Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to SBO's Conference Call on our Half-Year Results of 2025. I'm happy to be joined today by our Executive Board, Klaus Mader and Campbell McPherson, and we'll have an interesting agenda for you today😔. We'll be sharing some updates on our recent business highlights with you. We will look at how we are executing our strategy, and of course, we'll look at the recent market developments and our financial performance for the first half of the year, but also specifically at the second quarter of 2023. After we've finished our presentation, we will be happy to take Q&As. I would encourage you to type your questions either into the prompts on your screen in front of you, or you're also happy to join the live Webex call. There's a link underneath the livestream window that you can click on and join us directly.
All right, without any further ado, I would like to hand it over to Klaus Mader and ask him to give us the presentation on the results.
Monika, thank you so much for this nice introduction. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Happy to do the call together with Campbell McPherson, Chief Operating Officer, and we are going to start, as indicated by Monika, with the business highlights. The business highlights in the first half of the year, I would like to start strategic. In March, we presented our strategy for the next years, and on July 1st, the change of the legal name to SBO AG, which we are named now, marked the completion of the brand repositioning. You may recall, the strategy is based on the four pillars: diversification, technology leadership, market expansion, and operational efficiency. All activities within SBO have to support and will support those four pillars. A strategy that is going to be executed over the next years long term.
We will talk a lot about the current environment, but please keep in mind the strategy that we presented half a year ago is going to be consistently executed, and we started that process already now. One example is the successful launch of technological innovations. Our downhole drilling tool portfolio has new innovations. You can find them also in our half-year report, and we are already gaining momentum with that as we are taking market shares with our upgrade of our downhole drilling tools fleet. The inauguration of the new site in Saudi Arabia that we have done at the end of April supports the pillar market expansion in the growing and fast-growing and interesting Middle East market.
The expansion in Vietnam that we have done in June when we had the inauguration will support the market expansion in Asia as well as operational efficiency in a more and more challenging market environment. One of our core competencies is our global footprint. Diversification through geothermal, carbon capture and storage drilling, lithium and helium drilling is going to continue with sizable business also in the second quarter and also in additive manufacturing. Here, I'm very happy to announce, and we have announced it already earlier today in our press release, the acquisition of 3T Additive Manufacturing Limited, a leading U.K -based provider of 3D metal printing solutions. I will provide more color on that after we have discussed the financials. The current market environment remains complex.
The tariffs uncertainty, the global trade tensions, the oversupply concerns on the market, the volatile commodity prices continue to weigh on the sentiment of our customers. What we have already discussed in May, and it also continued in the second quarter. Let me briefly provide you with the financial highlights that we are going to discuss then in more detail. Sales on a year-on-year basis declined by 12%, which is driven by the sales reduction in our precision technology division that could be partly compensated by increases in the energy equipment division, but not fully. This lower sales impacted also our profitability figures. EBITDA arrived at EUR 44.5 million and EBIT at EUR 28.6 million, but the margins remained resilient. The EBITDA margin of 17.5% was impacted by the lower result in precision technology, and the improvement of the significant improvement of the energy equipment division could partly offset that PT reduction.
We continue to generate positive cash flows also in the second quarter with some timing impacts in the second quarter, which will slip into the third quarter that I will explain in more detail later. Also, the dividend payment in May of EUR 27.6 million and the weaker U.S. dollar impacted our cash position, but it remains on a high EUR 279 million rounded. The balance sheet continues to be strong with an equity ratio of 47%, where we also have prepared a separate slide to discuss that in more detail. Coming to the sales and earnings on a group level, I mentioned it already, the sales reduction is driven by the precision technology performance, which has been partially offset by sales increases of energy equipment. Campbell will provide more color on sales performance and EBIT performance and profitability performance on the segment level.
The lower EBITDA of EUR 44.5 million compared to the EUR 53.1 million in the previous year and also the lower EBIT of EUR 28.6 million. The EBIT margins remained clearly in the double-digit profitability area. The lower margins at precision technology compared to the previous year have been partly compensated by higher margins of energy equipment, and the EBIT margin remained on solid 11%, and also the profit before tax margin remained in a double-digit area. What we have seen and what we will discuss in a second is significant foreign exchange impact between Q1 and Q2, where we have provided a separate slide. Before that, let me also elaborate on the headcount development because you see a reduction of the headcount from 1,600 employees rounded at the beginning of the year to 1,526. This is coming from managing this environment in the precision technology division by adjusting capacity by reducing cost.
This is what we are known for. We control what we control, and the headcount reduction is coming purely from the precision technology division. What I want to, and this is different from our standard presentation that we had in May, is a significant impact of foreign exchange when comparing the Q1 EBIT with the Q2 EBIT. Therefore, today we are providing you with an EBIT bridge to compare the Q1 results with the Q2 results. The decrease of the EBIT of EUR 8 million from Q1- Q2 is predominantly, namely, EUR 7 million resulting from foreign exchange impacts, especially from the weakening of the U.S. dollar. We have seen in the first half of the year the U.S. dollar weakening from 1.03 at the beginning of the year to 1.17, which is significant. As the majority of our business, namely more than 80% of our sales, is denominated in U.S.
dollars, this is, of course, impacting our sales profitability and also our balance sheet. When we compare the euro U.S. dollar average rate in the first quarter, it was 1.05, and it was 1.13 in the second quarter. This different translation of U.S. dollar sales and also profit resulted in a foreign exchange translation impact, a negative one of EUR 2 million. You may recall that we had rounded EUR 3 million exchange gains in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we had to suffer EUR 2 million foreign exchange losses, also driven by the weakening dollar. This gap of EUR 5 million was the second significant impact to the result. The rest is operational. Luckily, only to a lower extent, EUR 1 million is coming from the operations, where the lower sales and the lower capacity utilization at precision technology was partly offset by a better performance of energy equipment.
This is defining the EBIT bridge from the first quarter to the second quarter. With that color on the group level, I'm handing over to Campbell on the segment on the division level to provide you with more details.
Many thanks, Klaus, and good morning from my side to everybody. Let's look a little bit closer into the divisions, starting with the sales side of things. As Klaus mentioned, group sales declined 12% year- on- year to EUR 253.6 million, mainly due to the contraction in precision technology. Precision technology sales fell by 31%, reflecting the continued weak customer demand driven by the low investment appetite in the industry, given the relatively low commodity prices and, of course, the turmoil with the global trade uncertainties that are still ongoing, as Klaus has already mentioned. Throughout the period, we stayed focused on the things that we can control, adjusting capacity and costs across the division. We're very experienced at this, and we know the playbook very, very well. What's different now is we really continue to focus on protecting our core capabilities while prioritizing executing on our strategic initiatives.
In contrast, energy equipment performed strongly with sales up 11%, driven by increased adoption of new technologies, especially in well completions, but not only in well completions. This led to market share gains in the U.S. and further international expansion. Group bookings came in at EUR 216.9 million, down 12.7% year- on- year, but stable quarter- on- quarter at EUR 108.8 million. Order backlog closed at EUR 103.3 million, down from EUR 141.8 million at year end, reflecting more cautious customer sentiment and environment. Across both PT and the EE, our actions were guided by the four central pillars of our strategy that Klaus mentioned in the intro: diversification, market expansion, technology leadership, and operational excellence. In precision technology, we continued to manage the variables within our control while staying focused on strategic execution. In energy equipment, we outperformed the market through internally driven progress aligned with these pillars.
Next, look at EBITDA for the divisions. EBITDA decreased to EUR 44.5 million, down 16% from last year, primarily driven, of course, by the EUR 34.5 million reduction in sales. In precision technology, margins were naturally impacted by the 31% drop in sales, as well as our gross margin due to a lower capacity utilization within that division. In Q2, though, PT's EBITDA margin declined by only 2.2 percentage points quarter on quarter when we adjust for the positive foreign exchange impact in Q1. So 18.5% in Q1 versus 16.3% in Q2. Meanwhile, energy equipment delivered an excellent performance, helping offset part of the group decline. Their EBITDA margin rose to 17.6%, bearing in mind the last period it was 10.2% for H1 2024, and EBITDA almost doubled to EUR 25.5 million. This was supported by higher sales volumes in the U.S. and improved operational efficiency.
Overall, the group EBITDA margin remains solid at 17.5%, only slightly below last year's 18.4%, with the improvement in energy equipment helping to hold up the overall margin. I think for energy equipment, this continues to demonstrate the effectiveness of the measures we took in the first half of last year and our strategic market expansion efforts. With that, I will hand back over to Klaus.
Campbell, thank you so much. After we discussed P&L, sales and profitability on the group, and also on a segment level, I will continue with the cash flow generation. I mentioned it already, we continued to generate positive cash flows also in the second quarter, but at a lower pace of EUR 5 million. I read it already earlier in some of the analysts' reports, ladies and gentlemen, nothing to be concerned about. It was predominantly driven by tiny impacts of the collection of accounts receivable. Already in the month of July, we generated more cash than in the complete second quarter. There is nothing to be worried about. It was a tiny impact, and we have those shifts among the quarters, and in the second quarter, it was the case. Working capital is under control. Inventory and accounts receivable are managed well, and this will shift to the third quarter.
Although free cash flow also includes capital expenditure, and here we have a clear plan that we also invest into strategic initiatives. The expansion of Vietnam in the first half of the year, and also the bigger facility for Wellbos in Dubai to establish a second headquarter of well completion resulted in higher CapEx. This is why we are investing, and this is why we are also investing in the future. When we come to the balance sheet, it remains solid as we are known for. The significant weakening of the U.S. dollar definitely had impact on our key figures. To name the most prominent one is the equity, which decreased from more than EUR 419 million to roughly EUR 420 million, EUR 419 million exactly, although we were generating a net income of EUR 19 million.
This can be explained with the dividend payments that we have done in the second quarter in May, where we paid almost EUR 28 million and returned it to the shareholders and a significantly weaker U.S. dollar because here we have to compare the closing rates from 1.03- 1.17. This had a significant impact of EUR 65 million on this currency translation reserve that you will also find in the balance sheet. The equity ratio remained high at 47%, and if you would deduct the liquid funds from the total balance sheet assets, it would even be in the mid-60s. SBO continues to have a very solid financial position. The cash decreased to, and I mentioned it already at the highlights, to EUR 279 million, also impacted by foreign exchange effects and also, of course, the dividend payment.
This temporarily increased the net debt to EUR 82 million, but already the month of July is taking that figure down and is taking that figure down in the gearing ratio of about 15%, which was close to 20% at the end of June. Let us now talk about the market outlook and how this is impacting our business also on the two divisions. You will see a similar slide that we had back in May because also at our Q1 earnings call, the market sentiment was a very similar one. The uncertainty in the global trade policies, the persistently low oil prices, the risk of an oversupplied market was also the mantra when we had our last discussion in May. Trade agreements brought some clarity, but the uncertainty remains because the interpretation of the trade agreements, still no trade agreement between the U.S.
and China, and you see changes here and there, continues our customers in the wait and see approach. This mix is, of course, creating higher uncertainty, lower visibility, and our customers are cautious and continue to spend less, although the bookings in the second quarter were on the level of the first quarter. This is the complex and challenging market environment that we are in. Also, the latest Evercore E&P spendings report is now talking about a declining CapEx for this year. After half a year ago, there was an increase mentioned. We know how to handle that environment. What Campbell always says, we control what we can control. The customer demand is expected to remain subdued for the remainder of this year. We know what needs to be done. We are adjusting capacities.
We are adjusting our cost base, not only by reducing headcount, but with a strict cost discipline, what SBO is known for in the cycle management. That is definitely the key theme that we are having at the moment in the precision technology division on the short-term priorities. This situation will not continue forever, but this is the situation that we are currently in, and we expect it also to continue for the remainder of 2025. In the energy equipment division, the market softness in the U.S. drilling and completion part is expected to continue. The good news is that we are in the energy equipment outperforming that market.
You saw that in the first half of the year with a sales increase of 11%, driven by market share gains in the U.S., but also our continued international expansion, and this successful market expansion on the international markets, as well as the introduction of technological innovations, helped us to increase our performance in the energy equipment division, even in a more and more challenging environment with rig count dropping and also frack crews reducing. The tariff discussion is and continues to be on the agenda. We talked a lot about our implications on the tariffs in our Q1 conference call when we described to you how our global footprint is, how our supply chains are. At that time, guided by saying that we are impacted by tariffs in our P&L, but not heavily.
Much more uncertainty is causing the so-called secondary effects, namely the uncertainty in the market, what does this do, and therefore also the subdued investment behavior of our customers. I would like to look also beyond the short-term uncertainties and priorities that we will manage, as we always manage them, and want to discuss also our long-term growth opportunities. In precision technology, the strategy is clear, and the strategic execution is expansion into forward-looking business areas, finding other attractive industries, especially also through additive manufacturing. Here, I'm very happy to announce the acquisition of 3T Additive Manufacturing Limited in the U.K earlier this week. We signed the agreement on Tuesday, so just 48 hours ago. I have prepared a separate slide for that, and will give you more color in a minute. Let me continue also first with energy equipment.
Here, the continued focus on technology innovations that you will also find in more detail in our half-year report. The diversification of our product portfolio in energy transition, also here, we have mentioned geothermal, carbon capture and storage, lithium and helium drilling activities and business, and expanding our Middle East footprint in well completion with the second headquarter of Wellbos, which we talked about at the Capital Markets Day earlier this year. The outlook is also that we will continue to outperform the market and will do in energy equipment better in the second half of the year, also compared to the previous year. As the final slides, let us talk briefly about 3T Additive Manufacturing Limited, which is a leading provider of additive manufacturing 3D metal printing solutions. The company is based in Newbury, U.K., which is not too far away.
It's a little bit west of London, 45 minutes away from Heathrow Airport. 3T offers the full value chain from design, prototyping, development, serial production, and post-processing. This is key, ladies and gentlemen, in additive manufacturing to be vertically integrated, namely from the know-how in the high-performance materials to the 3D metal printing itself, as well as also the post-processing activities that you have to do after printing the metal part. This is key, and this is also based on our core competence: high-performance materials, additive manufacturing, subtractive manufacturing, and therefore, it is a perfect fit, also a perfect strategic fit. 3T serves a diversified customer base across various industries: aerospace, space, defense, semiconductor, oil and gas, and other industrial sectors. It will also help us to diversify.
From a process point of view, we entered into an agreement to acquire 3T this week, on Tuesday, and the transaction is subject to regulatory approval, which we will clearly expect in the second half of this year. This will strengthen our position in additive manufacturing. We will accelerate with this acquisition our additive manufacturing strategy by gaining access to an established client base, a fully integrated manufacturing site equipped with high-precision 3D metal printers. The company generated GBP 5 million of sales in the year 2024, and the purchase price is EUR 5.5 million. I assume that you will have more questions in the Q&A related to that acquisition. With this positive news, also in terms of strategic execution, we end our presentation now and are happy to take your questions.
Thank you, Klaus. Thank you, Campbell, for these interesting business highlights, especially the exciting news on the acquisition of 3T. We would like to open it up now for Q&As, and I would like to ask everyone who's joining us on the Webex call to raise their hands to make yourself visible and then unmute your microphone if I call your name, or otherwise drop us the questions you have in the Q&A tool online. Okay. I'm giving this a minute for people to raise their questions. Baptiste has a question. He says, "Hi, thanks for the update and congrats on the acquisition. In terms of margin, how should we think margins for 3 additive manufacturing?
Klaus, I think that's a [crosstalk]
Yeah, I will take that question, of course. Baptiste, first of all, thank you for your interest and good morning to you, to Paris. I said already that this acquisition clearly meets our M&A criteria that we set and also communicated earlier this year. This means that there is a clear path also to have an accretive EBITDA margin of more than 20% going forward.
Okay. Thank you, Klaus. We have another question coming in from Richard Dawson-Berenberg. Hi, Richard. His question is, "In precision technology, your outlook points to another six months of subdued demand expected for the second half. What could cause this to change in 2026? Is there any indication at this point that 2026 could be an improvement to 2025?" Campbell?
Yeah, I'll take that question. Thank you, Richard, for that. In terms of the outlook going forward, I think, as Klaus elaborated very clearly, the market environment remains very challenging and complex. Our customers have become very cautious and hesitant in their planning and ordering going forward. I remember at the last earnings call, you asked about the trade tariff policies and when we will get some clarity on it. Now we're past that period of time. While some of the trade policies have settled down, there are some agreements in place. There are still some outstanding issues in relation to trade tariff policies as well. China is a big one. We've just extended that by 90 days. A lot of our customers source a lot of their products through their supply chain in China. Right now, that tariff is between 30% and 50% for products.
They are in deep discussions with us and other suppliers about how they can manage and mitigate those things. I think until we see that trade tariff issues starting to settle down, people will be very hesitant to place orders and demand to come back until that settles down. In our discussions with our customers, the majority of them are saying it's going to be definitely out towards the end of this year, the beginning of next year. They expect and anticipate demand to pick up based on the tariff situation settling out in particular. Hopefully, that answers some of your questions, Emmerich.
Thanks, Campbell. In fact, Richard has a second question, this time on energy equipment. His question reads, "The outlook for energy equipment is for it to outperform the overall market. We're still seeing softness in U.S. recounts and commodity prices." The key question is, what do you expect the overall market to do in 2025?
Yeah, I'll take that. I think in terms of the overall market in 2025, it's clear that in the drillings and completion market in the U.S., it's going to continue to generally slow down apart. We're very confident in energy equipment that we can outperform that, as Klaus has already said, introducing a lot of new technical innovation into the business, continuing with our overall market expansion in certain regions as well. Of course, if it continues to go very fastly, that is obviously going to have an impact on our margins. If it continues to be flat, flattish, just slightly lower, then in energy equipment, we feel very confident we're well placed with what we're bringing to the market and all of the operational efficiencies and changes we put into the business last year that we can perform against it.
Very good. Thank you, Campbell. I'm checking for more questions online. Do we have any more questions in the call? Seems like we've explained the majority of it. Oh, Baptiste has another question.
Good.
In terms of CapEx organic, should we expect a decline of CapEx in the second half of 2025?
Let me take that. I said initially, we planned 2025 CapEx at roughly last year's level. However, given the attractive opportunities emerging in the market, we're very prepared to increase our investments selectively if they support profitable growth and align with our strategic priorities. It may be that you see an increase in CapEx towards the second half of the year if we see the right thing to invest in that is fully aligned with our strategic priorities.
Okay. Thank you, Campbell. Thank you, Baptiste, for your questions, and Richard as well. Any other questions in the call? Yes, there is another one from Richard. Just a clarification, there was more than doubling in corporate expenses of EUR 3.7 million for the first half at the EBIT level versus last year. What is driving this increase, and should we expect something similar in the second half?
Richard, thank you for this question. This is driven by the foreign exchange losses. What you need to know is that on corporate, we also have U.S. dollar deposits, and this was mainly driven by this impact. U.S. dollar deposits in cash at the holding level here in Austria with our functional currency in Europe. Should the euro U.S. dollar exchange rate remain on that level, you should not expect that to continue.
Okay. Very clear. Do we have any further questions? Okay. I'm checking one more time. I don't see any other questions coming up in the tool or in the call. I would propose I'll give it back to you, Klaus, for your closing statement.
Monika, thank you very much. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your interest. Much appreciated, also the questions. What I would like to ask you as a takeaway is we have discussed the financial performance. We discussed the current situation that we know how to manage in precision technology, but also in energy equipment. There is also a longer-term path. There is a timeline beyond the short-term priorities that we have defined earlier this year with the strategy, and we are consistently executing this strategy. There are interesting markets out there with additive manufacturing, also geothermal, for example. Geothermal as a stable baseload to produce energy for data centers. This is more a mid to long-term story, and it will be done with the technologies from the oil and gas industry.
We are investing in that business, demonstrated also by the recent acquisition of 3T Additive Manufacturing that will allow us to diversify. Here, qualification processes take years. We have now acquired a customer pipeline and also an order book. This will support us in executing on our strategy that is still valid, but it is something for the next five years. Please take that also as a takeaway from, of course, the understood quarter-to-quarter performance discussions, but SBO has a strategy, has a plan, and is going to execute it. With that final statement, I wish you a nice remaining summer. Some of you, we will hear earlier, the others won't in November. I hand over back to Monika for the announcement of the Q3 call.
Yes, thank you very much, Klaus and Campbell, for your interesting insights into our business. I would like to thank you all for joining as well and the questions you raised. We're closing the call for now. I'm wishing you a nice rest of your day. If there's any remaining questions that you would like to address, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, we'll see you again back in November, on the 20th of November, to be exact, with our Q3 announcement call. Thank you very much and have a great rest of your day. Bye-bye.