Hello, and welcome to the ams OSRAM Q2 Results Debt Investor Call. We will start the presentation to be followed by a Q&A section. If you have a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen.
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If you have called in on a phone, please press star 9 to raise your hand, and star 6 to unmute and mute. Once your name has been announced, you may unmute and ask a question. Please stay muted when not asking a question. I will now hand you over to Jürgen Rebel to begin this call.
Hello, good afternoon. This is Jürgen speaking, like, to welcome you to our second quarter 2024 debt investors call. With me is Rainer Irle, our CFO today. Rainer will talk about the highlights from today's earnings call as an introduction, and then we go into the Q&A session. Rainer, please share your thoughts.
Yeah, Juergen, thank you. Thank you for joining. As you probably know, we were quite happy with our solid business performance in the second quarter as market uncertainties increased. So let's have a look at page 2. Q2 group revenues decreased as guided quarter-on-quarter and came in at EUR 819 million. EUR 28 million seasonal decline compared to the first quarter. We landed at the midpoint of the guidance. Seasonality is entirely due to the Lamps & Systems business as the semiconductor business is up 3% quarter-on-quarter. We come to the details in a minute. Comparing year-over-year on a like-for-like basis, we stood at EUR 833 million, excluding divestments in Lamps & Systems sector. The currency impact stands at only EUR 2 million. Like-for-like and on a constant currency basis, our revenue therefore slightly decreased by 3% year-over-year. Despite seasonally lower revenues, we improved our profitability.
The adjusted EBITDA came in at 16.5%, or EUR 135 million after EUR 124 million in the first quarter. Adjusted EBITDA landed almost at the top end of the guided range, that's 9% higher than in the first quarter. We see the effect of better factory loading and materializing structural savings from our Re-establish the Base program. On top, some tailwind from the IPCEI funding catch-up helped, though there was also obviously the offset that we are now capitalizing less R&D. On the other hand, within that number, there is also a seasonal reduction from Lamps & Systems. For comparison, you see a chart of adjusted EBIT on the right-hand side. Adjusted EBIT margin came in at 6.8% after 5.2% in the first quarter. In absolute terms, adjusted EBIT stood EUR 12 million higher than in Q1, EUR 56 million increase of 28%.
Let us now look at the financial performance of the business segments, and that is on page 3. Last year, we could record a total design win volume of more than EUR 5 billion lifetime value. We talked about this in early February when announcing the full year 2023 figures. We are on track to repeat this outstanding achievement. With a strong acceleration in the second quarter, our year-to-date design wins for the first half of 2024 stand at around EUR 2.5 billion. The design wins are across the board, but by nature with an overweight to over automotive. The design win base clearly underpins our future growth ambitions. But on page 4, so far we have been talking about improving the top line. Now let us switch our view toward the bottom. Exactly a year ago, we announced our strategic efficiency program Re-establish the Base.
We said that most of our product lines are structurally healthy, but the overall performance is hampered by non-core businesses, primarily in some consumer applications. We also said that we target structural run rate savings around EUR 75 million end of this year and around EUR 150 million end of next year. Today, now one year later, I'm glad to report that we are fully on track with the program when it comes to realization of those savings. To date, we have already realized about EUR 6 million structural cost savings. The fall through into results is also evident in the strongly improving EBITDA in the business unit CSA. In terms of non-core portfolio cleanup, we have addressed the most burning issues, i.e., passive optical components and the CMOS image sensors business.
As announced, the key assets of the passive optical components businesses are being sold to Focuslight for around €45 million in cash. We expect the deal to close in the third quarter. As communicated three months ago, we are restructuring the CMOS image sensor business to its profitable core in primarily medical applications. Key adjustments of the structure, especially in the U.S., are already implemented. The remaining €200 million non-core business are being dealt with in the coming quarters. Various solutions for the promised exit are on the table, and we are assessing which option will best given the various boundary conditions we have. For clarity, this means that our starting base for our mid-term operating growth model 2023 is around €3.15 billion. This is the level we measure ourselves against when it comes to the growth of the core business.
As we mentioned already, our midterm target operating model has three elements for improving profitability towards the target level. First is obviously the Re-establish the Base we just talked about. Second is the ramp of new products and design wins, and we talked about the volumes as a key element. And third, an overall market normalization as for market recovery if you think of industrial and medical end markets for the overall impact of car units. Let me also comment on the adjustment of our microLED strategy that we laid out three months ago. With regards to development activities, we have terminated no longer needed contract workers. We have also strengthened the core automotive development in high pixelated forward lighting by transfer of key employees. The reduction of factory personnel has started as well.
With regards to the 8-inch factory, we had said that this is a process that will take some time despite the significant interest we had immediately received. The process has started. Where interested parties will be handing in their bids, and we are on the anticipated timeline. Actually, quite a few of the interesting parties have already looked at the factories. Now we are on page 5, and that is the operating cash flow that came in at EUR 55 million, as you can see in the chart on the left. We told you that we now included the net interest payments in the definition of operating cash flow, and therefore obviously also in the free cash flow. The payment of the EUR 50 million interest would have usually been due in the first quarter, but due to a bank holiday, it slipped into the second quarter.
As such, Q1 operating cash flow was higher and Q2 lower than according to the underlying business. The next chart shows the cash flow related to CapEx. It stood at minus EUR 170. Please go back one slide. We're in the midst of, yeah, that slide. Yeah. It stood at minus EUR 176 million, around EUR 90 million higher than a year ago. It is elevated, obviously, compared to our 10% CapEx to sales target. Now, in that, there is a significant amount, roughly EUR 60 million, of basically invoices that go back to last year. A carryover effect is kind of particularly construction services. You only pay, you get a bill, but, and you book the bill, but you only pay it after the full technical approval. And a lot of that came in Q2.
If you look at the operating cash flow, there were also a few other important things that I quickly want to mention here. We increased factoring in the second quarter, but we reduced the reverse factoring, though the first effect was a bit higher. We also built significant inventory the second quarter in anticipation of the ramp of some complicated products, particularly the ambient light sensor that we want that is ramping in Q3, but also more various products that have a very complicated supply chain. One point at another point, there's Q2 is always the quarter where we pay bonuses, variable payment to employees. That is something like an order of EUR 80 million. So you accrue over the entire year, and then you have three quarters where it's actually a positive because you accrue for it, but you don't pay.
And then in Q2, it's a negative as you pay out. Yeah, that is together with that, the timing difference in the CapEx, that is their major influences that we saw on the cash side. We tried to cancel some of the micro LED-related equipment. It is not always possible. So we still had to take some of those that we can either use for something else or we will then sell it. We took the transformation cost down to EUR 680 million. It's now our estimate. We had EUR 700 million before, most of that being impairments. There were no meaningful inflows from divestments. The next one, as I pointed out earlier, is then very likely in Q3, the divestment of the optical components to Focuslight, where we expect the closing in third quarter.
The free cash flow, given all these negatives, came in at minus EUR 119 million on the right side, making it definitely the worst quarter of the year. It will become significantly better. The second half with lower CapEx, higher operating cash flow from higher revenues, and obviously also then the closing of the divestment. Now we come to slide 6, which is the cash. We had EUR 900 million cash on hand end of Q2, which is a reduction of EUR 176 million. I explained the free cash flow. We also paid the dividend to the minority investors of Osram Licht AG for roughly EUR 30 million in Q2. We also paid back EUR 100 million maturing bilateral loan end of June while withdrawing another one to replace it. We expect liquidity to rather go up than down in the second half of the year.
Bilateral bank facilities, and you see that here, including promissory notes, amount to EUR 346 million, a slight reduction compared to last quarter. We have now, this in July, already repaid the promissory notes of EUR 51 million as planned. There's no changes to the outstanding 25 or 27 converts and also not to the 29 senior unsecured notes. The Malaysia Sale and Leaseback, which is related to the factory that we are now selling, stood at EUR 401 million, and that accrues a little bit of additional interest every quarter. It is not that technically, but yeah, obviously we include it here and we consider that internally. We are working on the exit of the Sale and Leaseback in close alignment with the investors and transferring it to a new lessee, as we announced. That takes some time.
It's a structured process, and we really want to optimize the proceeds, so that will take some time. Once sold depending on the purchase price, but it would definitely remove the EUR 400 million or EUR 1 billion deadline, sale-and-leaseback liability, strengthening the balance sheet, reduce leverage, and it will also take away the EUR 35 million interest expense that we have every year. For completeness, the minority put options amount to EUR 605 million, 40% of shares outstanding compared to last quarter.
There was only a small reduction of EUR 5 million of the value of shares that were tendered. We have the revolver of EUR 800 million. That is unchanged, and that is much more than we would need in the unlikely scenario of a bulk exercise of those shares. In summary, we continue to stand with a strong liquidity of EUR 1.8 billion end of the second quarter.
Now let's have a look at slide 7. In Q3, we expect the beginning of the seasonal rebound in the auto lamps aftermarket business. In semiconductors, we expect the demand for automotive products to weaken in line with the reduced car units forecast by IHS, but we have the design win, so kind of the content will be growing, but the number of cars will probably be declining. We will see a good revenue contribution from ramping the new sensor products we talk about for smartphones. We continue to see inventory corrections in some industrial and medical markets. In summary, revenues are expected to come in between EUR 830 million and EUR 930 million. On the back of the stronger sales and progressing implementation of our Re-establish the Base program, we expect the adjusted EBITDA to improve quite a bit, coming in between 17% and 20% in the third quarter.
Thereby, we assume 110 as an exchange rate. Looking at the remainder of 2024 as a whole, the target is EUR 75 million run rate savings from Re-establish the Base on track. When it comes to CapEx for the full year, we had the guidance of EUR 450 million, but we are a bit uncertain on when we will receive certain government grants, and governments tend to be sometimes a bit slower. So that might slip into next year or not. If it slips, we might end up with something like EUR 500-EUR 500 million CapEx. But then, I mean, that would just be a slip by a quarter or two, but then obviously in 2025, we will make up that by the same amount.
With the Free Cash Flow standing at minus €79 million for the first six months, we will certainly, yeah, we will certainly be much stronger in the second half and as we continue to target a positive Free Cash Flow, excluding the interest in 2024. Then we have a final slide summarizing a few of the Q2 takeaways. I think we delivered solid revenues in an increasingly difficult environment. Profitability came out at the upper end of the guidance. Structural growth in the automotive semiconductors continued with 6% year-over-year. We continue to win significant new business in our core semi year to date at €2.5 billion lifetime value for new businesses. Re-establish the Base implementation well on track. The key elements of the non-core portfolio are addressed. Restructuring of microLED activities have started. Key resources have been transferred to the automotive core development and high-pixelated forward lighting.
That has really a very promising prospect. Finding a new lessee, a new owner for the eight-inch factory is on track. Q3, improving revenues, improving profitability despite a more difficult market environment. That concludes our introductory remarks, and we are happy to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. If you have a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you want to withdraw your question, please lower your hand using the raise hand function in the Zoom app. If you have called in on a phone, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to mute and unmute. Our first question comes from Conor O'Kane. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Conor from Payden. Hopefully you can hear me okay.
We can hear you, Conor.
Can h ear you?
Great. All right. Thank you for hosting the Debt Investor Call. I had a couple of questions on your free cash flow guidance. The first one for 2024 guidance, given the uncertainty on those government grants to the tune of kind of €50-€100 million, I just wanted to clarify the free cash flow positive before interest guidance that you've reaffirmed that assumes that CapEx stays at €450 million. Is that right?
No, it does not. I mean, there's kind of, you know, a cash flow guidance is always a lot of uncertainties. We believe it will remain positive no matter if it slips or not, but obviously if it would slip into next year, it would be much lower.
But I kind of, depending on business development, a few other things, but we remain confident that even if it slips, we could still deliver a free cash flow that is positive, excluding interest paid.
Okay. Great. So that's kind of offset by just better delivery on operating cash flow.
Yeah, less positive. Yeah, less. Yeah, I mean, I told you about the inventories. I told you kind of about the other contributors. It is not that we wouldn't get any grants. It would just be less. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also on the back on improving business.
All right. Thank you. And then for next year, 2025, I think previously in your quarterly updates, you've included a piece of guidance for 2025 to be positive on all-in free cash flow. So after interest payments, and I didn't see that today, I didn't hear it mentioned.
I just wondered if that was kind of intentionally left out. Are you kind of stepping away from that guidance for the moment, or is that still in place?
No, we're not stepping away. We're just kind of focused today on the Q2. Now, I mean, I think I said last time that it's our clear intent that we didn't word it as a guidance, but yeah, depending if it slips or not, kind of either year will be even better, but we confirm to intend next year's free cash flow to be positive, including interest.
All right. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Sebastian Kaufman. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. What do you guys intend to do with the €158 million bank facilities due in 2024? Do you want to roll them or pay them back?
And then the other thing is, could you give us an idea of the, you said in Q2 you had a positive impact from the IPCEI funding support, so that helped to improve profitability. How much was that quarter-over-quarter in the increase?
Yeah. So first, the question on the facilities that are maturing, we will roll it or refinance it. I mean, we're in discussion with a few banks on that. And on the IPCEI, there was certainly, there was a catch-up effect, right? Every quarter we get a bit of IPCEI. So that was a positive catch-up effect. On the other hand, we had a negative effect because the amount of R&D that we are capitalizing has come down massively as we are no longer capitalizing anything around the microLED technology. So the one was a positive, the other one was a negative.
Can you quantify what the net effect quarter over quarter from Q1 to Q2 was?
I mean, as I said, I mean, the CapEx was negative. The IPCEI was a bit higher in Q2 due to the catch-up.
Okay. And then on kind of the free cash flow items that are part of your guidance for being free cash flow positive pre-interest, could you help us out a little bit of what you guys expect on the, and I know it's obviously these are moving parts, moving things, but what do you guys expect on the working capital side, exceptional side, cash taxes, and obviously cash interest? Thank you.
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of we have some wiggle room around factoring, I believe. We had built inventory, so we're not planning to build a lot of additional inventory in the second half.
I talked about the bonus and kind of that is more positive, right? Because we continue to see the negative impact on EBIT, but we're not paying out. We continue to expect the inflow of some subsidies that will be positive. Yeah, on the interest, I think, I mean, there's always two quarters in the year where we pay the major interest twice a year. That was Q2, and we will see that in Q3. Q4, the interest payments will then be much lower, but kind of Q3 will be comparable to Q2, and then Q4 will be lower. Yeah. I guess on the taxes, we expect for the whole year around EUR 50 million. So second half will be less than the. Hope that suffices.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Ryan Ehrlberg. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks.
When the design wins of EUR 2.5 billion life to date, how do you guys overlay that against the maybe programs that are reaching end of life? And could you comment on just, you know, if we think 2.5, if replacement rate is programs that are leaving, new programs divided by programs that are leaving. So if you're replacing a program dollar for dollar, that's 100%. How does this kind of 2.5 million map to programs that are reaching end of life?
Yeah, Ryan, if life was that easy, huh? I mean, last year we had EUR 5 billion design wins, and I mean, that is always lifetime value. And that was very much what we need for the kind of the growth path we have been plotting. I mean, you never know kind of, it's always the design wins are multiplied with estimated volume.
Volumes can be higher or lower. So kind of there's some uncertainty how the market or how the platforms will really develop, right? If you're designed into a smartphone, into a car, into a computer, whatever. But kind of EUR 5 billion per year fully supports our growth plan.
Okay. Got it. So you're about like halfway there for the year.
Basically saying you win more than expires, right?
Well, I guess.
Yeah, you have to say.
The EUR 5 billion expires, you're saying.
No, no, no. I mean, it's not an exact science as the design wins. You have to bear in mind you have existing business. And if you look at automotive, there's existing business across classic products that is typically negotiated every year in so-called volume purchase agreements.
Then you have a high share of business related to new products, new wins, and then they go through that typical design win process. And that is an ongoing theme. You have that every year. And you cannot really relate that in a sensible way, in a mathematical way, you know, how would the growth rate really look like? Because in reality, the plans are then made bottom-up from true assumptions, etc. And maybe to give a granularity also on the design wins, that's blended across all businesses. So in automotive, maybe you have a typical lifetime value of five years. In industrial, you have 8+ years. In consumer, of course, 2-3 years, depending on the individual platform. And that makes it basically impossible to draw from that in a mathematical manner as it just goes 1% up or 1% down.
But from the overall fitment to the long-term growth model, that is roughly what you would expect you would need for that 7% growth on the core portfolio. But of course, I mean, if suddenly car units go up by 10%, then it's much higher in terms of value. If it goes down by 10%, it's much lower, as an example. The basic idea that we publish those numbers also in some more detail is to give credibility that underlying without having an exact number for the percentage that we do have a basis for the claim that there will be structural growth.
Yeah.
So while you have to go contract by contract, vertical by business line by business line, that you can't really map it, but I guess that the pace of the design wins supports, you know, the volume of design wins, I guess, supports management's optimism around the growth. So those two are highly tied together. Exactly. For sure. Okay. There's a big spend on some of this microLED equipment. I know you guys are working on leasing Malaysia. Is there any sort of recovery value that you guys are working for or think is realistic on the equipment? Or is that going to be included in the lease? And so there's not going to be just divestiture proceeds associated with the equipment?
No. No, look, I mean, a lot of the equipment is sitting in the new factory in Malaysia that we are about to sell.
So that can be highly specialized equipment for microLED, or it can also be more fab-related, like overhead transport systems or other stuff. So we obviously first offer it to the buyer of the factory, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure they could make good use of the OHD and other things. While other equipment is so specific to microLED that there is probably very little value, right? And there's also certain equipment that we can continue to use for kind of our values, highly pixelated headlights. So it really differs. But yeah, part of the right offer was obviously that we took down the value of the equipment quite a bit.
Got it. Okay. And then the last thing for me, you used the word dividend to the Osram shareholders.
Is that a true dividend, or is that just a reduction in the put liability that happened during the quarter?
No, it's true. As part of the termination agreement, we pay each shareholder €2.50 dividend per year, which is a €30 million cash output.
And what's the duration of that? Is that until all of the shares are fully put, or when does that, I guess, liability terminate?
No, I mean, the shareholders, I mean, we currently, the offer is still out. They can tender the shares. Other shareholders might prefer to hold on or maybe in anticipation of a higher offer in the years to come. That is their choice what they do, but we will continue to pay the dividend as long as there are shares outstanding.
Okay. That's what I was getting at.
So once those shares are no longer outstanding, that EUR 30 million dividend goes away?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you, guys.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature. Once you've been invited to ask your question, please unmute and ask your question. And our next question comes from Dan Grillo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Perfect.
Thanks for taking the time and my questions. So first one, just coming back to the Osram shares, I'd just like to ask if you've sort of had any progress in buying back any recently and if you intend to back in the near future, is there any update on that?
We made as part of, I mean, when we entered the termination profit loss transfer agreement, we made an offer to the outstanding shareholders.
That has been appealed. The court that was the first ruling that was in our favor, it got appealed again. And then there will probably be a final ruling next year. And until that final ruling, outside shareholders still have the right to tender their shares under the existing offer. That offer will expire 2 months after the final verdict of the court. And during that time, shareholders may decide to tender, or they might decide to hold on and to continue to get the dividend. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of shareholders are then waiting for a higher offer going forward as part of a squeeze-out procedure.
Okay. So I know you said next year. Is there any specific kind of timescale for that, like what the latest that could be is?
No, really not.
Really not.
That's just kind of typical time that it takes for similar proceedings.
Okay. Thank you. And then just on the Kulim II plant, I know you said that you're still looking for a new lessee. Just wanted to clarify maybe how you're going about that, because I know you said there were perhaps like 10 parties interested back in the previous call in the first quarter and just how discussions are going there, if you can comment any further.
Yeah. I think what we said is that about 10 parties had approached us, not us approaching them. Malaysia is currently a wonderful place to be with all the geopolitical issues. It is an independent place. It's not China. It's not outside China. It's everywhere. It is kind of a low-cost country.
So space is limited, and kind of there's really a lot of interest in just taking a brand new factory that is absolutely high-end. And that would accelerate a lot of plans for other people. That's why a lot of people approached us. We have entered into a formal process where we have contacted even more potential buyers and seen a lot of interest. You're signing NDAs, showing the factory, giving management presentation. And then we are expecting LOIs pretty soon. And then kind of we will choose the ones that we continue a more detailed discussion in the hope to sign a deal then this year.
Okay. That answers my questions. Thank you very much.
All right. We will return to Ryan Ehrlberg for follow-up. Please go ahead.
Thanks.
I know you guys mentioned initially talked about for the non-core divestitures that while you stayed away from explicit numbers, I think you kind of talked about high eight figures, low nine figures in total potential proceeds. And obviously, this one came in, I think what I heard was EUR 35 million for Focuslight. Are you guys still targeting kind of that ballpark for the remainder, or have you guys kind of changed your thinking on that?
No. I mean, the first one is sold, still to be closed, but it looks good. The second one, the microLED, we decided to restructure because kind of the cash flow from the core that we then keep is higher than kind of the price we're able to achieve. So we decided to restructure it. That was the better decision. And yeah.
And there's one or two other things out where we're still kind of in the process, kind of if we want to rather restructure or sell it.
Okay. So I guess from there, it sounds like if we're only at €35 today, maybe that total expected divestiture proceeds number isn't going to be quite that high given the decision to restructure.
That was €45, and there's maybe a few smaller things. But yeah, that is probably that is the big thing for this year, yeah, if you're doing a model.
Okay. And then you guys mentioned a little bit of kind of commentary on automotive weakness. I mean, is this, I guess, how do you guys think about this impacting that segment?
Just in terms of the magnitude of headwind going forward, is this going to historically, it's just been kind of supporting the semis business with pretty solid year-over-year growth. Are we expecting that to just flatten out, or do you think it turns negative from here?
Yeah. It's just downgraded. There are a number of light vehicles sold the second half this year, and now half of the year it's over. So basically, that was kind of you could translate that to a 2% reduction in the second half of the year, where it was another 1% for the entire year. So 2% for the second half. That wouldn't be too much. There's obviously also a shift back from EVs to traditional combustion engines, which kind of is a bigger hiccup for the supply chain.
It doesn't impact us too much because our content is really not in the drive train, but it's kind of, I mean, it's lighting, it's entertainment, and so on. So it doesn't really matter if it is traditional or EV. Or to put it another way, I mean, more modern platforms have higher content for us. So kind of it doesn't really make a difference if it is a new combustion or a new EV. But kind of the hiccups currently that you read everywhere is more kind of, I believe that the OEMs created a lot of overcapacity for EVs, and now they all have to scale down their plans. That shouldn't affect us too much, but it is also, on the other hand, it's a pretty new thing, and we have to look what kind of, if there's how much inventory is there in the supply chain.
So as we said, we definitely believe it will impact us. But we certainly believe in the growth in Q3 driven, not that much by automotive, but more than by other of our core applications.
Okay. That's helpful. And then the last one is the Lamps segment. If we look at the EBITDA line for that in the presentation, it looked like it came in around EUR 39 million, which is down from EUR 60 million, I guess, the year prior, which is a pretty meaningful decline. How do you guys think about the trend line of that, the EBITDA contribution from that segment going forward? I don't think it's from the full presentation.
Oh, yeah. That is.
Yeah. We had a little positive.
Yeah. You mean Q1 to Q2? Is that what you're looking at? Yeah. No. Q1 is over this.
I think it was a year over.
Sorry, just real quick. I know there's a lot of seasonality in this business. I thought there was a €60 million figure for a year-over-year.
Yeah. Not the numbers we disclosed, but maybe you look at last year's numbers in your model.
Yeah. You see the typical decline in Q2, but it's also there's an industrial segment in there that is also weak, like all industrial segments, right? I mean, that's for example, we're selling replacement lamps into the semi industry, and there you just see the reduced wafer starts, right? And that is dragging the replacement down. I mean, the industrial markets are all weak, and that also has a bit of an impact on our lamps and systems.
Okay. Yeah. Sorry, I may have misspoke on that, on the €60 to €39, so. Okay. All right. Thank you, guys.
Our next question comes from Tomas Valtas. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, Thomas from Tenax Capital . I just wanted to follow up on debt and liquidity question that was asked before. So for the EUR 158 million, if you were planning to roll this over, would you utilize the EUR 106 million bilateral line, or that would be a pure refinancing, and it would still leave the EUR 100 million liquidity in place?
Hey, Thomas, I hope you understand that I cannot really answer that. I mean, we're negotiating with a lot of banks, and yeah, we're just in the middle of that.
Okay. And then so separately, the EUR 106 million, what's the commitment or maturity on that one?
I'm not sure which one you're talking about.
So you always show additional liquidity as EUR 800 million RCF, plus it used to be EUR 200 million available bilateral facilities.
Now it's down to €106 million. So my question is, what's the maturity under that €106 million?
Yeah, the €106 million undrawn.
Correct.
Very last footnote.
Yeah. Yeah, but that's not easy to answer. That is a line that is infinite, basically, available.
Yeah. Okay. So it's committed.
Yeah.
And what are the terms under the new €100 million bank facilities due 2026, please? Roughly.
Yeah. That is a line that I mean, we paid back one line and drew another one that matures in 2026.
Yeah. Can you disclose the terms? How much you're paying for that?
Yeah. We're not intending to disclose that at this point in time.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. And maybe just one other line.
That line was negotiated long ago, so that was about it.
Okay.
Then also going back to one other question I was asked before, given you say automotive is quite a big growth vertical towards your 6%-8% plan towards 2026, are you still confident on that 4%-6% growth?
Yeah. Look, I mean, the growth is kind of the content growth times number of times volume in the end market, right? So we had in the growth model that we published, we did not assume the growth in the number of vehicles sold, but that was solely based on content growth. Now, if the number of vehicles goes down now, like the second half of this year, that obviously has been a negative also for us. If it would recover next year, that would have a positive for us.
But we were talking about an average CAGR for growth, and that was based on content growth, not on the number of vehicles sold.
Okay. Understood. And maybe just final question from me. In the EUR 2.5 billion lifetime order that you just received in the first half, how's the margin looking on those new orders? I know you need more utilization to get better margins, but just for us to understand, is it in line with higher than you have now?
Yeah. I mean, you're probably a bit too detailed now. Yeah.
Why don't you just kind of I mean, it's a variety of products, right?
But yeah, we are obviously trying to optimize our margins.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
And we'll return to Conor O'Kane for follow-up. Conor, please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the follow-up. I wanted to ask about visibility in the automotive end market.
So you sound obviously quite a bit more or a little bit more bearish on sort of market demand looking into the second half than you did previously. I know you referenced the IHS forecast, but is your visibility based on sort of past cycles? Are you kind of literally going by what IHS have got for 2024? Do you feel that implies anything better or worse for 2025, or is 2025 just kind of an unknown to you at the moment? How does your kind of lowered expectations for the back half of this year feed into 2025?
Yeah. You feel the uncertainty of customers. And although there appears not to be a massive decline in the end market, there's certainly a reshuffling of kind of EV to combustion plus kind of market share gains or losses.
So that kind of the order pattern then that you see then is more trending towards a shorter-term order. Because you feel that people are getting more nervous. We haven't seen any buckets of excessive inventory. We just looked at it this morning. I mean, we don't see anything, but kind of it is definitely that you need to be a bit more careful when you see all kind of negative news from the OEMs, right? We saw the profit warnings of some of the OEMs. So certainly, we try to also reduce our tone while we are looking at the inventories and the order intake.
Yep. Okay.
And then just on the debt number itself, I don't know whether have you given any sort of rough expectations of where you expect year-end net debt to end up with combining sort of free cash flow guidance plus the potential disposals? Are you sort of guiding roughly stable, a little bit higher, a little bit lower than year-end 2023, or you haven't said?
What we said is that the free cash flow will be much better than the second half of the year. And we said that the liquidity will not go down further, rather go up and down, but we are not guiding on net debt.
Yep. Understood. Thank you.
Looking at the time, we may have time for one or two more questions, please.
I guess we have no more raised hands at this moment, but as a reminder, the raise hand button is at the bottom of your Zoom interface. If you're on the phone, star nine will activate the raise hand. Thomas Veltas, go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my follow-up. Just can you remind us, please, on your grants? I remember there's around EUR 60 million from Germany that you roughly expect a year. Is there anything else?
Now, I think we disclosed that the Austrian government approved a capital grant, which is now sitting in the European Commission for their approval. And that would be a very significant grant that was more than EUR 200 million. And that will come not all at once, but over time.
But the question is really, do we get the first one or two installments already this year, or will that slip into next year?
And the €200, that's on top of €300, or that's the same? Sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's completely independent. What we're getting in Germany, the IPCEI, that's for R&D. And what we're getting in Austria, what we're hopefully getting is an investment grant.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
This concludes the Q&A session.
All right. Yeah. Thank you, Lila. With this, we would like to thank you for dialing in for your questions. And if there are any questions left, you can reach out to investor relations for follow-up. Thank you very much, and have a good weekend. Bye-bye.