Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the half year 2023 results conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Alex Waser, CEO of Group, Bystronic Group. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our half year results 2023. I'm here with our CFO, Beat Neukom, and we are pleased to walk you through our performance of the last six months. Before we start, kindly take note of our disclaimer. Let me take you through our agenda of today. Firstly, I will kick off with a business update and the progress we made in line with our strategy. Beat will explain you our financial performance in more detail. To wrap up, I will elaborate on our outlook and will then take your questions from the conference call. In the first half of 2023, we delivered a good performance. Thanks to the realization of the high order backlog, sales at constant rate grew significantly by 10% to a total of CHF 468 million.
The group more than doubled its EBIT to CHF 25 million, which corresponds to an EBIT margin of 5.4% compared to the previous year of 2.3%. As expected, the customer's cautious approach in view of the economic development, led to a decline in order intake of 16.3% at constant rate to CHF 421 million. Because of our solid EBIT performance, the return on net operating assets improved from 6.6% in the first half of 2022, to 12.5% in the first half of 2023. Also, our operating free cash flow improved compared to the first semester of 2022 to -CHF 34.4 million. We continue to have a very strong balance sheet, with cash and liquid assets in excess of CHF 280 million and no debt.
Our equity ratio at the end of June 2022 was 60.2%, increased to 63.4% at the end of 2022, and now stands at 64.5%. Let me share some qualitative highlights about the first six months of 2023. I've traveled to China a few weeks ago after the relaxation of the COVID-related restrictions. While from my point of view, China's unlikely to return quickly from previous levels, Bystronic continues to maintain its strong customer relationships in China. For example, through Competence Days at our facility in Tianjin, we are confident in our team in China will be able to reap the benefits of our broad portfolio as soon as the Chinese market recovers. As a continuation from the situation towards the end of 2022, we are experiencing improved component availability.
However, certain assemblies, such as electronic components and control modules, continue to be impacted by supply constraints. Their availability is recovering only gradually. In the past few years, we have seen a substantial increase in the demand for complex automation solutions. In the recent months, due to the current market sentiment, customers started to increasingly combine high-end laser cutting systems with simpler automation solutions. This enabled customers to be more effectively managing their investment volumes and benefit from faster investment times.
This trend primarily affected the EMEA and Americas region. Bystronic invested in a Competence Center Automation in Shanghai. With the new sites, the development cycle for automation on automation products has been accelerated, while we increased the capacity on very competitive levels. We have focused on developing automation solutions for mid and entry-level segments, and the trend we are seeing developing strongly.
Our service business is strong, as expected, grew by 19% at constant rates and accounted for 26% of our Group sales. Remember, that was 19% just a few years ago. All of our midterm growth drivers are very much intact. We have portfolio offerings across the different price segments, we are prepared for the trend towards automation and digitalization. Let me further elaborate on this.
We made significant progress on our strategic pillars. In the area of systems, we upgraded our Silver portfolio with the brand new ByCut Smart, a cost-efficient and high-quality laser system ranging from 3 kW- 15 kW. In our entry-level segment, we continued to expand our DNE portfolio and increase global market reach. Let me share with you some progress we made in the area of software and solutions.
At EuroBLECH last year, we launched our brand new BySoft Suite as a modular, scalable, and open software platform that can also be integrated with third-party processes and third-party brands. Since then, we have seen a growing demand from existing as well as new customers. We receive very positive feedback about BySoft Suite, regarding the ability to integrate third-party brands or machines, the end-to-end process management capabilities, and the scalability, allowing our customers to start small and grow over time. The BySoft Suite allows us to offer a full Smart Factory solution. We continue to see demand for up to 50 projects annually. In our service pillar, we expanded our service offering. For example, our existing 360° Advisor, a health check service product for our customers, now available for all product lines.
We saw ongoing success in our service contract coverage for new installations, and we hired 20 new service technicians, while the revenue per sales technician increased. Let's have a look at the regional performance. In general, we do see a normalization of our high order backlog, which drives the top line, both in Americas, with a net sales growth of 29%, and the EMEA of 14%, respectively. Especially in Europe, we do see restrained customer investment behavior.
Northern Europe proved to be somewhat more resilient, while the customers in Southern and Central Europe acted cautiously. On the other hand, our Americas region is benefiting from the reshoring activities and has now grown in relevance, and represents now 35% of our total sales of Bystronic. Beat will elaborate more on the order intake later in his presentation.
As I have mentioned before, we have reinitiated face-to-face customer activities in China. APAC is in solid levels overall, compared against the strong first half of prior year. While the largest country, Korea, is showing softer customer activities, we saw actually Australia developing nicely. With this, I hand over to Beat for the financial review.
Thank you very much, Alex, and thanks everyone for joining us today. I will now walk you through the financials of the first semester 2023, where most of our key performance indicators after six months have improved year-over-year. Order intake has reached CHF 421 million, and I will elaborate, as Alex said, on one of the next slides. Our net sales in H1 2023 of CHF 468 million. This represents a growth of 9.7% on a constant exchange rate basis. Our service business grew strongly with 19%, and shows that our investments in this area are demonstrating success. The CHF 123 million represents 26% of total net sales. As Alex mentioned, supply chain tensions are gradually easing.
We are able to work down the order backlog and generated systems net sales of CHF 346 million, a growth of 6.8% on a constant exchange rate basis. On the top line, we had significant unfavorable FX translations impact of CHF 29 million due to the strengthening of the Swiss franc. Our EBIT and EBIT margin in H1-2023 more than doubled to CHF 25.3 million or 5.4%, respectively. The net result for the first half 2023 was CHF 19.8 million, compared to CHF 7 million a year ago. Our operating free cash flow improved -CHF 53 million to -CHF 34 million, and the return on net operating assets increased from 6.6%- 12.5%. Now, let me elaborate on the order intake and the trends and developments we're seeing by region.
Overall, there has been a softening in order intake on a very high base, H1 2022. Just as a reference, H1 2022 was the second highest semester in the history of Bystronic after H2 2021. In the light of the broadly weaker development of the economy, customers already started to exhibit restraint in H2 2022, in particular in the EMEA region. This trend also continued in Q1 and in Q2 2023. The Americas region has grown in relevance, especially due to the efforts to localize production. There is a strong trend towards automation and digitalization in the American market. Sequentially, H2 2022, there is an increase in order intake. For us, the U.S. market is more profitable than China, the reshoring activities bring a positive mix effect. Our investment in the U.S. is demonstrating success.
compared to the pre-COVID 2019 levels, order intake in 2023 is about 50% higher. In China, we have seen some favorable development after the relaxation of the COVID-related restrictions, but order intake remained flat compared to the second semester last year. As Alex mentioned, APAC had a very solid first half of 2022, and is now normalized from the buy-in levels. Until recently, markets such as South Korea benefited from government investment programs.
We see that customers will place their orders once more clarity on future programs is available. An additional impact to our order intake was the unfavorable development of the Swiss franc. About a quarter of the year-over-year decline was attributable to the change in exchange rates. To sum up, Bystronic continues with a high order backlog of more than CHF 350 million on June 30th.
We do see a continued strong demand from customers for service and software. Looking at the P&L. The EBIT more than doubled to CHF 25.3 million, from CHF 10.5 million the same period a year ago. The EBIT margins stood at 5.4%, compared to 2.3% in the previous year, and the net result improved from CHF 7 million to CHF 19.8 million. On the one hand, the higher sales volume contributed to the significant profitability enhancement, while on the other hand, the implemented price increases as well as operating cost saving measures made an impact. In particular, the material margin has improved year-over-year by 1.1 percentage points, and compared to the second half of last year, by almost 6 percentage points.
It is the combination of the price increases we have taken, less discounting, a favorable mix, we also see sequential improvements on the sourcing cost. Despite inflationary pressure on salaries, globally accounting for about 2%- 3%, and to continued investment in the service organization, our personnel expenses basically were flat year-over-year. Because there were selective reductions of about 4% in other areas.
The operating expenses were flat compared to the first half of 2022. Reduction of fixed operating expenses compensated the volume-related variable costs, such as higher installation costs and sales commissions. Looking at the cash flow, our operating free cash flow year-over-year improved to -CHF 53 million to -CHF 34 million. In the first six months, our inventories have increased mainly to work down the remaining high order backlog and the build-up of some safety stock.
Softening in the order intake leads to a reduction of advanced payments from customers, which amounted to about CHF 12 million in H1 2023. The increase in other current assets is related to accrued income from larger solution projects and increases in prepaid expenses to benefit from better sourcing conditions. Capital expenditure amounted to CHF 6.7 million, and is lower due to the timing of some projects. Usually, we spend about 3% of net sales for CapEx. What I can say in general about the phasing of the cash flow, is that the second half usually has a higher cash flow than the first half of the year. We expect to see a significant improvement for the full year 2023. This concludes the financial review, and I'm happy to hand back to Alex.
Thank you very much, Beat. Let's talk about the outlook 2023. We are confirming our guidance for the full year of 2023. In light of the economic slowdown, we continue to anticipate the decline in order intake in the systems business, a growing service business, and a higher EBIT, with a slightly decline in overall sales. Strategically, Bystronic is well positioned for further growth based on our solid market position and the strong portfolio of systems, services, and solutions with software. We remain confident to reach our midterm targets based on our market position and the industry's intact growth drivers.
With this, let's move on to the Q&A session. Operator, please move on to the first question from the conference call, please.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment, may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only hands while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Torsten Sauter from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please, go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me well. I have two questions with respect to Forex. Firstly, I'm assuming that current spot rates hold into the second half. Can you maybe give us a guesstimate what the Forex headwind is that you're having for your top line into the second half?
Could it be, you know, 600 basis points negative, for example? Secondly, I'm not sure that's been disclosed in the annual report, but what's your Forex sensitivity towards the various Forex pairs, in particular, Euro-Swiss francs? I mean, in other words, how much would your EBIT, for example, go down if the Euro depreciates, say, 10% against the Swiss franc? Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much, Torsten. With regards to the FX development, I can say that we have a high sensitivity on the top line. On the bottom line, much less. I'll comment on the top line first. What I expect, you know, going forward into the second half is about the same effect that we have in the first half.
You know, if everything kept constant. Now, with regards to the bottom line, the situation is as such that we have a very good natural hedge on the Euro, so the exposure to the Euro is very minimal. On the other hand, against the US dollar, there is, you know, an impact, but we have, you know, good hedging in place for the remainder of this year. I don't expect a significant impact, you know, a low single-digit million on the EBIT, but that's probably all you can expect for this year. Thank you.
The next question comes from Daniel König from Mirabaud Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Can you hear us? Or me?
Loud and clear.
Yes. I have a couple of questions. I was wondering, how many service technicians do you have in total? That's question one. The midterm target, Amada has issued also midterm targets. I was wondering, when do you want to achieve your midterm targets? I was wondering, on the raw materials, your gross margin has improved. I was wondering which raw materials have actually were helping at this improvement. Finally, I was wondering, what is happening in terms of market share? Is that improving? Is that going down? Is it stable? That's it. Thanks.
There were, like, four questions, I think I noted. The first 1 is in relation to service technicians. We're actually not disclosing the number of our service technicians. We have a couple of 100 service technicians. That may be to that part. You know, adding 20 to it is probably much lower than what we have done the last two years, where we targeted 100 service technicians per year. Beat, do you want to go for the next one?
I think I take the next one, which is the Amada strategic plan. Amada has, you know, if you look at their presentation, I think they have, you know, from a, from a CAGR, top-line CAGR perspective, they have, you know, as we have, about a 5%, a 5% growth, a 5% organic growth, so that would confirm our assumption that we have in our strategic plan. For us, it is, as we said in the outlook, you know, it really depends, Daniel, on the economic development, right? When we will achieve our, you know, our, our midterm targets. You know, when does the economy, you know, come back, and how fast it does come back? That is basically the question we would have.
Then the third one was about raw material. Steel price is a component, especially for our bending machines. You know, there we have seen, you know, an improvement. It came, you know, then it got a little spike in the beginning of this year. Now it's improving again. On the other hand, it's across the board. I mean, we unfortunately, we still do see some increases in certain, for certain components, but it's no longer going into the wrong direction, and it starts now turning. It's not that everything is coming back with regards to raw material prices. There's still certain area where there is an increase in raw material prices.
The last one?
The last one was in terms of market share.
Got it.
That probably has a little bit to do with our highly disciplined work that we have done in the first half around discounting. To be honest, a part of an improved material margin has to do with less discounting. We have been more disciplined around that. I don't think it had a really large impact in the market share. We didn't go for all of the deals, but it's very hard to say, but you can see that basically, we are all in the same type of market. I'm not sure I can give you an exact number around it.
That might actually change in the second half, but, you know, we have been disciplined with our pricing, and that has paid out, and that we feel that is the right thing to do in this type of times we are in. We hope we answered this four-pronged question for you, please.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, gentlemen. Couple of questions as well here. First on supply chain, when do you expect tensions to be gone quarterly-wise? End of the year or maybe only later. The second one, you touched on China. I mean, tough situation over there, but is there anything which, yeah, provides you a silver line on the horizon, so to say? Any data points, any discussions with clients, any potential stimulus programs which could come up? Last but not least, maybe you could comment a little bit on M&A. Has your activity come down here? Has it been stopped, or is it still some looking around here for potential expansion? Thanks.
Okay. Well, let's start. Thank you very much for the question, Tobias. Supply chain, so as we said, the situation has improved. We still have a few items, as I mentioned in my earlier speech. We expect this to be, you know, in line again at the end of this year. That's basically what we're seeing. We still have some issues, and they're painful, but it has improved. The China expansion or the China story, you know, is very clear. You know, we don't see really, in China, strong signals.
There are actually really interesting areas that are booming or that are running very well around battery, electric vehicle or around copper and, you know, mining and industries and things like that. In general, you know, we all, I think, know the situation there. What I think is the silver lining for us as Bystronic in China is that the plants, especially the one in Tianjin, but also the one in south, which Shenzhen, are set up for export, and that's actually, that's actually helping. We are still at a full capacity in Tianjin, and with DNE, our entry-level products, we are very good on it. We have just opened the U.S. market for it, and we see a very nice demand.
I think while China, as China market, is really at a lower level, I think what's going on is that we have, with our plants, also opportunities to deliver products outside. The third effect that I think we can mention is, you know, Bystronic has, in the past, done a lot of work in taking cost-effective concepts and professionalize that from China into the rest of the world. Our brand-new Competence Center Automation in China actually has just opened now, we see that this will be for automation, giving us a brand-new platform of products that are very cost-effective.
While the market is really, you know, where it is currently, we see those three reasons, on the two plants and on the automation side, being actually quite positive, not just for China, but for the rest of the world, for Bystronic. You know, the trend to automation is very clearly continuing. There's no doubt about that, we need products for entry level, for the mid-segment, as well as for the highly industrialized ones. The third question, if I remember that right, was around M&A. Yes, that actually, the appetite, is absolutely there. We have, looked at two opportunities, which I, of course, cannot conclude. One of them, you know, is interesting for us, the other one we will decline.
We are continuing building a pipeline of interesting companies, because as I always said, being it in the tooling area, being it in the service area, or being in the application side, that's interesting for us, and we are set up to do that. It always needs, of course, you know, the right opportunity at the right time. Tobias, I hope I have answered your question.
Yes. Yes. Maybe one other follow-up, if I may? It was a question about the expansion of the service business. You hired 20 technicians. Even if the figure is now lower, what's the plan for the full year? Will you stop then the expansion program by end of the year, meaning that we can finally see some more benefits also on the margin side than from last year?
Yes, sure. Yep. Well, thank you for this question. Yes, I think actually we are reaching about the right level of our own service technicians for everything that we need to do. Remember, those are the same people that install as well as do the service activities. What we're gonna see is that we're gonna reduce on the third-party service activities and source that more in. We will punctually, you know, do there or here a bit more, but I think the biggest part of our growth in the headcount has been done. Of course, we will replace where we have changes, but I think we are actually getting close to that volume that we were targeting. I hope that answers your question.
Yep, thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Julien Bouteiller from Pascale Advisers. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. A couple of questions still left for me. I'm not sure I understood what you said about the supply chain. Do you talk about a resolution in H2, or you still expect some problems in the component shortage? I was wondering if you have managed to have a more robust... Because I think you changed one of the components, or at least one of the suppliers. Have you managed to establish a robust supply chain now with them? My second question would be on the cash flow. Last year, the operating cash flow was largely hampered by those large project delivery missing.
I was just curious, why is cash flow again negatively impact in H1? I would have expected some resolution on that front. If you can, yeah, give some indication on the full year, do you expect a negative working capital impact again on operating cash flow for 2023? The last one is on the personal cost reduction. You talked about the reduction of the headcount, which is feasible in H1. Is it annualized already in H1, or will it be coming gradually in H2 also? I'm talking about of course, the impact of the reduced personal expense. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Bouteaux. I think I'm gonna go for the supply chain one, and then please, you follow up. Well, what I meant to say on the supply chain is that we have seen, you know, improvements over the last half year from what happened last year. And they were remarkable, but they are not resolved yet. We are down at a handful of components that are difficult to get as scheduled as we want.
In the amount of, let's say, products that are causing a lot or have caused a lot of issues, we have reduced that really down to a handful. In that sense, it's quite robust. We do see still some few products being a real issue. We're working very hard on that. We also see that that's improving, what I said earlier in one of the questions was that I would expect this to be resolved by the end of this year. Beat Neukom, would you like to comment?
I'll take the cash flow.
On the cash flow, the banks, please.
Right. On the cash flow, the situation is that that is as such that we have built some inventory, you know, and, you know, basically finished products that are being shipped, you know, in the months to come, are being installed in the months to come. The, you know, to work down the backlog. Then also we have increased slightly, you know, the parts inventories, you know, just to increase the safety stock, where it is possible to do. Not to have a situation as we had in the previous years.
Compared to 2020 to June 30th, there has been actually a decline on the inventory level because of these unfinished products that we, that we had, right? The situation is just that the delivery times are becoming longer and longer because of the more complex automation systems that we have. Just from a seasonality perspective, it is always to be expected that our first half is going to be lower from a cash flow perspective than the second half.
Thanks.
on the personal-.
You still expect an overall for the full year, a negative impact from working capital, or?
No, no, no. No. No, no.
Neutral.
No. For the full year, absolutely not. Because we're expecting a second half from a revenue perspective that is higher than the first half.
Mm-hmm.
Still below the previous year, but overall, you know, overall, but the first the second half being higher, and that comes then from a, from the work done of the inventories.
Clear. Okay. On the personal cost?
The question on the personnel cost, you know, the personnel reduction has been selective, right? Some of our plants are actually still, you know, working at full capacity to work down the order backlog. Once that has been cleared out, you know, we will also see a slight reduction there. I would expect towards the end of the year, a further reduction in headcount, but I haven't quantified that yet, and how much that will be towards the end of the year.
Okay. Maybe a last one, if I can squeeze. You opened the Korea Customer Center last year.
Mm-hmm.
around the same period as now.
Yes.
Can you make an assessment on what you see, does it help you? It's in an area where you want to grow, if I'm.
Yes. Yeah.
Yes.
Yes, of course. Would love to expand a little bit. See what we have what we've basically done in Korea or outside of Seoul, towards the airport in an industrial area, is that we have built up what we call a Brand Experience Center. The Brand Experience Center really concentrates on, you know, how does the future of the Smart Factory look like? We have fully automated systems in there. We show the software solution that we have in there as well. We show the automation modules that we have. I think we are, we are absolutely in the trend of automation of fully automating plants, that was probably good timing to do that.
Currently, we see the demand has reduced over the last, you know, period, but that is, you know, automation and automated sheet metal plants, that trend is not going away. We actually see several projects that we have in the pipeline that are currently discussed, regardless of the current situation that we have. We think that was a good timing for a good investment, in our personal opinion.
Did you manage to engage with new customers there?
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, customers that are going for, let's call it, single machines or production cells, that were customers in the past for us. Customers that are going for complete production lines are, you know, were only partially our customers. Those we see, you know, higher amounts of customers of that type that is coming to exactly look at those solutions. Yes, from that standpoint, I can confirm that.
Okay. Thanks.
You're very welcome.
The next question comes from Walter Bamert from BKD. Please go ahead.
Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for taking my question. My question is regarding the margin mix. Can you give us an indication on the service margin and the effect of the larger automation projects, if those have a comparable margin or if that is diluting somewhat the fiber laser margin? The second question is regarding the competition. How do you experience the competition currently, in particular in the developed countries? Thank you.
Yeah, should we maybe start with margin mix and-
Yes.
Effect of automation?
The service margin, obviously, you know, helps us, you know, in the overall mix, right? You know, especially on the, on the spare parts, we experienced, you know, a significantly higher margin than on the machine side. The contribution in the first half of the mix was, you know, on that 1 percentage point improvement, you could say about, you know, half of that comes from the, from the, from the margin mix, the rest is improvements on the, on the sourcing side. With regards to the, you know, the highest margin we have on the laser, on the fiber laser, on the gold products, you know, there we do have the best margins.
The more components you add, the, you know, there is a dilution on the margin on the one hand side. However, it is less comparable to, you know, to when you make an offer towards your competition, right? Because it's tailor-made, and that helps from a margin perspective. Individual products, fiber laser, highest margin, but then once you go into combined products, it helps with the overall margin.
Perfect.
maybe I go, you know, just a bit into what happens in the market. Well, or maybe I can say so much. We have this model where we talk about the gold segment, the silver segment, and the entry-level segment. Basically, every time, when the economy is getting a bit softer, what we're seeing is that customers are moving from, let's call it, the gold segment to the silver segment. We have seen this several times now and vice versa, actually. That's also this time the case. we see a larger of what we call our silver segment products that are in demand.
At the same time, we see also that larger systems for larger OEMs, they remain to be in the gold segment, and there is much more around trustful partnership, a complete software integration, a well-done service, and an availability question that is much more important. In the entry-level, we see, I think what everybody is seeing is that we see a lot of Chinese OEMs being very active and coming in, and that is exactly where we position our DNE products against it, because that's a Chinese brand that can compete in that. That's where we are.
That's why we have been probably more disciplined around pricing, is that we are moving from, you know, if it's just about pricing, if that's a large part and not the value in all the other parts that, as you said, we are moving towards silver segment. That's what we have done in the past as well, and that's probably the comments I could share with you right now.
Thank you.
You're very welcome, Mr. Bamert.
We have a follow-up question from Torsten Sauter from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello again. Actually, it would be three follow-up questions. I hope that's all right. I'll make them quick. Firstly, when I look at the order intake, and then, I mean, obviously, we need to extrapolate a little bit and assume. There's gonna be a prolonged crisis. Can you tell us a little bit about your attitude towards a continuous, you know, doldrum period? Would you be, you know, willing to sacrifice margin, for example, in such an environment? Or would you have contingency plans that you could already elaborate on in case the situation worsens? Second question, you said you are very firm with respect to discounting. Now, a little bit less visible is obviously the terms and conditions with respect to customer advances.
What's your feeling there? I mean, like, in the next cycle, will you see a similar amount of client pre-funding compared to previous cycles? Also considering your, you know, experience over the cycles and with the mixed shifts now. Then just, you know, generally speaking, I mean, I see that you had good success with services and, of course, invested much there. Apparently, customers are buying these service packages, but, like, can you remind us, in particular in uncertain times, right, I mean, how much is there a need to push these services, and how much is this, all of this demand driven? Thank you.
Yes, of course, I would be very happy to talk about. I think there are three questions, one about the order entry and sacrificing margin. You know, our strategy in working with our customers is more towards trustful partnership. With other words, you know, we are here to build value for our customers. When it's just around price, then we would, instead of just going after discounts, we would also be able to offer a product at a lower pricing segment. That's typically what we are doing, and that's working actually quite well. We have certain programs that we are starting in the second half that are very specific and targeted at certain customer segments that will drive, you know, sales.
On the other hand, we have new products, as I mentioned it, that are at a lower cost base, at the same or higher performance that we are introducing, especially on the high volume laser side, that we are starting to see. In fact, actually, we could see some more competitive pricing, at the same, at least at the same margin. That's maybe on the first question. The second question on the pre-funding over the cycle. As you know, we had last year, we made several changes in our general terms and conditions. One of them was also a forced prepayment, and yes, that has been accepted in the market and is being done also now.
Of course, in times like now, cash is always an important element of it, but I don't see a fundamental issue with that at our customers, because it has been, in the meantime now, basically accepted. On the service side, you know, service and the service demand, you know, is currently very robust, and we have a high 90, or, you know, mid-high 90, sort of percentage of service packages going with our new systems. That is because it's building a value for our customers. It's building the value. The value is we are preventing our systems to go down in the middle of unplanned times, helping them to have the systems running all the time, and that's really what the core is on this, and this goes back to a trustful partnership.
I think this will continue. We do have really not attacked a quite a, you know, a significant amount of installed base. That is not with those contracts yet, because we are focused on all the new customers. That could actually be something we do in the second half more and go after our installed base there as well. I think it's, it will continue. However, also the service part of our business is not completely decoupled from economic cycles. When customers typically have less activity, you also see less service activity needed, but not as drastic as we can see on the investment cycle or the CapEx cycle of our customers. I hope I answered your question with that. I am not sure.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Waser for any closing remarks.
Well, thank you very much, operator. With this, I would like to thank you for your attention and interest in Bystronic. With this, we close today's conference call, and I wish you all a successful afternoon. Goodbye.
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