Good morning and welcome to Kalmar Q3 Results webcast. My name is Camilla Maikola, and I'm from Kalmar's Investor Relations. Today's results will be presented by our President and CEO, Sami Niiranen, and CFO, Sakari Ahdekivi. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A. Please pay attention to the disclaimer, as we will be making forward-looking statements. Now, over to you, Sami.
Thank you, Camilla, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to share with you Kalmar's third quarter's performance, which was a solid quarter in many ways. I'll start with highlighting the fact that we delivered a record-high comparable operating profit margin of 13.8%, which was driven by services and improved efficiencies. Despite persistent global market uncertainty, indecisiveness, and delayed decision-making among some customers, we did ensure a solid performance. The market activity in the quarter was in line with our previous expectations of a slightly softer environment in the second half, especially in the Americas. Orders received declined by 10% to EUR 375 million. Services orders increased by 12%, while equipment orders decreased by 20%, which I will cover more in detail in the next slides.
With one quarter left in the year, we keep our guidance unchanged, and we expect our comparable operating profit margin to be above 12% in 2025. Moving into orders received, firstly, zooming out a bit from the quarter and the drop in total orders by 10% compared to last year Q3, I would like to point out that year-to-date we are at EUR 1.3 billion versus EUR 1.2 billion last year in orders received, and that is up with 9%. As mentioned, we have a positive momentum in services. Service orders were strong across the portfolio, with an increase of 12%, while equipment orders decreased by 20% from last year. The decrease in equipment orders was mainly affected by timing of larger orders and delayed decision-making. The underlying demand remained mostly stable; however, it was subdued in the Americas.
Tariffs are causing further uncertainty, and as mentioned, was dampening decision-making, meaning that our customers, especially in the U.S. and Latin America, have remained cautious. The order book remained on a good level. Let's now focus on the regional development. The order development was mixed across different geographical regions and segments. In Europe, the order intake has been strong year-to-date, up 11%. The decline in Q3 was explained by timing of larger orders. In the Americas, we saw some growth year-on-year despite trade policy-related uncertainty. The growth was primarily driven by the distribution and customer segment and can be explained by a weak comparison period 2024. AMEIA's order intake year-to-date has been stable. In regards to our two segments, the services segment orders have been strong across all the regions, which is key for us, of course.
Moving on to our sales performance, our sales in the third quarter were EUR 436 million. The sales continued to grow by 3% and in constant currencies 5%, which is the result of strong operational execution. Sales in equipment was flat and increased in services by 8% from last year. Services share of sales continued to grow and was 34% in the third quarter. Let me guide you through how our sales have developed in different regions. Geographically, in this quarter, there are differences depending on the region and end customer segments as well. The sales overall in Europe were stable, with variations by end customer segment and country. The decrease in sales in the Americas continued and is explained by a lower order book in the distribution end customer segment. In AMEIA, the sales performance has been strong, especially in the ports and terminals end customer segment.
As you well know, we have a well-diversified business with our four strong customer segments. As already covered, the services segment share of sales was 34% in Q3, which is providing resilience to our overall revenue. Eco-portfolio share of sales is continuing to develop positively and increased to 46%, which is showing the strong interest towards our sustainable solutions. On the people side, let me highlight our 5,298 passionate employees and teams worldwide. Together, we are dedicated to managing this dynamic environment while diligently executing our strategy. Let's now look at the whole year 2025 from a macroeconomic standpoint, which is one of the hot topics at the moment. The current macroeconomic uncertainty, driven by geopolitical tensions, leads to increased volatility in the economic data, making it difficult to provide long-term forecasts.
However, as this data shows, based on external indicators, the market in 2025 has been more resilient than previously anticipated. IMF increased its global GDP forecast again in October compared to July 2025. Drewry has again upgraded its container throughput forecast for 2025 to almost 5% and for 2026 to 1.3%. Oxford Economics has also upgraded the global manufacturing forecast upwards for 2025 and 2026 in June. Building on the previous slide and looking at the development from a fleet activity point of view, here we have our fleet activity development of our 14,500 connected equipment around the world. We get a good picture of the activity in the different regions by following this. Overall, we see a positive development trend both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, which is indicating increased activity at our customer sites during the third quarter. As we see here, the activity in the U.S.
has decreased, which is in line with the softer market we have experienced. However, our global footprint is an important driver which provides us resilience in turbulent times. Even though the market might be softer in one part of the world, as we see here, the overall development in the fleet activity is positive and provides us opportunities for future growth. Our Eco-portfolio continues on a positive development trend. The Eco-portfolio share of total sales has remained high and increased to 46%. Eco-portfolio share of order intake was also high at 43% in Q3, which is demonstrating our customers' strong interest towards electric and hybrid solutions as well as sustainable service solutions. The fully electric machines share of equipment orders for the last 12 months increased to 11%. We continue to see significant potential with electrification, and our focus has been on innovations enabling this transition.
As an example, we have, during the third quarter, launched our next-generation lithium-ion battery technology for our counterbalanced equipment portfolio. Continuing on the positive side, we have been pleased to announce some orders booked in the third quarter, including the three-year Kalmar Care maintenance contract for NOATUM Ports Malaga terminal in Spain, five hybrid straddle carriers including My Kalmar Insight performance management tool to Rotterdam Short Sea Terminals in the Netherlands, and 14 hybrid AutoStrad machines to Patrick Terminals in Australia. One of my favorite topics is yet another quarter of good momentum and progress in strategic actions. During Q3, as a few examples, we kicked off the five-year Move to Green program with a successful launch event in our innovation center in Finland. We also commenced with the construction work of our new test center in Ljungby, Sweden.
Additionally, we were proud to be awarded with an EcoVadis Gold Medal, which is placing us in the top 5% of all rated companies in terms of sustainability performance of the company and its supply chains. Additionally, as part of our commitment to sustainability, Bromma has manufactured the world's first crane spreader made from fossil-free steel to be delivered to DP World Sokhna in Egypt this fall. A few highlights from our business performance before handing over to Sakari. The performance was solid in the third quarter despite continued market uncertainty. The services margin was strong at 18.5%. The equipment margin was at the solid level, however, affected by the product mix and tariff impacts, which Sakari will come back to. The order book is on a good level in both segments.
In other words, I think we are well positioned to drive growth and deal with the volatile market environment. On my last slide here, I would like to remind you about our performance targets 2028, which we are fully committed to. Now I will hand over to Sakari. Thank you for now.
Thank you, Sami, and good morning to all of you also from my side. I will start off with our traditional slide on our financial profile and where we are. A couple of highlights from that. Our financial profile has remained strong, which gives us excellent possibilities to target growth and execute the kind of actions that Sami was mentioning that we have been publishing also during this quarter. If you look at the relationship between the orders and sales, you can see that over the last 12 months, we have booked clearly higher orders than what we have had in terms of sales. Even though we had a slightly weaker quarter in terms of orders in Q3, I think this should be viewed a little bit longer term. That leads us to having an order book at a healthy level of around EUR 1 billion.
Our business performance has been successful, and our comparable operating profit margin for the last 12 months shows a slight uptick to 12.7% now as a result of the strong performance in Q3. Our leverage continues to be low. Maybe a low light from the financial profile is that our cash conversion now has dropped to below 100% due to the weaker cash flow in Q3 and is now at 75%. Still pretty strong though. I will then go into the segments a little bit more in detail. As Sami mentioned, the equipment segment's orders received decreased by 20% from last year in the quarter. However, when you look at the year-to-date number, it's still showing a healthy growth of 11%. In terms of the order book, that remains on a good level. Sales was flat in the quarter, and profitability was at a very good level at 12.7%.
That was, of course, sales was on a good level driven by successful project deliveries. We did have a temporary four-week delay in forklift deliveries to the U.S. due to the new tariffs announced in August and also the related documentation requirements, which has some impact on the quarter. However, equipment segment's profitability was at a solid level in Q3, 12.7%, supported by our continued solid commercial performance and Driving Excellence program actions. Although we had some impacts from tariffs, and also the product mix impacted the profitability in the quarter to some extent. Through proactive measures, the majority of the tariff impact was mitigated, though with a slight negative impact on the margins in the equipment segment.
One of the highlights of the quarter definitely is the services performance overall, with an orders growth of 12% in the quarter, 7% year-to-date, which means we're growing faster than the market in services. Strengthened order book, which provides resilience, and sales up 8% in the quarter and 6% year-to-date. Also, the profitability at 18.5% in the quarter. The 18.5% profitability was driven by higher sales and strong commercial performance. The U.S. spare parts distribution center relocation, which had some impact to our Q2 profitability in services, is very much on track now and is supporting our services growth now and going forward. Our tariff-related mitigation actions taken during the quarter supported the services margin resilience in a good way. Now let's dive into the topic of tariffs.
I think the key message here is that the full impact remains unclear, and of course, we are dependent on the same external information as everyone else. The trade policy landscape is still fluid. What is clear though is that Kalmar has taken actions in regards to the tariffs, mitigating the tariff impacts with price increases, supply chain actions, and other operational excellence initiatives, as well as working on fulfilling the documentation requirements. As you know, our U.S. factory in Ottawa, Kansas, produces terminal tractors mainly to the U.S. market and then also to Mexico and Canada. From our Poland factory in Stargard, Poland, we sell reach stackers, forklifts, and straddle carriers to the U.S. market. It is worth mentioning that to our knowledge, no player is manufacturing straddle carriers in the U.S., and our factory in Ipoh, Malaysia, produces Bromma spreaders, which are sold globally.
As you can see from this slide, our factory in Shanghai, China, sells nothing to the U.S., so that is not impacting. When it comes to the spare parts, components, and steel of Chinese origin, they represent a low double-digit percentage share of Kalmar's total portfolio. I think that's an important thing to note. Then to our driving excellence program. The execution of our driving excellence initiative is ongoing very well, and as you know, we are planning to reach EUR 50 million of gross efficiency improvements by the end of 2026. During the first three quarters of 2025, we have progressed with the implementation, and a run rate of approximately EUR 24 million of annualized gross efficiency improvements have been secured. The majority of the improvements so far originate from commercial excellence actions, primarily around sourcing, with impacts from operational excellence actions starting to materialize from things like process development.
To the balance sheet side, our return on capital employed in the third quarter was 20.8%, so very stable. As before, it's worth noticing that the items affecting comparability, which mostly are deriving from the demerger and listing process in the previous year, still have an impact on the Q3 ROCE, and the impact is about 1.7% points. Normalized for that, we would be somewhere around 22.5% in ROCE. Our leverage is at a strong level of only 0.3 times, and our gearing is around 13%. A few words about the cash flow, which was a bit of a low light in the quarter. Of course, cash flow always has some quarterly fluctuations, and this time we hit a number of EUR 26 million. This was impacted by increased working capital.
This increase was driven by inventories and largely explained by the tariff-related issues, as well as our deliberate action to improve spare parts availability, so carrying somewhat higher spare parts inventory. In addition, the high level of HD orders that we've been seeing in the previous quarters is to some extent also impacting work in progress. All in all, that resulted in some buildup of working capital in the quarter. Our cash conversion for the last 12 months was at 75%, as stated previously. As Sami already mentioned, our guidance for 2025 remains unchanged, and we expect our comparable operating profit margin to be above 12%. All right. That's all from the presentation side, and I welcome my colleagues back to the stage.
Yes, we are now ready for the Q&A. Moderator, can you please open up the line?
The next question comes from Mikael Doepel from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please. I can take them one by one. Firstly, on the service orders, very strong growth in the quarter, as you mentioned, double-digit here. Just wondering if there was anything exceptional there, any larger modernization deal, something else, maybe a weaker comp, and how we should think about this trajectory going forward. Do you have any early indications for Q4, for example, from the connected units?
Okay, thank you, Mikael. That's a good start. Yes, we are happy, and I'm happy with the services performance overall. We announced one service or maintenance contract during the quarter as well. That was visible there. Overall, I think it was a strong performance across all the regions in service. The mix, I mean the product mix within the services, was quite favorable as well. I mean good parts and logistics business we had.
Okay, any indications on the connected units trends there, continuing as you saw in Q3 or something else into Q4?
You mean connected versus our performance? No, I think overall what we see with our connectivity and the fleet activity, of course, it has been mostly green. It has been quite positive year-to-date and during this year. Of course, apart from the Americas region, which has been slow. Otherwise, of course, there is a correlation, of course, to the service performance as well. When the fleet activity is on a good level, of course, that provides us with opportunities to offer and sell our services solutions. In Q4, the quarters, they are not equal to each other, as we normally say in different means. That applies to services as well. Growing services is one of our strategic pillars, maybe the most important strategic pillar. Definitely there will be a high focus on growing services going forward as well. That's what I can promise.
Okay, that's clear. Secondly, on the U.S., looking at the orders in the quarter, they didn't seem to weaken much sequentially in Q3. If I look at Americas, and I'm assuming that's mainly reflected in the U.S., would you regard these levels as some sort of a floor level here, or should we expect some further weakening? I'm just wondering what you're seeing in the market right now and discussing with customers. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the absolute numbers here. I know you realize that they're a relatively tough comp in Q4. Any color on that would be great.
That's a very good question as well. Of course, as we mentioned in the report as well as the presentation, there are lots of uncertainties still around in the Americas, not only related directly to the U.S., but the surrounding countries as well. We have had, I think, still not on a very high level, but at least a little bit better level than what we had in 2024, the performance in the U.S. market. It's a little bit building from the fact that we have a strong presence in the U.S. market. We have a factory there. We have fantastic services business and the dealer network and the supply chain and so forth. It's building from many of those cornerstones there. How it will evolve going forward, again, visibility is not very far in the U.S. market. We trust that we have the right actions in place.
We are managing the situation well with tariffs, with price increases, and so forth. We are actively, of course, visiting and talking to our customers as well as dealers to find new businesses as well. The U.S. market is very large. We see opportunities there as well. Let's say the Q3 landed on a, let's say, on a quite similar level as Q2, as you rightly said.
The comparison quarter from last year is very weak. Although we show growth compared to that, that's maybe not so relevant.
Talking to the front lines as late as yesterday, customers are still making CapEx plans for next year despite the uncertainty. I think that's one message.
Okay, that's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Panu Leitinmäki from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, I have a few questions. Firstly, continuing on the market kind of topic, you have this comment that it looks maybe kind of a bit better than expected. Are you referring to Drewry and all these external forecasts, or is this referring to kind of what you saw in Q3 and onwards compared to what you said after Q2, kind of speaking about more subdued market?
Yeah, let's say we can look at it from different angles. Yes, absolutely, based on the external reports and certain KPIs coming from Drewry, Oxford , and so forth. Of course, there, the indications and the KPIs, they have been adjusted slightly upwards compared to the previous reporting in July, Q2 reporting. That is one building block there, of course. We can look at the fleet activity, which I mentioned already, which is, I think, on a healthy level and showing green, showing good development there apart from the Americas region. I think that is one way to look at it as well. The overall, I would say, underlying demand has been mostly stable in Q3. Okay, how will that develop towards Q4? I don't know, maybe no major changes expected on the underlying demand unless some radical things happen.
I think overall, if you look at the order intake, for instance, we can always look at one quarter at a time, but as we quite often say that quarters are not equal to each other, it's sometimes good to zoom out a little bit and look at the year-to-date order intake. Where are we with those numbers? Then divide it by three. Basically, you get some kind of average per quarter then.
All right, thanks. Secondly, on Europe more specifically, you mentioned timing of larger orders there. What kind of timing are we talking about? Is this like you have a sales pipeline where you expect larger orders and they didn't come in Q3, or is this customers delaying decision-making in large orders once again? What should we expect going forward?
Yeah, it can be both reasons that you mentioned there. It's large orders, and the quarter is only three months time period, basically. Of course, some of the orders might slip to the next quarter and so forth. In some cases, the decision-making might be a little bit slower due to different reasons as well. I think it's a combination of these things. Yes, that was the main reason compared to the previous quarter, for instance, that we had a couple of timing effects there.
I think it also makes reference to the previous strong quarters where we had, of course, larger orders and also more order announcements than we had now in Q3. I think it also should be thought through in that kind of perspective.
Okay, it indicates what is the kind of pipeline for larger orders in Q4 if things go as you kind of hope?
Let's say we have good activities with our customers overall and on the larger orders as well. We can look at the external report and those parameters, how container throughput, for instance, that's where we quite often have those a little bit larger orders as well. How that is developing now in 2025, we talk about 5% growth again, and last year was really good as well. I think we have a healthy pipeline even going forward.
Thanks. My final question is on tariffs. Just to kind of make it simple, do you expect Q4 impact from tariffs to be more negative than you had in Q3, or is it similar, or is it smaller if we are talking about kind of earnings and margins?
Very difficult to say. There are so many moving pieces there as we can read from the news as well, and it's changing on a daily basis, basically. Too early to predict what will happen in Q4. What we know is, of course, Q3, which you partly explained as well.
Of course, it depends on whether things stabilize or whether there's further turbulence, because when there's changes in turbulence, they always take some time to adjust. In a stable environment, of course, over time that helps.
As you see from the past and the Q3.
Yeah.
You see from the Q3 also that in services it's been more straightforward, and in equipment there are more moving kind of parts when it comes to understanding the tariff requirements.
Thanks. I meant that if the environment is stable, are you having any lagging negative cost impacts or anything like that? We have seen a lot of different dynamics from companies during this earnings season, with some getting a bit of a tailwind and some getting a headwind. Just wondering what's your expectations for Q4?
Yeah, reflecting a little bit back to what Carina just said on the parts and service side, service side in general. The situation is a little bit more dynamic, and we can manage the situation in a better way. When it comes to equipment, okay, there might be some differences there. Even there, we have been managing the situation very well, but we can see some kind of impact there. If it's exactly similar type of level of tariffs Q4 versus Q3, maybe we can expect similar type of behavior.
Okay, thank you. That's all from me.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Andreas Koski from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning. Firstly, can I drill a bit further into the large order situation? What did your large orders approximately amount to in Q3, and how does that compare to, say, what you consider a normal level or the historical average level? I am just trying to understand if this quarter is on a normal level and that previous quarters have been inflated, or is it the other way around?
Yeah, what we can say on the large orders, let's say this. Quarter Q3 was on a low level, I would say. You can see it in our publishments or announcements as well. We had one large order that we published now in Q3, and in the previous quarters, even last year, some of the quarters we had much more of those. This was on the low side, I would say, in Q3.
Do you want to share any thoughts about 2026 already now? Because you referred to, I think, Drewry, who expects container throughput to increase by more than 5% this year, and then I think you mentioned around 1.5% next year. How to translate that into demand for your products? Does that mean that we should expect a substantial slowdown also in the demand for your products in 2026 as the container throughput will decelerate? Thank you.
Yeah, let's say that, of course, those KPIs, they give an indication, and we need to look at it with a bit of a grain of salt as well and through the fingers. That gives some kind of understanding of the underlying demand. The positive thing here is really that all of those indicators, they are on a positive side. None of these are negative, and they have been even adjusted a little bit upwards since three months ago, basically. That's how we look at it. We combine it with the fleet activity. How many equipment do we have? 68,000 all over the world and 14,500 connected, and they are providing very valuable data for us. We also, of course, add on the customer activities, our pipeline discussions for different areas and portfolios.
When we put everything together, we get some kind of idea of, of course, 2025 as well as maybe towards next year. I think overall, how you should perceive the next year, I think it's good to look at these graphs here, which provides us with a positive, moderately positive outlook for 2026. That's how we look at it. On the other hand, these are changing quite rapidly. We were experiencing much lower 2025 forecasts in the past during this year, and now they have been adjusted upwards. They are quite volatile depending on what happens in the macroeconomic and geopolitical situation. The visibility is not very far. That's also very much true.
I guess it's fair to say that the only reference that can be made is to these external indicators at this stage for 2026. We'll need to come back to that at a later stage.
Understood. Lastly, on your comparable operating profit, the other line was minus four, which can be compared to the quarterly average in the first half of around minus eight. Have you been able to lower your overhead costs to the extent that we should expect mid-single digits going forward, or what is the sort of guidance for the other line or the overhead costs going forward? Thank you.
I think I'll give guidance, but you're right, it has supported the quarter by a couple of million. Of course, we are constantly working on our cost basis, part of our driving excellence. That's where also some of the process improvements that we are doing are showing, of course, in the admin line in general, and some of that is in the group cost.
Lower level should be sort of sustainable?
I would say that, of course, costs don't jump up and down so much. I think clearly it's in the right direction.
The next question comes from Antti Kansanen from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, it's Antti from SEB. Just two questions from me. I'll start with the Americas orders on the third quarter, up a little bit from last year. Was there a notable impact from pricing, whether it be tariff-related or other price increases on a year-over-year basis?
Yes, thanks, Antti. Yes, there was an impact on pricing, especially on the services side in the U.S.
Is there any way to quantify how much that was increased or anything else?
In general, yeah, we have given some indication of the price increases. They are more or less. Of course, the target is to match the impacts from any tariff impacts.
Yeah, earlier we have talked about 5%- 10%. Okay, now we can expand it a little bit towards maybe 5%- 15% on price increases.
Is the 5%- 15% price increases referring to the services side alone or also on the equipment in the U.S.?
Basically everything. It's a combination of both equipment and services.
Okay, fair enough. I wanted to continue. There's been a little bit of a discussion already on the bigger orders and the pipeline. Maybe a question on kind of seasonality. In some cases, it seems that Q4 tends to be quite a busy month. Some of the clients want to sign the agreements before year-end. If I remember correctly, Q4 last year was quite active in terms of the bigger deal. I'm just trying to figure out this year, is the Q3 order level now more reflective on what should we expect from last quarter, or is there some type of a big order pent-up pipeline that could be released before year-end? Is there any this type of seasonality in any of your product groups?
Not really. Not really seasonality, cyclicality there. As I said in the previous question, Q3 was a little bit on a low level, but we have good customer activity and we have a good pipeline. We will see when some of those orders will land. We don't know exactly, of course, when.
If you look backwards a lot, when we had more bigger project-related businesses, you could see a seasonality towards the end of Q4 in a much larger extent than now when we are talking about mobile equipment.
Yeah, I don't think we regard this as a seasonal business as such.
No.
Okay, maybe that was what I was remembering then. I mean, last year Q4 was quite active. If you're referring to this Q3 now being kind of on a low level, maybe Q4 was then the mirror image of that. Am I correct?
Difficult to say. Let's say the underlying market demand has been mostly stable in Q3, similar to Q2. As I alluded to a little bit, if nothing radical changes, it might be on a similar level for Q4 as well. It's a matter of when some of the larger package orders will land.
It is true to say that, of course, there were quite a few larger orders in that last quarter last year.
Even though the releases don't give a total picture, if you flip back and look at the order releases from the different quarters, they give you some kind of an indication.
Okay, thank you very much. I have no further questions.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Tom Skogman from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. This is Tom from DNB Carnegie. We have discussed a lot about orders geographically, but perhaps you could also open up a bit in different end markets and customer industries. Do you see any big differences?
Yeah, that's a good question, Tom. I would say, as we can see even in the external reports on the container throughput, I think the ports and terminals and customer segment has been performing well throughout the year and in Q3 in general as well. That has been on a good level. When it comes to heavy logistics, heavy industries, as well as manufacturing, I think they have been on a rather stable level as well. Where we have had the slowest performance or the market activity, that has been at the distribution and customer segment. I mean very much the logistics centers and warehouses that are located in the U.S., for instance. Out of those four, that has been the slowest so far.
All right. I would like to understand how big share of the market Chinese companies have in your type of products in the U.S. To me, it's very unclear what kind of a market position, for instance, Kalmar and other companies have in the U.S.
Very difficult to answer. Normally we are not commenting on competitor activities either. What we can talk about is, of course, our actions and our strategies in the U.S. We have a full focus there definitely, and we want to gain even more market share going forward. Unfortunately, you have to ask somebody else, Tom.
I'm just looking at kind of a potential for you to gain market shares when you have these high tariffs on Chinese companies. I think it's very relevant just to understand how big share they have, more or less.
I don't know if there are any external reports published openly on the indications on the machine volumes and that sort of thing. That might be the source of information, of course, for that question.
Okay. About electric machine, at the Capital Market Day, I think you said that 50% of the market will be electric by 2030. Do you still kind of expect this? Do you expect that you will also have 50% of machines being electric in 2030?
Yeah, let's say overall, of course, electrification is one of the mega trends or market drivers, and it's growing fast. That's what we see. You can see it in our numbers as well when we report the Eco-portfolio , where there are a couple of electric hybrid machines as well. If you look at the electric share, electric machines share 11%. We are climbing from 9%, 10% a while ago and now towards 11%. It is growing in different parts of the world, in different portfolios and so forth. That's what we believe in. We talked about 28% annual growth, which would result in 40% by 2028. Interpolating a little bit longer, of course, we talked about maybe 50% by 2030. We believe in electrification, and we have a full focus on that one in different parts of the organization. Absolutely.
The customer interviews and even research indicate that a vast majority of our customers are planning to invest in low-emission equipment and solutions in the years to come.
Yeah, we have fresh reports, NPS studies and so forth from customers. When we ask about the indication, it's really strong when the customers are looking forward on what they will do. 2/3 of them will invest in low-emission equipment going forward.
Can you give out some specs about your new electric machines? How much cheaper are they than the previous generation? What is the price of them more or less compared to fossil alternatives, for instance?
Yeah, earlier I think at the Capital Market Day, we talked about the pricing up to two times revenue versus the diesel. We have come down from those levels, so it's a little bit closer to the diesel. Let's say we talk about substantial premium still on the electric machines. I think it's important to understand how and what we are selling and offering to our customers is the solutions, basically. Not only the piece of equipment where there is a price tag on, but we are offering the combination of the superior electric performance together with the machine itself, including the services, including maybe some other technologies and so forth. That's what we are offering.
Therefore, rather than talking about the machine price itself exactly, we talk about the TCO and total cost of ownership, where we can see a clear benefit for our customers in five years, after five years of operations or seven years of operations already with the lower TCO, for instance. I think it's frank to say that yes, the price tag of the new batteries and technologies, they have come down a little bit. That's what we are harvesting as well. When now in Q3, mentioning this Next-generation Battery, Lithium-ion Battery solution on our counterbalance, I mean forklift, reach stacker, electric empty container handler products as well. That is a very important part of that development.
What is the big difference in your third generation of machines compared to the second? What is that?
I think it's a combination. The whole solution, basically their performance. Of course, cost competitiveness, I mean the cost is one piece out of that as well. It has a lower product cost, absolutely.
Where do you source the batteries going to products aimed for the U.S. market?
Let's say we have a couple of suppliers for our electric components, key electric components. It's not only batteries, it's several other products as well. The major ones are coming from China to the U.S. market as well. What we are doing, of course, we are working on the dual capabilities constantly and looking at the best possible solutions and options for our equipment going forward.
My final question on this, are you confident that you are as competitive in these machines as in the fossil machines? Everyone is scared of cheap Chinese products. We have seen what has happened in the car industry.
Yeah, we are confident, as confident as the Capital Market Day, which you referred to earlier. Now that we have a strong position, if you look at our portfolio, the width of the portfolio, including electric options, including the Eco-portfolio options, I think we need to put that one in the picture as well because we want to make the transition towards electrification as smooth as possible for our end customers. When we combine it with the technology part, the intelligence, the skills that we have in our organization all over the world, and then services, I mean the aftermarket capabilities as well, which we are constantly developing further, I'm confident that we will be competitive going forward. We are competitive already as of today. Maybe the fourth layer or dimension is the customer feedback as well.
When talking to the customers who have been operating our equipment, electric equipment in different parts of the world, not only in one country, it's basically everywhere. Very positive feedback as well.
Of course, it requires constant development of our offering as well as our supply chain, also going forward.
It's an evolution, not a revolution, because it takes quite a long time for the customers also to transform into fully electric operations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Panu Laitinmäki from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my follow-ups. I would have two. Firstly, just to clarify on the price hikes and service growth. If it was 5% to 15% price hike, does it mean that it kind of explains 2% to 3% of your service growth in Q3?
Not fully. I mean in the U.S. market, yes, that's basically where mainly the growth is coming from. The other regions, there we have organic growth as well.
Yes, I meant that maybe U.S. is 20% to 30% of your service base revenue.
Yeah, U.S. is an important market for us in service, but so are the other regions as well. We have had a very good performance both in South and North Europe as well.
Okay, thanks. Secondly, just on this efficiency improvement program where you now achieve $24 million out of $50 million. How should we think about the earnings impact from that if you are now at a certain run rate? Are you kind of getting some earnings uplift afterwards? How should we think about 2026 margins compared to 2025 based on this program?
Yeah, I think you should think about it in a way that we talk about gross efficiency and run rate. Of course, run rate always means that it's where we are traveling at the end of Q3, and some of it translates into P&L positive impact this year. You have the full year impact from that in 2026. Our target is to hit the $50 million run rate of gross efficiency improvements by the end of next year. We have also stressed that it's a gross efficiency improvement, so some of it is reinvested into R&D and other activities to support our strategy and our growth. It's not all then visible directly in the bottom line. There's a lot of other things happening at the same time, of course, with the tariffs, prices, and other things.
Some of it is in the P&L, in our sourcing savings already in the actuals.
Okay, is it possible to kind of quantify it even in rough terms? How much is gross and how much is net? Is it like you get half to bottom line or less? What should we expect?
We haven't actually stated that. If you take our run rate from the different quarters that we've been showing, I think you can somehow model it from that.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.
Thank you. Thank you all for joining today. We will get back again with our Q4 results on 13th of February next year. Thank you.
Thank you.