Thank you very much for joining us here in the room, first of all. For those of you who are at the screen, thank you very much for joining us at least online. I know the weather outside is very, very tempting, but I hope we have some good news that will be interesting for you as well. It is a hybrid presentation, so in other words, we have people watching us, and it is being recorded, and it will be available on our website later. If you have questions, I will first address the questions that are here in the room, and then afterwards I will address the questions which are online. You will have to raise your electronic hand so that we can see who has a question, but that we do during the Q&A session. Today, with me are going to be
Let me see if I can work out the electronics here. There we are. As usual, Manuela Suter is going to join the presentation later and explain some financials. It's Matthias job as the future CEO, the CEO as of the general assembly in April, to give an outlook. If I try to summarize last year's results, what we can see is that the markets where we are active have stabilized overall. There is some recovery visible, especially in Europe. We see more demand also in the agricultural sector, which is good. We have two divisions that managed to grow their order intake, which is basically Kuhn Group and Bucher Hydraulics. The sales still fell if we compare it to 2024, based on the lower volume or lower order book that we had at the beginning of the year.
It was only Bucher Municipal as a division that managed to increase their sales year-over-year. The EBIT margin reflected the lower activity that we had in our facilities, the reduced volume, and we profited from the sale of a property here in Switzerland, so that compensated somewhat the situation, which is what is a very nice highlight, is the strong cash flow that we generated last year, and that will then result into nice requests to the general assembly. Also a good result is the fact that we managed to reduce the CO2 emissions once again. If we look for the long term, then we can see that we have a very solid financial position. We are holding about CHF 500 million in net cash positions, and we have a high equity ratio of 66%.
We are proposing also for that reason the continued dividend of CHF 11 at the general assembly despite the share buyback, which is almost accomplished now. Finally, the last point, which is important, we have established a new management team. A new management team with Matthias being my successor, but also was in the divisions, Bucher Municipal and Bucher Emhart Glass. We have two good, very capable successors. If I come to the numbers, you can see that order intake I spoke before was a stronger focus on the European market that increased by about 7% year-over-year. If I show you these numbers now, they're always corrected for exchange rate and for acquisitions. These are really like-for-like numbers.
7% on the order intake that went up, it was mainly Kuhn Group and Bucher Hydraulics that increased there, whereas the glass forming machinery business suffered most, but in the aggregate, 7% up. The sales, however, still based on the lower in order intake at the beginning of the year, declined by about 6% last year. It was only Bucher Municipal that managed to increase their sales. The good news, though, is that, especially with the fourth quarter of last year, finally, we reached a stage where we were showing positive sales for the whole group again. If we look at profitability, you can see the group's EBIT margin reached 9.7%.
That is a bit higher than the 9% we had in 2024, but we did benefit from the sales of a property that we had here in Switzerland. We cleared that property, and now we got it into the market and that netted in a profit of CHF 43 million. Profitability otherwise was, of course, impacted by the lower volume that we had. If we look at the cost elements, then we see that our personnel costs in percentage of sales had a tendency to go up despite measures that we took to reorganize or adjust capacities, especially in the U.S . FTEs declined by about 4% year-over-year.
In some areas, we had to reduce them. There are other factories where we are already building our employee base again so that we can prepare to produce a higher output. We continue with some key elements. That is, of course, the R&D cost. The R&D cost did not go down. We basically maintained almost CHF 140 million, not quite, CHF 134 million in percentage of sales. It's where it should be, in my opinion, somewhere between 4% and 5%. The 4.6% I think is a good value.
We did continue to also invest into buildings, IT and of course, modern machinery. As you can see here, the CapEx did get reduced from about 150, which was a high level, down to about not quite 120 million CHF. I can show you some examples. For the R&D side, what I'd like to show you is in the middle picture, the new tine cultivator that we introduced, especially for the European market. The tine cultivator is a tool that you use after the harvest. It really has the job of putting the residue or mixing the residue with the soil so that the decay can start happening.
It's a natural way of kind of reducing the residue and getting back, some fertilizer or some, nutritions actually into the ground, and we're very successful with that. That's one element, and we have a lot of other products that we, of course, introduced into the market. What you can see is, of course, that, tine cultivator, it's called the Highlander, that is towed by a green tractor, the John Deere tractor. It's a bit in the dark, but you would see otherwise hydraulic components, and these components are from Bucher Hydraulics usually. That is one of the reasons why we expanded our buildings, in Frutigen, and that is the picture on the right side, where we are going to be delivering into a new generation of John Deere tractors, and we have created that capacity to do so.
Another achievement that we made, we reduced our CO2 footprint by another 13% year-over-year. We're down to 60,000 tons or 61,000 tons. When I started, it was 93,000 tons in 2021. I think we are on a nice path to continuously bring it down. We invested into renewable energy that we bought, so the energy mix was better, but we also invested in solar cells. Of course, lower activity does help also to reduce the CO2. In the last four years, we reduced 35%. That's a very good achievement. Every year when you look at the annual report, we have kind of a topic. This year, our topic of the annual report was, where do we create value for the society?
We just brought some examples that I would like to explain to you. I mean, the first question would be, could you imagine a life without milk? Maybe the milk, yes. Can you imagine a life without cheese? The pizza without cheese? I mean, as Swiss, of course, we cannot imagine at all. The chocolate without milk or milk powder or a toast without butter. That is, of course, one of the elements where you suddenly notice how important milk is to our society, at least to the diet that we know, and that is this part of the story. Producing milk is very labor-intensive, so you need to take care of your cows on a regular basis every day. If you don't do that, of course, milk production goes down, and eventually they'll start complaining.
Finding the labor that wants to work in the stable is the next challenge that the farmer has, especially in the milk industry or dairy industry. We have developed this robot that goes out to fetch the silage. It puts some other ingredients into the foodstuff. It mixes it. There's a mixer inside that robot, and it has a belt that feeds that food mix basically to the cows. On top of it has a brush because if the cows start sweeping out the food mix too far away, they can't reach it, the robot will then sweep it back right in front of the cow. That machine does it all day long, just drives back and forth and keeps feeding the cows very, very regularly. Like this, the milk production is just optimum.
That is a machine that is pretty successful. It's getting installed in more and more places, into dairy farms. If we take another example that is probably very prominent today, as you can see, I mean, obviously, first of all, our sweepers have the job of cleaning the streets again, when there's gravel on the road, maybe from the wintertime or still old leaves. That is one job that has to do with safety. Of course, a clean city is something where people like to be. It attracts a good society. Then, I think sweeping goes right beyond just having a clean road, but also providing comfort to the inhabitants of a city. Such a sweeper can do about 25,000 square meters per hour, so it has to be high-performing continuously.
What we see more and more through these cities, we have electric buses. I think it makes a lot of sense. There's a lot less noise for the electric buses. It's easy to kind of run them. We had invested into a company about five years ago that produces these inverters. It was an electric bus, basically you have the battery available. You have all kind of systems that need to be powered by electricity. That can be the steering that needs power steering. That can be the compressors that drive the dampening or the tilting of the bus for when the passengers are entering. It can be something simple like air conditioning or the USB power plug that is available in the buses today. We have these inverters that go into these buses.
It is a successful business as such. Whenever you sit in an electric bus, enjoy the quietness. Somewhere in the background, there are our inverters working. There is no doubt for us, and it's also, I think, well depicted on the right side, that glass is one of the best containers for liquids and for drinks. It is just the purest form. Or about PET, a lot has been written. Even aluminum cans, they have a plastic liner inside. It's not really aluminum that it touches. It is just not quite as healthy as what glass can offer. There we are proud of producing almost or more than every second bottle in this world is produced on one of our machines, and that's really globally.
A lot of people sitting together enjoying the bottle of beer or eventually wine. They will be profiting from our glass machine. Finally, apple juice is another beverage that people like very, very much. We have invested into a facility in Poland. About three years ago, they produced the containers where all this apple juice or the concentrate can be stored. We have the filters that go right in front of it, and we have the presses that is our origin that we sell to go with it. Basically, we have the full chain for apple juice production, and again, we see people enjoying it. Just some examples how Bucher is creating comfort and a better life for people in this world.
I would like to continue now with some details on the divisions. I'll start off with Kuhn Group. Of course, we have another nice product which I cannot refrain from praising because we did get a medal for that at the Agritechnica Show in Germany last year. That is the GMD 15030. That's a disc mower. It has a reach of 14 and a half meters. It's driving along with some are 20 km/h. It's cutting at 14 and a half meters. It's highly efficient. The specialty about it, of course, because you have such wings, you have to have them flexible because they have to adapt basically to the terrain. Otherwise, you would not be cutting the grass nicely.
The other part that is interesting, because at the end, he has to drive home. We have to fold this together from 14.5 down to three meters in width and four meters in height. That's the allowable size that is available in European regulations, and it does so very, very well. If we look at farming last year, it's kind of a mixed picture. The picture that was a bit more pessimistic is on the left side, where you can see the grain prices. Down below it is more corn and wheat. If you compare it year-over-year, you can see where we're at a very low level for the farmers, and particularly in the United States, and they were suffering. Income for farming was bad last year. You can also see the green line.
That's the upper one on the, on the left chart. You can also see that dip, which is most likely the dip that happened when China decided not to buy any soybeans anymore from U.S. That happened right around mid year because of the tariffs. After a while, Trump renegotiated, and then they started buying again. These are all these elements that happened. There's no doubt, crop production last year was a very difficult task and hardly profitable for the farmers, and they're suffering. The milk price was better. Dairy was actually a good business last year. In the U.S. , it started coming down. It continues, but it's still at a fair level. In Europe, milk price is still at a good level. One element that we don't depict here is meat price, livestock.
That was at a very, very high level, and it remains there. So these farmers are doing well, but the crop producers have problems. Here you can see the farm income as it is projected by the USDA. You can see 2025 wasn't really an improvement over 2024, and 2026 is expected to remain about the same. These levels here are just not sustainable for farmers. The United States government has noticed it, and obviously, farmers are Trump fans, so they expect more subsidies to happen in 2026 or more to come, and they were more promised. 2025, there were some promised as well, but the problem is at the moment they had promised it, they had the government shutdown, so they didn't pay. So that delayed as well.
Challenging year for these crop producers overall, a bit less challenging in Europe. If we remember a year ago, we said that one of the biggest challenges that we had was that the dealers were overstocked. They had too much in their inventory. They were not selling quick enough, and it took a while for them to reduce that inventory to the level where they would start ordering again. We have reached the level now. The dealers in Europe are at normal levels. They are ordering again the material that they need. The ones in the U.S. are getting there. That happened a bit slower over there. That was one element why we see more revival in Europe happening. If I take some other areas, I mentioned U.S. being challenging.
Brazil, there what we see is the subsidized credits that farmers can get from the Brazilian government are at interest rates that are not attractive for the farmers. It is available, the money, but they don't really want to use it because the interest rates are high. At that moment, they're holding back with investments, that is basically the part. All in all, Kuhn Group's order intake rose by impressive 20%, albeit from a rather low level. The order book reached six months of sales, which I think is a fair level. Sales, of course, still reflected the low order book of the beginning of the year, and it fell by 7% year-over-year.
The lower utilization of our factories and sites led to an EBIT margin, which was on the low side for Kuhn at 7.1%. They were also having to pay tariffs. They were most impacted by the tariffs overall from our divisions. Then we had capacity adjustments also in the U.S. that needed to be done so that we can face the lower level of demand, at least over there. If I change over to Bucher Municipal, this is our latest baby in the, in the line of compact sweepers. It's the smallest one too, the VR17e. It's fully electric, four-wheel steering, very, very maneuverable. It's ideal, of course, for more pedestrian areas. What is interesting, it has actually a full drive-by-wire setting or electronics. That is what we need.
We want to do autonomous sweeping, so we need to have the controls, and they will have to have a digital control or digital access to all these elements of the sweeper. Matter of fact, it's in Duisburg, where we are testing the sweeper, fully autonomous, no driver in it, for now, testing purposes, obviously, but with the intention eventually to come out with a product that can fulfill this requirement. If we look at Bucher Municipal, which I think is a very nice story. The order intake, we had mentioned it came down a bit. Compact sweepers like the one before went pretty well. There was also momentum for the sewage cleaning side. Then, the truck-mounted sweepers had a bit more trouble selling.
Likewise, the winter equipment or refuse collections, they were a bit more under pressure. All in all, the order intake declined somewhat by 3.4% year-over-year, but at a solid level. The reach of our order book is five months, so that's still good. The sales remained high at about 3.4% above previous year, mainly driven by U.S. and Europe and less by Australia and Asia. As a result of very solid sales, but also as a result of the restructuring and the continuous organization, the EBIT margin almost finally reached 9.4%. I think a very good value. I would continue to the next division, which is Bucher Hydraulics. This is a system integrator that we bought in Finland. There's quite some machinery being built in Finland.
Forestry is one good example. Then also defense or offshore marine, and this company was a good system integrator for all these applications. We're very happy that we could buy this team that produces solutions for these applications as mentioned, and it is doing actually pretty well. I mentioned that we saw a little bit of a revival with hydraulics. It's a good sign. There were different applications, different regions that helped it to do so. Construction started picking up again. Agricultural machinery, also our tractor manufacturers are starting to come back to life, but there was also industrial hydraulics that was going upwards. There was mainly one application that was on its way down still, and that was material handling. That is the facility that we have over in the United States that was suffering.
If we look at the order book, altogether it decreased by 4%, and the sales, of course, were still an effect of that lower order book that we had at the beginning of the year, and that also decreased by about 4% altogether. The lower capacity utilization did challenge us here and there. Then we also had some acquisition costs for also the new system integrator that I mentioned before, and we had to also open up a new facility in Mexico or in Malaysia just to be closer to customers. For that reason, our EBIT margin kind of sank by about not quite 1 percentage point to 10.1%. I would continue to the next division, which is Emhart Glass.
There we acquired a company that is active in the engineering of glass manufacturing plants. A complete specialist, but it is the first company that a glass customer would address when he has a new project in his mind, and that is one of the reasons why we like to have them. They do all the engineering and the specification for the machinery that is required in a glass manufacturing plant, and of course, they will then also specify our machines in the future. It's good, but it also gives us an opportunity to sell more of the infrastructure that is needed to run our machines. We will eventually expand that business beyond just glass forming. Another side effect which was very pleasant, with the acquisition of this company, we also found a new member of our management team and a successor for Matthias Kuemmerle.
If we look at, the overall results, it is clear that our customers were suffering substantially last year. Glass consumption was still lower. Energy prices was a challenge for them. They were adjusting their capacities, closing older plants, and what we also see is alcoholic beverages, which is a driver for glass, is coming down. The consumption of alcoholic beverages is coming down. Overall, there was less demand from our customers. Order intake went down as well for forming machines, but as well also for inspection machinery, altogether by 15.4%. The one element that stayed stable was of course service and spare parts that continues. There we continued with solid success. Sales were significantly lower, also based on the order intake by 18%. The operating profit margin, despite that reduction, remained at very respectable 12.6%.
We did adjust our production planning to that lower demand, we did some activities as well. One of them is to shift the production from inspection machinery from the United States over to Germany. That is Bucher Emhart Glass. I'm coming to Bucher Specials. There you can see presses. These presses are normally used to press apples and then produce apple juice, but there's a side application that we have been serving only halfway successful in the past. That is pressing of sludge and the sludge which comes basically from water and purification plants. We received a big order at the end of the year from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is reshuffling their sewage system, and they want to have these presses so that they can dry the sludge better than with current technologies.
We're gonna be building them this year and then delivering them in 2017. They will be installed in caverns for Hong Kong sewage system. Maybe a breakthrough of a new technology. Bucher Specials overall was challenged last year, and especially the wine production was a very difficult topic. We see clearly that wine consumption is going down. That is one element. The markets where we are very strong in France suffered particularly because there were tariffs on their French wines, so there was less consumption in the U.S . Almost everywhere in the world they're reducing the vineyards, the surface of vineyards. European Union is actually paying money if you start reducing your vineyards. That is going on, and that was very challenging for one of the units, which is called Bucher Vaslin.
The other unit that does mainly juice production, which is Bucher Unipektin, apple juice, orange juice, and also beer filtration, that was doing very well last year. We have the trading business for tractors here in Switzerland, Bucher Landtechnik, that remained at a low prior earlier level, but was solid. Finally, the last unit of this Bucher Specials, which is the automation side, which has a high degree of internal customers, Emhart Glass being one of them, and then Bucher Hydraulics being the other. That unit was also challenged just by lower demand and had to go through some restructuring. All in all, the order intake was stable, as you can see, but the sales did fall 9%. The profit margin improved somewhat from 2.3% to up to 3%, but still at a low level.
That, in short, is the explanations to our divisions, and I'll hand over to Manuela to explain the very positive financial data.
Thank you, Jacques. Good afternoon from my side. We talked a lot about the operating results. Now let's come to the net profit of the year. In between, we have the net financial result and the income taxes. Net financial result, in our case, a positive number. The net financial result was driven by interest income and result of short-term investments, mainly in Brazil. As a reminder, we have a substantial high net financial liquidity, and we are almost debt-free. The effective tax rate was slightly below 20%, slightly lower than expected, mainly due to special effects. The property gain was with a lower tax rate, and then we also benefited from R&D impact or R&D credits. Midterm, we still expect the tax rate to be in the range of 21%-23%. The net working capital, it was a highlight.
We could reduce net working capital significantly by CHF 180 million, mainly due to a reduction of inventory and higher customer prepayments at Kuhn Group from Europe or in Europe. Net working capital and percentage of net sales of 18.5% compared to 22.8% last year, this is a meaningful improvement year-over-year and shows our focus on the cash conversion. There is still some way to go. Over the last couple of years, our average was between 17% and 18%, and that's a number that we also would like to achieve over the next two, three years. The reduction in average net operating assets is mainly attributable to the net working capital reduction. As we continue to invest in our product, production facilities, modernization, digitalization is a key topic, and also ensures our long-term organic growth.
The return as a result with 16.2% is still above our cost of capital for around 8%, below our target over a cycle of 20% and includes the effect from the property gain is roughly 2.5 % points. Here on this graph, I would like to start right in the middle with our operating free cash flow. It was clearly a highlight of 2025. The operating free cash flow of CHF 365 million exceeded the already high prior year, mainly due to the substantial reduction of net working capital here on this chart with CHF 130 million. Even without this impact, it's the highest operating free cash flow over the last 20 years of Bucher Industries. As a result, on the bottom, the free cash flow slightly above CHF 100 million.
In between, Jacques mentioned the acquisition that we did over the years. Then we have the dividend and treasury shares or the share buyback program with CHF 234 million. The impact is roughly half/half. So dividend payment around CHF 112 million, and the rest is applied to the share buyback program. As a result of this strong free cash flow, we achieved a net cash position close to CHF 500 million in the middle, and we are still have a comfortable equity ratio of 66%. This solid financial position ensures our flexibility, but also our stability for the whole group and creates optimal conditions or for the future growth. When it comes to our capital allocation priorities, first, it's organic growth, investing in CapEx, innovation, so R&D is key also in the future.
Second, scan the market for acquisition opportunities to complement our businesses to generate future growth. Last, with such a strong balance sheet, it also allow us to continue to pursue a consistent dividend policy. Another nice chart, over the years, over the last 10 years, we were able to increase our dividend per share. The board for the year 2025, the board of directors will propose a dividend of 11 CHF per share. This takes into account our results of 2025, including the property gain, the outlook 2026, future investments, and also, further the dividend policy or consistent dividend policy. Overall, we are also in the final stage of our share buyback program. Yesterday evening, we achieved close to 4%. We paid around CHF 150 million over the last year.
It's a bit earlier than expected, so our board will propose at the next AGM the capital reduction this year. Before I hand over to Matthias, some non-financial numbers. The heart of our company is the people, and it's right in the middle, the employees. We are still have around 14,000 employees or headcounts, around 400 trainees worldwide, 100 in Switzerland. It's also key to further invest in skillful employees and in our training. The average hours of training for regular employee also increased by 14%. Has mainly to do with also the introduction of ERP programs and additional trainings. Another key target is to reduce the number of occupational accidents on the bottom. Here, we were able to reduce it by 13%.
Within the group and as for group management, we have a commitment to further reduce this number with a new target that we also introduced during 2025 to reduce our lost workday rate. To summarize, for a sustainable value creation, it's important to work on both sides. On one hand, on the profitability, our focus is remain on actively managing the cost within business units with still lower capacity utilization. At the same time, we are also well-positioned to capitalize on those where we are seeing signs of market recovery, so profitability, managing costs. On the other hand, our invested capital, it's our aim to return the net working capital as a percentage of sales to the long-term average, the 17%, 18%.
At the same time, we remain committed to investing thoughtfully in future growth, guided by our capital allocation priorities, as I just mentioned before. With that, I would like to hand over to Matthias with an outlook.
Thank you, Manuela. Good afternoon also from my side. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon and for joining us. I haven't had the pleasure yet to speak with all of you. Please allow me to briefly introduce myself before we go into the outlook. My name is Matthias Kuemmerle. The name comes from Germany. Born in Germany, grown up in Switzerland. I have a technical background, studied at ETH Zurich, mechanical engineering, then ended up in Lausanne at EPFL for a PhD, finally complemented my studies a few years later with an MBA. Had a number of years with Hilti in Liechtenstein first and then a couple of years in China. A country which I'm still following with great interest. Since 15 years now, I've been with Bucher Industries.
I've headed the R&D effort at Emhart Glass for 10 years, and the last five years, I had the pleasure of heading the division. Now from April on, as it has been mentioned before, I have the pleasure to take over from Jacques as CEO at the next general assembly. I'm looking forward, a lot, of course, to continue building on what Jacques and the team have built in the last years and to working with the management team. As you know, Bucher Industries has a very long history of entrepreneurship, of decentralized responsibilities and management, and I think also a very disciplined capital allocation process, as Manuela has mentioned. I wanna continue that culture and basically continue driving with the teams along those lines. Coming to the outlook.
I have to admit, looking into the future has already been easier in the past. With all the uncertainties that we have going on at the moment, the whole planning cycle is challenging. The most recent events in the Middle East are not really making it easier. Nevertheless, I will walk you through the assumptions that we are applying at the moment and what that means for the expectations for this year. Overall, we expect that the recovery in demand that we have seen made in the second half of last year will continue. This will be most pronounced with the Kuhn Group and also with Bucher Hydraulics.
Again, the uncertainties are still quite large and elevated, and we have to also live with the possibility of headwinds, which might have an adverse impact on the investment mood of our customers and also on the cost side. Walking through the divisions. It's this one here. Starting with the Kuhn Group, we can say that based on the higher order book with Kuhn Group, we expect an increase in sales. When I speak about sales, I always mean comparable basis compared to last year. In addition, also the operating margin is expected to be higher than the prior year. The improvement in volumes and also the high discipline that we enjoy with Kuhn Group on the operational side, will support the profitability as the demand continues to normalize.
With Bucher Municipal, we expect a slight decrease in sales on a comparable basis once again. Also a slight decrease in the operating margin compared to 2025. Overall, the demand should stay intact. We are not worried about the demand, and we also expect the continuation of the benefit from efficiency measures that have been going on. The order book going into the new year is substantially lower than what we had a year ago, and this limits a bit the near-term visibility and also weighs on the year-on-year comparison. Bucher Hydraulics, there we anticipate a slight increase in sales. Correspondingly we also expect a slightly higher operating margin. As mentioned, the order intake has improved, especially in Europe.
While we remain cautious about the overall situation, the trend is clearly more supportive than in the prior years. Bucher Emhart Glass, obviously I know that division the best at this moment. There we expect on a comparable basis a significantly lower sales and also a significantly lower operating profit margin. That has to be put in light with a strong increase in sales that we saw in the last year, towards end of the last year, which supported in the previous year the profit margin and the sales. Because of that, we really start the year now with a lower order book, and that will weigh on the Emhart. We are hopeful that we'll see during the course of this year, a trend to the positive again.
The visibility is not the best yet. Finally, Bucher Specials. There we anticipate a slightly, a slight sales growth, and also the operating profit margin is expected to improve again. That is supported by the higher capacity utilization that we expect and also some ongoing efficiency measures. If we put all that together, we can say that Kuhn Group and Bucher Hydraulics, and to some extent Bucher Specials, they have to compensate in 2026 for the shortcomings of Bucher Emhart Glass. Overall, we expect a comparable sales compared to 2025 and also a similar operating profit, and that is excluding the property gain that we had in the last year. We believe that this picture contains a quite balanced view of the risks that still are there and of the upside potential.
The risks, as I have mentioned before, there are still uncertainties with the trade situation with tariffs and so on. The cost side is difficult to anticipate. On the other hand, on the upside, it could be that agriculture in Europe or also in the U.S. might pick up a little bit faster than we believe at the moment. Overall, the picture we believe is quite balanced. With that we approach 2026, I would say, with a cautious optimism. Before we go into the Q&A, I would like to mention a couple of words about the management team. I'm in a very fortunate situation that I can start working with an extremely experienced management team, which is fully aligned also with the culture and the values of Bucher Industries.
There is Manuela Suter, responsible for finance as our CFO, whom you know very well. We have Thierry Krier, responsible for the Kuhn Group. We have Frank Mühlon, driving Bucher Hydraulics, and we have Stefan Düring, responsible for corporate development and for Bucher Specials. I've known these colleagues since a very long time from my term on the management team, and I'm super happy to be working together with them in the future and to have their experience on board. Then, as Jacques has briefly mentioned, we have for Bucher Municipal, Martin Starkey, an internal successor who took over from Aurelio Lemos beginning of this year. Martin has been heading the truck-mounted sweeper divisions during the last years, has an automotive background, and is a huge asset on our management team.
Last but not least, Daniel Schippan, who took over from me at beginning of the year, running now Bucher Emhart Glass. I've known Daniel since many years from the glass industry. He has a very strong entrepreneurial spirit, is strategically quite visionary, and I'm convinced that he's the right person to take Emhart Glass through these still difficult times and also bring it back to a growth path. Last but not least, an announcement that you saw as part of the communication packages this morning. We have a change on our board. It is Urs Scheiber, our Chairman of the Board, who for personal reasons has decided not to stand for re-election at the next general assembly. Urs has been on our board since 2023. He has been Chairman of the Board since 2024. Again, for personal reasons, he's not available anymore.
It is Stefan Scheiber who is being proposed by the board to be elected as our chairman. Urs, you know him most likely from Bühler, has had a career there as CEO. Has served for a very long time, a very seasoned international manager. Stefan has been on the Bucher board since 2022. He knows our company very well. He's in line with the culture, so we are happy that also here we have a very good solution that will guarantee a seamless continuation. With that, I would like to hand to Jacques, who will open the Q&A.
Right. We'll of course do that as a team. I'll try to answer more 2025 questions together with Manuela, Outlook will be a bit more the topic of Matthias. Who's gonna break the ice here in the room? Any questions concerning the past year? Serge, please.
Yes, I have one question. It's all about the capital allocation, because the dividend remains unchanged. We have CHF 11. You said number one is organic growth, number two is acquisition, number three is giving back. As you don't give back more money to investor despite the 20 years of record operating cash flow, I'm wondering whether you are growing much more organically or are you investing much more into M&A or did you treat the shareholders badly?
The money is still there. It won't be lost. I don't know if it's. I think one element is if we start growing, then we will need more cash. That is known. One part will eventually go back into that element. I know we're still conservative, but eventually we will need it over time.
You guided flat sales growth. You don't need more money.
Let's see what happens. Yeah.
In a downturn, we were always able to manage or to reduce the net working capital. I would say we are now quite on a high level of net cash. For next year, we expect an operating free cash flow between CHF 100 million and CHF 150 million. Again, a positive number, but clearly below this year. Yeah, you are right. There are future growth. We have R&D CapEx. We expect around CHF 150 million next year, also slightly higher than this year. Last acquisition was always on our agenda for the last 10 years.
I can just build on that. It is very clear that with this situation, acquisitions will play a role as we go forward. We will be obviously continuing to look out for acquisitions that make sense. That is, yeah, going to be part of the strategy also in the future.
Next question, please. Strassis.
Thank you very much. How do you see net working capital, for example, as a percentage of change developing for the next two years?
Yeah, right now we are around 18.5% of sales. Over the last years it was more 17%-18%, I think that's a number that we would like to go again. Means for next year or for 2026, we will see a slight reduction, obviously not to the extent that we had during 2025. I would say around 0. Depends a bit on the movement to CHF 30 million, something like that. It's hard to say. It depends also a bit on the growth that we will see during 2026, or how it develops depending on the businesses.
I have also another question. Can you remind me of your CapEx plans for the next 2 years?
The CapEx plans, as mentioned before, for 2026 we expect around CHF 150 million, but overall and a good number is always around 4%, 4.5% of sales when it comes to capital expenditure.
Thank you very much.
Hello? Yeah. Okay.
Hello. Oh, loud and clear.
Thank you for taking my question. I have one maybe to continue on M&A. It sounded, Mr. Kuemmerle, that you might wanna be doing more acquisition in terms of numbers and maybe also in terms of size. If yes, can you give an indication what would be your ambitions, in which areas and geographies?
I mean, I can make a couple of general comments, maybe not as specific as you might expect. In general, I see, well, the strategy overall is not gonna change, so we continue investing in organic growth, and that will be complemented with M&A. I think it's clear if M&A shall be a growth driver also in the future of our business, the size of the acquisitions needs to be on a certain level. Obviously we will be building a pipeline and be working on the funnel to also have objects which would serve a growth target. We are in the fortunate situation that with the current balance sheets, we are able to propose those type of propositions to our board.
I would say the type of acquisitions, I mean, that is an ongoing discussion. I personally believe that in areas where we already have a relevant position in fragmented markets, we have a very good chance to further strengthen our position. That is going to be high priority, but we will be also considering pushing a bit more into geographies where we may not have such a strong position yet, or in businesses with a very strong position already to also consider adjacent activities. I would say that's in a nutshell what we expect, but it's a bit too early here to go into more details.
Okay. Can I ask a question on Kuhn, maybe? When I look at the charts that you have presented, Jacques, it seems that the rebound in farmer income or farmer income is really driven by the subsidies. Is that coming, first of all? How can you give a bit of an indication about the geographies, if they're coming or not? Then maybe related to that, how's the mood? Because in the U.S. it's been very volatile in the last months. One's up, one's down, one's up, one down. You don't know where they are standing. Maybe they don't know themselves either, actually.
No. No. Well, I think, I mean, the main drivers for farm income are, first of all, of course, weather and yield. The second element then is price of whatever they sell, the commodity that they sell. Then you have the costs for the inputs, and finally, subsidies. There are multiple elements, not just subsidies as such. It's true in the U.S. , where crop production is not very profitable at the moment, the biggest impact on a better income would be subsidies at this time. That's for sure. Now the mood in farming in the U.S. is no good. At least I'm talking about crop production, eh. Dairy and livestock is not a problem, but the mood in farming and in crop production is not good at the moment. I don't really see that it has been up and down.
Basically, it has been down for a while. That's the part. That's talking about the U.S. , you know. There are other areas where you might see either, you know, maybe a relaxed agricultural policy or less regulations that helps a bit for the, for the self-confidence of the farmer and then the investment, attitudes. That's one element, and that is very different from country to country. European Union, although they have been protesting, they're a bit worried about regulations as well, but, overall it is improving the situation and they're seeming to buy more.
Can I ask you a last one maybe here on, always on, agriculture? I don't know if it's relevant, but in Switzerland we have seen the farmers throwing away milk. Is this something that happens also outside Switzerland? If yes, how can the milk prices stay high?
I would
This is something I don't understand.
I would not at all overrate that media coverage that this one action got. It's not relevant.
Yes, it was not only the throwing away the milk, it was also a lot of additional cheese production because there was just too much milk available.
Yeah, that's Switzerland, I mean, we're looking at the global scale here. I mean.
It's only Switzerland.
Yeah. The, the dairy farmer overall has been doing pretty well. Of course, the milk prices are getting a bit more under pressure now, but it had not very much to do with the milk. Mr. Bamert, you were in action afterwards. Somebody else.
Walter Bamert from Zürcher Kantonalbank. I have a question regarding the component for John Deere that you mentioned. John Deere has an ambitious growth program for excavators in the U.S. There are two questions I have. One is, can you benefit from those new factories and the new offering there? The second one is, when I see what John Deere is doing with closing the gaps, I ask myself, is it also a risk that they would get into implements? I don't know what John Deere already produces in terms of implements and if that would be an attractive business for them to produce on their own.
I'll maybe answer the first question, and you can take the implement question.
Right
A t that moment. The first question is where the John Deere business that we have is agriculture. It's not the building construction side. There might be some small applications, but it's the main part is tractors that we're supplying to. The excavator is not a very important topic for us at this moment. Are they competing with us in implements, Matthias?
I mean, the answer is yes and no. I mean, they already have implements, so it's not that they're only focusing on tractors, even though that is the biggest part of their business. On the implement, it's typically more the big, big and a few flagship products, which are also the brand shapers. The big gorillas like John Deere are typically not the ones who have the breadth of the offering like Kuhn also going into the mid-size and the smaller ones. That's, I think, where companies like Kuhn can really make the difference and can bring a very strong position with the dealers. The big companies like John Deere, they are struggling to have here the complete offering. It's a yes and no answer.
Two of them. Thank you, on this phone , Santander Invest. A question regarding Emhart Glass. I'm wondering, how long are these investment cycles, if I may say? I mean, you were mentioning that there's a lot of investments being done. We go with capacities around, consumption's going down, efficiency going up. It looks like a kind of a textile machinery business almost. Just give us a feeling, what's your what's the fairest assumption to say, well, at a certain point, all these fillers or glass producers
Yeah. I mean.
H ave to invest again.
In the past, I would say a typical cycle was three to four years, three years, a typical one for a longer one. This one here is a bit longer and a bit deeper to what we have seen, and we believe that it's still, to a large part, due to an extreme amount of over-investment that happened after COVID. We are still in that downswing, and it's gonna come back up. There's no doubt about that. The only thing that is on top of that is that in the last two years, there has been a little bit a shift from glass into aluminum cans, so that adds a bit of an additional element which we have not seen in the past.
Looking globally, we have no concern that we will be back on a typical growth trajectory that we've seen in the past, which is typically 1%-2% or 2% more in the long run. With the global footprint that Emhart has, being also present in China, in India, and the emerging markets, we are not concerned.
It's a question of
It's a question of time.
T ime.
Yeah. Yeah.
You don't think that you're not as positioned as in the past?
We don't believe that it will shoot back to the post-
Yeah
COVID level anytime soon, but it'll be back on a stable trajectory. That's the assumption.
The product extension you did or the acquisition you did, I can't remember the sale. Is that something that helps at least to dampen the cycle or is that not
Um
E nough? In that case.
Yeah
B ecause it's also investment, it's the same, it's plants, it's like the equipment you put into these plants, so it's, does it or accelerate the cycle
Yeah
Going forward?
The additional sales from that acquisition is relatively small. It was around CHF 7 million-CHF 8 million, the sales on top. The bigger impact that we expect is that we can offer a more complete product to the industry. There we expect an amplification of the effect, that we get a bigger scope in the different projects, and that we get a bigger share of the cake inside the glass plant.
Okay. Maybe a last question. Coming back to Kuhn, you had good order intake in Europe, if I may say so. I'm wondering whether we kind of are a little bit on top of the investment cycle in Europe or what's the risk that we will see next 12, 18 months lower order intake or lower demand from Europe?
I mean, the indications that we have at the moment with the level of the dealer stocks, which are on a normal level at the moment, but not on the other side of the curve yet. We don't see an immediate risk yet that we're already overshooting. We are working with the assumptions that we have mentioned before.
Maybe if you look into the past. The downturn of agriculture started mid of 2023, and since then we had a quarter-over-quarter reduction of demand until basically Q3 of last year. It's pretty clear, I think, looks like now it's stabilizing, and if anything, I would more assume it's a pent-up demand.
Yes.
That will eventually drive the business. Of course, for me, it's easier to say than for Matthias.
Okay. Got you. Thank you.
Any other question? Or, yeah. Mr. Aziz once more, then I'll start looking at the online members here.
How do you see the demand backdrop in hydraulics over the next few quarters? Are there any observations in the key end markets that support this view?
I mean, we play in different segments, so what has been or what is supporting the statements that we made is developments in agriculture, in construction and in general industry. There also in Europe we have seen a positive momentum again. What is not working yet is on the in the U.S. particularly on the transportation side, so those are leveling docks in logistics centers and so on. That segment has been still relatively weak. That's I would say if you go into the applications and the segments, the picture that we have.
The material handling segment is more exposed to U.S. I think that has also a reason why it's still lagging, and then we have agriculture and construction. We are still coming from a very, very low base. I think that's also we need to take into account. However, over the last couple of months it was really a steady improvement also in order intake that we could see in particular in construction and agricultural segment.
Again, the signs are not super strong, as I said. It's, I would say also cautious optimism that it continues like that. Yeah.
Many thanks.
Sure.
If there are no more questions here, I would address Louis Billon or Billon. Yes, Louis.
Yeah. Billon. Thank you for taking my question, and good afternoon. My question is about Emhart Glass. Could you give us more details on the competitive landscape in this division? Do you have a different strategy versus your competitor? Do you think you might have a stronger recovery than your competitor?
Image.
I didn't quite get which. I
Image division.
Emhart Glass.
Emhart.
Okay. Yes.
Glass.
Yeah. I'm happy to take that. I would say the industry within this glass business is relatively consolidated. Suppliers of those forming machines, there you have four players which are relevant, of which Emhart is the largest one. Then you have the other big segment, which is inspection machines. There Emhart Glass is number two, and there our competitor is leading the pack, even though the size of that segment is substantially smaller. I would say the competitive advantage that Emhart has had is that we have a lot of credibility with our history, with the R&D, with the technology, and also I can say, with Bucher Industries behind, it's a very long-term-oriented business.
It's very much relationship driven. That's what has helped Emhart Glass in the last, I would say, 15 years to continuously build the market share and to be perceived as the clear number one. Typically, if somebody does not work with Emhart Glass, it's because of pure price. What Jacques said I think is true. It is on a global scale, every other bottle that you drink of will have been produced at an Emhart Glass machine. Will the recovery come faster for Emhart Glass? I think what we will see is that the service and the part side that's typically reacting earlier, that will pick up again. We hope to see these signals during this year.
I think with this combined business of this acquisition that we had, we have our foot in those projects probably earlier than anyone else. I think we have a very good chance to benefit of an upswing also when the, when they start investing in CapEx again.
I think we can say over the last ten years in the cycles that we have been living through, Emhart Glass has always emerged even stronger than before. Market shares over the time have been rising. That story could continue.
Okay.
Any other
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Billon. Any other questions from the online participants? I don't see any hand raised. At that moment it was my 19th presentation, half of them more or less for Belimo, and then the other half for Bucher. A lot of the faces I see here have been continuously showing up. I appreciate that very, very much. I had an incredible amount of time, and I'm also very proud that I can hand over a very, very solid company with a lot of potential to the team that deserves it. Thank you very much for showing up, and of course, we'll still be around sharing a glass of wine with you. At that moment, we will close the session and also turn off the online recording. Thank you very much also for those who joined us online.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.