Good afternoon, and welcome to Konecranes' Q3 interim result webcast. My name is Ruusa Vallin, and I am the Interim Head of Investor Relations at Konecranes. Before we go into today's agenda, I would like to remind you about the disclaimer. We might be making forward-looking statements. As our agenda today, our CEO and President, Marko Tulokas, will start the presentation, and then Teo Ottola, CFO, will continue. After the presentations, it is possible to ask questions. Today, our webcast is a bit shorter, 30 minutes, as later on, we will be continuing with Konecranes' Capital Markets Day 2026. The stage is yours, Marko.
Well, thank you, Ruusa, and good afternoon, everybody. As Ruusa was already saying, today we are going to be a bit shorter than usual, but I will also start, as usual, by focusing on the key points of the quarter for Konecranes. A very significant milestone was that we updated our financial targets in the quarter. That includes our dividend policy as well as our capital allocation and long-term climate ambitions. Looking at the quarter, I would categorize it as a great quarter for Konecranes. Our demand activity continued strong, particularly within the port business and on the industrial side. This particular quarter, the way it was specifically on general manufacturing, power and mining segments.
However, as it is particularly in the port business, the order intake has some volatility, and it is somewhat difficult to predict the order intake timing, and that also happened in quarter three. Even though we have a lot of activity in the funnel, our order intake in the Port Solutions was somewhat muted, and that meant that we also fell short of last year's quarter three in terms of order intake. But I am very happy about the quarter, particularly when it comes to delivery performance, and that is also thanks mainly to Port Solutions, where we caught up very nicely after a somewhat slow half of the year. That was, as we discussed in the quarter two report, that was very much as planned, and that was what we saw already in the planning stage, that is just the timing of the port deliveries for this year.
So very good delivery performance on the third quarter of the year. That also meant that we had an excellent result, and that was driven by volume as well as then the solid performance. I will move on to the actual numbers now. Orders were really down due to Port Solutions, but we had some growth in Industrial Equipment and Industrial Service, and particularly we had a very good mix on all three business areas when it comes to the order intake. Our sales grew 10% on comparable currencies compared to the last year's quarter three, so we caught up very well as planned, and also the service business started to improve the delivery performance on the third quarter. That also meant that our order book continued to strengthen. Our profitability was very good, although not quite as nice as the record-breaking 2025.
We had 15.6% margin on the third quarter of this year, which we consider to be a very good achievement from the team. The decrease in relative terms of the margin was mainly driven by higher positive one-offs in the comparison period. Our underlying performance, generally speaking, was strong. As already said, order intake not really as strong as previous year quarter, but particularly because of port's timing of orders. We saw increase in Industrial Service and increase in Industrial Equipment, and increase in the EMEA region, but decrease in the Americas and APAC, and again, in Americas particularly driven by the Port Solutions timing of orders. Our deliveries improved in all regions. Our Port Solutions and Industrial Equipment factories performed very well, so we had no major supply issues.
The only remaining issue, particularly in the Industrial Equipment side, that the customer acceptance issue still exists, although we do see some improvement in those also. Now, I will move on to the Konecranes updated financial targets, which do reflect our increased ambitions, and this is for those who are not maybe listening later to our Capital Markets Day presentation today. We revised our strategic ambition as well as our targets, and as well as increased our targets. This reflects our confidence into our operating model, the performance that we've seen in the last years, as well as our mid to long-term opportunities that we see in the marketplace. Our absolute, we set an absolute growth target that is 7% for the Konecranes Group, as well as 7% for Industrial Service and Port Solutions. Industrial Equipment, 6%.
The main reason for that is that in that particular business, we have some areas where we are, or some business lines where we are somewhat more selective still than maybe in the others, and that is why the Industrial Equipment is slightly lower target. The same we did for the profitability target. We have had good progress in our efficiency, in our margin development in general. We were well in the range of the previously set targets. Although we have not really seen a downturn yet, we are also confident that our ability to grow efficiencies that we have built into our model. Our renewed product offering, efficiency of that, as well as the runway of improvement potential is all there.
Therefore, we are confident to say that apart from a global unforeseen shock or crisis, we believe that we can perform in a normal downturn so that by 2030, we are in that range of 15%-17% on group level. I am very happy personally, as well as committed as is the whole Konecranes team to these new targets. That is a very inspiring and an important thing for all of us. Now we are going to move on to the financials. Teo will join me on the stage for that.
Thank you, Marko. Let's continue to the profitability side more in detail. Like Marko already pointed out, the EBITA margin for the quarter was very good, 15.6%, but still about 1.1 percentage points lower than in the exceptional good Q3 of 2025. We did improve in both solutions as well as in service, but there was a decline in Industrial Equipment. When we take a look at it from the group perspective, like Marko pointed out regarding the one-off, we actually had positive one-offs in this quarter, roughly in the amount of EUR 8 million as a result of tariff refunds in the U.S. But we actually had maybe EUR 10 million- EUR 15 million one-offs in the third quarter of last year, so a larger number, and those were positive as well.
If we back out both of these from Q3 this year and Q3 last year, we are looking at the negative margin difference of roughly 0.5 percentage point. Excluding the one-offs, the difference is not as big, but it is still a negative in Q3 this year versus the year before. This - 0.5 percentage point roughly comes from the mix, and then also to some extent from, let's say, operational issues in comparison to the situation a year ago. Maybe we can take a look at that more in detail with the help of the bridge on the right-hand side. Despite the decline in the EBITA margin, the EBIT euros actually rose to EUR 172 million.
When we take a look at pricing, that was maybe 2.5%, maybe a little bit more in a year-on-year comparison, which leaves us about 7%-7.5% underlying volume improvement. This obviously creates a very nice operating leverage positive contribution to the result. Net of inflation pricing was on the positive, but very little, so no meaningful impact there. Then, like I said, the mix was negative, and then also the performance was negative, partially as a result of lower positive one-offs and partially as a result of operational issues, particularly in the Industrial Equipment. Fixed cost actually rose by EUR 5 million, but this is basically inflation, not much more. Not really anything else. Then, for a change, we have an FX translation impact slightly on the positive side. Very good underlying volume. No meaningful impact from the net of inflation pricing.
Negative mix, negative performance as a result of one-offs and operational topics. Those basically explain the profit difference between these two quarters. Just a couple of comments, few comments for each BA, starting with service. Here, order intake 1.2% higher than a year ago with comparable currencies. It's a bit unfair comparison this time, as we had a very good number of modernizations in the third quarter of 2025. If we excluded those, we are looking at 5%+ growth actually within the field service and spare parts, which is on a good level. Then regarding sales, 2.4% growth in a year-on-year comparison. There is a small technical topic here as well. We have moved one unit from service to Port Solutions, as a result of which service is selling less internally.
If we were to exclude this one, we would be taking a look at roughly 4% growth in sales year-on-year. So a pickup in the sales like Marko already explained. You can, by the way, see the other end of this internal sales as lower Group internal sales in Q3 this year versus Q3 last year. Taking a look at the Industrial Equipment, there maybe focusing on the sales. We have a decline in sales by roughly 1 percentage point in comparable currencies. We have had a little bit of, let's say, delivery delays. These have been primarily as a result of the customer delays, but there also have been issues that are originating from our own business and own doing. These then have been visible also in the margin.
As a result of lower volume, obviously fixed cost absorption has been on a lower level than what it was a year ago. We have had a little bit cost overruns as well there. On top of that, also the lower positive one-offs this year versus last year is visible in the Industrial Equipment margin as well. Of course, 10.9% is by no means a weak margin. But of course, again, when you take a look at the more than 14% one year ago, it was exceptionally good. Port Solutions, and there we obviously have a decline in the order intake as a result of the timing. Taking a look at the underlying activity in the port business, that continues to be good. We had good orders in port, s ervice, lift trucks as well.
But of course, the timing of the bigger orders is something that is impacting the number quite a bit. On the other hand, timing was now better for sales. We have almost 30% growth in sales in a year-on-year comparison, which is then, of course, also visible in the EBITA margin. Margin is improving, but only by 0.2 percentage points. So with this high volume, that may be considered, let's say, not a very big improvement. But at the same time, we need to remember that the mix is, of course, now much weaker from the margin point of view than what it was a year ago. Also within port, the quarter last year was operationally very clean, solid, and good. Finally, from my point of view, a couple of comments on the balance sheet. Net working capital, to start with that one.
Net working capital did not really increase from the level of Q2, but it didn't really decrease either. So the work in progress continues to be on a high level. There is nothing extraordinary, so there are no deviations in the commercial terms or anything. This is probably mostly a timing topic. But it is of course true that we are slightly on the wrong side of the target of 10% of rolling 12-month sales. But like I said, nothing extraordinary in this or behind this number. From the cash flow point of view, the third quarter was better than the previous quarters as a result of the net working capital development. We have now at the end of the third quarter, we have a net cash position of roughly EUR 100 million total. With these comments, I will hand over back to Marko.
Well, thank you, Teo. I'll use a couple of slides again to iterate the demand outlook. Our demand outlook, in itself, is unchanged. So within the industrial customer segment, we expect the demand environment to remain on a healthy level. As you saw from my first, or heard from my first slide comments about the quarter highlights. This time we had quite a lot of activity in general manufacturing and mining on top of the power and aviation defense earlier. That is just the sign that what is part of the Konecranes model strength is we cater to so many industrial customer segments that we see also positive signs and rotation that helps us to naturally hedge the demand environment. At this time, we also saw improvement in two other segments compared to the previous ones, which is a good thing, generally speaking.
For our port customers, the container throughput continues to be on a very high level. As we've several times already said today, besides the longer terms prospects remaining good, we also have good customer and funnel activity. But as it is always said, the uncertainty today, whether it's related to geopolitics, trade policy tensions, or to the nature of the Port Solutions business volatility and order intake, that still remains. Of course, that creates the usual, if not even more challenges today in terms of the timing and predicting the order intake. But demand outlook in general remains unchanged. As it comes to our financial guidance, we iterate our financial guidance and our sales to remain at the same level to increase and our EBITA due to remain at the same level.
We remain confident thanks to our good order book and stable profitability development. But of course, as I said earlier also, it is realistic to say that there is uncertainty in the environment. But we remain confident nevertheless. With that, I'd like to thank you all for this short and quarter three webcast. I welcome also Ruusa back on stage for the question and answers.
Yes. Thank you, Marko and Teo, for the presentations. It is time for the Q&A. I would like to remind everyone that let's now focus on Q3 in this webcast and continue with the strategy topics later on this afternoon. Operator, please open the lines.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two questions and they both relate to service, so I will ask them in one go. First, I guess the margin today sort of quite record high compared to past. Can you sort of separate from this, is it all you would say, is any of the concentration of the one-off maybe tariffs in there, or something else that you would say it's not sustainable, we shouldn't think about this as a doable level of margins going forward on a more continuous basis? Second, also on service, I believe in last couple of quarters, you were running a little bit ahead of your desired levels in terms of churn on the service installed base. Just wondering how that's been progressing. Thank you.
Maybe since we had that margin question. You forgot to, by the way, mention about the good service margin in your presentation. Now is your chance to iterate that.
Now is the chance.
Yes.
The margin indeed is a good one. But the question is a good one as well because there is, to some extent, one-off impact there as well. Part of the tariff refunds is in service. A small part, something probably between EUR 1 million and EUR 1.5 million, is allocated or is within service. Other than that, there are no major one-offs one way or the other in the service profitability.
Daniela, your second question was about the churn, right?
Yeah.
By that, do you mean the attrition rate in the service contract?
Exactly.
Yeah. Our target is we normally target roughly 90% level, and we are well on our way. We've actually improved in the agreement base attrition. There's nothing unusual in that as such that we see today. It is as planned as expected.
You're in that level now because I believe you were a bit ahead of that in the last quarter.
No, we are actually, if I recall correctly, I don't have the numbers, 88% level, 87%. Very close to that. But not really big change there.
We have been saying that the targeted level would be to be above 90%.
Yes.
Or 90% or above. For the past quarters, we have been on a little bit weaker level. There may be somewhere 86%, 88%, like Marko noted. No significant change now in the third quarter in comparison to the second.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question comes from Panu Laitinmäki from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. I have three questions. Continuing on the service topic. The growth picked up from previous quarters. What are your expectations going forward? Is this kind of a turn to better growth, or was this one quarter, or what do you expect?
As Teo was already kind of dissecting the service growth, of course, just to iterate that for everybody's sake, particularly last year, we had the maybe unusual high number of modernizations for a quarter, which was not the case this month. The underlying service, field service, and parts order intake was good. In the order intake side, sales is, of course, in service it follows quite closely. That is an encouraging development. What we said about the market environment, it has been somewhat challenging in service in general when it comes to customers' willingness and ability to take on service work. There are some cautious signs of improvement there. Therefore, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about the service development going forward. But as you know, we don't really guide on individual BA order intake forecast as such but.
Maybe we could take here one discussion topic regarding the overall market environment because this is something that we have been discussing every now and then. Not only service related, also Industrial Equipment related. Now what we have been seeing is maybe a little bit more positive sentiment to some extent. The number of new cases that are coming to the funnel. This is rather going up than down. The decision-making times are unfortunately still quite long, but there is more material coming to the funnel. The funnels, of course, they continue to be in good shape. Then when we take a look at the connected equipment. The usage of those connected equipment is not up year-on-year.
Yeah.
If there is a deviation, it's rather a little bit to the worse. This is a little bit similar as it was towards the end of the second quarter. Not all of the signals are pointing in the same direction. Unfortunately, we will need to repeat that same message that we said at the end of Q2 as well. It is a little bit unclear where the overall environment is going.
Particularly mixed also between the equipment investment and the service activity. There are different less fact-based but also less fact-based assumptions of why that actually is. Just on that activity on the customer side, when we measure with our remote connections, actually it was up in September. But that is more to do with the fact that we had the, of course, coming out of the holiday period sequentially.
Thank you. You partly already answered to my second question. I was going to ask about Industrial Equipment. You now mentioned data centers and talked more positively about the power. Is this like a meaningful acceleration in those segments that makes you more optimistic there?
When we look at the power generation specifically, we believe, of course, that, it is both directly and indirectly, of course, it drives demand first in the equipment, eventually in service over time. And of course, the service there is quite a big delay when those new investments actually turn into service work. But for power generation in general, all other uses or ways of generating power except solar power actually consume different sizes of cranes. So in general, there is a bigger demand for power generation capacity than that reflects into a lifting equipment need. And that is one source for demand and order intake in Americas, but also in EMEA in the last months and also visible in our funnel.
Okay, thanks. Just finally on the Industrial Equipment deliveries or delays, the revenue hasn't grown as much as the orders lately. When do you expect this to improve? In Q4, or will it take longer?
Well, Teo was mentioning that, okay, if I address the order intake topic and the discrepancy, the book-to-bill ratio discrepancy. Of course, in Industrial Equipment, we have different types of products with lead times from roughly three months all the way to two years. Of course, when we have those bigger orders, they tend to take a longer time to realize. So that is not as is in service. It is not as clear the connection between order intake and sales. But Industrial Equipment, let's say delivery challenges, it's nothing to do with our own factories. Actually, our factories perform very well, so we have very little actual supply chain issues at the moment. We have, and what Teo was mentioning, we have some internally born issues in Industrial Equipment that are more related to handling of the orders.
That is a mid or short-term challenge that we are well in our way of realizing, partly driven by the strong activity in Industrial Equipment that we have to get our processing of orders in the same speed. That's more a question that how that should not take too long to recover. The customer born slowness, which is related to the customer's ability to receive the equipment, either because they do not have the need for that equipment, hence they postpone the order that they have already placed, or because they are not ready to receive at site, which is often to do with the slowness of the construction or other equipment that would be for supply chain related reasons late.
That's something that is not so much in our own hands, and of course, we can help the customer to realize, and we can do certain actions to speed up the handover, but that is something that is more customer born thing. It is more difficult to predict than when that actually rectifies or corrects itself, that situation.
All right. Thank you. That is helpful.
Hopefully, Panu, that answered your questions adequately.
Yes, definitely it did.
Thank you.
Thanks.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Antti Kansanen from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Couple of follow-ups on the previous topic from me as well. I will start with the tariff refund. Teo, you mentioned how much was in the services side, so how was the rest of it between segments?
Industrial Equipment is the biggest, roughly EUR 4 million, and then port is about EUR 2 million, and then service a little bit, maybe a bit more than EUR 2 million, and then service a bit more than EUR 1 million. So that gives roughly the EUR 8 million.
Okay. That is clear. The second topic is maybe coming back to the growth on the services side, and after Q2, there was a bit of a discussion on why the growth on sales was kind of lacking the agreement base and order side, and there was a bit of a mixed signals back then why the agreement-based customers are not taking in service work. Would you like to return to that topic? It is obviously some improvement on the third quarter, so are we any wiser on what is happening in there?
Well, maybe somewhat wiser. Of course, you saw from the speed that we were able to realize that environment, that certainly improved to some extent. As Teo was saying, it is true that one can see that the actual activity, the manufacturing capacity utilization of customers hasn't really significantly improved, although there are some slow signs. Of course, we do our own work to accelerate our sales activity and to sell more to those customers. It's a little bit and partly due to our own activity level also, and that we have, of course, actively done. The rest is up to the customers, and there is only somewhat smaller changes at the moment. On the other hand, like we said in the quarter two, this is the type of thing that eventually the customer has to do. So it's more a question of time.
Maybe one can add to that, so that actually the agreement-based invoicing was more or less in line with what it should be in this quarter. The thing that we discussed previously did not repeat itself, but maybe there is some catch up to be done from the previous quarter still to that. So that it did not rectify all of the, let's say, gap that we had earlier. Then, like we have been discussing also in connection to the second quarter, of course the bigger thing was that the discrepancy between order intake and sales was that we were just building order book for service as well. As a result, for example, the product mix that we had, so replacement orders that we have got in the service business.
The order book did not really move significantly from Q2 to Q3, which is also then visible in the sales, and this 4%, excluding the technical items, is roughly there where it on a quarterly basis maybe should be. But some catch up to be done from the previous quarters. Yes.
Okay. Then I'll squeeze in one more. Coming back to the overall industrial demand. Maybe to better understand how narrow is the strong demand that you're seeing on the Industrial Equipment side. What I'm trying to get here is that, we have PMIs going up, but is it kind of a few industries that are doing extremely well? You are flagging power. Defense is probably one, but then there are multitude of things, especially in Europe, that are structurally kind of struggling, automotive, forestry, things like that. Those are much more represented in your agreement and service base, and that's kind of holding back. Would you kind of think that is giving you these mixed signals?
Yeah, if you want to have more the service angle here, I understand in your question still as it comes to the.
Yeah.
Of course it is I guess you are reading the With your experience, you are reading the situation well. Of course, what I was saying earlier about the activity on equipment side, that was, of course, applicable for both of the Business Area Industrial Service and Industrial Equipment, but it is particularly visible first in the Industrial Equipment when there is improving activity. We had solid order intake growth, particularly in, as maybe cannot say new segments, but a bit more than in the previous quarters in mining and general manufacturing. In addition to what we mentioned earlier this year, which was power, defense, and aviation. It is true, like you said, that there is particularly in Europe, certain segments, you mentioned automotive and pulp and paper, and they are certainly so, that are somewhat muted.
Now, of course, if you put that to the service context, then for that activity to turn into that new activity to turn into service work, it takes, of course, a bit more time for that new equipment to turn into service activity. Those customer segments that we mentioned are also consuming service work, except maybe a bit less for power. On the other hand, pulp and paper and automotive are big users of the service work, and that, of course, may be one explaining factor why it has been a bit more muted on service side. Generally speaking, of course, our ability to cater so many customer segments and so many places across the world helps us to kind of mitigate the fluctuations for these segments that might be in a downturn. That is now been visible also this year particularly. Particularly in relative terms due to our competitors.
Okay. That is very clear. Thank you very much.
For the questions. Now we are unfortunately at the end of our time for this webcast, and we will continue the discussion at our Capital Markets Day 2026 in about one hour. Thank you very much for the discussion. Any leftover questions, please send them over and we will get back to you. I hope to see you everyone in about one hour at our Capital Markets Day. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.