Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Interos Presentation of Half Year Results twenty twenty five Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Matilde, 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 and A session. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Markus Asch, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for your introduction. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. With me beside me is Heinz Wissler, our Group CEO. We welcome you on our half year results presentation 2025. And ladies and gentlemen, we are glad and honored that we have so many participants in this meeting.
Let's quickly go through our today's agenda. I will start with the group overview and my reflections on the first one hundred and fifty days, its priorities, its achievements, but also the areas where we are working on in order to gain additional momentum. After that, Heinz Horsley will present the financial performance and at the end we'll have a live Q and A session as already announced. You can raise your questions. For organizational purposes, we decided not to offer the chat to ask written questions.
For those of you who have been in calls before, this is probably a very well known slide for you and I quickly would like to summarize and repeat the markets we are working on. Interol is playing in a small niche segment, in a small segment of a rather huge market, the material handling equipment manufacturing market. And we are working, we are playing, acting in the internal logistics solutions segment of this market. Even though the entire Material Handling Equipment manufacturing market is more than 200,000,000,000, It is expected to grow even more with about a compound annual growth rate of 6%. Our market our relevant market is about 6,000,000,000 to €8,000,000,000 worldwide and rather more and more getting dynamic both in terms of a development of the market as well as the technologies involved.
And we have a relevant market share of about 8% to 11%. That's the area where we are focusing and that's the area where we are developing our solutions towards. If we go to the next slide and you have seen those in presentations before, there's basically no change in the 2025. However, and gentlemen, what I would like to focus on is one of those small informations, our 16 main factories and that represents our worldwide operations footprint. More to that later on during our presentation.
This slide shows the eight verticals or industries that we focus on, that we're working on. And you might ask yourself the question, where is e commerce? And e commerce for us, ladies and gentlemen, is not a vertical or industry, why it touches so many different of our verticals of our industries. For example, warehouse and distribution, courier, express, parcel. But for those companies who more and more go into omni channel, it also applies to fashion and retail.
And more and more, it also goes into food. Those markets where we have special focus and attention, they are the ones who are highlighted in yellow. Let's go from a general market approach to our business model. And on one side, we see the markets. And I already introduced to you that the market is increasingly being more and more dynamic.
We also see the Material Handling market as a relevant market with new entrants, focusing on consolidation. So on one side, we see a very active market. But let's now focus on how do we serve that market. And our business model, ladies and gentlemen, has the customer in the center. We focus on being close to the end customer and its main applications and providing them with what we can do well, providing them with proven state of the art scalable technology with our product platforms.
And that end user approach with getting close to the end user applications help us to drive best possible solutions with the result that the end customer understands the value that we can provide to their solutions. And in best case already specifies us when additional investments are happening. And on top of that, by focusing our end customers, we do understand their pain points in applications where we can improve our products, but also where we can develop new possible solutions. Here you can see our main product groups. It starts with rollers, it moves on to drive and it then goes on to conveyors and sorters and we have pellet handling.
All of these product groups have one basic structure in place, and that's a platform strategy with modular, scalable and flexible components that are individually configured in order to provide best customer solutions. And service is also very essential to our business and it differs in relevance on rollers and drives compared to conveyors and pallet handling and service is included in each and every product group. Let's move on to innovations. At Logimatz in April 2025, we have launched the MCP Blade at the left hand side. And in June, we received the highly respected EFOI Innovation Award for this groundbreaking innovation.
What is so essential with innovation? It serves two major pain points in our industry. One, it simplifies the installation and commissioning approach by substantially reducing complexity in a nature of projects that is always complex. So by driving standards, we reduce complexity. On the other side, it improves the operation for the end user by being more efficient and reducing energy efforts.
On the right hand side, you see the HPP, a product that we launched in 2024, high performance conveyor platform with the multi belt switch. And this is gaining now step by step more acceptance and we'll see that to develop further. I would now to move on and share with you my reflections of my first almost one hundred and fifty days. I would title it first strategic investments, global expansion and innovation that are the basis for sustainable growth. What do I mean with this?
First, the market we serve, as already introduced to you, is substantial. And what is even more important, through our value proposition, through our capabilities and solutions, we help the market to develop to help the market to grow. Our value proposition of standardized configurable solutions serve the needs of the markets ideally very well. Now in order and that's what you see as the second line, in order to regain growth, it is essential to increase our competence at our customers and their applications. We therefore have restructured our market competence, including key account management, our solution sets and vertical market management and there have extended our capabilities.
These investments into people and competence are seen today in our P and L, but will produce the results in the next months to come. As mentioned before, our global sales and operations footprint is almost unique in the industry. And ladies and gentlemen, this gives us a competitive advantage and opens further potential for us in a political more and more uncertain environment. What is now essential that we localize this competence in the market to serve regional requirements. In order to gain and capture the potential that we see in those markets in those regions.
These investments we have already decided immediately and they are already underway and we will see or we already see the first results, they are noticeable. On the innovation side, ladies and gentlemen, required extensions to our platforms are initiated and well underway. Further focus will be on innovation along the value chain of our customers, and that's very essential as we work in complex projects. Innovation that is driving benefits into the value chain of our customers is far more valuable and it's far above products and solutions. It's value chain innovations.
Our successful strategy in the past has been refined and decided, which will be the basis for our priorities and sustainable long term growth. On top of that, we have restructured the organizational setup. It is already up and running since July 1 year. And that will also serve as a basis for further market growth and regain momentum. Let's quickly talk about a few market relevant results that we have been able to secure.
And we are very thankful at this point of time to report to you that we have results of our market and our product initiatives. Let me take the first example. We have secured our first overseas order orders from top global lithium ion battery manufacturer. And this taking let's pause a moment, taking this as an example. This is happening today.
Battery manufacturing technology is happening in China. So you have to succeed in China, only for the Chinese market, but with the Chinese manufacturers worldwide as they dominate the battery manufacturing market. So we see already orders not only in China, but we see orders in China also for the world for different battery manufacturing sites in the world. Second point is airports. Airports, as we all know, are back at their peaks.
And we have secured their and we have shown you one possible example, we have secured already some wins. And together with our global lifetime service, we are working on additional projects where we reinforce and combine our capabilities both of products as well as service as well as refurbishment in order to prepare the airports for additional growth. Also we see there is a clear rebound in e commerce starting, but not limited to The Americas. And with our solutions in conveying and sorting, one side we are well positioned and we work on additional solutions into that market, but also to share the growth that already we see and get a momentum, get a share of the growth that is happening. This is a brief introduction of our major priorities, our major focus and some of the results that we were able to produce in the first few months.
And with this overview completed, I would like now to hand over to our Group CFO, Heinz Hussle. He will go through us through the figures, which are the results of the described activities.
Thank you, Markus. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, I'm happy to present you the results of the first six months 2025. I would like to start with an overview to give you an overview before I go into the details starting with the order intake, 0.8% decrease in Swiss francs, but this is really the path we have gained in local currencies 2.7%. So from a really negative turn to stagnation, we have now seen a slight growth.
And early indicators are also promising going forward that e commerce will make a comeback. And this you can also read in the newspapers that the very big ones have announced already orders. It is not yet with us. This will take some time. But clearly the signs are much more positive than they have been in the past.
When we look into the regions we have seen this and we always mentioned this we are most positive that the first growth will come from Americas in e commerce. This is happening. This has started. That we have seen some first projects in the first six months. This is also why the order intake of Americas has increased.
In EMEA, we have basically a stable situation. And I'm also always talking now in Swiss francs. So in local currencies, it's clear that the U. Dollar had the strongest headwind. This is even more growth in local currency.
EMEA also the euro had a downward trend. So stable in EMEA means in local currency positive. And we could also stabilize and now show a slight growth in China where we lost in the last couple of years quite a lot. And this is now a positive sign out of China, but we have lost in all the countries in APAC where the project business is has been slow for the first six months. When we look at sales, it's a positive sign even though it's basically stable like in the first six months last year.
But also here in local currency, it's a plus of 3.6%. This is quite a good achievement considering that we started the year with the lowest backlog in the last couple of years. Looking at the region sales increased in EMEA and Asia Pacific whereas The Americas this is basically also because of the low water intake in the second half year twenty twenty four from the project. The Americas has suffered a little bit, but they will catch up in the second half year. Coming to the EBIT, we see a decrease of 7.7% to CHF 27,600,000.0.
If you look at the difference in Swiss franc last year CHF 29,700,000.0 with basically the same sales, You can see that we have a higher cost base and this is mainly driven by higher R and D costs and marketing costs. These are investments for the future as also already outlined by Markus Asch. Overall, we clearly commit to keep our strong cost discipline up and this is also what we see. There is really only two areas where we have seen major change and this is really an investment into the future. The highlight of the first six months for me is clearly the cash flow.
The operating cash flow increased by 34.6% to CHF21.8 million and this is mainly coming from optimizing net working capital. Now a little bit more in detail, the order intake at CHF284.1 million as mentioned in local currency a plus of 2.7%. If we look into the four product groups, we see rollers growing 5.1%, drives minus 8.4%. Here I would like to make a remark that in the period of last year, we have been awarded with a very big one time order in The Americas which has been around CHF5 million. So this explains why this is minus 8.4% this year.
Conveyors and sorters this is coming from the e commerce first signs of a rebound plus 8.1% mainly coming from The Americas. Pallet handling this is the very cyclical product group which we see up and down and you will see on the next slide and the positive sign, but in the order intake minus 19.1%. And at the end the book to bill ratio 1.15 basically at the same level of last year where we have been 1.16. Looking now into the sales, we see a slightly different picture. You can see that rollers plus 4.1% drives only 3.1% negative.
Then Conveyors and Sorters here you see the big difference where we have seen quite a good growth in the order intake. The sales still lag behind with a minus 7.3%. As mentioned before, this is mainly driven by the Americas region. And pellet handling very negative in the order intake, but with a plus 38% very positive in the sales. Nevertheless, the pellet handling doesn't make a big difference on the total sales.
Now the sales by region. And here we clearly see the development EMEA and Asia Pacific with the growth and Americas with the decline compared to the previous year. As mentioned before, the reasons are clear. By the decline in Americas is there, the order intake in the second half year twenty twenty four from the project business was low and this affects the invoice sales in the first six months of this year. This will as mentioned change in the second half year.
When we look at the split by region, we see that EMEA has slightly increased to 62% from 60% last year. Americas 28% lost three basis points compared to last year and Asia Pacific gained one basis point to last year. So there is not a big movement by end of the year. As always, Americas will catch up as they have a lot of project business and this will be on the cost of EMEA. And hopefully APAC will remain stable or even show an additional growth.
Looking at the EBIT minus 7.7% this looks quite a bit. But in absolute amounts I think this is okay as this is an investment into the future. As mentioned, we have higher R and D costs. The R and D costs you will not find directly in the half year report as this consists of external costs and a lot of personnel costs. And then we have also invested a little bit more in marketing.
We had the big shows at Logimat and the big show in The U. S. And we have also with the MCP play a lot of equipment to present on these shows which has been booked into the cost. As we do not capitalize anything on R and D everything is expensed immediately and this is why you see the impact in the P and L. The strong cost discipline this is where we are fully committed also to continue in the future.
This has been a good and basic pillar of the profitability and to protect the profitability even in a downturn. And even though the result looks compared to last year not really good despite the investments in R and D and marketing. But if you compare this with 23,000,000 it's basically exact same level. Amortization and depreciation in absolute terms remained unchanged. This had impact on the EBIT in percentage of sales now with 11.1% and in previous year it was 12.1%.
Looking at the result, there is not much to say. We have a negative financing result coming from FX currency losses. Due to the big natural hedge we have the currency loss are really minimal, but nevertheless it is negative slightly negative. And in the previous year it was neutral. The interest from the cash we invest is also lower as the interest rate has come down and the tax rate is slightly lower than last year.
This results in a decline of 11.3% to CHF 21,200,000.0 or in percentage of sales 8.6% versus previous year 9.7. The free cash flow €17,100,000 the operating cash flow 21,800,000.0 in percentage previous of sales 8.8%. So this is an increase compared to last year. And as mentioned already in the first introduction with the overview, this is mainly coming from the optimization of net working capital. The free cash flow is the result of lower investments.
The investments in this first six months with CHF 7,200,000.0 has been even lower than last year with CHF 8,500,000.0. So the combination of an increased operating cash flow with less investments shows the free cash flow increase and in percentage the increase is 54%. So this is quite considerable and to me the cash flow is the highlight. It's also worth to mention that even in a difficult market environment Intro always can generate free cash flow. Now I come to this long term value creation chart where you see really a long term return on equity 9.1% return on net assets 14.9%.
What I need to mention is in the first six months there is always a negative effect due to seasonality which is shown in the figures. The return on equity is quite difficult to reverse because this is highly related also to the equity ratio. We have now almost 80% equity ratio, which is very high return on net assets. This automatically will reverse and go into the direction where we have been between the years 2014 to 2019. We expect slight increases when we start to see a growth of the sales because the assets we have, the assets are more than enough to produce a much higher volume.
So we have capacity to grow strongly with current capacities and this will then increase the return on net assets over the long term again. Now I come already to the outlook. As mentioned, the e commerce sector is showing early signs of a rebound. Big integrators have already seen the firm orders. And this will take some time.
But with a time lag of six to nine months, we should also see this in our order intake. For now what we can say is signs of market stabilization have emerged at least regionally with growing demand for large orders in the project business. The feedback from our customers and end users is increasingly positive in the warehouse and distribution segment also in Courier Express and Parcel mainly driven by the rebound of e commerce. Also in the airport business, we expect a sustainable growth going forward. Nevertheless, we continue to operate in a challenging macroeconomic environment with geopolitical tensions, which could impact business performance.
However, the long term trend of automation driven by the need for productivity gains and labor shortage are clearly signs that increasing demand for our solutions. Our commitment to quality, speed and simplicity remains our building blocks and we also will put the customer into the center more than in the past as mentioned also by Markus Aschen. This is also the investment into sales and we will continue to shape our culture. Before I come to the end, I would like to highlight that we have now on our Investor Relations webpage more online content. The link is shown here on the bottom and please have a look at it.
And we always are open for feedback and for suggestions for improvements. Please just contact investorrelationsintro dot com if you have something which we can improve on the Investor Relations website. With this, I'm at the end of my part and we will start the Q and A session.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Session.
Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker The first question comes from the line of Konstantin Hesse from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, loud and clear.
Good morning, everyone. Three questions, please. Number one, more general question in terms of the restructuring of the organization that you've done to regain momentum. If you can maybe share a bit more color on what you've done there, what your targets are? Also maybe a little bit of a word on competitive environment.
Second question, order intake, if obviously, we saw Keyence results yesterday. They were also quite impressive in terms of the warehouse automation side of things, and they've also been mentioning ecom, though they did say it was obviously not a sustainable growth driver, they do expect an improvement in the second half, too. So if we think about order momentum for you, how should we think about this potential recovery curve? Do you expect book to bill to remain above one in the second half? Maybe just some color here would be interesting.
And lastly, on free cash flow for the second half, if we could just get some color here on working capital movements and CapEx. Thanks.
So thank you very much, Mr. Hesse. I will answer the first question on structuring and regaining momentum and Heinz Hestli will answer the second and the third. Let's quickly look at the first one. So what have we done?
I indicated to you that for us an excellent basis and operations footprint. Now what is essential that we focus ourselves also on the relevant markets with closeness to the customers and the markets that basically we are rebuilding the company from a more European centric to a customer centric organization. What does that mean? The relevance of Asia and especially China, the relevance of America has to be equally valued in the organization, as the relevance of Europe. What does that specifically mean?
Our structure, our decision making progress in Asia is equally now represented in the board. We have established also product management and engineering already in China and we are building that by. And let me give you an example and I mentioned that before like the electric vehicle industry, it's not about China, it's about the world. So relevant we have to be where relevant customers are not only for their domestic market, but for the relevance in the world. So we have restructured that and also the whole organization has been made leaner and much faster to decide. That's a brief answer for your first question, Josef.
Then I take the second question regarding the order intake and what you mentioned regarding the publication of KION. I think Kion also made very clear where this is coming from. This is coming from e commerce. And this is also where we say we see light at the end of the tunnel much more I cannot say to this what I stated already before When such a big integrator gets such big project takes nine six to nine months and see some in an order intake it could lead even up to one year. The projects they got they are massive.
This is clear with communications who is the end customers or the end customer and are also positive to see something if this is still end of this year or early next year that's too early to say. Regarding your third question, the free cash flow, what I can say is free cash flow will also increase in the second half year. We might invest into FX a little bit more in the first six months as our infrastructure, but not really much more. And yes, overall, we will continue also to generate cash flow in second half year, but we cannot give you a number. We don't have a forecast for this.
Fair enough. Can I just follow-up on the order intake? So obviously order on book to bill was north of one in the first half because orders were clearly relatively low in the second half of last year. You had a lower backlog. So improved order intake clearly had this impact.
But looking at the momentum into the second half, do you expect orders to accelerate into the second half? How should we think about book to bill as we go into the second half? Just to a little click and kind of like frame the story in terms of the recovery curve here.
Yes. What we expect is that the business on the product side will continue more or less in a similar fashion as in the first six months. And for the project as mentioned, it might be very possible that we get an increase that we see early order intake in the Q4, but we cannot guarantee this. It can also be that it's Q1. But that we expect the increase in order in orders in the next twelve months is clear.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Next question comes from the line of Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. I also got three questions. The first one is a bit of a follow-up question. As you said, right, these reference to the six to nine months until we will see these orders on your side and your order book as well. And then you had made the reference to the 12 for the larger ones.
Again, coming back to the six to nine months, meaning that you also expect some of the smaller projects or some smaller project related orders coming from e commerce over there? Or are they just the big ones that anyway coming then in twelve months? That would be the first question. The second one is, if you can remind us a little bit or if you have a ballpark figure, what's your overall e commerce exposure on a group revenue basis? That would be interesting.
And as well, the same applies to airport exposure, if you can shed some light over there regarding revenue exposure, that would be great. Thanks.
Sorry, can you repeat the last one?
Airport exposure on the group.
I'm quickly Yes, share of revenues.
Yes, I'm quickly answering the first one. So you're perfectly right in your evaluation. So we already see we're already in discussion also with those relevant players and we momentum on the smaller projects that will happen this year in order intake. The bigger ones as mentioned by Heinz, firstly they will take the time until they are structured with the big system integrators.
Your second question regarding the e commerce this is roughly 30 to 40% which is related to e commerce. And as mentioned before there is also a portion of fashion and food included there. It's not only Courier Express parcel in the airport. And on the airport, the share is between 510% of revenue.
Got it. Many thanks.
You're welcome.
We now have question from the line of Walter Baumert from Z. C. A. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. This is Walter Baumert from Zurcher Kantonalwag. My first question relates to the growth initiatives. Is that correct that those costs in the first half about one percentage point EBIT margin? And do you expect that to phase out over time or are you stepping up those initiatives?
So if I we didn't understand you 100% clearly. Your question was the EBIT effect that we have today, will that remain or will that phase out? There is a clear task for us that this will this is right now immediate investments that we already see some of the results in the next six to twelve months. And this is of course will phase out As we are very strong on our cost side, as soon as we gain momentum, our task is to invest what we can afford and not to jeopardize the EBIT.
And the both And maybe Sorry, maybe in addition to what Markus Ascher said, now when we go back into growth mode, have a high leverage and we will we still can invest and you still see an increase in profitability due to the high leverage.
But that's correct about one percentage point in the first half?
That's correct.
Okay. And then regarding the e commerce orders, when a system integrator gets CHF1 billion in orders and assuming you would have 100% market share on that those orders, what would be your revenues?
This we cannot give you an answer. This depends on
the scope of the project. This depends on the technology and the structure, yes.
What goes in, this is impossible to make a reference.
So I have to refer to the 10% market share you have in global And Material Handling in July, you didn't see that much of order activity?
The only thing what I can say about July is that July looks that we are clearly above last year. So there is a growth compared to the previous year period.
Good. And the order backlog that you have currently, the bulk of that is for installation in the current year?
Not all, no. There is a big project. We mentioned this also in The Americas where the invoice sales will be next year. The majority of the backlog is for this year, but not all.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We now have a question from the line of Lasse Stuban from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just one additional follow-up on competitive landscape. I was just wondering if you've seen any big changes here, just given you know it's been a tougher market now for two to three years. Looks like we're coming out of that. But just wondering if you've seen any big changes in the competitive landscape and if that's what's really driving some of the higher investments you're making now to take advantage of that? Thank you.
There is a clear increase in a competitive landscape Mr. Stueben. And we see that mainly driven by China, Asia Pacific. And there's multiple reasons. First of all, they have been investing heavily in the last few years.
And second, they have some issues in China that the market is not growing, so they're outside of China. And that's why we have made a clear decision that we have to face competitors where they are. And it's one like DEMEN for example, very aggressive low profits up to no profits in China and outside of China. So we use our value, we use our momentum to and we have already the first orders against them. So we use our momentum both in China as well as in the world.
That's clear. Unless we face competition and win, we will not be able to succeed in the market worldwide.
Great. Thank you.
We now have a question from the line of Martin Bedshard from Rahn and Budmeer. Please go ahead.
Hello, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. I have three, if I may. I will ask them one by one. In your press release, you said you received sizable projects in North America and Middle East.
When did you receive these orders before or after the Liberation Day on the April 2?
So the first question, it was The Americas was after and the EMEA was before. But there has been no there is no relation to the Liberation Day.
Okay. Thank you. And then around this Liberation Day, did you see some customer being hesitant hesitate around this day? Or did you see also some projects being pushed out, which will come maybe in H2? Or how did your customer react to this?
There's a there's a different behavior. What we see in Europe that there is a bigger hesitation on awarding bigger projects or going ahead with bigger projects. They are doing smaller projects as the uncertainty is heavy. When we look at The United States, we don't see that behavior. So they are going ahead with the orders, they're going ahead with the projects.
And we even will develop as indicated some momentum as we have a true U. S. Footprint that many others don't have.
Okay.
then very what Vasj just said in The U. S. If the tariffs now remain, we just gained actually competitiveness because we produce in The U. S. And some of the European big integrators they have no local production.
So they produce in Europe and ship to The U. S. And this is changing the landscape quite a bit.
Okay. Thanks. And my last question is around the cost of steel. And because of the tariff on steel, the price is going up. How will affect you this in the second half?
Do you increase price because of that? Or do you think something will stick to your P and L and diluting a little bit the margin? Or what is your plan there?
I can tell you what the strategy is. Now we produce in The U. S. For Americas. We buy steel in The U.
S. For Americas. So the primary effect of the tariff is not really directly visible. But the secondary effect this will go to every company because this steel industry in The U. S.
Which is not competitive in the first place with this huge protection shield will be less competitive in the future and steel price I assume steel price for everybody buying steel in The U. S. Will go up. And this then will be handed over to the customer. We already see that
the market price in The U. S. Is much higher than in Europe. And in Asia Pacific also because of the raw material because of steel is much higher.
Okay. Thank you very much for your answers.
The next question comes from the line of Nej Lavrej from Octavian. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Maybe the first one on R and D. Can you maybe say what you're focusing on? Is it new solutions? Is it just for new verticals?
You highlighted Food Now. Can you maybe talk more about the opportunities there long term? That will be my first question.
We are not disclosing our strategic initiatives. What we can say we are carefully extending our platforms mainly into serving regional demands and some of the markets that I indicated to you before.
Okay. And last year you also did a small acquisition in India. I mean what are the plans there? Do you also have some organizational change and see opportunities? Or is the focus really more now on China and Americas? Thank you.
As we are fully aware, India is a very sustainable market and a little bit decoupled of volatilities that we see in other markets. So we have a very clear strategy to build. We are now building right now the basis and prepare the company for sustainable growth in the next few years. So there is no derive of focus in India.
Okay.
difference between India and China is India is a market by itself. This growth momentum that we focus China has huge effects not only in China, but also in the world. That's why we treat them treated differently.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Sebastian Vogtle from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. I have two follow-up questions, if I may. First one is on pricing. What is the sort of current pricing backdrop that you see in the industry and how you fit in there?
And the other question would be on your transaction exposure. Just to be clear there, does your answers previously mean essentially that pretty much everything what you sell in The U. S. Is also locally produced? If you can share your thoughts there, that would be great.
Yes. On the first one, the pricing of the competition sometimes we know it, sometimes we don't know it, but this is also not relevant. Now we provide the value to the customer. We are clearly not the price leader, but we are the leader when it comes to return on investment over the long term. And we get the price premium compared to our competition.
On the second one with The U. S, it's difficult to say where
it goes, but clearly the prices will by tendency go up. And if I understood you right Mr. Vogel, you said how much of the share we sell in The U. S, we produce in The U. S.
Is far than it's above 90%. So we have only international some platform components that we provide internationally. The maturity above 90% is done in The U. S. By U. S.
Got it. Many thanks.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Konstantin Hesse from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just one question. I just wanted to go back to that competitive landscape question. And clearly, you already answered the pricing question versus value. But what I'm trying to figure out, right, if a lot of these, as we know from various other industries, the Chinese have typically gained a lot of share by just being aggressive on price.
Now from what I understand, this is a bit more difficult in this industry because a lot of customers the cost of failure of a warehouse is obviously something that you don't want to have because your profitability is already very low. So I'm just trying to get a feel for how should we think about as these Chinese tried as a lot of these Chinese manufacturers try to gain share in other markets with regards to their products, with regards to the quality of their products. As you've said, they've been investing quite heavily over the last few years. Have you seen an improvement in these and some of these products? When customers decide to go for a Chinese competitor, is it mostly pricing driven?
Or are you actually seeing that customers are quite happy with the quality that Chinese manufacturers are offering these days? So just a bit of background here could be quite interesting. Thanks.
So first of all, there's one basic principle that we take very seriously in company, in the executive management never underestimate Chinese. If you do this, you see what's happening and just look at the automotive industry. So we take them very seriously. What we see today at that technology they are catching up, but it's not that we have like in the automotive industry already reverse situations. When today, the orders are being awarded, it's mainly price issues and our strategy there is a very clear one.
First of all, we have to remain competitive. What does it mean? Not the cheapest. We will not win against the Chinese in terms of price, but in terms of value. So what we do is price wise be in a competitive range and provide additional value.
That's what I mentioned not only on the product, but also on the products with controls and the products with control and software. So we provide a value beyond the product. That's our approach. That's our strategy. Has that Mr. Hasse answered your question?
Absolutely. That does. Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Markus Asch for any closing remarks.
So ladies and gentlemen, again, you very much for participating in the call, And thank you for your questions. It shows the interest. It shows also how you have supported us over many times. For us, what is essential, we have very openly communicated to you where we see out to date our strengths and our weaknesses, what we're doing, what we are prioritizing, where we are focusing in order to regain momentum, but also put the company on sustainable and long term growth. We are building the basis where it's required and we are continuing the success that has been successfully established over decades.
We are keeping our basic business model of quality, speed and simplicity because it provides scalable solutions to the market. We again want to thank you very much that you honored us with your time, with your questions and with your support. Thank you very much for participating in this meeting.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.