GEA Stock

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Q2 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advise that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach, Head of IR.

Yes. Thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our Second Quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO; and Alexander Kocherscheidt, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the second quarter, and Alexander will then cover the business and financial review before Stefan takes over again for the outlook 2026. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session. Please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today. And with that, I hand over to Stefan.

Thank you, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference call today. Before starting with a review of our second quarter results, let me share with you some important news which we published last week. The Executive Board has resolved that we will start another share buyback program in the amount of up to EUR 500 million. Keeping in mind that we have already bought back and canceled shares with an aggregate volume of EUR 700 million in the last 5 years. The new program brings us to a share buyback volume of EUR 1.2 billion between 2021 and 2027, an impressive volume in relation to our market cap.

The new program will be split into two tranches and will run until the end of '27. The first tranche of the program was up to EUR 250 million starts tomorrow, and will be executed over the next 7 months. Like the last program, all repurchased shares will be canceled once the program has been completed. These news clearly demonstrate our conviction in GEA's growth opportunities. We are growing our top line, improving our profitability further and making continuous progress towards our Mission 30 targets.

Thanks to our strong cash generation, the share buyback is not limiting our investments, R&D spending or potential acquisitions. As in previous programs, there is an ESG feature linked to the buyback, we will donate part of the guaranteed outperformance, which is the difference between the purchasing price and the volume weighted average price of our shares over the duration of the program to the Deutsche Universitätsstiftung. It will be roughly EUR 250,000, which will be used to support exceptionally talented students in steam education.

I'm turning now to our second quarter release. After having already reported a strong first quarter, we accelerated top line growth and improved profitability further in the second quarter. Order intake rose significantly by 14.2% year-over-year to EUR 1.5 billion. This performance was driven by strong growth in all order sizes. Base orders, however, had by far the highest absolute growth contribution. Large orders, the orders above EUR 15 million had a total value of EUR 34 million, while no large order had been booked in the prior year quarter.

Sales grew strongly by 10% to EUR 1.4 billion. Organic sales growth was even higher at 11.0%. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by an excellent 15.6% year-over-year to EUR 251 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved to 17.4%, this marks a new record level for GEA.

Return on capital employed continued to rise from an already high level in the prior year quarter to 36.8% in the quarter. This marks a new record too. Due to an excellent cash generation in the quarter, Net liquidity turned from a net debt position at the end of the second quarter in 2025 into a net cash position of EUR 71 million at the end of the second quarter in '26.

To sum it up, a very strong second quarter with improvements in all key performance indicators. Due to this very positive operating performance and confident expectations for the remainder of this year, we raised our guidance for the fiscal year '26 as announced on 21st of July. We are now guiding organic sales growth to be between 6% and 8% for the full year '26, up from the prior range of 5% to 7%. The new range is well above our midterm target of more than 5% organic sales growth.

EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses is expected to be in the range of 17% to 17.4%, up from the prior guidance of 16.6% to 17.2%. This brings us already close to the low end of our Mission 30 target. Even if you have to consider that this year's EBITDA margin is before restructuring expenses, while from next year onwards, the EBITDA margin is as reported. The new guidance for return on capital employed is between 36% and 40%, clearly above the prior range of 34% to 38%. And as you can see, we are once again delivering what we promised or even more than that.

This is one of my favorite charts. Once again, we have been recognized as one of the world's most sustainable companies by Time magazine and [ Statista ]. Over 5,000 companies were evaluated globally to identify the top 750 companies. And GEA not only made it to rank 17 globally but was ranked first among all German companies. This is a special honor for everyone at GEA as it underscores our position as a real front runner in sustainability.

And it is exactly this distinctive aspect, sustainability as a driver of long-term value creation that we strive to communicate to the capital markets. Over the past few years, our Investor Relations team together with my Executive Board colleague, [ Dr. Naren Stella ], has done a fantastic job in transparent and understandable ESG communication. It is especially rewarding to see that this work has been recognized and appreciated by you, our investors and analysts. Receiving the German Investor Relation Award for Best ESG communication is a great honor to us. It reflects something we truly care about engaging openly with our stakeholders and bringing our shareholders along on our journey towards an even more sustainable company.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your vote, your trust and your continued support. We see this award not only as a recognition of what we have achieved but also as encouragement to keep pushing ahead on our journey guided by our group's engineering for a better world. And now I hand over to Alexander, who will give you more insights into our performance in the second quarter.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and a warm welcome from me as well. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now walk you through our business and financial performance in the second quarter. Let's have a closer look at the group performance.

As Stefan has already highlighted, we had an excellent second quarter throughout all key performance indicators. Order intake increased significantly by 15.4% organically with all divisions contributing to this positive development, except for PSA. From a customer industry perspective, once again and for several quarters in a row, dairy processing and dairy farming continued to be strong.

In addition, food and other industries were showing good demand. Translational FX effects became smaller. While we had an adverse translational FX effect of more than 3% in the first quarter, it shrunk to 1% in the second quarter.

Sales grew organically by 11.0% driven by excellent performance in both new machine and service sales. Organic growth in the new machine business reached 11.6%, supported by double-digit growth rates in almost all divisions. The service business continued its growth trajectory and reported an organic growth rate of 10.2%. This marks the 30 -- sorry, the 23rd quarter -- such a high number, it's difficult, 23rd quarter in a row with organic service sales growth, an impressive performance. On the back of the slightly stronger growth in the new machine business, the service sales share declined by 0.5 percentage points to 39.6%. The EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 23 million to EUR 251 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 0.9 percentage points to 17.4%. And significantly higher volume and better gross margin were the drivers of the profitability increase.

Moving on to the divisional performance. I will start with pure flow processing, which reported very strong top line growth. So order intake and sales, while the EBITDA margin declined slightly at a high level. Order intake grows organically by 9.8% year-over-year, driven by orders below EUR 5 million. Demand was strongest in food, dairy processing and marine, but also beverage, energy and distribution and storage contributed to the impressive growth rate. Thus, order intake strength was broad-based across different customer industries.

Organic sales grew significantly by 12.9% year-over-year, driven by very strong growth rates in new machines and service business. As the new machine business grew even more than service sales this quarter, the service sales share decreased on a high level from 47.0% in the second quarter of 2025 and to 46.2% in the second quarter of 2026. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 13 million year-over-year to EUR 145 million, driven by higher gross profit, which was partly offset by increased operating costs, such as higher selling expenses in line with our order intake development. The corresponding EBITDA margin declined on a high level by 0.5 percentage points year-over-year to 27.5% in the quarter.

Turning to nutrition plant engineering, which caught up strongly from a slow first quarter. The division reported impressive numbers across all key performance indicators, significant order intake growth, strong sales as well as a substantial EBITDA margin expansion. As a result of this performance, all key indicators turned from a negative performance in the first quarter to a positive one in the first half. Order intake for the second quarter was up organically by more than 40%, this was driven by a very strong performance of orders between EUR 1 million and EUR 15 million as well as two large orders from the dairy processing industry, which totaled EUR 34 million. The prior year quarter contained no large orders.

In terms of customer industries, dairy processing remains strong. And this is not only driven by the two large Asian dairy processing orders, even without these two large orders, this customer industry would have been a strong growth contributor. In addition, Pharma showed good demand in the quarter.

Sales increased organically by 10.6% year-over-year. Service sales continued its growth trajectory, increasing organically by 11.5% year-over-year. At the same time, new machine sales rebounded as expected and promised after reporting a decline in the first quarter. As mentioned already in our first quarter call, we expected an improvement in new machine sales kicking in, in the second quarter.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased from EUR 45 million in the prior year quarter to EUR 56 million in the second quarter of 2026 on the back of higher sales volume and better gross margin. The corresponding EBITDA margin rose strongly by 1.3 percentage points year-over-year to 11.3%.

Continuing with pharma and food applications, which delivered strong sales growth and a substantial profitability expansion. Order intake, however, declined organically by 9.6% due to timing of orders. Base orders, which are orders below EUR 1 million, we're growing by more than 6% in the quarter, while medium-sized orders were down. Sales grew by 8.5% year-over-year in organic terms driven by both strong new machine and service sales.

The new machine business delivered an organic growth rate of 9.2%, while service grew at 7.2%. As a result, the service sales share decreased from 34.5% in the prior year quarter to 33.3% in the quarter. The impressive track record of continuous profitability improvement which the division has built up over the last years continued in the second quarter. Absolute EBITDA before restructuring expenses and the corresponding margin reached new record levels for the quarter. EBITDA rose substantially by 30% year-over-year to EUR 45 million, driven by volume and significantly higher gross margin. For the first time ever, the respective margin crossed the 16% mark and reached 16.2%, an outstanding achievement.

Finally, Farm Technologies. Farm Technologies reported another quarter of double-digit growth rates in order intake and sales. Let me give you some more details here. the favorable market environment for dairy farmers, which began in December 2024, continued steadily throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026, this translated once again into a notable increase in order intake. Order intake rose by 11.4% organically due to strong demand for both automated and conventional milking systems in the new machine business area.

In terms of order sizes, base orders were the growth driver. Organic sales rose significantly by 15.4%, and new machine sales continued their strong performance since middle of last year with a substantial year-over-year organic increase of 22.6%. Service sales grew organically at 8.6%, and as a result of the significant outperformance of the new machine business, the service sales share declined from a high level of 51.1% in the second quarter of 2025 and to 47.8% in the second quarter of 2026.

On the back of higher sales volume, EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 3 million year-over-year to EUR 30 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin declined slightly by 0.2 percentage points to 14.2% because of the lower service sales share and product mix effects.

Let me close the divisional chapter with an overview of the EBITDA growth contribution in the first half and in the second quarter of 2026. There are two important messages. Firstly, we have been able to increase our EBITDA before restructuring expenses in both time periods considerably. Secondly, all divisions contributed to this positive development. This underlines our broad-based strength resulting from our price and cost discipline as well as savings from our procurement and production optimization efforts.

Let me now turn to another important topic, net working capital. Year-over-year, net working capital declined by EUR 27 million to EUR 396 million. This reduction was driven by a combination of higher trade payables and higher contract liabilities. The high volume of large orders over the last 4 quarters led to higher advanced payments, which are reflected in the increase in contract liabilities. This resulted in a net working capital to sales ratio of 7.0%, placing us at the bottom of the guided corridor of 7% to 9%. On a rolling last 4 quarters basis, which smooths seasonality the ratio was even lower at 6.3%.

Free cash flow reached an outstanding level, marking the highest second quarter free cash flow in 6 years. Let's have a look at the main drivers. After a moderate net working capital outflow of EUR 12 million and a EUR 26 million outflow in the others position, which mainly results from miscellaneous balance sheet movements like Operating cash flow stood at EUR 185 million in the second quarter. CapEx related cash outflow was relatively low at EUR 39 million compared with our full year 2026 guidance of around EUR 240 million. As in previous years, we expect CapEx to ramp up in the second half of 2026.

As a result, free cash flow was very strong, amounting to EUR 151 million. After deducting lease payments and interest paid, net cash flow amounted to EUR 131 million. The strong net cash flow was offset by the dividend payment. But even so, we ended the quarter with a net cash position of EUR 71 million.

In the first half, free cash flow was still negative at EUR 39 million. However, we saw a very strong catch up in the second quarter. We are, therefore, on track to achieve roughly the same level of free cash flow for the full year as in 2025.

Free cash flow generation over the last 4 quarters has been strong, reaching EUR 483 million. the corresponding cash conversion ratio, which indicates how much we -- how much of the EBITDA before restructuring expenses has been converted into free cash flow before restructuring expenses landed at a solid 54%. With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thank you, Alexander. As already mentioned at the beginning of today's call, we have increased our guidance for 2026, based on the very positive performance in the first half of this year and the promising expectations for the second half of '26.

Despite the volatile environment driven by geopolitical tensions, around the world, GEA's positive journey is not only continuing. It is even accelerating. And this is based on the various levers, which we initiated with our Mission 30.

Finally, our road map for 2026. The next important date will be the release of our third quarter results on November 9. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at upcoming roadshows and conferences Alexander, the Investor Relations team, and I will be meeting investors until the end of September. This concludes my presentation, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. And yes, let's start with the Q&A session. And therefore, I'm turning the call back to you, Madalena.

[Operator Instructions] And this question comes from the line of Akash Gupta from JPMorgan.

My first one is for Stefan. Stefan, you earlier touched base in your prepared remarks that you are technically hitting the bottom end of your 2030 target of 17% to 19% already this year. And I know margin guidance for 2030, excluding restructuring -- including restructuring, and this year is excluding restructuring. But I'm wondering if you can talk about the timeline for potentially revisiting 2030 targets, which looks conservative.

And then my second question is for Alexander, which is on Farm Tech. Your new revenue guidance is 8% to 10% organic after more than 20% in H1, and that would mean that even at the top end of the revenue outlook, you are guiding a modest revenue decline in second half. Farm Tech has seen more than 1x book-to-bill for 3 consecutive quarters and backlog is at highest level since 2023. So maybe if you can help us understand what is driving this revenue guidance for Farm Tech.

First of all, I think the positive message is I think there is no question mark that we can make the Mission 30, this question marks might be finally gone. And I think if you also -- we know each other very well casing a long time. And if you see this performance now, I think it proves that we can deliver what we promise. It -- let's first finish now the year '26 and let's see where we finally end. And as I said, we are definitely touching the lower end of the Mission 30 already at this year's end. And then at the right time, we might think twice, and we will see what we -- if there is any room for recalibration. But the company has, of course, a lot of potential like you can see.

So second question, Akash, regarding the FT sales We, of course, are running also against second quarter of last year. That's also always the case if we then compare the two numbers. and this has been quite a strong one last year. So that's the first one. And yes, the comparison in Q2 -- in H2 is quite high. So that leads to our overall guidance of 8% to 10%.

But still, like when I look at your last 3 quarter order intake, even if we have similar revenues in second half, we should get growth in Farm Tech revenues in the second half. So just wondering if there is anything we are missing there?

No, there's nothing that you're missing. So that's the guidance we are giving, and that's based on the current expectation. I think with the yearly growth rate, we are still within the growth trajectory that we are needing also, also in comparison to last year's growth in FTE. So that's where we currently sit.

This question comes from Megan Yang from Goldman Sachs.

I just have to -- so I think on your previous earnings call, you talked about the acceleration in organic sales growth throughout the year. I wonder if given your strong first half performance, are you see expecting this? And in that case, be still further room to upgrade your full year guidance of '26?

And my second question is if you could give us a bit more color on how much visibility you have now for the order to support future quarters at current high-growth organic orders growth rate or even higher?

Well, you are right. Normally, we can accelerate organic sales growth in the second half of the year. Like also profitability that makes us very optimistic that we will achieve the guidance which we promised. We know each other not so long time. But if you follow GEA during the last years, we always deliver what we promise. So for us, it's not an option to overpromise and under deliver. So we rather like to do it the other way around. So that is what I can say.

There are always some risk in the air, not coming from our company coming from outside development, but we are very optimistic that we see sales growth, which is in line with the guidance we just gave.

And the order pipeline or let's say, of course, we are -- the second half of the year is a little bit of an uphill battle, let's say, because we are comparing against especially a very strong Q4. So it is very like -- very unlikely, let's say, like that, that we can beat last year's Q4 because last year, we also booked Baladna here in this fourth quarter. So just also to manage expectations don't expect Q4, which might be even above last year's Q4.

But as I always like to say, a quarter is it's very difficult to judge in our business because it happened so fast that we can book something in Q3, what we expected in Q2 or vice versa. So more important is the 12 months period, I would say, and we are very optimistic that we can see at the end of the year, a significant growth also in order intake. It doesn't matter when we book it.

This question comes from Klas Bergelind from Citi.

My first question is on your exposure to the data center build out. It seems like you haven't seen much growth here yet. But we're hearing from others of increased orders here in the slow end of the business. So these are pumps, valves, fittings, et cetera. Could you talk through your exposure here, Stefan and to what extent you can make this sort of commercial -- to commercialize this opportunity. I'll start here.

Well, I cannot comment on what others are promising or telling or whatever. For us, from today's point of view, we don't expect any significant business from us for the -- in the data center. But this is not a big problem for us because, as you know, we have a lot of other verticals where we have really interesting growth.

Also, just to mention that we are extremely successful in the topic of continuous tablet pressing where we have a unique position. And you also could maybe read that now -- and Novo Nordisk is also starting with the GLP-1 tablet in Europe. This is something where we might benefit significantly from. So there are different verticals for us, which are very interesting, but most likely data center is not.

My second 1 is sort of linked to other questions in that your guidance feels competitive. So if you look at pure flow processing, the one-off, but it's a little bit it beside second half full year midpoint shows a sharp operation to 2% below around 5%, and there is comp that is effectively conservative as through the cycle? Or are you seeing anything here that would suggest slowdown? Or is it linked to tougher come from pacing or something else. The implied margin. It's very good for [ PFP ]. But there is on the sales comp.

Okay. First of all, I was maybe too fast in giving you kudos for the good connection because it was quite, quite bad again. But I think I've got the point. Well, what should I say, we -- you know Klas we know each other also very long. You know that we are always guiding what we can achieve. And there might be -- if everything goes in the right direction, there might be upside potential not only in [ PFP ]. This is, I would say, how I can comment it, but there is nothing which you don't know and should know to be sure that we might be worse than expected. We do our job. We like always, and it might look conservative, let's see where we end up.

Okay. My very quick final one, if you can hear me okay, the very strong orders ex the large orders in NPE, which seems to be driven both by dairy processing and pharma, did any of these two segments ex large orders accelerate more than the others quarter-on-quarter. And the debate now in GEA, sort of moving on from large orders to base orders in you have a tough comp from large orders in the second half. But the question now, do you see this underlying order level sustain into the second half? Any comment on the sort of base order pipeline EUR 1 million to EUR 15 million would be useful and across geographies.

Yes. I think that's good what you mentioned because we see a very good base load in NPE. By the way, also here when -- while we are talking about verticals and growth drivers. Also the whole high protein trend is something which is very favorable for us at the moment. There is a lot of investment going on in the world needs to have high protein.

And also many people are moving to dairy-based products, which might not have consumed it so much in the past. So this is what we see. And on top of that, we have an interesting and very promising pipeline for large orders in NPE. So also here, we expect a very good second half of the year in terms of order intake and of course, also in sales.

This one comes from Max Yates from Morgan Stanley.

I just wanted to ask firstly about your services growth. So 10% organic growth in services in the quarter. It's obviously -- it's a very impressive number and I guess, far above what your installed base is growing at.

So I guess my question is you laid out in your sort of previous plans, moving up the service ladder trying to kind of recapture more of your installed base, higher value per machine. I guess I just wanted to understand how far along are you in that process? And maybe if you could give us any sort of quantification of how much were you capturing of your deliveries into your installed service base versus today? How much is that kind of capture rate? Just any sort of quantification about how that kind of process has evolved and how much more you think there is to do?

Yes. Our service is a very important part of our success story in the last years. Of course, we achieved meanwhile in percentage of roughly 40%. Can it be larger? Yes, I mean -- but it also -- it depends on how successful we are in new installations. We don't want to outgrow it to, let's say, 45% or 50% because that would mean that we are selling too little -- or too less new installations. But we promised in the Mission 30 to grow service business to EUR 2.9 billion in 2030. We are very well on track here. We also are increasing our number of digital products, which we sell.

This is a very interesting part for us and where we can also accelerate service growth, but it's also that we do a lot in all the traditional areas that starts with creating more transparency of the installed base, really capturing and deploying the potential of the installed base being more aggressive in sales and end. So the journey is not yet over. and we see very good growth rates. And as I said, on top, we have all the digital products, which we are more and more bringing to the customers where we have a lot of recurring revenue coming out where we don't sell software anymore like it was in the past where we have only license agreements where we charge per month per unit, per cow whatever, and that will also help us to boost service also further in the future.

And maybe just a sort of conceptual question about your margins. If I look at your margins kind of it looks like you're going to be trending towards the upper end of that target that you gave by 2030.

Just conceptually, when you look at your peer group, I know kind of previously you churn charts of kind of benchmarking where you were versus the kind of best-in-class peers. It's kind of implied that you will have closed most of that gap. When you look at sort of how the business is running and the path over the next couple of years, do you still see kind of major opportunities to improve efficiency? Are there still divisions, maybe things like rolling out the SAP systems that can really unlock a huge amount more margins or really see kind of once you get to those levels, you really are kind of operating as best-in-class and it really then moves on about to investing in the business.

I'm just wondering kind of conceptually beyond the midpoint of those targets, how do you think about it?

Understood. Understood. The journey is not yet over. And I think there will also be a mission beyond the Mission 30 whenever it has been completed. And this is, I think, I also can say there's only one GEA. It's very difficult to compare us to peers. When you look at the fuel flow processing part, for instance, we are definitely best-in-class and outstanding the average might be a little bit lower than so-called best-in-class peers.

However, they don't have businesses like we with nutrition and engineering, where by purpose, we have our operating model with lower margin but with extremely favorable net working capital this is the business unit and other division which we run with a negative network capital, which brings us to a ROCE of almost 40% already now. So this is also what we don't have to forget.

And I give you also maybe a little bit shade of gray when we talk about the SAP program, which we call Transform 360. At the moment, we are spending a lot of money in medium size of double-digit million what we spend per year for the introduction and rollout costs. And we have, at the moment, not yet any synergies made out of that. And this is all in the P&L.

And if you think about once we have completed the rollout, we don't have this cost anymore, though you can add that to the EBITDA immediately. And on top of that, we have the synergies which we will create out of one common system. So even if we would see no improvement in the operational business simply by completing our Transform 360 journey by saving the money we spend today for the introduction and at the same time, leveraging the potential we have from the synergies that will create another level of profitability.

Understood. Just one really quick housekeeping question. Restructuring for '27 once you take it above the line, how much do you think that number will be next year?

Next year, 0 because we don't exclude it any more next year. And even if you look at the numbers you are used to, these are things which are not recurrent. It's not that this company must have 50, 60, 70, whatever restructuring cost a year because this is also what we promised at the end of '26. We will be done we will be ready with our transformational system and our great formational journey. And then there is only a very, very small number, which might kick in. But it's not that we will see huge impacts here.

So you're not going to guide to flat margins because you've just taken 50 bps of restructuring above the line or something like that?

No, what we guide is that from next year on, we don't have EBITDA before restructuring anymore. We have all in.

No, I understand. But if suddenly the restructuring is above the line, it will be margin dilutive if it's there. So I'm just trying to understand I'm just trying to understand.

You're absolutely right. But also today and in the last years, we disclosed both numbers. So you always have the number, EBITDA all in. And you also have the number we obviously guide EBITDA before restructuring. But what I can say, if next year, we change to EBITDA all in, you should not expect any significant decline based on that fact. So we will be ready and done with everything we need to do, and that's the message.

This question comes from Uma Samlin from Bank of America.

My first question is on the gross margins that I guess you've had a really significant improvement in the past few years on your gross margins. And this quarter, if I'm correct, it seems to be the highest on record. Would you give us a bit more insight on what's been driving the improvement, if there is any one-off there? And how sustainable that is?

Yes, so the gross margin has been definitely positively impacted over the last years, I have to say by both the clear focus on the project side to drive, yes, project execution excellence. And on the other hand, also by it's impacted positively by our COGS program, which we also talked about at the last Capital Markets Day. And this is also continuing, yes.

So we are, of course, happy to see the margin having risen to this level, but we don't see that this is now a one-off top high level, and it should go down, not at all, yes. We are continuing to focus on execution excellence and also to drive cost down even further, engineer to design yes, projects running in our components business as well. So this is an ongoing exercise.

Okay. That's super clear. And that doesn't include any tariff refunds?

Yes. We -- in the first half year, we had a number of tariffs, which we got refunded of midsized single-digit million euro number. And of course, this also works in a way that we are passing the refunds on to our customers where this is appropriate, and this was roughly half of this amount in the first half.

Okay. That's super clear. Another one for me is a follow-up on the Mission 30 target. You mentioned that you're closing into the Mission 30 targets. And I guess you also mentioned that you're yet to finish the SG&A program and the COGS program. So I guess that does it mean that you see further upside from here in terms of margins given you still have like half of the COGS programs left? And also like you -- as I understand correctly, SG&A only expected like '28 to '30. So if we add both of those savings into your margin trajectory? Does it mean that you still have like a couple of percentage to go to 2030?.

Well, I think it's -- what we promise we deliver, let's say, like that again. And it is clear that we also have additional opportunities, like I just mentioned, when you think about the Transform 360 program, what comes out of the savings from G&A costs here. And on top of that, we will still continue to optimize our COGS. Also here, we are not at the end.

This company is a fantastic company in really resilient markets with a lot of potential, which we can deploy over the next years. when we are faster than originally expected, everybody is happy. We will definitely not be slower.

And this one comes from Sven Weier from UBS.

The first one is just on the buyback. And I was just wondering, of course, it's the biggest size so far. I mean should that tell us anything about timing of M&A? If maybe you can speak a bit about the M&A pipeline, whether that has changed, whether things are a bit less imminent on the M&A side? That's the first one.

Okay. Thanks for the questions. Well, no, nothing has changed. I mean, it's simply that -- I mean, no huge acquisition is expected to fall from heaven, which we would not know, where we would not have any idea that it would come to the market. And everything which might come also over the next months, years, whatever, is something we could easily digest and acquire.

So we especially designed the share buyback program with this EUR 500 million in a magnitude which is not limiting at all our M&A power. So whenever we feel that there is something which we should acquire, we see no limitations to do that.

Yes. That's what I just wanted to confirm that. Second question is just sorry for belaboring the point, but coming back to the revenue guidance for the full year. I mean, did you have any pull forward revenues from the second half? Because I remember that part of the rationale for a back-end loaded guidance originally was that you'll generate a lot of plant engineering sales where you got the orders late last year, and they would simply not come earlier in terms of revenue generation. But as you maybe pull forward things into the first half somehow?

Yes, that's -- Alexander speaking again, so the Q2 numbers were quite strong. I think that's very obvious. And at the same time, there were no significant effects that you were just mentioning. So yes, given the full year guidance, I think Stefan has mentioned this already. So we are here to deliver what we promise. And that's exactly also the headline for the full year guidance, I would say. And there's nothing more to add. I think that's our -- that has been our logic over the last years and will continue also to be the logic for the next years.

Understood. And the last question is just also coming back to what you said on the order intake, Stefan. I mean you said you expect significant growth in order intake in 2026. But is it fair to say that this significant growth in absolute terms will only come from the first half and that in the second half, we're probably looking more for like a stable absolute order intake. Is that fair?

Good question, good question. I would say that it depends. I mean, you know how it is with the large projects. I can say that we have a very, very interesting pipeline. We have a lot of expect a really interesting big orders or potential orders and it's like the example of Baladna, I also explained many times, it's not always easy to say, can we book it till this year might flip over to Q1. But what I can say, we are talking to a lot of very interesting customers with huge projects. And it might depend on what can we still book this year and what might flip over to '27, but the most important message is we have a good base load. And on top of that, we have an interesting pipeline.

Did I understand you correctly that your order intake will be up either way, whether you land one of these big ones or not.

Yes. Yes, absolutely, yes. I think, of course, if everything goes out, it's bad, but normally, this does not happen. So I expect an interesting growth rate at the end of the year. It might be percentage twice, not as high as it is now for the first half year because we are beating against a very strong second half, especially the Q4 was extremely high. So you should not expect the percentage growth rate which is even accelerating, it might rather be a little bit lower but let's see what we can book. Anyway, the overall pipeline, the project activity is interesting and will go on also not only this year, also next year.

[Operator Instructions] this one comes from Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF SA.

Just a couple of quick ones. Actually, on cash flow. I heard you say last time that actually you strive for keeping that stable versus 2025. which was a good year. Now actually, you increased the guidance on the margin side of things. Q2 will look pretty solid on free cash flow. I was just wondering if you have optimism here now on this number?

And the second one is -- or maybe two [indiscernible] very quick housekeeping ones. One is actually on the financial expenses side, they were a bit higher in the second quarter. I was just wondering if there's something special in there, it looks that you are a bit above normal run rate. And the same is probably the case before the tax rate. I mean, it was kind of in the corridor of what you're guiding at, but I just thinking about? Is that something where you see the upper end of your guidance and how cash tax rate will look like versus the guided range?

So let's start with the cash flow one. So as said already, we expect cash flow -- free cash flow to be in the range like last year. We have to also look at the half year number. Free cash flow is still negative. The rebound in the second quarter was very strong, as you also said. But we also see -- because it's also dependent on the level of prepayments we get in, which is dependent on also larger orders to land in the next 2 quarters. So that gives us a little bit of, of course, uncertainty regarding the projection. So you asked about more optimism I would state it like we are confident -- we feel confident with the guidance that we will be on the same level like last year.

And on the tax rate question, I'll take this one first. The range that we guide for the full year is still intact. We expect to be below 30% in that region. The cash tax rate is somewhat lower or is also expected to be somewhat lower for '26 in total. So that's what we expect.

So the second question was around the financial results. If I understood you correctly, and you is a bit not in the normal to the expected range. I think in -- if we look at the financial results, I think it was minus 11% in Q2 for the full year, the expectation is around minus EUR 30 million. So that's, I would say, is still within the range or you should not just take it times for, yes, let's put it that way.

Right. I mean just referring to Q1, which was significantly lower and to get to the 30%, obviously, you need lower levels. So I was just wondering if there's, I don't know, EUR 3 million, EUR 4 million.

Yes, it's nothing special in there, perhaps a little bit of timing topics, but the expectation is [indiscernible] '30.

We are now going to take our last question, and this one comes from Sebastian Kuenne from RBC.

I have three questions. One on biofuel exposure, one on Farm Tech and one on tax rate again.

Now with the biofuel, with the Middle Eastern crisis, do you see any incremental momentum from Regions clients to push stronger into biofuel and biodiesel? And what is your exposure there? That would be my first question.

Okay. I'll start with the first question. This is not really an issue for us. We ourselves at GEA are anyway not really significantly impacted by energy prices because this is not a big, big issue for us, not so energy intensive. However, our customers are -- and like you know, we have developed a lot of brilliant and smart ideas how to save energy with different various equipment. Now this might be, for us, even a growth driver than any risk. And with biofuel itself, we are not really so much involved, yes.

For Farm Tech question, there were a few questions coming already, but I want to explore a little bit the midterm outlook. We now have a very tough year for farmers for crop farmers in Europe, a lot of crop farmers -- also our dairy farmers is kind of a mixed business here in Europe. So I was wondering if you see discussions amongst your -- especially European client base to maybe postpone delay investments or where you hear stories of farmers being cash squeeze and therefore, maybe reducing investments that they would otherwise have done. Is there any commentary you have on that?

Yes. I mean it's more than due to the weather conditions in summer, it's lower, but we are very optimistic to see a good development coming back at the end of the year. And the business is very solid, and this is mainly based also on the fact that farmers need to automate, farmers need to invest more and more in automatic milking systems because of the shortage of labor of the reliability of labor. And we have the solutions and we have especially the solutions for the larger equipment for the CPQ, which at the end is only coming more or less from us. And therefore, we see a very good pipeline all over the world. And we are very optimistic that also this trend will continue that we see good order intake and increasing sales and margin in from technology.

Very helpful. And my final brief question on the tax rate again. You still expect to below 30% cash tax rate is a bit lower I assume that's because of the use of certain tax loss carryforwards, tax assets for activated tax losses. And could you update us if you have the numbers in front of you on the overall expectation of tax loss that you can still use and maybe give us a rough number for the next, I don't know, years of how much those tax assets would reduce tax payments? Is it EUR 5 million? Is it EUR 20 million, is it EUR 100 million?

Yes. was, I think the question is a bit difficult to answer now in this context. The tax less loss carried forwards, especially in the U.S. and also here in Germany still are in our books. And we can also use them in the next years. but with a positive development of our business, this will come down, of course, in the next years. But perhaps we can have a deeper dive in a session on this one. And yes, but you are right, the difference, of course, between the tax the cash tax rate and the overall tax rate is coming from this topic.

We have one more question, and this one comes from Timothy Lee from Barclays.

Most of the questions have been answered. I just have like a follow-up on the 2030 margin guidance. Again, it's probably still room to expand margin. But I think one key element is definitely on the [indiscernible] segment, which is the biggest segment for us. And if I look at the margin profile for the segment over the past couple of years, over the past couple of quarters, it has been kind of staying at a similar level. And the second quarter is actually a little bit down as well.

So I think my question is how far we can see this margin or [ PFP ] segment to go on? What would be the driver going forward? That would be helpful.

Yes. Sorry, it was a bit difficult to understand your question, but I think we got it that you were talking about the [ PFP ]. So pure flow processing margin and the outlook for this if this is right.

So as we already explained in the earlier part of the call, so the year-on-year comparison of the single quarter is now no indication of, let's say, margins going down in PFP, because again, I think if we compare the margin -- the comparable margin in Q2 last year, this was, I think, record margin over at least the 2 years or going back to or even more years. So we still keep the margin level quite high, now 27.5%. Also our expectation is not to shrink the margin in the next years, but to slowly grow. Of course, it is already on a very high level, which makes it more let's say, yes, challenging to even grow on this level, but still potential is there. I think the levers we were talking about also on the gross margin side, yes, efforts on the COGS side as well as working on the mix of the business is also still valid for the future. So that's the answer to your question. If I got the question right.

Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I will now hand the call back to Stefan Klebert for closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and thanks for your good question. I'd like to summarize our call and tell you that it was really outstanding second quarter and a very good half year with a broad-based improvement in order intake, sales and EBITDA margin, though that really shows we are fully on track. And on back of this strong performance, also, our outlook for the second half of the year is very optimistic. And therefore, we have increased our full year guidance for all three guidance parameters.

And on top of that, we launched a new share buyback program, reflecting our confidence in GEA's attractive growth prospectives. So with that, I will close the call today and hand back to your operator.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Pre-Close Call Q2 2026. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Mel, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our Q2 2026 pre-close call. My name is Oliver Luckenbach. I'm the Head of Investor Relations at GEA. And my colleagues, Rebecca and Eduard, join me for today's call.

As today's call will contain forward-looking statements, it will be conducted according to our disclaimer. I will not read the disclaimer, but please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement, which is part of our presentations, you can find on the Internet. We will now address topics which we also discussed during recent conferences and roadshows. And afterwards, you will have time to ask questions.

Topic number one, guidance. We confirm our group guidance for fiscal year 2026, which we released with our full year 2025 results in March. We expect organic sales growth between 5% and 7%, EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses of 16.6% to 17.2% and the return on capital employed between 34% and 38%. So no changes.

Topic number two, customer industries. Food, the business is looking good. It's a broad customer industry with some smaller applications like poultry showing strength. On the beverage side, the picture is improving in both components and projects. Alcoholic beer is structurally softer, but we see a good momentum in nonalcoholic beer. Dairy Processing. The pipeline continues to show activity across both projects and components, and we see ongoing good market development with a big trend currently in protein-rich products.

Dairy Farming. The general market sentiment is okay with U.S. and large farms being the growth drivers. Pharma has been a growth contributor in the first quarter, and the business continues to look good depending on the application. On the new food side, we are optimistic that the positive development continues, and we can make further progress later this year.

Topic number three, order intake. We are very confident that 2026 will be again a good year for GEA in terms of order intake. The pipeline looks very promising across the board, so in terms of large, medium-sized and base orders. This supports our confidence of a solid order intake in full year 2026. We had a good start into the year with an organic order intake growth of 6.4% in the first quarter, and we see no reason why this trend should have held up in the not -- should not have held up in the second quarter.

So regarding the second quarter, in addition to a healthy development in small and midsized orders, we have booked 2 large orders with a combined volume in the mid-double-digit million euro. On the translational FX side, you should expect a smaller impact compared to what we have seen in the first quarter. Here, it was minus 3.4%. So we -- for the second quarter, we only expect a slightly negative effect.

Topic number four, sales. We started the year with an organic sales growth of 5.3% in the first quarter, and we do expect an acceleration during the year. As with order intake, translational FX effect should have become smaller. Best guess is also here that remains slightly negative in the second quarter. Also here in the first quarter as a comparison, it was minus 3.7%.

Topic number five, EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses. Our EBITDA margin guidance clearly indicates that we want to make further progress with regards to our profitability in full year 2026. So after an already good start with a margin of 16.2% in Q1, we expect further progress in the second quarter. And just to remind you, last year in the second quarter, so in the second quarter 2025, we had an EBITDA margin of 16.5%.

That's it from my side, and I will now pass over to Rebecca.

Thanks, Oliver, and hello, everybody. What to keep in mind for cash flow? So that's topic number six. Just as a reminder, we expect CapEx of around EUR 240 million for the full year 2026. And in Q1, we had EUR 33 million. With regards to net working capital to sales, our target corridor is 7% to 9% and Q2 will most likely be within this corridor. As a reminder, Q1 2026 was 7%. And don't forget our dividend payment, which we had at the beginning of May, where we paid out our annual dividend of EUR 1.30 per share. So the entire cash outflow for the dividend is around EUR 212 million.

Number seven, some housekeeping information. Depreciation and amortization before restructuring expenses, we expect for the full year around EUR 230 million. In Q1, we had EUR 53.5 million. With regards to our financial results, we expect for the full year around minus EUR 30 million, and we had in Q1 minus EUR 6 million. The tax rate is expected for the full year between 28% and 30%, and we had in Q1 29%. R&D for the full year, we expect around 3% of sales as R&D expenses. In Q1, we had 2.4%.

And now we are happy to take any questions you might still have, and I hand back for that to Mel.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi.

Klas here from Citi. So my first one is on farm tech. I think you said dairy farming is okay, and you mentioned the U.S. and then Oliver, I think you mentioned larger farms. And what's going on in Europe at the moment? Obviously, feed costs are going up, meat-to-feed ratio is coming down a bit here. Is Europe still holding in or any changes there? That's my first one.

Yes. Let me maybe start. Thanks for your question, Klas. Yes, you're right, we have mentioned this. And what we are -- however, what we are still seeing is that also overall, the dairy farming business, let's say, overall, it's nothing where we are, let's say, having a lot of headaches about. There are always some dependencies on food -- milk price -- milk to feed price ratio here and there, but nothing that is really right now a concern for us. So overall, what we said, it's a very healthy and also sound business we are seeing here.

Obviously, you're coming up against a quite tough comp here in farm tech. Do you still think -- I heard what you said at sort of the group order level, but do you still think farm tech can grow in the second quarter?

Yes. At the end of the day, what I said to be quite positive. So there's no reason to assume that there's that has completely changed to what we have seen so far.

Okay. My second one is on -- obviously, you're still talking about the pipeline is good, large, medium base orders, very confident, and this is sort of mirroring the comments from management during recent investor conferences. But if you look at nutrition and I'm thinking the order pipeline here, obviously, going into the fourth quarter, if we're looking a little bit further ahead, we're up against a very tough compare, thinking about the [indiscernible] order. Like do you have those sort of like food security very large orders that are in the pipeline, like that kind of size that you think that you can realize later in the year?

Yes. So as I've mentioned at the beginning, so we are actually quite optimistic looking into our pipeline, let's say, across the board, in particular, also with you what we are currently seeing and discussing in terms of large orders that we're actually quite positive that also 2026 should be a year with further growth in order intake. For sure, Q4 as a single quarter last year was a very strong quarter with order intake of more than EUR 1.8 billion. This will be hard, let's say, to talk. But you know it's always hard to predict finally when we will be able to book the orders. But as I've mentioned, very good pipeline. We have already booked 2 orders in the second quarter. There's most likely more to come in the third quarter and probably also in the fourth quarter. But overall, Q4 is a very high comp. But on a yearly basis, I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to grow our order intake year-over-year.

Yes. Because I mean a final point, you did EUR 73 million in the first quarter. Now you talk about a mid-double-digit large order in the second quarter. I mean larger orders need to ramp a lot here in the second half. But yes, you seem very confident that you will...

Very, very confident on this, yes.

And then absolute final one is just a clarification. What did you say on sales growth? I got interrupted a little bit here when you talked about that for the second quarter.

Sure. Yes. We said after the start with an already good growth of 5.3%, which is already at the lower end, let's say, of our full year guidance of 5% to 7%. We said that we expect an acceleration during the year. And also, we see no reason why this shouldn't be also the case then for the second quarter because we want to get to this range of 5% to 7% or let's say, more in the middle to the higher end of this range. So from that perspective, also quite confident what we have seen so far with regards to good order intake growth -- sorry, good sales growth.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from the line of Sven Weier from UBS.

Oliver, you talked about beverage that caught my interest because that's been quite a difficult market for quite some time. And now you start to talk about an improvement here. Can you elaborate a little bit further of what you're seeing there? And what's -- when you said the nonalcoholic part is driving it, can you go into some more detail about that?

Yes. I think also if you look into the newspaper, you can really read that at least in some regions, in particular in Germany, there is a certain kind of, let's say, lower demand for alcoholic beer. But on the other side, more demand for 0.0 alcohol beer, so alcohol-free beer. And that is also a trend that, let's say, that we have observed, and that's also something we are discussing with our customers for sure.

And maybe just one thing to add here, Sven. If you look at our Q1 results, we highlighted already for the division pure flow processing in terms of the order intake growth in the first quarter that the growth was also driven by the customer industry beverage. So there are various customer industries, but beverage was one of the growth drivers in Q1 in pure flow processing.

And is the majority of your revenues in beverages from alcoholic -- or from beer in general or also nonalcoholic beverages?

Alcoholic beer beverages make only a small amount for us in beverage. If you can think about it this way, like [ carbonated ] drinks, all that stuff or juices, it's also beverage for us. Innocent is a well-known customer. So this also plays a role in there.

Okay. Second point I had was just on capital allocation. I mean, obviously, share price has been a bit of a rollercoaster during Q2. I was just wondering what management has said during conferences around about capital allocation. We obviously saw them buying shares quite a bit on the management level and also the packing order maybe between M&A and buying back shares.

Yes. Thank you, Sven, for this follow-up question. So regarding uses of cash, we have this clear, let's say, have divided it into the 4 buckets. So we said that CapEx is the first one. But we also know that over time, we also want to reduce CapEx as a percentage of sales from currently still more than 4% down to 2.5% to 3%. We have also, I would say, very interesting and attractive dividend policy. So we want to distribute around about 50% of our net profit to our shareholders as a dividend and due to the fact that we are expecting rising earnings also going forward, this is also an attractive element of our stock M&A [indiscernible]. But I think it also tells a story that we haven't done anything because it also means that we are quite strict regarding our criteria. So we look at our own multiple compared to the multiples of potential transactions and would only, let's say, do an M&A deal, an acquisition if we are really convinced that it would also be effective for our shareholders.

And last not least, for sure, we are a cash-rich company. We have a strong balance sheet. And that's also something -- so share buyback, we are looking into from time to time. So from that perspective, that is what we are telling here. And yes, some of our Board members, as you have said, they have used the opportunity because we also had no real, let's say, explanation for the, let's say, not so positive share price development after the release of our Q1 numbers. So they have used the opportunity to buy some shares. That's correct, yes.

And is it fair to say that the lower the share price, the higher the packing order maybe for buybacks then you could change the packing order a bit?

Yes. It's always hard to say. There are many things you need to consider, as you know, I've just described them. But you also know that also in the past, we have not only talked about share buyback, we also did them if we thought it would be the right timing. And as I said, this is a topic that is always on a regular basis, also discussed on the Board level. But yes, so that is the normal rule, let's say, we are following. But as you know, in the past, in the meantime, we bought back more than EUR 700 million of our shares. So it's also one of the means, one of the potential uses of cash for GEA.

And our next question comes from the line of [ Min Yang ] from Goldman Sachs.

This is [ Min Ho ] from Goldman Sachs. Just have one question on the margin side. So historically, if we see the historical seasonality, 2Q tend to be quite strong. But taking into the fact that you said at 1Q call that in the first half is probably more of the delivery of the new equipment sales that you take order in 4Q last year. Should we expect less strong seasonality pickup from Q-on-Q margin-wise?

So I've mentioned the margin of the second quarter of last year, so Q2 2025, that was 16.5%. In the first quarter, we have achieved an improvement of around 40 basis points compared to the first quarter the year before. So -- and overall, we want to improve our margin. It is correct that's normally a little bit more weighted towards the second half of the year. But at least it's our -- let's say, our intention is to show some kind of improvements always quarter over quarter. So from that perspective or from what I said, I think one can assume that you can also expect some margin improvement in Q2 this year over the second quarter of last year.

Our next question comes from the line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF SE.

Just a quick question actually on free cash flow. Thanks for the additional financial information you've been giving usually. I was just wondering if we should, besides what you said, take something into account in particular on free cash flow? Or does it follow the normal seasonal pattern, i.e., I guess, should be improving over Q1? And the second question very quickly, could you help us a bit with the restructuring amount that is due to hit the P&L in Q2? And the last one is actually on NPE as obviously, this one was a bit slower, I guess, than generally expected in Q1. So should we take into account that conversion from the backlog is improving already in Q2? So expecting a better quarter from a top line perspective?

Yes. Let me maybe start maybe also with your last one on NPE. As you said, that was -- let's say, the start of Q1 was okay, I would say. But I think there's room for improvement. And as we said, you can expect that there will be further, let's say, conversion of order backlog into sales already also starting with the second quarter and then also going forward in Q3 and Q4.

On the cash side, maybe I would say that overall for the full year, we are quite optimistic that we will come out with a similar free cash flow like last year, around about EUR 500 million. That has also to do with the large orders where we get a lot of prepayments. And we have talked about the pipeline, which is very promising also for the second half of this year. So from that perspective, I think we can also be quite positive here. And on the restructuring side, we are currently guiding for a level, let's say, around about what we have seen last year. It's hard to say what exactly will be booked or has been booked in the second quarter. That's maybe something we can share then on the 10th of August, yes.

And then, very quick one, half for understanding and half to dig deeper into it. So you did say you booked larger orders with a double-digit million euro amount. So that's specifically referring to the very large orders above EUR 15 million, right?

Yes, correct.

Okay. So it's probably, I don't know, 3, maximum 4 that you probably booked, I guess.

No, sorry, I said we booked 2 large orders with a combined volume in the mid-double-digit million euro.

This part I didn't get. All right. Okay.

And our next question comes from the line of Akash Gupta from JPMorgan.

Most of my question has been asked. Just one follow-up, and that is on the order intake this year. So I think -- I mean, you have been guiding for order intake growing over last year. And last year, we had one very large order from Baladna. And of course, when you have a single order of that size, it can create a meaningful difference to a quarterly order intake. And therefore, my question is that when we look at the pipeline, and I think you mentioned you have a very strong pipeline for small, medium and large projects. But can you say, do we have any project in pipeline of this Baladna order that you booked last year that can create like a big difference to a quarter or these large orders are more like, let's say, double-digit, high double-digit type of range. And therefore, we shouldn't be expecting that much volatility in quarterly orders?

Yes. Thank you very much for your question, Akash. So it's not that easy to answer. For sure, there are many, many different orders we are discussing with our customers and all across the board, some also -- in the magnitude also in the low triple digits. But as you know, it's always hard to [indiscernible] let's say, the breadth of our [indiscernible] you know the chart we like to show all the time is that we have so many different [indiscernible] that gives us, let's say, the confidence to make this kind of statement regardless if at the end of the year, there will be an order in our books similar to the size we have seen with regards to Baladna or maybe a little bit smaller. But overall, we see a very good and strong pipeline, yes.

I think your line was breaking in between, but I can follow up afterwards.

No, probably not. So we should because then we are also quite strict in this. So can you hear me now? Then I can -- I'm happy to repeat what I said or maybe Rebecca, you can...

I mean what Oliver was referring to, Akash, is actually the slide in our presentation where we're always sharing that the single largest customer is just about 2% of our sales or the actually top 10 customers to just account for a very small percentage of our overall sales, just highlighting how, let's say, independent we are from a single customer and therefore, actually have this quite promising pipeline in different projects across different regions and customers and customer industries.

So maybe if I can clarify, when we look at your pipeline, it's not like we are -- like if you have to look at the risk to your order intake guidance, then it's not like we are just looking for 1 or 2 large or very large projects that can make or break when it comes to -- you have a very diversified pipeline.

Yes. So that's not the case.

And our next question comes from the line of Uma Samlin from Bank of America.

So I just have a follow-up on revenue conversion on NPE. I guess last quarter, it was quite -- you mentioned that the conversion was full because of project phasing. And would we then expect Q2 to see already a normalized phasing in terms of both revenue and margins?

Yes. Maybe I'll just take that. I mean, in terms of the organic sales growth in the first quarter in Nutrition Plant Engineering, you're right. They started the year with minus 4.8%. And what we already stated at that point of time that we expect an acceleration in terms of sales conversion, so actually converting the order backlog into sales also already starting with the second quarter. And I mean, you know that we also kept the guidance for this division for the entire year. So the guidance for Nutrition Plant Engineering in terms of organic sales growth is for the entire year, 7% to 9%. And I mean, if you start the year with minus 4.8%, you can assume what kind of acceleration needs to come.

That's very clear. I guess just a follow-up, given I couldn't hear you very well in the last answer on the order intake side, so if I just ask it slightly different. So if we remove the -- if we include the large order that you took last year, I guess, because you don't have a single largest customer. So I guess that should not affect -- that you had a very large order last year with Baladna should not affect your thinking on organic growth, I guess. Would that...

No.

So your organic growth should continue to ramp up as you guided, like mid-single digits despite the large orders we saw last year. Is that a correct interpretation?

So with regards to order intake, I said that we are quite confident that we will grow our order intake versus 2025, knowing that there was a very large order of Baladna. But we haven't given any numbers here. In terms of sales growth, for this year, we are guiding organic sales growth of 5% to 7% and in general, more than 5% over the period 2024 to 2030. So that is what I can also confirm today.

And we have a follow-up question from the line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF SE.

Actually, two very quick ones. One on the Middle East side of things. Just want to make sure that there were no issues on the supply chain or any kind of impediments to the ability to ship in that country. So wording has not changed, I would assume. And secondly, on tariffs, I guess you are also queuing up in the line to get some refunds. I just wanted to hear a bit of an update on that situation and how it has progressed.

I can start with the...

Please go ahead.

Yes, I can start with the cost inflation side. I mean, as you rightly assumed, Adrian, so there are no news in that regard. The wording has not changed. I mean what we have seen that logistic providers were increasing their prices for transportation. But as we shared with you, we charge transportation costs directly to the customer. So we don't see an impact here for ourselves. And I mean, regarding, let's say, in general, let's say, price inflation for energy-intensive raw materials, I mean, we do expect inflation coming in here or kicking in here, but we are in active dialogue with our suppliers to negotiate against these price increase requests and I mean, counteracting these effects with targeted measures and I mean, where necessary also with price increases. So -- and keep in mind that we also have in the project business locked in prices and on top price escalation clauses. So no change in wording, just summarizing again what we told you so far.

Then regarding the refund, to be honest, Adrian, I have no new news here. I haven't heard anything so far if we already got something back or not, but maybe that's something we can then also discuss on August 10 when we release our full year or Q2 numbers.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand the call back to Oliver for closing remarks.

I think there's one final question coming in just now.

And our next question comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi.

Sorry, I just want to clarify one thing there, Oliver. You said that, obviously, you talked about margin progression, further margin progression. But to your knowledge, there is nothing that is boosting the margin like, yes, profit, maybe this is margin neutral actually, but there's nothing that is boosting profits from the tariff refunds.

No, no. No.

Yes, it would be great to get some clarity when you report if you had something of that in it later.

Sure. Yes. No, we will update you clearly, yes. But no funding so far to be expected in Q2.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand the call back to Oliver for closing remarks.

Yes. Thanks again, Mel and the analysts and investors for participating in today's pre-close call. And I think as you have heard, we are and remain very positive for our Q2 and also full year 2026 performance. And with the end of this call, we will start our quiet period and are already very much looking forward to talking to you again on the 10th of August after just the release of our Q2 2026 number. So all the best from the entire investor relations team of GEA. Stay healthy and talk to you soon in August. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Q1 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today's conference is being recorded.

I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach, Head of IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO; and Alexander Kocherscheidt, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the first quarter and Alexander will then cover the business and financial review before Stefan takes over again for the outlook 2026. Afterwards, we will open the call up for the Q&A session.

Please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today.

And with that, I hand over to Stefan.

Thank you very much, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you again to our conference call today. Please keep in mind that we operate under our new organizational structure from 1st of January '26, and hence, we'll report our first quarter '26 results in our new divisional setup Pure Flow Processing, Nutrition Plant Engineering, Pharma & Food Applications, and Farm Technologies. The new organization reduces complexity and reduces costs. We have already seen first benefits from it in the first quarter and for the entire year '26, we expect savings of EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million, another EUR 10 million is coming on top on '27.

We had a strong start in '26. Our key performance indicators improved significantly once again. As indicated with our fourth quarter release, the EUR 1.8 billion order intake, which we booked in the fourth quarter of '25 was extraordinarily strong and shouldn't be considered as a new normal. We benefited from 9 large orders, which, of course, cannot be repeated every single quarter. The first quarter of '26 reflects now a more normalized level of large orders and is with an order intake volume of EUR 1.5 billion and an organic year-over-year increase of 6.4%, a very good start to the year. This performance is surely significantly better than the industry average.

Orders below EUR 5 million in size were the driver of this performance. In terms of large orders, so orders above EUR 15 million, we booked 3 with a total value of EUR 73 million versus 3 large orders amounting to EUR 83 million in the prior year quarter. Thus, the increase in order intake is coming from a broad base. Sales rose by 1.2% to EUR 1.3 billion. Organic sales growth amounted to 5.3%, which is already within the guidance range of 5% to 7% for the full year '26. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by 3.9% year-over-year to EUR 206 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved to 16.2% and marked a new first quarter record. Return on capital employed continued to rise at a high level further to 35.7% in the quarter, which is well within the full year guidance range of 34% to 38%. Net liquidity decreased by EUR 24 million year-over-year to EUR 162 million due to a higher net working capital outflow in the quarter.

Let me briefly introduce to you our new offer that we have recently launched for our customers, GEA Security Partner. Over the past years, we have gained substantial information security expertise by implementing a holistic security approach throughout our own company. This includes hands-on experiences in securing complex global production environment, connected products, IT and OT landscapes and regulated operations. Since our customers are dealing with increasingly connected production environments and are facing new regulations such as the EU NIS2 Directive and EU Cyber Resilience Act, they need to strengthen the security of their IT and operational technology environment.

New obligations are coming up such as stronger security governance and mandatory incident reporting. And this is exactly where our GEA Security Partner comes in. We have deep knowledge of our systems installed at the sites of our customers and therefore can leverage our in-house security expertise to the benefit of our customers. GEA Security Partner is a modular portfolio of complementary industrial security offerings which strengthened the security of the operational technology environment and helps them to establish the processes and structures needed to operate securely and meet regulatory requirements. The new offering enables us to turn our security expertise into a sustainable competitive advantage, strengthening customer relationships and differentiating GEA in the market.

Let me now say a few words on how the situation in the Middle East affect GEA, given that the conflict has unfortunately not yet been resolved and continues to have far-reaching implications for the global economy. There are 2 dimensions that need to be considered, direct implications and indirect effects such as rising oil prices. Starting with the direct implications, as already mentioned with the publication of the full year results, our direct exposure to Middle East is low. We have neither production sites nor important suppliers in the region, and we continue to negotiate projects with customers from the region. Therefore, we do not see any material direct impact on our business.

Turning to indirect effects through capacity constraints and cost inflation. We also do not see any material impact here. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, we are not an energy-intensive company. Last year, our energy bill amounted to less than EUR 30 million and most of our energy consumption is already secured under fixed price agreements until the end of '26. Second, as just mentioned, we have no major suppliers in the region. In addition, more than 80% of our procurement is sourced locally, which limits our dependency on global supply chains and in particular, to sea freight.

Third, logistics are mostly arranged and paid for by GEA, but charged to the customer. Of course, we are not completely immune to price inflation resulting from capacity constraints and higher energy costs due to the conflict in Middle East. We expect price increases, especially in energy intensive raw materials such as steel. In response, we are engaging in an active dialogue with our suppliers to negotiate against price, increase requests and are counteracting these effects with targeted measures also with price increases whenever necessary. From today's point of view, the indirect implications remain manageable. Nevertheless, we continue to monitor the situation closely.

With that, I would like to talk not only about the negative aspects and risk, but also about the opportunities arising from these volatile times for GEA. Due to the increasing scarcity of energy resources and the associated rise in energy costs, energy efficiency is an even more important topic than ever. Now more than ever, majority of our customers are very energy-intensive. The current situation creates an even stronger incentive to modernize their asset base and processes. At GEA, we are very well positioned to benefit from it due to our Add Better products and sustainable solutions portfolio. We have already launched our environmental label Add Better in summer '23. And this label marks GEA products and solutions that are significantly more resource efficient than their predecessors.

Solutions range from different applications, such as our AddCool that reduces energy consumption for spray drying by up to 49%, our tablet press NextGen 45 that reduces energy consumption by 27%, or our electrical oven GEA E-Bake G2 that saves up to 32% energy consumption, just to mention a few of them. At the end of '25, we had already 50 Add Better label products, and the portfolio is growing further. This nicely reflects our strategy, which we follow for some years now; to innovate more energy-efficient solutions, it proves to be the right strategy more than ever before.

I now hand over to Alexander, who gives you more insight into our performance of the first quarter.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and also a very warm welcome from my side, ladies and gentlemen. I will now walk you through our business and financial performance in the first quarter, reflecting our new divisional setup. Let's have a closer look at the group performance first.

As Stefan has already highlighted, we had a strong start to 2026, also in terms of order intake. All divisions contributed to this positive development except for Nutrition Plant Engineering, which faced a small decline. From a customer industry perspective, dairy processing and dairy farming continued to be strong. In addition, pharma and other industries like distribution and storage as well as marine were showing good demand. This underscores the broad-based strength of our order intake development.

When looking at the order intake performance on a reported basis, an adverse FX translation effect of EUR 49 million or minus 3.4% needs to be considered. Sales grew organically by 5.3%, driven by both new machine and service sales. Organic growth in the new machine business reached 5.8%, supported by a strong performance of Pure Flow Processing, Pharma & Food Applications and in particular, of Farm Technologies. The service business reported a healthy organic growth rate of 4.6% once again, continuing its growth trajectory for the last 22 quarters. On the back of the slightly stronger growth in the new machine business, the service sales share declined by 0.5 percentage points to 41.2%. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 8 million to EUR 206 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 0.4 percentage points to 16.2%. Higher volume, better gross margin and stable operating costs were the drivers of the profitability increase.

Let's have a closer look at the performance of the divisions. I will start with Pure Flow Processing, which is the former Separation & Flow Technologies division plus the compressor business unit from the former Heating & Refrigeration Technologies division. This division reported strong numbers across all key performance indicators. Significant order intake growth, solid sales as well as a further EBITDA margin expansion. Order intake rose organically by 13% year-over-year, driven by all order size brackets below EUR 15 million. Demand was strongest in dairy processing, beverage, food and marine. Thus, order intake strength was broad-based across both order sizes and customer industries.

Organic sales grew by 6.3% year-over-year, driven by strong growth rates in new machine and service business. As both businesses grew roughly at the same rate, the service sales share remained almost stable at 47.5%. Higher sales volume, combined with a better margin quality in the new machine business resulted in an improvement in gross profit. Operating costs rose slightly. As a result, EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by EUR 4 million to EUR 126 million. The corresponding margin expanded at a high level further by 0.2 percentage points to 26.5% in the quarter.

Let's move on to Nutrition Plant Engineering, which is the former Liquid & Powder Technologies division plus the solutions business unit from the former Heating & Refrigeration Technologies division. The division had a slower start to the year after a record fourth quarter. As Stefan said earlier, the super strong volume of large orders we saw in the fourth quarter 2025 should not be considered as a new quarterly run rate. Large orders tend to be lumpy, which drives higher quarterly volatility. While Nutrition Plant Engineering had 7 large orders with a total volume of EUR 346 million in the fourth quarter of last financial year, we booked 3 large orders totaling EUR 73 million in the first quarter of this financial year. All of them were in dairy processing. Thus, the strength in this customer industry continued.

On the back of the very strong performance in the fourth quarter, order intake declined year-over-year by 2.1% organically in the first quarter. Growth in customer industries, pharma, dairy processing and distribution storage was not enough to offset the declines we saw in beverage and chemical. Sales declined organically by 4.8% year-over-year. Service sales continued its growth trajectory, increasing organically by 5.2% year-over-year. At the same time, organic new machine sales declined by 9.3%, reflecting the late booking of orders in 2025. While order intake declined in the first 9 months of 2025, it accelerated significantly in the fourth quarter. However, these late booked orders in the fourth quarter could not yet be converted into sales. This is still to come and will lead to an improvement in new machine sales during the course of 2026, already beginning in the second quarter.

As a result of the stronger service sales growth, the service sales share increased by 3.2 percentage points year-over-year to 34.4% in the first quarter. The lower sales volume and the corresponding inferior cost absorption led to a reduction in EBITDA before restructuring expenses from EUR 40 million in the prior year quarter to EUR 32 million in the first quarter of 2026. The corresponding EBITDA margin fell by 1.3 percentage points to 8%. We expect a strong profitability acceleration in the coming quarters and, therefore, feel very comfortable with our divisional guidance of 11% to 13% EBITDA margin for the full year.

Moving on to Pharma & Food Applications, which is the former Food & Healthcare Technologies division. Nothing has changed here except for the name. Pharma & Food Applications reported a strong set of numbers again. This is the fifth quarter in a row with improvements in all major KPIs. Solid organic top-line growth, coupled with continuous margin improvement. Organic order intake increased by 5.9% year-over-year, mainly driven by orders between EUR 1 million and EUR 5 million in size. In terms of customer industries, Pharma & Food processing and packaging business positively contributed to this growth. Sales grew by 3.9% year-over-year in organic terms, driven by strong new machine sales. While the new machine business delivered an organic growth rate of 5.8%, the service business grew only slightly at 0.4%. As a result of the stronger performance in the new machine business, the service sales share decreased from 36.1% in the prior year quarter to 34.6% in this year -- first quarter of 2026.

Despite the slightly lower reported sales volume and the lower service sales share, gross profit remained stable because of the better gross margin. Due to the lower operating costs, EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by 6.4% to EUR 33 million, leading to an EBITDA margin of 13.4%. This is an all-time high for first quarter, a strong start to the year. Continuing with Farm Technologies. This division remained unchanged, neither changes to the portfolio nor to the name. Farm Technologies reported an outstanding quarter with double-digit growth rates in order intake and sales and a significant improvement in profitability.

Let me give you some more details here. The favorable market environment for dairy farmers continued. After an already significant organic order intake growth of 26% in the fiscal year 2025, the first quarter of '26 reported another strong growth rate of 13.7% year-over-year. This increase was mainly driven by the strong demand for automated milking systems in the new machine business. In terms of order sizes, base orders, so orders below EUR 1 million in size, showed a particularly strong performance. Sales generation continued to accelerate in the quarter following a positive organic growth momentum in the second half of 2025. Organic sales growth accelerated to 26% year-over-year in the first quarter.

New machine sales experienced a substantial organic increase of 57.4%, which needs to be seen in the context of a weak New Machine business in the first quarter of 2025. Service sales grew organically at 3.9%. As a result of the significant outperformance of the new machine business, the service sales share declined from an extraordinarily high level of 58.7% in the first quarter of 2025 to 47.8% in the first quarter of 2026. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose considerably by 57.8% year-over-year to EUR 34 million. Main reason for this extremely positive development is the significantly higher sales volume with the corresponding fixed cost absorption. The corresponding EBITDA margin increased by 3.9 percentage points to 16.7%, the strongest first quarter on record.

Let me close the divisional chapter with an overview of the EBITDA growth contribution in the first quarter of 2026. All divisions, except for Nutrition Plant Engineering contributed to the increase in EBITDA before restructuring expenses by improving their gross profit and, in most cases, lower operating costs. Farm Technologies was the largest EBITDA growth contributor in the first quarter on the back of significantly higher sales volume and the resulting capacity utilization.

Let me now turn to another important topic, net working capital. As in prior years, the first quarter shows the typical seasonal uptick in net working capital versus year-end. This quarter-on-quarter increase was mainly driven by a reduction in trade payables. In addition, inventories and contract assets increased due to the higher order backlog. Year-over-year, net working capital remained almost stable at EUR 383 million. The high volume of the large orders over the last 4 quarters led to higher advanced payments, which are reflected in an increase in contract liabilities. This results in a net working capital to sales ratio of 7%, placing us at the bottom of the guided corridor of 7% to 9%. On a rolling last 4 quarters basis with smooth seasonality, the ratio has been stable over the last 2 quarters.

As expected, free cash flow was negative in the first quarter of the year. Let's have a look at the main drivers. Operating cash flow was a negative EUR 125 million, mainly driven by 2 factors: First, the net working capital outflow from the quarter-on-quarter buildup; and second, the EUR 90 million outflow in others. This position includes the outflow of bonus payments for fiscal year 2025, which, as you know, was again a very successful year. The CapEx-related cash outflow of EUR 33 million was rather low compared with our full year 2026 guidance of around EUR 240 million. This slower start is a pattern we have seen over the last 2 years. So we expect CapEx to ramp up in the coming quarters.

As a result, free cash flow stands at minus EUR 190 million, leading to a net cash flow of minus EUR 240 million after deducting lease payments and interest paid. Quarter-on-quarter, this reflects the typical seasonal cash outflow in the first quarter, which reduces the net cash position to EUR 162 million. Like in previous years, the first quarter had a slow start in terms of cash generation, which will accelerate during the course of the year. We do expect roughly the same level of free cash flow for the full year as in 2025.

With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Alexander. So after a strong start into the year and despite the conflict in the Middle East, we confirm our guidance for the fiscal year '26. There is an acceleration of sales growth to 5% to 7%. EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses between 16.6% and 17.2%. Return on capital employed in the range of 34% to 38%. With this guidance, we expect continuous organic sales growth and further improvement in profitability for the sixth year in a row throughout all cycles and crisis.

Finally, our road map for '26. The next important date will be the release of our second quarter results on 10th of August, but I'm sure we will see many of you in the meantime at the upcoming roadshow and conferences. Alexander, the Investor Relations team and I are on the road seeing investors almost every week until the end of June. We will occasionally be joined by one of the new Executive Board members, so we have a chance to get to know them better. We are looking forward to meeting many of you in the coming weeks, be it in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, London, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Zurich or Geneva. If you want to meet us in one of these places, please reach out to our IR team.

This concludes my presentation, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. And yes, we are ready for the Q&A. So I turn the call back to the operator, so please be so kind and open up the lines for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now take our first question today. This is from Max Yates from Morgan Stanley.

Just my first question is around the order pipeline and kind of customer conversations that you're having. I guess we started the year at kind of EUR 1.5 billion of order intake, slightly less than EUR 100 million of large orders. When you think about how this evolves over the kind of coming quarters, do you see kind of large orders out there that mean we should have a couple of quarters where that number can be meaningfully more than EUR 100 million. And when you think about your base order business, do you think about that sort of sequentially increasing from here broadly staying at these kind of levels or softening?

Thank you, Max. I'll take that question. I mean, I know that you are always concerned about order intake and growth, especially during these times. But let me once again repeat. First of all, we are operating in extremely stable markets. It doesn't matter what kind of prices are around people need to eat and drink and also need medical health, and that is also what you can see. I think GEA never, ever grown so fast. If you look back the last 10 years, like we do now last year. I just want to repeat that we had an organic growth of order intake with 9.1% in the first quarter. We are above 6% with organic growth and that are very strong numbers.

And the pipeline, if you look at the pipeline, the pipeline is very promising. We also expect that we can see very good order intake in the first half year. And by the way, not only coming from large orders, are also coming from a lot of medium-sized orders and base load. So we have a very optimistic view of the order intake, even if you know that sometimes it's difficult to predict, will we book order intakes in the second quarter or third quarter. But I would be completely surprised if at the end of the year, we would not see again a very great order intake improvement and growth for this company.

Okay. And maybe if we could just touch on the dairy farming business, because I guess this is the division where the market is most concerned given some of the pressure facing some of the farmers. And admittedly, it's more on the kind of crop side, that, that could feed through from fertilizer prices into grain prices. I guess the first bit is your order intake at 13.7% growth. Do you think there's any preordering in there ahead of potential price rises? And then maybe the second bit related to dairy farming. Could you just talk through -- you talk about kind of gross profits increasing a lot. Margins have taken a big step change. Is that kind of level sustainable as we think about the rest of the year? Or is there anything unusual dairy farming margin in 1Q?

Yes. I mean, first of all, you always will see some volatility in all the business in which we are in. But the good thing is that we have so many different businesses like you know, we have not only Farm Technology. We have -- we sell heating -- cooling compressors. We sell heat pumps. We have pasta machines. We have bakery ovens and so on. And every business has somehow a cycle. But due to the fact that we have so many businesses, it is always very, very stable what we see.

When it comes to Farm Technology, we also had, in the previous year, a different situation. We had, let's say, under load in the factory that is now turning around. And by the way, we also did and continue to do a lot of performance improvements in value engineering, in COGS programs. So I'm very optimistic that we can also keep the speed and the level of performance you see in Farm Technology. It might be, of course, that there is always a kind of volatility when the milk price is going down or feed price is going up or whatever. But over the cycle and also for the full year, we expect here also a good development. And you know that we have a guidance for Farm Technologies this year, 14.5% to 16.5% EBITDA margin, though the first quarter was a very good one. But we are also very optimistic that this will stay a very good business.

We also do a lot of digitalization, that also helps us to improve year-by-year the recurring revenue. And of course, the margin is also very interesting when we talk about digitization because COGS are very limited when we sell some more.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Klas Bergelind from Citi.

Klas at Citi. So I just want to come back to Farm Tech. I was wondering on the sort of indirect impact following the conflict either behavior of your customers and asking this in a slightly different way, if you can go through region by region, in March and April, am I right that European farmers are now a little bit more hesitant placing orders because of potentially higher feed costs and general macro uncertainties. You obviously have a very tough compare on orders in the second quarter. And I'm sort of interested whether we can have a slowdown in Europe beyond that effect. I will start here.

Yes. I have no knowledge that we have some order acceleration simply because customers have fear that it might not be as favorable anymore in the future. So we have good products. We have expanded our product range like you know, we are also active in feeding robots. We also have developed a lot of digital products like CattleEye, where we have also important AI application. So I'm also here quite optimistic. And as I said before, we have no reason to believe that business is declining or order intake is flattening.

Okay. Also in Europe -- okay. No, that's good to hear, Stefan. My second one is also on Farm Tech on the margin. Obviously, if I look back the last 12 months, you've sold many automated milking systems. And I was just wondering whether this has some sort of mix implication within the equipment margin. Obviously, great to see this strong operating leverage, bed utilization, but I was wondering whether the mix within equipment is also better because of selling more automated milking systems?

Yes. I mean, what comes normally on top with the automatic milking system is the digitization, yes. I mean, I think we don't have a single customer, I would guess, who buys automatic milking system and no digital solutions because this is bringing the benefit. And therefore, we also have quite intelligent and good pricing models, I would say, with the digitization. We had always things on top like now the CattleEye version where we can see with the camera at the roof of the farm, which animal is behaving and walking differently. We can see much earlier if there is illness or not and connect. So these are all things which has a lot of value for our customers. and that is normally all associated with the topic automatic milking system.

Okay. My final one is on the margin MP. The service mix is up year-over-year, but the margin is weaker than I thought. I get the lower volumes on the sort of equipment side. But is there any weak sort of legacy projects moving through the backlog before you start to ramp on the new backlog just to see if there is anything else going on, on the margin?

Let me take this, Alexander here. So we do not see any other reason for the margin development now in Q1 other than the fact that we were lacking volume in total. Yes, you see that we have compared to the previous quarter or the last year quarter 1, more than EUR 30 million turnover less. And this effect and the missing margin on this led to the dropping EBITDA. So that's the reason for this development.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our next question, which is from Akash Gupta from JPMorgan.

I got 2 as well. The first one is on your Q1 order intake, which I see growth is driven by smaller size orders. And wondering if you can quantify order growth in service and whether customer placing orders for spare parts a bit early, given the volatility in geopolitical environment and if that had any impact on Q1 order intake. And my second one is on restructuring. You had only Q1 with EUR 5 million. You have not given any indication for full year in your prepared remarks. So maybe wondering if you can comment on what kind of restructuring expenses we should expect in the remaining year given 2026 is the last year when you will be splitting it out. And from next year onwards, it will be part of guidance.

Akash, we haven't got the first question really. Can you maybe repeat again what exactly you mean here?

I mean, you had -- so you had good growth in small size orders. And I was wondering if you had seen any prebuy of spares and spare parts because of the volatile geopolitical environment, I mean, the conflict in the Middle East, maybe for...

I understand. I understand. No. No. I mean, there is nothing which we found out here.

Yes, I can take the second one. So you were asking regarding the restructuring expenses. First of all, you know that this year is the last year that we will report our results before restructuring expenses. So this will come to an end in '26. We expect until the year-end, still an amount of restructuring expenses, which is less than we had last year. So we do not expect the level that we saw last year to repeat. And yes, to give you a little bit of a number, I would say we expect roughly in the region of EUR 40 million this year.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Sven Weier from UBS.

Just one. Just following up on the organic growth guidance for the year, because I remember you originally thought that Q1 would be the same seasonality as last year, so the lowest growth rate of the year, but it was already in the guidance range. So I was wondering, do you still confirm that, that Q1 should be the lowest growth rate? Or did the growth come out a bit higher than you would have thought?

Yes. I think it was really -- like we said, a really good start into the year. Therefore, we also have been a little bit surprised about the stock market reaction today. We have no reason to believe that the next quarters will be somehow worse or going down. So we have a good order backlog. We had last year a great order intake, especially in the fourth quarter. We have now the first quarter with a good order intake. We have a good pipeline.

Also when it is about NPE, I am quite optimistic that for the first half year, we will see also in NPE, higher order intake compared to previous year, higher sales compared to previous year and our EBITDA compared to previous year. So we have a very optimistic view and that is also backed by the pipeline we see. And therefore, we are also very, very optimistic that we achieve our guidance. This is what we, I think, proved to do since years now. And we have no reason to be scared or afraid that we wouldn't make it.

But is it still fair to say that the second half growth rates year-on-year should be higher than the first half, just given the phasing on NPE of the big tickets?

Yes. That should be the case, yes.

Next question today comes from Louis Billon from Alpha Value.

So my first question is on the food sector. So food companies are starting to talk about inflation, and they will increase their price. So I assume this could reduce volumes. So if the war continues, should we expect a slowdown in order intake in the food sector?

I mean, I wouldn't expect that because, I mean, look, this is also what you can see over the years. It doesn't matter what goes on in the world, be it COVID crisis, be it supply chain crisis, be it Ukraine war, be it Iran war, people need to eat and drink. And that is also what we see and what we note here. And on top, I can also tell you, we see at the moment a very interesting new trend, the world, and that is also something you might have noticed, is very much interested in high protein. So we also have many projects going on at the moment, also medium and larger ones where customers are talking to us about high-protein investments because there is a huge demand and you see meanwhile, product in the market, in the supermarket, in the stores, which exists since more than 20 or 40 years, and they are all of a sudden now also available as high protein versions. So there is a big, big trend towards high protein, and that is something which also might trigger additional investment on our side -- for our customers' side.

Okay. Very clear. And maybe another question. Could you give us more color on how your suppliers will be impacted by the war in the Middle East and how it might impact your margin?

Yes. Like I said before, we don't have any significant supplier in that region. And we source also a lot of things locally. GEA is still very decentralized when it comes about local suppliers. And that also helps us even if logistic costs are going up, that might have less impact on GEA like compared to other companies because we have quite also decentralized suppliers. And of course, the old game is starting again that some suppliers trying to increase prices, but we have, like you know, a great purchasing organization, we can also defend that and whenever it is acceptable and understandable we take it, but then we also can pass it on to our customers. And therefore, as I said before in my speech, we don't see a significant impact neither from direct nor from indirect effect coming out of the Middle East conflict.

Okay. That's clear. And maybe a last question concerning new food. So there is a strong growth this quarter from a very low base, I guess. So what the pipeline looks like in new food for 2026? And what do you expect looking forward?

Yes. New Food is an area where we believe that this will sooner or later be really important for the world. We are very well positioned. But I think there is no other supplier who is as good positioned as we are, and we also expect that this year, I cannot always tell you in which quarter because this is very difficult to foresee, but we expect that this year, the order intake in new food will be significantly higher than last year.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our next question. This is from Lars Vom-Cleff from Deutsche Bank.

I've got 3 questions. Maybe I'll start with the first 2 for Mr. Kocherscheidt . If my calculation is correct, your cash conversion ratio at the end of Q1 was 40%, so far below recent ratios and your Mission 30 target of 60%. You already indicated that you're expecting free cash flow to be more or less flat year-on-year. So taking the current EBITDA consensus, I would end up with a cash conversion ratio of around about 50% for this year. Does this sound reasonable to you?

Yes, that sounds reasonable. So the 60% is the guidance that we for the Mission 30 timeframe. And we have already reached it, but you cannot expect that to continue or happen every year. I think with the absolute cash that we are expecting to turn in this year, we are quite, let's say, happy with this number that we keep it on the same level like the last years. And yes, but your calculation, that sounds about right.

Perfect. Then we saw that your higher cost of goods sold were partially offset by lower G&A expenses in Q1. Is this a trend we can expect to continue during the remainder of '26?

What did you say? Sorry, I didn't get that. Lower...

Higher -- your material costs were slightly higher, but your G&A costs were lower...

Yes, yes. Yes, sorry. Now I get it. Of course, this -- as you know, we also have in our Mission 30, a clear focus on bringing the G&A costs down and the restructuring efforts that we -- or the new setup of the company that we introduced end of last year, which is now in full operation this year, already plays a role in this G&A and this journey will continue for sure. This is exactly what we are focusing on.

Perfect. And maybe just as I remember, the SAP implementation, I guess, is running according to plan. Are you able to say how much of your revenue are already on the SAP platform in the meantime?

Yes, we can say that. So we have -- this -- beginning of this year, we had a launch of the next wave as planned. And we are now running roughly in the region of 15% of our revenue on the new platform. There is a new rollout plan for end of this year with another chunk coming on to the platform, but it's also true that we have still a way to go, which we always communicated that this will run well into 2030, and this is exactly -- this is unchanged the timeline.

Perfect. And then maybe ending with a quick question for Mr. Klebert. We recently saw some smaller transactions in the market without you being involved or not finally showing up as a buyer. Is there any update on your M&A pipeline and/or ambitious -- ambitions? Or is that unchanged from what you say before.

No, I can give you some updates. First of all, we are not interested in mom-and-pop shops, as long as they do not have a very special technology. We made some small acquisitions of that kind, but we are not looking for companies with EUR 40 million, EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million sales because they are very, very hard and difficult to integrate in a larger corporation like ours. There should be something very special. So we are looking more for larger, should be minimum EUR 100 million sales or better EUR 500 million or whatever. So this universe is somehow limited. And I can only repeat what I always said. We don't do any stupid things.

We are ready to make acquisitions. We have enough power, firepower, but we buy only something when we feel it's the right price for the right target. And we have a good strategy in place like you can see. I mean there are -- I don't know if you find any other example of a machine-building company having organic sales growth and order intake last year for more than 9% and now in the first quarter, 6%. This shows that we really have good products, innovative products. And therefore, we are open for M&A, but right target for the right price and then we do it.

We'll now take our next question. This is from Timothy Lee from Barclays.

So my first question is about the large orders. So this quarter, we have 3 large orders like last year, but the magnitude is a little bit lower than last year. I know the last orders will be roughly lumpy in terms of timing, in terms of scale every quarter, but can you give us a little bit more color on what do you expect or what we could expect in terms of the big orders because in the course of the year?

Yes, thanks for your question. I mean we have a very good pipeline, also for medium and large projects. We have in the pipeline orders in the magnitude of 3-digit millions. We also have a lot of medium-sized projects in our pipeline. And you might remember that I also made last year the example of the Baladna order, where it took 1 more year from handshake until we could book this order, and there was no single day when this job was on risk. But big projects or larger projects are almost impossible to predict in which quarter they are. What I can tell you is we have no reason to doubt that our growth will come to an end. We see good order activities, good pipeline for small and for medium and also for large projects.

Understood. And then my second question is about the margin for Pure Flow Processing. I mean the margin for the quarter is relatively flattish over the last year. Quarter, that is the biggest segment for us and for our group margin to move towards our full year guidance. I think we also need to see PFP margin to improve further from the first quarter level. So can you give us a bridge on what we can expect for the improvement in terms of margin for the segment in the coming quarters?

Yes, I can take this. So we are -- so with the margin that we achieved now in Q1. And if you compare this to the full year guidance for Pure Flow Processing, which sits between 26.5% to 28.5%. We expect this to continue this development. And there is also I think it's fair to say that there can be the expectation that this will also go up because we are now at the lower end of the guidance. And in this range, we will definitely land also for the full year.

Understood. And my last question is about China, India. This is probably for Stefan. I think this year or since the restructuring, we are putting these 2 regions under your direct supervision. Can you give us a little bit kind of what you have done or what you have seen to have changed in these 2 regions after the restructuring? And what opportunities we can expect from here?

I mean the org change we made with China and India is nothing you can feel now in the first quarter or in the second quarter. It's more a question of having the right setup for the future. What we do, in the past, these countries were also very much, let's say, controlled by the divisions, a lot of discussions and so on. So both country CEOs are reporting directly to me. And that is also what we can see now that this is accelerating decision-making, that we also build up more local knowledge and know-how. We will increase the number of engineering in these countries. We will increase also product managers and everything, which makes these countries more independent from the existing know-how areas here in Europe because we strongly believe that these countries need their own products and own R&D sooner or later. And they need to become more independent. And this is nothing which changes in one quarter or another one, but we can feel a different spirit here. We can also see, like I said, that decisions are done faster, and it goes in the right direction.

No further questions at this time. I would now like to hand back to Stefan Klebert, CEO, for closing comments.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions. Let me summarize. I think, first of all, we had really, after a very successful year last year, and it was, I think, now the fifth or sixth year in a row where we could improve all our KPIs through all cycles and crises in the world. We started again very good, and we have a very optimistic view also for the remainder of the year. We are full in our guidance already after the first quarter. And the first quarter, you also know is in a company like ours normally not the strongest one. So we are very optimistic that we can achieve all guidance parameter and that we are fully on track also to achieve our Mission 30 targets.

And with that, I think we can close today's call. And thank you very much for your interest.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.

ladies and gentlemen, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I hereby open this year's Annual General Meeting of the GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, and in accordance with the Articles of Association, assume the chairmanship. On behalf of Supervisory Board and Executive Board, I warmly welcome you, dear shareholders and shareholder representatives.

For the sake of feasibility and ease of speech, we would like to avoid gender-specific language as much as possible during this Annual General Meeting. However, personal designations and terms are, of course, to be regarded as gender neutral in the spirit of [indiscernible]. I would like to take this opportunity to inform our foreign shareholders that the entire AGM will be simultaneously translated into English. However, speeches at the Annual General Meeting are only permitted in German.

This year, the meeting will be held as a virtual Annual General Meeting in accordance with Section 17 Subsection 5 of the Articles of Association in conjunction with Section 118a of the German Stock Corporation Act, that means without the physical presence of shareholders or their proxies with the exception of the company's voting representatives who are present here on site.

After careful consideration and in consultation with the Supervisory Board, the Executive Board has once again opted for this format. The decisive sectors were the positive experience of recent years as well as the advantages for many shareholders, in particular, the elimination of travel expenses and costs, while at the same time, safeguarding all shareholder rights. Finally, in this way, all of us are contributing to climate protection.

I would like to welcome Dr. [indiscernible], who as a notary will perform the certification of the resolutions of this Annual General Meeting as required by the German Stock Corporation Act. I would also like to welcome the members of the Executive Board present here. Chairman of the Executive Board for Stefan Klebert, Dr. Nadine Sterley, Mrs. Kai Becker, Johannes Giloth, Alexander Kocherscheidt, [indiscernible] and Klaus Stojentin. The new members of the Executive Board will introduce themselves to you briefly later on.

I would also like to welcome the members of the Supervisory Board. Ladies and gentlemen, GEA looks back on a successful fiscal year 2025 evidence not least, but in particular, in the fact that GEA was admitted to the last year due to its sustained financial strength and profitability. This development of the company is a reflection of a clear strategic focus of responsible corporate governance and the great commitment of the Executive Board and all employees worldwide.

They have all consistently and purposefully continued the successful transformation of the recent years and will continue to do so. On behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the Executive Board and all employees for their achievement, particularly the successes obtained in 2025 in the sustainable development of the GEA Board.

Before we proceed to the agenda, I would now like to explain as announced the formalities of today's Annual General Meeting. The meeting will be broadcast live in its entirety for shareholders and the public on the company's website. Through the Investor Portal, shareholders who have registered in a timely manner and their proxy also have the opportunity to follow the meeting, to cast their votes by e-mail, ground proxies and instructions to the company's proxy holders, take the floor here at the meeting and file objections to resolutions or questions recorded as unanswered.

With regard to the exercise of the right to information, I hereby state that as already announced in the notice to the Annual General Meeting, this rights may be exercised exclusively via video communication. I will return to this point later. You can access the investor portal using the credential sent to you in the registration confirmation. Dr. [indiscernible] has verified in advance that the technology is functioning properly. Should any transmission issues nevertheless arise, we will, of course, make every effort to resolve them immediately. Please check if necessary, whether your Internet connection is stable and your web browser is up to date.

If you have any questions about using the investor portal, please contact our service provider, Computershare. You can find their contact information on the portal homepage under the contact menu item. With the exception of my Deputy Chair of the meeting Prof. Dr. and my colleague, all other members of the Supervisory Board are participating in the Annual General Meeting via video and audio transmission with my consent in accordance with Section 16 Subsection 4 Sentence 2 of the Articles of Association. The Executive Board is fully present.

The containing of this Annual General Meeting, including the complete agenda, the management's proposed resolutions on the announced agenda items was published by the Executive Board in the Federal German Gazette on March 13, 2026, in due form and within the prescribed time frame. A supplemental notice regarding the convening of the Annual General Meeting was published in the Federal German Gazette on March 19, 2026. The notice of the meeting was also distributed throughout Europe.

In addition to the announcement in the Federal Gazette, the convening of the Annual General Meeting was communicated in due form and time to the group of persons therein and in accordance with Section 125 of the German Stock Corporation Act. The notice convening the Annual General Meeting, the annual financial statements of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft for the fiscal year 2025 and all other mandatory documents pertaining to this Annual General Meeting has been available on the company's website since the notice was issued.

The company has not received any motions to amend the agenda, any counter motions regarding the agenda items that are subject to publication or any proposals for the election of Supervisory Board members or auditors within the statutory deadline.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are once again maintaining an electronic list of attendees for today's Annual General Meeting. This is available to you on the investor portal under List of Participants. The list of participants for today's virtual Annual General Meeting initially includes those shareholders who are represented by the company's proxy holders. In addition, the list of participants also include all shareholders or their representatives who are connected electronically during the Annual General Meeting.

In contrast, shareholders who voted by mail, but are not connected electronically during the AGM are not listed in the list of participants. However, when announcing attendance, I will state the number of mailing votes cast. Please note that only the list visible on the investor portal is valid. Information made available on other websites or by means other than this portal will not be taken into account. Any form of photographing or other reproduction of the list of participants as well as the misuse of the data contained therein is prohibited.

Persaunt to Section 19 Subsection 2 of our Articles of Association, I hereby determine the manner and the form of voting as follows: Voting will take place exclusively via the investor portal during this year's meeting. Voting rights exercised in advance of the Annual General Meeting by postal ballot or by proxy and instructions to the company's proxy holders will be taken into account. You can access the investor portal using the log-in credential There, you may also cast postal votes as well as grant, revoke or amend properties and instructions for the proxy holders even during the annual meeting up until the time announced by me as part of the voting process. I will inform you of this in a timely manner.

In addition, you may file objections to resolutions for the record and submit other statements via the investor portal. Please follow the relevant instructions in the investor portal if you want to do so. The proxies appointed by the company are Mrs. Johanna Berkman and Dr. Matthias Decker. They will exercise their voting rights elusively in accordance with the instructions you have provided. Those proxies are present here today. We will vote on all agenda items in a single around of vote. For the vote, we will use the accumulation voting method, which I will explain to you before the voting begins.

When announcing the voting results, we would display detailed version of the results on the screen. However, I intend to limit my statements to confirming that the required majority has been reached unless this is contested.

Ladies and gentlemen, as we did last year, we will once again hold a general debate in a virtual format. The general debate covers all items on the agenda and will take place following speech which you will hear after my remarks as well as the explanations regarding the agenda that followed the speech. We have written a written statement from a shareholder in advance of the meeting, which we have made available on the website. I would like to refer you to it.

Request to speak as well as motions regarding procedure and motions regarding the rules of procedure may be submitted via the investor portal during today's meeting. I ask all shareholders and shareholder representatives who wish to speak to register via the investor portal as early as possible. This facilitates a structured conduct of the general debate and contribute to the efficient conduct of the Annual General Meeting in the interest of all shareholders.

Please ensure that you enter your contact information correctly. This information is necessary for us to contact you if needed and to explain the further proceedings to you. After registering to speak, you will receive a request to join a virtual waiting rule. You can continue to follow the Annual General Meeting from there. I will then have disconnected to the general discussion via video conference at the appropriate time. Please understand that this process, depending among other things on the number of requests to speak will take some time.

As already explained in the notice convening the annual general meeting, we will also conduct a technical check of the video communication system functionality. This is the only way we can ensure the smooth running of the Annual General Meeting in the best interest of all shareholders. At this point, I would also like to draw your attention to the instructions and recommendations for video conferencing, which you can find on our website for your reference. If you wish to submit procedural nations that is motions regarding the rules of procedure, please also submit them via the investor portal. Please include one or more key words regarding your motion to specify its subjects matter. This will allow me to review and determine how to proceed with the motion, particularity particularly, whether proposal should be given priority to speak so that they may present and justify their mention.

Here, too, please ensure that you enter your information correctly. This is the only way we can contact you if necessary. And the only way we can ensure that you can be connected to the Annual General Meeting via video conference.

Ladies and gentlemen, before we proceed to the agenda, I would first like to announce the current attendance. Of the company's registered share capital in the amount of EUR 520,375,765.57 divided into 162,801,664 no-par value shares, 140,355,318 no-par value shares representing the same number of votes are currently represented at the AGM via proxy and instructions to the company's proxy. This corresponds to an attendance of 70.24% of the registered share capital. In addition, postal ballots 392,815 no-par value shares have been received, corresponding to 0.24% of the registered share capital.

Attendance, plus the received postal votes that amounts to 114,748,133 no-par value shares. This corresponds to 70.48% of the registered share capital. The list of participants is available to you on the investor portal under the menu item Attendance List.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will now call the agenda Items 1 through 11. With the exception of agenda Item 1 on which no resolution will be passed, the remaining agenda items will be put to a joint vote later. I will now move on to Item 1 on the agenda. Presentation of the adopted annual financial statements of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft and the approved consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2025, the group management report combined with the management report of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft for fiscal year 2025, including the report of the Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2025.

Ladies and gentlemen, the aforementioned documents also include the Executive Board explanatory report on the disclosures pursuant to Sections 289a and 350a of the German Commercial Code, the corporate governance statement with the corporate governance report as well as the group sustainability report. The annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2025, as well as the consolidated management report summarized in the management report of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, including the sustainability report fully integrated therein has been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH Wirtschaftspr fungsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, as the auditor elected at the last Annual General Meeting.

The sustainability report was prepared on a consolidated basis and meets all requirements for the GEA Group sustainability statement in accordance with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards as well as requirements for nonfinancial reporting obligations under Section 315b to 315c of the German Commercial Code, HGB, for the nonfinancial group statements and the requirements of Article 8 of Regulation 2020/852 the so-called EU Taxonomy regulation. The auditor has subjected the sustainability report to a substantive review regarding the required disclosures to obtain limited assurance.

As part of this business review, the energy data Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and the total Scope 3 emissions were subject to review with reasonable assurance. The Supervisory Board has thoroughly reviewed the annual financial statements, the consolidated financial statements, consolidated management report combined with the management report, including the sustainability report as well as the proposal for the appropriation of net income. Together with the auditor, the audit report was discussed in detail during the Supervisory Board meeting on the 5 March 2026.

Neither the audit by the external auditor nor the review by the Audit and Cybersecurity Committee and/or the Supervisory Board gave rise to any objections. The auditor issued the required unqualified audit opinion pursuing the Section 322 of the German Commercial Code on the audit of the consolidated financial statements and the consolidated management report. In addition, the auditor also issued an unqualified audit opinion on the audit of the group sustainability report to obtain limited or reasonable assurance Supervisory Board approved the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements submitted by the Executive Board at its meeting on 5 March 2026.

The annual financial statements are thus adopted in accordance with Section 172 of the German Stock Corporation Act. The Supervisory Board's written report on its activities during the past fiscal year can be found in the annual report starting on Page 256. The focus of the Supervisory Board's activities in the past year was particularly on the corporate and growth strategy, including the continued implementation of the Mission 30 strategy as well as addressing strategic initiatives for the sustainable and profitable further development of the group.

Other key topics of the Supervisory Board activities included financial reporting and financial performance, including the effects of inflation, compliance, geopolitical risks and their impact on GEA and the areas of markets, customers and customer satisfaction, competition as well as sustainability. The was significantly supported by the work of the committee. The Executive and Sustainability Committee focused primarily on ongoing M&A projects the strategy and implementation of the Mission 30 strategy with a particular emphasis on sustainability the potential applications of artificial intelligence, succession planning of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board, the definition of the Executive Board's 2026 and the efficiency review of the Supervisory Board.

The Audit and Security Committee primarily dealt with regular financial reporting and the nonfinancial group statement. Its activities also focus on topics such as the effectiveness of the internal control risk management and audit systems. The audit of the financial statements and the compliance management system. Finally, the note regarding the adjustment of the company's management structure, which Mr. Klebert will report on in detail in his speech that follows shortly.

The previously existing global executive committee has been dissolved. The Executive Board has been extended as of January 2026 to ensure that the divisions are also represented at the executive board level. Currently, the Executive Board consists of 7 members, our Chief Operating Officer, Johannes Giloth, will be leaving GEA at the end of April 2026. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to Mr. Giloth.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to give the floor to the Executive Board for its presentation of the 2025 financial statements and business performance. Mr. Klebert will explain the key figures for the 2025 fiscal year and will then focus primarily on the near future. Mr. Klebert, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Prof. Kempf. Well, dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, anyone who was there on the 30th of September when the bell rang at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange will never forget that moment, the sense of anticipation in the room, the joy, the pride and above all the beaming faces of our colleagues. More than 100 employees from numerous countries and corporate functions shared that moment together. See for yourself.

[Presentation]

Well, GEA is in the as the first pure-play mechanical and plant engineering company, historic success, the highlights of a strong financial year. We will look at the figures shortly. But first, let's stay with this particular moment for a second. It means a lot to us because it's the result of hard and disciplined work. GEA no tailwinds, but rather profitable growth driven by our own efforts. Behind all these are the people who made it possible.

One of them is here with us today. has been with GEA for many years. She leads a team at our site Actually, he was one of the colleagues you just saw in the video. Well, when you think back to that particular moment, what is your strongest recollection?

All in all, it was a very special day indeed. And early in the morning, you could feel that everybody was euphoric looking forward to what was about to come. And then when we entered this platform of the Frankfurt stock exchange and you land about all this pride came well, something that was sounded there was a jubilation, everybody was happy. So it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for me.

Wonderful to hear. You've been with GEA 15 years. What makes the special company?

It's so special because I've grown this company. Over all the years I've continuously further developed and the projects we execute are super interesting, highly demanding, and we are rewarded with our work becoming visible, large plant as the end product, and this is motivating to me and it gives great joy to my everyday work.

Thank you very much, Julia. And well, I would all at this point, also express my sincere thank to all our colleagues worldwide. Together, we have bought GEA into the DAX. To understand what this moment really means to us, it is helpful to take a brief look back. In 2019, 7 years ago, GEA was in a deep crisis. True. We have strong technologies, excellent teams. The foundation was set. But we had created an organization that initiative to centrally controlled little entrepreneurial freedom. The results, 7 profit warnings in a row.

We lost trust. We lost talented people. The capital market had almost no faith left in GEA. One analyst verdict at the time was uninvestable stock, uninvestable. That was our starting point back in 2019. We had to act quickly. It was clear that things had to change. So we repositioned GEA more focused, more efficient more entrepreneurial. At the same time, we delegated responsibility to where it belongs to 5 divisions, each accountable for its own results with a freedom to make their own decisions. After all, if you want people to deliver, you must give them autonomy. That clarity is missing today, it is back and with it the entrepreneurial spirit.

We divested 7 companies with approximately EUR 300 million in revenue not because they weren't good, but because they no longer fit with our strategic focus, and we tackled many other issues as well. Some of these but the results show they were the right ones. Part of this transformation is also a new performance culture. It can be summed up in 1 sentence that every one of our managers know by heart budget and budget. That sounds simple, but it carries a lot of weight.

It means I was hard to finding. No excuses, no surprises. And in particular, no profit warnings. We say what we do and we do what we say. This starts right at the very top. Those who lead to that responsibility. And that's due with this latitude comes with accountability. Every manager will stand behind their target. Anyone who repeatedly fails to deliver in the wrong place at GEA. This is how we regain the trust of the customer market. Step by step, quarter by quarter, year by year.

Since 2019, GEA has issued no more profit warnings, not during the pandemic nor during the supply chain crisis nor during the energy crisis. On the contrary, we frequently deliver more than we promised. In 2021, we presented our Mission 26 strategy with ambitious targets. We have achieved those targets in 2026, but in 2024, a full 2 years ahead of time. None of this happened by chance. It is the result of clear principles ownership performance culture and reliability. These principles guide us. They are the reason why we can once again speak of a record year.

And this brings us to fiscal year 2025. The economic environment is anything but easy. German industries under press mechanical engineering is contracting, key sectors of struggling against massive headwinds. And GEA, we grew profitably with record margins, bucking the trend one more time. Let's take a look at the figures. Our order intake rose by 9.1% in organic terms to EUR 5.9 billion. In the fourth quarter, organic growth was nearly 18%. That's a strong new signal because today's orders are tomorrow's revenue.

Revenue reached EUR 5.5 billion, an organic increase of 3.7%, placing it at the upper end of our guidance range. EBITDA before restructuring expenses was EUR 907 million. The corresponding margin was at 16.5%. And return on capital employed also reached an excellent level in 2025 at 36.2%. I want to emphasize 1 point, in particular, we have raised our guidance in the summer. And at the end of the year, even partially expected it.

These results speak for themselves and for the strength of our business model. One major driver is our service business. This now accounts for 40% of our revenue. machine service relationships often span decades. This made force stability, especially in volatile times. And that is why GEA continues to grow profitably. For 2026, we expect accelerated organic revenue growth of 5% to 7%, and EBITDA margin because restructuring expenses of 16.6% to 17.2% and the ROCE between 34% and 38%.

This means we are approaching the margin corridor of 17% to 19% as defined in our Mission 30 strategy. Once again, more quickly than expected. GEA is in a strong financial position. What does it mean for you, dear shareholders? Those who believed in us in 2019 how then we've awarded our share price as roughly tripled and dividends have continued to rise. Today, we are again proposing a higher dividend of EUR 1.30 per share, that is EUR 0.15 more than last year, an increase of 13% at the fifth consecutive increase.

On average, our dividend has risen by more than 7% a year since 2019. We are paying out a total of EUR 212 million to you. This corresponds to about 50% of net profit. he creates lasting value for our customers, our employees and for you, our shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, figures are important, but I don't want to stop at the numbers. The question is why does GEA deliver so reliably. And even more importantly, what makes us confident it will stay that way. The answer starts with our people. It extends through our technology and all the way to sustainability.

These 3 factors belonging together. The most important reason for our success is the people at GEA. When I look back at 2025, I think my many encounters with colleagues worldwide, special energy was palpable everywhere I went, a determination to become better every day, the ambition to understand things from the ground up, tackle problems out their root and to keep working on solutions until they are better anything that came before. This is the spirit that defines our company in development and production and out in the field with our customers.

I wanted to experience the first-hand for a day as a service technician at our customer Take a look.

[Presentation]

Well, job. It calls for precision, experience, physical effort and a cool head even under pressure. The colleagues who did a day after day have my utmost respect. That capability doesn't come out of nowhere. It needs a foundation and that's why I keep coming back to 1 question. Where will our future talent has come from? Where will we find the skilled workers we need to maintain this level and Germany has great strength in this area.

Deeply rooted engineering position that is the envy of the world. The combination of theory and practice in vocational training at universities and in a deep understanding of industrial processes. These strengths will only be preserved if we nuture them as a society. What is elected in education today have a lasting impact. Even if we act now, it will take a generation before we see a turnaround. This must concern all of us. This is both a social and economic imperative.

For us at GEA, this means we take responsibility here and now. And at our German sites, we are training around 380 young people in engineering and commercial applications as well as in the dual study view program. And what they accomplish is impressive. Take a look at this model. separator one of our most important machine. Our GEA's largest factory worked and it separates. This small example illustrates what makes GEA stand out on a large scale action for technology precision and the pure joy of creating things.

Word is getting around. Interest GEA is growing internationally and in Germany, on average, twice as many people apply for a vacancy in this country today as they did 2 years ago. We are an attractive employer, which the top employees institute also confirmed. At the beginning of 2026, we were recognized once again for the fourth time in a row. Today, we are certified as a top employer in 9 countries on 3 continents. We particularly value feedback from our employees.

80% participated in our global survey this year, 84% of them would recommend GEA as a good employer. Why is that? Because what matters is what you work on. Ultimately, at GEA, we don't just build machines what we develop is fundamental for people, markets and societies. Our technology is often out of site, but it's just part of how we live, it's about basically it's every second be worldwide is with our technology, every processed milk coming from our production systems, every fourth package of every fifth cookie, GEA technology is at work everywhere. And in GEA solutions are Every second for the treatment of cancers produced on GEA equipment.

Markets can fluctuate, economies can but people have to eat and drink and they want to stay healthy. Take a look at this. This is milk powder. In many regions, it's a key dietary In Algeria, we are currently building the world's largest fully integrated plant for the production of milk powder for our customer from dairy farming to packaging all from single source, one of the largest single orders in our history.

But what matters most to something else. Algeria is still the third largest importer of milk powder worldwide, but that will change. Our plant will go into operation step by step from the end of 2027. The target capacity is around 100,000 metric tons of milk powder per year. This is equivalent to roughly half of the country's demand, roughly 5,000 jobs will be created locally. I personally signed contract in 2025 which was a pleasure.

At moments like these you truly see you with industrial technology can achieve. It is about contributing to the full security of an entire country. Here is the second example. In 2025, we opened our technology center for new food and biotechnology in the U.S. We invested EUR 18 million. And by the way, the entire center runs on renewable energy. There, our customers can test and optimize next-generation processes such as precision fermentation and cell cultivation. In other words, egg without chicken and fish without fishing. And they can lose to industrial production.

In Jamesville, we validate the relevant processes together with our customers before they go to industrial scale. That is how we help made the decisive step from the lab to production. So we are not just securing nutrition today, we are also shaping the nutrition of tomorrow. At the same time, we are delivering key question, how can our customers set our performance by consuming fewer resources? That is precisely what we mean by sustainability. Plenty of companies talk about this today.

But at GEA, sustainability has long been part of our business model. Why? Because our customers are coming under pressure, especially you go to time, energy is becoming more expensive, water scarcer, regulations getting stricter have to come down. Geopolitical attentions are making everything more uncertain. So deficiency is a clear competitive advantage more than ever. We deliver to take machines and processes that produce more and consume less. One case in point, European dairy installed a new GEA system.

Gas consumption dropped so sharply that the energy provider got in touch and asked if there was a problem at the site. There wasn't. The plant was running normally, just much more efficiently, 60% less fossil energy, 40% less energy overall. That is exactly what it's about, sustainability that Two years ago, dear shareholders you supported supporting our Climate Transition Plan 2040, with 98.4% approval.

The first sales vote on the DAX index family. That was a powerful and I can tell you today, we are on a very good track. Already 45.7% of our revenue come from sustainable solutions. By 2030, this is set to be over 60%. We have reduced green house gas emissions from our own operations, Scopes 1 and 2, faster than planned. By the end of 2025, there were already 62% below their 2019 level. Our interim target for 2026 was 60%.

We're also making strides slide in our value chain in Scope 3. Compared to 2019, we have already reduced these emissions by 38%. So here, too, we are well on track. That does not go unnoticed. EcoVardis has once again awarded us with 92 out of 100 points, only 1% of all rated companies worldwide achieved that level, and we, GEA, are 1 of them.

sustainability ranking, we presently rent 12 globally and second in Germany. has put GEA on its A list for climate leadership once more. For many customers, sustainability is a key decision-making criteria. This bolsters our market position. But for us, responsibility does not end with the product or at the factory gate. A year ago, I introduced the valuation we promote education, to improve access to basic infrastructure and provide during disaster.

[indiscernible] have been with us from the start. Additional partners have joined since then. [indiscernible] Together, we create opportunities for young people from the classroom to the start of their career. 1% of our net profit goes to charitable causes every year. In 2025, that was over EUR 4 million. People, technology, responsibility. This is what our success is built on. That is the heart of GEA. And from this position of strength, we are now shaping our next phase of growth. To take the call, we have adjusted our leadership structure. Instead of 5 divisions, we now have 4. flow processing, nutrition plant engineering, and food applications and farm technology, each with a key focus and full bottom line responsibility.

At the same time, we dissolved the 14 member global executive committee. Since the beginning of 2026, it has been replaced by a newly formed Executive Board that will comprise 6 members going forward. It includes colleagues who have played a major part in GEA's success in recent years and who are now taking on the roll of responsibility. Our Chief Operating Officer, Johannes Giloth, will remain part of this team until the end of April, after that, he will leave GEA.

We owe a great deal to Johannes Giloth. He and his team fundamentally improved our operational processes. Above all, by consolidating our global procurement activity. In doing so, he was instrumental in enhancing value creation at GEA. And for that, Johannes, I would like to thank you sincerely. The new members of the Executive Board will now introduce themselves, so I would like to hand over to my Executive Board team.

Well, thank you very much, Stefan. Hello. My name is Alexander Kocherscheidt. And since November 2025, I have been the CFO of GEA. And I joined GEA in 2019. At the transformation that Stefan Klebert began Since then, I had financial functions, the division CFO of Plant Engineering of LPT, Nutrition plant engineering. As CFO, I stand for transparency of figures for smart capital allocation as well as for a sustainable success of GEA. Thank you very much.

My name is Nadine Sterley. Sustainable growth starts with strong teams. I'm convinced of that. Since 2016, I have been working with GEA and recently in the function of Chief Sustainability Officer. Now I'm a member of Executive Board, and I'm responsible for human resources, people and more. And I want to move the best talent for GEA and to retain them.

My name is Klaus Stojentin. I'm responsible for the Nutrition Plant Engineering division. I have been working with GEA since 2003, recently responsible for the Separation & Flow Technologies division. Our plant engineering business for the drinks and food industry opens enormous opportunities, which we will use consistently.

Good morning. My name is Kai Becker. I've been working with GEA for 20 years now and during that time among other things, I was responsible for activities in China, Italy and Great Britain. And since the beginning of this year, I have been responsible for the fewer flow processing division. This is a elementally important for our customers and an important wealth lever for GEA.

My name is I come from Belgium, and I've been working with GEA since 2020. I have more than 20 years of international experience in the mechanical engineering business. Today, as a Head of the Pharma and Food Applications division. In particular, in the pharmaceutical area, we find one of our most important dynamic markets, and we bring everything into this business in order to be successful.

Well, thank you very much to all of you. This team knowns GEA. Each and every one of them have long been in a position of responsibility and have shown that they can deliver. I look forward to continuing on our path at the high pace of it and actively shape the generational transition leadership.

A key lever for our continued growth is digitalization. Here, too, we just don't talk the talk. We are building a business with quantifiable added value for our customers. In 2025, our revenue from digital solutions stood at around EUR 80 million. By 2030, that figure will be more than EUR 200 million. Today, more than 11,000 machines are connected to the GEA cloud. And by 2030, that number will exceed 35,000. Why is it so important? Because our digital solutions are based on artificial intelligence and AI becomes even more powerful as more data is available. And that's exactly where our advantage lies.

We combine our engineering and service data with operating data from the connected machines. The outcome is great higher productivity and lower resource consumption. And AI can do even more. It opens up new possibilities that simply did not exist before. One example is our system. It uses a camera and AI to analyze the gate of their recon automatically day after day. It detects at an early stage. This means faster treatment, healthier animals and higher productivity.

Animal welfare any profitability go hand-in-hand. AI doesn't only benefit our customers. It also makes us more efficient ourselves by accelerating processes and increasing our productivity. A casinos our in-house AI solution enables us to digitize complex engineering drawings and analyze them automatically, that saves time, reduces hours and accelerated work on our projects. And this is exactly where one of GEA great strength lies. We can buy new technologies with in-depth process knowledge and data from tens of thousands of machines. This is an advantage that cannot simply be copied.

Our competitiveness is not determined in the digital space alone. It is also decided on the ground side by side with our customers. The global economy is becoming increasingly fragmented, trade barriers, tariffs, geopolitical tensions, the rules of the game constantly shifting. As a company with customers in more than 150 countries, it affects us. And let's not kid ourselves, the German success model no longer works.

Develop everything here, produce it here, export it to the world and then expect everyone to applaud, that is over, and it won't come back. But we are prepared better than many others because we are were our customers are. We develop there, produce there and provide service there. In a complex world, it's not the most complex organization that wins, it's the most agile one, the 1 closest to the customer. That is why our divisions manage their business globally with seamless responsibility down to country level. This creates clear accountability and sure decision paths. In 2 countries, we are going a step further, in China and India. Their market dynamics and competition are evolving a great This calls for even higher degree of independence at even in greater That is why starting this year, these 2 country organizations report directly to me.

China is much more than a large sales market for GEA. We have been present for many years with our own production, our own engineering and now also our own digital solutions. In 2025 alone, we developed over 20 products locally in China. India is also developing at a rapid pace. For us, the country's growth market, the production site and in engineering hub, all in 1 several hundred continuous work in Vadodara and Bangalore. They develop not only for the local market, but for many of our global projects.

Today, more than 2,000 people work for GEA in India and China and what is created there has an impact on this region strengthens the entire group. We also have a strong footprint in North America. Our industrial network there includes almost 1,200 employees at 16 locations. Made in the U.S.A. is also a live reality for us. This strategy, local strength, global reach makes us more robust and it makes us a fast reliable partner on the ground.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm often asked, can we maintain this momentum? My answer to that is short and clearer, yes. We look for the future with confidence because we have good reasons to do so. We generate almost 80% of our revenue in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. These are industries with structural demand. The global population is growing. In many countries, the middle class is growing as well. There is increasing pressure to use resources more efficiently. And these are trends driving our success.

Our position in these markets is strong and our reputation among customers is excellent. We deliver machines an entire production plants in which many processes interact. Every order is different and also highly demanded. Anyone who can master that complexity is not easy to replace. Add to this strong balance sheet, operational discipline and an outstanding team, and Mission 30, our clear strategic company. All of this makes us robust and ready to respond quickly even in difficult times.

Finally, let's return to where we target in Frankfurt to that special moment. Moments like this bring out what we have achieved but they are never the end of the story. They are the beginning of the new chapter. The fact that is in the DAX today is a powerful statement. It sends a strong signal, not just for GEA, but also for Germany as an industrial hub. It shows that engineering is the future, including in Germany, provided that new part, says focus and creates value.

Ladies and gentlemen, little piece from the Frankfurt stock exchange floor shows our ticker symbol. Today, there's a place at our new headquarters in It stands for what we have achieved together and everything else we can achieve. My sincere thanks go out to our employees worldwide, to our customers and partners and to you, our shareholders.

YOu have stayed the course with us even in difficult times, and you have been rewarded for it. In 2019, hardly anyone would have bet on us. Today, we are in the DAX. Behind us lies year. This is not the finish line, but the next step on our journey. Let us continue on this path together with determination. Thank you very much.

Mr. Klebert, thank you very much for your remarks. I would like to point out that the text of the speech delivered by the Chairman of the Executive Board has already been published on the company's website in advance. Ladies and gentlemen, before we now proceed to the general discussion, I would like to quickly explain the remaining items on the agenda.

Agenda Item 2 the association of net retained profits. The executive Board and the Supervisory Board propose the distribution of a dividend of EUR 1.30 per dividend-bearing share.

Agenda Item 3 concerns the resolution on the approval of the remuneration report.

Agenda Item 4 and 5, concerning the ratification of the acts of the members of the Executive Board and the members of the Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2025.

Next, Agenda Item 6 deals with the appointment of auditor and auditor as the sustainability report for fiscal year 2026.

Under Agenda Item 6.1, the Supervisory Board acting on the recommendation of the Audit and Cybersecurity Committee proposes that a PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH Wirtschaftspr fungsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main be reappointed as the auditor of the company and the group for fiscal year 2026. As well as the auditors will review of the contained financial statements and the interim management report of the half year financial report in fiscal year 2026.

Under Agenda Item 6.2, the Supervisory Board are based on the recommendation of the Audit and Cybersecurity Committee proposes to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH Wirtschaftspr fungsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, as the auditor of the sustainability report of the company and the group for fiscal year 2026. The appointment as auditor entrusted with providing assurance of sustainability reporting will be effective upon entry into of the German law implementing the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, that is CSRD and in the event of the German legislator should stipulate the explicit appointment of such auditor the Annual General Meeting.

Agenda Item 7 concerns the resolution on the approval of the remuneration system for the Executive Board. Section 120a1 German terms Corporation Act provides that the Annual General Meeting of listed companies were resolved on the approval of the remuneration system for Executive Board members submitted by the Supervisory Board at least every 4 years the company's Annual General Meeting last adopted such a resolution back in 2025. The Supervisory Board has reviewed and adjusted the remuneration system in light of the company position following its inclusion in the DAX and the new organization of the Executive Board. Therefore, the Supervisory Board acting on the recommendation of the and sustainability committee proposes system the remuneration of the members of the Executive Board of the GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft as adopted by the Supervisory Board is available on the company's website be approved.

Agenda Item 8 covers my reelection as a member of the Supervisory Board. Since my supervisory tenure is due to expire at the conclusion of today's annual general meeting, I'm standing for reelection today for 1 more year. In doing so, I wish to contribute to the continuation of our trusting cooperation within the Supervisory Board and with the Executive Board during the transition to the new management and organizational structure.

Agenda Item 9 concerns an amendment to the articles of appreciation to comply with legal regulations regarding the issuance of electronic shares. No transition to electronic shares is planned for the time being. The amendment to the articles of association is in to open up this possibility for the company in the future.

Furthermore, Agenda Item 10 provides for the creation of new authorized capital. This is intended to replace the company existing and now expire authorized capital in their entirety. This is intended to simplify the existing authorization structure outlined in the Articles of Association. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board therefore proposed creating a new authorized capital 2026 with a volume of up to EUR 156 million.

Authorization will now end on April 28, 2031. The authorized capital may be increased through the issuance of new no-par value shares in exchange for cash and on past contribution. The shares to be issued to the authorization for capital may be used amongst other things as consideration and business combinations or the acquisition of companies to service employee participation programs or to demand script dividend. Furthermore, the authorization provides for the possibility of a so-called simplified exclusion of subscription for cash contribution pursuant to Section sentence 4 of the German Stock Corporation the possibility of excluding eruptions is, as in the past, limited to a total of 10% of the share capital.

Please refer to the detailed information in the notice of the meeting and the Executive Board's report, which is available on the company's website for further details regarding the capital authorization in particular, concerning the exclusion of subscription rights. I come to on the agenda resolution is to be passed here regarding the authorization to issue bonds with conversion or option rights or obligations as well as to create contingent capital to service these bonds. The proposed authorization to exclude subscription to a proportionate amount of the share capital totaling 10%.

The background here is also the expiration of the previous authorization. Please allow me to refer once again to the details provided in the notice of the meeting and the Executive Board report. Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you, even if you wish to speak only on the individual agenda items to do so during the discussion that is about to follow. Please register your request to speak by the investor portal. As mentioned, you will then receive upfront to join a virtual waiting room and our staff will guide you through the technical process.

In the virtual waiting room, we will first the functionality of the video communication and provided the test is successful, I will call on you at the appropriate time and have you activated to speak at the annual general meeting. We will then collect your questions as usual and address them in The speaking time is not limited from the however, I would like to ask all speakers to keep the remarks as concise as possible to address all agenda items in a single statement.

For the speaking, the elapsed speaking time will be displayed on the investor Board all for a reference. I reserve the right to limit speaking and question time to an appropriate level, be expecting the occasion is been necessary. Please also restrict your remarks to items on the agenda.

I will now call on the speakers. When calling on the speaker, I will already account announce next speakers. Well, I look at my list of speakers at the moment, I requests to speak and I have to Mr. and then Mr. Christopher Mr. you have the floor.

My name indeed is I'm Managing Director of the shareholder association. We used to be neighbors of GEA. Unfortunately, you moved, but it didn't stop your success story. So I can leave with it. Congratulations on your last fiscal year and then my congratulation on your to the DAX. It's not a given well as a gift to you, you have to fight for it, so the thanks and the praise of our shareholders due to all GEA employees, and this is extraordinary.

And let me come in with another angle. It's a beneficial thing for the DAX to have GEA on board because GEA is a good company and I recall the period prior to 2019 until then, we were greatly worried and when you look GEA today, it's different company indeed. So thank you very much. It's not done overnight. It's a long path. It's a marathon. And you have wonderfully managed to cover it below 2-hour limit the thank you goes to the employees to the Executive Board and the supervisory Board, we shouldn't forget that body. So congratulations, and welcome to the new members of the Executive Board.

We wish you all the best for the future success and that the success story will continue. We are not worried about that, but I've got a few questions to you. You know it, you will anticipate it because we would like to aim more. And I simply go for and make associate with take a look at the order book. How well or how strong that will look at a single project, we had a problem many years ago, things got out of hand.

I do not surmise that this is the case, but could you please elaborate on it? Do you have more large projects and more risk? And why is it not a risk? Maybe you could expand on that and tell us everything is fine and why that would be something I would be very grateful for.

Then your book-to-bill ratio is 1.08. Wonderful, no doubt about that. But maybe you could also expand on that. From your point of view, is it good? Is it bad? What role does execution speed play, project structure and also margin quality? To give us a little bit more flesh and let us look at your order book, it would be great. If we could do that. So what's your assessment of the midterm perspective of the Farm Technologies segment, also against the backdrop of the intense cyclicity and dependence on the farm, on the agriculture market that you play a role or not?

I think Crop Science and so on, Bayer, BASF, and they have to fight with it. Could you tell us, are you dependent on that, too? Or is there no major dependence in your case when you look at the prices for soybeans and the others? Your margin development were, [indiscernible] I take my hat off. You can be highly happy about it. So what's driving your margin? Is it that you -- that you set the prices that you can increase prices? Is it efficiency that you come from 2 -- that these things come together from 2 sides. Could you shed some light on that and tell us why your margin is so significantly and nicely increasing and answer the question whether this will continue.

The increase in your service share, you mentioned that during your speech, Mr. Klebert is also an important building block and component of your success. So congrats on my part. But 40%, you mentioned that in your speech. So what is the plan? Is it going to continue? Tailwind was there because you kept fighting, your team kept fighting. But is there more the risk profile of GEA? Could it still be improved that there was more the service?

So when you can wonder for you do the trait yourself and work yourself is even better. So what can we expect in terms of the service business? And then, well, in P4, we have cheap a lot. You have a lot. The shareholders are happy. You can -- it's reflected by the stock exchange price to what are the top 3 for achieving your Mission 30 goals. If we talk about opportunities you do, about the efforts, the work behind it.

But what are your 3 big building -- well, 3 big things that could put your risk achievement -- put your achievement in general at risk. And then 2 years ago, we moved well, we look at sustainability in a positive way. Sustainability plays a big role in your business model. Your approach was different from other companies, and this is also a positive aspect. And today, again, you pointed out the energy efficiency provides to your customers.

I would love to hear from you what about worldwide because sustainability is viewed differently in the individual regions. And we well see it and come face to face with it all the time. So how do you view it worldwide? Or do you move in via energy efficiencies? And then we do not need to talk about sustainability because it's an economic efficiency topic. So the view of the world to sustainability is that a different one and also the way they view GEA.

I would love to hear from you whether maybe you see a question mark with your counterparts when you talk to customers. So next, what about geopolitical upheavals, -- to what extent do they impact on your supply chains, then the oil price. And I think that the strength of the market in India and China is something you addressed in your speech. Maybe you could briefly elaborate on the extent you are affected well by that. You act local to local, to what extent are you impacted? Maybe a little bit more. Then M&A somehow as a shareholder, you've got the feeling that there is something you've got and your pockets are deep, and we've been talking about M&A for quite some time. And what we could read is that CVC well had a minority stake, well in [ Syndicon ], they sold to Apollo.

You didn't do it. It's not necessarily bad because private equity has got unfavorable prices, and it's sometimes hard not to seize the opportunity. What's your general approach to M&A? Are you going for the risk? Are you risk averse? What could you imagine? Where do you move? When I look at your equity story, you've done your homework wonderfully. I mentioned it before. But of course, we are waiting for the next step to take place.

And I think you also have got the right feel for doing it at the right point in time. The right thing has to come along. Simply acquiring something for acquisition purposes is not the right thing to do. But just elaborate. Then China, you were self-confident talking about the topic, China. You can face up to competition what about your competition from China? We do not hear a lot about this.

Well, may be you could tell what are the Chinese up to? Are they increasingly coming in? Do you encounter them more frequently in your endeavors? Or are your products so specific that there's no need for you to worry? Then working capital, again, [indiscernible] I take my hat off. You reduced it significantly. I've got a feeling that this is not repeatable because it's always relating to a reference date. But you have issued a range. So why is it such an outlier now? What is it? Just make us understand better what is going to be the path ahead for our new CFO. So welcome. It's an important position for the shareholders.

Do we see a countervailing effect in 2026 out of a low working capital level to a high one? Just to know beforehand. So I know next year's question. And then to conclude, what about the new organization structure? Is it bearing fruit already? Well, just elaborate on it, highly exciting. Some companies go for big, some for a smaller Executive Board, others well-abolished committees. But do you already see the benefits and that is really a good thing you've done. And right at the very end, thank you very much again, Professor Kempf. We, of course, will vote for you even for 1 year, but maybe just tell us why only 1 year.

I would have voted in favor of you for longer than a year. You would have received a yes for more. What are your plans? I'm also asking for a well, succession process. I'm so well there chairing association, but maybe Professor Kempf tell us more and tell us why it's only 1 year. We would have given you longer than you are. Well, I stayed well within the 10-minute frame. Thanks for your attention. Well, stay the way you are and so wonderfully reliable because this is the currency that count. See you next year. All the best. Thank you.

Well, Mr. [indiscernible] thank you very much for your questions. And of course, thank you for all the praise you lavished upon us. We are going to give extensive answers to your questions. Thanks for keeping within the time frame. And then the next speaker, Christopher Selbach, who will ask his questions.

Well, Mr. Selbach.

Well, thank you, Professor Kempf, for my part. Well, dear members of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, my name is Christopher Selbach, and I represent the SDK Shareholder Association. I would like to point out that I personally own shares in this company. So this is something that reflects my trust and confidence from the point of view of the shareholders, the 2025 fiscal year is something that was highly satisfactory.

The development of the share price and the proposed dividend increased to EUR 1.30 per share. This sends out a clear signal. Then when these well developments not happen stance, it's the result of wonderful work, which is reflected in the commencing financial figures. And these are positive figures and the shareholders benefit from a very high level of transparency in terms of communication with the investors in the capital market. I personally love this. And well, it doesn't make my task here easy and it doesn't make it easy to find meaningful questions.

And so my contribution will be relatively short. It's a good sign, and it's also for the benefit of Mr. Kempf, the CEO. He well reminded us to be short and some questions will overlap Mr. Tungler's questions. Now we are right in a fortunate situation at the moment, a well-deserved fortunate situation that I and Mr. Tungler, other shareholders have no reason what ever to voice any criticism or ask when will we go uphill again?

No. The only essential question I can ask is whether we will continue the same way just as favorably and whether the Executive Board in cooperation with the Supervisory Board will make sure that GEA's future will remain successful. And here one more time, let me anticipate this, the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board provide answers. They are not resting on their laurels.

They're [indiscernible] their shoulders. But even now they set the course for the future. And I refer to the rejuvenation and the streamlining of the organization structure that goes hand-in-hand with the reorganization of the Executive Board and the divisions. And this comes out of a position of strength. And what I'm interested in is maybe you could explain what the tangible reasons on ground for your decision were, where you are expecting benefits and financial impact.

well, what we will see there. And then I subscribe to what Mr. Tungler said, the first insights and experiences of the first 4 months after the implementation of this reorganization. Can you report on anything, anything tangible? Then within the framework of this change, a bit surprising, the departure of Mr. Brinker, your former CFO. Maybe you could explain why all of a sudden, it came in out of the blue. I do not want to interfere in any personal things, but maybe you could shed some light on this whole story.

Then also in connection with the new organization of the division, the question of goodwill, the balance sheet, well, there it accounts to EUR 1.5 billion. It only amounts to 1/4 of the balance sheet, and it would be a major risk if we had an impairment. So goodwill, the new structure there is to be allocated to 4 well segments. Does it have this recoverable value? Or might there be a need for impairment? And that well, could be highly significant.

The further questions I prepared, they do not refer to fiscal year '25. I do not want to look back such a lot that figures were excellent. No, I look ahead into the future. And right there, I would like to ask the Executive Board to answer the following questions, which relate to hands-on tangible plans for the future. It's about the free cash flow in the past fiscal year exceeding EUR 500 million. And in the years ahead, we will have something of this magnitude.

And at the same time, we have got high repayment levels for the promissory loan note, which are no longer there. So what do you plan to do with all this money, this cash this additional liquidity shouldn't just lie around, well, without doing anything. And then another point that we will vote on later on. And this is the authorization to issue new shares, then we have them pulled in the new authorized capital 2026. It will be pulled and extended. Are there concrete actual planned mergers and acquisitions, M&A?

Are there any plans on your part because that might be the most well immediate use of this money. Then a few questions regarding your forecast, [indiscernible], by 2030, you would like to have EUR 200 million sales, EUR 60 million we saw in fiscal year '25. How there is a gap. There is some potential in there. So maybe you could give us the reasons for delayed revenues and why you stick to your goal of growing up to EUR 400 million by 2030.

So we need some explanations as to why you remain optimistic and stick to your goals. And then your guidance report as such. It embraces information until the preparation of the annual report early March, no further escalation of the well Middle East conflict was expected. You could argue about what an escalation is today, 29th of April, the situation still holds. The conflict goes on. Is there any impact on your guidance? Are you affected by the conflict in any way when you look at business figures should we worry? And then one last question on my part.

Well, in relation to Mission 2030, your midterm plans, what you tend to do is to, well, reach your goals early 2023. So should we say you accomplish them in 2026, Well, could you maybe elaborate a little bit what is going to come afterwards? Can you tell us what you are expecting for the time past 2030. These are my questions. There's one thing that remains today -- 2 things. Number one, I'm always happy to be here and to represent SDK with GEA. And I would see that it has a great advantage if we look at face-to-face again at another AGM, maybe an in-person one could take place again.

And second, to conclude from my point of view, congratulations on this successful year. I wish all the best to the new members of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. Thanks for listening to my question, and I'm looking forward to your answers.

Thank you. So thank you very much for your inspirations. I would also like to thank you for staying within the time frame. I've got another speaker in the pipeline. And I propose, well, that we do it in a blocks of 3, so to speak. I have Mr. Leonard here online. I would like to ask him to activate.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I do hope that everybody can understand me all right. Well, I want to be very brief. I do not want to focus on the content. Rather, I would like to congratulate you on what you have achieved and express my hope that you can even exceed here in the future. And what my colleagues already expressed is that the organization of the AGM in a virtual form has been mentioned.

And I would like to know how many people, that means how many shareholders have logged in today during the AGM. And to compare that, I would like to know about the average number of attendees during the 3 years before the corona time so as to show what is really happening and how these numbers are developing.

Normally, we hear that virtual AGMs are much nicer for shareholders. But when you ask for these figures and want to compare the virtual attendees and those who participated in AGMs in former times, so please give me these figures. And that's it as far as my questions are concerned. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you very much indeed, Mr. [indiscernible] for this question. Right. Now we have dealt with the block of request to speak. Most questions were directed to the Executive Board. So I suggest Mr. Klebert that you start with your answer.

Mr. Klebert, the floor is yours.

Well, thank you very much indeed, Professor Kempf. Let me start with the questions by Mr.[indiscernible] The first question concerned the order book, how much that influenced growth and where are the risks? Well, we can say that in 2025, large-scale orders really played a very important role. They accounted for about 10% of order intake. So in other words, this accounts for 90% of the baseload business, and we think that this is very balanced. So we do not see any risks here. Furthermore, during the last few years, we have done many improvement measures in the project business, and we feel very much at ease also with regard to the Baladna project.

Another question regarded our prospects in the segment Farm Technologies and whether there is a dependency of prices of soy. And I can say in summary that the prospects for Farm Technologies are very positive. In the business year, we had an order intake, which was 23% -- which grew by 23% -- there is a cyclical -- we do not see a cyclic movement of agricultural market.

We have a broad product portfolio. We expect further potential, in particular, when it comes to automatic milking and feeding systems. The next question by Mr. Tungler, concerns the present geopolitical upheavals and supply chain and oil price. Well, we can say that only 3% of our entire business takes place in the Middle Eastern region. That means this is a restricted exposure. We have no production sites. There are no main suppliers. So we have a negligible impact there. And we are not a very energy-intensive company. That's why the energy cost increases do not affect us massively. Of course, there is influence when it comes to supply costs, but we are optimistic that we will be able to pass them on.

Moreover, we consider the rising energy costs to be an opportunity for GEA, and I mentioned that in my speech. We have devised many innovations in terms of energy saving, and we are convinced that this creates added value for our customers that we can offer them added value. So the higher the energy prices, the better the effects because we have very energy-intensive customers. And we expect a rising demand for energy-saving solutions, which we offer.

Another question by Mr. Tungler was competition from China. China for us is a strategically important market. And that's why we have taken the decision that since the beginning of the year, China and India report directly to the CEO, report directly to me. We have a clear strategy for China. We devise and produce locally. And as a result, I think we have a very strong focus on this market in general. But of course, we have to say that competition from countries outside of Europe is bound to come. But we are active in markets where the quality plays a very important role, where impediments to enter the markets are rather high.

So we do not see an immediate threat, and we think that we have the right strategy to produce in these markets. Next question concerns the 40% service share that we have, whether this is the right thing to have and how we will continue in the future. These questions are very often also asked by analysts. When we stop the new machines, we have 100% service. I think 40% is a good figure. And service and the new machine business needs to continue growing. And by 2030, that's part of our mission 30, we want to generate EUR 2.9 billion.

Last year, we had EUR 2.2 billion. So 40% is a good and healthy relationship. It's going to fluctuate, but we want to continue growing in both areas. Another question concerns the question for the 3 biggest risks for achieving Mission 30. You know that we are right on track with our guidance. This year, we have already started achieving what we embarked on for 2030. And I think that internally, we are well positioned. There are many initiatives and opportunities to reach our targets. Impossible risks would be external influencing factors such as a pandemic or a war, something which we always managed very well in the past.

And what benefits us is that we are in extremely resilient markets. 80% of what we do is food, pharma, beverage. People need to continue to eat and drink. They continue to need medical help. That's why the risks on the path towards Mission 30 are very limited. The next question concerns the new organizational structure, first experience. Well, yes, our first experience is very positive. It's real fun to work with the new colleagues. I enjoy it. We increased our dynamism even more and the organizational levels have been streamlined as a result. We have removed the regional structures in part.

We have measurable cost effects, which can be felt to the tune of EUR 15 million this year alone. And this, as I said before, leads to new impetus. Another question concerned M&A. Well, basically, we are, of course, interested in M&A, and we are constantly looking at companies, but our Mission 30 strategy works well. We are going to have growth CAGR, 5% organic growth per year. That means we are not going to do anything crazy. We are not going to do anything that doesn't increase the value. That's why when it comes to M&A, we are very interested.

But simultaneously, we wouldn't opt for anything that doesn't generate real value. And that's our point of orientation. And up to now, we haven't really found targets that can be found in this dimension, but we are confident that in the future, the one or other major acquisition might come up, but we have to wait and see. topic concerning sustainability all over the world. I know that you can read a lot in the press that sustainability is decreasing in importance. Let me tell you that when I talk to all the customers also in the United States, they do not have this feeling. My feeling is that there is a difference between reporting by the media and what customers are really doing. Everything that affects sustainability, climate protection, the reduction of CO2 gases is something that continues to be important for companies who deemed that important a couple of years ago.

So I think we are continuing on the right course because that's our obligation. We are firmly convinced that it is necessary to act in order to preserve the lovely planet earth and to save it. And on the other hand, we are convinced that it is our business model because our customers are very energy-intensive ones. And as a result, we can make a contribution to energy saving because even those customers who do not believe in climate change, they still believe in their energy bill at the end of the month. And when we are able to reduce it, then that's our valuable contribution.

Now let me give the floor to my colleague, Alexander Kocherscheidt, and she will answer a few questions.

Yes. Thank you very much, Stefan. I also want to answer a few questions by Mr. [indiscernible]. The book-to-bill ratio, which last year was at 1.08, whether we consider that to be good and what is our attitude towards it? Well, we think that 1.08 is sustainable and healthy as book-to-bill ratio. We think that it reflects a good balance in terms of our project structure and a good investment speed. We assume that we will continue to have these figures in the future. Looking back, we had also higher but also lower book-to-bill ratios with GEA. But with the 1.08, we feel well positioned. One question referred to the margin development.

It was also a question posed by Mr. Tungler. The margin development is very pleasing. What are the driving forces behind it? Is that price fixing efficiency or both? Well, the positive gross margin development is mainly due to improved product and project mix, higher operational efficiency when it comes to implementing projects as well as consistent price fixing. In addition, the further growing share of the profitable service business, which was mentioned before, makes an important contribution to that.

Service share, 40% of total revenue contributes to stabilizing margins as well. There was another question dealing with working capital or net working capital. It was addressed directly to me. What is the plan of the new CFO? Well, it was said quite rightly that at the end of 2025, we had 3.25% net working -- 3.2% net working capital. When you look at the average back in 2025 over the 4 quarters, we had a value of 6.6%. And you know that we had a corridor in our guidance of 7% to 9%. And with this corridor, I feel very much at ease.

With 6.6%, we were slightly below it. But of course, due to project management and implementation and certain necessities with regard to project procurement and order intake, this may go up a little bit. So in the framework of the Mission 30, the 7% to 9% is something that we and I feel very much at ease with.

So these were the questions asked by Mr. Tungler. Let me proceed with the next topic. There was a question by Mr. [indiscernible] concerning free cash flow. Last year, with EUR 500 million, we had a high free cash flow. And in the future, we also expect similar values. simultaneously, we do not have to repay money. And well, what do we intend to do with the cash? Well, first of all, free liquidity that we have offers us the opportunity to strengthen our balance sheet and to engage in profitable organic growth.

Furthermore, we stick to our dividend policy with a payment ratio of 50%. And Stefan Klebert said so before. We are still interested in engaging in strategically meaningful acquisitions. Once we state that we cannot find targets in the immediate future in terms of M&A., we will, nevertheless, in the future, look at the topic of share buybacks as a possibility for capital allocation. There was another question by Mr. [indiscernible] on goodwill. We have EUR 1.5 billion goodwill in the balance sheet, a potential risk of an impairment.

The question was whether the value of the newly allocated goodwill is also there in the -- after reorganization. Well, the answer is that due to the reorganization on the 1st of January '26, the goodwill and value of the former division Heating & Refrigeration Technologies and the new division PureFlow Processing and Nutrition Plant Engineering, they were allocated to that and the goodwills were subjected to an impairment test.

And as a result, for all the divisions affected as per the 31st of December 2025, there were clear obvious differences between what could be achieved and the carrying amount. As a result, the value of the goodwill at the point of the reorganization were confirmed. And presently, there is no indication for a change of this assessment, and that also goes for the divisions that were not affected by the reallocation.

Now let me give the floor back to you, Stefan.

Right. So let me answer the 2 questions that were directed to me. First of all, the question by Mr. Tungler concerning the suggestion that I be reelected for just 1 year. Thank you very much, Mr. Tungler for the trust that you implied in your question. But let me, first of all, explain why the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board agreed that in contrary to previous planning, it would make sense that I continue for another year.

Well, that has mainly got to do with the organizational changes that we have implemented as per January this year. And together, we are convinced that if shareholders agree, namely that during the initial phase of this new organization with the new team, I can be of help, then I'm very willing to do so for another year. And that leads me to the core of your question, why just for 1 year? Simply, this has got to do with my personal plans, although I've been made up and you probably don't see it.

But next year at the AGM I will be 74. And I think this is -- this speaks for itself, and I think that answers your question, Mr. Tungler, doesn't it? The second question was posed by Mr. [indiscernible] namely the question concerning the end of Bernd Brinker's mandate. He left the position and his agreement was dissolved on the 31st of December 2025.

That happened in the -- his leaving the company happened in the best of trust and was directly connected to the reorganization of the Executive Board as per the 7 -- so he left on the 7th of October, and this was directly connected to the future management structure of GEA. It was not a reaction to operational or financial topics. It was part of the adjustment to the strategic organizational planning with which GEA wants to streamline its decision-making path, and it created the precondition for the next development phase of the company.

And we were able to make for a smooth transition because Alexander Kocherscheidt had already had several financial functions in the company. He said so when he presented himself. So he had already been prepared to be a candidate for the role of the CFO. So that made for a very smooth transition of the function of the CFO. So I do hope that this also answers your question, Mr. [indiscernible], and I give the floor back to Mr. Klebert.

Thank you very much. I continue with the remaining questions posed by Mr. Selbach. Just give us an assessment on further business development, do you expect it to continue just as well? We, as the Executive Board look with a lot of confidence to the years ahead. Post 2030, we know our guidance. This year, we expect organic growth of between 5% to 7%, EBITDA margin between 16.6% and 17.2%. And then in addition, we firmly believe in our Mission 30 based on which we would love to further grow with a minimum of 5% organically speaking per year and an EBITDA margin of between 17% and 19%.

We would like to accomplish that at the very latest in 2030. And then Mr. Slebach also asked about the reason for the reorganization. I have answered the question before, partly. We had a global Executive Committee with 14 individuals that work pretty well over the many years, but you always have to think about an organization that you need to change it when it works well and not once it starts working badly. It was the next -- was time for the next step.

The matrix organization that has been criticized regarding complexity and so on. Costs were reduced, this complexity was reduced. And well, we put it on a wider basis, had Executive Board where P&L responsibility was exclusively on my shoulders, we well allocated it and spread it on several shoulders and then move into the direction of a succession solution. We consolidated the divisions, reduced them from 5 to 4, creating efficiency. What's important? 2 weeks of communicating this organizational change, we did a spot survey amongst 2,000 managers worldwide, and we are asked, do you believe that we are marching into the right direction with this reorganization, yes or no. And 94% answered in the affirmative, and this gives us great trust.

And the first months were good. We started off very well. If great joy working in this. And then Mr. [indiscernible] asked about tangible plans for M&A measures. I think I answered this question at length. We are interested. We are going to pursue these matters, but nothing too risky or too well expensive. We are going to create value. Then the organization, this was another question. Well, it came again. I answered it before. Then Mr. [indiscernible], you asked about new food.

We planned to generate EUR 400 million in sales in the new food sector in 2025, we only had EUR 66 million right there. I believe that this is a field which will take a little bit longer than we initially thought well, but we remain optimistic. Why? Because the technology is excellent for the purpose of feeding the world in an efficient resource, efficient and long-term way. We are highly committed in our test centers. We recently opened one in the United States. We've got a high demand. It's a strategically relevant market for us, and we are excellently positioned that we do believe that the development will follow a positive trend.

Then Mr. [indiscernible] asked about the conflict in the Middle East. We have -- we report in our forecast, we do not see any change to -- any reason to change our forecast. If there's no further escalation. You could then discuss how you define escalation, but we do not see any major impact. We own -- only generate 3% of our business right there and that were price/cost increases. Well, in this respect, we are confident that we are able to pass them on. We see opportunities to make our contribution to reducing energy in the production of food, pharma and beverage.

Then another question, Mr.[indiscernible] what's going to follow well past 2030. You should always think about it when it's time -- well, the right time to do it, and we are well advised now to implement and execute Mission 2030. We are well on track right there. And with a high level of probability, we will touch on the well bottom of this range. We see potential to further evolve in this respect. And let me add, even if I might not be the one who presents the next mission to you in 2030, I can tell you that there is potential in this company. It's not the end. It won't be the end. It's an excellently positioned company in excellent markets with plenty of potential.

And now let's turn to Mr. Kunal's question. How many shareholders are locked in? Currently, we are talking about 185 shareholders that have joined us via the investor portal. But we need to take into consideration that in addition, we are all so streaming the AGM live via our homepage and many more people will watch. In the past in-person meetings between 2017 and 2019, we had an average of 73% of the share capital presented.

In 2019, we had 275 shareholders on site. And in 2017 and 2018, we had a comparable number. So it's relatively modest, let's put it like that. Well, this capital thing, the contingent capital. There's one question to my CFO. There was Mr. [indiscernible] question on authorized or contingent capital, whether we have real [ qualified ] plans. No. The authorization to create authorized and contingent capital solely serves the purpose of providing entrepreneurial flexibility, and they, well replace authorizations of previous year.

At the point, the AGM was convened and now there are no tangible plans for making use of these authorizations. There are no capital increases taken funding measures we have planned. The authorizations in scope and structure correspond to market-based practice of comparable companies, and they allow the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board to act in the interest of the company and the shareholders and act in an efficient way, a potential use as well legally provided would only be done by taking into consideration the subscription rights and other rights.

So ladies and gentlemen, currently, there are no further requests for the floor. And so I would like to ask you whether further shareholders or shareholder representatives would request the floor and the 3 gentlemen who in the course of the discussion came in, I would like to ask and check whether the answers given to their questions are sufficient or whether there are any parts that have remained unanswered. I would give you another 3 minutes. And based on my watch here, it would be 11:59, and I then will adjourn the meeting for at least 3 minutes and then welcome back online.

[Break]

I come back, I promised to come back after 3 minutes. I do have one additional question by Mr. [indiscernible] You have the floor.

Thank you very much for giving me Well, when I posed my question I will refer to the locked-in shareholders and the in-person attendance, in the 3 years, pre-COVID for everybody, it's clear that the number of shareholders who were present in person prior to COVID were meant. And so the comparison wouldn't make sense. So what about the average number of shareholders who participated in the AGMs in the meeting, not the represented share capital, but the number of shareholders who were there attending in-person.

So I can spontaneously answer that. I believe that -- I read it out, Mr. Klaus. In 2019, we had 275 shareholders who were present in 2017 and '18, we had a comparable number, 275 plus minus a few. So well, a manageable amount we dare say when we talk about attending shareholders. Is that sufficient? Does it suffice or we cannot hear you?

Well, maybe it was due to the fact that I have problems hearing. So this answers my question.

So thank you, Mr. Klaus. So then after looking at the list of request to speak, I find that I have not received any further request to speak, no follow-up questions. And I -- well, after the answer given by the Executive Board, I find that all questions asked have been fully answered. I ask the notary, Mr. [indiscernible] to record this in the minutes, and I hereby close the general debate. And well, this covers Item 1 on the agenda, which is hereby concluded with the determination that the Annual General Meeting has taken note of the adopted annual financial statements, the approved consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2025, and the consolidated management report combined with the management report of GEA Group Atinggestschaft.

Ladies and gentlemen, we now come to the votes on the proposed resolutions on our agenda. As already explained, no resolution will be passed on Agenda Item 1, with the exception of the resolutions on Agenda Items 10 and 11. All resolutions on today's agenda will be adopted by a simple majority of the votes cast or of the share capital represented at the time of the resolution.

Only for the resolutions on the capital measures and the Agenda Items 10 and 11, 3/4 majority of the share capital represented at the time of the resolution is required in addition to a simple majority of votes due to the authorization to exclude shareholders' subscription rights. Votes may be cast if not already done via the investor portal by postal ballot or by providing instructions to the proxies appointed by the company.

I will announce shortly the exact deadlines by which votes may still be cast, changed or revoked. Voting will take place according to the aforementioned accumulation method, meaning only yes votes and the no votes will be counted. Shareholders and shareholder representatives who wish to vote in favor of a proposed resolution, that is vote yes, must click well, yes, under the menu item company proxy or under the menu item postal voting for the respective agenda item.

Shareholders and shareholder representatives who wish to vote against a proposed resolution that is to vote no, must click no under the relevant menu item for the respective agenda item. Shareholders who wish to abstain may click abstain under the relevant menu item for the respective agenda item or need not take any action due to the aforementioned accumulation method.

So now we proceed to vote on agenda Items 2 through 11. The proposed resolutions are being put to the vote exactly as they were published in the Federal Gazette on the 13th of March 2026. And therefore, I will limit myself to presenting a summary of the individual items. We will begin with Item 2 on the agenda, appropriation of net retained profits. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board proposed that the net retained profits of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft for the 2025 fiscal year be used to pay a dividend of EUR 1.30 per dividend-bearing share and that the remaining net income be carried forward.

We now move on to Item 3 on the agenda, approval of the remuneration report. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board propose that the remuneration report for the 2025 fiscal year prepared and audited in accordance with Section 162 of the German Stock Corporation Act be approved. The remuneration report, together with the auditor's report is available on the company's website.

We now move on to Item 4 on the agenda, ratification of the acts of the members of the Executive Board for the 2025 fiscal year. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board propose that the acts of the members of the Executive Board serving in fiscal year 2025 be ratified for that period. Well, Item 5 on the agenda, ratification of the acts of the members of the Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2025. The Executive Board and Supervisory Board propose that the acts of the members of the Supervisory Board serving in fiscal year 2025 be ratified for this period.

Regarding agenda items 4 and 5, I would like to draw your attention to the existing voting restrictions and bans pursuant to Section 136 of the German Stock Corporation Act. Members of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board may not exercise voting rights, whether from their own shares or from shares held by others when a resolution is passed regarding the discharge. Similarly, third parties may not exercise voting rights on shares owned by the members of the Executive Board or the Supervisory Board.

The members of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board have been informed of this exclusion from voting and have been asked to take appropriate precautions in this particular regard. We now move on to Item 6 on the agenda, appointment of the auditor and the auditor of the sustainability report for fiscal year 2026. Under agenda Item 6.1, the Supervisory Board proposes appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main as the auditor of the company and the group as well as the auditor for a review of the 2026 interim financial report.

Agenda Item 6.2 concerns the appointment of PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers as the auditor of the sustainability report for the 2026 fiscal year.

We now turn to Item 7 on the agenda, approval of the remuneration system for the Executive Board adopted by the Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board proposes that the remuneration system for members of the Executive Board of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft was adopted by the Supervisory Board and published on the company's website be approved by way of a consultative resolution.

Well, I will now proceed to Item 8 on the agenda, election of a Supervisory Board member. Based on the recommendation of the Nomination Committee, the Supervisory Board proposes well, that I, Dieter Kempf be elected as a member of the Supervisory Board. The election is to be for the period until the Annual General Meeting that resolves on the ratification of the [indiscernible] fiscal year 2026.

Okay. We now move to Item 9 on the agenda, amendment to the Articles of Association to align with statutory regulations regarding the issuance of electronic shares. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board propose that the provisions of Article 5, Paragraph 2 and 3 of the Articles of Association be consolidated into Article 5, Paragraph 2 in an amended form and reworded. The exact wording of the proposed resolution is set forth in the notice of this Annual General Meeting, which has been provided to you.

Let us turn to agenda Item 10 concerning the creation of new authorized capital with the authorization to exclude subscription rights and the corresponding amendment to the Articles of Association. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board propose to cancel the current authorized capitals 1 through 3 to create a new and single authorized capital and to amend the Articles of Association accordingly.

In this regard, I refer to the detailed proposals for resolution submitted by the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board in the notice of the meeting. Finally, let's turn to agenda Item 11, authorization to issue convertible warrant bonds, profit participation rights or income bonds with the authorization to exclude subscription rights, creation of contingent capital with simultaneous cancellation of the existing contingent capital and the corresponding amendment to the Articles of Association.

Please allow me to refer in this regard to the proposed resolutions of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board submitted in the notice convening the Annual General Meeting you are aware of.

Ladies and gentlemen, well, unless you have already cast your votes, I now call for a vote on agenda Items 2 through 11. This can still be done by the investor portal by postal ballot or by granting a proxy and issuing instructions to the proxies appointed by the company.

You now have approximately 5 minutes to issue instructions to the company's proxies and cast a postal vote. That is until -- well, based on my watch until well, 12:18 -- well, 18 past 12. And after that, the proxies will cast the votes they represent. Well, in Germany, I've given the wrong time, I've given you the right one. So I'll give you, as we said before, until 12:19. Now we add another minute, I lost by making a mistake, time until 12:19. And after that, the proxies will cast the votes they represent. Voting will then be closed. I will now suspend the annual meeting for this period.

[Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, as promised, I'm back. It's 12:19. The time for both issuing instructions to the proxies and casting postal ballots has expired. The voting options via the investor portal have already been closed. We will now resume the Annual General Meeting. I first note that all shareholders have the opportunity to exercise their voting rights. I ask Mr. [indiscernible], our notary public to record that in the minutes. Until the results of the vote are available, I'm adjourning the Annual General Meeting for approximately 20 minutes. So I assume that by 12:40, we will have counted all the votes. And then I will adjourn the AGM until 12:40. If you intend to object to individual resolutions on the agenda, I would like to point out that you already have the opportunity to do so via the investor portal. well. And now I'm adjourning the Annual General Meeting for the aforementioned 20-minute period.

[Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, I now have before me the attendance figures for the voting as well as the results of the votes on agenda items 2 to 11. I will therefore resume the Annual General Meeting, announce the updated attendance figures and now confirm the voting results on the proposed resolutions for agenda items 2 through 11 as follows.

Well, in addition, you can see the details of the voting results in the presentation displayed on the screen. We will also publish the detailed information on our website. I would like to point out that the Annual General Meeting will be closed shortly after the resolutions are confirmed. This also marks the end of the opportunity to file an objection to the resolutions of the Annual General Meeting via the Investor portal.

Of the company's registered share capital in the amount of 520,375,765.57 divided into 162,801,664 no par value shares 140,358,263 no par value shares, representing the same number of votes were represented at the virtual general meeting through a proxy and instructions of the company's proxy. This corresponds to an attendance of 70.24% of the registered share capital.

In addition, postal ballots for 399,062 no par value shares have been received, which corresponds to 0.25% of the registered share capital. The attendance plus the received absentee votes thus amounts to 114,757,325 shares. This corresponds to [ 70.49% ] of the registered share capital. I state and announce as follows for each resolution.

The resolutions proposed by the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board or by the Supervisory Board alone as published in the Federal German Gazette on March 13, 2026, were put to the vote. Regarding item -- agenda item 2, appropriation of net retained profits, the Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

Regarding agenda Item 3, approval of the remuneration report, the Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

Regarding agenda Item 4, ratification of the acts of the members of the Executive Board for fiscal year 2025. The Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the Executive Board with all its members for their work over the past fiscal year. Thank you very much also on behalf of the Supervisory Board.

Regarding agenda Item 5, ratification of the acts of the members of the Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2025. The Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority. Regarding agenda Item 6.1, appointment of the auditor and group auditor as well as the auditor for the review of the interim financial report, the Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

Regarding agenda Item 6.2, appointment of the auditor for the sustainability report, the Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

Regarding agenda Item 7, remuneration system for the Executive Board, the Annual General Meeting approved the Supervisory Board's proposal with the required majority.

Regarding agenda Item 8, election of a Supervisory Board member, in this case, myself, Hans-Dieter Kempf, the Annual General Meeting approves the Supervisory Board's proposal with the required majority. Thank you very much for the confidence you put in me.

Regarding agenda Item 9, amendment of Section 5, Subsection 2 and 3 of the Articles of Association to align with Section 10, Subsection 6 of the German Stock Corporation Act, electronic shares is the keyword here. The Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

Regarding agenda item 10, creation of new authorized capital with the authorization to exclude subscription rights and corresponding amendment to the Articles of Association, the Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority.

Regarding agenda Item 11, authorization to issue convertible and warrant bonds, profit participation rights or income bonds with the authorization to exclude subscription rights, creation of conditional capital with simultaneous cancellation of the existing conditional capital and corresponding amendment to the Articles of Association, the Annual General Meeting approved the proposal of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board with the required majority. I would like to thank you very much for this vote. And our agenda is now complete.

Before I close the Annual General Meeting. And before I say goodbye to you, I would like to thank everyone involved, both on stage and behind the scenes, behind the [indiscernible], the employees of GEA and our service providers. I would like to thank all of you for your support in organizing this Annual General Meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby close the Annual General Meeting of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, and I would like to ask the notary to record this in the minutes. I would like to thank you for your participation, and I would like to say goodbye.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Pre-Close Call Q1 2026. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you very much, operator, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Q1 2026 pre-close call. As said, my name is Oliver Luckenbach, I'm the Head of the GEA's IR team, and I'm joined by my Deputy, Rebecca Weigl; and my colleague Eduard Biller. Please keep in mind that we operate under our new organizational structure from 1st of January 2026 and will report our Q1 2026 results in our new divisional setup that's Pure Flow Processing, Nutrition Plant Engineering, Pharma and Food Applications and Farm Technologies. To help you model this new divisional setup, we have published an Excel file beginning of March with 8 quarters of pro forma figures for the fiscal year 2024 and 2025, which you can find in the download section of our home page. If you can't find it, please do let us know, and we are happy to send it to you.

As today's call will contain forward-looking statements, it will be conducted according to our disclaimer. I will not read the disclaimer, but please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement, which is part of our presentations, you can find on our GEA Internet page. We will now address topics, which we also discussed during recent conferences and roadshows. And afterwards, you will have time to ask questions.

Topic number one, guidance. We confirm our group guidance for fiscal year 2026, which we released with our full year 2025 results in March. We expect organic sales growth of between 5% and 7%, EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses between 16.6% and 17.2% and return on capital employed between 34% and 38%, so it's unchanged.

Topic number two, customer industries. On the food side, the business is performing good. Beverages look softer compared to the past. Dairy Processing, here, the pipeline continues to show activity across both projects and components. So it's an ongoing good market development. Dairy Farming, the general market sentiment is positive across almost all regions with the exception of China. Pharma, here, we see a promising pipeline. And the New Food, in 2025, we saw the first improvement with order intake almost doubling, and we are actually optimistic that this positive development continues so that we can make further progress in 2026.

Topic number three, order intake. 2026 will be again a good year for GEA in terms of order intake. We have a lot of interesting, also larger orders in the pipeline. But as you know, it is difficult to predict when they will be signed and spooked. Q4 2025 was the record quarter with an order intake of EUR 1.8 billion, including 9 large orders with a total volume of EUR 440 million. This is not the new normal, especially as large orders are lumpy. However, given the healthy development in base orders and an overall strong service business, Q1 2026 will be more in line with the order intake in 2025. And here, to remind you, in Q1 2025, our order intake was slightly above EUR 1.4 billion. Translational FX effect is expected to be negative in the first quarter of 2026. In the fourth quarter of 2025, it was minus 3.3%, and it's likely to be of similar magnitude also in the first quarter in 2026.

Coming to topic four, sales. As already stated during our full year conference call, we expect organic sales growth in Q1 2026 to be below the guided range of 5% to 7% for the full year 2026 with an acceleration during the year, given the fact that we have received many large orders in the second half of 2025, particularly in the fourth quarter. Therefore, we expect an organic sales growth pattern similar to last year, where we started the year with an organic sales growth below the original range and accelerated organic sales growth in the following quarters. Also here, the translational FX effect is expected to be negative in the first quarter of 2026. In the fourth quarter of last year, it was also minus 3.3%, and also here, we expect it likely to be of a similar magnitude in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Now topic number five, EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses. Our EBITDA margin guidance of 16.6% to 17.2% for the full year 2026, clearly indicates that we want to make further progress with regards to our profitability in fiscal year 2026. And therefore, you can expect that we already want to show some progress here in the first quarter of 2026 over the same period of last year. And just to remind you, our EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses was 15.8% in Q1 2025.

And with that, that's it from my side, and I will now pass it over to Rebecca.

Thank you, Oliver. Hello, everybody. Just some housekeeping information from my side. First topic is topic number six, cash flow. Just as a reminder, for CapEx, we stated that we expect CapEx of around EUR 240 million for the full year 2026. And in terms of net working capital to sales ratio, our target corridor of 7% to 9% of sales is still valid. However, keep in mind that due to seasonality, there has always been a sequential uptick in net working capital in the first quarter from the level in the fourth quarter. We don't expect that it will be different in 2026. So therefore, the net working capital ratio Q1 will most slightly be higher than the record low of 3.2% reported for the fourth quarter in 2025.

Now coming to topic number seven, restructuring expenses. As promised and stated several times, 2026 will be the last year with an adjustment for restructuring expenses. From January 2027 onwards, we will no longer adjust our EBITDA for restructuring expense. As a reminder, in 2025, we had EUR 48 million of restructuring expenses on EBITDA level.

Topic number eight, additional financial information. So depreciation and amortization, we gave an indication that for fiscal year 2026, we expect around EUR 250 million. For the financial results, we expect minus EUR 30 million. The tax rate is expected to be between 28% and 30% in '26 and the R&D ratio is expected around 3% of sales.

That's it from our side. We are now happy to answer your questions. And Sarah, may I ask you to open the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question today is from the line of Sven Weier from UBS.

I have a few follow-up questions, if I may. The first one is just, Oliver, on your order intake commentary because you said it's going to be around on the level of the previous year. Is that already taking into account the currency effect?

Yes, exactly. So last year, it was a little bit more than EUR 1.4 billion. And what we are guiding for is the reported number, which is likely to be at a similar level, yes.

Okay. So organically, you're kind of up mid-single digit on the back of that low to mid-single digits, yes. The second question I had was just, I mean, regarding your margin commentary. I mean, if we assume that -- I mean, as you said in Q4 already the year is going to be more back-end loaded in terms of organic growth, especially on the big projects. I mean, shouldn't Q1 then have a disproportionately positive effect from mix because you obviously probably have service growth higher than OE. And even within OE, you probably have the higher-margin stuff coming first before the big ticket projects come later this year. Is that fair? Or am I missing something here?

Yes, it's hard to comment on this at this point in time. As you know, we haven't seen the full figures so far. So it then very much depends on the constitution also of sales. But what we can say is what we have seen so far is that we can make the comment I've just made that we expect here an improvement in the first quarter this year over the first quarter of last year. And by how much that we need to see then at the end of the day.

Last question I had was just was wondering what was being said recently by management on M&A. We all saw that, obviously, the [indiscernible] deal has been PE and not you. And so that probably means that bigger M&A question mark is out of the pipeline. And if that's the case, how should we think about renewal of a buyback?

Yes. So M&A remains a topic for us that is clear. But I think what you have just mentioned is also clearly telling a story, so to speak, that we are not prepared to overpay for any kind of target. So we do our homework. And if it's feasible, if it's manageable, if it makes sense, then we would do it. But as we also say in our words we do not expect any stupid things. And yes, if we are not finding anything, I would say, during the course of this year, then for sure, also the topic of share buyback comes back. There's nothing we are against. It's actually something we have done when we bought back more than -- around about EUR 700 million in 2023, and a little bit in 2025. So that is also something that could come back, yes.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Klas Bergelind, Citi.

So coming back to order intake, obviously, a very strong quarter for large orders in the fourth quarter. And during the call, and now you're also saying that you have a lot of interesting large orders in the pipeline. I mean still in periods of increased macro uncertainty that we have now because of the Middle East situation, we typically see more hesitations, right, around large order decisions. Is that something that you're seeing now already in your discussions with your customers? Or are they more hesitant? Or is it too early to tell?

Thanks for the question, Klas. It's that disaster what's going on there. I think that is clear. But so far, we really haven't seen anything with regards to the hesitation. We're actually even discussing a large order in the region, and it's nothing that the customer ask for a break or anything like that. So it's continuing. But on the other side, we also know that these projects, as we have seen with the Ballast order, sometimes it can take under 1.5 and up to 2 years. So that's very hard to predict. But so far, no, despite the fact that there's so much uncertainty, we cannot see it in discussions with customers, at least not so far. And yes, that is the comment we can make as of today.

And then maybe to ask this in a different question. Obviously, you showed this slide that your direct Middle East exposure is tiny, but I'm thinking the indirect exposure, looking at your customers. I mean, for example, Farm Tech, you had amazing orders the last couple of quarters, but feed costs are now likely going to go up and perhaps energy costs, diesel and so forth, the farmers might impact their investment decisions. When you look at the indirect exposure, is there anything sort of makes you worried in terms of that things could slow at the customer brand because of what we see from a supply chain point of view, the indirect effects coming out from the conflict?

I think it's a fair question, Klas. And I think nobody has really the crystal ball here. But what we can say that we don't have any production sites here. We don't have any major suppliers sitting in the region. And also in terms of our own, let's say, procurement strategy, we have a very high share of local for local procurement. So actually, more than 80% of our procurement is always done locally. So that means we are not really dependent on -- or heavily dependent on global supply chain or on logistic routes.

So therefore, I mean, we haven't heard anything in that direction and feel actually quite relaxed here. I mean, in terms of what you're saying, what's the implication on customers going forward, we would say probably, I mean, if energy prices are further rising, I mean, it will probably lead to further pressure on the customer side to think about how to produce more energy efficient going into the future. So I think that could actually be an opportunity for our equipment on that side. But I think it's really too early to tell.

Yes. No, absolutely. No, I was thinking about sort of higher fertilizer prices, feed crops, et cetera, becoming an issue. But I guess it's too early to tell. My final one was also sort of linked to Sven's questions on the sales guidance. I mean, it's quite clear that you will have new machine sales accelerating through the year. But so shouldn't we have that sort of margin expansion being more geared to the first half, and then we should have less margin expansion in the second half? Or are you still of the view that you will have better operating leverage on new machine sales offsetting that potential mix issue that we might have in the second half?

Yes. It's always a debate and discussion we are having also on roadshows and conferences. But yes, if you think about it, and that is for sure, on the one side, we do still see good demand development of our service business. That is the answer number one. And on the other side, if you think about capacity utilization, the more larger orders, the better our capacities are utilized and this would also have a positive impact for sure. And that's also what we have clearly communicated that we cannot most likely not deliver another year of 100 or 110 basis points of margin improvement because we also want to grow our machine business stronger because then this will be the way for future service business we can generate in the years to come.

So overall, we feel very comfortable with the guidance I've given you for the full year. And quarter by quarter, we just need to see how Q1 was, and then we can maybe continue our debate afterwards.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Sebastian kuenne from RBC.

It's relating to the -- your FT business and connected is, of course, Dairy Processing. What we see in Europe is that the prices for raw milk are coming down quite sharply now and there was some overproduction in the last couple of months. Do you see a risk that the milk feed ratios come down sharply? It relates to Klas' question here. Milk feed ratios coming down, underproduction and then more cautious investments by the dairy processors further down the line? Or do you think this is just a distortion that we see in Europe might relate to Middle Eastern crisis?

Well, I think in terms of, let's say, first dairy farming, when we talk about the milk-feed price ratio, I mean what we are hearing from our colleagues, and that's what Oliver stated earlier in terms of their views on customer industries that actually what we are hearing from them that the general market sentiment is still positive across most of the regions with the exception of China. So from their perspective, it feels like what you're referring to is that this is not yet having an influence. In terms of dairy processing, you probably could argue that actually lower raw milk prices is an input factor for them. So it should be rather attractive them for investment.

But honestly, [indiscernible] or Nestle or you name them, they don't plan their CapEx according to the current milk prices. They plan according to CapEx expansions in general, whether they need additional capacities, whether it's innovation, whether it's actually investments into more energy-efficient equipment, et cetera. So I would say the current one price for dairy processors for their CapEx decision is not really a relevant parameter.

Then one brief question on the U.S. market. I mean the oil price is going up, that might reduce the relative cost for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel. Do you already see like more interest from this type of customer group that's basically finding alternatives to fossil fuels? Or would you say this currently too early?

Not so far, interesting thought. What you are saying, I understand it. But to be honest, at least we haven't heard anything so far internally, but could be, yes, maybe trigger, a positive trigger going forward.

Next question is from Max Yates, Morgan Stanley.

Just my first question is, normally on these calls, you've tended to actually give the large order announcements that you've had in the quarter, just so we can sort of calibrate them. Is the fact that you haven't sort of given any, does that mean you haven't had large orders this quarter? Or have you booked some? And if so, kind of how many and how much for?

Yes. So to be honest, it's not -- very early in April, and then -- we are shortly after the Easter break. Many people are still in the Easter break. So I wouldn't expect [indiscernible] large orders, but the exact number is hard to predict. We also need to check in our internal files, but the overall statement that order intake should be around about the level of Q1 of last year, that is still valid. But yes, it shouldn't be zero large orders, yes.

Okay. And could I just check sort of -- I mean during this call, obviously, where do you have firm visibility up to? So just because companies normally sort of when they communicate on these calls sort of have you seen February numbers and you don't know what March numbers look like? Have you seen 2 months -- 2 weeks of March? I'm just trying to get a sort of calibration of the comments that you're making. Where are they really up to in terms of the quarter?

No, for sure. We have no detailed numbers now in front of us. We have a very granular monthly reporting, and then we get some indications from our colleagues and then we put together our picture. But as you know, we are in a relatively stable markets and so on and so forth. We have good visibility. And so far with this information we had at this point in time, I think we have -- yes, we gave all information that was possible at this point in time. But for sure, there's nothing final at this early stage, but we have a very good footing for our comments we are making.

And just one final one, and it was a bit of a clarification on what you said on revenues. Obviously, I heard the comment that the Q1 revenue growth was below the range. Did -- when you talked about and referred to it about last year, were you just saying that it would follow a similar shape to last year, i.e., the revenue growth would accelerate through the year? Or were you actually saying Q1 revenue growth will be similar to the Q1 revenue growth of last year?

No, very good question. Thanks for clarifying. That was not our intention. It was just, let's say, the pattern, so to speak. So last year, it was 0.9% in Q1, but then accelerated during the course of the year. And from today's point of view, again, it's very early in the year, also Q1 not 100% finalized, as you know, we would expect a similar pattern, but not trying to tell you that it should be 0.9% in Q1 of this year.

Okay. And just sorry, very final one. Just on your large -- because obviously, what -- I mean, what is about to happen is we will get the spike in inflation and some form of inflation shock. When it comes to sort of hedging your large contracts, particularly these sort of longer-dated ones like the one that you've signed in Algeria. Can you give us a reminder of what you're able to hedge and what are the kind of unhedged costs where it's more difficult to pass these through to customers? And I guess I'm thinking about some of the larger buckets, electricity price -- well, some of the buckets of cost electricity prices, freight, raw materials and wage inflation?

I mean in terms of the large orders, usually the way it works is that when there -- when we bid for an order, we, of course, get all the quotes from the suppliers, et cetera, which we place our cost calculation on. And the moment we receive such an order, so when we get it awarded, we basically turn around to our suppliers and lock these prices in. So that's the back-to-back contract, if you want to call it that way. On top of that, we have many contract price escalation clauses. So therefore, for these long-term contracts, as you can also see that with the high inflationary environment where we have been in, we have been quite successful actually in dealing with that due to these price escalation clauses and these back-to-back contracts.

Okay. So things like electricity prices and freight, you would be able to pass on in those escalation clauses?

I'm not an expert what is exactly all included in there, honestly. I mean, if I think about, for example, when we also had a look at that in terms of tariffs, that's all paid by the customer. So I think we actually are, I would assume, a pretty good position here in passing these things on to our customers as we did that in the past.

Yes. I think if I remember right at that time when we had to face a very high inflation, I think about 90% of the vast majority of the freight cost was also paid by our customers, yes.

Next question is from Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF.

Actually, one question on the supply chain. I mean, obviously, since the war, unfortunately, has taken us a bit longer. What about the supply chain in particular? I mean, obviously, I'm not too concerned about any metals you might be procuring. On the other hand, obviously, there might be some disruptions on the semiconductor chain, which might mean some influence on whatever kind of controllers or whatever you need. Did you see something there? And how is the general shape and how is that you see your supply chain. Do you see any issues on that?

And then just a second quick one left from my side is actually Rebecca, you were saying something on D&A and financial results. We just didn't get it entirely. Was that something you just repeated the full year guidance? Or did you say something on Q1 with those 2 elements?

Yes. So regarding the additional financial information, that's exactly just a repetition of what we have in our material since March, the additional guidance. So nothing new, just really housekeeping to make sure that everybody is aware of these numbers.

And regarding your first question on supply chain, maybe I kind of start, I mean what we are hearing internally, we are hearing basically no issues on that side. That does not mean that something can come up. But at the moment in terms of how we are procuring as I said earlier, we have more than 80% local for local procurement. So therefore, we actually are not seeing any impacts here yet. And also in terms of the shift to semiconductors, I haven't heard anything here internally that there is an issue coming up.

No, so far, so good, so to speak, but it's a very volatile environment. We also follow this closely as we always did during this kind of more volatile times. We have dedicated teams following this. And as Rebecca said, there's no new information or anything that makes us any headache today. But again, it's volatile times.

All right. Can you remind us how it was with the supply chain crisis some years ago? Did you see some impacts/have you been able to kind of, I don't know, redesign some components quickly enough to be able to deliver? Or how is that?

So in the past, it was mainly related to some electronic parts, which was a problem. There was also something movement in the market, but then it was, let's say, the more sophisticated electronic components that have been impacted so far. So nothing to be worried about so far with regards to GEA. And at that time, it took us a little bit longer than to ship, so to speak, all our products. But again, nothing heard so far. So it doesn't seem to me that we are anything like close to such a situation right now. So no impact at GEA.

Take the next question. This is from Rizk Maidi from Jefferies.

Just a quick clarification. I'm not sure I got this right. Sorry, my line was a bit bad. Your commentary on order intake being at the same level as last year. Is that ex large orders or this headline ex large orders or including them?

No, it's actually all in what I said around the level of last year, then there was a specific question it was from Sven asking for the -- is it a reported number, organic number? It's a reported number. So that is our best guess as of today, all in, yes.

Yes, understood. Yes. Secondly, maybe along the lines of the questions that were asked before. I remember when we started to see now lending rates going up a bit. And I think your business tends to be a little bit sensitive to that. Maybe you could just give a comment there on how the percentage of your customers that use sort of lending to finance their equipment? And how do you see the current situation with lending rates sort of creep up a little bit?

I think -- I mean when we have seen these spikes in interest rates in the past wherein this period of rising interest rates, the customers were probably were most impacted from that were the dairy farming customers because they are -- I mean, for them they need to get access to financing to buy their equipment. That's at least that the customer group I have in mind was a bit more sensitive to interest rates and to higher interest rates from that way. I think with the other ones, I guess it's been more a mix of the general environment, whether we see postponements or anything like that. And as Oliver just said, I mean, so far, we haven't heard anything in this direction.

We'll take the next question. This is from Sven Weier from UBS.

Yes. Sorry, guys. I just feel I wanted to follow up on 2 points here. And the first one being on the importance of milk prices and the mill feed price ratio because that's an evergreen with you guys. I mean, should we just dump that out of the window because at the end of the day, the orders are driven by subsidies and food security aspirations of certain countries, and in fact, subsidies really account for the majority of the CapEx covered. I mean, should you not ask us to forget about the milk price entirely?

Yes, Sven, thanks for having us here. No, because so often, we are getting the question, and we also did our internal analysis and we couldn't really find any relation between the ratio and our order intake or sales and so on sometimes it seems to be there, sometimes not. There are many other impacting factors. And so far, we are really happy with the development we are seeing for sure here and there, especially with regards to small holder farmers. There might see impact that need to come to a decision that we want to go for holidays this year or buy a new making a robot or not. This might be here and there. But again, there is no clear relationship we can see here, yes.

And I would probably argue the harder at the times for the farmers, the subsidies will probably only go up rather than down.

I mean, you're absolutely, absolutely right. I mean in Europe, there's probably not a farm who can survive without any subsidies, yes.

And the other question, just to follow up on the question regarding energy costs and freight costs. I mean, on the electricity side, I remember you guys saying in the covered inflationary times that I think already then, it was a relatively small item of your P&L, and I think you've also rolled out solar power quite heavily in some of your factories. I mean is that still fair that this is actually a relatively small cost item in the P&L?

Yes. I mean in general, energy is really has a very low cost item. I think we actually had a...

About EUR 25 million last year with the majority for electricity and then gas. And so that is nothing that is really hurting us. So even if it would double, we're talking about EUR 20 million, EUR 25 million, which would be around about 2% of total EBITDA. And again, we are also increasing prices. So that's not a huge issue for us.

Yes. And actually, to my knowledge, the majority of our contracts for this year actually already fixed for 2026. But it's anyhow a small number.

And the logistics cost isn't so high because, as you said, you are 80% local for local at the end of the day.

Yes. Sure.

And there are no further questions at this time. So I will now hand back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Yes. Thank you again. And yes, the analysts and investors, thanks again for participating in today's pre-close call. With the end of this call, we start our quiet period and are already very much looking forward to talking to you again on the 11th of May, the day of the release of our Q1 2026 numbers. Before the publication, however, we will have our AGM on the 29th of April, And with that, all the best from the entire IR team. Stay healthy and talk to you again in May. Bye-bye.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Full Year 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Heidi, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO; and Alexander Kocherscheidt, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of our successful financial year 2025 and Alexander will then cover the business and financial review of the fourth quarter before Stefan takes over again for the outlook 2026. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session.

Please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today.

And with that, I hand over to Stefan.

Thank you, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you again to our conference call today for our '25 years final numbers. 2025 was a big year for GEA. It was a year full of successes. We were able to raise our outlook for fiscal year '25 already in summer after a strong development in the first six months, and we achieved all our raised targets. In some cases, we even exceeded them. In July, we signed one of the largest single orders to date together with Baladna, we will build the world's largest integrated dairy farm and milk powder facility in Algeria. This project will strengthen the food security of an entire region in the long term and contribute to its economic development.

The biggest highlight of the year was clearly the DACH's entry on the 22nd of September via the demanding fast entry procedure. Since September, we are officially belonging to the 40 largest and most valuable stock listed companies in Germany. This marks a significant milestone in our company's historic spending nearly 145 years. We have also achieved great results when it comes to sustainability. Our direct emissions Scope 1 and 2 got further reduced during the year, leading to a reduction of 62% from our emissions in 2019. This is ahead of our short-term target of a 60% reduction in '26. We hit the target a year earlier than planned. That's a fantastic achievement for all the teams around the world working on the decarbonization of our own operations.

Also with regard to the reduction of our Scope 3 emissions, we have made further progress. We reported a 38% reduction, which proves that we are very well on track to reach our -- or even outperform our midterm target set for 2030. Independent assessments also confirm that we are leading the way in sustainability. In times ranking of the world's most sustainable company, we moved up from 33 in '24 to 12th place in '25 and to second place in Germany. This shows that a company cannot only improve financials, we can also improve at the same time our efforts for sustainability.

Let me give you some background information on our strong financial performance in '25. The overall order environment for GEA has been very dynamic in the second half of the year like expected, so that we achieved an organic order intake growth rate of 9.1% for the full year after 4.2% in the first half year. All divisions contributed to this strong performance. Sales rose by 1.4% to EUR 5.5 billion. Organic sales growth amounted to 3.7% at the upper end of the guidance to 2.4%. The profitable service business continued its dynamic development leading to a service sales share of 40%, up from 38.9% in '24. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by 8.4% year-over-year to EUR 907 million. This reflects the higher gross profit and is based on the further expansion of the service business as well as higher profitability in the new machine business.

The corresponding EBITDA margin improved from 15.4% in '24 to 16.5% in '25 exceeding the guidance range of 16.2% to 16.4%, which was raised in July. We are at the highest profitability level ever. Return on capital employed rose on a high level further to 36.2%, well in the guided range of 34% to 38%. In short, we delivered again in all aspects. Our shareholders should not only benefit from our good share price performance, we would also like to share our success with them through a higher dividend. We propose an increase of EUR 0.15 to EUR 1.30. 2025 for the first year of our Mission 30 after we achieved our Mission 26 targets two years earlier. I would like to use the next few minutes to give you a brief update on our growth drivers.

As a reminder, we target an organic sales CAGR of more than 5% until 2030, which is based on six drivers. First, sustainable solutions sales with a target sales share of more than 60% by 2030. After 31.6% in '24, the ratio expanded further to 45.7% in '25 thereof. And I think that is a really impressive number and worth to highlight it 42.3% is a EU taxonomy aligned sales. Our Add better products are also part of our sustainable solutions. We were able to increase the share of the Add Better sales to more than 9%, which is remarkable considering that we have this ecolabel in place for only 2.5 years now. Second, service sales is expected to increase to EUR 2.9 billion sales in 2030. In '25 this number stood already at EUR 2.2 billion as service remained on its growth statutory with a year-over-year organic sales growth of 6.8%.

Our development in the service business is a real success story. We have raised the service share from 32% in 2019 to 40% in '25 with an average organic growth rate of 8%, and we expect the service business to continue with a strong growth rate until 2030. Third, we aim for an order intake of more than EUR 400 million in new food in 2030. The development in this business is lower than what we had expected. But we still think that this will become a relevant market in the future. If we want to feed the growing world population, we need alternative proteins. After a weak performance in '24, the order intake almost doubled to roughly EUR 70 million in '25. As we highlighted during '25, we see first improvement in this customer industry and discussions with customers are picking up again. We are optimistic that this development continues and that we can make further progress in '26.

To shed a bit more light into recent developments in new food sector, let me share some insights into one of our customers Solar Foods. At our Capital Markets Day in October '24, we presented to you the pilot plant, which was equipped with our processing equipment to produce proteins out of CO2. This plant started operations in '24 and produces 160 tonnes of Solein annually, which is then used in protein drinks, shakes and snacks. Due to its success, the customer is currently designing his first real industrial scale production facility, which will increase the annual production capacity to 6,400 tonnes. We have entered into an exclusive agreement with them to negotiate the supply, design, construction and delivery of the process equipment for this factory.

Fourth, our above-average growing verticals. In our Capital Markets Day in October '24, we presented to you a list of verticals which we expected to grow much faster than the overall 5%. 2025 clearly demonstrated this outperformance, while the overall order intake at GEA growth grew close to 7%, the growth verticals reported an outstanding growth rate of more than 30%. Our automated making systems as well as our engineering solutions to decarbonize the food and beverage industries were the main growth contributors. Fifth, we expect digital sales to grow to more than EUR 200 million by 2030. In '25, the sales volume stood roughly EUR 80 million, up from more than EUR 70 million in '24. We also made further progress in connecting our machines.

In the meantime, 11,000 machines are connected to the GEA cloud. By 2030, 80% of the machines installed at customer sites and suitable for digital applications will be connected. This would correspond to more than 35,000 GEA machines. And finally, our target for the Vitality Index. The share of sales from products that are less than five years old is to increase to 30% by 2030. We started with 10% in '21, improved it to 16.4% in '24 and raised it to further 19.2% in '25. Thus, we almost doubled the sales share within four years. This nicely demonstrates our innovation strength and the push for new products. Our commitment to this KPI is also reflected in the long-term incentive scheme of the Executive Board.

To sum it up, we have made good progress in each of the six levers by improving the corresponding KPIs that shows you that we are well on track towards our mission to the growth targets. But 2025 wasn't the only successful year for GEA. Over the past years, we have consistently delivered on average annual organic growth in order intake and sales across all time periods despite a very challenging external environment marked by COVID, the war in the Ukraine, supply chain disruptions and further geopolitical tension. When you put this into context of the development in the broader mechanical engineering sector, the performance is even more impressive.

According to the German Engineering Federation, ordered in the German mechanical and plant engineering sector have fallen by 6% on average per year during the last four years, while we have grown our order intake on average by 5.5% per year organically or 3.3% per year in reported terms in the same period. This outperformance clearly underlines the resilience of our business mode and the competitiveness and strength of our organization. Since 1st of January '26, we are live with our new organizational structure and the new Executive Board. The 14 member Global Executive Committee has been dissolved and replaced by a new seven-member Executive Board. The regional matrix organization has been eliminated. The COO organization will be dissolved within the first half of '26. Therefore, we are in the progress to integrate the functions into other areas of responsibility.

Johannes will remain on Board if necessary until summer to ensure a smooth transition. After that, we will be six people in the Executive Board. The strategically important countries, China and India report now directly to me. This new setup means faster decision-making, being closer to the customers and markets, decreasing costs and finally, enabling us to achieve our mission targets even better. I am very much looking forward to working with my new executive team. We have known and worked with each other for many years now and everyone has made a significant contribution to the success of the past years.

And now I hand over to Alexander, who will give you more insights into the fourth quarter.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and a warm welcome from me, ladies and gentlemen. You've just heard from Stefan, the highlights of 2025. I will now provide you with an overview of our business and financial performance in the fourth quarter. After successful first nine months of '25, we even accelerated its positive development in the fourth quarter. We achieved a record order intake, strong sales growth and another strong EBITDA margin increase.

Let's have a look at the details. Starting with order intake. Order intake rose by 14.4% year-over-year to a record level of EUR 1.8 billion. In organic terms, the growth rate was even higher at 17.9%. This strong performance was supported by nine large orders. So orders above EUR 15 million with a total value of EUR 414 million versus seven large orders totaling EUR 230 million in the prior year quarter. As already shared with you in October, we were able to book the large order from Baladna in the fourth quarter, so that's accounting for two out of the nine large orders as the order has been split into a large order for liquid and powder technologies and a large order for farm technologies.

In addition, we were able to secure further large orders from the dairy processing, beverage, food, pharma and new food industry. All order size brackets delivered strong growth, except for order sizes below EUR 1 million. This underscores the broad-based strength of the order intake. From a customer industry perspective, dairy processing, beverage, dairy farming and new food were the main growth contributors in the quarter. Sales grew organically by 7.2%, driven by both new machine and service sales. Organic growth in the new machine business accelerated from 2.7% in Q3 to a year-over-year growth rate of 8.4% in the fourth quarter. The service business once again reported a strong organic growth rate of 5.3%, continuing its growth trajectory over the last 21 quarters.

On the back of the stronger growth, in the new machine business, the service sales share declined marginally by 0.8 percentage points to 38.4%. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 22 million to EUR 261 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 0.9 percentage points to 16.7%. Higher volume, slightly better gross margin and stable operating costs were the drivers of the strong profitability increase.

Let's have a closer look at the performance of the divisions. Please keep in mind that it is the last time that we will report our numbers in this divisional setup. As of Q1 '26, we will report and publish our figures in the new organizational setup with four divisions: Pure flow processing, nutrition plant engineering, pharma food applications and farm technologies.

Now I will start with the figures for the Separation & Flow Technologies division, which reported strong organic new machine sales and kept the EBITDA margin at a very high level, above 28%. On the back of a very strong order intake in the prior year quarter, the order intake declined by 2.7% to EUR 431 million. When adjusting for the translational FX effect of minus EUR 17 million, the order intake grew slightly by 1.1% year-over-year. This organic growth has been driven by the customer industries dairy processing, oil and gas, marine as well as environmental applications. Organic sales grew by 4.4% year-over-year, driven by very strong new machine sales growth of 12%. Service sales declined organically by 2.9%.

As a result of this development, the service sales share decreased on a high level from 51% in Q4 last year to 47.4% in this quarter. To put this development into perspective, on a full year basis, the service sales share increased by 0.3 percentage points to 49.3%. Despite slightly lower sales volume, gross profit rose due to higher gross margin. EBITDA remained at prior year's level with a corresponding EBITDA margin of 28.1%. Thus, the EBITDA margin remained on an excellent level of above 28%. When looking at the full year '25, the EBITDA margin expanded strongly by 1 percentage point to 28.5%.

Let's move on to Liquid & Powder Technologies, a stellar performer this quarter. This division not only improved all KPIs, but it also achieved new record levels in order intake and EBITDA margin. Order intake rose significantly by 29.3% in organic terms, even by 32.8% year-over-year to a new record level of EUR 752 million. As stated earlier, we were very successful in securing several large orders this quarter. The large orders with a total volume of EUR 346 million were spread across our customer industry universe, three from dairy processing, two in beverage and one each from food and new food. Even when adjusting for the Baladna order, the order intake would still be comfortably up by almost 10% year-over-year. This underlines the strength of the underlying business.

When looking at the customer industries, the main growth contributors were dairy processing, which is probably not surprising to hear after having mentioned the number of large orders coming from this industry, beverage and new food. Sales rose by 7.4% year-over-year on an organic basis which was driven by both new machine and service business. While the Service business remained on its growth trajectory since Q4 2021, new machine sales continued its rebound. After reporting a decline in the first half of 2025 Q3 already showed the first improvement and Q4 delivered now another quarter of 4.4% organic growth. The reason for this pickup in the new machine sales is the conversion of large orders, which we received in the last quarter of '24 into sales.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased from EUR 59 million in the prior year quarter to EUR 72 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 significantly lower operating costs were driving this performance. The corresponding EBITDA margin rose by 2 percentage points to 14.3%, which marks a record level.

Moving on to Food & Healthcare Technologies, which reported a strong set of numbers again. This is the fourth quarter in a row with strong improvements in all major KPIs, strong organic top line growth, coupled with continuous margin improvement, leading to a record quarterly EBITDA margin a very strong finish to the year. Organic order intake increased by 5.4% year-over-year, mainly driven by the customer industry Pharma. The division secured one large order of EUR 28 million in pharma for our continuous tablet pressing line. As you might remember, we presented this technology as a growth vertical at our Capital Markets Day in '24.

While we saw first customers ordering our innovation for continuous tablet production in '24, we saw follow-up orders in '25. That's a fantastic example of a successful innovation offering, new growth opportunities. Sales grew significantly by 10.7% year-over-year in organic terms with strong contributions from both new machine and service business. New machine sales showed an excellent organic growth rate of 12.2% while service sales grew strongly by 8% organically. As a result of the stronger performance in the new machine business, the service sales share decreased from 35.4% in the prior year quarter to 34.6% in the fourth quarter of '25. The EBITDA margin continued its quarter-on-quarter improvement since its low point of 6.1% in Q2 '23. This marks the tenth quarter of sequential EBITDA margin expansion, an impressive development.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses reached EUR 41 million with a corresponding margin of 14.1% in the quarter. This is not only significantly up from 11.3% in the prior year quarter, but also resulted in a new record. Main driver behind this profitability expansion is a significantly better gross margin. To sum it up, Food & Healthcare technology has proven its successful turnaround over the last quarters, and there is more time. Continuing with farm technologies, whose top line recovery continued this quarter.

Let me give you some more details here. After an already significant order -- organic order intake growth of 22.9% in the first nine months of 2025, the fourth quarter reported another extraordinary growth rate of 34.5% year-over-year. This increase was mainly driven by a large order from Baladna, but even without this order, the order intake would have been strongly up year-over-year. This demonstrates the current favorable market environment with a strong demand for automated and conventional milking systems. While organic sales declined in the first half, reflecting the low starting order backlog at the beginning of this year, it rebounded in the second half after an organic growth rate of 6% in the third quarter. Organic sales growth accelerated to 9.7% year-over-year in the fourth quarter.

New machine sales experienced a substantial organic increase of 13.6%, while service sales grew strongly at 5.8%. As a result, the service sales share declined from a high level of 50.6% to 48% in the quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses fell by EUR 3 million to EUR 29 million, mainly due to the lower service sales share and product mix effects. The corresponding EBITDA margin decreased by 2.1 percentage points to 13.7% in Q4 '25.

Finally, let us turn to Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. This division delivered a very solid set of results with improvements in all KPIs, strong order intake growth, solid sales growth and a record EBITDA margin. Order intake rose significantly by 15.4% organically year-over-year due to strong demand development in midsized orders between EUR 1 million and EUR 15 million. In terms of customer industries, distribution and storage as well as beverage were the main growth contributors. Sales rose by 3.9% organically, while organic new machine sales growth slowed down to 0.8% in the quarter, organic service sales growth accelerated markedly from 1.8% in Q3 to 9.6% in the fourth quarter. The service sales share increased by 1.8 percentage points to 37.3% in the quarter.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose substantially by EUR 5 million to EUR 27 million due to an improved gross profit resulting from volume and a significantly higher gross margin. The corresponding EBITDA margin expanded strongly by 2.8 percentage points to 15.6% in the fourth quarter. This is an impressive result as Heating & Refrigeration Technologies crossed the 15% mark for the first time and thus achieved a record margin for a quarter.

Closing the divisional chapter with the overview on the EBITDA growth contribution in the full year and in the fourth quarter of 2025. Liquid & Powder Technologies and Food & Healthcare Technologies, have been the biggest EBITDA growth contributors in both time periods. This nicely proves again two things. On the one hand, the successful turnaround of FHT, this division has developed into an important profitability contributor for the company. And on the other hand, it underscores our success in improving margins within our engineering business at LPT. Price discipline, cost control, good risk management, better execution and the expansion of the service business are the key drivers behind this success.

Coming now to another important topic, net working capital. Net working capital declined by EUR 291 million from EUR 466 million in the third quarter to EUR 175 million in the fourth quarter. This remarkable reduction results mainly from a combination of higher trade payables and higher contract liabilities driven by the high large order volume received as well as lower inventories. In a year-over-year comparison, we have managed to bring the net working capital below the already low level of the prior year quarter. The year-over-year improvement of EUR 152 million is driven by a combination of higher trade payables and higher contract liabilities. This resulted in a net working capital to sales ratio of 3.2% which is a record low level and well below the guided corridor of 7% to 9%. When looking at this ratio on rolling last four quarters instead of spot to smooth out seasonality, this is the dark pink line in the chart.

Volatility is visibly lower. The last four quarters ratio remained within our guided corridor except for the end of '25 when it even was slightly below. Overall, the development reflects a clear downward trend. Cash generation was incredibly strong in the last quarter of the year. 180% of our EBITDA before restructuring expenses has been converted into free cash flow this quarter. Let's have a look at the details. Operating cash flow was EUR 542 million, which is EUR 281 million higher than the EBITDA. The main driver was the significant net working capital inflow, which you have already seen on the slide before. The pickup in CapEx-related outflow of EUR 95 million is in line with our full year 2025 guidance of around EUR 255 million.

As a result, free cash flow stood at EUR 470 million, marking a new quarterly record in recent history, leading to a net cash flow of EUR 448 million after deducting lease payments and interest paid. The strong net cash flow turned the net debt position from EUR 36 million at the end of the third quarter into a net cash position of EUR 379 million at the end of December. Free cash flow for the full year was at EUR 512 million, mainly driven by the strong free cash flow in the fourth quarter, as shown on the previous slide. The corresponding cash conversion ratio which indicates how much of the EBITDA before restructuring expenses has been converted into free cash flow before restructuring expenses landed at 59%. This is already very close to our target of more than 60% cash conversion in 2030.

With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Alexander. Please let me first, before we go to the outlook, I make an important statement here on the military confrontations in the Middle East, which we hope will end very soon in the interest of all people living in the region and also in the whole world. The events in this region are not expected to have any material direct impact on our business performance. I will now share with you some facts on our exposure of the Middle East. Middle East accounted for roughly 3% of our order intake in the full year '25. We have neither production sites, nor important suppliers in the region.

At the end of '25, we had roughly 70 FTEs in the Middle East. As part of these established business continuity management framework, precautionary measures were implemented to ensure the protection of our employees and the continued operations of the business, all our employees are safe. Therefore, risk from the direct exposure to the Middle East is rather very low and does not have an impact on our guidance range. Indirect effects on supply chains, oil prices, freight costs and shipment delays can currently not be reliably assessed. However, we expect rather limited implications for our business. Coming to our order backlog now, we finished the year with an order backlog of EUR 3.3 billion, which is almost 7% above prior year level.

Of this EUR 3.3 billion, EUR 2.7 billion is expected to be converted into sales in '26, so more than 80%. This lays a good foundation for sales generation in '26 and underpins our confidence for organic sales growth in '26. This brings me to the next topic, our guidance for '26. We had a very successful financial year '25 and are very well on track with our Mission 30. For '26, we are optimistic to continue with this success story and to make further progress towards our targets. Based on the invoiceable order backlog, the strength of our service business and the good order intake development, we guide for an acceleration in organic sales growth from 3% -- 3.7% in '25 to a range of 5% to 7% in '26.

As in prior year, we expect organic sales growth below the range in the first quarter with an acceleration during the year given the fact that we have received many large orders in the second half of '25, in particular, in the fourth quarter. For EBITDA before restructuring expenses, we expect a further margin improvement to a level between 16.6% to 17.2% after 16.5% in '25. Finally, we expect return on capital employed to be in the range of 34% to 38%.

So what does that all mean for our EBITDA development in '26? Let's have a closer look at the EBITDA margin bridge and its key components. We expect personnel cost increase of around 3% worldwide. As in the past, we intend to offset this cost inflation through to price increases. G&A will contribute positively to profitability due to the expected savings from our new organization. For COGS, we continue to expect a broadly linear saving progression this year, in line with our Mission 30 targets of an R&D ratio of 3.2% by 2030, we plan to increase our R&D spending slightly in '26. And finally, top line growth and product mix effects are another factor which will determine where we will end in the EBITDA margin guidance range of 16.6% to 17.2% in '26. And as you might have noticed, 17% would be already the low end of our Mission 30 target.

Looking into the year ahead, our key priority is to continue with the acceleration of organic sales growth. Our new organizational structure is already in place, and it will help us to increase efficiency going forward. We will capitalize on the new country strategies for India and China to speed up decision-making and unlock their full growth potential. Further improvement in our profitability remains high on the agenda. This will be supported by our ongoing COGS reduction as well as the execution of our Transform360 program. And finally, advancing our climate strategy remains an important priority.

Finally, our road map for '26. The next important date will be in less than two months, our Virtual Annual Shareholder Meeting on April 29. And on May 11, we will be back with our Q1 figures. This concludes my presentation, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. And with that, I hand the call back to Heidi for the Q&A session. So please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Max Yates from Morgan Stanley.

I have just got two questions. Thank you for the indication on the revenue growth for the first quarter. I was just wondering, could you give us a feel for order intake trends in the first half? And I guess what I'm really getting at is, obviously, there was a very strong contribution from large orders in the fourth quarter. Is there any indication you can give us -- should we be thinking about sort of large orders running as they normally do less than EUR 100 million a quarter? Can we stay at a EUR 400 million level? Just really trying to get a feel of is sort of 1.4% to 1.5% the right order level? Or should we continue to be substantially above that?

Okay. Thanks for this question, Max. And I mean what I can clearly tell you, we will continue to see good order intake situation also in '26. We have a lot of very interesting also larger orders in the pipeline, but you also know how difficult it is to predict. Will it be in Q1 or Q2 or maybe even Q3? But what I can give you, we have a lot of confidence that we will see our order intake in '26, which will definitely support our growth expectation to grow with the CAGR and more than 5% year-over-year.

Okay. And maybe just a quick follow-up. If I look at your -- the guidance that you've given and your backlog for delivery. So your backlog for delivery is up around EUR 100 million year-over-year. Your consensus revenues or your guidance implies that we should be doing a EUR 250 million revenue increase. So we need more of a contribution for in-for-out orders than we're getting from the backlog. So I guess what's giving you the confidence when you look at the end market to essentially kind of underwrite what looks like a high single-digit growth rate for your in for out orders. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty.

There's still a lot of inflation, cost pressures for consumer companies, your customers. So I was just really trying to understand what are you looking at that gives you the confidence to underwrite that kind of high single-digit growth you're in-for-out orders?

Yes, Max, let me take this question. So first of all, as you have already said, the part of the invoiceable backlog is going up year-on-year, we've shown this on the slide before. So there's a EUR 100 million coming from that. And then the [ in-for-out ] as you call it, if you calculate what we achieved in '25 and what we now need to achieve in '26, you will see that there is, of course, an ambition level in there, but not an ambition level, which is going up. So we feel quite confident and comfortable also with this number, also on the back of a continuously strong service business. .

Your next question comes from the line of Akash Gupta from JPMorgan.

I got two as well. The first one is on revenue guidance. So you guide organic growth rate of 5% to 7%. And I'm wondering if you can help us with your assumptions right now on how will the new equipment revenue growth might compare to service growth in 2026. And so when we look at lower end and the top end, what sort of service growth and new equipment growth have you baked in, in 5% to 7% guidance range.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Akash. So first of all, the overall guidance that we have given also in the Mission 30 is that the service its growth rate is slightly higher than in the new machine business. And this is also the assumption in -- for '26. So if you want the higher end of the range that we are giving is then supposed to come more from the service part.

So despite strong Q4 orders where you had a lot of new equipment projects, you don't expect any pickup in the mix of like new equipment might be growing faster than services in 2026.

Not necessarily because the orders that we booked are orders which all have a, let's say, a project time line of more than two years. So that's giving us then, let's say, a little bit sales in '26 and also '27 and sometimes even '28. So that smoothen it out a bit. So that's the reason why I said it before.

And my second one is on capital allocation. Maybe if you can talk about how do you see prospects for M&A in 2026? And any comment on buyback as well?

Yes. Akash, I mean it's -- I can only repeat what I always say. We would be very much interested in doing meaningful M&A, but only if the price is right. You know that we don't comment officially on targets, but there is also some rumor in the media around and maybe that also proves for you that we don't do any stupid things. And we don't do something when it does not fit. So yes, this is what I can say. We would be happy to find the right targets.

But on the other hand, we have a strategy program, which works perfect, like you can see, like you can also see again in the year '25. And also in '26, we are growing. We are increasing our profitability. There is no need for us to do anything which might be too risky. But as I said, we would be interested and open to do acquisitions whenever we find the right targets for the right price and then we will see what comes. If this will, at the end, let's say, not materialize a long time, then of course, we also might start to think again about share buyback. But yes, let's see how it works out.

And the question comes from the line of Uma Samlin from Bank of America.

Just one for me, please. Just if I look at your margin -- EBITDA margin guidance for 2026, I guess the lower end is just like a tiny bit over what you had achieved this year. I just want to understand what makes the difference between lower and higher end? What do you need to get to above 17% margin? Is that a function of revenue delivery? Or is there any particular cost reduction target baked in there.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Uma. So if you look at the -- or we can go through the slide again that we showed earlier, Stefan explained, of course, there are ranges. And if you take the ranges and add them all up, then you come also to a guided range. And you can see that we see on the pricing level, we see a bigger range. And we have on the COGS reduction program as well in ambition level as on the G&A contribution. So this, in the end, explains how we come to this guided range of 16.6% to 17.2%.

So I guess just following up on that, I guess, you mentioned pricing is a relatively important element of the margin bridge. And if we look at your pricing chart there, so how should we think about the strategy, especially in the wake of higher energy prices you might see a bit more cost inflation going forward than you had anticipated. How confident are you to compensate all that in your pricing plans?

Yes. I mean for us in our own operations, oil is not really playing an important role because we mainly source electric energy and some natural gas. That's the same, by the way, for our customers. We don't have any product to my knowledge, which needs oil or petrol to run. So the impact is -- direct impact here is extremely limited. And also the total number of energy costs for us it's really, really very, very low. And if there might be any impact, which we cannot avoid then I'm very optimistic that we had good reasons to explain that to our customers and that we can pass it through.

Your next question comes from the line of Sven Weier from UBS.

First one, coming back to the order pipeline, Stefan, obviously, which remains very active. I was just wondering on the dairy side of the business, how important high protein in general is a driver for the activity in the pipeline?

Okay. Good question, Sven. That -- I have no knowledge that this is really driving one of our larger projects. It's very, of course, you know that we are very active in dairy that we are very strong in dairy and especially when it comes to infant formula and all these things or ultra-high temperature treatment. But I have to say, I did not -- I cannot tell you that if this is now really a big driver, and I did not hear it so far that this would be a driver. Even if I know that, of course, many, many nutritions are more and more focusing on that. But it is mainly a question of probably how to use our equipment, yes.

Would it be fair to say that the strength that you've seen in the orders is a bit more broad-based and you can't really single out kind of individual short-term trends that...

Yes, absolutely. And also the quite optimistic statement about the order intake, we might also see in '26 is not based on dairy only. There are many other interesting areas in field, including new food, by the way, where we feel that we could generate interesting business.

And what you said on orders in general, I mean, I guess, should we take that as that book-to-bill will be again above one based on what you see, obviously?

I hope so, yes. That's what we felt, yes.

Good. And then just a follow-up on the M&A side. So it was interesting what you said regarding market concerns that you would overpay or something. I mean should we take that as a sign that you have walked away from a big deal that was speculated or should we not take that as a [indiscernible].

That it is difficult for me to comment. But I have -- I can say that I read something in the newspaper that this is the case. That was a small article in the small newspaper, but this is what I personally read in the newspaper.

Just in terms -- because I think the other concern the market had and when you do a bigger deal that it would need a capital increase? I would you say that with your financial firepower, you can almost rule that out that you would be the capital increase to do it?

Well, I think there are only a very, very few ideas where this could be realistic that we would need a capital increase because we have firepower, which is easily going beyond EUR 2 billion. And only that is not sufficient, then we could think about new shares and capital increase, yes. But we also know that this -- if we would spend EUR 2 billion or more, then it really should be a significant huge large profitable target which we -- which is difficult to find at the moment.

And is it also fair to say that in such an event, you also reserve the right to do a strategic review? Just in terms of how good...

Could also be the fact, yes.

We will take our next question, and the question comes from Sebastian Kuenne from RBC Capital.

First of all, I would like to get a better understanding of the one-off charges or projects that you are seeing for 2026, '27, so including ERP IT investments, organizational simplification to the bigger projects and what the impact might be on the P&L that would be my first...

So we expect for this year and just let me also remind you that '26 will be the last year where we record restructuring expenses or report an EBITDA before restructuring. So we expect, if you compare the number to the one that we had in '25, we expect this number to go down.

Then also 2027, so you don't have bigger projects that will last a couple of years and where you have bigger costs expected and that's correct.

Yes. That's what we said. So we will not have any -- we will not record any restructuring expenses or report them anymore, and you could deduct from that, that there are no bigger projects going on, correct?

Then on tax, I mean, Q4 was a bit steep at 40%. We know that the tax of tariff forwards in the U.S. are running lower and you now guide for 28% to 30% tax rate. I assume this is a cash tax. And is this also the level you see then in future years? Is that then a normalized level, 28% to 30%?

Yes. First of all, the 28% to 30% is not the cash tax. It's the P&L tax effect. So that's important to see. And yes, the expectation is that this will be -- I mean, we are giving a range because it's not that easy to really pinpoint it down to 1 percentage point. So that's the range we want to be in. That would be then a reduction to the effective tax rate that we had in 25% or 31%.

Okay. Then one more thing. SST Separation business, one could argue that the demand level, was it softer or certainly softer than what we saw in other divisions. And also the margin was pretty flat now. Would you now say that this business has reached kind of the margin ceiling that you can achieve with the type of products and the mix that you have? Or is there something coming up where I think this is -- there's more that could be 100, 150 bps more margin further down the line. So kind of a trajectory that you see internally where you say there's much more potential here.

I think we would never say and accept that the margin is not possible to improve. That's -- I think we always see the opportunities to do something better. But if you look at their margin level of SFT it is really very, very high already. And of course, the incremental improvement might be lower than in other divisions. But nevertheless, we don't see it as a peak or so. We feel that we have still room for improvement in some areas. I also have a lot of activities in my mind, which we do to improve further the productivity to bring down COGS and the one that is also what we do in the SFT business. And therefore, I'm also quite optimistic that we will see here also, and we have the headroom for improvement even if, of course, it is -- the air becomes thinner. That's very clear. But we are not yet on the top.

Your next question comes from the line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF.

Congrats, strong year actually. Two questions from my side. First of all, I'm phrasing the energy question a little bit differently. I'm just curious to hear how in the phase of rising energy costs in the past, your lead generation has been -- I mean, obviously, this might help you even in selling equipment to your clients that are looking at total cost of ownership and they might potentially anticipate some of their purchases or the life cycle by whatever a year or so, I don't know. Any thoughts would be helpful on this.

And secondly, on the strong net working capital development that you obviously showed and given that your last 12 months run rate is now below the previous guidance corridor. What does it take actually for you to become even more optimistic on the net working capital ratio given that you see a strong pipeline also on larger orders, which means probably prepayments coming in.

Okay. Thanks, Adrian. I'll take the first question. My personal view would be, I think we all hope that the conflict in the Middle East will come to an end in a reasonable time and maybe then also, we will come back to times where the oil price is going down again. And only if that is not the case, I think you might be right that customers would be more willing to spend more money for more sustainable solutions and even if I -- like I said, we have no equipment which runs with oil or petrol. So -- but there's always a correlation of the energy prices, of course, somehow -- so I would say, at the moment, we don't see any impact here or any acceleration of order intake for that reason.

My personal view would be if it -- if the conflict continues for a longer time, and oil prices remain high for a longer time, then you might be right that this would rather help us to see more investments in more sustainable solutions and upgrades for our customers.

Yes, then perhaps I'll chip in to take the second question, the net working capital ratio. I think we -- as I said earlier, we are -- at the moment, we are still very comfortable with the range, 7% to 9%. We see a downward trend on the last four quarter ratio, yes, and we ended the year even slightly below this. I would say it's a bit too early now to discuss a lower ratio. I think this will corridor this will depend on, let's say, the future development also on the inventory side, I would say. And on the project side, yes, you are right with the high down payments coming from larger orders coming in.

This would be an indicator. But on the other hand, we also have to keep in mind on the payable side, what -- let's say, what levels we can agree there. So that's something that we are closely monitoring. You know that since years, we have been really posing on net working capital management, and we lowered the range already once. I think I don't know how many years ago, it was 8% to 10%, now it's 7% to 9%. And if we continue this trend, I think we can revisit this again. But for the time being, we are quite happy with the range.

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question. The question comes from the line of Lars Vom-Cleff from Deutsche Bank.

Three quick follow-up questions, if I may. The first one is regarding your G&A costs. These were 12.7% of last year's revenue. I guess given that this is a cost category that is strongly in your focus, would it be fair to assume that we could see it go down to around 12% again this year? Or would that be too optimistic at this stage?

Yes. First of all, I think it's important to understand that the G&A ratio was also influenced in '25 by some of the expenses that were generated by the reorganization and which is not going to continue into '26. Also, the ratio or the development of G&A cost or the impact of G&A cost on the overall EBITDA margin. We indicated that we expect a slight reduction so I cannot give you now the exact percentage, but it will definitely -- and that's the aim also throughout the next year to reduce the G&A ratio.

Okay. And then the net working capital coming down, so massively, you're stressing that is mainly driven by advanced payments. I guess it's a special or yes, it's one advanced payment that really is moving the needle, right? Several large orders, but there's one large order is playing an enormous role I would assume.

I would not phrase it like that. I think as we showed earlier, we -- and it's also publicized, there were two large orders above the EUR 100 million mark and also several other large orders. And I would not say that one plate now or move the needle, as you said it. I think it's really the combination of the number of large orders and also milestone payments in other projects. So it's a multiple -- there are multiple reasons for that.

Okay. Understood. And then lastly, a new food alternative proteins. I admit you're in a good way. We're seeing promising growth rates. But if I remember correctly, many start-ups you are working with are also based in Israel, could the current geopolitical situation slow down the envisaged growth for this segment this year?

I would not say that this is depending on the situation in Israel. Yes, you are right. There are some of the start-ups, but we also have significant start-ups in the U.S., in Finland, in other regions. So I would not say that this is a big impact. And by the way, people initially, they are working. They are -- they somehow cope with the situation, I feel. So it's not that based to everything.

This concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'll now hand the call back to Stefan Klebert for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. So thanks for your participation in that call and for your continuing interest in GEA. I think you could see that '25 was an outstanding year again in all our financial KPIs and also in sustainability KPIs. And therefore, I think we are also a very good testimonial to show that financial performance can go along with efforts in sustainability and to make an impact to become a better world. What is also important to mention, we are very resilient. Now it's '26, it's now the seventh year in a row where we are continuously growing through all cycles and oil crisis.

And therefore, we are also not worrying about the crisis we see in the Middle East at the moment, which is compared to the other crisis, we had a much smaller one. And we see also the resilience of followup of our business model. Yes. So all in all, we expect another good year '26 after good year '25. And yes, stay tuned and see each other again or talk to each other again at the end of Q1. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO; and Alexander Kocherscheidt, our new CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the third quarter, Alexander will then cover the business and financial review, before Stefan takes over again for the outlook 2025. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session.

As always, please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today.

And with that, I hand over to Stefan.

Thank you very much, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you again to our conference call today. The biggest highlight of the quarter was clearly the DAX entry on 22nd of September via the fast entry procedure. Now we are officially belonging to the 40 largest and most valuable stock-listed companies in Germany. This marks a significant milestone for the company.

Since 2019, we delivered quarter-by-quarter and year-by-year, and we did it on our own without any tailwind. I'm incredibly proud of all employees at GEA. Their dedication, engagement, passion and performance are the reasons for our success. And exactly for this reason, we celebrated the traditional opening bell ceremony at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, not only with the Executive Board and members of the Supervisory Board, but with over 100 GEA employees from different countries and business areas and levels.

With the symbolic ringing of the opening bell, GEA opened a new chapter. We are now playing in the Premier League. And we believe that there is more potential in the company and that it's now also the right time to take the company to the next level and to become even better. So we made the decision to reshape the organization, to accelerate growth and to become even more agile. Many of you probably saw the corresponding announcement and some might have had the opportunity to listen to our call. To ensure that everybody is aware of the changes we are making, I would like to run through the key effects in the next couple of minutes.

Just as a quick reminder of what our organization looks like today. As you know, we have an Executive Board consisting of 3 members and we have the Global Executive Committee. This committee comprises the 5 division heads, the 4 regional heads as well as our Chief Sustainability Officer and our Chief Human Resource Officer. And all these people report to me. The full P&L responsibility lies solely with me. So the company is very focused and concentrated on my person. This organization is a matrix organization with a quite high complexity. We introduced it in 2019 to have a smoother transition from OneGEA.

I would like to give you some additional insights here. Every year, we conduct an employee satisfaction survey to check what is going well and what are the areas for improvement. And I can share with you that the matrix organization and its complexity have continuously been an issue over the last years. So the question was twofolded. First, how can we eliminate the complexity of the matrix organization? And second, how can we make the company a little bit more independent from me?

The answer is, in our view, the replacement of our 14 member Global Executive Committee by a new 6-member Executive Board. That means we are taking out several top leadership positions by dissolving the GEC and are basically eliminating the regional matrix organization. Regional CEOs and regional CFOs are not part of the future operating model, and will thus leave the company. From January 1, the regional operations will be managed out of the divisions. This new setup reduces complexity, decreases costs and finally contributes to our Mission 30 G&A saving target of EUR 100 million by 2030.

From 1st of January '26, the Executive Board will look like as follows. Three divisions will be elevated to the Executive Board level. The COO department will be dissolved, and its functions will be integrated into other areas of responsibility. A new role, People and Sustainability, will complete the setup of the new Executive Board.

After 2 years, Bernd left the company by mutual consent at the end of October. Alexander has been his successor as CFO since 1st of November. I will share some further details about Alexander in a few minutes. Let me just mention here that he has been one of the key people shaping the company since 2019. And I remember, he was, I think, one of the very first people I personally hired even before it was clear that Marcus become our CFO.

Nadine will take over responsibility for People and Sustainability. Many of you know her already, as she played active roles in our past Capital Market Days, and is conducting dedicated ESG road shows together with our IR department. Four years ago, Nadine took over the responsibility for sustainability. Since then, she and her team positioned GEA extremely successfully as sustainability front runner. We were the first company in the DAX Index family with say on climate at the shareholders' meeting last year. And we see that our sustainability efforts are also relevant to our shareholders. We have many more ESG investors than 2 or 3 years ago.

Kai is also one of our very successful managers. He started his career in 2004 in the business unit, Valves & Pumps, moved to China for GEA for several years, took then over responsibility for the homogenizer business unit before becoming CEO of Heating & Refrigeration Technologies almost 5 years ago. As you all know, this division developed very well under his leadership. Kai will be the CEO of Pure Flow Processing, which is the old Separation & Flow Technologies division combined with a business unit component from HRT.

Klaus, who will take over responsibility for the new division, Nutrition Plant Engineering, is also very experienced and extremely successful. He made Separation & Flow Technologies to our crown jewel, a big success story during the last years. The new division consists of the of old Liquid & Powder Technologies division and the business unit solutions from Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. There is a simple logic behind this combination of the 2. Many customers are the same. They did a lot of projects together, so it's a perfect fit from the customers' point of view.

Finally, Peter. Peter started in Farm Technologies. The impressive journey of Farm Technologies with good margins and strong growth rates was his achievement. Last year, he took over the responsibility for Food & Healthcare Technologies and managed successfully the turnaround of this division. He will remain at the helm of this division, which will be renamed into Pharma & Food Applications with an unchanged portfolio.

To sum it up, I will have 3 extremely experienced colleagues now in the Executive Board managing together with me, the operational businesses and sharing the P&L responsibilities. All 3 are part and very successful contributor to the big success of GEA during the last years.

The CEO of Farm Technologies, Andreas, will not have a seat on Board but continues to report directly to me. The reason behind this is simply the size of the division. It is too small. Its technology is also very different from the rest of the businesses. There is no strong business logic to integrate it into one of the other divisions like we are doing it with Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. Therefore, Farm Technologies will be kept separately, and as said, reporting directly to me.

A very important change belongs to Johannes' organization, which will be dissolved with the transition period through mid of 2026. Johannes is an extremely successful colleague, and together with him, we achieved this impressive journey of GEA since 2019. He did a fantastic job, especially in procurement, where he centralized all global purchasing activities. His organization has significantly contributed to the increase in value of GEA in recent years. However, in this new setup with 3 strong divisions and given the meanwhile established strength of GEA, we feel that the divisions are now mature enough to manage the excellence programs by themselves.

A centralized procurement function will be retained and will report directly to me. The other key functions of Johannes will be integrated into the businesses of the other Executive Board members. Johannes was closely involved in developing this new organization set up, and will stay with us for the transition period to ensure an orderly and smooth handover.

The other big organizational change which we will make refers to China and India. These are fast-growing and strategically important markets, which will also report directly to me in the future. The new setup enables them to become more independent and entrepreneurial in order to act faster, simpler, more agile and without long decision-making processes. This should lead to an acceleration of growth in these countries.

To sum it up, the new organization will enable us to reduce complexity in the matrix. This was one very important topic for us. And at the same time, we can decrease costs. We will save immediately EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million in '26 by reducing a 14-member Global Executive Committee to a 6-member Executive Board. These savings will grow to EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million until '27.

This new organization setup is an important contributor to our G&A savings target of EUR 100 million by 2030. We will have a more focused and streamlined organization, which will support us on our journey to Mission 30.

As you know, it is always important to take your people with you on the journey to make a successful -- make it a successful one. In the first week, after the announcement, my current and new Board members and I spent a lot of time to explain the new setup and the reasons for it in many internal meetings. Only 2 weeks after the announcement, we conducted anonymous pulse check with our managers, by the way, more than 2,000 managers, to see what they think about the organizational changes. Amongst others, we asked them the question, do you think we are going in the right direction with the organizational changes? And the absolute clear majority and overwhelming 94% answered, yes. This is an outstanding result, and it proves one more that it is the right time to dissolve the matrix organization and to reshape our organizational setup.

And now let's change topics and have a look now at our third quarter results. After a successful first half of '25, GEA continued its positive development in the third quarter. We have accelerated growth in order intake and sales and have once again improved our profitability. Order intake rose strongly year-over-year by 5.5% to EUR 1.4 billion. Please note that this figure is not yet including the signed Baladna order. Alexander will give you an update on the status in a few minutes.

As expected, sales growth accelerated in the third quarter due to the conversion of large orders which we received in the fourth quarter of '24 into sales. Consequently, sales grew organically by 4.5% year-over-year. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by 6.7% year-over-year to EUR 232 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved from 16.1% in the prior year quarter to a new record level of 17.0% in the third quarter of '25.

Return on capital employed had again a strong development, rising significantly by 3.1 percentage points year-over-year to 35.4%, even slightly exceeding the remarkable ratio of 35.3% of the second quarter. Net liquidity decreased year-over-year by EUR 102 million to a minor net debt position of EUR 36 million because of the share buyback program, which was completed in the second quarter. Without the share buyback program, the net cash position of prior year quarter would have further increased.

Now I would like to introduce you to our new CFO, Alexander. Alexander, has taken over responsibility, as said, for all functions from Bernd with effect from November 1. He has more than 20 years of experience in finance and investment banking and knows GEA extremely well. We started together with our previous CFO, Marcus, and me in 2019 as Head of Group Finance. Both Marcus and Alexander worked together in creating financial transparency and bringing down net working capital significantly. I'm quite sure that some of you still remember how the situation was.

He is a man, together with Marcus, behind our net working capital success story. He has been one of the key people since 2019 in the finance department. In the last 2 years, Alexander has worked as a divisional CFO in our largest division, Liquid & Powder Technologies, where he did an excellent job in steering the division through a tougher environment, and could also have more touch base to the real life outside.

Dear Alexander, welcome to -- on to the Executive Board. All the best for your new role, and I'm really looking forward to shaping with you, our next chapter.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and a warm welcome from me, ladies and gentlemen. As you just heard from Stefan, I'm deeply familiar with GEA. Since joining the company in 2019 as Head of Group Finance, I've had the privilege to gain comprehensive insights into our business. In my role as Head of Group Finance, I worked closely, as Stefan mentioned, with our previous CFO, Marcus Ketter, on all major finance projects. And over the past 2 years as CFO of Liquids & Powder Technologies, I gained an even deeper understanding of our operational business or real life, as Stefan just said.

Now as Group CFO, I'm excited to continue to successfully achieve our Mission 30 and create value for our shareholders. I'm very much looking forward to my new role at GEA and to closely working with you, the investor and analyst community.

I will now provide you with an overview of our business and financial performance in the third quarter. Starting with order intake. While all order intake brackets have contributed to the strong year-over-year organic growth rate of 8.4%, mid-sized orders between EUR 5 million and EUR 15 million showed a particularly positive development, driven by Food & Healthcare Technologies. We have received 3 large orders. So orders above EUR 15 million with a total value of EUR 64 million versus only one large order of EUR 59 million in the prior year quarter.

As Stefan said, the large order signed with Baladna has not yet been booked in the third quarter. But I can share with you today that we have received the down payment now, which means the order has been booked already and will be included in our order intake figure for the fourth quarter. Please note that this order is split into 2 contracts, one with Liquid & Powder Technologies and one with Farm Technologies. Hence, both divisions will show their share of the order in the fourth quarter results. But as you can imagine, Liquid & Powder Technologies will hold the lion's share of this order.

From a customer industry perspective, pharma, food and dairy farming were the main growth drivers in the quarter. On a reported basis, order intake was negatively impacted by a EUR 36 million translational FX effect this quarter. After an organic sales growth of 1.2% in the first half of '25, Q3 delivered the expected acceleration in organic sales growth to 4.5%. Year-to-date, we are now at 2.3%. Organic new machine sales turned into growth territory after 2 quarters of year-over-year declining sales, while the service business reported another quarter of strong growth. This marks the 20th consecutive quarter of year-over-year organic service sales growth, an impressive performance.

On the back of that growth, the service sales share increased year-over-year from 39.2% to 14.1% (sic) [ 40.1% ]. The service business has been and continues to be an important pillar of our Mission 30. The initiatives and measures are bearing fruit. Within the last 3 years, the service sales share expanded by more than 5 percentage points. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 15 million to EUR 232 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 90 basis points to 17.0%. This is an outstanding profitability improvement, marking a record EBITDA margin.

Now I will continue with the figures of Separation & Flow Technologies division, which reported another good quarter. All major key performance indicators, order intake, organic sales growth and profitability improved again. Order intake increased organically by 14.9% year-over-year, to which a large order of EUR 16 million from the pharma industry contributed. Please note that even without this large order, the order intake would have had a strong year-over-year growth rate, underlining the strength of the business. This order intake strength has been broad-based as almost all customer industries have contributed, especially pharma, dairy processing, beverage and food. When looking at the order intake development on a reported basis, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 13 million needs to be considered.

Organic sales grew by 0.8% year-over-year, driven by a 4.1% increase in organic service sales. New machine sales declined by 2.4%. As a result of this development, the service sales share increased on a high level further from 48.7% to 50.4%. Despite slightly lower reported sales volume, EBITDA remained on prior year's level, while the corresponding EBITDA margin improved year-over-year by 70 basis points to 70 -- sorry, 27.8%. Driver of the margin improvement was the better gross margin, mainly resulting from the higher service sales share.

Let's move on to Liquid & Powder Technologies, my home turf and my vision for the last 2 years. Order intake for the quarter was down organically by 6.8% year-over-year, mainly driven by lower total order volume in orders between EUR 1 million and EUR 5 million in size. Two large dairy processing orders with a total volume of EUR 48 million were booked in the quarter, while the prior year quarter contained one large order of EUR 59 million from the dairy processing industry. From a customer industry perspective, the positive development in food and pharma was not enough to offset the decline in the other industries. Of course, the order intake performance would have looked completely different if Baladna order had already been booked in the third quarter. But as I just said, in the meantime, the order has been booked in October.

This quarter, an adverse translational FX impact of EUR 9 million needs to be considered when looking at the order intake. Sales rose by 6.6% year-over-year on an organic basis which was driven by both new machine and service business. While the service business continued its growth trajectory since Q4 2021, new machine sales rebounded after reporting a decline in the first half. As mentioned in previous calls, we expected an improvement in new machine sales in the second half of this year. The large orders, which we received in Q4 2024, are starting to be converted into sales. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased from EUR 50 million in the prior year quarter to EUR 52 million in the third quarter of 2025 on the back of higher sales volume. The corresponding EBITDA margin of 12.4% remained almost stable at last year's level of 12.5%.

Moving on to Food & Healthcare Technologies, which reported a strong set of numbers again, strong organic top line growth, coupled with continued sequential margin improvement and a record service sales share, a very successful turnaround story. Organic order intake increased significantly by 16% year-over-year, to which both major customers industries, pharma, and to a lesser extent, food, contributed. As in the second quarter, midsized orders with a volume of EUR 5 million to EUR 15 million were the main growth drivers. Sales grew organically by 4.1% year-over-year with contributions from both new machine and service business. New machine sales showed an organic growth rate of 2.0%, while service sales grew stronger by 7.9% organically. As a result, the service sales share increased from 35.4% to a new record of 37.0%.

The EBITDA before -- the EBITDA margin continued its quarter-on-quarter improvement since its low point of 6.1% in Q2 2023. This marks the ninth quarter of sequential EBITDA margin expansion and impressive development. EBITDA before restructuring expenses reached EUR 33 million with a corresponding margin of 13.3% in the quarter, significantly up from 10.1% in the prior year quarter. Main driver behind this profitability expansion is a significantly better gross margin.

Continuing with Farm Technologies, whose recovery continued this quarter but let me give you some more details here. After an already significant order intake, organic growth of 19.2% in the first half of 2025, the third quarter reported another extraordinary growth rate of 31.2% year-over-year. The new machine and service business benefited from the strong demand for conventional and automated milking systems in the quarter. The market recovery, which started at the end of last year, continued, and is largely driven by robust milk and favorable feed prices as well as the introduction of new product features. This environment contributed to the notable increase in order intake which is expected to remain on a high level for the remainder of the year.

While organic sales declined in the first half, reflecting the low starting order backlog at the beginning of this year, they rebounded in the third quarter. Sales increased organically by 6.0% year-over-year, resulting from strong growth rates in new machine and service sales. New machine sales experienced an organic increase of 6.2%, which was even stronger than the organic growth of 5.9% in service sales. As a result, the service sales share declined from a high level of 49.0% to 48.3% in the quarter.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 4 million to EUR 36 million due to higher sales volume and an improved gross margin. The corresponding EBITDA margin increased by 180 basis points to 18.0% in Q3 2025.

Finally, let us turn to Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. This division delivered solid sales growth combined with further EBITDA margin expansion. Order intake declined by 7.1% organically year-over-year due to missing midsized orders with a ticket size between EUR 5 million and EUR 15 million. While in the prior year quarter, orders with a total volume of EUR 18 million were reported in this order size bracket, no orders were booked in this size bracket this quarter. Base orders showed stable development. When looking at the customer industries, main declines were experienced in distribution and storage, food and dairy processing.

Sales rose by 3.2% organically. New machine business showed another quarter of organic sales growth, the fifth in a row, of 4.1% year-over-year. Service sales grew by 1.8% organically so that the service sales share decreased from 37.8% to 37.1% in the quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by 7.1% to EUR 21 million due to an improved gross profit resulting from volume and margin effects. The corresponding margin of 13.7% showed an expansion of 70 basis points compared to the margin in the prior year quarter.

Closing the divisional chapter with the overview on the EBITDA growth contribution in the first 9 months and in the third quarter of 2025. There are 2 important messages. First, we have considerably increased our EBITDA before restructuring expenses in both time periods, even though operational costs were stable or higher in most cases. And this considerable increase is driven by all divisions, except for Farm Technologies in the 9 months period. So a broad-based improvement. And second, we have managed to improve or at least to keep gross profit stable across all divisions despite facing declining sales in some cases. This resilience is driven by GEA's price and cost discipline as well as the savings we have achieved through our procurement and production optimization efforts.

Coming now to another important topic, net working capital. In a year-over-year comparison, net working capital declined by EUR 27 million to EUR 466 million. This reduction resulted mainly from higher trade payables and lower contract assets, which more than offset the increase in trade receivables and the decrease in the contract liabilities. On a quarter-on-quarter perspective, net working capital went up from 7.8% of sales in the last quarter to 8.6% in Q3, which is within the guided corridor of 7% to 9%. While we received more advanced payments quarter-on-quarter, higher trade receivables combined with higher inventories have triggered the uptick.

Free cash flow has been solid for the third quarter. But let's have a look at the details. Operating cash flow of EUR 120 million this quarter is below prior year's quarterly figure of EUR 180 million. This decline was driven by a combination of higher net working capital outflow, higher cash outflow for taxes on the back of a higher tax rate and others. The pickup in CapEx related outflow of EUR 68 million is in line with our full year 2025 guidance of around EUR 255 million. This implies another step up in CapEx in the next quarter.

As a result, free cash flow stands at EUR 52 million, leading to a net cash flow of EUR 30 million after deducting lease payments and interest paid. The solid net cash flow reduced the net debt position to EUR 36 million at the end of the third quarter. With the share buyback program completed and no longer impacting this position and given our typically strong cash generation in the fourth quarter, we most likely will return to a net cash position by year-end. Free cash flow generation over the last 4 quarters has been solid, reaching EUR 394 million, the corresponding cash conversion ratio, which indicates how much of the EBITDA before restructuring expenses have been converted into free cash flow before restructuring expenses, landed at 47%.

With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Alexander. Before talking about our fiscal year guidance, let me share with you our view on the current order intake situation. As you know, large orders can be lumpy and we cannot perfectly predict when orders will be signed and booked. For example, last quarter, we announced that we signed the largest single order for GEA today, Baladna. We also explained that this order will -- would be booked in the second half of '25 once the respective down payment will be arrived. The down payment was not transferred until the end of September but came in only after the cutoff date like Alexander also said. Therefore, this order will be reflected in our order intake in Q4.

This is a perfect example of how the timing of signing -- or booking of large orders can be difficult to predict. But most importantly, this does not affect GEA's overall performance. Therefore, it makes more sense to look at our order intake development on a rolling last 4 quarters perspective which you can see here on the chart. Here, it becomes clearly visible that we have seen good order intake development since the low point in the second quarter of '24. This positive trend continued in the third quarter of this year, and we are very optimistic that it will carry on in the coming quarters.

As a result of the positive development in the first 9 months, we confirm our guidance for the fiscal year '25, which we have upgraded in July. Organic sales growth, 2% to 4%; EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses between 16.4% and -- 16.2% and 16.4%; and return on capital employed in the range of 34% to 38%.

Finally, our road map for '25 and also '26. So that you can already save the date for our reporting date in '26 in your diaries. From beginning of '26 onwards, we will report our results on Mondays. The next important date will be the release of our full year results on March 9. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming roadshows and conferences. Alexander, the Investor Relations team, and I will be meeting investors until the end of January.

That concludes our presentation for today, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. And yes, let me hand over to the operator, please open up the lines for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi.

Klas at Citi. My first question is on the margin at year-end. I mean, obviously, very solid margins again in the quarter, but you're keeping the full year margin guide unchanged. It looks like the upper end, i.e. 16.4%, is now likely. But if that would play out, the fourth quarter margin decline is now at the same level at the upper end, i.e., around 16.4%, at least according to my maths. That's down 60 bps quarter-on-quarter. It's obviously not unusual to see a margin decline at year-end quarter-on-quarter, but still quite a meaningful slowdown. Can you talk, Stefan, if this lower-margin machine sales helped the backlog at year-end relative to service? Or did some divisions thinking about farm tech in particular, see some very positive mix effects in the quarter that will not repeat.

Okay. First of all, Klas, I hope that the investment in your new headphone paid off, but it doesn't seem like that, so the voice quality was again a little bit weaker. But I think I got the point. The question about the margin development. I mean, look, if you look at the rolling last 12 months, this is 16.3%. So we also need improvement in the fourth quarter compared to last year's fourth quarter where we are very optimistic but we feel comfortable with that guidance. That is what I would say here. But as you can also see, there is no risk to underperform here on that side.

But are you -- okay. I hope you can hear me better now. Are you getting a higher margin when you ship, for example, automated milking systems in farm tech, obviously, your service share is down a bit, but you still do at 18% margin. I'm trying to understand this, if you got a bit better product mix for automated machines, and that will not repeat. I'm just trying to understand like what could effectively slow into the fourth quarter?

Yes. I mean you're also referring to FT division. So if we look at the year-to-date margin with 15.2% on the FT side, we are well in the guidance range of 14% to 16%. So that's why we confirm the overall guidance as Stefan said.

Okay. My final one is on end markets. As I think about the recovery in pharma, it seems to be broadening out across more divisions. You even got the large orders there in SFT. Could you talk a little bit about the outlook, what's going on? It seems like when I look through what has happened over the previous quarters, started in SFT, but now it's sort of almost in every division. So I'm curious in terms of what you see on the pharma side and the outlook.

I'm not sure if I got your question right because the voice quality is not so good anymore. But I think the question was also about the market, how we see the development also in pharma. I can see and I can confirm that we are really seeing interesting, good pipeline, interesting order activity. So Q4 will be a very good quarter also for order intake again. So everything we see looks really good. And I mean, if you look at the order intake growth we have so far this year, it is also very clear that you can expect for next year, a significant acceleration of growth. And without giving any guidance, let's say, for next year but it is very obvious that with that, we will be in a clear -- clearly in the range of what we promise as a CAGR for our Mission 30.

And now we're going to take our next question. And it comes to line of Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF.

Yes. So actually, on SFT, I've got a couple of small questions. So looking at the developments on the margin side of things, obviously, Q2 was an outstanding quarter. I was just -- wanted to have from you some statements on what has changed on the mix? And is that a kind of margin normalization that we should accept also going into the fourth quarter? And having said this about Q4, so should we expect actually organic sales growth to slow a bit as we saw in Q3? And also with respect to the base business order intake which seems a bit soft, just wonder if there are kind of trends we should take into account here? And then I've got 2 more, but maybe let's stick with SFT first.

Yes. So let's start with the SFT question. So the Q2 margin was extremely strong. I think that -- and it also needs to be said that we are there on a very high level anyway. So the decline quarter-on-quarter mainly resulting from a less favorable product mix within the service business, I would say, and that's the driver for the development on the SFT side.

And then on...

Yes, sorry, I'm just recapping. So the sales development, we do not see a reason to believe that there are -- that this is going to continue the slowdown.

And on base business order intake, is there anything we should be aware of in SFT?

No solid development, I would say.

Okay. And first of all, welcome also Mr. Kocherscheidt, by the way. So in general, I mean, obviously, I think in past investor meetings and conference calls, I think you mentioned as a guidance for the whole group, something 5% growth. I mean, Mr. Klebert, you said something, should expect something in line with the midrange or what we should take into account on the top line. I was wondering, is that -- I mean, on the other hand, that you probably mean that besides the Baladna order, we should also expect some at least midsized but probably larger orders to be booked in Q4. I just wondered if you could share any kind of thoughts on the pipeline and what do you think you're going to convert?

And the last one that I have is on the free cash flow. Actually, I mean, solid overall, I would say, I agree, the year-on-year comparison is a bit tough, I guess, the base was quite high last year. So it looks down in the third quarter, but I was wondering, should we assume that you already -- is there also some preparation in for the Baladna order or is it just kind of phasing on how working capital components moved? And what should we expect for Q4?

Let me first take the question about the potential order intake, we might see, Baladna is not the only large order we have or we will book in Q4. We are very optimistic that we can see others also quite significant. But as I said and as I repeated many times, sometimes it's very difficult to give a clear statement, what is the quarter when we can book a large order because this might be easily postponed for 3, 4, 5 weeks, and then it falls into the next quarter.

So if I would need to bet today, I would say Q4 will become another really great quarter. But what is even more important to mention, the pipeline we have, the pipeline we see is not only a very solid one in terms of base business because you also might remember last quarter, Q2 was a quarter where we achieved a good order intake without any large order, and the large order begins in our terminology with EUR 15 million. So we really, really have a solid fundament of pipeline. We are very well positioned in interesting markets. We are becoming even more agile now with the new organization. We put a lot of activities in sales also during the last years which you see now, which is which is helping us.

I mean you always have to consider the overall situation in the world, yes. I mean these are not the most bullish times worldwide. And if you look at other machine-building companies, they are significantly struggling and decreasing staff and declining the second or third year in a row. So I would say, when you look at our business and how our pipeline looks like, we see a very interesting and bright future also '26 and beyond.

I then pick it up with the free cash flow question. So yes, the free cash flow in Q3 as shown was negatively impacted mainly from the net working capital outflow and also higher taxes that we paid. And also the CapEx number was, compared to the last year in that quarter, higher. And as you also know, the quarter 4 free cash flow is always the strongest quarter in terms of cash generation. And we also expect that to continue in the year 2025. So Q4 should be also a strong one, and that's our expectation.

Now we're going to take our next question. And the next question comes from line of Sebastian Kuenne from RBC.

First of all, the EUR 15 million to EUR 25 million restructuring or reorganization charges, this is still coming in Q4. It's just a yes or no answer really. That's my first question.

Yes, it's not a yes or no answer because it's -- yes, a part of them will come in Q4, but also some parts might go into next year. But you're right, they will come, yes.

Okay. Then the Baladna order. I know it's the -- delivery spread out over a couple of years. But with these large orders, to what extent does it impact the gross margin? Because I recall, as soon as you go into project business, the profitability might drop quite a bit. Can you maybe tell us a little bit about the earnings profile of these type of orders?

Yes. I mean there is not a significant difference. We would not do any business, let's say, which does not meet our profitability targets.

Okay. A final question for the cash flow again. You paid higher tax -- cash taxes. Just for me to understand, is this related to the tax you expect this year? Or is this already the German tax authorities asking for prepayments for your expected tax budget for next year? So that's -- are we already seeing kind of more optimism on next year's earnings, basically?

The cash flow, of course, is based on the actual payment. And also, it's not only related to the German taxes we pay. Of course, we have to pay, fortunately, taxes in some other countries worldwide. So that's -- so the free cash flow that we are showing is based on the payments on actuals.

But actual meaning, what exactly already reported earnings or expected earnings for 2025?

Reported, so actual payments.

Okay. On historic earnings.

Yes.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Lars Vom-Cleff from Deutsche Bank.

Two questions remaining, and I would ask them one by one, if I may. The first one, most likely for Mr. Kocherscheidt. Looking at the current and prevailing FX headwinds and then taking into account that your 9-month revenue so far is only up 0.6% on a reported basis, do you currently see a risk that you might have to report negative revenue growth for '25 as a whole?

No. No, we don't see that risk.

Okay. Perfect. And then maybe one for Mr. Klebert. I mean, we appreciate that you're currently reducing the complexity of the organization as well as the number of divisions at least on the Executive Board level. But can we expect this to also cascade down in your organization rather sooner than later now and lead to a market reduction of the overall complexity with your more than 200 subsidiaries? Or is that step rather still closely linked to your proceeding with the running SAP implementation so that we should not expect major changes here before, I don't know, 2027 or so?

I would say that both things have not necessarily something to do with each other. I mean the changes we intend to do now is a change on the top and how we steer the countries. And the question of how many legal entities, this is a program we started and we are running so-called ELSA, where we are also very well on track. But this is not linked to each other.

At the end, the change which we do is now that we found out that the value of the regional coordination was in our understanding, creating a lot of alignment efforts. And like always, maybe we overestimated the synergies coming out of this kind of organization while the costs have been always there. So this is what we take out and we believe that the divisions can really directly steer the business worldwide. We also have in place some coordination on country level but this is something where we will continue to achieve some more savings in the future as well.

That's also -- I mean, if we look to '27 -- for this year, I mean, in '26, we expect EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million savings immediately simply because of the changes in the top management, but until '27, we also can expect additional EUR 10 million more savings on top of that, let's say, and this is an interesting saving potential. At the same time, we believe that it will help us to become more agile, more dynamic. And yes, and the ELSA program where we are going to reduce the number of legal entity is not necessarily linked to that.

Now we're going to take our last question for today. And it comes from the line of Uma Samlin from Bank of America.

So first, a follow-up on the cost savings front. I see that you're planning to have like EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million of savings on the new organizational change. And we also are supposed to see a bit of a step up in 2027. Can you perhaps give us bit of more color on what is the reason to step up on the cost savings there? And also, would you be able to clarify, it sounds like, from your answer to the previous question, that this is not part of the EUR 100 million COGS plan you have for Mission 30. Would you be able to confirm whether this is included in that or not?

Thank you, Uma. Thank you. Well, I mean, the first, let's say, bucket of savings, which we can see already next year, is very clearly coming out from taking out top management people, actually 4 regional CEOs, 4 regional CFOs, and people working closely together with them. So assistance, there's a kind of very close people working with those top management level, like you always know.

On the other hand, also, we -- I addressed it in my speech, we're dissolving the COO organization. We will also include the vast majority, but not all people from COO will find a new home. So we will also have savings here. And I fully believe in the power of a P&L. So now we reduced the number of organizations, which do not really own a full P&L, and give the responsibility to others. So the COO organization, for instance, we had no P&L in the COO organization. And we now integrated to a vast extent to the divisions. And therefore, we will see here also savings coming up during the next years, simply because of synergies, simply because of that we don't substitute everybody who is leaving, things like that.

Yes, that's super helpful. Just another question following up on your comments earlier on the sales, potential sales growth into next year. It seems like you're alluding to that we will see a bit of a step-up in terms of sales growth next year. Is that what you meant? And if so, what is the driver for that, please?

You mean the driver for the sales growth next year?

Yes, you're right. Potentially to be more in line with 5% to 6%, in line with your CMD Mission 30 rather than the 4% -- or 3%, 4% we're probably going to see this year.

I mean our Mission 30 guidance is that we want to grow with a CAGR of minimum 5%. And my message is that next year, we will definitely have a year where we will see minimum that. How much it will be, this is something we will give out as a guidance once we have closed the year and we have even more transparency. But if you just look at the sales we did this year at the phasing of the large projects, and if I look at the pipeline, I'm extremely confident that we will see next year, a full-fledged Mission 30 year, let's say that.

And despite all the issues which are around, and I think that's maybe also important to mention again, you know that we are -- I mean sometimes we are like a bulldozer. Since then some years, yes, we are walking the talk. We are delivering despite corona crisis, despite supply chain crisis, despite the war in the Ukraine, despite the conflicts within Middle East, despite tax or tariff things, nothing stops us.

That's super helpful, Stefan. Just if I may squeeze in the last one. Now I see that you have taken a lot of roles, well, perhaps a bit new role, the role to lead Farm Tech, India, China in procurement. Would you be able to give us a bit more color on the rationale there? I mean it seems like GEA has made a lot of progress in procurement, for example, especially in the past few years. What are you thinking that you would do differently than your previous COO on these fronts? And what are the opportunities that you would like to pursue in China and India?

Yes. Yes. In procurement, I will do nothing different. And it's simply that this person will report to me to make sure also in the organization that we will keep a strong centralized purchasing organization. But purchasing alone is not, let's say -- let's say it's not justifying to have a seventh Board member, let's say, like that. That was the reason why we said we need to take it on a different organizational set up. And by making sure that it is the right structure, this person will report to me.

India and China, it's different. In the existing or current organization until the end of the year, India and China are both reporting to a regional CEO. And if we look back, let's say, the last 5 or 10 years, and we ask ourselves, could we have been a bit more dynamic in China and India? The question might be, yes, or the answer might be yes. And this is simply also, let's say, in, I would say, quite typical for European machine building companies, everything which has to do with localization is still too much depending on Europe, on Germany, and it's not going in a speed which might be more helpful.

So the idea is -- and that's also the message I gave into the organization. We want to leave China and India from the hook. We want to make them much more speedy, much more independent. We give them more resources to build up their own R&D teams. They, of course, will be coordinated and also influenced by the divisions and business units but we want to make them more independent. They will have the right to do more decisions in the future simply to speed up the growth and the development because both are very important markets. And that is also the reason why we are now anchoring them on the CEO level and why they are reporting to me.

Now we'll go and take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Louis Billon from AlphaValue.

So my question is about Food & Healthcare Technologies. So you -- the key driver in either pharma in your presentation, but in the report, you also mentioned new food. So I want to maybe have an idea of to what extent new food is driving your order intake in that region? And also, could you give us more color on what is the current environment for new food? And what kind of order intake do you expect for the full year?

Yes. I mean the vast majority of new food business is reported in the today's LPT division in the future, Nutrition Plant Engineering. Of course, we also see some of the components from SFT and sometimes also FHT going into that business.

I mean, if you -- if you would have asked me 4 years ago, then I would have said the development in new food will be faster. It's picking up a little bit slower. However, you also know that we built the large -- the first world's largest factory for cell-based meat in the U.S. by Believer Meats, Believer Meats has now all the approvals they need. They will start beginning of next year with the production. This is an important milestone for the whole industry. We are also in touch with -- and very strong associated with other very promising companies like Solar Foods and I could mention much, much more. So we see that new food is picking up. It takes a little longer than originally expected, but we strongly believe that this is a big growth driver of the future and we are definitely extremely well positioned in that industry.

Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Stefan Klebert, for any closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everybody, for listening and for your great questions.

Let me sum it up. I think it is important to mention that we have delivered, again, a very strong set of Q3 results, with an acceleration in order intake and sales growth as well as a further improvement in profitability. We remain very positive for Q4, especially with regard to further strong order intake, baseline and also large orders. And for '26, we expect an acceleration of organic sales growth and a further margin improvement, though we fully confirm all our directions.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Pre-Close call Q3 2025. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you very much, Heidi, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Oliver. I'm the Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined by my deputy Rebecca and my colleague, Eduard. We welcome you to our Q3 2025 Pre-Close call. It's actually the first Pre-Close call as a DAX 40 member. So since the 22nd of September, we are now playing in the Premier League. As today's call will contain forward-looking statements, it will be conducted according to our disclaimer. I will not read the disclaimer, but please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement, which is part of our presentation you can find on the Internet.

We will now address topics, which we also discussed during recent conferences and road shows. And afterwards, you will have time to ask questions. Let me start with our guidance. We confirm our group guidance for full year 2025, which we raised in August. Organic sales growth is expected to be between 2% and 4%. EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses is expected to be at the corridor of 16.2% to 16.4%. And ROCE, return on capital employed, here, we guide 34% to 38%. Second topic, customer industries. In Foods, we see continued activity, especially on the project side. Beverage, here demand is at prior year's level. Dairy Processing continues to look promising and has been the growth contributor in every single quarter since Q2 2024.

Dairy Farming. Here, the market sentiment is very positive in most regions. For Pharma, the pipeline looks good. And finally, New-food. Here, we expect the demand likely to remain soft in 2025. That gets me to the second or third topic, order intake. We expect that 2025 will be another good year for GEA. The pipeline continues to look promising, and we are seeing that customers continue to negotiate orders. We also continue to see good base order business. Concerning large orders, we are in very interesting discussions and are optimistic that we will see some of the large orders kicking in, in the second half of 2025, but we can't pinpoint to the specific quarter when they will be signed.

In Q3, we have seen large orders. So orders above EUR 15 million with a total volume in the mid-double-digit million euros area. As you can guess by hearing this volume of large order, Baladna cannot be included. As communicated, the announced order signed with Baladna will be booked in the second half and as it is not yet included in Q3, it will be booked in Q4. The translation effect is expected to be negative as we have also seen in the second quarter. On sales, topic #4. Organic sales growth has been 1.2% in H1. The increased guidance stands at 2% to 4% organic sales growth for the full year as we do expect an acceleration in growth in the second half. Q3 should already show a step into the right direction. Translation effects also here are expected to be negative.

Topic #5, EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses. The H1 EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses was 16.1%. On the rolling last 4 quarter basis as of the second quarter 2025, we have also achieved an EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses of 16.1%. However, for the full year, the guide is 16.2% to 16.4%, which we are very confident to achieve. That's it from my side, and I will now pass over to Rebecca.

Thanks, Oliver. Good afternoon, everybody. So regarding topic #6, cash flow. What to keep in mind for the third quarter. Regarding CapEx, please keep in mind that we increased our CapEx expectations for the full year with our H1 results. We expect CapEx of around EUR 255 million for the full year 2025. In the first half, we had EUR 92 million. Net working capital to sales ratio for 2025, the target corridor is 7% to 9%, and the ratio will most likely be within this corridor towards the third quarter. Topic #7, additional financial information, just as a reminder, depreciation, amortization, we are guiding for the full year 2025, EUR 210 million. In the first half, we had EUR 100 million. Regarding the financial results, we are guiding minus EUR 30 million for the full year, and we had in the first half, minus EUR 19 million. And the tax rate for the full year, we are guiding 29%. And in the first half, we had 28.8%. This closes the topic we wanted to address in today's Pre-Close call, and we are now happy to take any questions you may have. I will pass on to you, Heidi, for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] We will take our first question. The first question comes from the line of Sven Weier from UBS.

Just first one is on the order intake commentary you made, Oliver, regarding a mid-double-digit level of orders above EUR 15 billion (sic) [ EUR 15 million ]. So this sounds fairly similar to what you had in Q3 last year. I was just wondering how we should think about the typical seasonality you typically have from the base orders, at least in Q3. Is that something to keep in mind when we compare our thoughts against Q2 where you had no big ticket above EUR 15 million? That's the first one.

Yes. Thank you very much, Sven. Yes, as we have mentioned already, we have just also mentioned it again. In the second quarter of this year, we had an overall order intake of EUR 1.3 billion without any large order. And what we have heard so far, it is too early. We do not have the final numbers. But so far, there are no indications that there's any negative development in our base order business. A big part of this is service business, as you know, which is the recurrent business, it's a very stable business. So yes, we continue to see a very good development of our base order business. And on top of this, you also might remember, there was no large order intake in Q2, and now we have seen some large orders as I mentioned earlier, in the mid-double-digit area. And as I also said, Baladna will be booked now in the fourth quarter, yes. So we are quite optimistic here and very positive.

Yes, because normally, you have a bit of a step down in base orders between Q2 and Q3 in the prior years. That's why I'm asking, right? But instead, you have the big ticket that you didn't have in Q2. So that sounds to me like a rush potentially. Second question I had was just if you had any updated thoughts on -- obviously, we saw a bit of an update on Section 232 in terms of tariffs, are you still kind of repeating what you said earlier that tariffs should be more or less kind of a neutral factor? Or do you have any update on this side?

Yes. So let's say the good news is that there is no update. We also looked into this in particular, the team here at GEA. And as we have mentioned earlier, during road shows, conferences and so on, if at all, at the very end, there shouldn't be an impact bigger than very-low-single-digit million euro number or EBITDA because the last majority already was or in the meantime is based on that we can pass on these kind of tariffs to our customers and also on the back of this so far, there are also no indications of any very negative or sluggish order intake development in the United States. So that is the good news here.

And would you say that what you said on beverages because that's the segment that stands out in terms of being more flattish. Would you say that's the segment where you see most impact of tariff uncertainty because that's what Krones has mentioned a few times.

This is Rebecca speaking. I think actually, I remember the statement on beverage actually was coming already earlier from our sales people. But not necessarily see that really in relation to tariffs. Maybe tariffs have not helped the situation. But to my knowledge, actually we got the sales people also actually [indiscernible] tariffs.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi.

I just want to come back to -- I'm sorry, if I get disconnected in the middle of this, my phone is a bit strange. I hope this works. So my first question is coming back on the tariffs. So just to clarify, the 18th of August extension of steel and aluminum imports, the pure steel content, not value-add of 407 products of 50% of the pure steel content, you are still comfortable that you are not going to get impacted by that and you can pass that on. I just want to be extra clear in terms of what I think Sven asked about before.

Yes, no. That is what I also mentioned earlier. We know there's a lot going on, and we have a team here doing more or less nothing else and following closely what is happening in the U.S., and we also looked into this specific question. And here, the outcome also was that, that is something we can pass on. And as I've mentioned earlier, so far, also we haven't seen any negative impact here also on order intake in the United States, yes.

Okay. Got it. My second one, Oliver, is you said that the sales growth into the third quarter is taking a step in the right direction. I'm just trying to understand if it could be a little bit more specific. Are we are sort of going towards the 4% level? Or is the year going to be very back-end loaded in terms of deliveries out of the backlog from new machine sales?

Yes. So far, we said that it is, let's say, back-end loaded in the sense of that it will be driven by the second half of this year, but let's say not only by Q4, you might remember that we had very good especially large order intake towards the end of last year, a lot booked in our LPG Liquid and Powder Technology division. Here, we start normally with the engineering phase, and it just takes some time before we can start with our, let's say, sales recognition. But as I've mentioned earlier, we do expect here a certain kind of pick up already in the third quarter, and this will then continue towards the year-end to Q4.

Got it. And in the second quarter, you had, particularly in SFT, a very strong margin, and you were talking about that new machine sales was also driving that utilization on the new machine side and that we shouldn't be too concerned about mix of new machine sales growing faster than the service business. How do you look at this? I mean you said you're very confident on the margin guide, of course. But is -- when you look at the third quarter, is mix, not an issue as well? Should we see the utilization on the new machine side more than offsetting any mix implication if you see where I'm going with the question?

Yes. Yes. It may be too early to be here too specific. But what we have, let's say, also mentioned when we had this question on road shows, on conferences, there are 2 topics that need to be considered. But we have seen also last year, double-digit organic sales growth in our service business. There are no reasons why we also expect this business to continue to grow, most likely not at these very strong rates going forward. So there's always a certain kind of mix impact, especially if you think about LPG versus other divisions. But nevertheless, also point to what you have just mentioned, there will be a better utilization in our factories, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the margin will be negatively that impacted. As I've mentioned earlier, we feel, let's say, very comfortable with 16.2% to 16.4%.

[Operator Instructions] There seems to be no further questions, I would like to hand back to the speakers.

Yes. Thank you very much, again, for participating in today's Pre-Close call. And with the end of this call, as you know, we start our quiet period and are already very much looking forward to talking to you again on the sixth of November, the day of the release of our Q3 numbers. All the best from the entire IR team, stay healthy, and have a good time. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.