Dear ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to today's media and analyst webcast for the half-year results 2025 of Schweiter Technologies. My name is Roman Sonderegger, I'm the Group CEO, and with me is Urs Scheidegger, our Group CFO. Now, what have we prepared for you today? Let's have a look at the agenda. We would start with a short business review and some highlights, then I would hand over to Urs Scheidegger for the half-year results. I would close then with what is our focus for the second half of the year and also an outlook for the second semester of 2025. Of course, we will also have some time for questions and answers at the end. I would like to encourage you, of course, to put your questions into the chat, and we will come back to that at the end of the presentation.
Let me start with some numbers and some key figures. On the net sales side, we achieved CHF 494 million net sales, which is FX-adjusted minus 4% compared to the previous period and minus 6% without the FX adjustments. On the net sales, we knew and anticipated at the beginning of the year that the top line will be challenged in the first semester, in particular also driven by decreasing raw material prices, and hence we observed a wait-and-see attitude of our customers, which led also, especially on the display side, to a destocking. On the profitability, we achieved CHF 43 million EBITDA versus CHF 46 million last year. The margin, we are very happy and proud that we were able to increase the relative margin of our EBITDA by 0.1 percentage points to 8.8%.
This was certainly driven by our strong focus on the cost reduction and the achievements we had around our Accelerate Program that we kicked off last year. On the operating cash flow, we achieved CHF 21 million versus CHF 30 million last year, minus 30%. This is mainly driven by the cash out of the Accelerate measures. Year to date, that's in the magnitude of CHF 8 million that we accrued last year, but we had the cash out this year. Urs Scheidegger will come back to that in more detail afterwards. On the net liquidity, we are very happy that we almost were able to achieve a plus of 60%. That is certainly thanks to a very good network in capital management. We had a strong AR collection, and also on the inventory side, we were able to optimize and hence to increase the net liquidity.
If we go now into further details of our different markets, our highlight of the first semester is certainly that our core materials business globally, which represents 23% of our business, and our architecture business, which represents 21% of our net sales, were able to achieve profitable growth. In both areas, core materials and in architecture, we were able to create growth, and we were able to increase our margins. On the display side, we faced some headwinds, as mentioned on the previous slide already. There, we had overall a minus 8% on the top line FX-adjusted. We faced in the display an overall soft demand, combined with, as mentioned previously, the raw material price reductions, and hence we had lower volumes and the destocking by the distributors.
The positive thing is certainly that we see this transformation we started towards a more sustainable and a more attractive portfolio is on track, and we also feel strong recognition from our customers. An example there is, for instance, the Kappa. Kappa is a lightweight panel with paper cover layers, fully FSC labeled, and we see that we have a strong growth in that segment. We see our customers appreciate our move towards a more sustainable and a more attractive portfolio. Kappa, for instance, is especially used in shop windows and displays since the material can be cut very well into different shapes from small to large and has the right answers for the needs of our customers. The strong focus on the go-to-market and the procurement efforts, we invested, for instance, especially in the display side, heavily into sales trainings.
We also see on the margin side, the missing volumes show some kit marks, and we had a lower profitability in our displays. On the architecture side, as I mentioned before, we were FX-adjusted growing by 1%, strongly driven by North America and Europe, but we faced a decline in Asia-Pacific, where we still see, especially in China, a weak construction market. On the other hand, in Asia-Pacific, we also see that India is growing very well, and also Southeast Asia is catching up. Overall, the architecture business is certainly going in the right direction with, as I mentioned, growth on the top line and also on the profitability in absolute and relative terms. It is certainly that we see that our endeavors to handle the procurement volumes across the globe and to learn from each other show a positive effect.
On the core materials side, the overall sales are above prior year level, with solid sales to wind customers and a very strong business performance with Balsa Solutions. We had in Balsa a growth compared to the previous year of above 20%. On the PET side, we still feel the margin pressure, but also there we were able to increase our volumes substantially. The lower demand in the non-wind business with a subdued marine market, and, as I said, the sales price pressure in China, especially on the PET side, is still there. The strong focus on the costs and innovation gains supported our profitability, and also here in core materials, we were able to increase our margins in absolute and relative terms. The transport industry, representing 15% of our business, had also pressure on the top line.
We had lower revenues, and we had still soft market demand and a soft market environment. On the other hand, the new innovative solutions we launched, for instance, the Duolane. You remember that I showed in the last presentation a lot more details around Duolane. It's a sheet that is particularly used for thermoforming applications in the areas of agricultural and commercial vehicles and also caravans. We see now that new innovation is creating volumes and a strong demand from our customers. We believe in the industry business. We have a bright future with our innovations. On the other hand, we had a challenge on the profitability, but the optimization on the footprint in the industry business, with the influence of our mines closure last year, had a positive effect. Now, if I look, how do we proceed in the implementation of our strategy?
We can clearly state that our strategy implementation is on track and that our focused actions lead to visible outputs and successes. As you remember, we have four key main thrusts of our strategy for creating a profitable growth story. On the one hand, it's attractive markets. We want to focus on attractive markets with a special focus on go-to-market/sales. Then we have second priority, innovation. We want to differentiate through innovation. We want to drive our portfolio transformation towards a more sustainable and more attractive portfolio. Then number three, operational excellence. We want, or we are aiming for, a high agility and efficiency in all parts of the company. Number four, last but not least, best people. We are building and fostering a high-performing team around the world, especially with a special focus on leadership. We sharpened our focus on our customers, on our innovation, and on our people.
I brought you today two examples. On the one hand, on the innovation side, the Sintrex. Sintrex emphasizes our transformation towards a more sustainable and more attractive portfolio. Sintrex is a rigid PET sheet for the display market, and it has some unique properties like lightweight, of course, fire-resistant, excellent recyclability because it's a monomaterial. Hence, the core and the cover sheets are the same, and it's extruded in one. It's resulting in very good printing results and easy processing options. Especially, I would like to emphasize the fire resistant. The fire resistant is especially important and very suitable for applications with large crowds, for example, in exhibitions. In exhibitions, we see more and more that the demand towards more regulation and more fire safety is increasing, and this is a fantastic product to answer that need of the future.
The first customer reactions, we launched that product at the FESPA. That's an exhibition of display in May this year, and the first customer reactions give us more than hope, a blockbuster story with the Sintrex. On the other hand, the second example is around attractive markets. The intensified customer collaboration in focus markets shows also here positive outputs and successes. The example I brought with me is on the non-wind side, and there we had a very close collaboration with an Italian marine customer, and together we were driving innovation and, of course, wanted to achieve market leadership with the customer, and we achieved that with PET foam as a structural core to veneered boards for walls and floors in luxury arts.
The close collaboration we had in the last couple of months moved the customer moving from a core from PVC to PET, and also here fire safety and the other properties of the PET led to higher margins for the customer, an increasing market for our customer, but the same for us. This joint development, this co-creation of the new solution in a challenging marine market, is a great example of how we can increase the share of wallet with customers and gain market share even in a stagnating market or in an even temporarily shrinking market, so that we can compensate the market environment with gaining market shares and gaining share of wallet with our key customers. The third example I bring with you is on the operational excellence side. We communicated today as well that we did our final step of the Accelerate Program.
We always said we have in our Accelerate Program two key dimensions. One is the efficiency side, where we want to focus on a footprint optimization. We had cost reductions and also on the portfolio management. On the other hand, we had the innovation side. I just gave you some examples of what we do on the innovation side, but also now the final step of our Accelerate Program on the portfolio management side is that we announced today the divestment of our non-core bus and rail business, which will lead to an improved margin profile. Why is it not in our core business? The bus and rail, our mobility business, is actually in a different step in the value chain.
It's directly linked and dealing with the OEMs, whereas the rest of our portfolio and our businesses are dealing with the tier ones and delivering our solutions then to a tier one. We also have some special technologies in mobility like GRP, glass fiber reinforced plastics. That's only used for train fronts and in that particular area, and it's actually not used in any other business we are in. It's also a completely different go-to-market approach that we have in mobility, especially also with the intense engineering part that we have in those projects. Therefore, we decided we want to sharpen our focus and sharpen our portfolio across the group. The closing of the transaction is expected by the end of July, hence next week. We signed last night the binding agreement with Hypex, which is a Berlin and London-based investment firm.
That company is focused on corporate carve-outs and operational improvements. We are convinced it's the better owner for the bus and rail business than we are today. Important to emphasize for us is Hypex is taking over all employees and commercial contracts and is highly committed to the future profitable growth of the bus and rail business. The mobility business represents about 3% of our group's net sales and occupies about 300 employees in two sites. One is in Altstätten, Switzerland, and the other one is in Mielec in Poland. As I said before, the divestment streamlines our business portfolio and is in line with our strategy, the focus on the core business and lightweight composite solutions and emphasizing our purpose and our ambition to making life lighter and more colorful.
It will, as I also said at the very beginning, improve our margin profile and also cash flow and our cash flow generation because in that business, it's a very cyclic business. Over those cycles in the last years, we were not able to earn money and it diluted our results. Hence, we are convinced it will improve our margin profile on the way forward. Important to emphasize is also we have a non-cash book loss that we will recognize end of the year of about $26 million for the full year of 2025. This is actually coming mainly from depreciations of intercompany loans that accumulated over the years, and also a large portion in there is coming from the acquisition that has been activated as intercompany loans when Schweiter acquired Mielec in Poland.
That's certainly an important step in our strategy to sharpen our profile and our portfolio and to lay the basis for a successful second half of the year, in particular also an overall goal for the next years. Now I would hand over to Urs Scheidegger for the half-year results 2025 and going into more details on the number side. Urs.
Thank you very much, Roman. Good morning to all of you. I would like to start with the overview on the financial key figures for the first half-year 2025. Net sales slightly declined to CHF 494 million, a decline of 6% at actual spot rates. FX-adjusted, it's a decline of -4%. The FX makes an impact of CHF 11 million. EBITDA comes in with CHF 43.4 million at an optic better profitability of 8.8% margin versus CHF 45.9 million last year, 8.7%. The optic on the profitability was generated particularly with the efficiency program Accelerate savings we have implemented last year and is now generating the planned savings. EBIT comes in at CHF 21.7 million at 4.4% versus the CHF 24.1 million and 4.6% last year. Net income stands at CHF 12.8 million versus CHF 20.3 million.
Mainly, the decline is mainly due to unfavorable currency impacts on balance sheet positions like receivable inventory payables. That impact is about CHF 8 million. With that, I'm moving to page nine. It shows on the left-hand side the bridge on net sales year on year. We start from the left. On the volume side, our global core material business, which is wind and non-wind, was particularly strong on the volume side. Strong demand for our wind applications across the world. Also, strong demand for our hybrid solutions on balsa and PET, and in particular, the balsa revenues were really strong. We have architecture on a global level. We continue to have strong volume growth in the U.S.A.. That was already the case in the last periods. Based on our very strong market position, we gained market shares. Our European architecture business is developing solidly.
The display business was challenged by soft demand on the volume side in Europe and in the U.S.A. and was particularly challenged on the acrylics clear sheet activities where the raw material prices went down very strongly. This was leading to a wait-and-see attitude of the distributors, particularly in Europe. Finally, our transport and industry business also encountered soft demand here in Europe. In that business area is also the bus and rail business. Prices were pretty stable overall, but the mix is a bit different. We see better prices in the U.S.A., particularly for our architecture business as one example. We see solid prices everywhere. We have our performance material, functional material in display. However, the PET prices in China remain under pressure. We see really a positive bucket of mix. This mix impact comes from added value activities.
One example is our wind kitting activities, which are developing well, or also our Balsa business, which is developing well and creates a positive impact for this. Finally, we have a currency impact of minus CHF 11 million. You see on the right-hand side a pie chart. In the middle, you see last year; the outer circle is this year. As you see, we have good and bigger revenues for the core material. It stands now at 23% of group sales. Also, the architecture business is growing, whereas the display business overall as a share is a little bit shrinking. I'm moving on to page 10. You see on the left-hand side the EBITDA bridge. CHF 46 million last year, 8.7%, CHF 43 million this year, 8.8%. The gross margins were a bit down by around 1 percentage point.
This you all see in the P&L where our material costs of group sales are 1% higher. They are at 51% material cost of net sales versus 50% last year. One major impact was that we consumed expensive PMMA and MMA material that was created as a safety stock last year to protect the closure of our Mines plant. This was expensive material. In the meantime, this is completely consumed. Of course, we now get the benefit of much, much lower purchasing prices for this material for the second half year. On the other hand, we were able to compensate the gross margin decline by strong measures on our G&A costs. They are lower due to the efficiency program Accelerate savings with less overhead costs with the closure of the Mines plant, and across the board, we reduced personnel costs.
The FX impact on the EBITDA bridge was close to CHF 1 million. On the right-hand side, you see the net income. As I said before, the real major impact from CHF 20 million to CHF 30 million was the currency exchange difference on balance sheet position close to CHF 8 million. Finally, we discuss the free operating cash flow development on page 11. On the left-hand side, year on year, from CHF 30 million to CHF 21 million. I can discuss three major buckets. We see less CapEx quite significantly. This is related to a land sale in the city of Darwen, England, where in the past we had two sites and we now have merged it to one site. This was a part of the efficiency program of Accelerate. The land sale was now realized this year.
There were less provisions, provision releases for the Accelerate Program of social plans. A similar amount like CapEx. That's kind of a wash. In the taxes, we have one larger non-recurring, non-operational tax payment of CHF 4 million in Germany. That's non-recurring. If you would adjust it operationally, our free cash flow would be CHF 25 million. A part of this payment will already be recuperated in the second half year. On the right-hand side, you see the development over the last five years, where now the CHF 21 million is the second most positive development over five years. With that, I'm handing back to Roman Sonderegger.
Thank you, Urs. We would come to the focus of the second semester and the outlook of the second semester. The volatility in the markets and the limited visibility will continue. On the other hand, we can also say we continue to serve the major trends like renewable energy, like sustainable materials, or increased mobility. Still, trends that lead to growth and opportunities, and we are in the middle of those markets. Additionally, we can continue to build on a strong differentiation and on some key assets like the house of brands. We have the broadest product and solution portfolio, our global footprint on the customer side, but also on our teams, and of course, also on our FSC-certified balsa forests in Ecuador and Papua New Guinea. You heard before in the balsa business, we had a very strong first semester with more than 20% growth.
We are very happy that we have from seeds to safe solutions, the whole value chain there under control. Our strategic priorities, attractive markets, driving the portfolio transformation through innovation, our operational excellence activities, and our teams remain unchanged. We see it works, and we are able to create profitable growth in the architecture and core materials business. We are convinced that we have the right actions in place to achieve that short term, then also in industry and display again. Also, our ambition over the cycle remains unchanged. We want to grow faster than the market and want to gain market shares. We want to achieve as fast as possible a double-digit EBITDA margin, and hence then over the cycle, an EBIT margin of 7 to 9% in order to also achieve the return on our invested capital from 9 to 11%.
How do we see now the outlook in more details for the second semester? As I said before, several end market dynamics are currently challenging and certainly difficult to predict. Let me guide you in a bit more details through the four businesses, how we see the different markets and the second semester. If we start with the display business, the display business was certainly the business that challenged us the most in the first semester. We still see subdued consumer sentiments in the Americas, but also in Europe. We expect it to remain flattish. The intended market share gains will certainly be supported by the progress we do in our portfolio transformation. We have a strong lineup of new innovations and product launches. I just mentioned one previously in more details around the Sintrex.
On the core materials side, the PET side is certainly still confronted with overcapacity, in particular in China. About 60% to 70% of the total PET is still going into China. However, we are expected to gain, or we expect to gain, market shares in the non-wind. I showed you an example from the marine market, how we want to achieve that and why we are convinced that we can also do that in the second semester. We will also build on our strong balsa wood position in particular. On the architecture side, we expect continued strong demand in North America. We expect a certain market recovery to continue in Europe, whereas Asia, in particular China, will remain challenging. The geographical expansions, and we are expanding our footprint there quite heavily, will certainly show first successes in the second semester.
On the transport and industry business, we expect the markets will improve slightly on the industry side. We see that in the number of quotes and samples we get from our customers. The de-consolidation of the bus and rail business will improve our margin profile. Overall, on the net sales side, we expect it to be slightly negative, FX-adjusted. We see the challenging market environment, but we want to compensate that by market share gains through innovation and market penetration. As I showed before, that marine market example, that is how we want to achieve that. On the margin side, we still target an increase of profitability, mainly driven by the further realization of our Accelerate savings and measures, and also on the de-consolidation of the bus and rail business. In summary, overall, we are convinced our strategy and our path is the right one and it works.
Our costs are reduced. The innovation pipeline is gearing up, and our sales teams are close to our customers. We are cautiously optimistic for the market and have the right plan. I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are ready now for your questions. Thank you very much. Stephan, maybe you give me the questions so that Urs and I can answer accordingly.
We have received a few questions through that webcast. They go around outlook, cash flow, and the divestment, really. The first one is on the outlook, whether you see increasing pressure from Chinese imports in Europe and whether that creates pricing pressure in Europe that we see.
Maybe first on the import on Chinese players. Certainly, the tariff situation led to certain additional imports, especially in the display market from China. Nevertheless, the key also there is that we continue to transform our portfolio so that we can differentiate, that we do not just compete on price, but rather can compete via functionalities, quality, and service. Of course, also there, we try to move more and more into becoming more a solution, a partner for our customers so that we can additionally differentiate there.
second field is around the divestment. There are two questions on that topic. One is whether that business was loss making in the past year, whether we can get some information on that. The second is whether we have to expect more of such divestments going forward.
Maybe two comments to that. First of all, as I said before, it's a very cyclic business, the rail and bus business. Over the cycles and over the years, as I said before, we were not able to earn money, and it diluted our results. As you know, we do not disclose any margin details of the different businesses, but you can assume that, as I said, over the cycles, we did not earn money, and it diluted our results. The second part of the question, if there is more to come, we are convinced that our house is built, that we are geared up now for a strong future for profitable growth. Nevertheless, of course, we review our portfolio constantly and would also take actions in case the situation would change. We would also take actions in the future.
Our next field is the cash flow. There we have two questions. One is on the change in provisions and employee benefits, where we see a strong movement in the cash flow and whether that sees corresponding benefits in the P and L as the first question. The second is what is in the external report that was communicated as well, not this presentation here, but whether the other positions not impacting cash of EUR 3 million can be explained, what that contains?
Urs, I think that's the right question for you.
Yeah, thank you very much. We talk about the cash flow and the provision releases on the employee benefits are really related to the setup provisions at the end of last year for the Accelerate Program for social plans, which now created occurred costs in the first half year of personnel which now left the company, and that was then offset by the provision release. That's result neutral. Your very specific question on other positions not impacting cash in the cash flow statement, this amount is particularly driven by the revaluation of our balsa plantations in Ecuador because the green lumber prices went up a bit. We have a very sophisticated valuation formula to value our plantations. We followed this one very strictly, and that created a bit this valuation gain. Thank you very much.
I think we'll just get more questions as we speak. Could you shed some light on the impact from that divestment on the EBITDA?
Again, I repeat myself, obviously. Over the cycles, we did not earn money, and it diluted our results, but we will not disclose in all details what the different margin profiles are of the different businesses.
On our strategic side, could you please remind us your exposure and efforts in data centers ?
Data centers is a very interesting field for us because there are two dimensions. One is there are no windows, so there's more square meters for the facade. That's one dimension. The other dimension is obviously you need to cool those buildings because there's a lot of heat in the data centers, and there our facades with the technology add additional value. It's an interesting business for us. I was recently in Southeast Asia visiting a few projects where we actually were able to realize some data center projects, and I believe this is an interesting opportunity for us in Asia, but also in the U.S. in particular.
We have a few questions around different topics. One is, is there any guidance on the margin that you expect the EBITDA margin for the full year?
Also there, that on the margin side, we target an increased profitability. We showed now also in the first semester, despite the pressure we had on the top line, that we were able to increase our relative margin. We want to continue that path. We said always short term, we want to achieve as fast as possible a double-digit EBITDA margin again. Of course, this is unchanged our goal that we achieve that fast.
One question is on M&A, on M&A activity, whether we have any efforts and ideas to become active in that field in order to strengthen or increase the top line.
Similar answer as we also said previously regarding the portfolio management when the question was regarding divestments. The same is of course valid for acquisitions. Our strong focus is on organic growth. If we can add certain market access, if we can add interesting new technologies, if we can add new products or services, we of course also let that open and might also fill such a gap we see with an acquisition. We always said we are also prepared to leverage ourselves more if the right opportunity would arise. Again, our strong focus is organic growth via innovation and market penetration.
I see your last question. Can you please elaborate on the wind core materials? Is the recovery sustainable, and will balsa wood continue to be in favor?
The wind business was in the past always a cyclic business, but growing over the cycles. We believe that is going to continue. Nevertheless, as I showed in a few examples today, we also want to strengthen the non-wind market to leverage that power even more and that we also have kind of a natural hedge in our core materials business. Yes, we believe the market will continue to grow. Yes, we also believe that Balsa will play a key role also in the future, especially also in the wind business. We see that with the current growth we are achieving on our balsa wood side. If there are no more questions, thank you very much again for your interest in our company and for your time. If you have further questions, of course, we are always available. We wish you all the best and thank you for participating.