Operator: Welcome to the Dürr conference call for the preliminary figures of 2025. I will now hand over to Mathias Christen.
Mathias Christen: Thank you, Anna. Welcome to today's call, ladies and gentlemen. The corresponding presentation is available on our website, and I assume you have it in front of you. As you know, we published select key figures in an ad hoc release already on February 17. Nonetheless, there are still enough figures and news to share with you today. The figures usually relate to continued operations with some exceptions that will be marked. Our CEO, Jochen Weyrauch will start on Page 2 before Dietmar Heinrich, our CFO, will take you through the financials. Jochen, the floor is yours, please.
Jochen Weyrauch: Thank you, Mathias, and good afternoon to all participants on the call. As the most important figures, as Mathias said, were already released, I would like to start with a wider perspective and share with you what I personally consider the most important achievements of 2025. Basically, we delivered on what we promised. We simplified our group structure and turned Dürr in a more focused technology company with only 3 instead of 5 divisions. This involves sharpening our focus on the core business, which is automating production processes and making them more sustainable and efficient or Sustainable Automation as we call it. In this context, we successfully sold the noncore environmental technology business with a high post-tax book gain of EUR 227 million. On top, we started resizing our administrative structure to adapt to a smaller scope of business and tackle cost savings of EUR 50 million. This was after the capacity measures at HOMAG, a further major step to systematically reduce our fixed costs. The effectiveness of our cost-cutting measures is being testified by the improved operating performance in 2025 that was achieved despite the adverse macro environment. Next is Slide 3. The improved operating performance is reflected by 100 basis points improvement of the EBIT margin before extraordinaries. At 5.6%, the margin even slightly exceeded the target corridor of 4.5% to 5.5%. The group's net profit of EUR 206 million benefited from the good operating performance and the high book profit from the environmental technology sale. At EUR 227 million, the book profit was higher than assumed, mainly due to valuation and currency effects. We met our revised order intake guidance, thanks to a strong finish [ to the ] year. In Q4, customers have more flexibly adapted to the uncertain environment and started to place large strategical orders again. However, I would like to underline that we might see quarterly fluctuations in new orders again as the macro volatility remains high. Sales stood at EUR 4.2 billion and we were not satisfied. But given the fact that we were facing customer-induced project delays, I would still call them solid. Free cash flow for the continued operations reached EUR 162 million and was appreciably higher than projected, mainly because of very high premature payments in Q4 that were expected in 2026. For 2026, we see potential for further earnings improvement. I'd like to talk about the drivers in a few minutes. Slide 4 shows the already released figures relating to the developments I just described. I would like to highlight that we managed to increase operating EBIT by 19% despite the slight drop in sales. This was mainly supported by 50% earnings increase at HOMAG and further improvements in Automotive from an already high base level. Moreover, we benefited from lower cost -- lower expenses for our OneDürrGroup synergy program that will be closed in 2026. On Slide 5, you see strong fourth quarters are not -- as you can see -- as we already mentioned a number of times, strong fourth quarters are not unusual at Dürr. Nonetheless, Q4 2025 was a really good one. As I already mentioned, the good levels of order intake and free cash flow, I would like to underscore the high 7.4% EBIT margin before extraordinaries, mainly resulting from an 11% margin in Automotive and an above 6% margin at HOMAG. Automotive's high margin reflects the division's best-in-class project execution and the effects of the value before volume strategy while HOMAG benefited from its self-help measures. Slide 6 shows that we met or exceeded all of our targets that has in part been revised in July. Please note that the low reported EBIT margin of 0.7% was influenced by high extraordinary expenses of EUR 204 million, while the book gain of EUR 264 million before taxes was not considered in EBIT as it is not attributable to the continued business. On the opposite, net income of the group includes the post-tax book profit and thus doubled to EUR 206 million. Slide 7 reveals the strong impact of the tariff conflicts on order intake in Q2 and Q3. In both quarters, new orders were almost EUR 300 million lower than they should have been in order to meet our initial guidance from March. Q4 included 2 major automotive orders from U.S. and Eastern Europe and the largest order ever for HOMAG in timber house construction equipment. This order from North America has a volume of not much less than EUR 100 million and underlines the outstanding market position of HOMAG when it comes to really large projects. Slide 8, please. The global distribution of order intake was well balanced. We saw the expected declines in those regions that we were very strong in 2025. That means Europe and particularly Germany. While the China share continued to decline, we benefited from higher dynamics in other Asian countries, especially India and Saudi Arabia. Slide 9 underscores that the sale of the environmental technology business was a really successful transaction. This is mainly expressed by the high book profit. Before 2018, [ these ] environmental technology activities were a low-performing business. Then we acquired our main competitor, MEGTEC/Universal, shaped an integrated global player with best-in-class technology and consequently created additional value. This value is reflected in the high book gain we generated from the sale. When looking at the lower table, please keep in mind that the 12% margin in 2025 is not an adequate measure for assessing the selling transaction as it includes EUR 9 million of positive nonoperating allocation effects. Let's have a look on the divisions, starting on Page 11 with Automotive. Looking at the 29% drop in order intake, please consider that the 2024 base was very high due to several exceptionally large orders. On the opposite, Q2 and Q3 2025 were exceptionally weak as automotive OEMs postponed CapEx decisions due to tariff-induced uncertainty. Q4 was appreciably better again with customers resuming strategically important projects. At constant sales, the operating margin exceeded last year's high level and reached a strong 11% in Q4. There were 2 decisive factors for this. Our excellence in order execution under the umbrella of the combined Automotive division and our value before volume strategy with its focus on margins, strong projects in the sales process. Page 12. At the Industrial Automation, order intake [indiscernible] were mainly burdened by the market weakness in the lithium-ion battery business. We restructured this business and transferred it to the Automotive division at the beginning of 2026 to make use of Automotive's execution strength. The negative EBIT includes impairments of EUR 135 million. Of this, EUR 120 million are attributable to the impairment of BBS Automation in July. Further impairments of EUR 15 million were recognized in the battery business in Q4, reflecting the weaker market outlook. A quick view on the other 2 businesses of Industrial Automation. Schenck's balancing technology business showed a very good earnings performance, while at BBS Automation, there's still room for improvement. We installed a new management at BBS at the beginning of 2026, headed by the former Chief Operating Officer of HOMAG. His task is to improve operating excellence at BBS and further develop the strategy. He has a great track record at HOMAG, and I'm very sure he will do a very good job at Industrial Automation and BBS as well. Speaking about HOMAG, the main message on Page 13 is that the division made excellent margin progress despite slightly lower sales and was able to much better cope with the difficult furniture market environment than in 2024. The margin increase of just under 200 basis points is the result of self-help measures and successfully reduced fixed costs. Order intake slightly grew on the back of the accelerating demand in the timber house sector. 3 years after the beginning of the market weakness in the furniture sector, it's still difficult to tell when there will be a real recovery. But what we know is that HOMAG is well prepared for it. Next is Page 14. Service sales were almost on last year's level, even though the uncertain environment prompted customers to temporarily be more cautious in their service spending. With this, I hand over to Dietmar, who will take you through the financials.
Dietmar Heinrich: Thank you, Jochen. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome also from my side. Page 16 basically presents figures Jochen already touched upon. Therefore, I would like to limit myself on shedding some light on net income. You can see 2 net income figures here. The first one is minus EUR 50 million for the continuing operations, resulting from the high extraordinary expenses of EUR 204 million, of which EUR 135 million were impairment driven. We will get back to this point more in details later on as well. On the second topic on the bottom, you can see the net income of EUR 206 million of the group as a whole. This additionally includes the post-tax book gain of EUR 227 million from the environmental technology sale. Slide 17 contains information on the quarterly and regional sales split which will certainly be helpful for your follow-up analysis. For now, I would like to directly jump to Slide 18 with the EBIT before extraordinary effects. As mentioned, operating earnings increased by a high 19%, spurred by a strong second half when HOMAG fully benefited from its self-help measures and Automotive contributed very high earnings. High margin towards the end of the year are a characteristic at Dürr. But the 7.4% in Q4 2025 are really remarkable and came close to our midterm target level of 8%. The main earnings driver in the full year was a gross profit increase of EUR 23 million based on lower material costs, good order execution and well-managed personnel costs. And this despite a sales drop compared to previous year. On top, we benefited from lower costs for the OneDürrGroup synergy program as well as from lower negative allocation effects of EUR 9 million. On Slide 19, we show the composition of the extraordinary expenses of EUR 204 million in continued operations. 2/3 were attributable to the impairments and will not lead to any cash out. The second largest item was cost of EUR 38 million for restructuring measures, mainly for the admin adjustments announced in mid-2025 that are well on track. PPA decreased from EUR 42 million to EUR 28 million. On the group level, the extraordinary expenses were opposed by the high book gain of EUR 264 million from the environmental technology transaction. Now let's turn to Page 20. Back in December, we announced that free cash flow would be in the range of EUR 100 million to EUR 200 million and exceed the original target of up to EUR 50 million. In fact, it reached EUR 162 million in the continued business. This resulted from very high customer prepayments before Christmas. We were often asked about the reasons for this. The answer has a lot to do with customers' balance sheet and cash flow considerations. If they expect lower cash flows in the year to come, they will bring forward payments to the old year to reduce future cash outs. Beyond high prepayments, free cash flow mainly benefited from lower cash outs for investments. Page 21 shows that we kept net working capital under respective 2024 levels during the complete year with very low days working capital of 27 at the year-end. While the business volume was almost constant with a sales decline of just under 3%, we strongly reduced inventories, receivables and contract assets. This shows that we are able to keep a decent level of cash in the company, which is even more important when macro uncertainty is high. I'm pleased to say that we saw strong progress in net working capital management at BBS Automation under the Dürr umbrella and that the Automotive division managed to further reduce net working capital to less than 0. Page 22 is next. In the group as a whole, free cash flow expanded to EUR 193 million. Based on this and the EUR 295 million proceeds from the environmental technology sale, we were able to reduce net financial debt by EUR 330 million to only EUR 66 million. This equals to a low leverage of 0.2 and brought back debt to the very comfortable levels before the acquisition of BBS Automation in 2023. My last slide, #23, is on ESG. I would like to point out 2 important facts in our climate reporting. The first one is a reduction of Scope 3 emissions by 27% in 2025. Scope 3 mainly includes emissions in the use phase of our products. 27% is an enormous decline. This figure illustrates the very high relevance of our painting equipment for reducing our customers' CO2 footprint. The reason for the strong reduction is that a large share of the painting equipment we commissioned in 2025 features low-emission technology. The prime example is the world's first paint shop to operate entirely without fossil fuels that we handed over to a customer in Europe. The second fact I would like to draw your attention on is related to the EU taxonomy. We were able for the first time to recognize sales from the spare parts and service business in our taxonomy eligible and taxonomy aligned revenues. This means that almost 1/4 of group revenues are taxonomy aligned compared to 13% in 2024. With this, I would like to hand back to Jochen, who will make you familiar with the outlook for 2026.
Jochen Weyrauch: Thank you, Dietmar. Slide 25 expresses that we expect the high level of macro uncertainty to persist in 2026. And looking at the war in the Middle East, this assumption seems absolutely justified. Automotive, we see a solid pipeline with quite a number of CapEx projects in the field of painting and assembly technology. However, the lesson learned from 2025 is that predicting the timing of contract awards is difficult nowadays. There's enough new business out there, but we cannot rule out that projects expected for 2026 might be postponed. Industrial Automation continues to see good prospects in the medtech and consumer sector, while new business with auto OEMs and suppliers is expected to remain volatile given the slower pace of EV transformation. At Woodworking or HOMAG, it's difficult to predict when the furniture business will finally recover. From today's point of view, we would rather expect another challenging year. However, HOMAG is strong enough to cope with this, especially given the upward trend in the timber house business that will support utilization and sales realization. Page 26, please. The war in the Middle East additionally threatens economic stability. This increases uncertainty and makes the outlook for 2026 even more difficult. Provided that the war will not further escalate, but rather be finished in the foreseeable future and under the assumption that no other international conflicts put additional pressure on supply chains and economic stability, we can give the following guidance for 2026. Sounds like a little longer disclaimer this year, however. We see potential to increase both order intake and sales. In the best case, order intake could rise up by up to 8% to EUR 4.2 billion, while sales could expand to up to EUR 4.3 billion. Looking at the ongoing uncertainties and the fragile geopolitical situation, however, we also included the possibility of declining new orders and sales in the guidance. With respect to earnings, our target is to further improve the operating performance and to increase the EBIT margin before extraordinaries to up to 6.5%. This also requires that the world will return to a more stable state soon. Supporting factors from earnings increase in 2026 include further earnings potential at HOMAG, operating improvements at BBS Automation, positive effects from the capacity cuts in the administrative sector and the battery business as well as strongly reduced expenses for the OneDürrGroup synergy program. On the opposite, we expect a onetime burden of around EUR 10 million at HOMAG for the transition to a new ERP system and for ramping up a new factory in Poland that will yield efficiency improvements from 2027 on. For free cash flow, we are giving a guidance of EUR 150 million minus to EUR 0 million. This considers the advanced customer payments at the end of 2025, higher net working capital needs for 2026, the tax payments for the environmental technology sale and the cash out for the administrative adjustments. Moreover, there might be a payment resulting from a tax audit that we will have examined by court, however. Upside potential for free cash flow may arise from customer prepayments in the course of the year that are not yet fully foreseeable. Page 27, please. To keep it short, I would like to refrain from going into detail on the divisional outlook. When looking at this, please note that the shift of the battery business from Industrial Automation to Automotive at the beginning of 2026 and the transfer of the BENZ Tooling business to Woodworking. The joint sales volume of both businesses is around EUR 100 million. This brings us to the summary on Slide 28. 2025 was marked by the transformation of Dürr into a leaner group with only 3 divisions and full focus on automation and sustainable production. Alongside with this, we improved our earnings resilience. Our 2 largest divisions, Automotive and Woodworking, were able to increase earnings in an adverse environment based on operating excellence and self-help measures. Industrial Automation will go the same way and improve its performance under the new management. Order intake was impacted by market uncertainties in 2025, but there is potential for improvements in 2026, provided that the extremely high level of uncertainty that we are facing right now will not last too long. Sales should, if at all, only grow slightly in 2026, but are expected to accelerate more strongly again in 2027. Provided that the geopolitical situation will calm down soon, there are good prospects for further margin improvements in 2026 and beyond based on operating excellence and further cost reductions, for example, in administration. Free cash flow will probably be lower in 2026. However, given our business model, it makes more sense to look at the 3-year cash flow average as this smooths out the high fluctuations in customer payments. Our balance sheet is very solid, securing the funds to grow and further develop our business. In 2026, we will put full focus on further strengthening our efficiency and operating excellence, especially at BBS Automation. Large acquisitions should not be expected this year, but are an option to speed up top line growth beyond 2026. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening. Dietmar and I will now be happy to answer your questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We have a couple of questions already incoming. We will start with the first question from Nikita Papaccio, Deutsche Bank.
Nikita Lal: I would actually have 3. The first one is on your service part of the business. The share of revenues is fluctuating close to 30%. Are there any initiatives or planning to increase the share? The second one is on your margin guidance for your automation business. I understand that you installed a new management team, but could you explain in more detail the building blocks of the margin improvement in 2026, please? And my final question is on dividends. Maybe I oversee it, but any comments here would be really helpful.
Jochen Weyrauch: Thank you for your question, Nikita. First on service. We have always ongoing initiatives for the service business. And it's a bit different by division. We have already a very good share of service revenues in Automotive, which we are further expanding with new offerings, for example, our spare parts in many cases now comprise RFID chips to make it easier for our customers to track the lifetime of our products on the one hand. But on the other hand, of course, make our business more captive as companies, let me simplify, like pirates are more difficult to work on similar spare parts. We use a lot digital products in the service system now partially based already on artificial intelligence. This maybe on Automotive. On the HOMAG side, we are developing because we have a very high installed base, a very complex installed base. We are developing very special standardized service and upgrade programs that will help to support the service there as well, just given a few examples. And as you can see on our Industrial Automation business, especially at the BBS side, is not so much used to a strong service business yet. There, we're really kicking off programs to benefit from the [ potential ] that's out there. So lots of programs. And this makes us really very confident that this business will grow. And actually, we've set this as a strategic target even down to our remuneration for the year. On the margin guidance for Industrial Automation, the blocks and improvements, Dietmar, do you want to cover a few topics where we see the improvements?
Dietmar Heinrich: It's on one side, continuing the optimization measures that are already established. We will on the -- one impact have the -- negative impact from the lithium-ion business that Jochen mentioned before that was under stress, and we had to do the impairment actually is removed to auto. This helps them to lift already to a certain extent then the margin. The second topic is that we are working on operational excellence in project management that we are improving the footprint continuously. We are combining 2 locations here in Germany that are very close together. That's already agreed upon with the works council there so that we can realize synergies. So that's why we are finally confident that we can reach the margin improvement, but it's not yet where we want to go. So there are still further steps to come finally beyond 2026.
Jochen Weyrauch: On the dividends, I think we have -- there is nothing to be communicated yet. So it's difficult to comment on it at this point.
Dietmar Heinrich: But Nikita, maybe to add, Jochen, we have the guardrails of 30% to 40% of the net income, but you are for sure aware that in case of extraordinary charges, we did some adjustments. This year, we have, 2025, an extraordinary benefit. So we might consider this. But in general, we are a good friend of a continuous dividend policy. And of course, nevertheless, having our shareholders having a share of the -- or the income [ that is the ] benefit that we produce. So it's a very generic statement, I have to say. We will discuss with the Supervisory Board. And when we get out with the final report at the end of March, you will get information in that regard.
Operator: All right. The next question is from Philippe Lorrain from Bernstein.
Philippe Lorrain: So I also have like a few questions. So maybe if I can just follow up a little bit on the impairment that you were mentioning for Industrial Automation, if you can quantify that? And also with regard to the guidance that you provide per division, you give indications on the sales for 2025 in the lithium-ion battery system business and also for BENZ. But looking at 2026, what would have been like the kind of figures that you were anticipating for this in terms of order intake and also like the margin impact, maybe the dilutive margin impact on Automotive and the relative margin impact on Industrial Automation would help a little bit. So that would be the first question.
Dietmar Heinrich: So Philippe, in regard to the impairment, just to make sure it's LIB that you mentioned.
Philippe Lorrain: Yes...
Dietmar Heinrich: Because I was still busy taking note, sorry for that. Yes, it's the market situation in the battery market in European market is very, very difficult. That's the area that we focus on because we have been of the opinion that we can gain business in the European market with the drive also for independency in regard to battery supplies in the European Union. We can see that from a customer perspective, this did not materialize finally. We could see the difficulties of Northvolt. We could see Porsche's announcement regarding their joint venture, Cellforce. And we do see that last year, the market in regard to new business was very, very low. At the very end of -- then we reviewed the business opportunities, we reviewed the business plan, and we came to the conclusion that for the foreseeable future, it's not going to build up then finally in the area that we really targeted. And we did then finally impairment of EUR 15 million. So the impairment as a whole is EUR 135 million. As I mentioned before, thereof the EUR 120 million for BBS that we already [ or PAS ] at that time that we already did at the end of the first half of the year and the EUR 15 million now in the fourth quarter for LIB.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. So the margin -- yes, sir.
Jochen Weyrauch: Maybe to add to that - go ahead, Philippe. Go.
Philippe Lorrain: No, I was just meaning -- so the margin step-ups come basically from the fact that we just reduced the amount of depreciation going forward?
Jochen Weyrauch: Yes, it's also operational improvement. So we expect a significant -- after restructuring we've made in the lithium-ion business, we really expect even close to double-digit million improvement in the lithium-ion business as such operationally independent from any depreciations on the business. You were asking also on the dilution for the business, it's...
Dietmar Heinrich: Based on last year, it would be around 70 basis points for Automotive in the margin.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. So basically, so if I take like the 7% to 8% target -- margin target range, sorry, for 2026, I would need to hike that by basically like around 70 bps. So more or less what you expect...
Dietmar Heinrich: Philippe, when you look to 2020 figures, then you would go down from the 8.6% towards 7.9% in order to have it comparable. And in regard to 2026 guidance, as Jochen outlined, we want to bring back the figure to the breakeven or the business to breakeven for 2026. So the dilutive effect is significantly smaller.
Jochen Weyrauch: More comes from volume. And you were asking about volumes, both businesses are in the magnitude of EUR 50 million or a bit more at the moment.
Philippe Lorrain: So that was the order intake volume for the LIB.
Jochen Weyrauch: Also order intake on lithium-ion was lower last year. We had a good 2024 with a large order that we're currently still executing and BENZ would be around the EUR 50 million roughly, yes.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. Perfect. Then I have like one question maybe on the large order that you had for timber house for HOMAG in Q4, if you can quantify a little bit that kind of impact?
Jochen Weyrauch: Yes. That order was close to EUR 100 million in order intake is coming from North America. It will be executed this year and to some extent, also next year. And all in all, in that area, what we call [indiscernible], which is the wooden houses business, we had an order intake of about EUR 200 million last year, record order intake.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay, including that order?
Jochen Weyrauch: Including that order, yes.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. Perfect. I've got 2 more technical questions, so to say, for you. So the first one is on the announcement that you already preemptively make that you are to revise the 2030 sales guidance. So obviously, there's a need to adjust anyway for the sale of the environmental business of CTS. But are there any other reasons also that push you to do that, say, for instance, like the slightly lighter anticipation in terms of order intake for 2026 versus what could have -- one could have expected, so let's say, me, for example, in terms of growth and also generally like the cautious stance that you have with regard to the geopolitical situation?
Jochen Weyrauch: All of what you're saying is valid in a certain sense. However, EUR 100 million up or down, maybe I'm a bit too generous now, in 2026 don't have much impact on 2030, at least I hope. So CTS is a valid discussion. We will be, of course, reviewing growth potentials, which currently we are really revisiting in order to, not too far in the future, redefine what would bring us to the EUR 6 billion or whether the EUR 6 billion are still the EUR 6 billion.
Dietmar Heinrich: And Philippe, it's always including both organic growth and inorganic growth, which means acquisition, Jochen pointed out with -- on the presentation, you can see 2026 is on efficiency. But of course, for the future, especially when opportunities coming up to strengthen the business, we will seriously diligently look into them.
Jochen Weyrauch: Within the core business.
Dietmar Heinrich: Within the core business and with net debt being reduced to a level close to 0, we are also now having a good headroom again to act when opportunities are coming up in the future.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. So maybe you will actually stop targeting such a fixed figure, including, let's say, like M&A and so on and rather guide organically that could actually like be wiser, I guess, going forward?
Dietmar Heinrich: We will take it into consideration.
Philippe Lorrain: Yes. That's good. And finally, I've got a question for you, Dietmar, because you were mentioning the fact that contract assets were actually reduced. So to which extent do you manage to proactively reduce or keep that under control versus what is it that you actually cannot control? Because I understand there's always a relation between that item and also the sales recognition and the earnings recognition and actually, the market typically likes if contract assets are not too much inflated. So it's good news here, but we get that to be seen. But I was wondering whether there's actually like -- really like something that you can control versus something that you have to actually deal with.
Dietmar Heinrich: Yes, you're right, Philippe, and looking into the number, we had a decline of EUR 84 million from end of 2024 to end of '25. So that's a significant decline. But basically, I would say the majority of this, we can manage. I think one of the reasons for this at the very end is in conjunction with the sales recognization, especially the excellent EBIT margin on the automotive side in the fourth quarter business. So a couple of projects have been completed. We had to -- or we could then finally realize the outstanding sales. We could realize then also the profit with releasing contingencies that we had in there, and that was also making a contribution to the drop in the total contract assets as well.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. Perfect. And if you don't mind just like a very -- like a little housekeeping stuff. So you mentioned EUR 10 million of cost for HOMAG for ERP transition. Is it going to be recognized below the line, so i.e., in earnings adjustments or within the guided margin?
Dietmar Heinrich: We had internally some discussion, but let's say it this way, the Head of our Audit Committee is not too much a friend of it.
Jochen Weyrauch: So it really goes bottom line.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. So in the adjusted EBIT still?
Jochen Weyrauch: This is earnings before extraordinary effects.
Dietmar Heinrich: And that's also -- Jochen mentioned that we had a decline or we expect a decline or had already a decline last year in the OneDürrGroup synergy program. In that regard, we stopped the one ERP approach, and we finally moved now to a brownfield approach regarding SAP R/3 to S/4 transformation that is division based. And we have on one side, the savings, and we have smaller amounts due to the brownfield approach than in the division, but it's reflected directly in the divisions, and it's shown there.
Operator: The next question is from Adrian Pehl, ODDO BHF SE.
Adrian Pehl: Actually, 2 questions left from my side. First of all, on the cash flow guidance that you gave, just to get a sense of what defines really the very low end and the upper end of that? Because if you take the 2 years together, i.e., 2025 and your, let's say, very low end of 2026, there's literally any -- hardly any cash flow left on an EBITDA of EUR 600 million. So that seems a very cautious to me, but maybe also the moving parts and building blocks would be interested on that number. And then secondly, on the regional developments, I mean, obviously, throughout the year, we have seen, in particular, China quite soft. And I was wondering also on the order side of things, actually now down to book-to-bill of 0.4 in Q4. First of all, how do you think of that business progressing? And secondly, is that due to a structure of Chinese rather buying Chinese products? So is that a structural thing? Or how should we see it? And then I might have a follow-up on the regional setup.
Dietmar Heinrich: Shall I start with the free cash flow guidance? Adrian, in that regard, we mentioned that we received quite big early prepayments or payments in December from our customer side that had a strong influence. Remember that the guidance originally was 0 to EUR 50 million. Now -- then we increased, we got out now with EUR 162 million. Based on the past, maybe we sometimes could overexceed a little bit. So you can roughly say that we received around EUR 100 million more than we expected finally. And this, of course, is missing as a cash inflow in 2026. So that's why we are certain. On the other side, we will not, for ongoing projects, receive significant milestone payments because these earlier payments also to some extent are made. And then we have nonoperating cash outs like we mentioned for the tax on the environmental technology sale. We booked the net gain finally, but the tax payments will be made in 2026. And we have the expected payout from the tax audit in Germany that we are targeting or not targeting, we will have it examined by the court. We don't want to mention the number due to the tax authority not letting to know our real position on this, but we build up respective provisions. So no impact on the profit side impacted. And that's actually -- and of course, when orders are coming in towards the end of the year, we could have again the advantage that we get the initial down payments and then have a better cash flow development despite the fact that not much of the contracts as is being built up during that time. So this defines the upper and the lower end from a verbal explanation.
Jochen Weyrauch: On the regional distribution, especially China of the orders, first, as a disclaimer, as you know, in many cases, we have orders that are triple-digit millions. So this can fluctuate over time. However, especially on China, where we've seen some declines, it is -- China is a very competitive market. And from what we see, it's not about in terms of winning the orders, at least in most cases, independent from whether you are local or not local. In fact, we are local for more than 30 years already in China. It is competition. And of course, the market after boom times around adding capacities with now dozens of producers that -- it's natural that the investments have been somewhat down. However, I can note that this year, we've already seen some upwind and book 1/2 orders in automotive, not the big orders, but activities there. So let's see what's happening. And China, of course, is the most competitive market on the planet. This is why we are also continuing to play there, especially to learn from them. And not to forget, we're using our own Chinese facilities to follow Chinese OEMs into the world. So if you look at China from a holistic point of view, it's a bit more than just the order intake mix.
Adrian Pehl: Right. And more generally on that, I mean, how are you managing your capacities, in particular on the automotive side of things? So I mean, obviously, your overall profitability was solid in particular in the second half of the year. It looks like you are probably also assuming or selecting orders depending on the margin profile. Is that continuously the case? And how should we think of the margin profile in your order backlog going forward?
Jochen Weyrauch: Yes. We have a healthy -- continue to have a healthy margin in the order backlog. And in many cases, with the excellence that we have in order execution, we turn or we even increase the margin that we have in the backlog when executing projects. Then in terms of capacity management, we are very much used still today to manage projects very globally. So when we -- just to give you an example, execute an order in Saudi Arabia, you would have colleagues from China involved, from Korea, from Italy, from Poland, from Germany and probably a few more countries. This is how we are used to execute orders, not saying independently from where they are, but to a large extent. And this is why we can manage capacities quite well. And second, also very important is that a lot of the P&L, especially in automotive, is purchased goods. So we are not so dependent in terms of load in factories because our value adding, our own value adding in terms of products is limited to the amount where we can differentiate with own IP.
Operator: So dear ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions in the queue at the moment. [Operator Instructions] And there is a follow-up from Philippe Lorrain, Bernstein again.
Philippe Lorrain: So the first one would be on the extra cost that you had on the continuing business prior to the actual sale of CTS Environmental. So could you quantify that again for the full year of 2025, so we know what negative impact actually leaves the P&L?
Dietmar Heinrich: This was around EUR 30 million, Philippe, as a whole, a smaller amount, low to 1-digit million euro, I would say, EUR 3 million to EUR 4 million was already in 2024. The remainder was in 2025. So that's the amount that we spent, and this was related to the carve-out preparation, which was quite complex and was then transaction-related expenses.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. But you had also this -- this also includes the impact of shifting the costs that were actually not recognized anymore in CTS Environmental, but rather in the existing continuing business also [indiscernible] all together?
Dietmar Heinrich: That's correct. It recorded in the discontinued operations.
Philippe Lorrain: Okay. Perfect. And second question that came to my mind as well, as you were mentioning Saudi Arabia. But with the current situation in the Middle East, so do you have any, let's say, like significant projects where you have works on the ground and so on? And what's the situation like there in this kind of scenario that we are going through in the Middle East?
Jochen Weyrauch: Yes. We are -- Philippe, we're having 2 projects that are currently significant, the 2 projects in Saudi Arabia, but they are not at the Persian Gulf side in the East, but they are in the West, near Jeddah, King Abdullah Economic Zone. So far, first of all, our people are safe because we have the people there. We have all the plans to deal with the situation and escalate if necessary. And second, in terms of the supply chain, we're carefully watching. And where necessary, we reroute goods at this point. So, so far, we're not with a view on this region, expect any interruptions. What, of course, we have to carefully watch is our supply chain in general. And there, it's difficult to say at this point. It is what we said before, if this conflict is managed within the foreseeable future, we don't see a real impact. If it takes longer, we will have to see.
Operator: Thank you very much. With that, since there are no more questions in the queue, I'm closing the Q&A session again and handing the floor back over to the host.
Mathias Christen: Thank you, Anna. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your questions and the discussion. If there are follow-ups, please don't hesitate to contact me. The full annual report will be published on March 26 and the Q1 figures on May 12. We are planning a Capital Markets Day in the course of the year as we are currently examining our midterm sales targets and working on a strategy update. For today, that's it. Take care. Goodbye.
