Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Stabilus SE web conference regarding the preliminary results in fiscal 2024. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dr. Michael Büchner.
Yeah, good morning and welcome to our call today also from our side. As always, you have our CFO, Stefan Bauerreis, and myself, Michael Büchner, being the CEO of the Stabilus Group on the call. Yeah, 2024 was a solid year for us with very good success for the Stabilus Group. We had a strong fourth quarter, which helped us a lot to also achieve our guidance, which we published in June 2024. And all this success, despite some challenging macroeconomic situations out there, so we achieved record sales and also a very good free cash flow. The integration of Destaco was well on track, and also we are along the line providing the right measures to maneuver through these challenging times we have on hand in terms of the market situation. Yeah, the diversification is important for us and continues to be important, which is an important measure.
Also, we achieved that by having Destaco on board, and we'll talk throughout the presentation about some good achievements we had over the course of the past weeks and months. You'll also see this diversification in terms of our market segments, but this is something we'll talk later about. Innovation is key for success, so we'll also talk a bit about automation and the latest developments of this takeover. However, now we jumped right away into the financial numbers. We delivered upon our guidance, which we published in June 2024. We achieved EUR 1.3 billion sales roundabout with a 12% EBIT margin adjusted, and we had good success, very good success after all in Asia Pacific with 14% sales growth year over year. However, the economic situation in EMEA and also Americas was kind of soft.
However, overall, the sales were very good, mainly driven by also the Destaco acquisition. So overall, the revenue increase year over year was 7.5%. And one thing is extremely important to us: Destaco is a great success. Destaco we basically had in the first half year of our joint future, about EUR 100 million, so close to EUR 100 million, EUR 95 million in terms of revenue, with more than 20% EBIT margin on hand. And the integration is absolutely well on track. By the way, our refinancing activities of our EUR 250 million bridge loan was a big success, was oversubscribed significantly, and we could secure very good rates for this refinancing activities. The deleveraging thereby is also well on track.
We could generate good cash flows, and at the end of the day, we could deleverage from EUR 720 million down to EUR 668 million end of September 2024. Here are a few also on the Destaco performance itself. Revenues, big success, EUR 95 million EBIT margin, more than 20%, and a very good cash flow on hand. Yeah, the first 100 days of the Destaco as mentioned were a big success. We have a strong team on hand. The joint team is working on cross-sales activities. We're having first trade shows and fairs together, and we created the Stabilus for Automation brand for us. So that means we launched our joint activities, making sure that this Destaco along with the nice suite of products of Stabilus is a big success out there.
And we see these signs absolutely given with this nice sales and the good margin and the good margin forecast as well. On the other hand, we are for sure internally working on HR-related integration, also integration in terms of IT systems. This is, at the end of the day, the activities we are currently driving to bring these two companies together to shape unified teams and also to shape our accounting and KPI system between the two companies. I would like also to highlight in technical terms new products innovations, and we will do that also in the calls to come. In the Destaco Group, as well as in the whole Stabilus area, we see a lot of changes in terms of motion control technologies towards electrification, also towards smart products, right?
In the past, the products on the Stabilus side as well as on the Destaco side were kind of mechanical. They were rather pneumatics, and with the new generation of products in both companies, we are paving ground for success, and they're very well perceived by the markets. Just to give you some examples on the Destaco side, for example, the Smart Gripping Systems and also the Smart Clamping Systems are products which we sold already to the industry, and they not only clamp and fix products for manufacturing, they also take care that you get measurement information back to your control unit and thereby are extremely important to guarantee quality and to foster process controls along the line in our customers' playground. One example is this gripping area and also thereby the electrification. It's a Plug and Play Gripper you see here on this chart on the left-hand side.
As a matter of fact, an industry problem or a problem out there is that it's very difficult to program a gripper. And if you find an easy solution, which we did, you can gain a lot of market share with these new products because they are easy to program and they give you good feedbacks in terms of measurement on the production shop floor to make your life just easier in the production. And with this system, which is very easy to program, we achieved to conquer and enter the market in a very rapid way. So we are selling this product now for a couple of months. Our order book is full because the product can be installed very easy, unlike other solutions where you need a computer to set up a gripper in the production shop floor.
This product can be done manually with a training of half an hour of an employee on the shop floor. It's just a great product which we absolutely count on, similar to other products because the same thing applies not only to gripping. It's about clamping. It's about the indexers and conveyors, which give feedback in their daily operation to ensure quality at our customers and to make sure that they get the right process control in place, they need to run their production.
Similarly, we also invest a lot in terms of innovations for sure in our home turf on the Stabilus Group side of our traditional products because we invest currently again further not only in automation and automated production, but also we invest in the introduction of our industrial Powerise systems along the line with new versions who are fully programmable at the production lines and in various applications. But also we invest in new products when it comes to process controls at our customers with all kinds of other products in the damping and gas spring areas. So you see we are investing in our future in a big way and are counting on innovations because innovations, as you know, is key for success of the Stabilus Group. So with that, I would hand over to Stefan for some financial numbers for the past quarter and year.
Thank you very much, Michael. And I just want to use the next couple of minutes to guide you through the Q4 numbers and then also having a final look on the full year numbers that we finally achieved in that, as Michael said, very challenging macroeconomic environment, mainly in the second half of the year 2024. So starting with the revenue in our Q4, so we were able to increase our revenue by 9.4% overall. But here, having a deeper look, we also have to admit that a good portion of that is coming out of the acquisition of Destaco with EUR 46.6 million sales in the Q4. Organically, that will mean the Stabilus Group without the impact of Cultraro and Destaco, so our recent last M&A activities, we suffered an organic downtrend of minus 2.4% on a global perspective.
In the later slides, I will show you the split between the different regions. For sure, this also has impacts on the Adjusted EBIT. Adjusted EBIT went down from the 14% in the fourth quarter last year to 12.5% this year. Once again, also here we are driven by a negative, unfortunate negative FX impact, which is valid for about 1.4%. So half of that deviation comes out of FX impact. Talking about profit, and here you see a significant higher downturn and reduction compared to last year. From our perspective here, we have to have in mind that as we announced it already in our Q3, in our half-year numbers as well, that we will provide the purchase price allocation then posted with all the depreciation on the identified assets and hidden reserves on the assets.
We will do that all in the Q4, and that is now done, so if you compare this, around EUR 16 million impact more or less that we had out of the purchase price allocation, this explains more or less the full reduction of the profit we suffered this year, so in that perspective, that is only accounting purpose and nothing from an operational perspective. Talking about the adjusted free cash flow, so here we had a very huge increase of the adjusted free cash flow. We also announced that in our ad hoc, so it's mainly driven by a very strict and good cash management on the one side, but also on the other side, we got in favor to us some tax repayments of about EUR 8.4 million in the last quarter of this year.
And last but not least, with a good and permanent optimization of our net working capital management, we were able also to achieve these numbers. Not forgetting that also a portion of that is part of our, let's say, liquidity management. And if you take that around EUR 15 million, so EUR 1.5 million, will then also be reverted in the next quarters to come. So not just the first, but also in the first half of the year. And that is overall the result of a very, very positive adjusted free cash flow that we were able to create in the fourth quarter. If you can then go to the next slide and see the full year picture. So here, situation changes. In the full year, we still are able to show also from an organic perspective of growth. It's only a 0.6%.
Having in mind the very challenging environment in the second half of the year, we still believe that finalizing the year-end with still a positive organic growth is a very good achievement. Once again, as I already talked before the fourth quarter, also here we are impacted by a negative FX impact. That all has not only an impact on the revenues, but also an impact on the adjusted EBIT, which is about 3.2% in that perspective. Therefore, the total year we managed to achieve last year, the 13%. Now we are in our revised guidance, in the middle of our revised guidance of 12.0%, knowing that Destaco obviously was supporting that result.
But nevertheless, it's on the sales side, on the lower side, on the EBIT side, in the middle of the range. I think a good establishment and a good achievement in the last month, as I already explained. Profit for the full year, it's the same story as I already explained. The main impact is here the purchase price allocation. It's this famous EUR 16 million we had to pay in addition, as you know. We financed the complete acquisition of Destaco, where we had to pay end of March the purchase price of $680 million. So obviously, interest expenses are slightly higher in the second half of the year due to higher debt indebtedness that we have on the balance sheet. So that is the reason of that reduction of the profit.
And last but not least, once again, the same story on the adjusted free cash flow. Stabilus continues in showing that Stabilus, old, let's call it for a second like that, but also including Destaco and then, its good reputation of being strong in free cash flow generation. And I think that is also something that is worth to mention. If we then continue in going to the short in the overview about the different regions, so you can see here that the revenues in all the three regions are growing. But we have to admit that in Americas and EMEA, it's mainly due to the acquisition of Destaco and organically, I'll come in the next pages on that.
We had to suffer some reduction in Americas and also in EMEA, but still also organically significantly growing in the region, Asia-Pacific, and that also with the highest adjusted EBITDA margin of the three regions, so that's why overall with the acquisition of Destaco, a good development, but nevertheless, organically, we suffered from the last second part of the year. If we then continue to the next slides and starting with Americas, so here you see what I already explained, organically reduction in sales of 5.7%, including the acquisition of Destaco, we were able to grow with about 4.8%, and we finalized the fiscal year 2024 with a margin of 10.2%. We suffered especially not only in the second half, but in the full year with high fluctuation, significant inflation-related increase of labor costs.
Last but not least, then in the last month of the year with a downturn also in the volume, which means that there is a lower fixed cost absorption that we were able to generate. At the end, and this is valid not only for Americas, this is valid for all the regions in the last month of the fiscal year 2024, we already saw that all our measures that Michael explained at the beginning starting to pay back and we're getting more and more efficient also despite this reduction. If we then continue to the next page, please, then we have a look on the EMEA numbers. Also here, an overall increase in revenues of about 5.8%, which is on the one side 8.3% out of that driven by M&A, but also impacted here by a negative FX impact by minus 1.3%.
That will mean organically with our business, like-for-like comparison 2023 to 2024, we suffered, and this is a result mainly of the second half of the year. We suffered an organic reduction of 1.2% in our revenues. Taking then in that environment the adjusted EBIT, so we are here with 12.2% last year, this year at 10.4% in the region. Also here, we have to say with inflation-related cost increases plus lower fixed cost absorption mainly in the second half of the year, we were quite under pressure. As I just don't want to repeat me all the time on what we said for Americas that the measure is starting to be on a positive side, also that is valid for Europe and the plans here in Europe. Last but not least, following APAC, APAC organically an increase of 14.1%.
That is really a great achievement that is excluding every M&A activities with Destaco. Destaco and the M&A activities overall brings us an increase of 6.2%. But also here, we have to see that the FX relation and FX impact was not our friend in the last fiscal year, and we suffered here a reduction from FX by 4.2%. So overall, organically, we were able to grow by about 14.1%. And I think that was once again a very good overachievement here in APAC as we were able to do that in the last year. On EBIT side, last year, we managed to achieve the 18.4%, the adjusted EBIT. This year, we are at 17.5%. So it's a slight reduction, mainly driven also by FX impact, which has significantly negatively impacted us. And this not only compared to budget, but obviously compared to prior year.
And if we take that into consideration, I think here the overall profitability in APAC was quite good, and that is a very important sign. So that is overall the logic about the regions. If we then continue to the next slide, please. Then we see the business development. And here, I want to hand back to Michael, who will give you an overview about that.
Thank you very much, Stefan. So for the next two pages, you see our share of wallet, right? What did we sell to our customers? You see here on the first chart, the quarter four. I won't talk too long about this chart because it basically ends into the next page. But however, you see on this slide already that we are migrating to 50-50 between automotive and industrial business.
The left-hand side of this chart shows that very well that we are migrating towards a healthier split between automotive and industrial business in our company, which for sure was the intention. Also with the acquisition of the Destaco Group. Overall, we sold in the fourth quarter EUR 336 million. However, we jump directly onto the next page, and the next page shows us the full year 2024. What you see here on this chart is that still automotive is performing better than the year before, which was basically driven by the first half of our business year last year. In the second half of the business year, as we all know, the economy turned out to be softer, mainly driven by the automotive industry for light vehicle production, but also the commercial sectors. No wonder our industrial machinery and automation share of wallet is rapidly increasing.
Overall, out of this EUR 1.3 billion sales, we had 11% industrial machinery and automation. Also well developing is the area of health, recreation, furniture, and the aerospace business, marine and rail. Aerospace business for us is a very nice and profitable business. And we achieved over the course of the past 12 months to basically have new products in the pipeline with the main producers of airplanes, right? There are only two big OEMs out there producing the commercial aircraft. And we are now in the business portfolio of both of them, right? That was not the case. We've been centered pretty much onto the U.S. playground before. And now we have the two biggest airplane producers in our share of wallet. And this is really vital and healthy sales for us.
This is why our sales are going up in the aerospace, marine, and rail sector on a profitable level. We are picking the areas of the business where you generate the most value for our company. That's our aim. We underline this also with our innovations because with these key segments, which is talking about be it automotive, then also in the area of automation and aerospace, you need the latest set of technology, be innovative so to make that a success. This is the areas we are performing the most across all regions in our business. On the next slide, you also see then our net debt. We had a reduction of about EUR 50 million in the last six months, which was an outstanding result driven by the healthy business position we have on hand.
We could reduce our debts by EUR 50 million from EUR 720 million to EUR 670 million roundabout. Our net leverage ratio is at 2.8, and it will for sure go down further. We expect in the next two, three years to get below two. Then for sure, again, our midterm plan is to be around one. And as I said, we are with our very healthy cash flow, with our very healthy business on hand on the right track to get to this number. On the next page, yep, we see here the net working capital. Net working capital is always a main field of operation for us, a very big field of opportunities here still. And we see some of them being executed already in the fourth quarter. You see this reduction of our percentage share here coming down over the course of the quarters. We will continue that path of success.
However, this is basically driven by stringent management in all areas because for me, the net working capital balances and connects in very well visual terms the operational improvements we're doing with the nice outcome in our financial performance because we are basically checking left and right wherever we can reduce our net working capital. That's really appreciated. We have several programs around the globe to work with our teams to bring them on a nice level going forward because for sure, that's one of the main drivers in terms of net leverage ratio and reducing debts along the line, and this is what we are pursuing very well. The next indicator is this EUR 166 million with 19%, which is a good number for our business anyways, which we always say it's in the range of 20% anyways. Yeah, our investments, as I said, we continue to invest in innovation.
It's about investments in equipment to fully automate production of products. We started that initiative in 2023 already and basically continued these investments in the year 2024. A significant share out of these investments is for sure the investment in the latest technologies, as I said before: door actuation systems, software-related applications in that regard, but also electrification and modification of all kinds of products is part of our innovation structure and innovation efforts. We continue to do so. On one hand side, that's the product area. On the other hand side, you see this nicely also in the degree of automation in all of our plants. You all know that over the course of the past years, we at Stabilus, like everybody else, is suffering from reduced labor availability and increasing labor rates. We found a way to nicely balance that with automation.
Automation is a key driver here. And it's also per se a good driver for sure for our efforts in terms of Destaco and developing these automation technologies where it really matters and for the customer where it really matters, those who have a high share of labor in their portfolio. With that, we would jump then basically onto the summary and outlook page. In a nutshell, we are doing the right steps. Absolutely. We had a solid performance in 2024. We are fostering our market position, and with diversification of our market segments, we generated cash in a very solid way and are therefore performing very well. Also, the Destaco activities are well on track. They deliver the numbers at Destaco. They are growing nicely compared to the market growth.
Moreover, it's also very important to know that we are shaping our future in terms of these innovations, right? A good indicator also for these innovations is basically our win rates, right? It's highlighted here as the third point. Our win rate for me, as you know, we had this discussion in various conferences. It's important to win business not only in Europe and in North America, but predominantly also in Asia-Pacific because in Asia-Pacific, you really see as a Western world-led company how successful and how competitive you are. And with our current win rates, predominantly also in Asia-Pacific, particularly in China, we underline that we are very competitive out there in the market. Yeah, we also invite you to participate on Monday, December 9th, to our full annual report communication, including the forecast for the year 2025.
Last but not least, we continue for sure to pursue our long-term strategy, STAR 2030, and we are on a perfect way to achieve our targets, which we've outlined in terms of our 2030 vision. With that, this concludes the presentation today. On purpose, we reduced the time for the pure communication one way, right? So we said the presentation time, we want to limit this time around to 30 minutes, concentrating on your questions now. So if you have any questions, please speak up. We are happy to ans wer them.
So, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question now, please press nine, followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel that question, please press nine, followed by the star key a second time. And the first question comes from Akshat Kacker , J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Akshat from JPMorgan. Three questions from my side, please. The first one on the cost actions across the company. You mentioned in the presentation that you have intensified these measures. Could you just give us more details in terms of what's planned for the upcoming year across Europe and North America, please? It'll be helpful if you could quantify this for us, either in terms of a particular gross amount or net euro amount that you're targeting in terms of cost optimization. That'd be helpful. Thank you. That's the first one. The second one is on the U.S. elections and your current thinking on what a second Trump presidency would mean for your North American business, both in terms of growth opportunities, but also the margin profile. Because when I look back the last time around, the revised NAFTA agreement resulted in inflationary pressures for the sector.
But on the other side, you also did see some pre-buys of rotary dampers in your industrial business. So just interested in your thoughts around what could the new presidency mean this time around. And the last question is on APAC POWERISE. Good to see the business returning to double-digit growth again in Q4. Could you just give us more details on the trends that you're seeing in China currently? And do you still expect the POWERISE business to grow by a double-digit percentage in FY25, please? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Akshat, for your questions. First point was measures in terms of Europe and North America when it comes to improvement activities. We are in the final stage of our budgeting process, also jointly with Destaco. And one thing or two things become obvious.
The area of materials management will be important next year, as well as bringing labor costs further under control. These are the two areas for the year to come. So the inflation is basically coming somewhat to an end when it comes to materials, also because of a softer business environment. The inflation of materials is coming down a bit, which we really appreciate. So in concrete numbers, when it comes to materials, we see a material reduction in the range of 1.5%-2% happening in the market on the materials for our products, right? And this is predominantly driven by Europe and North America, but also Asia-Pacific contributes some share.
I would also say it's between one and a half and 2% material price reductions by the indices we expect for the year to come, which we are forcefully negotiating with our customers, with our supplier base. We have supplier conventions where we drive the decision-making in a way that we have in the region for the region, but also multi-sourcing to make sure that we have a competitive environment for our suppliers. And this leads to a reduction of one and a half to 2% on the material side. Please keep in mind that the bill of material is around about 50% of Stabilus' value of the Stabilus sales. So that's one area. That's the material side. On the other hand side, the labor. On labor, we see inflation still, of course, broadly about 3%. And there is also some carryover from last year.
Our expectation is that in the range of 3.5%-4%, we work on our labor inflation for the coming year. These activities have been intensified. I wrote intensified because last year, around about in June, which is for our business year, June 2024, we saw very well that material indices would go down a bit. This is where we could intensify our activities with our suppliers. We invited our supply base to participate in, yeah, conferences. We had one in Asia-Pacific already. There is one coming for Europe and North America in November, where we have intensive discussions about pain sharing activities. The overarching target is, as I said, to reduce the materials significantly from where they are now. This is driven by a material reduction of indices by 1.5%-2%.
And we want to have our share of that. And on the labor side, as I said, it's in the range of 3.5%-4%, which we manage with these automation activities. So these are the two main angles for the current business year we are concentrating on and fighting for each and every day. Your second question was in terms of the U.S. elections. The thing is about this outcome of the election. It probably underlines a bit the volatility and that the volatility will continue because certain decisions might come up in a rather short-term notice in the future, also for the economical framework around the globe driven by this outcome of the U.S. elections. However, we've been adjusting in many areas already. So one thing is, a couple of years back, we had the same situation.
We were accommodating and know what's basically coming, at least in terms of the magnitude and in terms of how to prepare and what to prepare. That's one thing. The other thing is what happened on the Stabilus side in the meanwhile, over the course of the last four years. We are very well positioned. On one hand side, we have now a better share of the industrial business, which spans around the globe anyways. We have Destaco, which is a U.S.-based company, which is really favorable for what we expect to come over the next years. That's extremely important to us. Now, with Destaco, we have five production locations in the U.S. A very important point for us is the philosophy of in the region for the region.
Many customers already in the past six to 12 months came along and asked us to produce the parts they get out of North America, particularly the U.S. So thereby, even from China, but also from Mexico, we switched a lot of production already to our U.S. plant. And therefore, we are very well positioned within the region for the region. And this is our strong belief, as you know, and it turned out to be absolutely valid over the course of the past years. In the region for the region gives stability, this separation of the region. And if you remember, we talked about that also during our speeches when we did acquire Destaco. The separation of the region in conjunction with labor scarcity, they are main drivers of the business, not only driven by the elections, but in general terms, right?
The separation of the region. You need to be in the region for the region. You need to have your footprint in all areas, in all regions, and you need to have also the capabilities for innovation and engineering in all regions, and this is what we have along with our suppliers, and that's what we now harvest the fruits of. So you also mentioned very well, for example, safe harbor initiatives five, six, seven years ago. In the last equivalent situation in terms of political environment, that did help us a lot, so we do not expect any bigger impact to our business as we are prepared very well for that. Your third question was about Asia-Pacific and POWERISE. Yes, it was a very successful last quarter. The POWERISE production did grow a lot.
Main drivers were that we are, and I mentioned that on my last page, very successful in terms of win rates, particularly also in China and against local competition. So the bigger competition in Asia-Pacific is not anymore the traditional competition. It's the local competition. And with the win rates on hand, we can definitely underline that we are competitive in the region, Asia-Pacific, particularly China with our current products. And we will further improve them on the cost side with various technical changes, which we plan for the year to come to stay competitive. So these nice win rates we had over the course of the last 12 months, particularly in Asia-Pacific, are driving these rates.
This is not only on the POWERISE side, but it's also on the door actuation side because now we see big movements in terms of, and this is a given effect, right? If one starts with a door actuation system, everybody wants to have it, right? If your neighbor has a door actuation in his car, you want to have these gimmicks as well. And this is a trend which we now see taking off first in Asia-Pacific with China. So there are a lot of locals who also jump on door actuation now. So there are a lot of OEMs out there who count on door actuation as a nice gimmick because also in technical terms, it's on a mature level now.
On top of that, we'll for sure see the same trend also in the Western world because, as you know, we won the biggest contract so far in the Western world, and all the others see kind of the same pressure. Our order book actually is very good balanced and on a very good stage in terms of door actuation, which is one driver along with good fitment rates and increasing fitment rates in China for the traditional POWERISE systems. We are competitive even against local competition. These three factors, they are basically driving this success also in China. In the future, it pretty much depends on how the economy goes in terms of light vehicle production. You know that we have the IHS numbers in terms of light vehicle production as our guiding principles.
This is basically the fundamentals for the outlook for the year to come. So that's basically the foundation for our numbers. I hope that helps. Stefan, anything from your side?
Just want to add, perhaps, Akshat, one additional flavor to your first question about the measures and in terms of labor cost compensation. So Michael said it's about 3%-4% that we are expecting on a global level labor cost increase in the last years. And that was also one specific pressure that we had with labor cost increase, which were significant on a double-digit side in countries like Mexico or Romania. That was very difficult and not achievable, I would say, to compensate directly those labor cost expenses. Now, we still are faced in some countries with high labor cost increase, like in Romania, like in Mexico. So that will not disappear.
They will not be as high as in the past, I agree. But what is the message clearly with the optimization activities? We already started, already thought about all that to come. We will be able from now on to compensate labor cost increases in that perspective on a year-by-year basis. And I think that is already a very good achievement for the future.
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for that hint. Both materials and labor coming down from the inflation, absolutely right. And just one indicator how important that is to us and the others. We see several companies touching base with this takeover, making sure that they also, they don't order necessarily all new equipment, but also for existing equipment, they want to have features for further automation. And this basically drives the business along the line of this takeover in a very good way.
On the other hand, the activities we are doing in terms of automation also leads us to the point that we're getting less and less independent from labor inflations. Yeah, hope that answers your question, Akshat, and I guess we're ready for the next.
That was very detailed. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Marc-René Tonn, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
es, good morning. Thank you for taking my question as well. Coming first a bit back to the margin development in the fourth quarter, particularly I think EMEA was pretty soft with, I think, 8.4%, if I'm not mistaken, 7.4% if we take out the Destaco. You mentioned that you already see some positive signs from, let's say, the cost-cutting measures you have already implemented.
Perhaps you can give us some indication of what you would expect for EMEA to happen now in the current full year, 2024-2025, particularly when considering that volumes are probably still more on the weak side, particularly in the first half of the fiscal year, and perhaps also a bit in general, and I fully understand that you obviously want to just give the guidance beginning of December, but when we look at last full year, we're kind of taking out the Destaco to see, let's say, an average EBIT margin adjusted of, let's say, around 11%, quite stable over the quarters. You already, let's say, touched upon material costs, labor costs a bit, but pricing, I think, probably from the customer side would be an additional factor to look at.
But if you can give us some indication just roughly on what you would be expecting for this year, mainly as tailwinds and headwinds when looking at, let's say, the underlying business. And then the Destaco probably coming on top on the positive side with the full year development. That would be also very helpful. And the third question is just kind of a bit of housekeeping. With the PPA, you mentioned it was a Q4 impact for the full year. Is that full year, does it mean 12-month impact when we now look forward into the next year? So should we expect, let's say, similar adjustments for PPA in absolute terms for the year as a whole, as we have seen in the last fiscal year?
Or do we have to, let's say, kind of double the number considering that you just had, let's say, six months of Destaco in the figures for last year? Thank you.
Absolutely. Thank you, Martin, for your question. I'll touch base on these first two questions in terms of PPA. For sure, Stefan has the latest view for you in terms of full 12-month effects. So margin development in the year to come, right? The one important point is, as I said, we are in the finalization of our budgets. We are, at the end of the day, now switching Destaco from a calendar year to the Stabilus Group year in terms of financial reporting. And also, we should, over the course of the next weeks, then define our guidance for the year to come.
So the impacting factors, and you mentioned it, EMEA shows kind of a solid performance in terms of profitability. This is something which we expect to continue. We see basically good signs in Asia-Pacific for the time being, for the next three, four months to come, at least. We have decent visibility that there is a stabilization in place. We saw over the course of the past year in the one or other quarter some softer numbers. But also in the fourth quarter, we saw them coming back in terms of numbers when it comes to the point of kind of electromechanical devices, POWERISE systems. North America is also stabilizing. However, in North America and Europe, somewhat on softer levels for the last quarter this year.
So we expect in that term to be the first quarter rather flat in Europe and North America and probably some positive signs on the Asia-Pacific area. This is, in a nutshell, what we expect to happen. I mentioned as cost factor driving, and you're absolutely right, Martin. I mentioned material prices and labor. Last year, we always talked about pricing to the customers as well. This year, as the inflation is coming to an end, we still see some carryover effects. We are claiming at the customers in terms of price increases at the customer, predominantly on the automotive side. However, as things get tighter and tighter for the OEMs, as we read in the press, our expectation is also that they will come back.
So our expectation in terms of pricing is that these elements will be somewhat neutral for the year for us and that the major points of value creation and improvements in terms of margins and margin position will be indeed materials, material prices, and also the labor-related aspects. Our main focus points are PPV, VAVEs, or technical changes, and also further automation and efficiency in the plants. That are the main measures for the year to come. And in terms of sales, we expect the months to come to be rather stable in Europe, North America, probably the one or other upside in Asia-Pacific. And this is pretty much in line with what the current economic outlooks of GDP and IHS shows to the world, I guess, right? So for your third question in terms of purchase price allocation, I would hand over to Stefan, please.
Thank you, Michael.
Yeah, purchase price allocation, I think that is easy to answer. So first of all, as we made the acquisition on closing starting end of business day 31st of March 2024, and therefore this Destaco is included in our numbers for about six months and not 12 months. Also, the depreciation is already only included for six months and not for 12 months. So as I said in the presentation of the group numbers, we are around 16 million EUR depreciation that we posted for this six months that this Destaco is with the group. Here, the underlying logic is that out of the excess purchase price, which is a little bit higher than the $600 million, the goodwill itself will be on a level slightly below 50%.
I think that is in line with a lot of other PPAs that you can see in the market, which leads us also when we're talking about the year 2025 to depreciation, which are coming, which are between EUR 25 million and EUR 30 million to be expected. To give you a rough estimation also for the next year, because that is already based on a calculation that is not any more the basis of a budget. Therefore, I can provide this number. It's in this range, so slightly below EUR 30 million probably is a good value to take into consideration.
Thank you very much, Stefan. Coming back to that point, it's all about operational performance in terms of where we stand for the year 24/25 for us. It's all about materials and operational leveraging.
However, we are very well positioned with our strategy of acquiring this takeover, for example. We are moving our business split to 50/50 automotive and industry, which provides stability. We are in the region for the region. The acquisition was in the U.S., so we are very well positioned also in the years to come. Thank you for your question, Martin.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Yasmin Steilen, Berenberg. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my questions. I have also three questions. So first, again, coming back to the current business, and I completely understand that you will wait with the detailed guidance until December. But any color you can share in terms of current price negotiations with the OEMs, given the raw material inflation, as you mentioned, are coming down and they expect a slight decline in the light vehicle production volumes.
So yeah, just any indications you can give here, in particular with regards to POWERISE and also looking at Stabilus's exposure to the OEMs, also auto OEMs in general, any feedback on the current sentiment there in terms of the order intake. Then my second question on the integration costs. So according to my understanding, they reflect in the adjusted EBIT something not below EUR 4 million in the current fiscal year or in the last fiscal year, with the overall one-off costs below the initial guidance of around EUR 10 million. Is this the new guidance, or should we expect the remainder to be booked in the current fiscal year? And then the last one more housekeeping question again on your interest results. They look very low.
So can you walk us through FX effects from the intercompany loans here and how we should think about the interest results for the current fiscal yea r? Many thanks.
Yeah, thank you very much. I'll also answer here the first two and the last one in terms of interest rates. I'll leave it to Stefan because also we closed the bridge financing, as you know. So we have these numbers on hand for sure, but we probably need to look it up. So that's what Stefan will do in the meanwhile. So thank you for your questions, Yasmin. In terms of pricing, the automotive industry is in the range of 2%-2.5% pricing in a typical year. Now, on one hand side, we are so priced down, I mean, right? So now on one hand side, we are facing a situation where volumes are coming down.
On the other hand, customers are getting increasing pressure in terms of cost position, as we all can read. So they will come back to us like everybody else, like to everybody else in the industry, that's for sure. We will also counterbalance and for sure counter-argue that over the course of the past years, there's still some inflation recovery outstanding, which was not fully compensated, and there are some carryover effects on one hand. On the other hand, we'll argue about lower volumes, which lead to the point that for sure with customers, it's all about economies of scale. We also can talk about coverage and absorption of costs, and therefore we are in a good negotiation position. So in terms of numbers, this basically means for the Western world that the price pressure you have typically is in the range of 2.5% per year.
I see for the next year that for our products, I would say on the gas spring side, it's far less than 1%. So anywhere between 0% and 1% pricing discussions we have with the customer to get new business. And for the automotive side, in terms of POWERISE, it's in the range of 1% or a little higher, but by far lower than the 2%, rather in the range of 1% for the POWERISE systems in the Western world. And this is something which we expect as a negotiation position for this year. On the other hand, what we also expect is in Asia-Pacific, with volumes coming down, we see increasing pressure on the customer side of China, particularly because they typically put their business with their suppliers on a testing stand every six months.
Every six months, you're basically in discussions with the customers, and they are also reshuffling business and business share. We saw that from the past because in some instances, we've been winning very nice business from our competition in the past 12 months. And this is something which makes China a little different because there you really negotiate your prices one or two times a year, whereas in the Western world, you have a long-term or longer-term contract, and you only discuss these points once a year, if even. So this is what we expect in the range of our gas spring business, in the range of 0%-1% and probably 1%-2% for the POWERISE systems. Industry business, different business. Here we expect the prices to be kind of neutral in the discussions, if not a little higher, like a percent higher than before.
So anywhere between 0% and 1% increase. So in the automotive sector, you typically talk about the price reduction of 0%-1%, gas spring 1% or a little higher in power rise, up to 2%. And in the industrial side, typically you work with price lists and negotiations, and you basically pass on some inflation, which could lead to a slight increase up to a price increase of 1% up to 1%. So this is the first question. I hope you can work with these numbers. Then in terms of the EBIT impact, and I understood your second question in a way of costs of onboarding Destaco, right? In terms of exactly.
So it was basically what was reflected there in terms of integration costs and carve-out costs and what we could expect for the current fiscal year.
Yeah, exactly.
You know in such an integration, you have two steps. You first of all spend a lot of money on the external side, which we did in the first six months. Now in the next six months, it is about some external costs, but also internal costs. What we spent so far was in the first quarter of our joint future. Our third fiscal quarter, it was EUR 2 million, which we spent, as you know. In the fourth quarter of our fiscal year, we spent roughly EUR 2 million as well, external costs, both external. In total, EUR 4 million and a bit last financial year and some internal costs. Now we are shifting.
We will see going forward some internal costs and external costs, which at the end of the day will lead us to a number which should be on a fair share below the EUR 10 million, which we originally thought. We've been progressing very well. We are seeing that our colleagues of Destaco are very agile in terms of their project management, very agile in terms of adapting to new situations and also to adjusting to our new financial scheme, and I was highlighting in the pages before that we've been completing our HR workstream, and the finance workstream was also completed, and we're now working on the IT side, so in terms of hard costs externally, the majority is spent with this EUR 4 million. Now there will be the one or other million for the second step of external and internal costs for the next two quarters to come.
That's how I would summarize it, but however, we will stay below the EUR 10 million. I think that's a very good sign and underlines the high degree of efficiency we have in our organization. In terms of the integration and any comments, I would also ask now Stefan for his opinion.
Thank you very much, Yasmin. As Michael said, we are on a very good track regarding the, let's say, the integration costs, but there still will come some more still in this new fiscal year. The good message is we will be below the EUR 10 million. I think that is good. We also were able to shift something to more internal work, but that is still something to come also in the next month, the new fiscal year.
Talking about the financial result, so here we have to split a little bit between the financial income and the financial expenses. And I also would like to guide you through a little bit through the different areas. So we were able, like last year, to generate also in the first half of the year before the Destaco acquisition about EUR 3.8 million interest income. But then on the other side, once this takeover came and we increased significantly our debts, obviously also the interest had to be paid on incurred. So therefore, the interest expense in our P&L increased on a full year perspective from last year about EUR 9.2-9.3 million to about EUR 27.6 million overall. That is on the expense side.
On the other side, we are quite supported by FX impacts on the currency we have in currencies, not in euro, so mainly in US dollar and in other currencies, so here we suffered in the last fiscal year 2023 about a loss of EUR 11 million. And now in this fiscal year, we've got a win of about EUR 5.8 million euros. So these are, from my perspective, the major impacts. So the financial expenses increased from EUR 24.6 million to EUR 32.6 million compared to last year, obviously also indicated by a strong exchange loss in the last year. And the financial income increased from EUR 6.8 million to about EUR 19.6 million. So overall, I would say we even improved the financial results compared to last year. But also, once again, impacted significantly by FX, that we have to admit.
Yeah, thank you very much, Stefan.
And I think this underlines our solid start-off point for this year. Also when it comes to the integration costs, again, I think we are well positioned and did achieve to basically onboard this takeover to the vast majority. That's a good position. o thank you, Yasmin, for your questions. Are there further questions?
At the moment, there are no further questions. So let me just repeat once more. If you would still like to raise a question at this point, please press 9 followed by the star key on your telephone keypad.
Good. If there are no further questions.
Yeah.
If there are no further questions, thank you very much for listening in. I think we're right on time. And I wish you a successful week. And we hear us back at the 9th of December. Thank you very much, everybody. Bye.
Thank you. Have a nice week. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.