Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here today for the full year results 2025-2026 conference of LEM Holding, and a warm welcome from my side. Also to the participants who joined us via telephone conference or webcast. I'm Andreas Hürlimann, Chairman of the Board of Directors. I'm here with our CEO, Frank Rehfeld, and our CFO, Antoine Chulia. 2025-2026, once again, characterized by market uncertainty, currency headwinds. While conditions remain challenging, including ongoing pricing pressure in China, we saw signs of stabilization supported by mostly normalizing inventory levels and some positive signals in Western markets. Momentum was particularly evident in automation and energy distribution and high precision, supported by data center-related demand. Order intake improved towards the end of the financial year. Frank and Antoine will provide more details on business development and financial performance in their presentations coming up.
From the chairman perspective, this is important that you know that. In this environment, LEM continued to move forward with its strategy of building a business model that is well-positioned to benefit from global mega trends such as data center infrastructure, electrification, energy efficiency, energy transition, and E-Mobility. A key focus of the year was the continued implementation of our company-wide transformation program, Fit for Growth, aimed at improving competitiveness, enhancing operational efficiency, and strengthening our focus on Asia while making LEM more agile and customer-centric. As global markets for new energy vehicles and renewable energy increasingly shift to Asia, LEM further adapted its organizational and geographical setup. R&D activities were expanded in Asia, shared service center capacities consolidated in Bulgaria, and production capabilities strengthened in Malaysia and Bulgaria as well.
At the same time, the company continued to optimize its cost base across all functions, supporting growth in key markets while maintaining financial discipline and resilience. Beyond these organizational measures, we invested in innovation, strengthened customer proximity, and aligned our structure to meet shifting market realities, particularly in China, where our efforts to win new projects and build regional capabilities have contributed to bear fruit. Based on these measures and the resulting improved business performance, LEM has drawn attention of certain interested parties. In accordance with its fiduciary duties, the board of directors is conducting a review of potential strategic options to increase long-term value creation. The process is at a very early stage and no decision has been made. There can be no assurances that the review will result in any transaction or other specific outcome.
After my introduction, Frank Rehfeld will present the highlights of the last financial year and provide a deeper insight into the business performance. After that, Antoine Chulia will present the financial results before Frank will give you an outlook on the current year and an update on our sustainability strategy and effort. I will return to the speaker desk to inform you about the dividend proposal to the annual general meeting. The floor is yours, Frank.
Thank you very much. Good morning also from my side. A warm welcome here to the presentation of our full year results. For those who don't know LEM yet, LEM is providing sensors for measuring electrical parameters, namely current, voltage, and energy, and with those help customers and society transition into a sustainable future.
As you remember, we had a tough start in 2025-2026, just referring to our Q1 results. To report today stable sales and constant currencies of CHF 287.7 million is a decent achievement, even though it means a decline of 6.3% in CHF. As you might know, we only do a marginal business in CHF, therefore, the constant currency comparison is more relevant. I don't want to insinuate that we are satisfied with those results, though. The ambition is clearly higher. Considering through which challenges we have been going in the last 24 months, I clearly see that the efforts to turn around LEM are showing results. The quarter by quarter, increasingly strong bookings give us confidence that the worst is behind us and that we are going to enjoy for our visible forecast horizon growth momentum.
The year 2025-26 had a strong cost reduction focus, in particular on OpEx. We've been fully achieving our commitment of the Fit for Growth project to save EUR 20 million in 2025-26. As you can see in the EBIT increase, even more importantly, in the substantial improvement of our free cash flow to EUR 31.7 million.
As you might recall, 18 months ago, we reported a negative cash flow of CHF -11.6 million. Since Andreas Hürlimann has been already mentioning the strategic review, I will not repeat this here again, and you might have then questions that we can answer in the Q&A. Therefore, I would like to move to the business performance directly and then, following our business structure, you see here the development of the five businesses in comparison to the same period of the year before. With the focus on the numbers in constant currencies. As you know, well knowing that the Swiss franc is our reporting currency, however, our business is done in euro, US dollar, and Chinese yuan, and that had, again, a big influence on our numbers.
You compare the full year result with what we have been reporting six months ago, you will realize that in H2, our automation business has been further accelerating in growth. Our automotive and our traction business have been slowing down and both our renewable as well as our energy distribution and high precision business, abbreviated EDHP, have been improving in the second half. Both businesses were still shrinking in the year-on-year comparison. I will explain in the following slides in more detail what developments we have been seeing in our markets in the last six months. Before I do that, I would like to share on this page the distribution of our businesses relative to each other. There have been, again, some movements between those businesses.
The automation business grew two percentage points against the half-year results, driven by improved order intake since the inventory levels were depleted. Automotive and track remained relatively stable in the full year and constant currency comparison, however, did both have a rather weak Q4 in comparison to the year before. Also, the renewable business did not have a great Q4, whereas the data center demand pulled our EDHP business in a positive direction in the last three months. Now, let's go through the business one by one, starting with our biggest business, the automation business that represents now 31% of our global business. Automation has been the business that had the biggest growth momentum amongst all of our businesses. It was driven by recovering base markets, depleted inventory levels, but in particular, also strong demand from our customers who deliver into data centers.
For data centers, it's both the HVAC customers that came with strong orders and also some of our automation products made it into power measurement for data centers. Not surprisingly, the competitive situation in China remains fierce, a topic that Antoine Chulia is going to further allude to since it's impacted our gross margins across the company. A half-year reporting, we stated that our automotive business saw a nice growth of 9% in constant currencies, 2% in CHF. However, in the second half, the situation changed. We saw a slowing Chinese and US market while Europe recorded growth. European growth is to be attributed to product ramp-ups with key customers. All in all, we launched 17 new products across the whole organization in 2025/26, as well as positive market momentum.
In China, a combination of slowing market, technology choices in battery management systems, as well as the competitive situation impacted our sales. Also, our other Asian markets developed slowly since they saw softening exports. The importance of electrification in the U.S. business is going down, hence project postponements and lower sales were the consequence. Renewable energy, representing now 14% of our global business, declined in constant currencies by 6.7%. The situation, however, improved in the second half, mainly driven by the European market. While we are going to see less PV installations in China in 2026, the utility scale applications in Europe saw nice growth. While 18 months ago, our inverter customers in Europe saw a sharp demand drop since Chinese manufacturers came with very aggressive pricing, we see now that infrastructure deciders prefer European solutions for large-scale photovoltaic installations.
The renewable energy market, nevertheless, will remain a highly competitive market since the majority of the inverter suppliers are located in China, which puts pressure on gross margins. The Energy Distribution and High Precision business became our smallest segment with 13% of our total turnover and has also continued to shrink by 8.4% year-on-year in constant currencies. Similar to the renewable business, the situation improved in H2. With the Q4 2025, 2026 being slightly stronger than the Q4 of the previous year. Here, several rather adverse developments led to this result. On one hand, stronger demand from customers delivering into data centers, typically storage or mid-voltage applications. These customers are located across the world, while the investments are mainly made in the U.S. and China.
The charging infrastructure business remained weak and will only pick up once our new product generations are going to get launched within this year. Our Track business was showing growth in the half-year comparison, we experienced a slowdown in the second half. This led to an overall stable development year-on-year and making it our third biggest business with 15% of the global revenue share. China and India contributed positively, while Europe was declining and the Americas were stable. With the upcoming implementation of new regulations in Europe, we are positive that this development is going to change and that we are going to see also here positive momentum in the future in Europe again. I'm sure you realize that the performance in the different businesses were quite distinct in changing direction within the same business year in certain regions.
This clearly indicates that the volatility in our business is still high and makes midterm and longer-term predictions almost impossible. Probably with the exception of data centers, where all our customers are and remain bullish. Projecting our business now from a regional perspective, we see again some changes in comparison to last year. Most prominently, China declined by 25% in Q4 and 12.6% year-on-year in line with the challenges in the local economy. However, in constant currencies, this reduces to only 5% and therefore remained almost stable. As you can see, the weaker automotive business was offset by growth in automation EDHP and Track. Rest of Asia showed positive momentum, mainly driven by India, while the automotive dependencies of our Korean and our Japanese business had a negative impact.
EMEA had a good Q4, being slightly behind last year in constant currencies, and our EMEA business is now equal to the business in China, mainly driven by automation, automotive, and EDHP. In the numbers of the Americas, a significant tariff effect needs to be considered, and again, Antoine will give there more detail in his section. Nevertheless, the activities in data centers affecting our automation and EDHP business were overcompensating the automotive drop and drove the baseline up. With this, I would like to hand over to Antoine, who will explain the financial achievements in greater detail. Thanks.
Hey, good morning. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As we share results, these are my first annual earnings for LEM. I've seen you all six months ago for our half year. Thanks for being here. This past year has been transformative, right? When I joined one year ago, the company committed to restoring financial discipline, strengthening the balance sheet, positioning the company for sustainable growth. Today, I'm happy to report that we've not only met those commitments, but in the most part, we've exceeded them in several areas. Our results reflect a significant recovery from last year's challenges, driven by focus on operational efficiency, cost optimization, and yet still strategic investment in key markets and applications. As Frank explained, order intake is showing some good momentum, with CNY 80 million in Q4.
Sales have stabilized to just south of CNY 70 million in Q4. Operating profit is up almost 30% from prior year. Cash flow has more than doubled despite several headwinds. Besides the metrics, the most encouraging signals actually this year to me are the cultural shift that we foster at LEM, strong commitment to fiscal discipline and long-term value creation. With that, let's dive in the numbers. We're finishing the year with CNY 150 million of gross profit, 40% of sales. Gross margin had taken a hit in Q1 because of price pressures across the board and the continuation of Q4 last year, especially with some overcapacity in China, as well as the implementation of U.S. import tariffs, which hit us on the cost side.
We managed to partly recover from that hit in the second half with a more surgical management of price and deal margins in China and elsewhere, as well as the implementation of systematic recharges of U.S. tariffs to the market, and a strong push on material productivity across our main categories of spend. Going down the P&L, our SG&A trajectory has come down significantly from the prior year. This 12% reduction was the result of Fit for Growth actions, which started back in Q4 last year. Several structural cost takeout measures, personnel reductions, and efficiency redesigns, like shared services on back office and admin functions, including IT, finance, and HR. In R&D, you remember one of the objectives of Fit for Growth was a recalibration of our R&D efforts. We clearly delivered in that department with the spend brought back to under 10% of revenue.
More importantly, R&D activity is much more in sync with our end markets geographically and across our main applications. A particular focus was put on increasing R&D efficiency, prioritizing strong returns, shorter time to market, and strengthening our product roadmap to support the applications expected to provide growth moving forward. Our financial results have improved by around EUR 2 million from the prior year as well, many thanks to reduced overall exposure, ForEx exposure, which limited the exchange loss due to the CHF appreciation. Our debt service charge slightly increased year-over-year following the implementation of our main debt facility that took place around mid-year last year, and the interest charge lapsed over the period.
Our income tax charge went back up to $8 million this year due to higher levels of profits globally. It was also affected by a one-time hit from operating losses in certain jurisdictions that we were unable to carry forward. That's the result of the corporate and tax structure that was put in place several years ago. This structure was heavily tested during the sharp decline in revenue these past two years. This brought our effective tax rate to an underwhelming 45% this year. We expect this to normalize back down in future years. To recap, our income statement performance showed some good resilience following the prior year adjustments and top line, basically on all lines in the P&L, highlighting the results of the Fit for Growth initiative. Sales down 6% flat constant currencies and stable for nine months now.
Gross margin sliding around 300 basis points due to pressures earlier in the year, but we're showing some stabilization since then and recovery. OpEx being reduced substantially thanks to Fit for Growth, all resulting in operating and net profits strongly improving from the prior. Taking a look at our balance sheet now, we de-risked several positions throughout the year, including a structural capital expenditure and working capital reduction as a result of Fit for Growth, and as a result of our operational focus in this strange year, commercially. One of the strongest achievements this year was how we de-leveraged the company, lending below CNY 60 million net debt from CNY 90 million just a year ago. All activity, liquidity, solvency ratios have improved year-over-year, like equity representing more than 42% of our book as of March.
This was made possible by one of the major wins this year, which was how the teams turned the situation around cash-wise, with free cash flow more than doubling from the prior year, from $14 million to almost $32 million. This was achieved thanks to a strong EBITDA of $46 million, strict management of working capital, and a focused reduction of capital expenditures to critical and strategic product investments. From $16 million to $8 million this year. All of this in spite of large disbursements of restructuring expenses happening this year of around $9 million. As we look ahead, we remain cautious, disciplined, agile, focused on delivering consistent, high-quality results for all of our stakeholders.
I'm confident the foundation that we put in place here, that the teams at LEM have built this year, will serve as a good springboard for greater success in the months and years to come. With this, I will let Frank take over, who's going to share with you some more color on this outlook. Thanks.
Thanks a lot, Antoine. Yes, let's talk a bit about the outlook as much as we can, while considering that we typically have an order book that goes three to four months forward. We were very cautious six months ago, and therefore guided towards sales in the range of CNY 265 million-CNY 290 million. We see now more positive signs that are not only anecdotal, but they're factually visible in our order book. The most important driver behind this is the investment into data centers. These investments are today served with LEM's existing customer portfolio and benefit both the automation as well as the EEHB business. Nevertheless, I was just sharing the rather important trend changes in several businesses and regions with just within 12 months. We therefore remain, as also Antoine said, rather cautious about the overall business development in the current macroeconomic environment with increasing energy prices.
At the same time, the electrification story is everything else than that, and we remain optimistic for the future. I was sharing with you in November that LEM's market has been going through an important change in the last years, and that this was driving our transformation. From a niche market, since the foundation of the company, we saw a sustainability push in 2018, lasting until the end of COVID in 2023. From that, the market was entering into what I described as affordable sustainability. Based on what I just said, we repeat our guidance from last November that latest from 2027, 2028, we expect 47% annual growth in constant currencies and a gradual move in the margins from today to a 10%-15% area.
We continue our journey to increase customer closeness by expanding R&D activities in Asia and improving our cost position by consolidating service centers and our operations footprint. We are convinced that we are on the right path and uniquely positioned for the future. One more slide from me on sustainability, obviously, a topic that is very dear to our hearts. Sustainability continues to have a high importance internally and also externally. The three important pillars on which we drive this agenda can be described as our product portfolio that fully contributes to the CO2 contribution wherever it is applied. Second, the decarbonization of our operations, and thirdly, to live the ESG journey in all our processes and our way of working. You can find the details in our sustainability report, just to mention here some highlights. We internalized the carbon footprint calculation. TCFD has been further detailed.
Carbon neutrality in scope one and two achieved, and our three key sites in China, Malaysia, and Switzerland are now ISO 45001 certified. The journey is still long. However, we are fully committed to go into this and to go this to the end together with our customers and suppliers. With this, I hand over again to Andreas.
Thank you very much. I already mentioned at the beginning, 2025, 2026 fiscal year was once again characterized by market uncertainty, currency headwinds, and challenging conditions. In principle, LEM targets a payout ratio significantly above 50% of the consolidated net profit of the year. In view of the uncertainty surrounding the economic environment, the board of directors proposes not to declare a dividend for 2025, 2026 financial years. LEM remains committed to sustain its attractive dividend policy in the future. In line with the headwinds that LEM faced in the financial year, also the share price turned into negative territory. Of course, this is disappointing for us. Despite the negative share price performance and the proposed dividend suspension, overall, LEM returned a total of close to EUR 400 million to shareholders in form of dividends over the past 10 years.
We're confident about the medium and long-term growth of our business. Demand for our products will pick up again as they play an important role in accelerating the transition to a sustainable future. This is mainly due to the sectors in which we serve our customers, which are being transformed by decarbonization, electrification, energy efficiency, and mobility. These are major trends that are driving demand for our sensors, offering numerous opportunities to leverage LEM's expertise and ensures long-term sustainable success.
Let me thank, on behalf of the entire board of directors, special thanks to our employees worldwide for their dedication, expertise, reliability, but also resilience and innovative solutions. Also, thank goes to the management represented here by Frank and Antoine for the prudent, empowering leadership. We would also like to extend our gratitude to our customers, suppliers, and business partners for their continued trust. We thank the shareholders for their confidence they continue to place in us, and we thank you all for your interest in LEM performance over the past year and into our future project, showing this by being present here today. With this, we are ready for your questions.
Thank you. Oh, sorry. Florian Sager, ZKB. I have a question on the data center exposure. The question is, for the past 2 years, we've heard a lot about data centers all around the industry. My question to you is, why does this come up now specifically for them? Is there a specific reason for this or a specific product here, or is this just inventory management that had to be worked through? I had a follow-up.
Thanks a lot for the question. I think it's a very good one. I think we've been seeing for sure that there are investments made, for sure before the certain installations happen, this takes a bit of time. Like I said already, there were still also quite some stocks in the pipeline, it took a bit until this was carrying through the whole supply chain. Now we see rather consistent demand that is getting put.
Thanks. On automotive, you mentioned that the pricing pressure in China is especially bad, and I think that was known, and I guess the fear was that this pricing pressure would come over to Europe as well, to other parts in the market. Do you think this fear should be increased after today? You mentioned that pricing pressure is still really bad in China. There's overcapacity. Are we out of the woods in Europe?
I think we should never think that we are out of the woods because I think, for sure the competitiveness will remain a constant topic. I think we still have different ways to innovate and also ways to work between Asia, in particular China, and also in Europe. This also results then consequently in different gross margins. Nevertheless, we will also see step by step increased competition in Europe if we don't take decisions to, for instance, ask Europe-wise for a minimum content that needs to be manufactured here, because it's clear also here, Chinese competition is going to further mature and further try to get market shares. We see this not as fierce as in China, but for sure, this is really a development that is foreseeable.
Thanks. Tommaso Operto, UBS. Just a quick follow-up on the data center question. Could you indicate more or less how much of the order book or of current sales that makes up?
At the moment, it's still a rather small part of the business, so it's not life-changing. Otherwise, we would have probably also reported different numbers. What we see in the future is that with the next development steps for data centers that move towards into a hybrid way where a lot of DC is getting handled, that the importance of data centers is going to increase. We are really working today with quite a lot of our customers on exactly these future infrastructures where topics like solid-state transformers, for instance, will become very relevant. Basically, the data centers will move to 800 volts, something we know already from this power industry, and this will give a lot of application opportunities for our product.
Thanks. A question on the R&D focus that you mentioned is kind of shifting towards Asia. If I look at the more recent developments, it seems like pricing pressure in Asia obviously is a lot higher than Americas and Europe, yet you're moving the R&D focus to Asia. Can you help me synchronize those two developments?
Very good question. Sounds a bit like a contradiction. To have the right gross margins in China, you need to be with your customer from day one and ideally even before day one. That you design really closely with your customers. This will help to protect your gross margin. When you are at the end of the product life cycle, there will be always a cheaper Chinese producer of certain products. For us is to really innovate with our customers and take advantage of the first two, three years when the margins are still nice and towards the phase out, already focused on the next product generation. This needs the right R&D capacities that you need to have, then also in the right language and also in the right location. Going into almost a resident engineering sort of state.
Even within Fit for Growth, investing in R&D, we've been basically building up in China, despite the fact that we've been reducing here. Still, we are far away from even having a 50/50 constellation, right? Still, the majority share of our costs are also in Europe. What we want to achieve is basically a sort of a balance. Therefore, we will further invest there because we are convinced that this will allow us to be more agile and more close.
Thanks. Last question, and it's maybe a bit of a follow-up, but do you have some examples of these newer stage technologies that you're working on, specifically maybe in automotive, for instance, where is there a development towards 800-volt batteries that could support your approach here?
Very clear, yeah. Let's take the example of automotive, since you also took this. You know that there are certain developments technology-wise that basically go out of our product portfolio. Just take the example of shunt. Basically, we had solutions fluxgate-based in the battery management business. They have been replaced by shunt solutions, and we are now working on the next generations to basically compensate or fight the challenges that shunts have, in particular at high currents, and come up there with the right solution. The same happens in the area of the whole motor control business, motor inverters, where also here we work on solutions where the current prevalent solutions get replaced by solutions where you basically sense without core, right? These are innovation topics that we are very intensively discussing with our customers.
Dominique Feltgen from Metzler Asset Management. Two questions. Obviously, this might be your last annual results conference as bidders are circling. I understand there are several ones. Can you maybe just let us know if private equity in general is interested in your industry, or is there more consolidation going on? Who are your main competitors? What is happening out there? If you could give us maybe some background on this. Also the restructuring, if you could elaborate again a bit on this. How many costs or positions have been taken out now in Europe? How big has the shift been from Europe to Asia and beyond? Yes, please.
You want to take the first one?
Yeah. The first question, we have received multiple approaches from various parties, and obviously at this stage, it's too early to comment any further on that. I think in the overall context, correctly, the market structure is changing. We are a small but very successful company in this context. Also there is potentially increasing competitive threats from also larger companies. Altogether, it's in combination now, I think, in particular with the obviously substantially improved results that has attracted a certain interest here.
Fit for Growth savings.
You mean like Fit for Growth? Is it about the competition?
Yeah, I was not sure.
You know what I mean. What about the staff figures? How have they changed? Maybe also here in Switzerland, overall as well.
You guys.
the workforce now globally, how has it-
The Fit for Growth program was targeting CHF 20 million savings in this financial year. We've been actually overachieving that. The contributions were coming from personal, but also from non-personal measures. About, I think, two-third of the measures were personal, one-third non-personal. The overall headcount reduction net was in the order of magnitude of 150 people. Where for sure the European locations were by far more severely affected since we were also building up activities in China. The restructuring costs in total were about CHF 10 million, CHF 8 already in the P&L in last year, but obviously in the cash flow in this year. In regards to this, I think the cash flow result is probably even more important to understand in create CHF 2 million of restructuring this year. Antoine Chulia, anything to add from your point of view? I would return the question to you.
Anything more you'd like to know on typical growth? Just the workforce, how big is it now in Geneva still? We have in Geneva today about 130 people. 130. Yeah. Compared to how many before? Question is always when is before. When I joined LEM, we had about 330. Before growth. Yeah. I think for sure we had a constant decline in Geneva. When I joined LEM in 2016, we had about 330 people in Geneva. 330. Thank you.
Thank you. Miro Zuzak, JMS Invest AG. Regarding the guidance for the current year, I think the old guidance was 4%-7% growth also for 2026, 2027. Now it looks a bit like it should be a rather sideways year before it starts accelerating again. The same seems to be true also for the margin. Can you maybe give more color on the current year? Basically 2026, 2027?
Yeah. Maybe I start with.
Yeah
the guidance. What we guided was in November that we would see growth starting from 2027, 2028. The reason for that was simple, because we did not yet see really a change in the booking behaviors, and therefore were rather cautious what we can expect for 2027, 2028. Again, we are far away from being able to really guide for 2027, 2028. We would do that term like always in November. What we see, at least for the Q1, is also based on the nice bookings in Q4 that we expect a nice development.
That's on both on the top line and also a further improvement on the bottom line already in the current year.
Relevant for the top line for sure. Gross margin is one of the key topics in this year. Antoine has been alluding to this. For sure our gross margin is under pressure. We lost 3 percentage points. Maybe you want to further comment on that. We lost 320 basis points year-over-year, mostly comparing to the beginning of 2024, 2025. The main reason for that was the price and a negative price and mix impact. What we changed this year and what we're changing moving forward is how we're approaching pricing, especially in a context where a portion of the demand is actually showing some really encouraging signs. We're trying to price as close as possible to the business situation there. We mentioned data centers, there are also other areas which are a lot less price sensitive than our traditional markets.
We're trying to lift these overall level of margin moving forward through price of actions, as well as supply squeeze, basically.
Okay, thank you. Then a second question I will have on the topic of data centers again. You mentioned the 800-volt architecture, and the question is, can you give some indication on the total addressable market? How big of a business could data centers become to you? Then maybe also where you are and who your clients are. Is it the hyperscalers or is it the infrastructure providers? Give some more clarity there. Thank you.
We believe today that the market is going to become sort of a 100 million market in five, six years from now for current sensing. What we see is clearly that our existing current or customer portfolio is basically the ones who are leading also this architectural transformation. We are not talking here to the Googles or to the Microsofts. We really talk to the Eatons, the Deltas, the Siemens, the ABBs, because it's them who basically provide the infrastructure and products there.
Morning. Arben Hasanaj from Vontobel. I would have two questions. First one around free cash flow. Maybe if you can say how you see the moving parts for this year. CapEx, networking capital. Let's say we assume flat sales in Swiss francs, would you see free cash flow in the same range as last year? Second question around the whole ICS opportunity. Can you update us where you are on your roadmap? How did the market develop? Thank you.
Overall, the main theme here cash-wise, it is caution for this year. As we said, some markets are showing signs of stability and some of the markets are showing signs of recovery or rebound. We're being very cautious here in how we manage our working capital.
Trying to invest our working capital dollars where it matters, where it converts, right? Numbers-wise, under a flat sales scenario, we would expect to further bank on the reductions in working capital that we had last year. Right? CapEx-wise, we expect to stay in the same territory.
ICS, I think we've been extending our product portfolio rather significantly. We are, I think, moving forward in terms of ICS, both in the collaboration with TDK to basically launch here then TMR-based current sensing, and at the same time, we also make good progress with design with customers. Now all this needs to be seen that when you design in until this turns into renminbi, US dollar, and finally then also Swissies, that takes a bit of time. We expect here and clearly a stronger numbers in the financial year to date and nice growth also in the future.
Thomas Bodmer, VFAV AG. You said you gained market share in China in automation, energy distribution, and high precision. Does this came with stable margin or did you have to lower the prices there to keep the volume up?
For sure, China is the country where gross margins, independent from the business, are always under highest pressure. Antoine has been alluding to careful pricing, and we did this. We basically moved out of some businesses where we believe the margin is not worth it. On the other hand, it's also clear to create a certain volume and to create a certain fixed cost coverage, obviously, you need volume. That's one of the key topics we are intensively addressing in this year to further work on our gross margin by basically increasing volume, rethinking pricing, rethinking the whole way we work with customers, increase the part of distribution that we can use in order to stabilize our gross margin. We clearly see, we've been doing some benchmarking, that there is some further leverage out there.
One more from my side. I was looking at the margins, and as you said, you kept a target of 10%-15% in the medium term for the EBIT. Your current cost program is done, as I understand, does this then just come from higher capacity utilization and more revenues, and that's how we should think about that, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Multiple factors. Three mainly for sure. Obviously capacity utilization in order to cover fixed cost is one. More aggressive price reductions, so basically more contributions from our suppliers. Thirdly, also by changing the way of working. Basically still finding efficiency reserves in the organization.
The cost takeout part was the more immediate one, right, with Fit for Growth. The more difficult one, and probably the more interesting one is how we operate differently moving forward, right? We mentioned shared services, but it's also true, it also impacts the product content, right, with redesign or design to cost, right? Impact of this will be visible moving forward beyond the pure OpEx takeout that we had this year.
First results of this change, we will only see in the next fiscal year, not the current one.
Yeah. Hopefully we see already something this year, but for sure the majority will be rather in the next calendar year.
Great. Okay, thanks.
Just again to understand you a bit better as a company, how fragmented is your industry? What is your market share? Because you've implied there are bigger companies out there, maybe also becoming more aggressive. Where are they? Are they increasingly in China? Yeah, if you just could give us some background.
The business is very fragmented. We talk about everything from 1,000 pieces per year to 15 million-20 million per year. We talk about huge range of applications that you see reflected in more than 2,500 product specSKUs that we are having, and you see that reflected in just our number of customers that goes basically 600 main customers, but the total customer list is 3,000 plus.
3,000.
3,000 plus, yeah. Therefore, to be strong in one area does not automatically mean that you are strong in another area. For sure, we structure our business to basically work with our key accounts, and they buy products for different areas, be it traction plus drives plus whatever medium voltage applications, so where we can also leverage their certain presence. Therefore, there is not a simple way of moving and really coming up there with competition. The LEM philosophy is to be the one-stop shop for our customers. We have basically across all the applications and always products available. What is also important to understand is that despite the fact that we call ourselves the company well-known in the market of current sensing, like a Haribo for gummy bears, it's not as easily applied as a gummy bear.
You need to have really design ins. You need to really work in detail with your clients in order to make sure that the product works in their application. A lot of an application know-how is necessary to make this work.
Are there questions?
Shall we take the call just from the remote end?
So since there are no more questions in the room, dear ladies and gentlemen, if you are dialed into the conference call, please press star nine and the pound key now to raise a question. I repeat, the combination in the telephone conference is star nine and the pound key. If you are dialed in via the web interface, please click on the dial-in button and then raise your hand to ask a question. Let's wait a couple more moments. There are no questions in the queue at this moment. I repeat, the combination is star nine and pound key.
Good.
Everything seems to be quite clear. No questions coming so far.
Excellent. We were comprehensive in our explanations, except one question that remains.
I'm coming back to the price pressure in China. As it's not anymore a cyclical nature, it's a much more structural nature. What are your steps to defend your position which you have in the market, and that you're not will be overtaken by the local Chinese guys?
Obviously, question we are asking ourselves, and we are working also ourselves. Maybe just a couple of recalls from history. We had been in 2023, losing a not unimportant part of our market share because COVID was probably the time where we were not fully realizing what is happening in the country. We've been able to regain market share by slashing our component cost by up to 25%, and with this also being able to basically regain market share. China is, for a company like ours, not a lost terrain. It's important to understand that there is nobody who is in as many applications, has as many volume, and we do have more than 60% of our production in China. The art is, are we fast enough? Are we competitive enough?
Do we have the right competencies in China in order to basically act as Chinese as one needs to act, right? That has been considered when we've been setting up our organization to basically have regional decision power, less decisions that need to be taken in Geneva. Geneva gives the general direction, the strategy, but the execution is in China. That was also the reason why, obviously, we could reduce the number of positions here in Geneva. That is the way to go forward. Quite some companies have been showing that this is possible, and we again did a
benchmark just recently where we are standing, and we will implement the learnings out of this benchmark starting this year. Again, I'm here rather optimistic. When we are humble enough with respect to what we can learn from China, I'm convinced we will also be successful. We have one question from the webcast from Dennis Buhrmann from Dépigest SA regarding the strategic options to better understand the board's approach. He asks, "What are the criteria you are evaluating to make a decision, and what are the points that would be non-negotiable, or in other words, deal breakers?" We are in this context, obviously, the board is taking the responsibility of its fiduciary duty.
In this context, we have our standalone value creation plan, and we are obviously looking at what potential strategic options could be beneficial to the company, to the shareholders, to the employees, and also to other stakeholders. This is how we are going to eventually then evaluate such strategic options. Good. Thank you very much for your attention and for your time and for everybody who's here. I think we have prepared a little standing lunch here and looking forward to continued discussion here with you during this. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.