Welcome to Hiab's second quarter 2025 earnings call. My name is Aki Vesikallio, I'm from Hiab's Investor Relations. Our excellent performance continued, resulting in a strong first half of the year. Today's results will be presented by our CEO Scott Phillips and our CFO Mikko Puolakka. We will be making forward-looking statements in the presentation, so please pay attention to the disclaimer. With that, I would like to hand over to you, Scott.
Thank you, Aki, and good morning everyone from my side and welcome to our second quarter earnings call for the quarter. I'd say we had several highlights in the quarter, a couple of which I'd like to point out here. On the opening slide, our orders received increased versus the comparable period. I'll give a bit more color on that later in the presentation. Similarly, our comparable operating profit improved from a margin perspective. Really proud of the team for the great execution of our operational excellence pillar, which is the key driver behind the improved profitability despite the decline in sales. However, the good performance internally is a bit offset with the continued elevated market uncertainty due to the ongoing trade tensions and changes in trade policy.
We will specify our outlook today for the remainder of the year and proud to report that with excellent work of colleagues that are current and former colleagues within Cargotec and Hiab, we've announced the closing and the sale of MacGregor, which is expected on the 31st of this month. All right, let's see if I can get the technology to work here. Apologies for that, everybody. I'd like to start off the group presentation by highlighting a few of the key investments we have made in the quarter as we continue to execute on our strategy. First, moving from left to right, we announced we're making a €19 million investment in our MULTILIFT factory in Raisio, which will help to deliver on our promise to be more scalable and flexible throughout all cycles.
As well as delivering an excellent customer and employee experience, the investment will also enable our division to be much more efficient as well as more sustainable. Concurrently, we continue to execute nicely on our operational excellence roadmap. I'd like to highlight one of the elements to help us in our operations across our footprint as our truck mounted forklift and our information management team successfully piloted a new manufacturing execution system solution, which will enable improved material management and process efficiency. Finally, we launched new solutions in our MULTILIFT and Golfab brands to better serve our on-road load handling customers in both Europe and the U.S. At the same time, our DEL brand tail lifts launched a new heavy-duty solution for the UK and Ireland markets geared towards serving customers who have more operationally intensive fleets carrying heavier loads.
A key new penetration for us in that incredibly important market. Now I'd like to turn your attention to group financial results, starting with order intake. The orders received for the quarter were €377 million versus €348 million for the comparison period, representing an 8% positive variance. For the first half, orders were €755 million, up 3% year over year. In terms of demand trends, we remain on a similar level as we have for the prior 10 quarters, with demand coming more from larger key account customers, which is the explanation for the positive variance compared to the second quarter last year. Currencies had a negative impact in the quarter compared to a slightly positive impact in the first quarter, approximately 200 basis points. In constant currencies, we had a 10% variance versus the comparison period.
All in all, we are pleased with the results, but at the same time we do not see the trends overall changing in either direction. Let's look a bit more in detail to order intake by region. For the quarter, we were positive relative to the comparison period, but I would point out that we were coming from a relatively low base in the Americas. Starting with the Americas, EMEA delivered €188 million of orders, representing 50% of the group results, which is up 2% year over year, and €391 million for the first half, up 8% versus last year. The Americas delivered €159 million in the quarter, representing a 15% positive variance. For the first half, delivered €303 million, which is actually down 5% year over year, representing 42% of orders at the group level.
As I mentioned earlier, we come off a relatively low comparison period or a base from last year, and the positive variance was largely driven by a large order that we've recently reported on. In the Asia Pacific region, we continue to deliver stable results representing 8% of orders for the group in the quarter and up nicely year over year by 15%. We continue to see positive momentum in defense logistics together with robust replacement demand. At the same time, we continue to see demand impacted by the uncertainty stemming from the trade policies, which we see as causing our target customers in the U.S. to remain cautious in terms of sales execution, which is quite strong in the quarter. This resulted in €402 million of revenue and €814 million for the first half, representing a 7% and a 4% negative variance respectively, year over year.
In constant currencies, we were down 5% versus the comparison period and in terms of services sales, we were up 2% year over year. Now, looking at the sales mix by region, the mix for the quarter was similar to our order profile as EMEA represented 50%, Americas up slightly in sales versus orders at 43%. In Asia Pacific, at 7% of sales, EMEA declined by 4% to €203 million. The Americas delivered €173 million, representing a 12% decline, and Asia Pacific remained flat at €27 million for the quarter, but down 10% for the first half. I'm really pleased with the development of the percent of sales of our Eco portfolio as we improved to 38% of sales or €155 million for the quarter compared to €126 million for the comparison period.
For the first half, sales from the Eco portfolio represented €279 million of our €814 million of sales or 37%. Nice execution by the team in that regard. Although we had a 7% decline in sales, we were able to deliver a good level of operating profit in the period and for the first half of the year coming from excellent execution, in particular in our operational excellence pillar of our strategy. In absolute terms, profit was €60 million versus €63 million, so a decline of 4%, and for the first half the result was €126 million versus €124 million, so a nice year over year increase by 1% despite the decline in sales. In relative terms, the group delivered 15% for the quarter and 15.5% for the first half, a strong performance overall. Mika will provide additional insights with regards to the profit bridge just a bit later.
The good level of profitability supported a nice improvement in return on capital employed from 27.1% last year to 30.4% this year. I'd like to close this section with an update as to how we are tracking towards our strategy targets. If you look back to the prior quarter, we're down slightly in our rolling 10-year average of our compounded annual growth rate. Similarly, we're slightly down sequentially on our last 12 months of operating profit due to the fact that we lost a strong quarter last year in Q2, so slightly down from 13.7% to 13.6%, and our return on capital employed as I talked about in the prior slide is up to 30.4%. We feel that we're nicely on track to achieving our long range strategy targets that we communicated last year.
With that, I'd like to hand over to Mikko Puolakka to take you through the segment results.
Thank you Scott and good morning. Also from my side, let's first have a look on the equipment segment performance. During the second quarter the equipment order intake grew. However, profitability was impacted by lower volumes. Order intake grew 8% to €256 million. This growth came from the lifting equipment, especially in EMEA and in Asia Pacific. The delivery equipment order intake declined in EMEA; we had quite sizable defense order in the comparison period. It's also good to remember that this kind of defense orders do not necessarily come every quarter. Overall, we still see that the defense activity is on a good level and hope to also book some orders in the future. The order book decline is attributable to delivery equipment due to the lower market activity, especially in the U.S. During the first quarter and now in the second quarter, sales declined 11% to €284 million.
The lifting equipment sales grew, but this was not enough to fully offset the delivery equipment sales decline, which is very much stemming from the low order intake. What you saw in quarter one, our comparable operating profit declined due to lower sales as well as due to a €5 million asset write-off which we took in quarter two. Without this asset write-off, the equipment comparable operating profit margin is 15.5% in Q2, and despite the 11% sales decline. Really strong underlying performance. I will describe this write-off a bit more in detail on the next page. Let's have a look on the equipment segment profitability bridge. The €33 million sales decline, what you saw on the previous page, was the biggest adverse impact on equipment segment profitability. The equipment gross profit margin declined.
It was impacted by this previously mentioned €5 million asset write-off that diluted comparable operating profit margin and also gross profit margin by 1.6% units. As a part of ongoing restructuring in our Italian operations, which we announced late last year, we have identified certain assets which we have decided to write off now in quarter two. Currencies like lower U.S. dollar caused also some headwind in quarter two. On the positive side, the equipment segment SG&A costs declined, illustrated here on the other bar on the right hand side. Summa sumarum, without this €5 million write-off in quarter two, equipment segment delivered a very solid 15.5% comparable operating profit margin in the second quarter. Services performed extremely well in quarter two. Order intake grew by 9%. This growth came mostly in so-called recurring services like spare parts and maintenance services.
We have been successfully growing also the number of connected units as well as the number of maintenance contracts. The profitability development was really strong, supported by the commercial and sourcing actions. Looking at the services profitability bridge, there were several positive contributions to the profitability. First of all, 3% sales growth was one of the contributing factors. Already previously mentioned commercial and sourcing actions were supporting also the gross profit margin. We did not have any major impacts from the FX during the second quarter, and we had slightly higher SG&A costs as we continue to develop services capabilities and technologies in line with our strategy to take the services business revenues to €700 million by 2020. Next, let's have a look still quickly on the total Hiab financials. As mentioned already earlier, our sales declined 7%.
Also, as mentioned earlier, the gross profit margin was impacted by the €5 million Italy-related asset write-off. Without that, our gross profit margin in quarter two was 32%. The same applies to our comparable operating profit. Without the €5 million write-off, the comparable operating profit was 16.1%, on the same level as in quarter one and clearly improving from the comparison period. Thus, I would say that the underlying business performance has been very good despite the 7% sales decline, really highlighting the robustness of Hiab's business model. Looking at the cash flow, like in quarter one, most of our quarter two cash flow was generated by the continuing operations, i.e., Hiab business.
The cash conversion was slightly below 100% in quarter two, mainly due to the incentive payments which typically take place in the second quarter and VAT payments which fluctuate from month to month and from quarter to quarter. Thanks to the solid cash flow in the second quarter, we continue to have a very strong balance sheet. Continuing operations, i.e., Hiab's gearing, was -7%. This is slightly lower than what we had in the first quarter, -12%. We paid €77 million of dividends in the second quarter, and this was mostly offset by the strong operative cash flow as you saw on the previous page. Also please note that, like said earlier, we aim at closing the MacGregor sale at the end of July, and we expect then roughly €225 million sales price coming in in quarter three. Like Scott mentioned earlier, we have specified the outlook for 2025.
This is based on the first six months financial performance and our current visibility to the second half of the year. We estimate for the continuing operations, that is for Hiab, the comparable operating profit to exceed 13.5%, to be slightly higher than in 2024. With those words, I would hand back to Scott to summarize the key takeaways.
Thank you, Mikko. All right, so a couple of key takeaways that I want to summarize the quarter around. One is our first half of the year has been extremely strong and due to the excellent execution of the entire team at Hiab, that's led to our profitability being on a strong level. Really proud of that. Despite the challenging market situation, however, the market uncertainty continues to negatively impact our business, especially in the U.S. Therefore, we're still taking a relatively conservative view and providing a bottom scenario as we have been for each of the last several quarters in terms of our outlook. We believe we're in an excellent position, however, to deal with this market volatility and we like the fact that our strong cash flow and balance sheet position positions us to continue to invest in the business and gear Hiab for growth into the future.
With that, Aki, I'll turn it over to you for Q and A.
Thank you. Scott and I would like to welcome Mikko Puolakka back to the stage. With that, operator, we are ready for the Q and A.
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Quiet at the moment on the question front. If we don't have any questions for the call, we can conclude the session. I would still remind you that we have our site visit upcoming on 18th of September. Please sign up if you are interested to participate in this one. Thank you Scott. Thank you Mikko for the presentation.
Thank you, Aki.
Thank you.
Thanks everyone and have a safe day.
Have a nice summer.