A very warm welcome to the sixth convention point here to our Interroll Media and Analyst Conference 2025. For us, it's a huge pleasure and an honor to have you here this morning. Also, I want to extend a warm welcome to the one that are listening to this media conference online. Ladies and gentlemen, for the next while, we will introduce to you the following content. First of all, I will introduce to you how we have restructured, reshaped and refocused the company on market and growth. We will then talk. Heinz Hössli, our CFO, will introduce to you what has this led to, what are the results, the first tangible results that we could generate.
We'll then do a deep dive on sales through our CSO, Maurizio Catino; on technology through Ulrich Engenhardt, our CTO, me on operations side, and we will then conclude with how we see our achievements, but also a first glimpse on the outlook for the year 2026. Let's go into a little bit more detail. For us, what's very important that we want to start from a bigger picture and then more deep dive into our own markets and into our own capabilities. What you see on the macroeconomic time, and we also talked outside here, it is a difficult situation. It's an uncertain situation. We see messages like de-globalization, and we have also experienced that in our own market. For you, I think two messages are very important. First, we as Interroll, as a business, we are almost not affected. Why?
Because we have an international global supply operations footprint with about 16 factories, so we can compensate those changes very well. On the other side, our customers are affected, and that's what we have seen, especially on bigger projects and mainly in Europe, customers are very hesitant in awarding those projects because they really don't know how things are developing. If we then dig deeper in our own industry, in our own market, we would say the material handling market continues to be a dynamic market, a market that is open for innovation, a market that is required because of automation needs in order to compensate some lack of people. It's an open market.
If we look a little bit more into detail of that market, we see e-commerce rather showing momentum of growth. We see airports being strong. On the other side, we see softening on the industrial landscape, especially automotive being rather weak and continue to be weak. All in all, our customers are very open to good innovations. Our own business, and remember a year ago when we were asked at this point, "What do you expect for this year?" We said at that time, it's probably very difficult to change the sales side already because our order backlog was low. If we do our job well, we should see a reversal of the trend in order decline, and we should stabilize that or even show some growth.
What we have seen, 5% growth, we have reported to you in local currency 9.2% and especially a strong development in the second half. Maybe a couple of our own spotlights before we then go more into detail. We have seen a reversal of trend in China. We have a double-digit growth now in China after some declines over some years. Global Lifetime Service have increased its share and will further increase its share because that's a very important business, how we maintain customer relationship. This was only possible because we restructured and refocused and reprioritized some of our companies and some of our company's footprint in the market. Before we go into more of these details, I would like to again get some clarity on the market.
What is the market we work in? What is the market we play in? How do we understand today the market? There are some of the statistics that you can read, so they are very common knowledge. All in all, for example, Fortune Business talks about a material handling market of about CHF 278 billion in 2026. If we then dig more into details, and we look at the warehouse automation and internal logistics for manufacturing market, Interact Analysis shows here a market of about CHF 36 billion. If we now go even further into detail and say, "What is the addressable market for Interroll? For where do we work?
Where do we play?" We see for 2026 a market of about CHF 8 billion plus, and with a market that is growing and a market where we are shooting for a market share of about 8%+. That's mainly the areas where we work on. Ladies and gentlemen, now to say that's the area where we work, where we play, what is our value proposition to the market? We also want to be simple, clear in how we position ourselves in the market. What's very important, intralogistics, by their very nature, are complex installations. Our value proposition, our brand value, our promise to the market is we reduce complexity for our customers by offering modular and platform-based hardware, that means products, software and controls. Through this we basically serve with our main brand promise. Quality, speed, simplicity.
As those products are not just individually produced products, but as they belong always to platforms, the system is a proven system. That's mainly how we position ourselves in this market. That's our value. That's where we gain momentum. Being asked a year ago at this point, "What do you see this year? It's year 2025?" I reported that time it will be a year of transition, but we should see the first results. We can report to you it was a year of transition, and we saw and we see the first tangible results. Before Heinz Hössli goes with you in what is the results generated, I would like to briefly share with you what was necessary to make that happen.
We looked at the company under three major areas, strategy, structural organization, and culture. Let's first look at strategy side. We basically moved into three waves. First of all, strengthen what we know we are good at. What is our value proposition around quality, speed, simplicity? Second, then how to leverage our potential in the market, our customer relationship. Thirdly, what is necessary to lay the foundation to see substantial growth to come? I will. In the next slide, I will show you a little bit more detail what we mean, what was happening behind that. On the structural side, we needed to restructure the organization, the company, in order to make happen what we have decided on the strategy. Culture, and we cannot underestimate the value of culture in a company. It's the foundation.
It's the way how we act, how we behave, how we interact, how we lead. That's why we also have focused some of our efforts on the culture in order to build the foundation and to further develop the foundation. Let's a little bit go into the strategy and say, what is the three main areas? Strengthening the core, leveraging market potential, and laying the foundation for sustainable growth. What is behind there? On strengthening the core, we looked at the way how we quote, especially on project, in order to improve speed and order improve hit rate. That's some of the results that we also generated on increased project business. We improve product quality where necessary in order to fulfill our promise, quality, speed, simplicity.
We have driven on the operation side with efficiency programs, and some of it you saw on the gross margin. We have streamlined customer interaction. What I mean with that, the way how we manage project, how we interact with customers, how we execute, that's areas where we are focused on strengthening the core. On the next step necessary to leverage what we have. Basically, we used our market access, our market capabilities, and we further strengthened that with clear focus on key account management and vertical market management to grow together with our customers, to help our customers to grow their business and to serve our customers better. Some of the results we already see in our figures.
The second part on leveraging market potential is we have differentiated our approach depending on the structure and the readiness of the market. Highly developing market are more addressed by sales and key account management, while a developing market needed to have development structures. I will show you in the next slide what I mean with that. Lay the foundation, that's the third point. Maybe just a few glimpses. Ulrich Engenhardt will talk a little bit more about that. We have established the first development hub in China. It's fully running. The first three projects are running at Chinese engineering and development speed with a time to market of about half of typical time to markets that we know.
We are very well known in China and are today a standard in high-speed development. We have also reversed our perspective on innovation. We look today at innovation that generates value for our customers in their value chain, so beyond a product. We combine product and software, hardware and software. Thirdly, we have closed some of our product gaps through the first acquisition of Sortteq, and we have communicated that, and already we see a good positioning of this product in the market. What I mean with structure, we have adopted the structure.
When you look at today at Asia Pacific, it's China, and there's a high focus on China, both on the domestic market, serving those customers that not only for the domestic market, but also for their market then abroad as they abroad as they export. Also when you look at Southeast Asia, it requires market development skills and capabilities, and we have established those. The same you see in the Americas. United States as the biggest single market focus on sales structure, but at the same time on Central and Latin America focus on market development capabilities. We have established those structures. Just to give you a glimpse how we see today market and market development and market approaches. Lastly, the cultural side. Culture is very essential to us.
In a time where we have more autonomy in the region in order to serve market needs, global collaboration is crucial. In a time where knowledge is not so important anymore because it's commonly available, execution excellence is essential. At a time where transitions happen, accountability is very dear and very important to us. This only happens through people, through development of people, through helping to foster people and helping people grow into their roles and into their responsibilities. Let me quickly summarize a couple of glimpses of the substantial work that has been done, some of the results that have been generated. We have put in, for example, positioning ourselves in the battery market. What we mean with that, we have developed the capability to adapt fast to a growing vertical that we didn't serve in the past.
We have developed the solution. We have won the first orders, and we are now serving the market, which is mainly driven by China. When you look at the next one and the e-commerce site with the acquisition of the Sortteq product, we have an additional solution into a growing market on the e-commerce site, and we are already in listing discussion with some of the important players on this product. Also with the partnering with IMA E-COMMERCE , we have managed that our products are in their solutions as standard. On airports, with the expansion of our strategic partnership with Smiths Detection, we have secured this business and can further develop the airport business. What we want to show you on the bottom MCP PLAY, and the subsequent win of the IFOY Award shows our focus on value chain innovation.
We drive innovation, productivity, efficiency into our customers' processes. What we mean, we're showing you the Rolling on Interroll industry event is we are building partners and capabilities into verticals, into markets that we did not serve too well in the past. We are building, and Maurizio Catino will talk to you about that. We are building now capabilities to develop this more into an ecosystem, into a partner network. With the setup, Ulrich Engenhardt will talk about with the setup of the R&D hub in China. We are not only adapting to market needs in China, but we are also leveraging today's ecosystems that are built in China on fast and precise innovation, needing for market development and to serve the markets and to grow with a dynamic market that is happening also in our industry.
With this short summary on our priorities, on our structure, on our strategy and our culture, I will then like to hand over to Heinz Hössli, who will now go with you to what did this end up. What are the results of the work that has been generated?
Thank you very much, Markus. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also warm welcome from my side. It's a pleasure to present you with the financials of 2025. I start with the order intake as usual. Order intake, CHF 545.3 million, a plus of 5% in Swiss franc. Also, the year of 2025 had a very strong FX effect on us, and the growth in local currency of 9.2%, which basically came in the second half of the year, is encouraging and also looking positively into 2026. What I like to highlight here is that this is not coming from one big project. It is broad-based. It's basically from the three regions, less APAC, but all three region have contributed to this. It's in the area of Conveyors & Sorters where the project business rebounded.
A lot is related to the e-commerce sector, the same sector where we suffered in the past, the order intake, and in conclusion, also the reduction in sales. On the order intake, clearly we see a rebound. We mentioned this last year that it's probably too early to have a rebound in sales. One year later, I think I'm pretty confident to say we will see the rebound in sales in 2026. We have now the precondition of a strong sales growth as well as strong growth in order intake in the second half year of 2025, and this will provide the base for a revenue increase in 2026. When we look into the four product groups, the product really did well. Rollers +6.8% in Swiss francs did very well.
Drives is -1.9% in CHF. Drives has two effects. In 2024, we got a very big single order in the U.S., about $6 million, which we knew will not repeat in 2025, but also this in local currency is a good growth. When we come to Pallet Handling, this clearly is the area where we suffered, we did not perform good, and it's also the smallest segment. What is also good news is the book-to-bill ratio. After three years of having a book-to-bill ratio below 1. We now have with 1.06 a positive 1, which clearly means also that we have a stronger backlog starting into 2026. This is really important. This is the base for the future. Now I come to the sales, and sales by region. Here the picture is very diverse.
EMEA grew in Swiss francs 1.4%. Americas lost 9.8%, and Asia Pacific decreased 3.5%. If you just look at the pure number in Swiss, you could say Americas has a big issue. The FX effect clearly was much higher in the U.S. and in APAC than it was in EMEA. When I talk about the FX effect, the overall you will see later, this is a mix, and the mix is also considering the heavy weight of the EMEA. Clearly the big, big impact has been in the U.S. dollar, and you can see this also from the exchange rate, how it went down.
Considering this, as well as that we had a very low backlog, which also the U.S. suffered the most with a very low backlog starting into 2025, and then the project orders came too late to turn them in the same year into sales. A big portion of the increase in the backlog is in the Americas. This also affected the share. Now you can see the share with 62, EMEA, even 3 percentage points higher than last year. Americas lost the 3%, and APAC is stable at 11%. The long-term target to what we always say of 50% should come from EMEA, and the other 50% should come from the other two regions remains in effect. We are deeply convinced that Americas, but especially APAC region, has big potential for over-proportional growth. We need over-proportional growth to change this picture.
We clearly assume that all three regions will grow, but over-proportional growth should come from the other two regions so that we should go towards this 50/50 split. On this slide, you see the last six years, and you see the FX effect on the sales. It is by 21%, it's considered quite a bit. This has a compounding effect. This you see now on this slide. I've shown this slide in a different form also last year, but the compounding effect is really big. It's now almost CHF 110 million sales from 2019 to 2025. The lines, the form of the shapes is exactly the same. It went up, it went down, but the delta is getting bigger and bigger, and this is coming from the compounding effect of the negative FX difference.
You see the yellow line, which is the nominal figures we publish, and you see the gray line with constant exchange rates from 2019. It has a big impact. If you consider that we are now CHF 514 million in sales, CHF 100 million or almost CHF 110 million is huge. Now I come to the profitability. I start with the EBITDA, down 6.3% to CHF 94.1 million, or in percentage of sales as EBITDA margin, 18.3%, down from 19.1%. This is mainly driven by the reduction on the sales, but it would be much more if we did not have tailwind from the product mix. We sold more products, less projects, which gave clearly a tailwind.
We had announced this already at the half year webcast that we have spent more in R&D and in marketing. This is an investment for the future. Besides that, we still had a very strong cost discipline, which we upheld during the year. Only with this, the 14.0 EBIT is possible. If you look at the EBIT reduction, 7.8%- 71.8%, but the margin reduced from 14.8- 14.0%. This was only possible through these three actions I mentioned before. We already said at the webcast end of July last year that we will increase the spending in R&D and marketing. This is necessary. We need to go for it because it is an investment into the future. We continue this. My view, we delivered quite a good EBIT considering all circumstances.
The circumstances that Markus Asch already mentioned, that we are really in a challenging world. We have a lot of geopolitical issues to tackle. We have a president in the United States which changes opinion from day to day, which causes a lot of insecurity and uncertainty is never a driver for big projects and to release big investments. The depreciation and amortization is stable, will also be stable going forward. There is not a big change to be expected. I come to the result. The result suffered 10.5% below last year. The reason is quite simple. Last year, we had a positive finance result. This year, in 2025, we had a negative one. Interest income has been lower due to the interest rates going down.
On the other hand, we had quite significant foreign exchange loss, and the delta, the difference from 2024 to 2025 is CHF 3.2 million just in the finance result, which is quite considerable if you look at the total profitability. On the other side, we had a tax rate of 21.9%, which was lower than in previous years, and it is also lower than the average going forward, what we expect. We say, on average, the group is around 22.5% tax rate. The net result is a margin 10.9%, exactly one percentage point below last year. Overall, I repeat it, I think it was quite okay year.
If we consider the external circumstances and then also the transition Markus Asch was talking about, and that we had invested clearly into the future, which is visible in the costs with the 14.0%, with the decline in sales, we can be not happy, but we can be satisfied. Could have been much worse. Now I come to the cash flow. The operating cash flow has decreased 41.2% to CHF 54.1 million. The reason is the net working capital. The biggest two positions is inventories and trade receivable. For you, this is known, but for the general audience, this is difficult to understand that you have huge swings in cash flow, because in 2024, the decrease in inventories of CHF 11.5 million and the decrease in accounts receivable of CHF 16.8 million boosted the cash flow.
This year, we have CHF 3.8 million more inventories, and we have CHF 10.3 million more accounts receivable, so this decreases the cash flow. This is not, you cannot, compensate. This is just as it is, as it works. Especially the trade receivables, this is because we invoice quite a lot and towards the end of Q4. This is just a snapshot end of the year. This has already been changed drastically in January, that we got the payments. The inventory is also with WIP considered. It's not only raw material, but we had slightly higher WIP, which is actually okay. Also, considering that the business on the order intake side has rebounded, we will have more net working capital when we start to grow again and invoice more.
On the free cash flow side, CHF 40.3 million, -47.9%. This is just the effect of what goes down. The actual investment with CHF 17.5 million has been lower than in the previous year, and mainly the investments have gone into modernization of manufacturing units, into new machines with higher efficiencies and some very small part into IT. When we look at this now, considering the reduction in sales, the profitability, which has been lower, the operating and the free cash flow, in my view, is still quite good. It's very strong. We have now quite a weak year if you look at the last five years, and we still generate a free cash flow of CHF 40.3 million. Now, this slide we show for the first time. I know that this will cause more questions than answers.
Fully aware of this, but I think we show it, and we clearly want to show it how this has developed over the last five years. On the left side, you see the cash and cash equivalents. To mention that the financial liabilities we have in the balance sheet, they are just a capitalized lease under IFRS. We have no bank debts. This is the cash situation, what you see on the left side, how it's developed from 2021 to 2025. On the right-hand side, you see the equity, and you see the equity ratio, how this has developed over the same five years. We have now ended the year 2025 with an equity ratio of 82.0%. Very strong cash and equity position in the balance sheet. Now I come to the other two value creation KPIs.
Return on equity, 11.6%. Return on net asset, 18.7%. Both KPIs clearly below last year. Return on equity, more driven by the very high equity in the balance sheet. Return on net assets, clearly because of the reduction in sales and the underutilization of the assets we have. We have assets to go almost to CHF 1 billion. For the CHF 1 billion, we will invest into machines, but the manufacturing footprint, if the mix is not changing a lot, we are ready for a very big upwards trend on sales. These assets are clearly underutilized with CHF 514.2 million sales. This picture will change when the sales are going up again. Now to the dividend.
The board of directors has proposed or approved the proposal to bring it to the AGM to keep the dividend stable at CHF 32 per share. This is an increase in the payout ratio. It goes from 43.7% now to 48.8%. This is also in line to what we said now for quite some time, that we want to move from the earlier one-third payout to 50% payout as other peers we look at are also on the 50%. The cash situation clearly allows to make this dividend payment. This shows the dividend development over the last 20 years, from 2005 to 2025, starting with CHF 6 to the CHF 32, and you see the plateau of the CHF 32 from 2023 to 2025.
With the higher sales expected in 2026 and the payout ratio going towards the 50%, the dividend should also in 2026 go then slightly up. What is remarkable is that there was only one dividend reduction, and this was for the year 2008 due to the financial crisis. Otherwise, the dividend has always been increased or remained stable. For the sustainability report, not many words. Like last year, we just publish this later. We do not publish the sustainability report at the same time. Publication will be on May 22nd. Some words on the EcoVadis assessment. We showed this also last year. The good news is, the 20 companies which participate, they all got again a medal award. Overall, we even outperformed the last year.
We have now seven with the platinum, nine with the gold versus seven last year, three with the silver versus seven last year, and then we have one with the bronze, which had a silver last year, and this is the group. For the group, it's very difficult to get into a higher rank, even though the individual legal entities which participate have in average or they have all a higher ranking. It's difficult to bring the group up. Overall, I think this is an excellent achievement. We have now participated with these assessments over many years, and we were able to improve year-over-year, which is not a given because it's not that you approve against the average. If you remain stable, you will decline because the average of all the participants at the EcoVadis assessments, they will improve.
Remaining stable means you decline, and we could really improve. We did not only improve against ourselves, but we improved against the mass of companies which participates at the EcoVadis assessments. This is a great achievement. Now I come to the end of my presentation. I just would like to highlight that we have more content on the investor relations webpage. We have also the presentation you see here as a download since this morning ready on the webpage. Also, the annual report you can download on the webpage. We will also release a video from the CEO around noon. It's not yet released, but this will be released around noon, and you have additional information like chart generator and other data where you can have a look at. With this, I would hand over to Maurizio Catino, and he will talk about markets and customers.
Thank you.
Thank you, Heinz. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I will give you a brief overview on our 2025 from a sales perspective of what we see in the market and in the different accounts. We have invested during 2025 a lot of efforts into transforming our sales organization. This was due to the fact that we are experiencing the material handling environment a different approach from two main sides. One is from our customers, the system integrators, and the other one is from the end user sides, so the final user of our products. What's going on is clear. There is a lot of consolidation going on in the market. Especially some groups and system integrators started to merge and acquire other companies.
The fragmented scenario that we have seen and experienced in the past is dramatically changing. These customers are now asking us to be more present in the locations and in the countries where they are active, so most globally. On the other side, the end user was approaching integrators in the past with, let's say, a neutral position. They were not so much interested into the details of what they were buying, but basically they were interested in the outcome, the final, I mean, outcome of their automation. Now, especially the big end user, the global groups, are starting to be more and more interested in the details. Obviously they want and they pretend companies like Interroll to be directly connected with them and discuss directly with them the solution they are implementing.
Therefore, our decentralized organization, which was very, I mean, successful in the past, required some fine-tunes, and we have implemented this during 2025, as I said. What we have done, on a local level, we have now split the sales team into three pillars: the product, the solution, and the service. Physically having different people, let's say, taking care of these three pillar. This provides much more focus, of course, but also this increase our competencies into the people, into the sales, that they are now more able to discuss at the proper level with accounts and obviously, increase the accountability, you know. Giving them a strong, I mean, and a narrow focus on their product range, creates much stronger, I would say, knowledge into their area.
On top of this, we have added, let's say, a solution management team. This is for the system integrators to take care of their needs. They're asking us, I mean, to keep our promise to be the supplier of choice in material handling equipment, and it is exactly the case, but they want us to be present at least at a regional level. Not acting just in one country, but spread into the region. This team is obviously a functional team, is not located in a single country, but can act at a regional level. On top of this, taking care of these big accounts now, we have, let's say, developed this strategic team. The strategic team is acting globally, so we have people now assigned to this global account and in parallel on some verticals.
Of the verticals you well know where we are basically present. This creates, let's say, two advantages. One is, of course, that we can coordinate the, let's say, global business in a much better way. On the other side, I mean, now having new CTO in place, this gives us the possibility of being closer to the final needs of the end customer. The problems are there and, I mean, having always a system integrator in between and not having a direct contact in some cases, let's say, does not help us to really understand what kind of products the end users need. This is also a very strong outcome that we see. We said we have different scenario.
Of course, we have this verticals and end user on one side, system integrator acting globally. I mean, what we can leverage? What is our real value into this new scenario in the material handling equipment? This is pretty clear and all big end users and big system integrators knows this. It's our global presence. Interroll is everywhere. Interroll is able to produce, to sell, to support our customers in all the regions of the world. We have 16, I mean, production plants in the globe, and this is a tremendous asset that cannot be easily copied by our competitors. I mean, consider if a system integrator want to expand their operation in a different region.
Of course, their manufacturing capability cannot be the same as the one they have in the location where they are historically present. They ask us to support them in the region where they are not having this capability. Things now with the, I mean, global situation with tariff, I mean, this is a great advantage that we are producing and manufacturing locally. In this way, we are strengthening our ecosystem of products, of solution, but also the service. I mean, service is becoming more and more important. Obviously, finding the proper and the right service technician around the globe is not an easy task, also for our customers. I mean, our global presence is, in this sense, a very big asset because we can provide direct service with our people globally.
Also we can use the ROI partners that can support us also in a very remote location of the globe. The ROI is the last point where we want to also I mean implement into the program a different approach. I can show it here. First of all, you know that the value proposition for us is still there. For us, ROI partners are one of the core of our strategy in sales, and therefore we have decided to invest more into that. We want to expand the program. Already in 2025, we are present in 50 different countries around the globe, and we have increased the number of partner by 14 and more to come in 2026. This serves to us also as an early adopter of new technology.
Last year, we have presented MCP PLAY at LogiMAT, and the first, I mean, sales of this new technology went through an ROI partner. Last point, this is pretty new in the program. We have been asked by our customers to act as a one-stop shop globally. Therefore taking the responsibility on technology which we are not manufactured by ourselves, but some of our partners are doing. Therefore, we have now introduced, and we will straighten this in 2026, a technological partnership program into the ROI. What does it mean? We will basically make some agreements with third-party companies which are complementing our solution portfolio. This will be obviously branded as Interroll and will be, I mean, sold to our customers together with our solution.
Giving to our customers a single point of contact globally. This is what they need. Just to conclude my presentation, I want to show you some facts about this new strategy. I showed you this graph already last year. You know, I'm a strong believer that sales is always a consequence, but the pillar of sales is the number of customers that a company is able to develop. Therefore, the number of customers is the basic KPIs for understanding whether you are doing the right things and the things are going in the right direction. You can see further on we have increased our customer base in both product and solution business. As a consequence that you have seen in our order intake in 2025, the growth is coming also linearly up with this increase of customers.
We will keep working hard on this, and obviously, increasing our customer base, because obviously when you have a bigger customer base and the market is rebounding, you are taking advantage of both area, more accounts, but more sales per account in average. This is obviously granting our future growth. That's it from my side. I pass to Ulrich our new CTO. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today and share how we are shaping Interroll's innovation and technology agenda now and for the future. In order to deliver on our promise to drive customers' efficiency and simplify their operations, we will focus on three areas. Those are stronger customer focus, value chain innovation, and global capabilities. These are not abstract concepts. We already translated them beginning in 2025 into concrete actions which we follow through in the time to come. Let me take you through them. First, stronger customer focus mainly means appreciating that we are serving different verticals globally, and that the speed of change is increasing.
Thus, we need to be close to the market, close to the customer, listen carefully in order to derive the right conclusions for our modular system, because we still want scalability in our solutions. That's, for example, why we built up regional teams in product management, why we granted them greater authority, and why we're also then looking into our portfolio mix, what is needed in which region of the market, of the world, and in which markets. Secondly, value chain innovation. We're doing world-class components, and we will stick to our approach because quality is of essence and is one of our brand promises. Value chain innovation means to have a more holistic view on what solutions we do provide, and it's looking at the process of the customer and where we can, by interacting with software, hardware, and controls, provide step innovation.
Because these innovation jumps nowadays do not come from, you know, component getting incrementally better. It comes from the interfaces and between software, hardware, and controls. That's why we focus our approach. We open basically our scope in order to find out what serves customer and customer values. We set up this R&D hub in China, not only for increased speed and greater market access and solutions there, but also to provide us with different perspectives that we probably, you know, being a Swiss company, might not have just in Switzerland or in Europe. Opening up the scope and then deriving the right solutions for our integrated ecosystem based on modularity so that we can scale is key. Now, what does that mean? We talked MCP PLAY already in the course of our presentation.
MCP PLAY is the perfect example where we combine our engineering expertise for hardware but also on software and controls. We came out with it in the LogiMAT 2025 with the promise that this will improve, for example, commissioning. Now, the question is: have we delivered on that? I'm very happy to report this is the last installation, for example, we did two weeks ago in Barcelona. We not only increased in the throughput by 40% with this customer but also made commissioning come down from two weeks to two days. That's step innovation, and that's what we want to achieve even more so in the future. It's on us.
It's pretty clear what we can achieve, but we need to be very consistent and very precise and having a close ear to the customer in order to come up with those solutions. Lastly, global capabilities is of essence nowadays. I talked about the speed of change. I talked about in changing environment, so we need to be up to speed on that. What has made us successful in the past needs to be complemented with new capabilities and those new capabilities on a global scale and on a global level. We are hiring talent where talent is. We also strengthened our platform and the platform management by granting them more entrepreneurial freedom, but still governing not in order to having too much complexity. We are on our way, and let me please conclude with a personal remark.
Tomorrow marks the 50th working day of me at Interroll, and I expected a strong company, especially on the engineering area, CTO. I'm happy to report that it was exceeded. We have deep technical expertise, we have great commitment, and we will drive innovation. That's why I'm genuinely optimistic about our future. Thank you.
Thank you, colleagues, for the overview. Am I hearable? Okay. I will now take a moment to quickly inform you about where we are today in operations, what are our major focuses, and then we'll go to the summary and to the outlook. Again, let's start on our operations network. Where are we today? What is our value? What are our assets? As already briefly introduced to you at the beginning, our unusual asset in our industry is our global operations footprint of 16 factories around the world. We manage to serve our customers from the region into the region locally, and therefore our business model again is speed. One of them is speed. Speed and delivery is important because in the intralogistics environment, there are many variants to be served.
We can manage to serve those complexity, those variances at a fast speed locally to our customers. This we have further developed by improving our proximity, being faster in our actions and our reactions to serve the market. The additional task is now to combine that local availability of resources, that local availability of components, that local availability of competencies, and we now combine them with global standards. That's why we are building we call them a global operations network of experts around the globe serving this network and serving them in mainly four areas. One is industrial engineering, the other one is quality control, the third one is global supply chain, and the first one is digital production. Let me give you a glimpse on industrial engineering.
What is very important that we differentiate between a location with EUR 6 labor cost or CHF 6 labor cost to a location with CHF 60 labor cost, but still we follow Interroll standards, and therefore we can leverage the automation level, the quality, the approach to the market to serve our customers in a unique way in their various locations. The same applies to how we organize our global supply chain, especially in times when factors that were solid in the past, supply chains that were solid in the past are no longer solid in the past. We're changing a lot to regional supply chains, but still maintaining global quality.
Digital production will help us to even speed up our market requirements in the future, not having to add resources, but adding systems that help us to maintain our quality approach and our speed approach towards the market. That's a network that we have started to build, that we continue to build, in the next while in order to even better serve the market in the future. I would like to conclude and to summarize quickly what has been achieved in the year 2025 with what you have seen on sales, on technology, on the financial results. It was announced. It is a year of transition, however, where we had clear targets and clear priorities. We strengthened the core.
We leveraged our capability, what you then saw in our order intake, and we have started to build the structure for substantial growth where we have seen the first results. All of this always feeds and serves into our major promise, quality, speed, simplicity, and this proven in the market. I would like to finalize with our outlook. We see signs of market stabilization that have broadened over the course of 2025, supported by growing demand in project business. Feedback from our customers and end users have been more optimistic across most verticals. At the same time, the macroeconomic environment remains challenging, and geopolitical tension that causes issues on our customer side could affect the business performance. The long-term trend, ladies and gentlemen, towards automation driven by productivity requirements and labor shortages continues to support demand for automated solutions, making our market attractive.
With this, I would like to conclude our annual analysts and media press conference, and we will now go on to the question and answers session. Thank you. First questions, front.
Thank you. Remo Rosenau, Helvetische Bank. You have given a general outlook basically on the market a little bit, but you haven't given any outlook on your company specifically.
Mm-hmm.
In financial terms whatsoever. None whatsoever. Why? I mean, you could have said, "We expect slightly higher sales and profits," for instance, but you didn't give anything.
Mm-hmm.
Could you elaborate on that?
Also online there is a similar question in this direction. We have a tradition not to giving a clear guideline in which direction it goes, but you have first indications that also Heinz Hössli shared with you. If an order intake increases in 2025, that should result in a sales increase in 2026. That's a logical consequence. Whether this is in the first or the second half depends on the project life or the project timing and running. This, of course, has to materialize in some effect in year 2026. On the profits, we have also been asked online a similar question. It is clear that we will maintain our cost discipline on one side. Sales increase develops profitability.
At the same time, we will continue, and there we are very clear and very bold, we will continue our investments in innovation and market access. In this balance, the direction is for 2026.
I agree with you.
That's good. That's good news.
You could also have said it, you know?
Uh-huh.
Let's leave it there. Moreover, on the more mid and long-term view, there are also no kind of targets. I mean, you explained quite in detail what you have changed, how you did set up the company now to be more successful again in the future, as it has been in the past. That should lead somewhere, right?
Mm-hmm.
Don't you have a vision, you know, where it should lead and why don't you share it with us if you have one?
Of course, we have a vision, but we have a best practice in this company led by Paul Zumbühl in the past. He was not promising, but delivering. That's that mindset we will continue. Is that correct, Paul?
Okay. Quite interesting was on the cultural side.
Mm-hmm..
Accountability. Apparently there was a lack of accountability when you started.
Mm-hmm
That has changed now.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, could you give a few concrete examples what you have changed in order to reestablish the culture of accountability in the company?
Yeah, happy. It's, you know, I don't want to focus on the people side, were they good or bad? That's not the point. We have good people. Accountability also starts with having clear structures. For example, I take you one example that's a very obvious one. By establishing a global product and platform management, we based now the structure in one single accountability. There is somebody responsible for products, somebody responsible for Conveyors, somebody responsible for Sorters, somebody responsible for Pallet Handling, somebody responsible for Controls and Software. What that means, it's not who is maybe sales, maybe product management, maybe production. There is product management responsible for it. Specifying the right product, talking, of course, to the regions and involving and implementing their feedback, but the owning the topic. Individual owning of topic is important.
One is setting the structure, and then secondly, helping the people to develop in this direction. That's maybe one example.
Okay.
That's a principle that we apply to the whole company. Clear structures, clear accountabilities, and then helping the people to develop and own it and grow as they develop.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Tobias Fahrenholz from ODDO BHF . Let me follow up on this a little bit. Could you speak about the start into the year? The first two months, have you seen, again, higher orders, higher margins? Just looking back.
When you speak about a rebound of sales without providing figures, does it mean organically or also on reported level? Last but not least, on the margins, you speak about continuous investments, growth investments. Would that mean that they could come down a little bit, or should they stay comparable in percentage of sales?
To answer your first question, how did the year start? We saw a continuous strong development on the product side. On project side, it's more a question of timing, and so a month or one and a half months or two months are not relevant, representative. What we can tell you is that the order pipeline or the opportunity pipeline is strong, remains strong, and now we will see the next few months how this develops.
Maybe I can add here. Is it good?
Yeah.
Now, what is already very clear is that at 2026, the FX effect will be on the high side again. Nobody's expecting a strong rebound from the euro nor from the U.S. dollar. The rest is denominated on these two currency pairs, and the Swiss franc will most likely appreciate against these two, or at least keep it stable at this level of today. With this, a negative FX effect, a considerable negative FX effect is already given.
Okay, when you speak about a rebound of sales, that means including this FX headwind?
The FX we cannot calculate, no. We see clearly that this can be now -4%, -5%. In the first two months, it was even higher. This clearly will go down if the currency pairs stay at the level which they are now, if they are not really going further down. What is clear now, the sales in local currencies, they will increase. On the FX, we cannot judge today how the year will end. We will have a negative FX effect, this is clear. How much? We don't know.
Okay, you did not yet come back on the margin question, so I guess you also hope to see the margin improvement. The growth investments and percentage of sales, should they be comparable?
Yeah, this is what we said. Now, the investments, if the investments stay not in percentage, but they stay in actual spending, more or less the same, with an increased sales, they will be less. With an increased sales, we will have a quite big leverage coming from the increase. If you look at what we disclose, what is the material expense for the turnover we make, and you can add a little bit of the personnel, then you see that our not shown gross margin is rather on the high side, which means we have a very big leverage if we get the rebound in sales. This will overcompensate the higher spend in R&D.
Any other questions in the room?
Thomas Funk from GAM. Because it's difficult to calculate what has been local currency growth in H2, and were there any meaningful price effects from your pricing strategy going into it?
From pricing, zero effect. We did only keep the prices stable. For some products, we even reduced the price beginning of 2025, so no impact from the pricing. We also kept the prices stable now going into 2026. The growth, I cannot even give you the detail how much we had the currency effect for the first six months. I don't have this in mind now, but we published a currency effect in the half year report, and we published it now for the full year, so this is. You can calculate it, but I don't have it in mind.
Okay.
Clearly it was higher, no?
Yeah.
Higher on the trough. Yeah.
Stefan Gaechter, ODDO BHF, can you maybe just come back on the situation in China, how you tackle competition in China, both in China and maybe Chinese are trying to sell their products also on a global basis?
Let's quickly look at China. China is considered from many market players as a, they call it bloodbath. A strong word, but basically what is happening, there's overcapacity in China, and Chinese players are very strong, trying to defend as much as they can. What is our approach? We look where we generate value on applications where we have strong positions, and we increase basically our pressure in the market with the way how we approach our customers, the way how we approach the applications, and the way how we start to differentiate some of our products to serve those markets. That's generated already to the first positive effects, as I introduced to you.
When we look outside of China, we right now see, for example, in Southeast Asia, spillover effects of this bloodbath in China that many players are moving outside of China in order to capture their market. What we do, we built or we again leverage our competencies. We invest into market access in terms of sales and service and project competence in order to capture our share. We see the first steps coming. Have I answered the question?
Yes.
Thank you. It's clear. It's, I mean, China, it's going to be a challenge, but there is no alternative. It's not only because of China, it's because of the spillover effect into the other regions and some of the technology centers now happening, like electric vehicle happening in China. You have to be there, you have to succeed. If you're not there, if you do not succeed, you do not succeed in the world. More questions here? If not, we would turn. We have a couple of online questions. One, it's maybe a more interesting question from Walter Bamert from ZKB. If you take your page four and add the figures, are you moving from CHF 500 million- CHF 781 million? That's an interesting approach. That's a creative approach.
You can look at markets and market shares also different. You can also calculate $8 billion times 8% market share in dollars and transfer then to francs, then you are probably at a more realistic approach. But thank you for keeping us up on our toes, Mr. Bamert. At the second point, we had a question on expected recovery in 2026 from Constantin Hesse. Can you give us an idea of the magnitude? I think we have talked about it, what we believe, what has come in an order intake should result also in sales. Profitability was a question. I think we had also given there no guidance, but at least an indication how we see. There was a third question on capital allocation.
Yeah.
We can, if you dare, because it's clear the question is totally valid, and we have there a very clear understanding. As a company, as entrepreneurs, our task is to generate value of the money that is given to us. That means we have two ways of generating additional access or success in the market. One is the product side, increasing our competitiveness, and the other one is the market access. What we do. We have introduced to you that we invest into our market access already, and we invest into our product. We fill gaps, or we do additional engineering developments. Now, this also includes acquisitions. You have seen last year already in September the first acquisitions.
For us, acquisition, and that's very clear message to you, acquisition is now part of our strategy in order to position ourselves more successful, more competitive in the market. That's one. The second side is growth requires cash, and that's why a growing company will get additional or will take additional cash resources. Third one, we are moving what Heinz Hössli has introduced to you more and more towards the 50% payout. If above that, we do not have good ideas of generate values, we will take the normal methods that you know in order to take care of the liquidity that we have. With this, we would leave it right now because our task is to generate value with the money that we've been given. That's on that side then.
There was a question on the order momentum second half of Sebastian Vogel. I think we have answered that there was a strong, a much stronger order intake in the second half and also in the last quarter. CapEx plans. You want to mention something on CapEx?
Yeah. On the CapEx, I think also going forward, we will clearly stay in 2026 below the 5% threshold, more in the range of the previous year or the year before. Also still going a lot into modernization of factories.
Mm-hmm.
The footprint is there. There is no investment required for growth in the footprint. It is more that we invest into new machines, higher efficiency, and keep the equipment and the production plants on a good level.
There's a question, an additional question on, can you remind me what percentage of revenues are coming from e-commerce and airports?
We always said, e-commerce is between 30% and 40%. E-commerce is not really a vertical we show as a vertical because e-commerce has components in various.
Mm-hmm.
Distribution and courier, express, parcel, fashion, and also food. This is in four of the eight verticals we show, 30%-40%. Clearly, it has been on the lower side. Now it's second half year, it has rebounded. This is where the growth is coming from on order intake, and we don't expect that this is really going out of these boundaries.
There is another question from Pascal Bendinger-Schmidt . Can you quantify the potential impact on German fiscal stimulus on your orders and sales in 2026? No, we cannot. What we can say, they will make it complicated again. That's the strength of German politics. When this arrives at our customers and turn to orders, I would not expect this. There's a lot of that happening in 2026. We have not heard. Maurizio, have you heard anybody says, "Look, I'm now getting subsidies. I'm now getting support. I want to place orders with you." We haven't seen that.
We got the same questions under the Biden administration of this huge program and with the same output. There is not something really visible what you can say, you can allocate this order 100% because of this. Not the case. It's also not that you see a pattern that you have suddenly a spike in investments. Clearly not the case. That from here and there, maybe there is a project which benefits. This might be the case, but that you see an explosion of business because of subsidies, it's not the case with us.
There's another question from Baader on market shares and what we show and market potentials that we show. Let us be very clear. First of all, even the ones, the tools that we show you as officially published data and figures on markets, market shares are always estimates. We do not work in a market that has statistics that are aligned. Like in the automotive industry today, Daimler Truck can tell you exactly how many trucks, not only they have produced, but everybody else, and they can tell you the share because an official statistic on automotive. We don't have that. We have good estimates, and what we have done is taking those estimates that always they also change from year to year. Also, their increases change from year to year, and we have transferred them into our addressable market.
That's today our best guess. As we develop our market intelligence further, we will get some additional insights, and it could very well be that we modify that again. In general, the message is the market is there, the market is substantial, the market is growing and the market is open for innovation. That should be good enough.
Yeah. Just one additional remark to this question, though, because it is stated in the question, you stated before $6 billion-$8 billion worldwide Swiss franc. We clearly now relate to U.S. dollar as all the studies are done in U.S. dollar. So slide four shows U.S. dollar, not Swiss franc. It's not such a big deviation from the past.
Yeah. There was a question from Constantin Hesse from Jefferies. Can you confirm that this recovery a sustainable trend? We would not add more to what we have said. Another question from Constantin Hesse. My question on growth are mainly related to order momentum. Can you elaborate how orders have performed so far this year? I think I've mentioned something to that question, and that's enough. Another one from Constantin Hesse. 12% on second half. Can your momentum continue in first half 2026? We will be able to report that in our half-year call, whether this momentum has further developed. It's too early to say after two months, especially as the pure product side, very stable project side. It depends on the closing date. Another question from Mr. Vivek Kumar.
Just to come back on margins, if I'm not mistaken, you mentioned no increase in percentage of sales or costs, but to remain stable in terms of absolute numbers. I think we can repeat again. We will see some increase in marketing and innovation product activity. However, while at the same time sales will increase, they should be properly compensated.
That is what I mentioned before. Higher sales, a big leverage, will contribute positively to the EBIT margin despite ongoing R&D investments, which will be higher than in the past years. Clearly, the EBIT margin should see a positive momentum.
There was another question by Mr. Bamert. Are we saying that our sales would be at CHF 500 million? This is of course not right. If you add up this math, Mr. Bamert, that's not what we are saying. Not at all. Want to say Constantin Hesse talks about cash again.
Yeah. We can clearly say we have a lot of cash. There's no question. I get these questions all the time. What are you doing with the cash? Markus Asch said it very clear. First of all, we try to invest this to generate an added value for the shareholders in the company. Last resort, what many other companies are doing, what just Zehnder also mentioned this morning, this is the last resort. The last resort is a share buyback program.
This is only if we cannot invest it in the company. What, I also mentioned to a lot of you in the past is a special dividend is not considered, because some always ask about a special dividend. To make it clear, a special dividend is not considered by the board of directors.
There has been another question by Andreas Ulrich from AlphaValue. There has been unusual instability in your management position recent months. Some thoughts about that? It can be very simple. To lead on our general management or executive management, you basically have to serve two major capabilities. One, you have to be top in your function in what you do. Secondly, you have to be cultural aligned or in a sense fit into the culture of the company. If one of those areas are not good enough, you're not good enough to develop this company further. In the two places that we had to replace, one of those key elements were not there. We in clear communication, we had to do there the necessary corrections. Another question.
There is another new one.
Yeah.
I have another observation. In the past when we were talking about Asia, it was more the tone that technologically the Interroll products are a little bit too advanced for the market. Now you're talking about that Asia is morphing into a growth region for Interroll. Something seems to be changing in the market or in your product landscape or in your way going to the market. What has changed for Asia and probably emerging markets as a whole?
Maybe it's worthwhile to differentiate that a little bit in a couple of answers. First of all, what you see, there is an almost brutal change in technology and own understanding in the Chinese environment since the COVID times. Before that, the Chinese markets were for many industries a little bit the same. The good enough product came from China. The more advanced products came from Europe or from outside. What you are seeing in automotive industry, in some of the machinery industry, that has radically changed after COVID. China did their homework and started to build on Chinese speed innovation capabilities. Today, technologies on electric vehicles, on batteries are happening in China for the world. One to say, "I'm just going to serve a niche market that is becoming less and less" is no answer.
Second, our task is to understand where we in our products and solutions have capabilities to serve the market, and that's what we're focusing on, and that's where we're gaining momentum. Not try to position ourselves in the niche and hope we will survive. To go into the applications with growth potential, where we add value on products, controls and software and serve the market and competence, project planning competence. It's gonna be a fight. That's very obvious like the others. We will face the fight and we will find our way. Is that answering?
Partly. The change is more that you're really attacking these markets now.
Yeah.
Go into the market, find the parts that are interesting for you that you can serve probably there or there, and just need to be better addressed.
The market. Totally right. Fully. Also, the markets that will not be only important for China, but have spillover effects into the world.
Sure. Thanks.
There's another one. Oh, it's you?
Yeah, I can answer this. I mean, [Vithushan] is asking, looking in 2026, which are the verticals you are expecting the most to grow, I suspect is missed, and which one will drive the growth for the upcoming years? Well, I would say that, looking into 2026, for sure our verticals are stable and growing in the area of warehouse and distribution and CEP business or the Courier, Express, and Parcel. We see still the momentum there. The automation is needed more and more. I mean, workforce is not easy to find, and it is a tough job, so I mean, the automation driver is there. Airport business is still solid.
Of course, we are closely looking at the situation in the Middle East because, when it comes to airport business, this is of course a part of the world which is pretty much important and developing quite strong. In general, let's say industrial automation, especially, when it comes to automotive, you all know is not as bright, where anyhow our exposure is not so high like other markets. There are a couple of trends that we are still monitoring pretty close. One is the e-grocery. Grocery is not really yet able to, I mean, move into the e-commerce because, I mean, the cost related to the delivery of grocery is still too high and their margin are pretty small. There is several attempts from some of our customers and integrator.
In general, the FMCG, so the fast-moving consumer goods market is stably growing. We have accounts in that area. Yeah, we believe that this area will provide us with some good business for next and coming years. We have no more questions online. Are there any last questions from you? If not, we will then also close the Q&A sessions. We again want to thank you very much for coming, for honoring us with your visit, for your questions, for your support, and we will now close the session here and see each other outside at the apéro. Thank you very much.