarter by the controls part of the business. Overall, unfolding as we had forecasted for 2026.
The PTC side, again, sales decline, which is known, planned, and accounted for. The EBIT level remains very strong in the double-digit range. The 12.7 from Q1 2025 was a very high comp, but the 11.5% for Q1, again, clearly in line with what we were expecting, when you think about, again, our guidance on the right on the good side of the guidance, approaching the top end of it. Vehicle Lifetime Solutions, 0.9% of growth year-over-year, not completely what we're used to. Yes, nobody grows stronger than this, and we've grown stronger than this on a full year basis.
This is just a slow start for Q1, no warning, no alerts, no reason to worry. On the year to go, the volume piece will catch up. Despite this, an extremely strong, almost 60% work of the EBIT, driven, as I mentioned before, by also a strong pricing policy. The other encouraging point, I think already mentioned by Klaus, is the expansion of our platform business on a global basis, which means that we are successfully diversifying out of Europe and out of the traditional repair and maintenance solution activities.
On the Bearings & Industrial Solutions side, I'm not getting bored of saying this every time, but it's a very interesting combination of both growth and restructuring and operational performance, driving a very solid Q1 at the 9% EBIT. The 10% last year, again, very hard to beat the comparison, which was mainly driven by the inventory valuation topic that I mentioned before, and which was followed by a complicated or weaker Q2 in 2025.
The change in method takes us away from that. The 9%, again, very much on the progress path for the in IS, for Bearings & Industrial Solutions that we highlighted during the capital market days. It is paying off, and they are executing properly.
Free cash flow seasonally impacted as usual within the group. Klaus already mentioned the slightly higher restructuring payments that you find in the other category. Networking capital impacted by a conscious decision to raise our inventory levels and buffers in order to ensure that our customers are protected and safeguarded in a very volatile supply environment. This is something we will work down throughout the year as the situation stabilizes and hopefully resolves itself.
The decision was made there to invest a little bit in working capital to protect our customers. CapEx, as planned, in line with the investment plan for this year with a quarter 1 that is where we expected it to be.
From, if I move on to the next page, you see again a not very surprising evolution or lack of evolution of our leverage ratio in the 2.1, 2.2.2 range. Our maturity profile remains extremely well-balanced with the upcoming maturities already pre-funded, and we will continue to work on this as opportunities arise. That takes us back to the full year guidance, which I will hand back to Klaus.
Yes. Thank you, Christophe. Very briefly, we confirm our guidance. We are from our point of view also with what we see in April on track here. Certainly, the impacts from the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment were not known when we approved this guidance. We have still said we will not change it and do what is necessary to stay within the range.
The 5 percentage points, 5% EBIT margin is clearly pointing to the upper end here. We need to see what the bring. You know that our business is seasonable. What I can say here is I confirm these main KPIs. Let me finish by a quick look at the financial calendar.
The colleagues will go on road show, virtual, but also to the conferences. We see a lot of interest at the moment from U.S. investors, but also from Asia. You see it on the schedule. We try to be as responsive as possible, and we thank you for your attention and interest in Schaeffler. With that, I hand back to Heiko.
Thank you very much, Klaus. Thank you very much, Christophe. As already mentioned, if there are further needs, if you see further need for discussion tomorrow, the virtual road show organized by J.P. Morgan. If you have interest, please let us know. With this, I would say that we directly jump into our Q&A session, and I would hand back to our operator.
Thank you very much, Mr. Eber. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their 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 stay with the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Now anyone who has a question may press star at one at this time. We have the first question coming from Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one will be on the humanoid SOPs that you've highlighted. Now that you are moving into serious production, I was wondering if you could comment in a bit more detail on the expected revenue contribution in 2026 and 2027. Is it fair to assume that in 2026 it's probably closer to low double-digit million euros amounts, and in 2027 more towards the mid to high double-digit range? As a first question.
You called it out earlier that the environment is tricky currently and in some cases unpredictable. Do you see any changes of customer behavior currently from the OEMs? Any changes in call-offs also on the industrial side? With that in mind, should we expect Q2 to roughly trend in line with Q1?
Any color that you could share there, would be appreciated. Thank you.
Well, let me start with the second one. Again, we have four different businesses. I start with BIS. Nasha just came back from China, we see that there although the macroeconomic situation sounds a little bit subdued, there is growing interest to work with us. We don't look at the industrial business by call-offs, that's more an automotive concept. There, everything we saw, Christoph, in April doesn't look like a dramatic change. It's maybe a little softer than what we expected at the beginning of the year, but it seems to be quite resilient.
You know, when you see the news, when you see what's going on in the world, this is to some extent a surprise, but the numbers speak rather for, you know, a little bit of a softer development in the next months. It's not a dramatic change in direction. Let's see how this is going to unfold and how the Q2 will look like. With what I've just said, we don't expect a dramatic change to our Q1, certainly Q2 is typically not as strong in terms of growth as the Q1 . The more important question is how will this unfold?
Let me give you a little bit of a logic how we do this when we now estimate what's coming. You basically in these contracts that we have, and as I said, five customer contracts where you will understand I cannot mention the names. I can also not mention what kind of products the customers order. For sure, these are the ones that we have also communicated and shown at fairs.
We typically look at the number of bots. We look at the pieces per bot, and we look at the price per piece. This is a simple logic that is behind this. SOPs will start in Q2. There's another customer that will then come in Q3 and another one in Q4. This is the simple mix.
Don't expect miracles in 2026. This is not a full year. That's the start of the year. Again, this is all estimated at the moment. We have no reason to believe that these SOPs are not happening because for sure, in particular, the bigger players wanna get ready for their, for their first generation. The real interesting question, how does it scale then? How many more pieces are we going to expect then in 2027? Also there, what I see and you just mentioned, indicative numbers going to 2030, revenues I think have a chance to go up above the three-digit million mark. The ramp-up curve as such, again, is premature.
Again, 2026 will be also impacted by this timing aspect that I said. If everything works well, 2027 is more a two-digit million euros number, and then it will, however, the development in terms of the numbers is, will go up to something in the three-digit million euros, at the latest in 2030. From revenue point of view, order book is certainly already bigger than a one-year number. That's again, my best estimate at the moment.
We have told all of you also in the individual conversations that we will give indication today that you have a little bit of a sense what's going, but the regular reporting about order books, order intakes, revenues will need a little bit more time.
Christoph and myself, we are 100% certain that we should only come out with numbers that are solid. We are building this business. There's a lot going on here. I could spend most of my time on this, but I can't. Give us a little bit more patient. Give us a little bit more time. We'll come up, certainly, during this year with more figures here that you can also follow what we're doing.
Thank you. Very helpful.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from José Asumendi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Klaus. A couple of questions, please, on the order backlog on humanoid. Can you maybe just give some color, maybe how broadly this is split by region? Maybe a little bit the geographical split if possible. Second, do you foresee, as you think about a one or two year view, some expansion of plants, of maybe footprint either in the U.S. or in Asia, to support the humanoid ramp up? Can you talk a bit about also your R&D lab that you have next to Shanghai. When do you expect to open up that center for investors to visit it?
Second, on E-Mobility, can you talk a bit about how you reuse some of the capacity, existing capacity you have to adapt the different powertrain trends we have to globally, so you can make the best use of fixed costs investments? Thank you.
Let me start with the 1st question. In what I told you again with the 5 customer contracts, I can say again, there's a development that still needs to be more solidified. It's more or less equally balanced between China, the U.S. and Europe. It depends a little bit how you define it, whether you define it by the humanoid builder or where the end demand is coming from. If I just look at the big partner in the U.S. and the big partner in China, then that is together with the other ones, is more evenly spread at the moment. It's not China or the U.S. at the moment.
Both China and the U.S., plus a positive outlook on the humanoid players that have more a European base. You heard about Hexagon. That's the latest one where we entered into a cooperation. That's certainly a positive that this is not a just one country or one region bet. The footprint, sorry, the humanoid factory in China is open, so if someone is interested to visit it, you just need to organize it. We have seen significant interest there.
Maybe we need to organize a little bit of a tour. But it's certainly something that we would open up and show you what's going on there. It's quite fascinating, also the speed how the Chinese colleagues built that up. Footprints to support the ramp up.
At the moment, we have not decided on any plans to change the footprint. What we have, in particular in Germany, is for the time being sufficient, but we need to follow the development very carefully. It's a function of the ramp up speed. If this goes very fast, we will react. If it goes more slowly, it's a different story.
We do this, as I normally say, with our eyes on the road and the hands upon the wheels, and we'll be very pragmatic to organize the necessary capacity. At the moment, it looks like that we can more or less handle what we have without bigger footprint investments. For sure, the cumulative total investment for the next year will be another interesting figure for you.
Don't forget, we'll also spend money not only for plants or machines, but also for R&D and for people. If I may say this, my biggest challenge at the moment is to add the relevant people here to the team. This is a startup. It's a very different environment. We have super engineers and super product developers, all of that, but if we want to build this as a global business, we also need to support David and his team, that is a global team with more talent. That's where we're focusing on.
The next years will not only be looked at from a CapEx point of view, but also from the buildup of the right talent to drive this new market. Don't forget, there is a very important angle to physical AI and industrial AI.
This whole ecosystem is not just mechanics, it's the interface between software and hardware. If you really wanna play there, you need to understand the AI angle very carefully. Also, Christoph said this, see it in a broader context. The last question was on eMOB. Again, here it's not so much capacity in the plant, it's more how do we optimize the fixed cost portion. We certainly have a way to go in terms of R&D. That's something that we certainly address under our existing performance program. Whether that's enough, we need to see.
In general, I can say with the improvement in Q1 2026, let's say, over Q1 2025, if you remember this little formula that we developed, is it possible to bring E-Mobility across the line in 2026? That delta of nearly 5.5 basis points, 28. The delta from Q1 26 to Q1 25 is 5.5 to 6 basis points.
If you consider that E-Mobility is a seasonal business with a stronger Q4 , we can maintain that shift over the next quarters, that really points in the right direction, even if revenues come in lower than what we expected when we had our capital markets day. Let's see how Q2 goes, and let's see that we are able to put the right measures in place. It's not a CapEx question so much, it's more a question of reallocating resources within the group and reducing also the R&D impact from headcount here in Germany.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Ross MacDonald from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes. Morning. Thanks very much. It is Ross MacDonald at Citi. I have 3 questions. I will again ask on the humanoids, given there is so much client interest here. Klaus, just to help us back out, let us say, a potential content per vehicle to Schaeffler from these activities. I understand you are guiding around mid three-digit million revenue potential on the current 5 contracts, assuming a global market of 1 million humanoids in 2030.
It would be good to just confirm that specific point. Within that, what is the market share that you are assuming on that sort of revenue ambition, let us call it? I am aware for 2035, you would be comfortable or happy even with a 10% market share.
You know, on that math, is that the 10% market share assumed that is driving a mid three-digit million euros top line? That would be my first question. Thank you.
Well, Ross, it's, again, we are working in a market that is emerging and that certainly needs to some extent, a scenario approach. Our sort of conservative scenario is 1 million humanoids to be produced globally by 2030. I can also tell you, this is startup territory. We here at Schaeffler, we don't like hypes. We don't wanna see something where we are putting too much out. We wanna be conservative. I think the 1 million humanoids, as it looks today, is a conservative number. It could increase, but we need to see. It's also a question, where are they applied? There are still very different views on this.
Let's build on the 1 million and make sure that we make that and seize the upside if possible. The second cornerstone of our calculation is also nothing new to all of you. Andreas has said this also a year ago. When we look at the bill of material of an average humanoid build for different purposes, we're talking about a 50% addressable market for Schaeffler.
If I now say, if we aspire to get 10% market share of that addressable market for us, that's basically the logic that we have in mind. You all know that this is a function of how costs are decreasing and how this is progressing, and certainly whether you can, you know, sell your products and your development competency to the right partners.
That is, from my point of view, from a CEO perspective, the most important thing. It's the same like in an auto market. There are so many humanoid players around, so many people that claim that they can do this and this and this. For us, as one of the sort of leading suppliers in this space, we wanna do business with the right partners.
I can say, and you will hopefully understand that I cannot disclose names, but the names are prominent names. We wanna be selective in the ones that we bet on, and that what I see at the moment gives me a good sort of positive feeling that we have the right contracts to start with. This is a start.
It's not the situation we can say we've already achieved everything we wanna achieve. It will continue in 2026. This concept of offering partnerships in terms of we can supply our parts, and we offer people the ability to utilize their robots and learn together in a context where this is very much AI-driven, where the industrial metaverse plays a role, that is from my point of view, the driver for success. Let's leave it here, I leave you the rest of the calculation. At the end of the day, what counts is really what comes out in the bottom line.
That's helpful. Thank you. Maybe I will fire two more quick questions for Christoph, actually. Christoph, maybe on the Q2 trading, if I look at 2025, you know, there was quite a large step down in margin from Q1 to Q2. You went from 4.7% to 3.5%. How should we think about the seasonality within Schaeffler this year? Would you be hoping for a less extreme margin pullback in the Q2 ?
How would you think about Q2 within the current guidance range? Then a second question, just specifically on the other division, noting that was around about EUR 30 million loss per 1/4 on average last year. It has stepped up significantly to - EUR 15 million loss in Q1.
How should we think about modeling that specific division going forward? Maybe you can give us some color on what drove that EUR 20 million delta in Q1 versus Q4. Thank you.
For first question, I touched on it during some of my comments. Q1 was overly impacted by inventory revaluations in 2025, some of it which resolved itself in Q2 and led to the performance that you saw. It's not really driven by the business itself. It was more of a
The way we essentially take our standard cost variance is full inventory in the balance sheet. As I mentioned, we have switched some of our methodology on this one, so I expect a smoother quarter-over-quarter evolution in this one. The division that's primarily impacted by this one, especially last year was BINS, so Bearings & Industrial Solutions, first and foremost.
PTC was probably the second strongest impact. We'll see how Q2 unfolds, but if we did it right, we should have a much smoother quarter-over-quarter evolution. Now, we do have a seasonal business where plant loading is important to us, and efficiencies are driven by the loading of our plants.
You should not expect Q1 and Q4 to be directly comparable. If I put aside some of the R&D and the customer negotiations impact. From a purely operational standpoint, Q1 and Q4, despite everything I've said before, will not be directly comparable. Smoother quarter-over-quarter is what we would like to see and what we're driving for in 2026. I'm also a big believer than a better load, a better operational steering of our plants, drive throughout the year, drives higher efficiencies and higher performance overall. Let's see what Q2 gives us. I'm on the optimistic side on this one.
Division orders, as you know, it's a mix for us of activities we're ramping up, ramping down. The humanoid piece is in there. Our defense efforts are in there. Hydrogen is in there. Are some of the businesses that we're disposing of. The comparison year-over-year is a little bit tricky. If you use what you're seeing right now, you probably do not need to be off from what we should see in 2026. That one is especially tricky, I guess, for you to model from the outside, unfortunately. It's a task for us to think about maybe for next year, whether we guide something on this or how we best do this.
As you said, it's a mixed bag of things that are ramping up and ramping down. We understand the point, but for the time being, I think you have the guidance that you saw and, it needs to add up to the group guidance.
That's great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
There are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Heiko Eber for any closing remarks.
Sorry, Mr. Eber. We have a last-minute registration from Claus Singel from ODDO BHF.
Yeah. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Morning, Klaus. Hi.
Hi. Thanks, thanks for taking my question. I want to ask on the auto business. I mean, it was quite nice to see the outperformance this quarter across different powertrains. I would be interested in your view, looking ahead, if we can expect to see such a nice outperformance or if you would expect also some seasonality in here. Thank you.
Klaus, it's a good question, I don't have a crystal ball, to be honest. With this environment, it's really difficult to mention that. To answer that question, what is quite interesting from my point of view, if you follow what's at the moment happening on E-Mobility, not only in Europe but also in the U.S., you see what comes a little bit as a surprise to us, that in particular in the U.S., the people are, you know, buying e-cars.
The production side is more going in the other direction. That may have to do with the fact that, you know, people look for fuel economy in a situation where gasoline becomes more important. We don't know yet. The trend is not, you know, stable.
You also saw what happened here in Germany, what happened in France with more E-Mobility support. There are the obstacles with the loading infrastructure. For me, what is really most important is that we have this hedge across those 3 different types, and that we can play these corresponding cubes well. I can't tell you what Q2 is going to look like.
What I can tell you is our focus on, you know, playing in this space from E-Mobility to PTC in a clever and smart way to utilize the opportunities that are there quarter by quarter. That's the game plan. For sure, our biggest challenge is to deliver on our E-Mobility promise. There, if outperformance helps there, I would expect that we probably see a continuation during the year.
How this unfolds quarter by quarter remains to be seen. A critical element will be the China angle of this. Maybe I can leave you with the following information. My colleague, our colleague, Thomas Stierle, is spending more time in China than any other colleague that we have.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Heiko Eber for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much. First of all, thanks to our speakers. Thanks to my CEO, CFO. Thanks to all of you for your continued interest. As always, big thank you to the team for the preparation. If there are more questions, please feel free, give us a call. Happy to help. With this, thank you very much. Have a good rest of your day, and talk to you soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over, and you may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.