Everybody, and welcome again to the quarterly Wacker Neuson earnings call. This is Ingo Middelmenne from Investor Relations. Thanks for joining again today on behalf of the release of our nine-month 2023 figures. As usual, we will now present to you the latest results as released this morning. In the next 15-20 minutes, we will talk about the most important events in the first half year, or no, in the first nine months, actually, of 2023, from an operational and financial perspective. Following this, there will be a Q&A session. If you're not able to follow today's call via the webcast, the presentation slides are also available for you for download at wackerneusongroup.com/investor-relations. Please note that the entire call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded and made available publicly on our website in the course of the day.
Now I'm handing you over to our executives, Dr. Karl Tragl and Christoph Burkhard, who will, as usual, lead you through today's call.
Thank you, Ingo. This is Christoph Burkhard, CFO of Wacker Neuson, and welcome to our earnings call, and thank you for joining.
Thank you, Christoph. Welcome, and thanks for joining. I'm Karl Tragl, CEO of the Wacker Neuson Group. After the extraordinary revenue and earnings growth in the past fiscal year, the first half of this year, we do feel now a weakening of demand in the market. But as you know, we have quite some business activities which are less dependent on the construction cycle, like infrastructure, modernization, zero-emission solutions, and after-sales services. At the same time, we can rely on solid work. And finally, we have been preparing for such a scenario for some time now. So overall, we are managing quite well to adjust to the new market conditions. Our order backlog is proving to be very solid across the board. Although there are increasing signs of a slowdown in the economy, we can look back on a successful Q3.
We achieved impressive growth figures for the first nine months. Our group revenue increased by 22.7%, so we exceeded the EUR 2 billion revenue threshold with EUR 2,014 million, first time already at the end of September. At this point, I would like to thank our great Wacker Neuson teams, as well as our customers, suppliers, business partners, and of course, all of you for your continued support of the Wacker Neuson Group. With EUR 214 million after the first nine months, our EBIT once again grew significantly stronger by 66%, and our EBIT margin at 11.9% was also substantially higher than in the previous year. Looking at the Q3 only, EBIT margin at 9.8% was slightly lower compared to previous year by 0.2 points, in line with expectations.
As you will recall, the reduced EBIT margin in Q3 compared to the first half of this year has largely to do with two extraordinary effects, which happened during the first six months. First of all, the disposal of non-core assets no longer required for operations with around EUR 15 million, and secondly, the sale of intangible assets with around EUR 11 million. In addition, we are also seeing signs of an economic slowdown in the margin. Adjusting production and purchasing volumes to the rapidly changing market conditions always leaves a small part of the margin on the line. Although we have been successful in significantly reducing our inventory of unfinished machines in recent months, our inventory of finished machines has increased, particularly against the background of the general economic situation.
This has a temporary increase in our net working capital ratio, but more details on this one later in the presentation. The regional perspective shows that quarter three revenues in our most important markets stayed at a high level, with significant double-digit percentage growth compared to last year. In the EMEA region, our revenue increased by 21% to EUR 1,506 million in the first nine months. Overall, there was some slowdown in the pace of growth in all regional submarkets in the Q3 compared to the previous ones. Nevertheless, our growth in the Q3 was still 16%, which shows how robust our most important markets in Europe are despite economic environment. In the Americas region, our revenues year to date increased by 34% to EUR 447 million.
Even so, growth in this region is still well into double-digit figures. The pace of development slowed there as well in the Q3. Generally, however, demand in the North American markets remains good, and North America proves to be our most important growth market also in the future. The Asia Pacific region suffered a noticeable decline in sales. Revenues fell by 8% to just under EUR 61 million in the reporting period.... However, the decline is almost entirely attributable to currency effects. Adjusted for this, revenue in the region were almost on par with the previous year. We are seeing that the weakness of the Chinese and Southeast Asian markets is now increasingly spilling over to Australia, which was previously characterized by far above average growth. And I would like to hand over to you, Christoph, to give some more insight.
Thank you, Karl. Well, as you can see, the free cash flow stood at EUR -41 million at the end of Q3. The deterioration of, so to say, only EUR -10 million in Q3 compared to the end of Q2, is showing a slowdown of the working capital-induced negative trend. And we are working hard on a reversal of the trend towards year-end. Net debt increased slightly by EUR 20 million to EUR 376 million versus H1, and leverage with 0.9 continues to stay below one. Now, talking about our latest business insights, let me first focus on net working capital. With a ratio of 35.5% at the end of Q3, we expect that we have reached the peak in 2023.
There is a combination of effects behind this development, and we have kicked off a series of countermeasures to get net working capital down towards our strategic target level of 30%. Now, let me briefly comment on the effects driving the working capital buildup. We have been experiencing a fairly swift change from a very dynamic growth phase towards a much more restrained market sentiment due to current economic uncertainties. Now, adjusting to this more cautious approach along the entire value chain, takes for all market participants some time on the timeline. This affects adjustments all the way from the supplier side and raw material to our sales and dealer inventories of finished goods.
A perfect example in this context is our continuing successful reduction of unfinished goods, that you see displayed here on the slide, from more than 1,600 machines in July to currently below 900 machines. All those finished machines have been moved on now into our finished goods stock before they get delivered to our customers. Now, as mentioned, we have implemented a series of support measures to swiftly adjust working capital management to the changing environment. Since the adjustments need to go through the entire chain, it will take some time until significant reductions will materialize. Now, acknowledging the mechanics of working capital measures to become effective, we have adjusted our expectations towards a realistic net working capital ratio at year-end to around 32%. Now to a brief snapshot concerning new technology.
We presented a great innovation to the market in the Q3. With ASC, Active Sense Control, we presented a radar-based object detection system with integrated brake assist to the market, which will increase safety on construction sites in the future. We will be launching this system in Q1 and expect high demand for this innovation. You see once again, how innovation is an important driver to our market success. And finally, let me talk about our customers. With the Wacker Neuson Universe and the Kramer Dealer and Customer Day, we held two major sales events in Germany and Austria in the Q3. The positive feedback we received from our business partners was really overwhelming, and I was also, again, personally impressed by the customer presentations of our latest innovations and the live demonstrations of new machines. And with this back to you, Karl.
Thanks, Christoph. At the end of our presentation, as always, let's talk about the outlook for the current year, 2023. The economic slowdown is increasingly materializing in our business. We can see this in the development of our incoming orders, and above all, in the business climate indicators of our most important industrial sectors. On the other hand, we are still receiving quite some tailwind from our strong order book and a further stabilizing supply chain. Overall, we are very confident for the remainder of the year, and therefore, we can confirm our guidance for revenue and EBIT margin for the full year 2023. As Christoph already mentioned, we expect our net working capital ratio to improve to around 32% at year-end. Last but not least, we expect investments to reach around EUR 140 million.
As usual, we do not speculate at this point in time on an outlook for 2024. We will publish our guidance in the first quarter next year. Particularly in the current times, showing a very mixed picture of risks and opportunities, we first need to experience business climate and order intake dynamics of the final months of the year in order to draw our conclusions for the coming year. In the long run, the Wacker Neuson Strategy 2030, with its 10 levers for growth and profitability, remains our North Star. This way, we remain very confident about our future business development.
... and we look forward to continuing our journey of profitable growth together with you. So thanks for listening. We are now looking forward to receiving your questions.
Thanks, Karl and Christoph, for the update on the first nine months of 2023 and Q3. Operator, I'm handing this back to you now to explain the Q&A procedure.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, gentlemen. Thank you very much. And, I will start off asking about the pricing environment, and actually, I would like to have two different kinds of commenting on it. So, the first one is when I recognize that on your inventory, you have an increasing number of machines, is there a possibility that you need discount to bring them into the market? And the second one is, I see that you write in the outlook statement that you see a pickup of cost trends again. So when we think about list pricings going forward, do you think those are also under pressure, or would you actually rather have the need to increase the prices further?
All right. Thanks very much, Stefan. Let me start with the first question on pricing pressure. I would like to differentiate here. I think we have with respect to wheel loaders and our excavators that have been ordered a pretty stable situation. So, I or we would not expect that we now get basically a large-scale challenge on given orders. Yeah. However, of course, we have now price pressure for new orders, obviously. At the same time, we do have, to a certain extent, a counterbalancing effect due to import input costs, yeah, on the supplier side, where we certainly also have now more room for negotiations.
But now that, of course, leads to the second aspect that you have mentioned, that we have been more cautious on, particularly on energy and on the energy and transportation pricing. And I guess this is somewhat normal that we towards winter that you see here and trend on pressure on the pricing for energy and transportation. However, overall, I think input cost development will counterbalance some of the market price pressure. Karl, is there anything you want to add?
Yeah, I would like to add-
Yeah.
Talking about the pricing. I mean, the topic is we have to make sure altogether, there's an outflow of machines out of stock, also from our dealers towards the end customers, because as we said, there is still a need there on the end customer side. And there, it's less a discussion about prices itself. It's more about supporting by financing, by... I'm struggling for the English word, for extended warranty.
That's a good point, Karl. I mean, the whole set of customer finance instruments that we anyway keep on applying. And we are not talking here about increasing risk for the company, but about non-recourse customer financing. We have quite a close collaboration here with our partner banks, and this, of course, will intensify. And then, as Karl mentioned, also, we will chip in on the extended warranty side as an upside for our customers to, of course, increase sales.
Mm-hmm. Okay, and can we go a little bit deeper into the demand picture right now? So, could you make some comments specifically, for example, on the regions or between light and compact equipment and the agricultural side? I think service is actually a quite stable element here.
Yeah. I think the most significant differentiation at the moment is probably between construction and agriculture, and that has to do with the fact that in times where customer demand is slowing down, in agriculture, it's more digital. So either invest or not invest. In construction, you always have in parallel the rental business. So if there's uncertainty, customers might switch to rental. We have the opportunity also then to compensate with rental activities. I think that's one differentiator.
The other differentiator is that at least what we currently experience, that our direct markets, so to say, direct markets, where we have our own network of direct sales affiliates, there, we cope better with the situation than compared with the dealer markets, particularly UK and France, where we usually sell directly to dealers.
... because many of the dealers are also suffering. So I think if you want to differentiate between our sales channels, then direct cluster or our direct markets are doing better than the dealer markets, Karl, would you say? Yeah, I would, absolutely. And I just want to add the regional perspective. Yeah. And there, as you know, 90% or more than 90% is Europe and Americas, and it's definitely very much better in Americas. We have much more perspective there, and there is a stocking issue on the dealer side, while in Europe, as you are closer, or I'm sure about that, it goes more deeper into other issues. So Americas is something we're really very positive on for also for next year.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. And one add-on here is, can you outline a little bit on how flexible actually your production is? So if I understand that correctly, that you have, let's say, on the dealer side, some high loads, obviously, you need to tune down your production to cushion the effect as well, beyond anything that happens in the end market. So, to what extent is that, more or less, can that happen margin neutral? Is that something like, you have a normal flexibility inside, like 10%, up or down on the production side, or is that rather moving up to 20, or, something like that? Would you be willing to share such an insight?
Yes, I would just start with, and Christoph, please step in anytime you want to add something. I mean, we have to understand that we are basically an assembly shop. We just take parts from suppliers, engines, steel parts, hydraulics, electrics, batteries, and just assemble that to become a complete machine or to become a rammer or a plate. And this is pretty flexible because just adding headcount or adding shifts or working into the weekends and overtimes, their flexibility is, I would say, of plus or minus 20 or 30% is not that problematic. The key is always, do we have the components?
If we want to flex up or down to that amount with suppliers who have casting units, for instance, or who have big machining centers, or like, engine manufacturers who have a very complex supply chain as well, this is basically the problem. And then we always end up in that discussion, do we rather run or utilize the assembly slot in the factory, or do we risk to get material just on stock? So, and that's the reason why we always point at the supply chain, because I was a supplier in my previous life, so I know about the problem very well.
So the flexibility is basically going with our supply chain, and that is where we have to be cautious, where we cannot switch on and off like that, because then we lose the partnership with our supply chain. Yeah, and maybe just one comment here to add from my side, particularly now, maybe the CFO comment here. As Karl mentioned, I mean, if we now would come into a sudden downturn, which I'm not forecasting now, but just for the sake of the discussion, then, of course, the topic of under-absorption costs that you are hinting at would be certainly unavoidable at a certain stage.
But as long as we basically plan, or we do a proof planning, then we are pretty flexible, as Karl said. But of course, if things are really further deteriorating at a certain point in time, of course, under-absorption costs will kick in. Yeah, and just from my side, we have to, what I always call internally, we have to watch demand in sight, and as soon as it's gonna pick up again, we have to make sure that supply chain is also ready and in a partnership that this can pick up as soon as possible as well.
Okay, understood. Thank you very much. I go back in the queue.
Thanks, Stefan.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, you may press star and one. Our next question comes from Alexander Galitsa from Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thank you for taking the question. Just one on the rental fleet, just to understand the divergence that one can see on the one hand with the cooling-off economy, but on the other hand, you have increased your fleet significantly as of nine months. Just to understand what's driving it. Do you see really that there is so much incremental business for your rental services, or what's behind that?
Okay, first of all, Karl speaking here. First of all, it's our strategy to increase rental business or direct markets, because that's one of the big advantages which we have over there, and also utilize this type of business model to also rent out machines. And there we are a little bit different than just classical rental companies, because we are also using this as a testing ground for our customers so that they can rent a machine, and later on they can buy it. We call that testing without risk. This is especially important for zero emission because there's still, as you can imagine, skepticism in the market about electrical equipment on construction sites.
So, renting electric equipment, then after 3 or 6 months' time, to decide to basically buy it, is an important tool for us to also overcome this barrier on zero emission and electrical equipment. So yes, we are aware of that, that also our rental fleet has grown more than it probably should, should be, but that's pretty easy to correct, and we discussed it just the recent days in our budget meetings. This can be done by just increasing the amount of machines sold, as, as I explained, and that's something which we can do as a manufacturer, which rental companies normally cannot, cannot do.
Understood. And then also one question on, I guess if you could take it by region, maybe. If you have a sense of the stocking levels at the dealers right now, where are they compared to the sort of normalized levels, or if you can give any color?
Okay. First of all, let me try to start with, and then Christoph has to correct me or, push me back on track again. I personally would not distinguish between Europe and North America, because in both cases, dealers are stocked. And I also would not distinguish, there's no distinction, in my opinion, in between construction and agriculture, because I also had on the agriculture side, recently, some discussions where they are in the same situation, of overstocking on the dealer side. So, the plain answer from my side is there is no real regional or ag versus construction difference. The difference gonna be that on the agriculture side, as Christoph says, it's digital. This switches on, if macroeconomics are improving, this switches on immediately.
I know this also from my supplier side, from my history. So that's the advantage we have there compared to construction. But in my opinion, I don't know, Christoph, whether you would agree, this is more an industrial all over the place top-topic.
It is. I mean, we have been, of course, we are constantly reviewing that at this point in time, you know, our DIOs and try to optimize all over the place. So we have a very, very transparent picture. It basically comes out of the machine, where do we have which machine at the moment? And it's a pretty broadly spread picture across our sales entities. Yeah.
Alexander, does it answer your question? Oops, are we still there? Hopefully, we didn't lose you. Operator, are we still connected?
Yeah, we're still connected.
Okay, so it looks like just our analyst got disconnected. Luckily, he can listen to the replay of this call if he didn't get the answer. So are there any further questions for the moment?
There are no further questions at this time.
Okay. Then please, again, the reminder from our side, if you wish to ask a question, please just push this button. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Thank you very much.
Excuse me, gentlemen. We have Mr. Alexander Galitsa back.
Ah, he's back. Oh, yeah, great.
Yes, thank you. No, I actually could hear your response, but you, for some reason, could not hear me. I have one more question, if I may. I mean, you mentioned that you're not giving firm outlooks or anything like that for 2024, but I'm just wondering, as you're now looking into the cooling down environment and you're thinking about how to adjust the production capacities, I'm wondering, like, how much flexibility in terms of time, like, how much ahead of time do you really need to make this decision on the, s ort of to make the plans for capacity more firm, because we're almost entering now in 2024. And maybe you could touch upon a range of scenarios. What are you currently are planning for?
Do you, do you see a really high likelihood of a negative growth in 2024? Is it more of a flatish, if you are able to, spare any words on that?
Okay, let me just try with the first part, and then I leave the difficult part to Christoph. So our systems are in the way, like, that we have—we are thinking in quarters and in three months. So we are trying to fix roughly what's happening the next three months, and then in production and also towards supply chains. And then we have a rough picture for the next three months, so to six months, and then we try to keep it as flexible as possible, after that. And the current adjustments are pretty much also driven because we have good revenue, as we have shown in quarter three. The current adjustments are also mainly driven as well from that we want to adjust our net working capital.
That's where we are driving currently our adjustments, and that's the reason why we're doing it that way. I leave the comment on next to you, Christoph. You have the crystal ball. I don't have it.
Yeah, no, but, Alexander, I think we share the understanding here. I give you now my, let's say, current feeling and not a pre-guidance, obviously, but I think it's fair for the discussion to exchange that view. And in all honesty, I think currently we are looking at kind of a more or less consolidation scenario, let's put it like that, in broad terms. However, you know, this, of course, depends really on how the next two, three months will evolve, and then we will adjust accordingly. And maybe, concerning your question around flexibility, of course, we have taken into account now some scenarios, rather not the strong growth scenarios anymore. I mean, this is obvious.
Secondly, we have quite some stocks, you know, that we have also taken into consideration, so we have been adjusting already supply chain. The thing is, flexibility is now. I'm not saying that it's easy, but I think it has become better to manage compared to the previous two years, where flexibility was, of course, like zero, because everybody simply tried to get what he could. Yeah, and this is different. And I think that leaves us somewhat confident in a way that we will be able now to adapt with the scenarios, because also supply chain is more flexible, if that's maybe a bit helping.
Yes, thank you. That's helpful.
Gentlemen, there are no further questions.
Okay.
Good.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your questions. As usual, should any further questions arise, then please don't hesitate to contact us. We've reached to the end of today's call. Thanks again for joining, and have a great day.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Have a great day.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.