Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome from my side. It's a great pleasure that we can have this earnings call this Monday morning. I'm here together with Annabelle Lehner. She will later on moderate the question and answer. Before we start, a couple of logistics remarks. You've all been muted, and your camera has been turned off. We'll remain that until we start with the question and answer, and then you will have the opportunity to raise the hand and ask your question. Without any further ado, let's go into the main content of today. It's not switching. Now it's gone. We'll start with a short overview of the first half year. Then we will go into the business highlights and start with the financial overview, and then have a brief view into the outlook before we will hand over to the questions and answer.
The first half year of 2025 was extremely successful. We had a very strong net sales growth of 21% in local currency, or almost 19% in Swiss francs in our reporting currency, to an overall amount of CHF 562 million. That's ahead of the five-year average. Especially strong was the Americas, with sales growth of more than 30% in local currency. That's also very much supported by the favorable overall business, but obviously also by the strong data center business. From an operating point of view, also the strong growth led to a strong increase of our EBIT performance. We had an EBIT of CHF 128 million. That corresponds to an EBIT margin of 22.8%. That's despite some headwinds from the FX development, and the main driver was obviously the operational leverage we enjoyed in the first half year.
Also, from a free cash flow point of view, very successful, had very strong operational cash flow, and then some elevated CapEx requirements due to our capacity expansion program. We'll come to that. In a more broader part, we see a further acceleration of our control valve business that was contributing with 23% growth. That just shows the importance of this important business line and the increasing presence and market share we're gaining on the control valve business. Overall, we had a very strong performance across all regions. All regions contributed significantly to the strong results, and we had their strong contribution from the data center and the renovation mark. If you look a bit broader into what happened in the first half year, obviously the main highlight of the first half year was the celebration of the 50th anniversary of our company.
We are now around for 50 years, and that was the reason for various festivity activities and the strong presence we enjoyed in the market. From a more broad perspective, what happened in the first half year, obviously the discussion around tariffs were very important, especially at the beginning of the second quarter. There were a lot of uncertainty from the U.S. tariffs, how that will impact the market. So far, very minimum setup or impact to our business, so we're able to deal with the tariffs. We see a very strong demand in the Americas and in Asia-Pacific, and also some early signs of a European recovery with a strong boost also there from the OEM business that are supporting the EMEA business.
Across all regions, we see a high growth in the data center business, and that is positioning a significant support of our business, mainly there from the liquid cooling and there from the cold plate technology. Internally, based on the strong sales growth, we are accelerating our capacity expansion programs and investing in all our major sites to increase the capacity and cope there with the volume growth. We're also very proud that we were able to rank seventh among Europeans' top employers and have been selected as a top company to work for. That is obviously very important for us also to attract new talents and there to be able to cope and increase there also our workforce. Also that shows how attractive Belimo is as an employer, and that is helping us going forward.
Also we made a significant step forward in our long-term succession planning. We were able to announce Sara Benchik as the new Head of Americas. There also we have got a very long-term approach to the succession planning and are able there also to secure the success for the long run. I've mentioned we were able to celebrate our 50th anniversary. We've celebrated that during several trade shows. We had customer events. We have events with our partners. We also had a great exhibition here at the main location in Hinwil, and more than 2,000 visitors joined this exhibition with overwhelming positive feedback. I think many of the participants in the call had the opportunity to join this exhibition. Now, very important in the first half year was obviously the data center business.
Just looking how it looks inside the data center, you see there's a lot of orange that is required to cool the data centers down. We can see that on the top left side with the air-based cooling. A lot of air-based actuators are required. Or then when we come to liquid cooling, a lot of actuators and valves are required to secure the flow of liquid towards the server racks. Why is that so important? That is in conjunction with the significant higher heat density that is happening in high-performance data centers. That means that the heat that is produced per rack is constantly increasing, and that requires new cooling technology. There especially the changeover from a purely air-based cooling to a liquid-based cooling, be it rear door cooling or then cold plate cooling, is showing.
Giving a big business opportunity for Belimo, where we can sell our control valves and sensors into data centers. Now, how does that reflect to our business opportunity? The most important driver there is the installed capacity or the newly installed capacity. The way to think about the market in our view is to look at the installed capacity in a way of electrical capacity, so in megawatts or gigawatts that are being installed, because all the electric power that goes inside the data center needs to be removed as heat later on at the other end of the data center. That's where our technology is in there.
There's a good correlation: about every gigawatt of additional installed capacity provides a market of about CHF 40 million-CHF 60 million of our products. CHF 40 million more for the air-based solutions, so when the heat is removed with air, and CHF 60 million plus more when we go into the liquid cooling. On top of that, there's an increasing opportunity for retrofitting data centers, be it that data centers are upgraded from an air-based into a liquid-based, or also that all the data centers are upgraded. Those data centers need to be renewed after about five to seven years as the technology is becoming old and then require new installation.
If you look how that constitutes our business, here we can see always the half-year turnover starting with the first half year 2024 and 2024 second half year as a pro forma, and then the first half year of this year. You can see that the share of data centers is increasing from about 10-11% in the first half year of last year to about 16% in the first half year of 2025. That's significantly different across the different regions. The lowest share of data center turnover is in EMEA, where the deployment of new data centers is still relatively small. We have got much higher figures in the Americas or Asia-Pacific, where the data center share is about 20% and more.
Also, if you look at the data center growth, we can see that compared to the first half year in 2024, data center is growing about 60%, a bit more. Compared to the second half year of 2024, it's more than 40% growth. A significant share of the growth is coming from data center. I've mentioned we are a high-growing company, and that's also the reason why we need new capacity. We were able to inaugurate our new capacity extension, our new building in Shanghai, in China, in the early stage of the first quarter. There's a picture of the building. It looks very modern with a solar facade. That's also from an ecological point of view, a high-end building, and is also ranked platinum and the highest standards on the Chinese part.
We were also able to finish the raw shell construction of our capacity expansion here in Switzerland, and the building will be ready to put into operation in summer next year. We are making good progress there. At the moment, we are in the planning phase of the expansion project, also in our U.S.-based, in both our sites in Danbury, Connecticut, and in Sparks, Nevada. We will also increase the capacity and are starting now there with the expansion projects. That is in a nutshell what were the key business highlights in the first half year. We will go now into more details on the financials. We have mentioned a very strong sales performance with CHF 561.5 million of net sales turnover, a sales growth of 18.6% in Swiss francs or 20.6% in local currency.
From original breakdown, the Americas were 50% of turnover in the first half year, about 40% coming from EMEA and 12% from Asia-Pacific. Also looking at the breakdown by business line, control valve now with 50% business. The majority and the most important business line, 45% damper actuator and 5% sensor and meters, our youngest business line, significantly gaining traction over the past couple of years. If you look at the composition of our growth, we can see that about 18% is driving from volume and mix. The majority is volume and mix with a price contribution of 2.3% in the first half year, a little bit of others giving us to this 20.6%. Then an adverse FX effect of 2%, so probably only 2%.
Now we note the dollar significantly devaluated, especially in the second quarter, while in the first quarter, that was still relatively strong, which gives us then the reported sales of 18.6%. If you look a bit closer into the various regions, we can see here EMEA with about 10% growth contribution, really a stellar performance there given the economic conditions that we are in there. We can see there we have outperformed the commercial construction sector in all our key markets. What we can see in there is also an early recovery of the business. Now we see with significantly increasing OEM business, that shows there that. Also some recovery is happening in EMEA. Obviously, the strongest growth contributions come from the Americas, with 30% growth leading to a 50% overall contribution of the Americas.
There we can capture on an overall favorable HVAC market and a very strong contribution of our data center vertical. Also Asia-Pacific with 21% growth, also very strong. There especially was the focusing on high-end and attractive. Verticals and growing segments. A bit closer look into the different regions. In EMEA, we were able to generate CHF 216.3 million net sales in Swiss francs, a growth of 8.2% in Swiss francs or 9.9% in local currencies. As mentioned there, despite some headwinds from the economy, we are able to outperform there in all our key markets. We see some small recovery also in Germany, and especially there an increasing OEM business that is also helping the fire and smoke business and the damper actuator business line. That is also very much still driven by the retrofit initiative or the retrofit business, where a lot of business is coming from.
Upgrading and renovating business. A bit more view of the Americas. Very strong growth there to CHF 280 million, or a growth of 27.7% in Swiss francs or 30.1% in local currency. Very strong contribution from the overall market and then especially strong contribution from the data center business. In absolute terms, the data center business contributed to about a third of the absolute growth. That also means that two-thirds of the growth was generated outside of the data center business. That just shows also the strong performance of the overall HVAC market and especially our strong performance and some additional market share gains we were able to generate there in the Americas in the first half year. Looking into Asia-Pacific, also there, very strong growth of 19.3% in Swiss francs to CHF 65.3 million or 21.3% growth. All our key markets have contributed significantly.
We are especially proud also from our strong results in China, where we were able to grow more than 20%. That was mainly coming from our strong focus on attractive verticals. Also there, data centers across the entire Asia-Pacific market, a very strong contributor to the overall growth of the region. A bit more into the breakdown of our different business lines. 18% growth of damper actuators. Certainly the recovery of the OEM business was an important driver aside the general strong performance across all the region with this 18% growth in damper actuators. I have mentioned control valves, the main contributor of the growth with 23% growth. There, obviously, a lot came from data centers, but also from the broader market.
It is our largest market segment, and we are also getting a more dominant position in there and are able in there to grow significantly ahead of the market. Growth. Sensors and meters with 16% growth. Also, that had a very strong performance. They are also gaining significant traction with now contributing 5% of the overall turnover. If you go a bit further down the profit and loss statements, an EBIT of CHF 128 million or an EBIT margin of 22.8%, despite an adverse FX effect that is impacting our margin. We were able to capture operational leverage and significantly increase there our profitability and increase our margin quality. In line with the higher EBIT margin, also our net income increased significantly to CHF 101.3 million turnover or an earnings per share of CHF 8.223 per share.
We had a significant impact of the financial results by the impact of the forex losses. The financial results were there impacted with CHF 10.6 million FX losses. Cash flow, also an extremely strong performance from an operational cash flow perspective. Free cash flow, a bit lower than in the first half year. There are two effects that were mainly contributing to these results. On one hand, there was a significant increase of working capital, mainly from trade receivables in line with the strong sales growth. We have also had there our capacity expansion program with total investments of CHF 41 million in the first half year. That is going to continue as we are continuing to expand there our capacity and continuing there our capacity expansion program. A short look at our balance sheet. Still there, a very strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of 72%.
Net liquidity and cash and cash equivalents obviously reduced with the payment of the dividend in late March. That also impacting there slightly the equity ratio. We also had a significant impact from currency translation adjustments with the devaluation of the US dollar that were impacting there also the equity ratio. With that, I will come now to the outlook. We have upgraded our outlook in April, so we can confirm the outlook at this stage. We project our sales growth to be 15%-20% with the current trading more at the upper end of the corridor. That is on the sales growth side. Obviously, everybody is aware that there are still significant risks from a global economy point of view. It is unclear how the tariff discussion will evolve, but at the moment, we are confident that we will be able to mitigate those effects and generate those sales growth.
From a profitability point of view, based on the current exchange rate, we will be able to generate an EBIT margin ahead of 20%. That is under the assumption that there is no major changing or devaluation of the US dollar going forward, and FX rates changes remain at roughly the current stage. That means we can clearly confirm our upgraded and increased outlook that we have published in April. Now, the regional breakdown, we do not expect a major change of the dynamics in the various regions. Americas will remain the strongest growing region going forward with a lot of growth coming from the general economic, from the growth in the HVAC market, and the continuing strong contribution from the data center.
EMEA, roughly, there is a similar performance in the second half year expected with also their strong growth contribution from the OEM business and the retrofit renovation market. Asia-Pacific, also there expected continuing strong momentum. They are also very much supported by the data center business. Now, overall, the key trends are still in place or accelerating. Urbanization, climate change, and digitalization, those are the key trends that are driving the HVAC business that are supporting the growth of our business. They are continuing and accelerating, and therefore, also from a mid and long-term perspective, we are very confident we can continue to perform and still live with the growth trajectory. Now, before we go into the question and answer, an announcement also from our side. We're very happy to be able to announce that Stefan Kiek will start here at the 1st of September.
He will be our Investor Relations Manager, and then we'll be able to answer your question and coordinate the requests from an investor relations point of view. Stefan, probably known to most of the participants in the call, is at the moment Head of Investor Relations at OC Oerlikon and as a former analyst has their broad know-how, and this is certainly a great addition to the team. As mentioned, from early September on, you will be able to contact him via the IR contact or directly by phone. The next key dates, we'll publish our sales results on January 19th, and then the full set of results and the annual report on February 23rd. The Annual General Assembly is scheduled for March 23rd. The ex-dividend date is March 25th, and the dividend payment is on March 27th. With that, we are at the end of the presentation.
We'll start now with the question round. Just a quick reminder how that works. Please raise your hand, and then Annabelle will ask you to speak. Please unmute your microphone and switch on the camera. You can ask your question, and we'll hopefully answer it. With that, I will hand over to the question and answer session.
Okay, thank you, Markus. Let's start with the question from Mr. Martin Flueckiger. Please go ahead.
M orning all. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I'll start off with two and then go back into the queue. First one is, if I understood you correctly, Markus, and please correct me if I'm wrong, roughly one-third of organic growth in the Americas is attributable to the data center business. I was wondering how much is that for the group across all three regions? Data center contributions to organic sales growth for the group, and also how much did retrofit initiatives contribute in H1? What do you think is going to be the end result for the full year 2025? That's my first question, m aybe I'll go one at a time.
O kay. As mentioned, it's about a third in absolute terms of the U.S. business. It's a bit higher in Asia-Pacific, lower in the EMEA. Overall, a third is probably also a good guess for the overall group. How that's going to develop, we expect a high contribution from the data center in the overall year as data center is growing ahead of the rest of the business. That will be slightly ahead of these results at the end of the year w ith regards to renovation retrofit market, in EMEA, that's probably more than 50% of the growth as the main contribution is coming from renovation and retrofit. A bit lower in the Americas and in Asia-Pacific, but we do not have specific data on the contribution from the retrofit renovation market.
Okay, that is helpful. Thanks. Looking at your top-line growth guidance for this year, 15%-20% versus roughly 20%, 19%, 20% that was achieved in the first half. Apart from geopolitics and the general economic environment, where do you see the main downside risks? Why do you stick to that lower end of your guidance of 15%?
We have not stuck to the lower end of the guidance, just to precise that. We said we are at the upper end of the range, t he comparison base is also important. L ast year, we had also in the second half year a stronger business than in the first half year. The comparison base there is slightly higher than in the first half year. Therefore, we stick to the guidance of this 15%-20% with the comments that we will be rather at the upper end of it. Now, from a risk perspective, obviously, just mentioned, it is mainly the geopolitical risks that arise there, and that may then impact the business going forward.
Okay, thanks. I will step back in line.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Flueckiger. Next, the question comes from Sebastian Vogel. Please go ahead.
Many thanks. I would have also three questions. I would ask them one by one. The first is on the margin guidance, w hat are sort of the building blocks to get to a group margin on a full year basis, more like to 20% versus to a margin of more like 22%? Would be the first question.
Okay, so thanks for the question. I mean, obviously, the main impact is the FX development. There, obviously, the development of the US dollar. In the first half year, the impact was relatively minor compared to what the dollar is at the current state. That is due to the fact that we still had a very strong dollar in the first quarter and then an impact in the second quarter. The development of the US dollar is an important factor. The other part, we always have lower margins in the second half year as we are constantly building up costs.
Therefore, in the second half year, we have got a higher operational cost base that is impacting slightly the operational results. From the field of building blocks, obviously, it is the FX, it is the build-up of the costs, and then also the development of the top line.
Got it. Next question, related a little bit to that one. Is there sort of a rule of thumb, like what a 5% change in the US dollar would mean to your margin? Do you have some sort of ballpark figure that you would point us?
L ook, if the US dollar is devaluating by about 10%, that has an impact of about 150 to 200 basis points from a pure mathematical point of view. There is a bit of an offside in there, but that gears then towards about 150 basis points.
The last question is still related to profit margins. When I look at the segment profit margins on your segment reporting, and there the US or the Americas business was up like year over year by 60 basis points, but given the strong growth that you were alluding to with regard to data center, I would assume that they would also usually come with better margins. Why that step up was so small? Quotation marks.
O ur segment reporting also is just taking into account the local costs. We have got a setup with a lot of the IPs being in Switzerland, and therefore, you do not see the overall profitability in the segment reporting.
Got it. Many thanks, Anna. Happy to go back to the queue.
Okay, next, we have Mr. Martin Hüsler. G o ahead. Mr. Hüsler . Okay, then we go to—
Oh, can you hear me?
Yeah, [inaudible]
Sorry for that. Good morning, everyone. I have three questions as well. Could you remind us on the pricing measures that you undertook in the US in order to compensate for tariff impacts? That is the first question.
Thanks for the question. We have increased our prices by about 7% effective as of roughly 1 July, as we always give three-month notice periods to our customers.
Okay. Do you think you saw a pre-buying effect maybe in sales channels due to that?
There was certainly a small impact of some customers buying in advance, but bear in mind, most of our sales is project-related, and therefore, very limited pre-buying is possible. On the OEM segment, there is certainly a bit of an effect of that, but that is a minor effect that we will be able to observe there.
Thank you. A question on data center as well, and probably, I think, focusing on slide nine. Can you repeat what you said about the 40-60 million sales impact growing if capacity grows? Was this an impact for Belimo, or was it an impact for, let us say, Belimo content market?
Thanks for the question. Very good one. That is the market for Belimo content. About 40-60 million for every gigawatt of electrical power that is installed. That is our market. Then, obviously, it is depending on our market share, how much of that is going to us.
Obviously, yes, it looks like a lot of projects on the way. However, timing-wise, of the pipeline will be executed, difficult to say, I think. You said for the second half, you are optimistic. Do you have a mid and long-term view that how this growth might d evelop for the market or for Belimo in data center?
I mean, what we can say is certainly that the data center investments are continuing, certainly for the next couple of years, and additional capacity is installed. Now, as you mentioned, it's difficult to forecast the exact installation date, but certainly, given on the project pipeline, that's continuing to grow over the next couple of years.
Okay. And the very last question from my side. In the past, you were mentioning that maybe a limiting factor for growth is also installers' capacity. Now you grow so excellent. What has changed, or how can you grow at such an extent and probably beating market growth significantly?
Look, I mean, that is still a limiting factor, and that is especially dominant in the retrofit channel, where there's more work and more planning required to conduct such a project compared to a new build. Obviously, that is limiting. Now, with a bit of the economic downturn in the EMEA, a lot of those capacity was becoming available, and therefore, we were able to grow the retrofit business so nicely in EMEA. Going forward, that's obviously one of the challenges the entire industry is facing. They're becoming more efficient. Simplifying installation, simplifying planning process will be the key to also continuing and support the growth of the overall industry.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
You're very welcome.
Thank you, Mr. Hüsler, for your questions. Let's continue with Mrs. Ekblom.
Thanks, Markus. Good morning. I've got two questions, t he first one is just on mix. Y ou mentioned in your release that mix benefits had been a big tailwind to margins. Can you provide a little bit more color around how we think about price points for your product mix and how pricing might differ between the retrofit market, the data center market, and maybe your legacy business? That would be a little bit helpful. Could you comment a little bit more around the Asia-Pac growth? I think that was a clearer positive, at least, versus our expectations. Maybe a little bit more color on what segments are growing, how you're sort of leaning into that, even though in China, the overall construction market is actually quite soft.
Thank you. Okay. Very well. Thanks a lot for the questions. Going first a bit into the volume mix contribution. We've seen about 18% of the growth is coming from volume and mix there, a large portion, about two-thirds, is coming from pure mix and about one-third from pure volume, and about a third is coming from mix effect. They're especially going towards higher-end products and higher-end customers. There, obviously, the data center business is part of this development as they're buying higher-end products and are certainly also margin positive in this respect. What we see there is obviously a strong contribution from higher-end products that have got a positive effect both on sales and also on the margin quality side. The second question was about the Asia-Pacific growth. There, as you mentioned, we have significantly outperformed the general construction market, especially in China.
There, the main success factors were really the focusing on these high-end, high-growth segments. I n there, data center is the most obvious one. That is also a very positive and important segment in China that is growing despite the overall market more being flat, but also high-end industrial production like pharmaceutical, semiconductor production, or also certain transportation investments into logistics. There are still a lot of investments happening. That is really a focusing on the high-end segments, on the attractive growth segments that enables us there to outperform the overall Asian market. I hope I have covered all your questions.
You have. Thanks very much.
You are very welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from Fabian Piasta. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Smaller housekeeping for the beginning. We are looking at CapEx of roughly CHF 35 million half-year i s that some sort of run rate for the remainder of the year, or are we going to have some fade-off? The second one is rather around data centers. I understand that Rubin is basically starting to ramp or conversations are starting. Are you already seeing some demand for data centers with Rubin, or is that basically just Blackwell for the next two years?
On Blackwell, what I am looking at is rather 60% of volumes to be deployed rather in the second half than the first half, not for BELIMO themselves, but for NVIDIA. Is that something that, how we can think about that? The third one, more holistically on the semi-cycle, I guess everyone is really ramping for the next bigger upcycle. Is that something that you see, or is that more movements from reshoring in the U.S.? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks for the question. F rom the CapEx point of view, you have seen we are continuing our capacity expansion program. We do not see a fade-off, rather an acceleration of the CapEx requirements with the continuation here of the building and then the start of the projects in the U.S. Now, with regards to the deployment on data center, we do not comment on individual customers or individual deployments. We cannot answer the question on specific deployments of chips. What we can say is certainly, as you mentioned, this new technology is being rolled out. Compared to initial forecast, those projects are really large-scale infrastructure projects.
They take their time. Therefore, also a lot of, it is probably more realistic, construction period that is required, and therefore, rather a spread out of the investments a bit further on. As you mentioned, the build-up is starting, is increasing, and that is also our expectation that t he data center deployment is continuing to accelerate and therefore continuing to provide additional growth potential to us going forward.
Thank you. Maybe one last question with regard to capacity. I mean, you're looking at $100 million incrementally in data center. Does that work with the current capacity setup? Better asked differently, are there capacity constraints, and what would limit your growth? What are the key moving parts here?
Look, I mean, I think the good thing is that we're not supplying fundamentally different products to the data center segment. There are variants of existing products. That means we can use the same capacity. Obviously, we're very much aligning our capacity extension with the requirements of the business and are constantly adding capacity to cope with the demand. As I mentioned, there's not a sudden change of demand, but a gradual change of demand t hat is something we can cope with, not always without any difficulties or any special efforts. Certainly, that is the highest focus we have, and we ensure that we have ample capacity in line with what the market is demanding.
Awesome. Thank you very much. I'm going back into the queue.
You're welcome.
Are there any further questions? Yes, Mr. Vogel. Please go ahead.
Quick follow-up, actually, but it's a minor one. When you talked about financial result beforehand and you mentioned they had been from the FX side, I noticed there was also a bit of a more larger interest income position than usual in that regard. Can you shed some light on what was driving it and how sustainable or what do you expect going forward on that position?
We do not expect there are major change going forward.
Many thanks.
Thank you.
Mrs. Ekblom. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Just another follow-up question. Can you just remind us what your footprint is in the U.S. today as it relates to domestic production for consumption in that market? In terms of your CapEx profile, at what point will you be self-sufficient for U.S. demand in terms of U.S. production? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks for the questions. I mean, always to mention, when we talk about production, we talk about the final assembly and the customization and logistics operation. That's over about 13% of the value-add of the products. All the rest is done at our suppliers and imported. Now, if you look at the capacity of assembly, roughly 30-40% of the assembly work is done in the U.S., and 100% of the customizing work is done in the U.S. That is going to gradually increase. Now, when it comes to our supplier base, obviously, that is a worldwide supply chain we have. We are also importing a lot of the parts and components into the U.S. markets.
We're looking into localizing more into the U.S. markets of the parts and components, not only from a tariff point of view, but also from a supply chain security, from a transportation and logistics point of view. Obviously, that requires a lot of time as those suppliers need to be built up. Not all technologies that we are requiring are readily available in the U.S. or in the U.S. surrounding countries.
That's very helpful. If I can just have one follow-up associated with that. You mentioned the price increase as of the 1st of July in the U.S. market of 7%. How should we think about the pace of local currency growth, therefore, in the U.S. in the second half? Is this a case where actually local currency growth could be maintained or elevated relative to H1? Obviously, there would be a cost associated with that. It's not necessarily margin accretive, but just sort of thinking about that cadence of top-line growth due to that unusual price increase.
I mean, that is certainly from a top-line perspective, that is beneficial to the growth in the second half year and will gradually now also be becoming effective going forwards on a month-by-month basis. As you mentioned, obviously, from a margin perspective, there's also the cost element that goes against it.
Are there any further questions? Yes, Mr. Hüsler.
Yes. Thank you. An add-on question. You didn't mention a capital market day for this September. Is there any, i f not, when is the next chance for you to increase your midterm margin target, which I think still stands at 18-20% EBIT?
As you correctly pointed out, we have not plans to conduct the capital markets date this year. We're still looking when we'll then plan the next one, probably in the course of next year. Obviously, we always have opportunities to update the guidance whenever we release our results. The next time when we do that in February, then we certainly also comment on the margins going forward.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
It seems there are no more questions at this point. We will close the Q&A session here.
Also, thanks a lot for the great interest this morning and have a great day.