Welcome to the annual results call of 2025. It's another year with strong financial performance and the year in which we successfully divested the energy segment and thus became a focused aerospace company. It's my first earnings call as CFO of Montana Aerospace after taking over in January from Michael Pistauer. Because Kai cannot make it today, I'm joined by our CHRO, Vicky Welvaert, and as always, by Marc Vesely. Before we dive into the presentation, let me briefly remind you why Montana Aerospace is so well-positioned as a pure-play Aerostructure company. Following the divestment of the e-mobility segment in 2024 and the energy segment in 2025. From the beginning of our journey, our ambition has been to become a game changer in the global aerospace industry with deep vertical integration, multi-material competence, and the global best-cost country footprint.
This combination gives us a competitive advantage in lead times, in cost efficiency, flexibility, but also in ESG performance versus our peers. On top, reduce complexity for our customers and give us a sustainable, competitive advantage with attractive, margin, levels. Over the past years, we invested more than EUR 800 million anti-cyclically into our state-of-the-art, best cost footprint, facilities to support the industry ramp-up and the long-term perspectives of the aerospace industry. These investments have become fully operational now and underpin our scalable growth model. At the same time, our disciplined acquisitions have been, complementary, where we still needed, an integration with supply chain and further strengthened our one-shop approach. With this background in mind, let us jump into the presentation, that clearly demonstrates the strength of our focused strategy. Yeah.
As discussed, the successful divestiture of the energy segment after a long process that actually started in 2023 has made us a pure aerospace player now, with a very strong balance sheet going forward. The IPO after the energy segment this year will on top result in an earn-out of more than EUR 40 million and allow to close the ties between the two companies earlier than expected. It makes our equity story clean going forward, and with the divestiture, we also had the chance to convert another EUR 65 million of Belgian state financing into equity at ASCO without impacting Montana Aerospace shares. Our balance sheet is thereby now stronger than ever.
We have achieved, at the end of 2025, already a 0.8x net debt EBITDA ratio, which will actually turn positive in 2026, and an equity level of 62.5%. This setup and the enhanced financial strength will allow us to capture M&A or also internal strategic opportunities in the aerospace market going forward. Let's now look a bit more in depth into the results. 2025 was another year with double-digit sales growth despite the negative FX impact, as most of our Aerostructure sales are in U.S. dollars. With that growth, which was primarily in the Aerostructure segment, driven by the build rate increase and further gains in the market share. With this growth, we were able to grow our EBITDA over proportionally using our fixed costs and asset base.
We have achieved a 16.5% EBITDA margin and are on track, especially in the Aerostructure segment, to come to the 20% that we always communicated and work towards. How do we do that? As discussed before, there are a few pillars which are, let's say, the strength behind such sustainable figures. First, it's the integration that eliminates transport costs, it eliminates a complexity, qualifications and quality checks, and positions us as an attractive partner to the OEMs. On top, we have a local-to-local approach, primarily with investments and asset base in low-cost countries. All of that gives us basically a competitive, sustainable advantage versus many peers. The operative results of the EBIT has improved by more than 72% versus last year.
The only caveat to the results that I would like to highlight right away is the financial result, and thereby also net income, which was heavily impacted by the strong U.S. dollar rate. The outcome of that is that in IFRS, we are required to evaluate our U.S. dollar intercompany loans, despite the fact that they have not been paid back at end of 2025 with the then in place EUR-U.S. dollar exchange rate. That has led to losses of EUR 28 million, which are inside the financial result in 2025 versus EUR 18 million gains in 2024. Despite the fact that neither the gains nor the losses this year have in 2025 had any cash impact on the company.
On the cash flow side, this is a bit more complex with our path towards a pure Aerostructure player. Especially the investment cash flow was impacted by those transactions where we will dive into in a minute. What I would first like to highlight, as you can see, the operative cash flow, which includes working capital changes, has had a very solid growth of 42% to EUR 168 million in 2025. Very strong operational performance that we have seen throughout the group. On the investing side, next to our, let's say, standard CapEx program, we have seen two special effects in 2025 adding up to EUR 81 million that you can see here in the, let's say, third bar of the upper graph.
Those are the energy divestment, where we will see the cash inflow primarily in the year of 2026. The second one was the final payment for the ASCO acquisition in the amount of EUR 30 million. On top, in 2025, we have deleveraged by more than EUR 100 million over the year by one refinancing our loan and partially paying back the old loan for the next five plus two years, which gives financial stability for the company. On top, as mentioned, by converting the profit certificates of EUR 65 million at ASCO into equity. If we come to the working capital, I'd like to highlight that this is a focus topic in Montana Aerospace for the last couple of years already. But we have become better and better at it.
Thereby, at the end of 2025, we have achieved the ratio of 30%, which is quite strong and where we were driving forward to. Which doesn't mean we will not further work on it, but it's already a good and for sure sustainable level. Looking a bit into 2026, we will go into more details of that on the next slide. We will potentially add a bit of metal into our inventory in order to secure our supply chain with the turmoil in the Middle East at the moment. But I want to highlight once more that with our integration in Montana, where we partially do chips recycling and casting in several sites, especially in Europe, we are much more independent than are our peers. Thus, less reliant on the external market.
On the next page, we want to give you more confidence of how Montana Aerospace is positioned in regards to the Middle East crisis or any other macroeconomic challenge that may come up in the future. We divided that into four pillars that may be a concern or that you may see as a concern. First one is the material pricing. Raw material prices in Montana Aerospace are largely protected with our customers, and we can pass them forward in almost all of our contracts. That means that the increase in metal costs that we see at the moment should not impact or not, for sure, not materially impact our supply or our results for the year 2026 or going forward. On the sourcing side, as just mentioned, we have chips recycling and own casting.
With the target of M&A or internal CapEx, we are further trying to integrate the supply chain backwards to be less dependent on the external market. On top, as said, we have started to put a bit more inventory on the balance sheet in the recent weeks in order to respond to the Middle East crisis. From energy pricing resilience, there are two sides to this. One is the energy that we purchase ourselves. We have largely hedged those in 2026 and partially 2027 among our sites. On top, we have learned from the 2022 crisis here and have installed, especially in the Romanian site, substantial PV facilities in order to become less dependent on the external market.
Second point is that we have in several of our contracts, CPI escalation clauses, and therefore, can also pass price increases in that area onwards to our customers. The last pillar is the demand side. For the moment, OEMs and the communication from the OEMs, that they are still confident with their rates for 2026. As you know, we have a safety buffer of around 10%-15% versus the OEM rates in our planning and in our guidance. That means that we feel still very secured with the current picture at this point in time. On this page, we see that the OEMs are growing, but much more in line with our own expectations and assumptions and also guidance rather than the ambitions that are communicated from there and towards the market.
If you look at Airbus, for example, the last two years, from 2023 - 2025, showing around 4% annual growth in the rates. On the Boeing side, 2023- 2025, it's around 6% growth per year. That is pretty much in line with our conservative approach of putting rates into our guidance. On top, I would like to highlight that you can see that Airbus is very strong and leads the single-aisle market, while Boeing is strong on the wide-body market. Boeing sold 88 planes on the 787 versus Airbus 59 on the A350.
Good or important to mention here is that Montana Aerospace is part of all platforms and therefore less agnostic to any change in a single platform that we could see. Before we come to the guidance, I like to highlight one more time, that there are great opportunities that lie ahead of us in Montana Aerospace for the year 2026 going forward. Because as you can see on the left side, the supply chain towards the OEMs is still far too fragmented, and the main reason basically why they cannot deliver according to their plans year after year. Montana Aerospace, we position ourselves as an integrated and reliable partner to the OEMs with our integration and approach that you can see on the right side.
Thus the logical conclusion is that we further integrate our supply chain where we see gaps or where things make sense from a geographical or supply chain perspective. Either via M&A or strategic CapEx investments if they're supported by the OEMs. As said in the start, we clearly have a strong balance sheet for the moment that allows us to follow such attractive opportunities in the market or in our inside of our company. With that, I would like to jump to the guidance which is particularly interesting for you, I believe. I'm glad to say that we are very confident with the 2026 numbers, and I want to reconfirm that we see sales above EUR 1 billion for 2026, as well as an adjusted EBITDA of more than EUR 185 million.
Towards the end of the year, a net cash position. In terms of 2026, 2027, we also want to give a first outlook. Despite our conservative build rate assumptions and the conservative FX rate assumption that is above the current picture, but that obviously changes on a daily basis. We see further growth in our sales and in our market share to above EUR 1.1 billion in 2027 and to an EBITDA of more than EUR 210 million, which already comes very close to our 20% EBITDA margin target. With that, I would like to open the demanding question round.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You'll hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relevant field. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Josh Sullivan from Jones Trading. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning.
Just, you know, I know Montana has the 15% buffering guidance to OEM build rates. Have you seen any change in demand signals at this point from OEMs as it relates to Middle Eastern turmoil at this point?
Thanks, Josh, for the question. As said, for the moment, the OEMs are still reiterating their guidance for their build rates. As said, we still have the buffer, so we are less agnostic to that. Fact is that they of course sell to the Middle East companies. If you look at the almost 10-year order book that they have, I think any company, including the big players in the Middle East, will have to critically think if they delay their deliveries into future years or cancel them even, because that will put them towards the end of the order book. They are out of the reordering of planes for a couple of years.
I don't think that's in anyone's interest.
Got it. With the balance sheet now at just 20x, you've got the Spirit reintegration, you know, disruption in the Middle East and growing build rates at the OEMs here over the next couple of years. What does the M&A target market look like for you guys? You know, are you in? I guess, where are you comfortable taking that EBITDA leverage multiple to for acquisitions?
Yeah, no, I mean, I think, as we always read the tea leaves of the M&A market, we are very active on that. We have been very close in 2025, 2 x. We have, first of all, a conservative approach on the pricing, so it clearly has to be accretive, and we have to see a value above the company that we purchase. I mean, an integration value above the company numbers that we purchase. In addition, it has to fit into our supply chain and into our strategy. Those are the, I would say, two cornerstones of any M&A investment or also internal strategic investment, before we go ahead.
If we see something on the market and we are ideally not, let's say, in a bidding process, then for sure we will pursue M&A that fits to our company.
Great. I'll leave it to you. Thank you for the time.
Thank you, Josh.
The next question comes from the line of George McWhirter from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. On the net debt, can you just walk through the bridge in 2026, touching on contributions from the loans from affiliated companies linked to the energy sale, the IPO earn out and also the level of underlying cash flow that you expect to see at least.
Yes. Hi, George. Thanks for the question. Basically we started out with the EUR 100 million-EUR 128 million end of 2025. We have seen, and I believe published, that we have already received EUR 61 million from the affiliated company transaction and expect a further double-digit number towards the end of the year. That brings us already basically close to a positive net debt or a net cash position, actually. From the free cash flow, I mean, that depends a bit on whether we will see any strategic investment, any M&A transaction, but clearly we will not make a transaction that basically heavily harms our free cash flow.
It will be always in line with a still positive free cash flow that we project for the year.
Thank you. The double-digit amount, I think you mentioned that you expect towards the end of the year. Is that a further contribution from the loans from affiliated companies, or is that the-
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's a combination of loans and the earn-out. Yeah, exactly.
Okay, that's helpful. In terms of the phasing of the cash receipts from the loans from affiliated companies, after 2026, what's the profile that you're expecting there?
Can you repeat it? I'm not sure if I understood it correctly.
Sure. I thought you're expecting more cash receipts from the loans from affiliated companies after 2026. Is that right?
Yes and no. The vast majority we expect for 2026 and yes, there could be still some final payment in 2027, although all the rates are or all the loans are secured with the stock and as well on market interest rates. We are a bit agnostic to the payback because we receive well and good interest income from them. Yeah, to reiterate, clearly maturity in 2026 and potentially something in 2027.
Okay, that's helpful. Is there any guidance you can give on that, the absolute level of net debt that you expect to reach, this year beyond the guidance that you've put up net cash?
Not at this time, to be honest. Maybe we can give some more clarity on that in the upcoming quarterly call. At this time, yeah, we're at the rate and net cash positive position.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you, George.
We now have a question from the line of Christian Bader from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for the interesting presentation. I have a couple of questions. The first one being you mentioned that you are about to purchase additional raw materials or metals. I was just wondering which kind of magnitude of, let's say, inventory building we are talking about, and by when are you going to do that?
Thank you, Christian, for the question. I mean, that's just a bit, let's say to pull forward some of the purchases that we anyhow would do in the year. The magnitude is not substantial. We are talking about like a low- to double-digit million amount, so nothing that will completely change our balance sheet because as I said, we have chips integration, so we don't need to purchase everything externally. Yeah. I would say a low double-digit amount I would foresee at that point in time, quite low double-digit.
Okay. Thank you. Another question related to that. Can you confirm that you're not facing any delays or incremental cost for your metal procurement at this point or currently?
Well, not any. That's the wrong wording, probably. As said, we are protected on the customer side. For example, the metal is for us mostly a pass-through, but that's trading on different levels every day. Metal premium changes, for example, also with tariffs in the U.S. for the North American market. We have the right conclusion is that we are not impacted on the results perspective and that we can pass those impacts through to the customers.
My next question relates to the disposal proceeds of the energy segment. Originally, I thought that you receive everything by 2026. It seems that there is still something left in 2027. How much is left then for 2027 in terms of these overall proceeds?
Yes. It's just some of the loans because also the energy segment now in an independent state cannot pay back everything immediately. They also have to look into their financing and basically that's why there could be a portion that's coming in 2027. That's the vast majority in 2026 and potentially the full loans are repaid. This we will see in the course of the year.
All right. I see. The last one for me, and then I go back into the queue, is you mentioned that you are on track to achieve this 20% EBITDA margin. It would be helpful to tell us by when you are targeting this 20% EBITDA margin. Also, is this only for the Aerostructure segment or is this for the entire group?
Yeah, it's short to midterm, especially for the Aerostructure segment. Short to midterm, I would see, yeah, towards 2027, very latest in 2028, we will achieve that. Also, of course, keeping in mind that we have a conservative perspective on the build rates as well as the fixed rates. Should that be more positive than our internal perspectives, it could be earlier.
Okay, thank you. Last one for me on CapEx. Is there a CapEx guidance for this year, please?
I would say the let's say standard CapEx that allow us to grow with the build rates and that cover our maintenance CapEx is in the range of the always communicated EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million. And then on top, with the strong balance sheet position at the moment, we see, let's say, opportunities both internally to integrate further in the supply chain, which could be another EUR 10 million-EUR 20 million in strategic CapEx, or on the M&A market. That would be obviously an acquisition and not CapEx.
Okay. The overall figure for CapEx is comparable to 2025?
Yeah, comparable to 2025, although in 2025 there's a small portion still of the energy segment inside in the cash flow numbers. Yeah, that portion obviously would go out anyhow. That was another positive effect from the divestiture because we are not investing in the energy segment, but purely in the Aerostructures now.
All right. Okay, good. Thank you.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the related field. We now have a follow-up question from the line of George McWhirter from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Thank you for letting me back in. Just a question on your 2027 guidance in terms of the bridge between EBITDA and free cash flow. Do you mind just walking through that bridge? That would be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, George, for the question. As always with the strategic CapEx, that's and potentially investments M&A, that's a bit difficult to give like a final number for that. Basically, as we discussed, we are working towards our target of 50% conversion from EBITDA to free cash flow. That, without strategic projects, should be achieved in 2027 already.
Thank you. Secondly, are you seeing any disruption on the supply chain, so far from the Middle East conflict?
As said, not really. I mean, we see, I don't know, like everyone else, increases in fuel prices and some of the energy costs, but no issue on the supply side there yet, and the same for metal. Metal with certain risks in the future. That's why we are working on securing the metal supply, the limited metal supply that we have for our company already now.
Thank you.
Thank you, George.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Josh Sullivan from Jones Trading. Please go ahead.
Hey. Yeah, I just wanted to touch on the defense market within the European theater. I mean, what are you seeing as far as demand inbound, as far as European Aerostructure defense demand at this point?
We are already engaged in the defense market, but it's also like the aerospace or Aerostructure market. I would say not super fast moving market. You need, in many cases, especially if you go to the airplanes, you also need the long qualifications. The process is not as fast as it may seem from the outset that the money is immediately invested. But for sure, we are in many discussions with different companies and big companies in that regard, and also in different countries in order to benefit from that upside. As said, I mean, it will take some time, but we clearly see potential in that market.
Great. Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Christian Bader from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my additional questions. First of all, Alpine Metal Tech, a new segment. I mean, I believe not all of us know much about it. I mean, what's the kind of growth trajectory that we should model for this business?
Yeah. Basically it was always part or most of the time of Montana Aerospace. Just the sales figure was below 10% in the past, so it was not shown as a separate segment. Now it just achieved basically this 10%, with a bit different profile than the Aerostructure segment from EBITDA margins and CapEx investments. There are rarely any. And we also don't see there the growth that we see in the aerospace Aerostructure segment.
Basically that's a segment that we see quite flat and the growth and the margin expansion comes from the Aerostructure segment.
I see.
And, um-
Yep.
Yes. Just to amend, so basically AMT provides internal automation and robotics to the company and to the Aerostructure segment. That's, let's say, the strategic value behind having them in our group.
Okay. A follow-up on your intercompany loan, which is in U.S. dollar denominated. Is the, let's say, the overall scope of this intercompany loan does it remain flat, or is it decreasing or how shall we think about it, please?
Yeah, I mean, we are quite flexible on when to make a repayment within the group, but it's not planned to be enhanced substantially, so the leverage should stay the same. Obviously, if you compare 2024, where the exchange rate was 1.038, I think, and then 2025, where I think it was 1.15-1.16 range, that big movement from the U.S. dollar at the end dates resulted in this, let's say EUR 28 million non-cash related losses in the finance result.
This FX effect in the financial results will prevail if some currencies move, right?
Well, if the currency stays as it is, which is a bit lower than end of last year, then we would get a gain again, like we have seen in 2024. But if it's flat, there wouldn't be any impact from those.
Sure.
loans, basically.
All right. Good. Thank you very much.
To reiterate, that's really non-cash impacts, and you have the same with the assets that we have in, I don't know, U.S. dollar companies, but those are going directly through the balance sheet while the Intercompany loans, they have to go through P&L. That's the only reason they're, from a technical IFRS standpoint, why we see that loss.
Understood.
The next question comes from the line of Aymeric Poulain from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my question and I apologize if the question has already been asked, but I was cut while I was trying to load the first question. The first question is actually on the cash proceeds from the sale of energy. I'm still very confused by the absolute amount that you expect to receive in total, when taking into account what you received in 2025 and what you expect to receive in 2026. Especially when I look at the cash flow, it seems that you discontinued some cash flow from the energy, so the net proceeds seem very low. I just wanted to check exactly how much you got, both gross proceeds and net of some extra cash out.
Same for 2026, what's left to be received, just to be clear on the exact number of this disposal. Secondly, on the 2027 sales and EBITDA guidance, it looks to me that it was a bit of a cautionary cut compared to what you had previously assumed. I just wanted to be clear also about what assumption change actually triggered that cautionary cut to the 2027 guidance for sales and EBITDA on the aerospace business. Thank you.
Thank you, Aymeric, for the question. Let's start with the 2027 guidance question. The main assumptions I would say that have changed is obviously the speed of the growth in the OEM build rates. They both have reiterated their numbers and delayed them to the years later, basically. The second biggest aspect that I like to highlight here is that their fixed rate has changed substantially compared to 1.5, two years ago. Since the Aerostructure sales are largely in U.S. dollars and we are U.S. dollar long, or we have a U.S. dollar long exposure, that is the second aspect that has led us to reiterate the guidance slightly. Sorry, the first question with the cash proceeds.
Overall, we expect a three-digit million amount, and as said already, largely in 2026, potentially a small amount in 2027, which is basically to reiterate what has been said there before.
Again, sorry to insist on that, but my impression that you said that you were selling the business at something around 5x EBITDA, which my calculation was around EUR 200 million proceeds. When I look again at the cash flow from 2025, I'm struggling again. There's been some discontinuation effect, and you paid an extra cash to the ASCO shareholder. I'm just trying to reconcile some of the numbers and understand exactly how much you received in 2025, and if the gross amount actually equals EUR 200 million at the end or if it's lower than was previously assumed.
Yeah. The above EUR 200 million is an enterprise value, of course, so that there's always a bridge towards the equity portion of that. As said, I mean, what I would like to point out again there is that with this transaction, which was very value accretive because we could also on top avoid CapEx going forward in the amount of EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million per year. On top, we were able to transfer the EUR 65 million of profit certificates into equity. In a total consideration from an enterprise perspective, we have seen, or we see well above EUR 300 million from that divestiture.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification.
You're welcome.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Patrick Maurer for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you again for joining today's call and we very much look forward to presenting the Q1 results in the beginning of May and talking to all of you again in the meantime. Have a good day. Bye-bye.