KSB Stock

Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to the KSB earnings call on the half year results of 2026. My name is Sonja Ayasse, and I'm Head of Corporate Communications.

Our main speakers today are our CEO, Dr. Stephan Timmermann; and our CFO, Dr. Matthias Schmitz. After our joint welcome, Matthias will do a deep dive into the numbers of Q1 and Q2, followed by Stephan, who will summarize and also give an outlook on the remainder of the fiscal year 2026.

As usual, we will have a Q&A session at the end of this call. So please send in your questions using the little chat window anytime during the next hour, and we will get back to you. This call will end after approximately 1 hour. And as usual, we will publish a recording of the KSB earnings call on the KSB website, under Investor Relations.

But now I know that Stephan is very much looking forward to welcoming you personally. So Stephan, I pass on to you.

Thank you so much, Sonja. It is indeed a huge pleasure to welcome you and to give you a short overview regarding the agenda that we have. A few words from my side. And then for sure, the key part of today's presentations will be the financial update of the first half of the fiscal year 2026 by Matthias. I will then try to summarize it once more, give you an outlook and put a few words in terms of where do we see the fiscal year of 2026 in terms of long-term perspective. And then as you said, Sonja, questions and answers for all those who have questions at hand.

I welcome you, of course, in the name of the entire Board. Matthias and me, we have been given the job to present the figures. But of course, we do this in pleasure for the colleagues which are not here today, Stephan Bross and Ralf Kannefass. Having said this, a little bit of housekeeping.

As always, we will concentrate on the figures of the first half year. These figures do not blush. At the same time, especially regarding my part, then at the end of the presentations, we will give certain guidance, best estimations regarding the future development of the company. And these, as you know, these are no juristical guarantees. This is the best true and fair view that we, as a Board, have at the time.

And having said this, it's now a huge pleasure to hand over to you, Matthias, to give us a deep dive into the first half year of the year 2026. Matthias, please.

Thanks, Thank you, Stephan. It's a pleasure this time to give this update. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you, Stephan. I also want to take the opportunity to welcome you in this call. My pleasure today is and my duty, of course, to guide you through the figures of the first half year 2026.

Let's first talk about order intake and sales. We have increased the order intake by 8.8%. We have increased our sales revenue by 0.4%. So what is the message behind increasing order intake in these difficult times, in this very difficult political and economical environment. We are a company that is growing despite all these circumstances and in order intake and sales and of course, on profitability, we are on our path in order to fulfill what we have promised in our Mission TEN30.

We are showing a reported EBIT by EUR 98 million. EUR 98 million means this includes already effects from the first-time consolidation of Saudi Arabia, EUR 16.6 million. We talked about it in Q1, and we have spent EUR 12.3 million for the implementation of SAP HANA.

Talking about SAP HANA, let me make one special remark. First of all, in this year 2026, we will spend approximately EUR 26 million for the implementation of HANA, which means we are then more or less on the same level as previous year. Second message I want to give to you, SAP HANA project is running well, is on track, and we will go live in the first quarter of 2027, as it is planned.

We also can talk about an equity increase by EUR 45 million. And here, you have to take into account the EUR 61 million after tax we had -- we paid dividends of EUR 53 million. And later, I will elaborate a little bit about the OCI effect of EUR 37 million. You know OCI is other comprehensive income. These are effects that are only going through the equity, but will not be shown in the P&L.

Yes, we are a growing company. So for that reason, we have -- we had to increase compared with the end of the year, our working capital by EUR 85 million. Here also, you have to take into account the first-time consolidation of Saudi Arabia. This has an effect of approximately EUR 23 million. This is the half year highlight of KSB.

Now let's go and make a little bit of deep dive. First, let's compare the figures with 2024 to 2026. Again, you see order intake and sales revenue is growing. Yes, our EBIT is behind previous year. I will come to this later because what we see, what we are realizing is a strong quarter two. So the company is back on track.

In order intake, of course, we have increased the order intake by 8.8%. And here, you have to take something into account, which is valid for '26 as well as for '25. Also, we are only in the middle of the year, the currency effects -- FX effects compared with the previous year amount to a level of EUR 44 million. What does that mean? We are showing an order intake increase by EUR 150 million. Calculating these order intake effects for FX means that we have grown -- we should take them like-for-like to a level of EUR 190 million. If you compare Q1 with Q2 in the order intake, you see that, of course, Q2 is lower than Q1. Again, this is due to the big order intake we got by a great job, a big job in our Energy division.

Let's take a look at sales. We have increased our sales by 0.4%. And also here, you have to take into account currency exchange effects with a level of EUR 37 million. That means eliminating this FX effect compared with the previous year, we have grown by far more than EUR 40 million. We have grown by far more. This is a company that is growing. You can read our lips. We fulfill the growth path that we have in mind.

Let's compare Q1 2026 with Q2 2026. And one thing is really obvious here, we have increased our sales by nearly EUR 50 million. We have increased our sales by nearly EUR 50 million Q1 to Q2. Where did we increase our sales? We increased it in pumps, and we, of course, have increased our sales by EUR 27 million in SupremeServ. In all the meetings we had, I explained you that we are suffering in SupremeServ a little bit by the economy. But here you see SupremeServ is on its way back to track.

The EBIT, of course, is being influenced by the sales. And you see now that we have an EBIT of EUR 98 million, that means we are a little bit lower in pumps. We are a little bit better in valves, and we are a little bit worse in SupremeServ compared '26 with '25. And the reasons are obvious. The reasons are obvious. First of all, we had a not so good Q1, if you might remember. Secondly, we see that we have an increasing margin pressure. We see an increase in competition by Chinese competitors also in other areas. So the price pressure is increasing. And of course, with all the sales we did, we had to cover higher energy costs as well as logistic costs. On top, I mentioned it before, in the first quarter, our plants were not as much utilized regarding our capacity than we had in mind.

Let's make a deep dive and compare both quarters. I'd like to start with the Q1 2026. And you might remember that Stephan Timmermann and I -- he's close to me here right now, that we -- when we had our press conference, that we said it might be that the first quarter 2026 does not fulfill our expectations. Indeed, it did not. And indeed, this was reflected also in the stock market. And now take a look back to what we have achieved so far in Q2. We have EUR 64 million profitability, and we have a higher profitability in pumps. It increased by EUR 19 million.

And take a look at SupremeServ. SupremeServ is the profit contributor in the second half of the year with EUR 46.3 million profitability. What does this mean? Yes, we had a weak quarter. Q2, we see we are back on track. And I can promise you that the second half of the year, we will be even better, of course, than the first half of the year. And I take now the moment to make it summarize, yes, we stay in what we have promised in our prognosis.

Here is a short overview about the EBIT impact. And of course, we cannot cover all the costs. You see that the cost of materials have increased from a ratio of 39% to more than 40%. Here, the higher costs are integrated also to the logistical energy cost as well as material costs. You see we had an increase in other income. This is due to the first-time consolidation of Saudi Arabia. And of course, some other expenses are on the level of EUR 232 million. Here, the implementation costs for SAP HANA with an amount of EUR 12 million are integrated.

Again, we increased the total output of our operations. Here, you see the development in material costs. We were very low in the first half of the year 2025. We were above 40% in 2024. And of course, as we are not confident with this cost of material level, we have launched special programs in order to reduce our cost of material.

Our earnings after income tax is on a level of EUR 60 million. And what I really want to line out, we have a level of -- in our tax ratio of 31.7%. You might remember that in the last years, we had an up and down in our tax rate due to special effects. Now I can say our tax ratio at the end of the year will be anywhere on the level of 31%. This is our running rate for our tax ratio. So also here, we are in line with what we have promised and with the plans we are executing.

Finance income is a little bit lower than previous year. You see here all the major effects. It's interest expense for pensions. We have some hyperinflation effects that we have to take into account in Turkey and Argentina. And of course, the way how we calculate lease liabilities when you activate them in your balance sheet, we have to differentiate also interest expenses. This is an amount of EUR 1.5 million. And so you see it's a pretty stable consolidation we have here. Also tax will remain stable now and in the future.

Let's take a look to the balance sheet. Yes, we increased the total sum of our balance sheet to nearly EUR 3 billion. And here, we have to work out that the noncurrent assets increased due to the investments. The current assets increased due to the working capital. And despite all these economic effects, we still have a stable, slightly increased equity ratio of 48.4%. I want to take this opportunity in order to underline this is a very solid balance sheet. This is a sustainable balance sheet.

The increase in equity, how is it being influenced? On the one hand, of course, because of the earnings after taxes, we made dividend payments of EUR 53 million to all of the investors. And of course, we have 3 types of other comprehensive income translation effect for currency, pension, and the total sum for a lot of other smaller effects. At the end of the year, we also will have a better equity as we have right now. We are going on to do everything to further strengthen our balance sheet.

Working capital, there are two ways to look at it. On the one hand, you can say, your working capital has increased to a level of 29.7%. This is true. Bear in mind, once this management started, we were on a level of some 34%. We have decreased the working capital. And now we have reached a reasonable level of, let's say, 29% on average. We think it might be better at the end of the year. We are a growing company. And so our task is once we are growing, we have to utilize working capital, but it should be amongst the level of 30%. And this is what we're striving for. Therefore, we have a lot of action in place. We follow that up on a regular basis, and it works out we are below 30%.

Free cash flow. Yes, at this point of time, we see a free cash flow due to the reasons I have told you before that is lower than in the last year. And I can tell you it will improve in the second half of the year. We are aware of this situation. So what has happened -- and two things you have to take into account.

First of all, we see a lower cash flow in the operating activities due to lower EBIT. And of course, we had a first-time consolidation effect of Saudi Arabia with EUR 16.6 million. So this has an effect on your earnings after tax, but it has no effect on the cash flow. You have to bear that in mind once you want to make a kind of a link between earnings and cash.

Secondly, I think you're aware that we have increased our shares in Aromatic, in Eco. And we made -- we increased our shares in KSB Group, which is a pump and service group in East of Europe. Yes, we paid prices for them in a double-digit number. This also affected the free cash flow. The investments are still on a reasonable level, EUR 48 million. And we invested this as we are starting to build a new testing facility. We invested already EUR 4 million for that, a new testing facility for the energy department. We invested at GRW in the new CNC machine. And of course, we are modernizing our large parts production in Pegnitz.

So what does this mean for the net finance position? There's one very good way to read the chart. Take a look at 2024. You saw that at the end of 2024 until the mid of '25, the net finance position went down and it came up afterwards. The same in this year, we see that the net finance position to the end of June on a level of EUR 200 million. And the major effect here is, of course, that we paid EUR 53 million on dividend. The curve you're seeing right here is the curve we are facing year-on-year. For this reason, I can tell you the net finance position will increase until the end of the year. I think it will not be on the same level as in the end of 2025, but it will definitely increase by far more than EUR 250 million.

Market capitalization. Actually, we are talking about a market capitalization of more or less EUR 1.5 billion. I saw that our preference shares today have increased by EUR 50. So I'm absolutely convinced with the outlook we give you with a strong quarter two we have that our profitability will further increase. I can confirm we are on our way to fulfill Mission TEN30. And I think really, for this reason, I'm optimistic the share price will increase as we are steadily increasing the value of the company.

Let me summarize. We have increased the order intake by 8.8%. We have increased our sales revenue. We had a second quarter which was much stronger than the first quarter and which gives a positive out view for the second half of the year. So that means stronger sales revenue, EBIT as well as net financial position are expected in the second half of the year. So for this reason, we confirm the outlook for 2026, and the outlook is being summarized here.

I do not want to read all the figures. But again, we are on our way to fulfill what you can see here. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Matthias, for your very positive and bullish summary of the first half of the fiscal year 2026. And my job is now to wrap it up into the overall picture. And I would like to frame the boundary conditions that we are in today. Even if it might sound a little bit boring and to show how boring it is, these are the boundary conditions that we had in 2025. And as you know, 2025 was the most successful year of the company in the history of recording.

You now ask, have these boundary conditions significantly changed, especially in the light of the continued positive development of the company, I must clearly say they have changed a little. Only the ingredients of the soup have somewhat changed. And if you want the real big ones, of course, February, end of February, we had the unfortunate beginning of the Iran war, which is still ongoing, and which has huge repercussions all around the world in the smallest part of the continents where you wouldn't even expect them.

Then we have a slowdown in China, also nothing new, but the impact is becoming more and more graspable and also visible all around the world, especially by the efforts of our Chinese competitors, which I comment in full respect for what they are doing in exporting their products wherever they can. And it is not only the car industry, but also in the pump industry.

Then we have the economic downturn in Europe. Unfortunately, no true recipe in place yet to get the upswing going at short notice. And the big impact for us is, of course, the automotive industry especially in Germany and with all this automotive industry, the automotive supply industry and the tool machine industry. So this is a tough cookie if you know how big our exposure in Europe is. And last not least, the geopolitical fragmentation, which you know better than I, all of this really leads to boundary conditions, which have a multitude of impacts.

What is our remedy? And this might sound very simple, but we are responsible of leading a company of 17,000 employees again, through the sixth year of wild economy, cost awareness, extreme pressure and focus on costs, prudence in what we do, be it investments, be it working capital, be it the risk mitigation, but also a lot of confidence and a little bit of optimism because, again, if you lead a company, you have to be optimistic.

And coming to this optimism and putting it a little bit more graspable, what are our chances and our chances, they are there irrespective of the boundary conditions. The big one is at the moment, data center and data center for KSB, this is a big field of activity. It starts with the energy production where our power plant division, of course, steps in and then goes into the cooling, the primary circuit, the secondary circuit, the water supply, a real turf for KSB, and we are getting our foot into that door.

Power generation, worldwide as populations grow, power generation is necessary. As the climate gets warmer, more power generation is necessary. And of course, the big consumer again is data center.

Water, wastewater, if you were in Europe at the time, you can see we are really lacking water. And this lack of water, this has repercussions, positive repercussions on KSB, and be it that pumps, which pump water out of deeper areas below the surface are now necessitated for farming and who makes the best in the cars in Europe, it's KSB. And we see a nice demand there, a short-term demand solely based on the change of weather in Europe this summer.

And last not least, despite the fact that we are with own organizations in more than 100 countries, there is still a lot of room for expansion because KSB from the heating cellar to the nuclear power plant, we have such a big portfolio, and there are a lot of countries where our brand label is strong, but we still have opportunities.

And having said this, what is our way forward? Resilience in what we have started in our company strategy, flexibility in terms of the company setup. As soon as we see downturns, we have to react very quickly, and this is what we do. We focus on costs. We focus on liquidity. We focus on our profit structures. Of course, we utilize AI and all possibilities of digitalization. And SAP HANA for sure, as the biggest digitalization project that we're running at the time, it will have an impact on our costs.

And last not least, and this is the one that I want to deep dive with a few comments, a little bit more, take care of our structural costs because as the seas get rougher, you have to see that your ship gets lighter. Otherwise, in a dark big trout of valleys, you might hit the rocks, and this is not what we want to do. So if you continue with our strategy, everything that we have put in place from KSB SupremeServ via voice, via our customer orientation, Mission TEN30, the big cookie that we are now really focusing on is the question, how can we worldwide reduce our structural costs.

And here, we basically have two packets of measures, one short-term measures. And here for this fiscal year, Matthias forgot to mention it or gave the pleasure for me to mention it. We saw the downturn coming from the Iran war, and we took action rather quickly and asked our organization to reduce structural costs, variable structural costs up to the amount of EUR 30 million in order to safeguard our EBIT. And the nice thing about KSB, we have a management, if you whistle, they execute. And this, for sure, will help us not only grow our EBIT, but also mitigate any risk should there be a turndown in turnover, which I do not see at the time. And the next part of the structural cost will, of course, be to look into our headquarters worldwide and to see how we can make them a little bit more lighter, a little bit more flexible for the future to come because our target is clear. We want to grow our profitability.

And having said this, summary from my side, what do we do? Of course, we study the daily headlines in order to extract what trends do we see. We mobilize, we adapt our organization accordingly, but we lead with our long-term target. And our long-term target is to make this company by 2030, a EUR 4 billion-plus company with a return on sales of more than 10%. And this is what my Eagle -- our Eagle stands for.

With this, I thank you so much for your attention. And now Sonja, hand over to you. And I think now we have a nice half an hour for questions and answers.

Indeed, thanks a lot, Stephan, for your presentation and also Matthias for your insights. So it's now time for us to open the Q&A session. Therefore, we will move to our little Q&A corner. Please give us 2 minutes and we will be right back with you. You can use the 2 minutes also to send in your questions, we will be glad to answer them. See you in a minute.

So we are back, and thanks very much for sending in your questions. So let's start right away with the first question related to data centers. Stephan, I'm addressing you.

Could you provide more details on the size of orders for cooling pumps for data centers? Were these orders from different customers? And do you expect further orders in this area in the coming quarters? What do you estimate the annual revenue potential of this market opportunity to be? And who are the key competitors in this market segment? Are data center pumps more margin accretive than other applications?

Yes, Sonja, a lot of questions, exciting questions regarding data center. And I'll just come -- start from the bottom. Are they more accretive than other applications. Data center pumps, these are huge packages of pumps, and that makes them extremely interesting. We're talking about numbers where the smallest order is 100 pumps. And the vision that the customer groups give are in the thousands. And this is standardized pumps and one type, this for a factory, this is the best that we can have because we have economies of scale. We can really streamline the logistical processes from the procurement side to the own manufacturing side. And so far, this is a highly attractive business for us in terms of economies of scale.

Who are the customers? Of course, I cannot tell you explicitly the names of the customers because this is really a top secret business. But I can tell you there are 2 huge customer groups. And these are the Chinese and these are U.S.-based companies. And probably I guess these are all the big names in the business of AI, with really large-scale orders.

What makes this business extremely exceptional also for KSB is the speed. For some strange reason, maybe this is connected to the genetics of AI, speed is of essence. And we're not talking about months, we are talking about weeks. Customers expect prototype pumps in 4 weeks, and they expect the first orders to be executed in 2 months. And this is something where we really have to streamline our organization. And since I follow this in terms of somewhat guidance and godfathering, I am fascinated how our colleagues in China team up with their colleagues in Germany and make it happen or in France, or wherever these pumps come from.

And of course, I have asked the question, how big is this business going to be for us. The last estimation was, but this is accumulated that in the next 3 years, they expect about EUR 100 million in terms of order intake from data centers. But I feel this is not the holistic calculation because data centers, as I told you, it starts with the electricity generation. Outside of the data center, it continues with water generation. And as you know, a lot of these data centers are in the middle of nowhere. And it then ends in what you probably connect the data center, the cooling processes. And here, we have the primary circuits and the secondary circuit and the firefighting and the cooling of the building, the HVAC. So a lot of business.

Fast, extreme pressure in terms of delivery, but also connected to this urgency, the willingness to pay good margins and to give us the chance to execute with economies of scale.

Thank you, Stephan. So we take away, it's a matter of speed, actually. Matthias, I have a question for you.

The order backlog should provide good planning security, but the EBIT guidance range remains relatively wide. What did prevent you from narrowing the guidance range? And how confident are you in achieving the midpoint of the guidance range?

So first of all, if you take a look at your order backlog, I think it's the first time that we have an order backlog of more than EUR 2 billion. Taking this into account, you must bear in mind this order backlog is not only an order backlog for the actual year, but it has an extent of 3 and sometimes also on to 4 years, taking the big energy project, nuclear business projects into account. And of course, due to the big energy order we got, the order intake -- the order backlog increased by this more than EUR 150 million. So that means, yes, the order backlog is higher, but it's not only the order backlog for the end of the year.

Secondly, to give you a little bit guidance or an idea, if you have an order backlog, a rough calculation by some means that the order backlog we have is gives us full work for the next 6 months. That's a little bit kind of an estimation. And I think for that reason, there's no reason to narrow the guidance range. I don't think so.

Regarding the question, how confident are you in achieving the midpoint of the guiding range, I am confident.

That was clear. Thank you, Matthias. Stephan, I have a question for you regarding the Iran conflict.

So how does the Iran conflict impact your business currently in the Gulf region and in Asia?

I think basically from the two sides, one from the demand side, of course, there are no big investments at the moment directly in the near states which are impacted the most. This is Qatar. These are the Emirates. This is Oman. In Saudi, it's already a little bit different. The further you come away from the center of gravity, the bigger the investment appetite, which was very big rests. But I am sure that this investment appetite, which is there, it will resurge. It's just being somewhat strangled as long as the outcome of the war is not clear. And there, I think we all have the confidence there is a visible horizon for the end of this war.

The second impact is in the producing plants, we have a lot of orders which were supposed to be invoiced and sent into the region. Transport into the region is extremely difficult. And a lot of the customers are not willing to take the pumps and valves that they have ordered. So they remain in our plants, be it in Halle, be it in India. And of course, this postpones turnover. And out of both, if I were to summarize it, Sonja, it's just two chances the turnover will come, the one which is in the packed crates in our plants and the demand, be it for new building or be it for refurbishment of damaged plants, this will be present as soon as the investment possibilities are there again. So opportunities.

Very good. And I would like to add another question on the Iran conflict, and that's the impact on the forecast corridor. So is it more likely that you will end at the lower end of the guidance than at the upper end due to the ongoing Iran conflict. But I think here, Matthias already made a clear statement.

I confirm what I said. I'm confident we reached the midpoint.

Yes. Thank you for confirming that again. Then we have a question on the cost of materials ratio, which has increased from 39% to 40%. Has KSB been able to increase the selling prices? And did competitors also increase selling prices?

Very clear, yes. From 1st of June onwards, we increased our prices in alignment with the competition. So it's always a game who goes first and who follows how. The first ones raised their prices in May, and we then adjusted worldwide in June. Basically, based on the fact that our transport costs have gone up in many countries, the supply of raw materials. Again, India, let alone due to the gas shortage in India, foundry articles have increased by price 25%. And what we can pass on to customers, we pass on. Otherwise, we change our supply chains, which is, in many cases, not done overnight. So this is basically the mixture, passing on costs and finding alternatives. But we have raised our prices, yes.

Thank you, Stephan. Then we have a question on the EUR 30 million reduction in structural costs that you just mentioned. So Matthias, how much of this was delivered in the first half of the year and what is to come in the second half? What was or is the one-off costs associated with this? And is it being taken above the line?

Yes. So in the first half of the year, we could take out of that approximately value beyond EUR 10 million. So that means in the second half of the year, there will be an even bigger effect. This is due to the reason that in the first quarter, we had to work out this program. So far and until the end of the year, there will be no one-off costs because all the measures we are undertaking right now in order to safeguard the budget and our prognosis for the year 2026 do not contain any structural measures.

Thank you, Matthias. Then there is a question on Chinese competition that you mentioned. Is it mainly within China or increasingly outside of China, too? And which end markets is it mainly seen in?

The competition in China in itself, this is horrendous. And the reasons are rather simple. A key driver for the growth of the economy in the last years in China was infrastructure spending. And everybody happily lived on this. This infrastructure spending by the government is over for fiscal reasons of the government.

The supply of Chinese products are there for the little bit of the cake that is left in China, everybody is trying to get his part, and this is a purely cost-driven business, where, yes, due to our reputation, due to our people, due to our connections, we get a small part of the cake. But this is just a small part of the cake.

The much bigger part of the cake now for Chinese suppliers is the export business. And they have exported since decades. So this is nothing new. But now this is being driven with a high level of professionality, I must say, which you can admire and the starting corners where they are under the radar screen, be it South America, be it Africa, where they have been in the market long term.

Now it's just becoming much, much more fierce. And now, of course, they're also coming to Europe. And you see it in the car industry. I think this is in the headlines, the BYDs, which are now coming also to Germany. Do we like it? No? Can we prevent it? No. We are in competition. And today, Chinese products, many of them, they are of good quality, and we have to adapt accordingly.

Then I would like to continue with a question on the capacity utilization. Can you comment on that? And on the production process efficiency in the second quarter, what development do you expect for utilization levels in Q3 and Q4?

I can take over this question. When you talk about production and capacity utilization, you always have two parts. One, the variable part, the flexible part. And here, I must say I'm extremely proud, especially for the European plants. We have an extreme amount of flexibility together with the labor representatives and the unions to breathe according to the load. If we have a little load, we work into time accounts. We have a lot of load, we work out of time accounts. And this is what we utilized in the first half of the year.

What you can, of course, not change overnight are the structural costs, the investments that you have made into the factory, that is there. And this then hits you as soon as your turnover is lower than your breakeven, then you will have to bear these costs. And these are the things where I said in terms of SG&A costs on the office side, there we just have to come up with clever remedies, how we are more flexible to adapt.

Now as we look forward into the second half year, and this you can see if you compare all of our second half years, the second half year for whatever reason in mechanical engineering is always much stronger than the first half year. And this is what we not only expect, we already see in July, and this is what we count on.

And going back to the question of the workload that we have, there is no reason whatsoever why this should not also materialize this year.

Thank you very much, Stephan. So we have a question on KSB Pumps Arabia. What is the expected contribution, excluding the one-off EUR 16.6 million EBIT of this newly consolidated operation in 2026?

It's roughly between EUR 5 million and EUR 6 million.

Okay. And can you provide some more color on mining spare business in KSB SupremeServ and the sustainability of the improvement you saw in quarter 2.

Mining business, it sounds exotic, but it's a CapEx-driven business. And first of all, the good news, the mines all around the world, they are working at full power, be it the copper mines due to electrification and the change in electromobility and now, of course, the data centers. So they are running at full load. At the same time, of course, new mines are on the radar screen. But here, there's an extreme caution business in terms of investment because building a mine, once you have built at the point of no return is behind you. This is a huge investment and the according political environment has to stay stable.

And I think if you look at Panama and Chile and quite a few other countries in the past, it has become rather wobbly. So mine operators are very risk prone. And this you then also see in the variable part of the business. And this is the stockkeeping of spares, which is, of course, for us, a crucial part of our SupremeServ business. And I would say in the last half year of 2026, for the first time in my recording, I saw a big hesitation to buy spares.

There was a collective, basically, activity of reducing spares in order to safeguard liquidity. This went on into the first quarter of 2026, so this year. But now in the second quarter, we've seen that relaxation has come into the business. And again, since the mines are running, the time to buy spares, you can't postpone this forever. It will come. And this also makes me personally very bullish for the mining business. This is an extremely important part of our business and it will grow.

Thank you, Stephan. And we stay with mining and we stay also with KSB SupremeServ. So in the first half of the year, KSB SupremeServ was surprisingly stable considering that a major mine grounded to a halt in September last year and will only start to ramp up again in the second half of the year. So do you expect some orders as the mine ramps up to 65% towards the end of the year? Against that background, why are you no longer expecting KSB SupremeServ to grow in the second half of the year and thus on a full year basis?

First of all, I'm expecting SupremeServ to grow on a full year basis. Irrespective of this very specific question, which is -- touches the Freeport mine in Indonesia, which in terms of figures, this is for us a 15 million business in spares annually. And for those who are not so much in the detail, this mine, unfortunately, last year had a catastrophic accident. It's a mine underground, which basically collapsed. And unfortunately, to my knowledge, which is rather present, it won't open up, at least not the part which touches our pumps until 2028.

They wanted to open up this year, end of this year, and we were really happy about this, but this has now been shifted because there has been another mining accident and now the state of Indonesia is really looking into the boundary conditions of the mine. So this will be postponed. And EUR 15 million, we have to compensate. So looking for the good stories in SupremeServ to compensate EUR 15 million overnight, this is not so easy, but we've managed to do it.

And for us in this business of SupremeServ, especially the project business is crucial. This is mining. This is the chemical industry, and this is the energy industry. And coming back to these, the only one which is not growing at the time also to the known boundary conditions is the chemical industry, solely due to the fact that we have worldwide overcapacity in the chemical market. And this basically either leads to the shutdown of chemical plants or at least a huge risk mitigation in terms of doing too much repair work. And this is what we see at the time. But again, like in mining, the chemical industry will, after consolidation of capacity come back into track, and we are one of the big players. So I'm very positive.

Thank you, Stephan. Then we have another question on the water shortage, which is actually a very important topic right now also on the media. So can you provide some more information on how water shortage in Europe translate into sales? And what level of contribution do you expect for KSB?

The latter, how big is the contribution? I won't dare to give any guidance there. I can say, of course, and this is what we really see if you were to come to the workshop in Frankenthal. As we speak, we have one business area in the water section. These are what we call the UPA Pumps, sub-ground pumps [Foreign Language] at the beginning of the year, rather low in terms of order intake and suddenly with this heat period and the drought that we have a surge of order intake.

And if you then ask what is the reason, then you're told this is basically all farming business. The groundwater level has significantly gone down, which is explainable due to the drought and the farmers have to now extract the water from deeper levels. And for this, they need stronger pumps, and these are the pumps that they order at the time. And since I fear this hot summer will not be a one-off hot summer, but probably a new area, I do expect that the climate change even in Europe will have an impact on our business. A positive impact in that respect.

Thank you very much. And I take the last question and the last sentence and address it to you, Matthias. With respect to the EUR 30 million lowering of the structural cost, is this a set volume? Or could you step this easily up? Will there be costs associated with it? I think we have that one already.

I'm smiling because easily it's nothing in our business. Let me put it like this. The EUR 30 million cost savings, we are going on to safeguard the budget for this year. They are related to '26. At the moment, for the year '26, I do see no chance to increase it to EUR 40 million or EUR 50 million, whatever and not easily to make this very sure. Nevertheless, to increase our cost competition in SG&A cost all over the world, of course, we see a chance, and this is something which we bear in mind.

Thank you, Matthias. And we have another question on the service forecast for the end of the year. So the second quarter saw a nice pickup in service orders and revenues. What is your expectation on orders for the third quarter and thereafter? How is the Chinese competition affecting the service business? And what are the countermeasures, especially with respect to service business? Stephan, would you like to take that question?

Yes, I see. I had the discussion this morning in terms of service here for our mining business. The good thing about our company is our people. And especially in the service business, of course, you can sell spares, but the more critical the applications become, the more risk prone the customer becomes and the more he wants to know the people and have a good feeling that the ones that he employs know how to do the job. And even if they make mistakes, they have a company which stands up for the mistakes, mitigate the mistakes and gets the job done.

And KSB has created this reputation over more than 150 years. We're now in year 156. And this is what makes us extremely strong to paste and copy this, yes, you can try it. It will take an enormous amount of time and even more effort because it's a people-to-people's business. And for this, it is so crucial for me as a person, you have to keep your people, you have to motivate your people. You have to have a super company culture because at the end of the day, our success is based on people and where you see it the most is at the end of the day in service.

Thank you very much. So by the looks of it, there are no further questions at the moment. Let's wait a couple of seconds.

Is it over? This time, we got all of them. Okay.

That was very clear. If not, is there anything that you want to say as a final remark or statement?

I think this is the CEO task to make a final remark. Come on, Stephan.

Matthias, I do this with pleasure, and it was good to listen to you, Matthias, how you summarize the first half of the year. After the gains, before the gain, now we have the second half of the year in front of us. But I am, as you gave the guidance, very optimistic that despite these boundary conditions, which are, again, really cool if you're leading a company with 100 subsidies all around the world, which are cool and which are challenging, I'm very optimistic that we will get the job done because I see it on a daily basis, we have 17,000 highly motivated employees running the extra mile, mitigating costs, showing flexibility in tough markets, finding new chances. And this is what makes me proud and extremely confident.

Thank you very much for these closing words, Stephan. And if there are any further questions, of course, you can always contact Dieter Pott or Matthias Schmitz. They are at your availability.

And if you want, you can also dial in into the next KSB earnings call on the 25th of March 2027. We will be glad to meet you again. Thanks a lot for dialing in today, for spending the last hour with us. Thanks a lot for your questions. We wish you a wonderful summertime, and hope to see you soon again. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to the KSB earnings call on the results of the fiscal year 2025. My name is Sonja Ayasse, and I'm heading Corporate Communications. Our main speakers today are our CEO, Dr. Stephan Timmermann; and our CFO, Dr. Matthias Schmitz. Stephan and Matthias will do a deep dive into our financial performance of the last fiscal year, and then we'll also comment a little bit on the current fiscal year.

As usual, after the presentations, we will have a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]. This call will end after 1 hour. Any question that remains open will be answered afterwards. And as usual, we will provide a recording of this call on the KSB website under Investor Relations.

But now enough said, I would like to hand over to Stephan.

Yes, Sonja, thank you so much for the warm introduction and welcome. It's my honor to open our report on the fiscal year 2025. And as I do this, I, of course, say I have the pleasure to address the opening words in the name of Matthias, Matthias Schmitz, who will join me on stage to have the deep dive into the figures, but also Stephan Bross and Ralf Kannefass. And all of us -- we again had a short interruption. We are back on stage. Excuse me out there. We were just given the signal that there is no video signal, but the video signal seems to be back on track. So let me begin again.

I heartily welcome you in the name of the entire Board, Ralf Kannefass, Stephan Bross, Matthias Schmitz and me. And of course, we represent the 17,000 employees all around the world, including the top management, really fascinating guys who have done an extremely good job, and it's my honor and Matthias' honor to present the according results for the last year.

Before I start, as every year, the small disclaimer, everything which touches 2025 figures, dusted, these do not blush. Everything which concerns the year 2026, especially in the second part, when I touch the question, how do we see KSB developing in the year 2026, this is, of course, into the future. These are the best guesses, the best prognoses that we do at the time. Please no guarantees. The world is changing, at the moment, really on a daily basis. So this is the best guidance that we can give at the time.

Having said this, let me start. We have a short and sweet agenda. I will start with an introduction into the fiscal year 2025. Then for sure, Matthias will do a deep dive into all relevant and important figures, and I will wrap it up with 2 or 3 slides to explain what the drivers of KSB are, which especially for me as a person are extremely important, because we're not talking about onetime successes, we are talking about a company trend, a company development, and this gives me the huge optimism that irrespective of economic hiccups, we will continue on our path. And I will, of course, wrap this up with an outlook into the year 2026 and with a short summary.

Having said this, let me begin with an introduction. And I've used a few headlines. These are German newspapers, but I think you will guess immediately what the headlines are. This is what 2025 was all about. I mean, today, we live in a world which changes extremely fast. And we're now in 2026. Who still remembers 2025? And in order to give you some guidance there, this was the year where the U.S. got a new President. We're in the middle of the year, of course, somewhat attached to the new presidents. We had a lot of discussions and also disturbances due to taxes, which went to a level never seen before.

Connected to this, a lot of geographical hiccups in the world economy. As if this was not enough, we had a sizable, feelable slowdown in China, which is, of course, one of the economic drivers of the world today. Connected with this, the slowdown in Europe, which already started a little bit before that, especially in Germany. Here, 2 industries, which are extremely important for us, got impacted. This is the chemical industry and of course, the automotive industry. Here, we talk about structural problems -- not problems, challenges, the change in terms of electromobility, which costs a lot, which the automotive industry has to digest somehow. This is attached to legislation which is changing day by day. All of this, at the end of the day, a big turmoil. And to put it back into a nutshell, the year 2025, irrespective of the fact that we did quite a good job as we will show, it was a rough year.

If I were to summarize these headlines into more digestible words, this is what you would see. These are the headlines that you know, geographical uncertainty, armed conflicts, a lot of growth problems in China and in Europe, hiccups all around the world, which at the end of the day also led to the disruption of logistical chains. And we, as KSB, once again, in another year, the 5th year, I would say, after Corona, were truly challenged. And we did it in a way which we now have practiced, which is really proven and dusted. We showed that our troops all around the world, accompanied by fantastic management in our regions, in our markets showed real resilience. We proved once more that irrespective of the fact that it was a very rough world. Even in a rough world, we have confidence and we have optimism. We are flexible, we are agile when it comes to changes. And last not least, we are staying grounded on the earth, a lot of pragmatism and staying grounded accompanied all of this.

And having said this, 2025, this is what today is all about. What was the result for KSB? It was, again, in a nutshell, another best year ever. And this, of course, makes me extremely happy, extremely proud. And I say, again, is this a self-fulfilling prophecy, did it come out of the market? For sure not. Was it a onetime issue? For sure not. Because if you now look into how this fiscal year 2025 fits into the trend, this is the development of the order intake in the last years since this Management Board, Stephan Bross, Ralf Kannefass, Matthias and me, had the possibility to put our energy into KSB. This is the development of the order intake. And again, the EUR 3 billion mark, it had been surpassed already in 2024. We now took it one level higher in 2025.

Matthias will comment when he touches those figures. Yes, this was an absolute increase, but this increase would have basically been of double size if we would not have had the impacts of currency fluctuations. And this, I would like to stress also at this point, all the headlines that I showed you, the tariffs, the currency devaluations, they had a sizable impact, because KSB, as you know, we, at the end of the day, add up our big bills in the euro zone and the dollar, which was the one which had the biggest impact. Yes, it has repercussions on the Brazilian real. It has repercussions on the Indian rupee, of course, on the Chinese renminbi. And all of this, when we then draw the big line, it is sizable and it is feelable in our accounts. But irrespective of this, our order intake, it grew once again.

And having said this for the order intake, I come to the turnover. And here, too, we succeeded for the first time in the history of KSB, and this is not young. This is now 155 years. We succeeded to surpass the EUR 3 billion line, and this is just a great achievement. A growth of 2.3%, double if we would not have had these sizable currency devaluations. And currency devaluations you always have. This is normal course of business, but not in the magnitude that we had in 2025. So here too, absolutely good news.

And coming from the turnover, we come to the EBIT. And here, the EBIT, again, an all-time high, EUR 252 million, a jump of around about EUR 10 million, EUR 12 million. In comparison to 2024, a good result if I see what the world was all about. And it was not only a good result, it was a great result if I now don't take the currency into impact, but take the fact into impact that we are introducing SAP HANA at the time. SAP HANA, for sure, the biggest transformation program and project that this company in its 155 years of existence has ever had, transforming our present worldwide landscape onto the new model basis, SAP HANA.

And this costs money. And we decided at KSB rather early that we would not create a bill for the future, but take the costs as they come. And let alone last year in 2025, in terms of external costs, we nearly had EUR 27 million of external costs. So payouts, which you see in our liquidity immediately at the end of the year, to consultants whom we need in terms of their professionality to give us guidance in this important project.

At the same time, near to 1,000 employees all around the world were working on the project. And these employees, these were not newly employed for SAP HANA. They have been existent already. So part of their work, which they did, of course, had to suffer due to the fact that they were now engaged in SAP HANA. This led to a loss of efficiency. And the same is, of course, applicable to the fact that latest by summer 2025, we froze all changes in our present software. We call this the software freeze. Why? Because you have to come to a certain point where you just say the existing software is not touched anymore, that you can copy it, golden copy into the new system as the test system, which will go live at the beginning of the next year.

And all of this led to inefficiencies. But irrespective of these inefficiencies and, of course, the big cost block of EUR 27 million for the external consultants, we managed to grow our profitability. And you see it here in hardcore absolute numbers, if I take the return on sales, which for us is an important figure, we reached a return on sales of 8.3%, all included, so including the HANA costs. If I would carve out the HANA costs and here just these external consultant costs of EUR 27 million, we would have been at a return on sales of 9.2%. Coming up from 8.8% last year without any HANA costs to 9.2%. So this shows you that irrespective of this really shaky difficult market of all the boundary conditions that we already had in 2025, we managed to grow our company in terms of order intake, in terms of turnover, in terms of EBIT and in terms of return on sales.

And if I am now asked as the last introductory words from my side, what do I think when I see these figures? I feel extreme pride, and I feel extreme satisfaction and even more thanks to all of those, the top the managers and all the employees all around the world for having been able to deliver such great results in shaky times.

And now, Matthias, I hand over to you that you really give us a deep dive into the figures, and I'll come back on stage to give you a few words on the possible drivers of this really successful story. And of course, the question, how do we see the continuation of the success story, how do we see the year 2026?

Thank you, Stephan. So now first I have to take a look at the camera. Am I positioned right, sir? Okay, I get an okay. So hello to everybody. This morning we had the press conference, and we already have published our results. Nevertheless, after the coverage story of Stephan Timmermann, I'd like to make a deep dive with you in order that you have a, by far, better understanding about our financial figures than you might have up to now.

Stephan highlighted it already. Order intake as well as sales has exceeded the hurdle rate of EUR 3 billion. We show an EBIT reported of 8.3% return on sales. And even if you take into account the SAP HANA project, which will, at the end, in the mid of the year 2028, cost about EUR 88 million to EUR 90 million. The EBIT adjusted is on a margin of 9.2%.

Equity ratio on a level of 48%. And one thing I want to really highlight, it's the first time that we show this figure here, the return on invested capital has exceeded our WACC, which is at about 8.3%. So KSB generates value gains exceeding cost of equity as well as borrowing costs. We are creating value.

When you take a look back, and I started this chart here in the year 2021, I could have gone back even further more, but you see this development of our story is a constant one. We have succeeded year-on-year, and now we end up with an earnings after tax of EUR 166 million and earnings per ordinary share of more than EUR 80, and we have a positive operating free cash flow. I come later to these figures a little bit more in detail.

Before, I told you it's a figure we follow up year-on-year, but it's the first time that I show you today. Since 2021, the return on invested capital has exceeded the cost of capital. It means it has exceeded the cost of equity and on top, the borrowing cost. So we have created a value of approximately EUR 60 million in the last years. If you might take a look to the year 2019, where our return on invested capital was at a level of 5.7%. You have to take into account we had Corona in the year 2020. So that means we really have a constant increase in our return on invested capital. And I want to outline, the figure is being calculated based on the earnings after tax. So 1 or 2 tax effects, special ones, we had in the 2 last years, of course, have an impact here.

KSB is a company that creates value. How do we create this value in the year 2025? And here, you see a really good overview. We have achieved EUR 3.2 billion in order intake. And Stephan Timmermann before, he mentioned the influence of FX. On the right-hand side of this chart, you see the magic figure of EUR 84.3 million. What does this mean? It means if we calculate the order intake based on the ratio of 2024, then our order intake would be higher by EUR 84 million. In other words, taking the same FX ratio like in the year 2024, our order intake would have grown by almost EUR 170 million. And one big driver we had, the water market really has increased its order intake.

One thing I want to highlight here, and this is also relevant when I talk later about sales, the strong euro, of course, had an impact, not only in terms of U.S. dollar. Everybody is talking about U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar impact on the group order intake was on a level of EUR 13 million, Indian rupee 26 million, Brazilian real on a level of 12 million and China, 11 million. These are our big production countries where we are strong. And of course, once the euro is getting stronger, this has an immediate impact on our order intake, on our sales, as well as on our P&L. These are effects we cannot escape.

Nevertheless, if you take a look on the left-hand side of the chart, you see the orders on hand have increased on a level of EUR 1.7 billion. So this is very stable orders on hand. And I ask you to bear in mind these orders on hand does not mean they will, for sure, be sales in the year 2026, because we have also long-lasting projects like the energy project, they will become sales in the year 2029, '30, '31 and so on. Just as a calculation by thumb, you can say that 5 to 6 months sales is being guaranteed out of the orders on hand we already have. But it's just a rule by thumb.

Sales, we have mentioned it before, also here we have an order intake which is higher than EUR 3 billion. Last year, we promised, yes, we have an order intake higher than EUR 3 billion next year. We also will have an order intake -- sales which is more than EUR 3 billion, and this is what we made happen. You can read our lips. It happened the way we have promised. And here, we see the currency effect on a level of EUR 77 million.

You also might see that SupremeServ, I know everybody of you is focused on SupremeServ because there, we make the biggest profit with EUR 1,013 million. It's EUR 3 million beyond the year 2024, but please take into account 2 effects. First of all, we see that the spare parts business in mining as well as in the engineering business went down. Secondly, we have a currency effect of EUR 24 million. If you take only the EUR 24 million into account, you see that SupremeServ is doing okay and we are following our growth story.

EBIT, Stephan Timmermann mentioned before, we show a return on sales of 8.3%. And when you take a look to Pumps and Valves, you see Pumps make a high profit. Valves are anywhere on breakeven. I want to show you these figures without the HANA effect, because you have to know that the EUR 26.6 million, we split or we dedicate them to the segments we are reporting. This view you see here right now means this is the profitability without the SAP HANA project. And here, we are on a level of 9.2%. You see the Valves business is breakeven and SupremeServ makes 193%.

Watching these figures and knowing you all ask what about Valves. Valves does not make any profit. There's also one thing I ask you to bear in mind. Bear in mind means when we talk about the segment Pumps or Valves, this is only new business. This is only new business. It does not include spare parts. That means if you want to get an idea what is the profitability of the whole Valves business in this case, you have to add the profitability and the sales for Valves that are included in the case, the SupremeServ business. If you add sales or if you add the profitability for Valves new business plus Valves spare parts, the whole of the Valves business is on a level of something like 5% return on sales. Bear that in mind when you are taking a look at these figures. The Valves business, all in all, is a positive one.

Let's have a view on some selected income statement items. You see here cost of material, 39.5% of sales, staff cost 35%. I think these are reasonable numbers. And when you take a look at cost of material here on the right-hand side of the chart, you see that we came in the years before, we were on a much higher level. In 2023, we were on nearly 41%. Now we are 1.5% below the figures of '23. So you see the outcome of a constant improvement.

Development of staff costs. Yes, here, we increased by 1% in relation to sales. We have hired people. And most of them we hired in India. 50 people are coming out of new consolidated companies. And of course, we hired 100 people. The majority here we hired in the R&D area. We hired them in the energy business, yes, and also in the sales area.

Other expenses, what is other expenses for us, and you will see it in the annual report. We have administrative expenses, repairs, selling costs, other staff costs. If you eliminate or if you adjust the cost for HANA, we kept them stable. R&D, 2.2%. Here, we remain on the level we had in the previous year. We feel confident with that because these costs are, for us, absolutely okay to cover the needs for new R&D for new products. And Stephan Timmermann later on will give you an idea about new products we are having.

So besides the fact that we have a higher EBIT, we also have increased our earnings after tax with EUR 166 million, also with lower tax than in the previous years. I will come to this later on. And you see attributable to the shareholders of KSB have a profitability of EUR 141 million, and this is relevant for the calculation of dividend. I will show you later. The finance income is more or less stable compared to the previous years. When you take a look at the income tax or at the tax rate, you have to bear one thing into account. First of all, the tax rate in 2023 was very, very low due to written down deferred tax assets. '24, we had some special effects. And now we pay tax on an amount of EUR 74 million, which is 31%. And this is the tax rate where we are now, I would say, in the ordinary course of business. This is also the tax rate we expect for the year '26 and '27. This is now where we stay. All these ups and downs in the last years, now they are all cleaned up. 31%, this is the tax rate we expect for the year 2026.

Balance sheet, you see the total sum of balance sheet is more or less the same than previous year. One thing I ask you to focus on, this is equity. With almost EUR 1.4 billion, we have a EUR 56 million higher equity than in the previous years. So what's the message here? KSB has a reasonably good balance sheet, and we have a sustainable balance sheet. Whatever might come based on the crisis and all the things we might expect right now, KSB is secure. KSB has a solid balance sheet, and this is for us a precondition to go into the future.

Let's take a look at the fixed assets. You see an increase from EUR 804 million to EUR 852 million in the fixed assets. This is mainly due to the increase in investments. You see it on the left-hand side. We have invested in the last year EUR 182 million. On the one hand, you might say, well, this affects the cash flow. This is true. On the other hand, if you take a look on the right-hand side of the chart to understand the material acquisitions of investment, I give you an idea, just take a look at the first line, warehouse expansion Richmond. This is what we're doing to invest in the United States. We invested in the last year EUR 10 million, because we are on our way to establish our strategy in the United States, and we are on our way. Could the circumstances, could the economic field be better? Yes, of course. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the way we are going there, that we already started is the right way for KSB to invest. U.S.A. is a relevant market for KSB. There's absolutely no doubt.

Working capital, I want to highlight that despite the fact we are growing, despite we have very difficult economical circumstances around us, we talk now about EUR 860 million in working capital. It's a little bit higher than previous year. And we are talking now about a cash cycle of 126 days. We are talking about 28.8% of sales. And here, you have to take into account when we are talking about sales, we are talking about the average of the last 12 months. It's not a year-end calculation. And when you see, we decreased our cost of material in terms of sales. We are decreasing the level of working capital we have. These are 2 signs where you should really get an idea that we are working hard in order to improve our operational excellence. We started -- if you go back to the year 2018, then we had some 34% of sales. The cash cycle was at 135 days. So we constantly improved step-by-step our operational key ratios.

Equity, I said it before, now we have a level of 48.3%, which is one really relevant sign for the sustainability of our balance sheet. You see here how did the equity develop. We paid dividend for EUR 53 million. Of course, this does not go through the P&L. Of course not. It goes directly into the equity. You also see on the other side, on the right-hand side, positively the net profit contributed with EUR 166 million. These are the effects we really have under control. What we do not have under control are the EUR 85 million other comprehensive income. This is, of course, linked to the interest and to currency. This is what we cannot control. But despite the fact, here, we have a negative impact of EUR 85 million, we anyhow increased our equity. I think 48% is an excellent figure. Nothing more to say about noncurrent liabilities as well as current liabilities. You see the noncurrent liabilities went down by almost EUR 30 million, EUR 35 million. Main effect are the pensions, because here we had the possibility to calculate with the new interest rate. This was the most obvious effect. The rest is business as usual.

Let's take a look at the free cash flow. And here, you see in the year 2024, we had EUR 371 million. Now our net financial position is at EUR 315 million. This is a difference of 56% (sic) [ EUR 56 million ]. And where is it coming from? It's coming from about EUR 20 million out of FX, not to be forgotten. It's coming out in a level of EUR 25 million to EUR 26 million working capital. And bear in mind, we have invested more in the year 2025 than in the year 2024. These are the 3 main effects for the change in our net financial position, and we are convinced that we have invested this money in good manners for the long future of KSB.

Share price. The share price at the end of the year was at about, well, more or less EUR 958, let's say, roughly EUR 1,000. The market capitalization was at about EUR 1.7 billion. So the market capitalization is EUR 500 million more than the equity that is attributable to the shareholders of KSB. And I think here, this is a very relevant information to you. We are a EUR 1.7 billion company. And in between the last weeks, we were on a level of EUR 2 billion. I saw that the share price went a little bit down today or even more than a little bit, but I'm absolutely sure, as we are going our path, as we are implementing MT30, the share price will further increase. That's my strong belief.

Let's come a little bit to the dividend. Take a look at the share price relevant indicators within KSB Group. At the end, the earnings after tax for the KSB shareholders is EUR 141 million. And based on that, we will ask the shareholders' meeting for a dividend of EUR 26.50 per share, which is 33%. I've spoken to maybe 80%, 90% of all of you, and I told you all the time that we will leave the dividend minimum. On the level of previous year, we will leave it in the frame of from 30% to 40%. And so we kept our promise. You maybe have expected a little bit more. You have to take one thing into account. In the year 2024, we have increased the dividend by EUR 0.50 in order to set aside also the profitability per ordinary share was lower. This was because of special tax effect, and we thought, in these times, then it makes sense to offer a dividend at the level of EUR 26.50. If you go back to the year 2023, there we had a higher profit per ordinary share than in the year 2025. Nevertheless, this year, we kept the dividend higher than in the year 2023. That's our way of thinking.

For this reason, let's make a summary. The order intake and sales, the revenue exceeded, or both exceeded the figure of EUR 3 billion. The EBIT increased to 8.3%. If you take out HANA, we are talking about 9.2%. We are on our way to exceed the 10% return on sales that we have promised in our discussions in our presentations. Also Stephan Timmermann did in the press conference this morning. Equity ratio is at 48%. Yes, the net finance position is lower in the last year because of working capital of all the investment we did. And of course, it's being affected by the FX ratio. We have a positive value added of EUR 60 million, and our market capitalization is nearly 4x as high as it has been when the 4 of us started in 2018 with a level of EUR 1.7 billion.

Now I'm at the end of my presentation. I hope that you got a little bit more deeper insight in the financial figures than you may have heard this morning when you only went through the press release. And of course, all the questions we might not answer today as we have a little bit of lack of time. Maybe after 1 hour, we are happy to explain in individual talks.

Thank you very much so far. And now I hand over to Stephan, who will explain you the drivers for success.

Yes. With pleasure, Matthias. Unfortunately, our time is limited. So I really have to summarize the drivers of success. But for me, they are extremely crucial and important. Matthias showed you the continuous development of KSB over the last 7 to 8 years, which we have been able to manage the company. I gave you the indicator in terms of order intake, turnover, EBIT and profitability. All of this has a root cause. I'm now in management for more than 30 years. I've seen it all. Today, I have the confidence, if you put the right things on track and you give the company, especially a sizable company like KSB with 17,000 employees, the possibility to develop, you can take it to the next level. And this is exactly what we at KSB are doing.

And the measures that we have put in place, KSB SupremeServ, KSB Voice, KSB Climb 21, the Red List, and our positioning of the brand in terms of KSB next level. These are the things that have been started, year-by-year one rocket more, which slowly but surely are showing impact. And if you were now to ask me, when do your rockets stop to blow, I say we have a lot of blowing ahead of us. All of these things are cultural changes of the mindset of the company, a lot of growth opportunities in our more than 100 KSB companies all around the world. We are about halfway through our possibilities, those which I see at the time.

And this gives me the extreme confidence that this track record, which we have shown in the last years, especially in the last 5 years from 2020 to '25, which were extremely challenging economic years, this will continue. And we have put this into our house of strategy. This you see, it has the title Mission TEN30. The TEN30, latest by the year 2030, we want to have reached our 10% plus return on sales. Matthias just showed it once more. We are at the time, if I exclude these one-off costs of HANA, which will be gone in 2 years, we are already at the time at 9.2%. And this really gives me the bullishness to say, yes, we're on the right track. And the best thing is we have the right troops in place. We have the right strategy. We have the right mission. We have the right mindset. We have the right subjects of focus, and this will push the company ahead.

If you now ask me to summarize it a little bit more in detail, what I would propose, these are the 9 big cornerstones of the success. And it starts with our product portfolio. This morning, in terms of the press conference, I showed concrete examples of new products that we developed in the last year 2025, the AmaRex Pro, the Multitec, our new solar controlled water pumps, which we sell out of India, the new controlled valves, which come out of MIL, what we are now taking up as valve business, huge valves, MAMMOTH valves in China, absolutely incredible. And all of this is new business, add-on business which we're putting into the market, which drives our success.

Then we have this market orientation. What is market orientation? Today that we are thinking in 8 markets, 6 markets in the Pumps, then the holistic Valve business and the SupremeServ business. And this is headed by market presidents who really understand what mining is all about, what the water, dewatering is all about, firefighting, building, the petrochemical industry. And they do it in a matrix in a superb collaboration with 9 regions, and this makes us unbeatable. And KSB SupremeServ, of course, this is the big bracket, the aftermarket business, which goes from the valves and goes into every pump. We've started this journey. We're the first company who has really put a strong brand label on all of this. Are we at the end of this journey? Of course, not. We are somewhere in the middle, and there's such a lot to come. Do we have chances when big markets like the mining markets have a hiccup? Of course not, but we compensate it as much as we can, and we grow. And this makes this part of our business, based on 155 years of population put into the market, an extremely strong pillar of our resilience.

Then our global presence, find a company in the Pump and Valve business, which has more than 100 owned entities all around the world. It was started with the first generation of the founders of this company. Today, it's the stronghold, especially as the world gets more and more disrupted. We have our factories in China, we have our factories in India, we have them in Brazil. Of course, we have them in Europe. We have them in the U.S. now with the investment that Matthias mentioned, our great GRW factory for the mining business in Augusta and now the big warehouse with the possibility to go into knockdown assemblies in Richmond, where let alone at the time, we're investing EUR 26 million to get our foot into the world's biggest economy of the world with absolute great people, superb managers in place just making it happen.

And having said this, the employees, I can only underline it again and again, our 17,000 employees running the extra mile, irrespective of how strong the winds are, we team up, we get what we can out of the market. This makes me extremely proud, and this makes me confident that the money, the investment, the EUR 181 million, which we spent last year, let alone last year, which, of course, has an impact in our cash flow. You can only spend the euro or the dollar, the renminbi once, you see that, but it has a huge impact on our future, because we're investing into new factories, into extended capacity, into digitalization, of course, into sustainability, but also into working environment for our employees, because company culture is just extremely important for us. And this touches corporate culture, which is, as I said, one of the cornerstones of KSB, and I'm extremely proud to be part of this. But corporate culture also means when the times get rough, get that cost awareness into place and push that brand. And these are the things that KSB is really good at.

And having said this, I now come to the last chapter, and this is for you, for sure, the interesting part, the outlook in summary, because the last year is last year, after the game is before the game. And again, this year, we thought it might be a little bit sweeter than the 5 years before in a positive sense. Unfortunately, with the Iran war, which took off a few weeks ago already, it has really become very challenging. And I've just put one picture onto the screen that you see what this is all about. I mean we have sites in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in Qatar. Of course, we have a big factory in Saudi Arabia. This is 150 kilometers away across the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. And all around this region, you have U.S. military bases. And this, of course, explains that if you get into a war with Iran, you cannot just keep it in Iran.

And this is happening, and the worldwide repercussions, I will not go into them. I tried to summarize it on a slide. This slide, you can actualize every day. The impacts yesterday, they were somewhat of a prediction. Today, of course, they're feelable. All of us feel the rising prices of fuel and gas and oil as we go to the gas stations. In countries like Pakistan and India, if you go to a restaurant, the restaurant will be closed because today, gas shortage is really already visible in your daily life. If the war goes on for a longer time, this impact will, of course, go all across the world. What we can already feel today is, of course, logistics. We are an exporting company. We, of course, use the train, we use the ship and we use the planes. The plane freights have become extremely expensive. And if you try to export into the region of MEA, depending what port you choose, it has become really tough, because most of these ports are either completely congested or closed.

All of this, of course, leads to inflation. This leads to an impact on the interest rates. This you know, the European Central Bank has already put the foot on to lowering interest rates. The Fed has done exactly the same. It has, of course, an impact depending on how long all of this lasts, on consumption, on payment morale and, last not least, on the investment climate that we have. And to say that KSB, despite the fact that we are an absolute great company and have a superb track record also, in year of crisis will have the possibility to escape completely. I'm a born optimist, but this optimism, I would not present in front of you.

And if I were to summarize this, what does it mean? It means, again, a year which is impacted by market weaknesses, by currency fluctuations, by trade barriers, by high competition. None of our competitors, unfortunately, also not in the last years, have died away. Now we have a very big one, in a positive way. This is China, as the market in China, their own captive market is getting weaker, the Chinese go into export, the Chinese EPC. Today, they're really in good quality. And this, of course, is something that we have to counterbalance either by participating by our Chinese factories which, of course, is a good ,choice or by being extremely competitive wherever we meet Chinese competitors in South America or in Africa.

And last not least, geopolitical alliances, whether more armed conflicts will come out of all of this, I do not know. I can tell you, we stay resilient and we stay optimistic. What I can tell you is that the first 2 months, and this is what we see at the time, January and February, in terms of what would we have wished in the best case, yes, the order intake and the turnover day were weak. Would this have made me nervous in any way today? No, because January and February, especially if Easter is very early, as it is this case, are always weak months, especially in terms of turnover. Now of course, if you have a January and February which forces you to catch up, the bet is on how are the next 10 months going to develop. And this is the only part of the risk in the bet.

But we, at KSB, we are resilient, and we are very optimistic that we will keep our course. Why? Because the recipes that we have to put in place in order to safeguard our resilience and to play our cards, as we have done in the last 5 years of crisis, they are a proven pattern. It's again, batten the hatches, it's again pushing sales, especially short-term sales, and this is, in our case, the standard business. It's, of course, the SupremeServ business. It's cost cutting as the normal part of the exercise. When you batten the hatches, you really rethink every spending. Do you have to do it? Does it make sense? Or can you defer it? This is what we are used to and doing again. Securing the margins, adapting capacity wherever is the important part, but the most important part is to keep our troops together, to really focus on corporate culture, to inform, to have the commitment of all those on board and then, of course, a little bit of luck and a lot of commitment.

Now having said this, what will this year be all about? Just doom, no, of course, not. We also have a lot of chances. And I've just written down a few of the big titles. KSB, as you know, from the heating cellar to the nuclear power plant, we're everywhere. And where we're extremely strong is in electricity production. And today, growth in energy of all kinds, be it nuclear, be it conventional, let alone driven via AI and according data center. This is, of course, one of the big drivers also for KSB. And you might have read it, one of the biggest orders ever received in the history of the company, more than EUR 150 million. We booked it a week ago. These are energy pumps going into a power plant, which we will produce here in Germany.

Then the meteorological change of the weather due to global warming, it will not be impacted by the conflict that we see at the time. And thus, all activities, all growth opportunities in water and wastewater for flooding, for desalination, for irrigation, they are still there, and we will take our part of the cake. The same, of course, applies to the valves. Matthias, you already mentioned it. For us, the valves is a growth opportunity. The good thing about it is, we know how to fix the valves. We are fixing the valves, and this will be a part of our not only growth story, but also profitability stories as we sweat out the losses which we were used to in the past in the Valve business. And last not least, in terms of business chances, there are a lot of business chances. We are present all around the world. The Iran conflict, even if the repercussions are all around the world, there are a lot of growth opportunities in countries where we are present today already, where we have just not taken our share of the pie, and now we're doing this.

Having said this, what is our guidance? The guidance corridor that we have given to you and all of our shareholders. In the best case, of course, this remains my hope, we can achieve another best year ever. This is basically the top of our corridor. In the worst case, we will end a little bit below the results of the last year. Where do my hopes lie? That we maneuver very solidly through this corridor that we have given.

And having said this, I start to summarize. And once again, today, it's about 2025. And again, 2025, it was a tough year. Luckily, we forget all of this, but we continued our superb success story in 2025 despite all of these boundary conditions. And we will do the same job in 2026. Unfortunately, again, no winds out of the market which propel us to success. So we have to put a lot of energy into it by ourselves. But I think we are very good at this, because in a nutshell, what is KSB all about? What makes KSB so good? KSB, we have a plan. We have our strategy. We don't change that strategy. We follow up this strategy. We're executing this plan. And slowly, but surely, we are reaping the success, which, in my world, will take us where we belong, to fly with the eagles.

And with this, I say thank you so much for your attention. I hand over to Sonja as we have a little bit of time for the questions and answers.

Yes, we do. Thank you very much, Stephan and also Matthias, for your insights. So now it's time to open the Q&A session. For that purpose, we move to our little Q&A corner in the back. This will take approximately 1 minute. So please bear with us. We already have a lot of questions, so I hope we can answer as many of them as possible in the remaining 5 to 6 minutes. So see you in a minute.

So we are back in our session. And let's start with the first question. It's actually on the profitability of Valves, Matthias. Can you please explain what caused that? What practical measures have been taken to improve the profitability? And what is the realistic time line to bring the operating margin to a decent level, say, above 5% of sales?

Okay. So the 5% of sales, we already have achieved. That's the good news, because one thing I really want you to bear in mind, and I mentioned it during my presentation. When we talk about Valves, where we see more or less the breakeven, this is only new business. Taking into account also the spare part business, the whole of the Valves business all over the world makes a return on sales of some anywhere at 5%. So again, I really want to place this message here. The whole of the Valve business, new parts as well as spare part business has a positive return on sales of 5%.

Secondly, what are we doing right now? First of all, we have started several measures in order to increase profitability, especially in our plant in La Roche Chalais. Secondly, we are shifting products to China. And third, we got rid of the Cryogenic Valve business, which is a very special business where we made no profit. I'm absolutely sure the profitability of the new Valve business will be positive in the year 2026. We are on our way to reorganize the business and to bring it back in a good position.

Thank you, Matthias. Then let's move on with our transformation project on SAP S/4HANA. First, what are the costs for the year 2026? And then is the SAP S/4HANA project meeting its deployment and cost milestones as of year-to-date 2026? And are there opportunities to lower the total deployment costs by using AI?

Yes. So the answer is yes, yes, yes. What does this mean? First of all, we expect cost in the year 2026 for SAP HANA for the implementation on almost the same level as in the year 2025. And once we are talking about cash flow and the expectations about cash flow, you also have to keep in mind that these costs are one-to-one cash affected, because they are only external costs and no internal costs. Secondly, the SAP project will go live in the January 2027. Nevertheless, in '27 and '28, we will also have some process improvements, but we will spend, in '27, approximately EUR 12 million for this project and in the year '28, maybe EUR 6 million. And I can say regarding cost, this project is in budget.

Then Stephan, let's move to the region, Middle East and Africa. So it saw the fastest growth this year. Do you think this growth will continue? And are there any risks finishing projects in 2026?

Let me start with the risks. There are risks everywhere and anywhere. And of course, in Middle East, there are risks at the time. Finishing projects, this mainly depends on the length of the war and the possibility to freight into the region. At the moment, I already said that, that's extremely difficult. But today, we are in March and the year luckily still has 9 months. So I remain rather optimistic. I mean, it highly depends on how the war will now continue. Middle East, Saudi Arabia, if you would have asked me 6 weeks ago, this was one of our hottest growth spots in the KSB world. We have a big factory, a sizable factory in Riyadh.

Saudi, as you know, has a lot of very big investment programs, which will not be changed by the war. These are the Olympic (sic) [ Asian ] Winter Games as well as football championship. This is in Salman Park, the biggest green area in the city worldwide. These are huge projects which are, of course, executed. And if you want to do business in Saudi, due to the very stringent and consequent Saudification Project, you have to produce in Saudi Arabia. And we are the only Pump and Valve producer, to my knowledge, who has a full-fledged factory at place, and we profit from this. And will this continue? Will this be impacted by the unfortunate war at the time? Maybe yes. Will the growth be stopped? Of course, not. It will, in the best place, be deferred. And is this going to be a sizable impact for KSB? I do not think so.

Okay. Thank you very much. There's another question on our forecast. So mid-February at your preliminary figures, you still expected growth for sales and EBIT for the year 2026. How do now you expect flat sales and declining EBIT at midpoint? So what changed actually?

So first of all, I think this is also what Stephan said, growth is still possible. For example, if you take a look at your order intake, when we got this -- well, it's a EUR 200 million order, in fact, the biggest job in energy KSB ever got. But one thing, of course, is now even more obvious than it has been at the beginning of February, this is the crisis in Iran, and of course, at this point of time, we did not oversee what it means for the MEA and Middle East. And we did also not foresee what this can mean for the whole of the world. And we see kind of reluctancy regarding further investments.

And honestly, this is a situation we cannot really foresee. We cannot quantify what that means. And so for this reason, growth in terms of order intake, we see still is possible. But of course, taking all these effects, Stephan Timmermann thought into account, we have to be a little bit more cautious definitely. And we want to stick to our guidance. We want to appear reliable. And so these are the reasons why we see the world a little bit different than 6 weeks ago.

And I think this is very understandable. So you are the beneficiary of inflation. You have pricing power. Is it still the case?

We have the same pricing power as our competitors. Nevertheless, we have to take into account that the price pressure that is coming from our competitors, also especially in China, not only in Europe, but all over the world, is increasing more and more. So it's not in the last years that we can say we want to have 2%, 3%, 4% higher prices and we get it from our customers. These times are over. Yes, we will increase the prices, but on a level of maybe 1.5%, something like that. It depends region on region.

Okay. Thank you. Then we have another question regarding CapEx. So do you see CapEx in 2026 relative to the EUR 150 million in 2025? Should we expect further progress on the net working capital days in the next 2 to 3 years? So who would like to comment a little bit on the investment and the net working capital?

No, we will do it combined. We are extremely prudent in terms of the money that we spend. And every euro that you have spent is gone out of your cash, and we think this through. At the same time, we realize, first of all, if we want to grow the company, we have to invest. Today, growth is about new market opportunities, new technologies, new countries, and all of this has to be done by presence on the ground. The time where we could fly out of Germany into Chile in order to do business is over. Today, we have to be present. And from all that we see at the time, the globalization that we knew yesterday, it will not come back.

So being local and investing locally, this is absolutely imperative. To be local, but also in many cases, like in the case of Saudi, but today, also in the case of Indonesia, yesterday already in the case of Brazil, possibly also in the case of the U.S., to just be able to produce locally because local legislation asks you to do this. And this costs money, either you skip this part of the game or you take the bet. And this has been somewhat accompanying our investment decisions in the past.

Of course, it is accompanied by digitalization. Of course, it is accompanied by sustainability. Of course, it is accompanied by the fact that we need working environments, which are attractive for new talents, which we need employees, I can only underline it again. They are the backbone of our success. We're a qualification-driven company, and thus, we must invest into workplaces. Will this stop tomorrow? No. Will we do it very consciously in line with the way that we have done it yesterday, yes. And of course, we now have a very special focus on our cash flow, because cash is always limited. And we want to go secure through every rough water. And this would be my summary, Matthias.

Thank you. Then a short question on the forecast, and please also a short answer. Is the weak start to the year already reflected in the midpoint of the guidance or the forecast corridor?

So the guidance already reflects the situation in the near Middle East. This is the reason why you maybe expected the higher guidance. This is all we can say regarding this. We took the crisis into account, expecting that the crisis is not a long-term crisis.

Thank you very much. Then we have a question on KSB SupremeServ. Can KSB SupremeServ get back to a growth trajectory that exceeds the growth of the rest of the business as more aftersales business is captured? Or has KSB reached the ceiling on providing aftersales for existing business and therefore, grow in line with the rest?

Yes. I'll start with the last one. Has KSB SupremeServ reached the ceiling? Of course, not. As we said during the presentations, KSB SupremeServ, this is the backbone of all of our business. In every one of our big market areas, we harvest whatever KSB SupremeServ possibilities there are. There are certain markets, and this is the mining market where the spare part proportion of the market is extremely big. It's part of the business model. We put pumps into mines in order then to very professionally serve the customer with the coating wear and tear parts, which come in the aftermath.

If markets like mining, or in the last year also energy and petrochemicals, are weak due to the boundary conditions, then, of course, we have this impact, and this cannot be compensated overnight by the growth in SupremeServ, which takes place. Are we at the end of any road? Of course, not. I said that I personally presume we're somewhere 50% down the road. We have such a lot of opportunities. And it's not about technical service. It's not just about spares. It's about digital services today, online monitoring. It's about efficiency consultancy services. It's about a lot of new things that we provide. And we do this all around the world. And everywhere, the seeds are being planted and growth is taking place. So I'm very optimistic. This is really the backbone of KSB, and KSB is very fortunate that we have a product which has an aftermarket, and this is good.

And there is another short question. I'm not sure if this relates to SupremeServ as well. What was the EUR 28 million provision outflow?

I also do not know whether it's related to SupremeServ. In general, I can say, we had some reduction in provisions because, for example, we have better means lower cost of quality and also for our standard business as well as for our project business. I think this is what the question means. I'm not that sure.

And what could be an impact from energy and logistics costs in 2026?

Regarding energy cost, I do expect a smaller impact because, of course, the energy costs are rising, but we do not, in our cost structure, depend too much on the energy cost. I think the amount is at about 2% in our P&L. And regarding logistic cost, honestly, yes, they are increasing when we see the rates in ships. But what is more important for us that the logistics will deliver our pumps, our products to the customer in time and that we get the parts in order that we can keep on running with our production time.

Okay. Stephan, you mentioned Chinese competition earlier. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Yes, of course. And I do this with full respect for Chinese companies, which today are providing top quality, unfortunately, at an unbeatable price. This is, of course, where the sentiment then steps in. Since the captive market, China is down at the time, and there are a lot of drivers which will tell you it will not go up in at least the next months to come, maybe years.

The Chinese, who are by nature international tradesmen, go into the world and we meet them as new competition, accompanying established European, U.S. competition increasingly all around the world. And this is now where our value proposition has to step in. And it's not just about price, it's the combination of local presence, SupremeServ and absolute high-tech quality products, reliability as an OEM. We stick to our promise. This must be our value proposition. So I respect the Chinese competition. I notice how it is increasing all around the world, but it's another challenge, and we are taking up this challenge.

Okay. Thank you, Stephan. Do we want to take another question, Matthias?

Yes.

It's already 9 past, but okay. Another one on KSB SupremeServ. Did the shutdown of the Grasberg mine had any impact in 2025? If so, could you give us a sense of the magnitude of the impact on EBIT? And do you expect any catch-up effect in 2026? Where do you see spare parts inventory levels at your key mining customers at the moment?

Of course, what we are not doing here right now is to give impact on our profitability, which are due to some special effect. But in general, you can say that the shutdown of Grasberg, or also if you take, for example, the problems when the mine in Indonesia had...

Freeport had the accident.

We had this big accident. This, of course, affects our sales and profitability, also especially in the region of Asia and of course, in our spare parts business and of course, at GIW, no doubt about it. And these are effects we had to compensate. And a little bit of this you can see in the P&L in the year 2025. When I take a look at our Freeport mine -- the Freeport mine, it's not ours, it will not be open before end of this year or beginning in 2027. So this, of course, has an effect on our spare parts business, but it's already included in the budget 2026, because we have been aware of this. It has not been impacted in the budget 2025 because the accident happened in the year 2025.

Thank you. And I think you also answered another question on that line. Good. Then there is a question on La Roche, our Valve plant. On the restructuring of the La Roche plant, can you update us on where you currently stand in the process? What additional measures still need to be implemented?

Yes, I think, with pleasure. La Roche, first of all, our plant, 450 employees near Bordeaux. You might still remember, 3 years ago, they had a huge impact due to a hailstorm. This hailstorm was very local, damaged the roof, which would not have been that bad. Unfortunately, the roof contained asbestos, which in France still sometimes happens, and this led to the fact that we basically had to close the factory for a year. And these repercussions, they took 2.5 years in order to fix. And this is now totally irrespective of restructuring. This meant a new roof, complete new cladding, now really taking out every asbestos fiber out of this big plant and putting the workplaces back into track, luckily using the chance to optimize the workflow and to invest into clever things.

Having said this, La Roche consists of 2 big parts. It consists one of the standard business. These are standard valves, which go into the European market, sold by mainly KSB entities all around Europe. This part is now back on track. It is profitable. Here, the hiccups from this hailstorm, they really have to go out of the system now. And these hiccups are that we now have to regain confidence with the customers, because if you are not able to deliver for more than 1.5 years, the customer looks for alternative, which is normally. And here's our job now to bring back these valves into the market, and we're being increasingly successful there.

The second part of La Roche, and this is the really painful one, it's high-technology valves. It's cryogenic valves. These are valves which you operate at minus 170 degrees in LNG tankers, extremely specialized mechanical engineering in terms of the proprietary knowledge of the materials that you use and the way you engineer these things. Unfortunately, this LNG market is not in Europe anymore. It is today in Korea, increasingly in China, and a little bit in Japan. And to export out of La Roche into these markets, with increasing competition, again, out of China, but today, out of Korea, this is not a good idea because, one, you have the European costs; and two, you have the delivery time. And the delivery time today for everything that we do is becoming more and more essential. And this brought us to the decision now 2 years ago that we would step out of the cryogenic business in La Roche for these super-complicated valves for LNG tankers.

LNG tankers on top, it's a very cyclical business. This is another boundary condition that you have. And we said all of this, we will not be able to make money. So being KSB, we will fulfill our order book, but then step out of the market. And this is what we're doing. And as we are doing this, the profitability comes back into place. And we're talking now about the new products, not the aftersales business, which also in the cryogenic valve business is extremely profitable and which we will, of course, safeguard.

Thank you for the explanation, Stephan. Let's take one last question. It's a question that just came in, the last question, actually. Is the price pressure from Chinese competitors part of the weaker EBIT guidance? Or is the weakness only related to the situation in the Middle East?

No, for sure, not. We do not take competitors' pricing to give our guidance. This is just something that we are aware of, which I do not blush to communicate, again, in full respect in regards to very professional Chinese EPCs today. Our job is to follow and contribute to these EPCs via our factories, which we have in Shanghai, in Changzhou, in Dalian and of course, to bring our costs into competitive holistic value packages, which today also include KSB SupremeServ. And this is a big differentiation criteria of KSB. We have KSB SupremeServ, and it's not just about selling something, it's also about taking care of the product in the aftermath, and this for decades, and this is a stronghold of KSB worldwide.

Thank you, Stephan. I think now we really stretched our and your time line a lot, another quarter of an hour, but I think there were so many questions. It was really good to take this time and to answer your questions. If you have any further questions, please get back to our Investor Relations team.

So now I want to draw your attention to the 6th of August. That's actually the date of our next KSB earnings call on the half year results 2026. For the moment, we would like to say thanks a lot for your attention, for your interest and your questions. We wish you a wonderful spring time. Be safe, and goodbye.

Thank you for coming to KSB. And who are we? Who are we? And this is something you really -- I ask you to bear in mind. We are a company that is 154 years old in an old economy, mechanical engineering. And of course, we are 130 years stock listed. So that's the tradition KSB is very proud on, 154 years and stock listed for over 130 years. And if we're going to take a look at the development of our share price, yes, we are on more or less the highest level this company has ever seen. We are proud on what we achieved and we are eager. We are really eager to achieve even more in the future also for you as investors, shareholders and everybody else.

For us, it's something again where we say, wow, 130 years, not so many companies do have that. In a way, this year is our birthday. So a little bit only the highlights I'd like to give you about 2025. I know you're aware of the figures. We had an order intake of more than EUR 1.7 billion. Sales revenue more than EUR 1.5 billion. We had EBIT adjusted by HANA. We are running really in the way as we have budgeted this year, as we have foreseen this year, and we are running in the way that I have told you in a lot of meetings we have, especially on the one-on-ones. This company, even under these difficult economic circumstances is on its way to increase this year a little bit better than the previous year.

And once you're going to take a look back, the development we see is not a 1-year good result. It's a development that we are following up since 2015, where we are improving year-on-year further on. And of course, this is what we bear in mind with our Mission TEN30. And Stephan Timmermann, our CEO, of course, will give you a further insight on that. For that reason, bear in mind, if you're going to take a look in the figures 2023 to the actual year 2025, here, we compare the half year. We are on our way, and that's the message to you to be in 2025, a little bit better than in year 2024.

We are not a company looking for onetime success. We are a sustainable company, and we are looking for steady growth and steady development. This is our path to the future. We have confirmed this in the past, and that's the way we are going ahead in the years to come.

Take a look at the share price even in this year. I know the share price is a little bit under pressure like all of them, but the company we are talking about is a company with a market cap of EUR 1.7 billion. Once we have started as a team, it was 2017, '18, the market cap of KSB was at around EUR 400 million. Now it's a company of EUR 1.6 billion anywhere there. So this means the market value is 4x as high as 7 years ago. Why is it so high? It's, of course, on the one hand of the work, but that's something where I really want to say thank you to you because the market price, of course, depends how eager people are and how they are interested in our share.

And once people are buying shares, they give us trust. So we say thank you for the trust you give us because once you buy a share, you make up your mind what is the future of this company. And we feel and we recognize you trust us. And you can be absolutely sure, read our lips. We're doing the utmost to fulfill all the hopes you're putting in us, and we are strengthening all our efforts in order to further development -- to develop the company in the way we have done this before.

So for this reason, Stephan, as a CEO, I think it's your job to take over and summarize all of the stuff and give maybe some final messages. Thank you.

With pleasure, Matthias, and it's really already recapping what Matthias said from all that we can see today 2025 will be another successful year. And I put this into proportion, heading a German company, of course, closely aligned with the car manufacturing industry, the car supply industry, the German tool machinery industry and of course, the chemical industry, a big one is just across the river.

And if you see what figures they are reporting in terms of order intake, it's not an increase, it's a decline in profitability, what cash squeezes they are in, then I must say we are extremely lucky to be able to head a company, which despite globally, really, yes, challenging conditions, which I will pinpoint a little bit later in one slide are doing very well. Order intake up, turnover up, profitability up. And from everything that we can see today, the guidance corridor, which we gave to you, we will fulfill it, and we will fulfill it with pride and with pleasure. And of course, when you say this, we have a lot of clever people under the guidance of Matthias who do calculations.

At the end of the day, it's 100 companies which we consolidate 9 regions, 2 of them will report today and boundary conditions, which are wild. So what do you have to rely on? You have to rely on a superb management, which pushes the company and even better employees. And my pleasure is not only to host you, but also to host management meetings and sales meetings. And last week, I had the pleasure to be in Vienna where we had our top management meeting, our international management meeting, IMM this time in Vienna 2.5 days, 50 nations, 136 managers from all around the world to reflect on how is the company doing and what potential do we have in terms of growing despite all of the hiccups that we see and the message was absolutely amazing.

And I'm so happy that I don't have to reflect this, but that Rajeev for India will tell you his part of the story and Jens for South America and then 2 market areas, Thomas for energy and Jonathan for mining will give you an insight where this optimism and this energy comes from despite the fact that the world is not easy at the time and markets are not easy. And from Vienna, I'm a lucky man. You can see I moved on to lovely Istanbul. This was Monday and Tuesday of this week. There was a sales meeting. The picture is blurry because Robert, our super photographer was not there, who's also taking photos today. So anybody who said, I don't want my photo taken, please hands up. And then Robert will, of course, take this into account.

The sales meeting was basically concentrated on pushing our standard business, and Ralf will reflect on that. The standard business, the project business, the valve business, the spare part business, which Falk will have as a key subject is for us important because from standardized projects, we get economies of scale in big factories like here in Frankenthal in data production. And they only pinpointed again, 120 participants, 40 nations, they pinpointed how are we going to push the standard business, the OEM business.

And I was just happy to say a few words and then to listen and the energy that I took out of this was amazing so that I come back here without blushing. First of all, we're going to stick to our forecast corridor, which has been postulated, but we will also stick to developing our fascinating KSB story to the next level in 2025. And in the following slides, I've just shown you once more, you know the figures. What we -- and this is always 17,000 employees all around the world have achieved in the last 7 years, order intake, then turnover. We're today a EUR 3 billion company coming from EUR 2 billion.

So the figures might -- 30% might so somewhat sound small, but we're coming from a EUR 2 billion company now sizably in terms of order intake and this year, also in terms of sales, above EUR 3 million. We have grown our profitability and here the figures now get a little bit bigger sizably. And with this, of course, our return on sales, which is for us somewhat of an important figure. Last year, 8.2%. This year, we want to get a little higher, knowing and stressing, and I think this will be mentioned during the discussions with a very sizable impact, which we created ourselves.

This is the introduction of SAP HANA, one of the biggest transformation programs that we are undertaking at the time, which costs a lot of money. You just have to know and part of this money, those costs which go to external partners will hit -- impact our result this year, but we will digest it. And despite this big impact, we will continue to increase our profitability. And this -- I think this is just a great story. And on top of this, and here come back to what really makes me proud because in my eyes, this is the true success of the company. It's our employees and the spirit of these employees, the engagement of these employees.

We measure this engagement with a lot of questions, around about 30 questions every 2 years. Here, you see the development. And those of you who are interested in engagement, increasing the engagement by 71% in 6 years is absolutely fascinating. And these are figures. If you then see the people on the ground, how they are running the extra mile, how they're burning for KSB, how they are putting new ideas on track, how they're trying to squeeze out our competition, which is good, which is tough and good wherever they can, then you can only say you're superbly proud.

And reflecting these last years that I've now shown you, basically our years since we are together as a team from 2018 onwards up to today and I include now 2025, I think this has been a true success story. This just makes you humble and extremely proud to be part of this success story. And of course, when you show these figures, figures don't blush. And when Jonathan and Rajeev and Jens will come on stage, you will see what I'm talking about, what is the true input into the story.

Of course, when you tell this story, you are asked what are the drivers of the success? Where does this come from? And I can tell you right away, it was not the markets, but it was basically what we, together with our managers, our team, which met in Vienna put on track since basically 2018. And -- the key pillars of the success you see here once more, those who are following the company a little bit longer than just today know the story. It's our focus on the aftermarket business with KSB SupremeServ, giving our service organization, which today is a EUR 1 billion-plus organization, a shelter brand label, which slowly but surely is really developing into a differentiation criteria in the market of service.

It's our high focus on employees, employee satisfaction, giving them an environment that they are proud of. And this starts with having the right work desks and offices in place and ends in the way that we communicate, integrate party together to really make them a proud member of the KSB family, 17,000 all around the world.

Then in 2020, CLIMB 21 -- 2021, we introduced it. That's where the name CLIMB 21 came from. We started to develop the strategy in 2019. This is reshifting the company, a good old German company focused on technology and superb products to a market-orientated company, where we take market segments into the focus, know the customers of these market segments and then reroute our superb technology and Stephan is going to elaborate on that one, really on to customer groups. And Jonathan will give you an input how we live this in mining, and Thomas, you will do the same in energy. And you will get a reflection there.

There's a huge difference whether you talk in applications, have a pump and you can use it there and here and here or whether you say, I know the mining community worldwide. I know my competition in the mining community, and I develop products which are really made for the job and which differentiate ourselves from the [indiscernible] and FLSmidth and the Metso Outotec in mining. So this was CLIMB 21. Then -- and these are all processes. So don't see them as projects which have been started and stopped and now we head for the next project.

An ongoing project was what we called the Red List projects, 100 companies all have to perform if at the end of the day, and that's our mission to get the company sizably above 10% return on sales one day, then all have to perform, knowing that you always have hiccups in the development of a company. We have good times, we have bad times, but the trend of every company which belongs to KSB must be a positive one. And this is what the projects entrepreneurship Red List was all about that irrespective of how big the company is, if it does not perform, a little bit of extra love is invested into looking where the roots are, which lead to the mild performance.

And I must say today, there's not a single company worldwide, which is not earning money. And this, of course, adds to what we have shown our profitability story. And all of this has now been summarized in our Mission TEN30. What's the roots of Mission TEN30? Mission is clear. 30 is the year 2030 and TEN is our return on sales. And it says latest in the year 2030, which is now in 5 years, we want to have surpassed 10% return on sales from all that I can see, we will not only reach it. We will reach this figure before 2030.

And this is today the guidance, which all the regions, all our 9 regions and all our 8 market areas follow, and they follow up with a lot of measures which have been put in place.

And last not least, since the evolution of the company, all the things that we have put in place somewhat commemorate a new KSB and KSB has changed like a reptile somehow its coverage across these 154 years, we took the chance to say, let's rebrand label, let's put the KSB logo and our signature, which is connected to this into a new, more modern look. And this is what you see today, and let's give us a new claim, which fits more to what we are today. In the former days, it was pumps, valves and service. Today, as the video showed you, it's solutions for life, which just shows you we are today a holistic provider, not only of superb pumps, which we design to what the customer needs, we then also take care of the whole aftermarket service business, which is sizable 30, 40, 50 years depending on the application.

All of this is put into our house. This you know, our Mission TEN30 house, and I will not deep dive into this too much anymore because it starts to become repetition. Important is that the big columns that you see on the top, the quality leadership, the qualification, the digitalization, those are the big pillars how we differentiate in our competitive landscape. And I can always phrase again, we have superb competitors everywhere, be it in the building Grundfos Wilo, be it in the mining business with FLSmidth and Metso Outotec and we are -- be it in the petrochemical business, but we differentiate ourselves due to the fact that we know what is important for the customer.

And qualification, I think you will hear it several times. The 17,000 people that we have on track, it's lifelong learning. They know where the problems are, and they know how to assist the company, and this makes us extremely strong. This is all then based on the markets and 2 will present themselves this morning. And the markets, again, they collaborate with the regions and 2 regions, Rajeev and Jens will be on track. And this is where the challenge now begins and where I come back to our IMM 2024, '25, it's the matrix of our managers, the markets and the regions. If they work, we're unbeatable and they work. And this is, I think, something that you will see as the day goes by.

Now if you ask myself, me once more, okay, with the strategy, now I understood, what makes KSB so exceptional. And this is the question that I have to answer at least in Germany again and again because our figures are outstanding if I compare them to other parts of the German industry. Then here, you see once more in summary, what KSB is all about. It's our product portfolio, which is unbeatable. In good times, it's a curse because you have to see that this huge product portfolio, pumps, valves and of course, today, also the aftermarket business has to be state-of-the-art.

So Stephan, together with his troops has to do a lot of R&D business in bad times, and we are in bad times, is our differentiation because one market will always be in a hiccup and then another market will suddenly pop up and research. And one lovely example is Thomas Pabst and his energy and nuclear energy. If you would have asked me about nuclear energy in 2019, at least as a German, I would have said this is a rock bottom business we're stepping out today, and Thomas will show you this irrespective of our German mindset or identification with nuclear power is something which is booming worldwide. And we have stayed on track. We are leading in terms of technology.

We are heading the new generation of reactors, which is now coming, the small modular reactors. This will be Thomas, which will detail it a little bit more, and we're extremely strong. And thus this wide product portfolio, this is absolutely something which is a diamond and which drives our company. The market orientation I already described, we are very close to the customer and this collaboration markets together with regions. If this works, and this is a pure peoples-to-peoples business, this makes us unbeatable.

We have the lucky possibility to do good aftersales business. Also, this is not normal. If you are Elon Musk and build rockets, you don't have an aftersales business once the rocket is gone, that's it. We sell pumps, and then we can harvest for decades, whatever services, digital services and Stephan again will elaborate on this, spares, monitoring, whatever is necessary. And of course, one, keep the customer close to KSB, extremely important, create our reputation, qualified people, 24/7 all around the world and last not least, of course, earn a little bit money. In order to do this, you have to be globally present because our market is the world with more than 100 owned companies, KSB companies and of course, a huge network of partners. I think we are unbeatable.

There are little companies in the field of valves and pumps who have this worldwide network. And of course, we didn't build it. We could not have built it. This is really 154 years of development of the company of all the work that our predecessors already started with going global rather early. And today, I think we're covering the world and still every day discovering new spots where to grow. And Jens in South America, I think you will give us examples of that.

Then employee engagement, I've stressed that it's for me, I think the most important factor. Profitability can only be achieved if you have engaged employees. You cannot go to war with people who are not motivated. And that's why we put a lot of effort into all of this, and it pays back. It really makes KSB unbeatable. This means investing money, not only into lovely workshops, but also into lovely offices and showrooms and whatever. Of course, you can only do this if you have the according cash flow.

And today, we are in the lucky position that the money that we earn, part of it goes out as dividends and part of it is reinvested into new products, but also into growing our capacity, our efficiency, digitalization, SAP HANA, all of this without having any debt in banks. And also this, again, for a company, a EUR 3 billion company, I think this is worth mentioning. It is then, of course, governed by a corporate culture, which today also has changed. If I would have been standing here 10 years ago, I would have told you this is a German company with international entities. Today, I say we're an international company with a German corporate center. That's it.

And we are shifting as the possibilities are created more and more of our services into our world, realizing that we are much more cost effective than sometimes also faster because competencies like digitalization in India, I do not blush to say our Indian colleagues are just faster and better. And China, exactly the same. And if we have them on board, why not utilize them.

Cost awareness, last not least, every euro that we earn, we see that we invested wisely. We are, at the end of the day, not a Mittelstand company, but we are not a cause concern, whatever this is in the English language, the money that we earn, we appreciate it, but we're also very conscious in how we spend it. And last not least, the brand. It is unbeatable. Today, KSB, if you travel around the world, you become humble when you see how this brand is appreciated by customers and for what it stands. And this then brings me to the question, okay, with all these success factors, how can we stay on track in terms of the future success?

And this for sure will be your question. I can answer one thing. It will not come out of the markets. And I will not go into the details, and there are much more things that could have been added. Let alone, if I reflect the last 5 years in 2020, we had Corona, the world came to a standstill. Then we had the Russia-Ukraine war, the beginning of this dreadful war in 2021, February 2021, the world came to a standstill. Then we had hyperinflation, we had gas shortage. We had commodities missing no more electronic parts. We had logistical hiccups because the Suez Canal was blocked and then the Houthis blocked the Red Sea. And despite all of this, this company has been continuously developing.

None of our competition, unfortunately, has died away. They're all there. They're all aggressive. Markets have completely changed, but we have found our way to maneuver this company through all of these hiccups and have not only grown the volume, but also the profitability. Will 2025 now be a home run? I think you're much wiser than me there, of course, not with all that has been begun with the tariff discussion, it is not predictable. The only thing that I can say, we follow this up, of course, very closely. We react quickly in there, you need the engagement of your employees, and we will find our way and also make 2025 to a best year ever for KSB.

And if I were really trying to summarize what is the foundation of our success, it's basically today just keep moving the bus resilience in what we do in our company setup, growing it in our strategy, but also in our mindset. And part of the mindset is, of course, it's not only us. We are just one little cornerstone of 17,000 employees. It's also our Administrative Board, which accompanies us and our Supervisory Board. And in that respect, Harald Schwager, you're trying to hide. I have to greet you all the same, the Head of our Advisory Board, Harald Schwager is here today also just to listen in. And if there are questions, for sure, he will answer this.

But this continuity in management, this continuity -- the possibility to continue our strategy, the belief that what we have started will continue. It's all processes. The bus is driving, and we're maybe halfway through what we can achieve. This personally makes me extremely happy to be part of this family. And my mission is fly with the eagles, not scratch with the chickens, take the company really to the eagle position. And again, from all that I can see today, looking in the rear mirror and now looking in the head and talking to our great employees, we will get there.

And with this, I thank you so much for your attention, and over to you, Sonja. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome here in the Frankenthal. Tough times for you now, tough times for me, 15 minutes, 15 slides to explain our product innovation and digital technology ramp-up. And this is what I'm trying to do. And afterwards, I would like to have convinced you that we are doing the right things to shaping our future following the growth path and success path Stephan has already shown to you.

So an idea stays an idea and never becomes an innovation long as it is not successfully introduced into the market. Otherwise, it is maximum an invention, but never an innovation. So that means all what we are doing in terms of R&D, in terms of technology has to follow our business strategy. R&D is a lever and leverage, and we have to leverage, and we have to do everything what we are doing according to our business strategy. And the business strategy and to organize this more in a structured way is all of our efforts have to follow those 4 items. Either we are doing product development and enhancements to have better energy efficiency of our products.

We have to enhance our product portfolio, either we are going into new applications with the same product or even in new applications with new products, which needs a lot of knowledge of the application itself, but also of the products. We are doing every time cost efficiencies or cost down programs to be competitive at the market. But what really makes out the future sustainability of KSB in terms of the market is smart products, digitization, but not for digitization per se. It is to follow up to support our regions, our market areas for their strategy.

When we're looking into the budget that we're spending each and every year, it's about EUR 70 million. And you can see the distribution here on pumps and valves and on digital solutions. 35% of the overall budget we are spending each and every year goes into digital solutions, but not for digital per se, as I said, to support our business. And I do not want to tell you what we're doing on cost efficiency and energy efficiency. I would like to concentrate the rest of the 12.5 minutes on digitization, what we are doing there and why we are convinced that we are doing the right things there.

This is why I've structured my agenda a little bit what and how. What is digitization about and how can we make business out of it? Can we make already business out of it when we're just putting a sensor on the pump or the valves? Does the client pay for it? No, of course, not. We have to adjust our systems, our products, our philosophies, our processes according to that only one goal to support our customer in the best way. Therefore, we need an ecosystem. What I mean with the ecosystem on digital products and solutions, I will explain in a few minutes. Then of course, I'm coming to some innovations, especially when it comes to sensoring to monitoring of our pumps and valves.

And at the end of the day, everybody is using his smartphone. There you have a platform. You can only use digitized solution. You can only serve the customer if you have a platform that you're providing. And especially that, what we are working on, this I would like to explain you a little bit more in detail. What is a digital ecosystem. The digital ecosystem consists mainly of 3 parts. One is you have to have a physical solution. On the left-hand side, sensors, for example, communication, everything what is necessary to make the product smart, left-hand side. Then you have to make something out of it.

What you're doing with the data, what you're doing with the information. You have to transfer them, you have to digitize them and you have to monitor them either with AI or with human resources. And this is what we're doing in our monitoring center -- in our monitoring digital consultancy center. And at the end of the day, you have to run that system, operate that system. You have to give updates, you have to monitor it, you have to have a help desk. All that is necessary as an ecosystem to make digital business happen. This is exactly what we are doing.

Why we are doing it? Because we have a clear strategy. Our vision is -- our mission and our vision is we support our customers. Customers is in the focus using our products in the best way from commissioning the pumps and the valves, operating them. And even if it comes to recycle, which is more and more important, there we would like to be supporting our customers. Do you see in this mission any word of digitization? No. Why not? Because it's the customer which is in the focus and digitization is just an enabler, but a very powerful enabler. And this is what we are doing. Why is it so necessary? Because if you're looking to the cost of the life cycle of such a product, it's only the upper part on the surface, which is the CapEx, the investments.

But the longer the pump, the valves are running, the more customer has to pay, especially in the OpEx, maintenance, for example, energy consumption. And this is exactly where we would like to help our customers with digitized solutions. Wherever I have seen a pump being installed in the field and being a field service engineer, for example, I was it for several years responsible for the service. There are a lot of failures which can happen and I'm flipping through everything that is normal business for a technician who has to do something with the pumps, whether it is unbalance, whether it is vibration, whether it is noise, that can already be centered, and we are doing it. Today already with our KSB Guard.

Since 7 years now, we have the KSB Guard in place. More than 6,000 units are monitoring our pumps over the world. And in the next year, in the first half of the year, we will have a new release of the KSB Guard. We call it Guard 2.0, which much more sensitivity, smarter sensors, easier communication, easy to install. So this is what we are doing, the next level of the KSB Guard. But if you're a little bit more experienced with pumps, you will know that about 80% of the pump failures are according to mechanical seals. And this is exactly what we are going to tackle next year by a new extension of the KSB Guard, we call it KSB Guard Mechanical Seals.

We will be the first one, the first company providing a sensor system, which can take the signals directly from the seal of the mechanical seal. Everything what is available at the moment at the market is if you're taking a glass, for example, putting it on your cooker, water in and putting the finger in, then you have to wait until the heat really heats up the water and then you can have a signal. What we are doing now with the mechanical seal of the guard is putting the finger direct on the hot plate and giving the information immediately. So this will be the first of the kind. We are now actually in the field tests will be released in the next year, especially for a critical application like hot oil application where it comes to accidents when the mechanical seal fails.

This is on the left-hand side of the ecosystem, the innovations and the development on the hardware side, software side. But we have to bring it into a platform. We have to make something out of it, and this is what we are doing there, putting everything in one platform so that the different products can communicate. We're taking the data points, having intelligence there, getting out of the data information and out of the information actions. And this is what you can see there on the right-hand side.

What we are doing with those information. We are giving guidance to our customers by our monitoring system -- by our monitoring center. Here, we really have specialists looking at your equipment, looking at the customers' equipment whenever there is a service contract, for example. And then going into the details, giving warnings or giving, I would say, advisers how to run it up. You can imagine that this is quite personal intensive.

So what is the solution? Using artificial intelligence in that way, that we are combining artificial intelligence together with human intelligence, reducing the necessity of having real human experts by bringing already the knowledge by teaching our systems already to the edge devices on the left-hand side and reducing then the necessity of having the experts more and more growing up. All that -- I'm good in time. All that has to be worked out in a platform. We call it our DSP, the digital service and product platform, which we have provided or which we are providing to fulfill the different needs.

On the one hand side, we have the customer needs. The customer has to work on this platform very easily, very intuitive, has to run on smartphones or even on handheld devices. On the other hand, we have, of course, our hardware. This has to be maintained. This has to be updated all the time. Then we have the algorithms and the data. Data is key. Every pump and every valve that is sending data and they have to be stored, they have to be analyzed, which enriches then also our knowledge going back into the AI systems and teaching them. So this has to be provided. We have to have the interfaces to our business model, SAP because at the end of the day, we would like to earn money with it, and this has to be processed in our systems.

As you see is -- and we have to operate it, as I said, and this altogether, we are working in our digital service and product platform.

By the way, ladies and gentlemen, it gives us a lot of headaches because just having such a system is not enough. You also have to comply, especially on the different legacies. On the one hand side, we are here in Germany, in Europe or in America, we have different legacy. So that means on the one hand side, we have to secure our know-how and to protect it. This is what we are doing physically and also on the software side. We have to apply with the global legacy and global compliance on the right-hand side, of course, we have to integrate it into our business models because you can imagine such system, if you have, for example, like with your mobile contract, if you just processing EUR 10 or EUR 15 a month. This has to be pure automatically running through the SAP system, and this is also a challenge.

What we are tackling also in our development programs and quite successful. So summarizing all my speech today is, yes, we are doing a lot of digitization. We are working out new business models, especially to support our SupremeServ for the aftermarket business. But we are doing it not just for digitization per se. We are doing it only to serve and to satisfy our customers. Thank you very much.

I'd like to give you some insights as well before I go there, I'd like to step back very briefly to Istanbul and what Stephan just was referring to. It was not just a sales meeting. It was special sales meeting, a global sales meeting on a specific business where we want to grow. And that's what we call OEM business. So it's a huge market on a global scale. It's addressed by our market area general industry. And right now, I would say we have maybe 2% market share roughly. It's about EUR 80 million in our -- more than EUR 3 billion. And the market is more than EUR 4 billion. And this is a way where we have to grow.

We have to grow in 2 directions where we not coincidentally, but by purpose, want to be and want to succeed. And that's what we are addressing special tasks, and we believe that we will dramatically grow until 2030 also in this area. And it's, by the way, also mainly addressing pumps, for instance, like the [indiscernible], which you see later also in the factory and also the MoviTec. So global markets of 2.5 million pieces and 3.5 million pieces a year. And we are only making 120,000 so far, respectively, 50,000 for MoviTec. So it was not nice and just having good food and nice weather in Istanbul, but it was specifically addressing OEM business and to make KSB even more valuable in the future.

Now I have the big honor to present the valve business to you. And I think the valve business is not so much known to the global community, especially on your side maybe. And I'm also looking forward to all your questions, what you have. There are many, many different valves, different type of valves in the world. And we always say the valve business is about twice the size of the pump market. So the pump market overall is maybe EUR 50 billion a year. The valve market is maybe EUR 100 billion, but it's very fragmented. And you see only 4 areas of valves. There are much more valves you can imagine. There's even valves in our body.

We do not only have a pump in our body. We also have many, many valves in our body. Otherwise, it wouldn't work. It would be too much for this only one pump. What valves do we offer? We have a gate globe check that's basically where you just move a piece of metal most of the time into the current and try to stop and open and close it, even check valves that is avoiding flow of the fluid in the wrong direction. Then we have butterfly valves. It's not about the small butterflies in the nature, but it can be huge even up to a diameter of 3 meters, this big one, which you see in the top middle.

We have diaphragm valves. Diaphragm valves are specific solution where the -- where you separate the current from the open piece of the valve by a diaphragm. So this is used for either toxic fluids or also food or also pharmaceutical. We just need to make sure that there's no air coming in, that there's no toxic fluid going out, things like this. And last but not least, we also have control valves. And later also in the presentation of Rajeev, he will also refer on this because we are making them also in India. So the good thing of the valve business is in all the market areas where KSB is present today for pumps, we are also present for valves. So we are meeting the same customers, sometimes even the same projects. It's different people at the customer buying the valves.

It's also a different mindset. It's also in a different phase of big projects when the valves are bought, mainly the valves are bought together with the pipes and the pumps are more bought by the system engineers and different pieces in the customer. When I show you these examples, you could say, yes, you also have pumps there. So there are many, many nice examples all around the world where water treatment stations, for instance, in Park. Certainly, we also have pumps in the water treatment station, yes, but we also have valves. Then the other example there is the Dangote petrol refinery in Nigeria. Again, there are many, many different examples as Tuas Nexus on the left bottom side, that's a wastewater incineration plant in Singapore.

On the right top, it's a chlorine electrolyzer. That's where we -- it's very toxic, and that's where we are using the diaphragm valves. On the right bottom, Hinkley Point, that's nuclear valves. And in the middle, it's a thermal energy system in Radolfzell in Germany. So it's a huge variety where you can use us. It's a huge market, very fragmented. And our market share right now is below 1%, I would say, and our global position in the market is maybe, I don't know, number 20-plus x, something like.

Where are we making these valves? We have 10 factories around the world. We have one in La Roche. We have one in Burgos. Burgos is making, by the way, the very big valves, the 3-meter diameter. We have Frankenthal, where we are also making some standard valves here. I'm not sure whether we have time later to look at this, I don't think so. Pegnitz, we are making more high pressure and high temperature valves. Cochin and Coimbatore are 2 places in India, which Rajeev will also introduce.

In China, we have 2 sites in Changzhou and Dalian even 1 in Korea, that's Busan. And last but not least, also Echternach that's where we are making in SISTO, which is a 50% KSB company, the diaphragm valves I was just explaining. Just a little bit about the figures. The valve business, especially the new business is in the magnitude of about EUR 400 million roughly. And the good thing is also the valve business is coming with spare part business. And this we want to push for. That's for sure. And right now, the spare part business is in the magnitude of EUR 60 million. So you need to add up the EUR 400 million plus the EUR 60 million, and then you see roughly what the number is in the size of KSB.

The EBIT, which comes with the pure valve business, and that's what we are showing also in our business annual report is stretch 0 right now. It was very negative. We had some problems, especially in La Roche. We are fixing them right now. And most of the valve business especially when I look into the valve business as a complete business, including the spare parts, most of the sites are highly profitable, above 10% EBIT. And that's also our target then for the future. When we say about Mission TEN30, we want to achieve also with the valve business, including the spares above 10%. It must not be dilutive to the overall targets.

What are the measures? You read it more quickly than I can do. Certainly, we are looking at different sites, try to improve the operations. We are doing some localization also, I show you one example in a minute. Expansion of our standard business, as I was just describing a minute ago, this OEM business for the pumps, pushing for the standard business is key to success on a global scale for pumps and valves.

Application-oriented, that's something which we did in the pump market so that we do understand more clearly as a whole company, why we are selling, what and where, not only incidentally, we are a huge company, but you also need to have a clear strategy behind where and what and why you're selling. And that's why we implemented on the pump side, more an application-oriented approach. That's what we are going to do also on the valve side.

There's also the help of partners. We can't do all the business ourselves. In the valve business, we have sales partners. We call them -- in some regions, we call them dealers. In the U.S., we would never call them dealers because they wouldn't like us to call them dealers, anyway. And this is applicable for both pumps as well as valves. Most of the dealers or sales partners are focusing either on pumps or on valves.

Many of them are also taking care of the spare part business later and some of them are also doing the service. That's why it's interesting for us to work with them. Many more examples there. Maybe a step to some operational improvements. You see here something what we did in [ thickness ]. I click through the operational improvements, there's also some investments. We were focusing in thickness from 2 different places, integrating into one building, also doing some modernization, also investment in machine tools.

We have some examples on localization. Here, you see Changzhou in China, where we did also localize for the Chinese and the regional Asian market, this big valve I just mentioned from Burgos. So we are making it in future since April this year in 2 places. One is in Europe and one is in China.

And last but not least, we are also moving into, yes, I should say, the smart pieces of the valves like the controllers, not only the drives, but more the controllers. So position us for the best. That's also important area to grow also in a digital way for KSB. That should be all from my side. And yes, Sonja.

[Audio Gap]

Personally, something about myself. My name is Jens Deltrap. I'm now 17 years with KSB. I consider myself not just a Dutchman who's in Brazil, but basically a global citizen. I've been working in Italy, United States, then back to the Netherlands, then to Germany. And now the last 10 years, I've been sent to Brazil, responsible for the region, South and Central America.

Actually, South America, so let's go to the first slide. South America is actually a very beautiful region. I don't know whether some of you have been there, maybe in a long, long, long past as a backpacker, traveling to Peru, traveling to Brazil. But normally, it's not the region where you go to on a holiday with your family because it's not an easy region to travel. It's considered dangerous. It's sometimes dirty, it's complicated, a lot of chaos, but you can also make a lot of profit.

And I will try to show you a little bit what we do there because for me, it was actually quite a surprise how good you can do business over in South America because normally, people don't know too much about it. Actually, my story is about -- is divided in 4 parts. First of all, something about the region and our presence there. Secondly, a short pitch, 2 slides about the results we had over the last years. Then some of our performances over the last years. And then the most important was the potential because we still consider South America as a region with a lot of potential, and I will try to show you this in the coming 25 minutes.

Well, first of all, is the region. The region is a region with a lot of potential. I already mentioned this. And one of the big drivers behind the potential is the demographics because if you travel in South America, you will see that there are a lot of young people. I'm personally living in near Sao Paulo. And if you are in the city of Sao Paulo, it's very busy, but you hardly see any old people. About 25% of the population is less than 18 years old. So it's not like Africa where you even have more young people, but even South America has a lot of young population. So the demographics for the coming years is very positive.

Secondly, it's very rich in minerals. Natural resources and minerals are basically the things that are driving the economy there. Minerals in the sense of mining, you will see that later on as well in where we stand in which market segments, but mining is important. But on the other hand side as well, agriculture, meat, soya beans and oil and gas. So it's very much mineral natural resources driven.

And then for us, as a European company, a corporate and KSB is European, the business model is very European. Later on, you will see in the story with Rajeev, there you completely go in a different world. South America is far away. It's unknown, but the business culture is very European. So as a European, I feel very comfortable. If they would have send me to China, probably everybody would have seen -- or this is not a Chinese. If they would send me to India, probably everybody would say, well, doing business with the European is difficult.

In South America, normally, the business partners are Europeans. They have been living there for 50, 100 years, but they're French, they're Spanish, they're Portuguese. So the ethics are very similar. So for us at KSB, it's very easy to do business. On the other side, everybody knows there are downsides. The politics are very unstable. I've been living now in Brazil, as I said, for almost 10 years. I had 6 governments. So basically, every 1.5 year, you have a new President. Now it's Lula. It's basically the second time that I have Lula there. We had Bolsonaro. We had a lot of people. And every 1.5 years, you have to adapt yourself.

Interestingly enough, the economy and the companies are not linked to business. So whoever is the Prime Minister, whatever government you have, right, left, you still do business. So they're quite dislinked. It's not like you're in Europe. Traditional high inflation, also known by you, you will see that later on also a little bit and protectionism as a consequence due to the fact that politics is unstable, high inflation, as a consequence, normally, the government is very protectionistic. So these are the pluses and minus normally in our region.

The other thing you see is that the region is very big, is very far away. If you travel from Frankfurt to Sao Paulo, you have almost a 13-hour flight. But even within the region, if you travel between my countries, from Sao Paulo to Colombia, it's 6 hours. To Chile, it's another 4 hours or to Panama, one of our latest companies that we established, we're talking about 8-hour flights.

So going from Frankfurt to New York is quicker than going from Sao Paulo to Panama. And sometimes people underestimate that. I got a call from Germany and say, well, let's have a quick meeting with your country managers next week and you get them all together. And then they don't realize that actually for us, that means that they miss a week because they have to travel one day, or in a [ meeting ] travel back one day. So the distances are quite long.

Then something about the macroeconomics. The worldwide shortage that we had during the last year in natural resources actually was a big benefit for us. because due to the war in Ukraine, due to the problems between China and the U.S., you saw a lot of differences in the trading of natural resources. And for us, being one of the providers of the natural resources, this was a big benefit because the prices increased. There was a high demand for those resources. So for us, this was great.

Secondly, the restructuring of the global supply chains, also very positive for South America. A good example is the soya bean. Argentina is a big producer of soya beans. We do supply a lot of pumps in those industries. And what we saw is that the demand for soya beans during the last year was increasing tremendously, basically due to the tension between China and the United States. So these kind of restructuring the global supply chains for us, again, was a big plus.

And we -- because we are confronted with this protectionism already for many, many, many years, we are basically ready for the deglobalization. In South America, specifically for Brazil, basically, everything is produced in-house. I'm not talking about KSB now specifically. But in general, if you look at the cars driving around in South America, almost all cars are produced in South America. Little by little, the Chinese come in, but we are very, very autark in that sense.

On the other hand, also macroeconomic, Trump is giving some headaches. We're looking currently what's going on. But I'm pretty confident that normally South America is quite flexible. But within some months, we are able to find new opportunities. You see this already. Brazil and South America is getting closer and closer to China. So the little import we have to the U.S. is little by little now already shifting to Asia.

Another thing, the volatility of the U.S. dollar, also something we have to watch because many, many countries are indebt with U.S. dollars. And of course, if there's a fluctuation like this, you immediately see that in the interest rates. Fortunately, we have a positive net finance position in all our companies. So we are not indebt in general as a company.

Two social things that are also quite interesting to understand is, first of all, the middle class crunch. What I mean with that is that you see that in South America, there's hardly any middle class. You have that discussion also in the United States, a little bit in Europe where people talking about the disappearing middle class. In South America, the middle class is already gone. We have a lot of poor people, and we have a lot of rich people. And the rich people normally are really rich and the poor people are really poor. So this is something that you have to understand when you do business there.

The other thing is the brain drain, everybody is leaving. Everybody wants to leave to the U.S. and everybody wants to leave to Europe because nobody wants to stay in South America. And this is a problem for us, of course, because we're losing a lot of competence.

So now KSB, quickly, how is KSB doing in the region? And you see a lot of dots. These are our own dots. These are not sales partners or partners. So we are quite present in the region. We have 8 companies with 1,600 employees in the region. 1 foundry and 3 manufacturing plants, 2 of the manufacturing plants are in Brazil, 1 is in Argentina and the foundry is as well in Brazil. We have 14 own SupremeServ facilities, so branches where we do service. And Brazil, Chile and Argentina, they represent 92% of our volume. So 92% of our volume is in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. And this is interesting. We already in the region have 41% of our business in SupremeServ. So when we're talking about globally trying to increase our SupremeServ in order to increase the profit to 30% or from 30% to 40%, we in our region already are at 40%, 40-plus percent. And you can see that in our profitability.

On one of the next slides, I show you the profitability of our region, and there's a direct link between the 2. So the higher this percentage of SupremeServ, the higher the profitability, if you do it right, of course.

And then the main markets for us, mining, of course, because it's natural resources, general industry, mainly in Brazil because Brazil is the powerhouse of South America and water, water, of course, because where you have people, you need water. Here, you see an overview of the competition. And you can see that normally, as I said in the beginning, KSB in South America in the main markets is market leader.

If you look at Brazil, which is roughly, as I said, half of the economic activities in South America, we are clearly market leader with 17%. And the two #2, which is actually Franklin and Ebara are both at roughly 10%. If you look at the more engineered competition, Weir, Sulzer and Flowserve, they are behind with 9% and 4%. And there's still some room with the others. And you see that the others are roughly 13%. So there's still room to increase by picking up the small pieces of the smaller players.

Chile is our #2 country. There, we are #2. Why not #1? #1 is Weir because Chile is very, very, very mining driven. And as you might know, Weir is our competitor -- main competitor in mining. They're the global market leader in mining, and we were not able up till now to beat them as the #1, but we are clearly #2.

Also here, you see that many, many, many competitors are local competitors, [ PG costlun ] companies that you probably don't know because not too many European -- traditional European manufacturers are actually present in South America. Now quickly the pitch. When people tell me, what have you been doing over the last years in South America? What was the development? Then normally, I showed those 2 slides. And actually, in those slides, we distinguish basically 3 important areas.

The first period, you see that this is actually the customer order intake. So this is the top line. You see that the top line went down from EUR 200 million roughly to a minimum of EUR 150 million. And then we distinguish 3 phases. The first phase, what I would call the restructuring phase, then the rebuilding phase and the last is the reward phase. And you can see that actually our dip was somewhere in between 2015 and 2016. And then little by little, we consistently went up back to the EUR 330 million last year. Even more prominent, you see that in our profitability numbers.

You see that we came from a profitability somewhere at the 2010 of 7% -- 7%, 8%. We went to a minimum of almost breakeven. And then during the last 10 years, we consistently moved it up to last year, a little bit more than 16% ROS. And also this year, our forecast is that we will improve again probably with 1%, 1.5%.

And also here, you very clearly see the restructuring phase, the rebuilding phase and the reward phase. Okay. So what we did is actually this. We basically outperformed, this was the most important thing. We outperformed the local GDP growth and the inflation because when you do business in South America, you always have to watch the inflation. It's great to do 10% growth, but if you have an inflation of 11%, doesn't help you too much.

Secondly, we also increased the quality of the top line. We had a substantial increase in our margin over the last years. We established 3 new companies because as you saw, the main business we are still doing in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, but we have to think about the future. So we have been establishing new companies in what we would call the white spots. We also consolidated 3 companies we already had or 2 we had, Peru and Colombia and one of the new ones, Ecuador. And as you saw, we basically increased the ROS through a sustainable double-digit number.

And here, you see the growth of 2 companies, over the last 10 years. The first one is Brazil. In local currency, this is in local currency. And the average growth we had over the last 5 years, I did the calculation is 17.9%. And if you then deduct the inflation, as I said, the inflation is always a very important element. If you deduct the inflation, which was over the same period, 5.9% per year and also deduct the GDP growth, you still get a net growth of 9.1%. So that basically shows you that our performance over the last year was basically increasing our market share in the Brazilian market.

And we did the same also in Chile, there we have a sales growth number of 11.7%. We had an inflation of 6.2% over the last 5 years, a GDP of 2.2%, and that leaves you with a net growth of [ 3.3% ]. So we always try in each country to have at least a net growth of 2%, 3% in order to make sure that we're increasing our position.

And this slide actually shows you a little bit about the quality of our top line. So we did grow, but we also increased our margin in parallel. And when I get the question, how did you do that? Then actually the bullets or the pizzas or the slices on the bottom side show you the real trick. This is the increase in our SupremeServ business. So if you look in 2020, 30% of our business was SupremeServ. And actually, last year, we reached 41%. And for me, this is the main driver. So the more SupremeServ business you do, the more spare parts you sell because basically it's spare parts, it's selling the spare parts, the higher your ROS can be.

Next to this, of course, we have effective price increases. During the break, I had a short chat with one of you. And I told them, if the inflation is high, normally, the customers don't really look at your price increases in that depth. You saw a little bit the same in Europe during the last years with this increased inflation, suddenly, all the manufacturers are increasing the quality of the top line by increasing the margin or increasing the prices a little bit more than they should have done. And this is also happening in South America. And if you have an inflation of 6%, instead of increasing 6%, you increase 6.5%, you increase 7%. So it's very easy to increase the quality of the top line.

We have a very strict margin control, of course, very important. SupremeServ, I already mentioned, and we increased the productivity in the plants. And for this, I show you this little graph on the right side, on the top right side. And there, you see the sales divided by the blue headcount. And also here, you see that during the last 5 years, we had a substantial increase. So actually, we also put a lot of effort in increasing the productivity of our plants.

And finally, localization. Localization in South America, also very important. As I said before, protectionism is the name of the game for the government there. So it's very important to produce locally. Fortunately, during the last years, we had this philosophy during the whole group, local for local. And currently, we are producing around 80% of our sales volume is locally produced in our factories in South America, very important for us.

And here, you see some pictures. If you nowadays go through the factories, you don't really see the difference between a South American factory and a factory that you will see today. It's really European style, which is not very common in South America. Very often, if you go to local manufacturers, you really see a big difference in style. For example, something like lean manufacturing is not very typical South American. It's more something that you see you would consider in Europe. But in South America, it's very rare. But for us, it's quite common. It's quite normal, and this also gives us a lot of push.

Investments, also something that we have been doing a lot during the last years. In average, over the last years, we invested in 22 new CNC machines. And then if you imagine that every machine will cost you roughly EUR 0.5 million, you're talking a lot of money. So this is a lot of money. And this also helps us, of course, to increase our productivity.

Then very quickly, 3 new companies that we established, and I come to the point potential. Here, you see 3 companies that we established during the last years, last 5 years. Basically, every 2 years, we try to create a new company. And again, these are small companies, companies that normally have a target within 5 years to reach roughly EUR 5 million. And here you see Ecuador, which we actually established at the beginning of 2021. Last year, we were at EUR 3.8 million. This year, we will probably reach the EUR 5 million. So they are basically according to plan.

Panama, we established in 2022. There last year, we had a great year. We already achieved the EUR 5 million. This year, we will go down a little bit because there was a big project in this EUR 4.7 million. And Bolivia, we started last year. We didn't really make the EUR 1 million in the first year because we only started at the middle of the year. So we only had 6 months. But we are quite confident that with each company, we will reach roughly the EUR 5 million.

And very interesting is that next to the business we do in these countries, they buy pumps at our manufacturing facilities. So last year, for example, these 3 facilities basically bought EUR 6 million in our manufacturing plant in Brazil. So there's a double whammy. We made profit in the countries, and we make profit in our intercompany plants on those companies.

Now Sonja has already signaling me, give me 5 minutes, okay, I'm almost there. The most important actually for me is the potential, where is the potential in the coming years? Because I personally feel that we will be able to continue this growth rate, so roughly 5% to 10% per year to stay at the profitability of around 15%, maybe a little bit more. And these are the 4 areas where we feel that we are able to grow and make more profit.

First of all, SupremeServ, I think there we have already talked a lot. Standard business, I will show you some slide there. New countries and new markets. First of all, SupremeServ. SupremeServ, again, is pushing the spare part business for us. And where do we see this? First of all, reverse engineering. More and more we go into the pumps of the competition. We ourselves have an enormous amount of pumps in the market, the installed base, but our competition also has a lot.

In the past, it was always a discussion, can we service the pump of the competitor? Nowadays, it's basic business because if we don't do this, they are doing this to us. It's very clearly that pirates will enter into our market. So we have to attack them as well. So with reverse engineering, the scanning, the in-house foundry makes it easy for us to copy those pumps. We have invested recently in the sand printer that actually makes it not necessary anymore to buy models, patterns. So it's very easy for us now to scan, make the foundry part and then copy the part from the competition.

The installed base, also logical for you, I think that if you know your installed base, you know where to go. So we are very keen on every time registering the products that we send out to the market. It's very important. The infrastructure, also a point in SupremeServ. You have to imagine that the closer you are to a customer, the more easy it gets to service, but there is a limitation. You cannot open a branch in every city. That would be ideal. But of course, from a cost point of view, that doesn't make sense. So what we're doing there is we are copying a little bit the McDonald's model.

If you look at McDonald's, they have various levels of cost structures in their infrastructure. They have a full-blown McDonald's. They have a McCafé, which is a more simple one. And they even at least in Brazil, have this little Mac ice creams, which are portable booths, which they set up in the shopping mall and they sell ice cream. And with this idea, we started to set up very small containers, service containers at key customers to be as close as possible to those customers. So very important for us.

And finally, also mentioned already by Stephan Bross, the monitoring aspect. More and more, we equip our pumps with guards. And this guard, just like the device you have in your car, is giving all kinds of signals. And these signals, of course, help us to afterwards [ attract ] the customer and tell them, hey, you should do service, something is wrong with your seal, something is wrong with your vibration. So the SupremeServ part, very important for us, number one. Number two, Mr. [ Kanafat ] already mentioned this, the standard business. The standard business for us, at least in South America, is not so important for the profit. That's more the SupremeServ part, but to increase our market share.

If you remember the slide of the competition in Brazil, you saw that #2 was Ebara and Franklin, and they are focused 100% on standard pumps. So it's very clear. If we want to grow, we have to focus also more on standard pumps. And this is what we're doing with this action. And here, you have several elements. First of all, we did set up a separate organization for this business. We have now a separate sales force for only OEMs, and we have a separate sales force only for resellers and dealers. So this is also helping us to push this business.

We're investing a lot in tools, especially the selection tools because for the standard business, the customers in generally do not come to you and ask a lot of advice. They want to be self-supporting with their own tools, with their own digital tools. We're doing that as well. We're investing in products, and we're investing in logistics. So on one side, pushing spare parts to secure the profit and on the other side, pushing the standard business to make sure that we are able to increase.

And then we have 2 more things where we think we can grow. One is pushing new countries. As I already mentioned to you, in the last 5 years, we established Ecuador, Panama and Bolivia. And now in the next years, we still have plans every 2 years to open a new company. 2026, our plan is to open a company in the Dominican Republic, 2028 Guatemala and actually, as it looks now, 2030, Costa Rica. So our plan to continue to open these companies after some years, consolidate those companies is still valve.

And then the final [ feet, ] Sonja, or the final 3, but it's one shape actually. We're looking into new markets. And actually, with the setup of the market segments, this matrix that we have within KSB, we also, as a region, are thinking more and more about market segments. So general industry, water, PCC. And what we did is we actually made the Boston matrix, which you probably all know, per country, per market segment. And what you see there is that we still have a lot of rising stars that we can actually move into the cash cow position.

And if you really look into this, and this is really interesting, is there are some interesting combinations because sometimes we see a rising star, in this case, mining in Peru. In parallel, we already see a cash cow mining in Chile. So by combining the 2, we have an optimal possibility to grow the business in Peru. So what we tactically did, we took the team of Chile, send them to Peru and help the guys in Peru to develop the mining business. And the result was that in the last 3 years, we basically tripled the business from USD 5 million in Peru to USD 15 million.

A similar thing, if you really look into it is here. Here you see the petrochemical business in Colombia being a rising star together with the petrochemical business in Brazil, where we are very strong with Petrobras. So by combining those 2 teams, we see a similar effect. So the last thing where we see a lot of opportunities is in combining these teams in the different countries and the different market segments.

Sonja, I think that's it. If I would have more time, I would have given more examples, but unfortunately, we're limited.

I could listen to you for hours, but it's really, really interesting, but we have to make a cut now and talk to you later in the Q&A. Thanks a lot.

Good morning. From South America to India, another part of the world, a different continent. It's my privilege to represent India, KSB India in front of all of you. And I will share the journey of KSB here in India with my presentation.

To start off, introduce myself, my name Rajeev Jain. KSB has been my first job and working in this company for more than 3 decades and had also the privilege of going and working in other locations as well. Before my Indian job, I was responsible for Asia South region in Singapore and looking after the Southeast Asia countries and also have worked 4 years in Korea. So with this experience, came to India in 2016, and this photo you see is of our latest office near Pune in Shirwal and the biggest energy plant. This is an index or these are the subjects which I will take you through.

To introduce the region. We have 3 legal entities in India. The biggest one is KSB Limited, a manufacturing entity with 6 manufacturing plants across India, pumps and valves as well as control valves. Then KSB Tech, 100% company owned by KSB based in Pune and doing all the engineering as well as IT support work for KSB and with an employee strength of almost 330 employees there, young employees based in Pune. Last, KSB MIL controls, a company, mainly in control valves in the southern part of India and specializing in those high-tech products, with an employee strength of 305 employees.

So total region comprising of these 3 legal entities, almost 2,900 employees and contributing 10% of the sales to the group. KSB journey started in India in 1960 and then has steadily increased their footprints, their market presence continuously over the years. And this is -- these are the snapshots of this. 1960, the first plant set up in Pune. We call it Irrigation and Pumps division because India is a very agricultural country and the business started with borehole pumps in India. [ 1960's, ] this is still our headquarters in India, where we are based.

Subsequently, India, we invested in a foundry, 1974. 1978 was a power plant division, a smaller one, which today we have converted into a SupremeServ division totally. 1987 was the Coimbatore plant valves in South of India, totally dedicated for valves. 1994 in -- near Pune, in a place called Nashik, we have our standard pumps division and catering to basically the standard pumps for KSB. 1997, KSB acquired control valves, MIL control valves. And today, it is a flourishing business both domestically as well as internationally.

2005 is the time when we set up KSB Tech center for expanding and sourcing the engineering and the IT business, just started with 6 employees. And today, it's almost 330 employees today.

And last, this is our pride as well, the Shirwal plant, and I show it in the next slide. This is our Energy division. Our division today, with pride, we say because India is booming in energy business. And today, we make pumps for all our big power plants, petrochemical plants and also the nuclear power plants. An investment which KSB did EUR 40 million in 2017, a unit where it is powered by solar power, 80% of the consumption, we do it by solar energy. And why I say we are proud of it because 1 of the 3 units in KSB world where we are rated 3 star, that means best among -- best-in-class amongst the KSB factories.

Coming to the industry outlook, the macroeconomic factors, I know you must be reading and well aware of it, but India is today in a very good momentum, I would say. And we have consistently had a good GDP growth, almost more than 6%, 7% and it is sustained over the years that today also -- the next year, we forecast a continuous momentum in this GDP growth. If you look at the inflation steadily coming down over the years and today, we are at a very good rate, almost less than 2%, and this has also helped the banks to reduce their interest rates and a thing which is pushing good momentum for business in India.

A purchaser Manufacturing Index, an index where we measure the economic growth. And consistently over the years, we see in the last 2, 3 years, the figure has been above 50% and 58% represents that means over the past month, the business is still growing. And I benchmarked it with the World Global Index as well.

And lastly, the CapEx, the investment. This investment in India happens both through the government sector as well as the private sector. And today, you see the government sector is also investing a lot and majorly to bring up this economy in India. And this continues together with the private investment as well.

Coming to the pump market, pump industry market, organized sector, I would say, almost we estimate EUR 2.3 billion and forecasted to grow almost 8% -- 8% to 9% over the next 4, 5 years and maybe beyond. KSB steadily has grown in the last 6, 7 years to #2 position. We are ranked second in terms of our sales turnover, the second largest and with almost approximately a market share of 12% in India. The competitors are local as well as international.

In the local ones, we have Kirloskar, Shakti and international, we have Grundfos, Sulzer, WILO, all of them are there. But KSB today is #2. And I will show you in the coming slides that we are going -- or we are aiming for the leadership position there in India.

Similarly, in the valves, we are mainly -- as I mentioned, in Coimbatore, we are in the manual valves. Also, we are the second largest gate globe check valve manufacturer after L&T and also having a 12% market share. And basically, the valve market is dominated a lot by the local players. I mentioned that L&T and Bonetti. These are local manufacturers for control valves. Also, we are amongst the top 3 in the market for control valves. In the globe control valves, we are the leaders. But even the overall control valve market, we are the top 3 along with Emerson and KOSO. So this gives us a very good position of strength and to lead the market.

Coming to the market side, I start with energy. And this is the booming market in India today. With India's growth, there is a high demand for energy. And this demand for energy is being fulfilled by all the options available, starts with renewable, and you see good growth in solar energy as well as wind. And not only that, I think the demand is so high that the government was forced to open up the fossil fuel thermal power plants.

And in the next 4, 5 years, we will see a good growth of almost 43 gigawatt investment coming up, and it is already happening. These are not headlines. These are things which are happening already in front of our eyes and the investment is coming. And so you see the growth in the next 5 years will be 3x more than what it was in the last 5 years. And this is the scale of investment and the activity happening there.

Similarly, in the nuclear energy market, power plants of 700 megawatts are being set up. And this is also going to triple from 8 gigawatt to 22 gigawatt. So all in all, a very good outlook for the Energy segment, a segment where KSB has been traditionally strong, has been having the leadership position globally as well as in India. So these are good times for us in India, especially on this investment and this booming market.

And I already mentioned that coming to the next infrastructure, all of you know, India needs a lot of infrastructure development. And this is already recognized by the government and a lot of investment is coming up having 18% of world's population, our water problem or water availability is only 4%. And that is where the investment comes, big projects like linking the river waters so that where there is more rainfall, this is being supplied to places where there is scarcity of rainfalls.

Many missions initiated by the government, also water treatment, which was never so much a focus. Now that water treatment is giving a focus to increase it from 30% to 80%. So a lot of investment from the government side, and this is driving our water business as well.

Manufacturing. Manufacturing, if you look at India's GDP, manufacturing contributes only 15% of it. 55% comes from services, 15% comes from industry. So this manufacturing, the boost of Make in India concept by the government is taking -- is going to take this manufacturing contribution to almost 25%. And this is where the incentives and all the industrial investment is happening both by private as well as public sector. So this is the third segment where there is a lot of investment happening.

Now I come to another segment, Irrigation. I mentioned agriculture. Agriculture also is around 15% of the GDP and is something which is very critical and very sensitive in India. And this is a market where as a pump supplier, we cannot stay away. And I mentioned that we started our footprints in India with borehole pumps. And today, this market is changing to solar market. And the government has now initiated many schemes where this market is being driven by solar pumps. And today, we had made an entry into the solar business, solar market. We are already doing almost EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million, and -- but this market is growing exponentially.

And so this is also a good opportunity where our share today is 6%, 7%. Of course, there are a lot of local competition. But in spite of that local competition, we have had, I would say, a reasonable share, but we intend to take this quite forward in the coming years.

Segments, I think this has already been mentioned. KSB strength is that we are present in all segments. So we are insulated against -- a lot against external environment. If one segment goes down, the other is there. So with this backbone strength, we are present in all these segments. And if you take -- I just put the share of business in these things where we are present in a quite good percentage out of our order intake in all these segments.

And of course, all these segments in India are quite bullish and will be growing quite well, as I mentioned, in a good percentage of at least 8% to 10%. Our competitive edge was also mentioned is our product range. KSB is a very elaborate product range. If you see we make a small pump of 1 horsepower to a pump for a nuclear reactor, the most critical pump. And if you talk of pumps, there is only one shop where you [indiscernible] manufacturer, where you can get the complete range. And this is our strength. And you see this elaborate range both for pump valve as well as SupremeServ. So this is our distribution of business.

Moving with times, we are also digitizing and you see EUR 55 million of our business is through e-sales, which is very important, and we are adapting to that and digitizing our processes so that we can bring speed and momentum in the market. And our share of export and domestic is -- 85% is domestic, 15% is export. Of course, this is -- this could be better or in exports, but our growing domestic market helps us to keep a very good ratio in domestic as well.

One of our good competitive edge is the dealer network. If you look at a dealer in India, it's a vast country and having a lot of customers spread out in the country. And so we have a dealer network of almost 800 dealers who stock our products and reach and serve our customers across the country. And if you would ask me what is your biggest strength, I would, without any hesitation, say that dealer business is one of our core strengths where we excel and this continuously helps us to grow the business.

When you have an established sales channel, bringing in products becomes very easy. Just bring in products and there is an established sales channel and makes it -- make the business very, very easy. And this is the tradition which we have been following in KSB India.

Coming to next, I think -- and I said 50% of our KSB business is today in dealer business. And this is very -- this has many advantages also that it is a cash and carry business. We don't have big credit terms. So it helps us to balance our project business and makes our business more profitable. We can -- and today also helps when we -- when the markets open up into new sunrise segments, we call it green hydrogen, railways, firefighting pumps, life science. It becomes easy when we enter these segments with the products, there is an already a sales channel available where we can deliver those products.

SupremeServ, I guess, a lot has been spoken. And this is, I feel, again, a very good initiative, which we have had in our group as well as in India. This SupremeServ business in earlier times, maybe were -- we were a little bit passive and we were waiting for customers, but today has become a very proactive and our front liner business. We take all these steps.

If I look at dedicated plant, this is a dedicated new home for this business, central warehouse where we sell our standard pumps business, spare parts, which is mainly dependent on delivery. Authorized service centers, we call that [ pump ] partners across the country, service centers, KSB-owned service centers, reverse engineering and last SupremeServ Academy to retain our talent, to train our people and to continuously ensure that the knowledge remains in the company. So all these measures, I guess, are great and I would say, seeds for the future growth of profitability for the company.

KSB Tech, I mentioned briefly, this is also a very great initiative by KSB that we had that vision 20 years back to set up this division in India, and it started with 5 years and Dr. Bross is here, was the founder member of this. And today, it's such a successful unit, a unit which gives us comfort, a unit which is a go-to unit where we have any issue, and this is now with 330 young employees, employees where in India, you see the boom of GCCs, and KSB has been the front leader in establishing this and being ahead. I don't go through the details, but all anything technical, engineering, IT and you name it, if you don't have a solution, you go to KSB Tech and they will find something.

KSB MIL controls also, I mentioned this. This is also, let's say, a jewel in our crown because of the special products, a business which is very profitable, double-digit profitability over years, 2 decades and a good SupremeServ business and bringing out good quality products.

Marketing in India is very important. And since we do standard business, building up a brand -- it's all about building up a brand. And this is what all we do that the KSB brand, not only globally, but in India is very well known. You would find it every corner, whether you see those simple things like umbrellas, we also brand label our dealers, the media presence on televisions as well as news and investors, because we are listed in India. We are publicly listed in India, our company. And hence, we do all those digital as well as social media. And of course, exhibition and fairs are where we all meet and interact with our customers.

Strategic outlook.

The company has been -- this is KSB Limited, has been growing in a very, I would say, satisfying growth story for the last years. We have a compounded annual growth rate of almost 18% continuously and consistently for the last 6, 7 years. And I'm sure with the Indian story, with the Indian market opportunities and with KSB's preparedness, we would continue the same story in the future decade as well. So same 18% in order intake as well as sales. Coming to the -- aligning with the group strategy, what are our major pillars?

I mentioned about energy. I mentioned about SupremeServ, mentioned about standard business, all aligned with the group strategy. Solar pumps is a bit of a local thing, but this is an opportunity, we KSB grabbed with the competence available and the products available. And last but not the least, the Valves. Valves is a very profitable business in India, both Coimbatore and MIL, as I mentioned, a double-digit profitability and in fact, on the range of 14% to 15%.

Overall, the company does an EBIT of 13% and a good profitability and it is for years and years. Investments normally, it's almost 5% of our sales. This is traditionally which we have been doing -- continuously doing. And some examples of that capacity expansion is very important with the growth. That is in Nashik as well as in tech, we are adding floors, of course, SupremeServ Academy, robotics is the need of ours. So we are kind of bringing automation in our plants, replacing machines as well as capacity expansion. So this is a continuous process of almost, as I mentioned, 5% of our total revenue, we continue to invest.

Our ambitions, 2030, I guess, continue this growth. I mentioned the 12% to 15%, maybe it's a bit conservative, but I'm sure it will be easily achieved with the market opportunities what we have. Sustain the [indiscernible] or the ROS to 12% to 13% in spite of a growth of 15%, 17%. So it's a very profitable growth. Strive for leadership position in the market. We have been closing the gap with our top manufacturer that is Kirloskar, and I'm sure in the next 2, 3 years, we would be able to achieve that leadership position.

SupremeServ already said. Solar pumps is an opportunity, which will be there due to the huge market potential, and we want to achieve more than 100 million there. Sustain our quality leadership, KSB's brand is known for the quality and the technology and to keep that is in our DNA and as genes over these years. Gender diversity is something -- a subject which we are working on. We are not there, but it takes time, and this process has started. And so this is what we want to achieve that. And of course, climate neutral. The last session of my presentation, we have been spending and investing a lot on renewables inside our company as well.

Today, 68% of our energy consumption is coming through renewable, 68%. All our plants have Solar, either rooftops or the Solar access, and we continue to do that and drive that. And maybe we will achieve at least 80% to 90% of our needs through Solar. It's also CSR, corporate social responsibility is a part of KSB, again, culture, I would say. And almost every year, we spend 2% of our net profit on these activities. This is also a statutory requirement of Indian law, but KSB has been doing this much before this law also came into force.

People, of course, organization, and I feel we all in KSB Group have been very proud that this employee engagement has come to such a good level today. And this is one of the main reasons for our success, sometimes underplayed, but I would say this is the top most reason for our success. And in India, we achieved an employee engagement rate of almost 88% with a new and a young employees as well.

So to summarize my last slide, I would say the Indian story is real. Indian story is there to stay, and we would see this continued investment and this momentum in the coming years. And the government has a big vision of creating it a EUR 30 trillion economy, which today -- from today's investment and the measures look a reality. Energy infrastructure will be the key enablers. These will be the driving force. And with KSB India, with our readiness, with our future readiness preparedness, the investments in all these capacities, products and the improvements which we are doing, I guess we are ready to take on this opportunity in the country.

And last but not the least, I mentioned Valves and Solar also will -- portfolio will help us to do that. So I would say in a summary that we are very well positioned to have this continued sustainable profitable growth in the coming years. And it's great that together with KSB and the German technology and with the local manufacturing, I would say, strength that we combine these together to make a very winning combination over the years and we'll continue to do so. Thank you very much.

So next, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jonathan Samuel. I've been with the KSB Group now for 31 years, 27 of which was spent in mining. In those 27 years, we have seen a 500% growth and KSB mining is growing very rapidly. I want to start with a statement. If it can't be grown, it has to be mined. It's a very impactful statement because think about all the basic necessities that we have, food, shelter, clothing and then the modern amenities that we like, the modern luxuries that we like. All of them require some basic material. And this basic material has to come from the earth. It has to be grown or it has to be mined.

Now mining is not very sexy. It's considered to be dirty sometimes. We don't see it as we drive to the malls, but mining is a quintessential part of how we live life. So in today's presentation, I want to show you what is the footprint for mining globally. What is KSB's footprint. And then we look at some facts and figures, what is our order intake and sales, how we do business, how business has grown, what is our sales share? Unfortunately, there is competition, and we fight with them every day.

But what is our sales share, who are our main competitors? But we look at the key opportunities. I said we have grown 500%, but we have loftier ambitions with Mission TEN30. We want to grow more. So we will talk about the key opportunities and risks, and we have mapped out a strategic roadmap, how will we get to 2030 and reach all our lofty ambitions. So that's the theme of my presentation. So what is our footprint? Mining is worldwide. I know when you drive along the highway, you don't see mines, but you see all those dots there, the different colors. They represent different metals and minerals that are extracted from the earth.

So what metals do they get? The most -- the highest mined metal is copper, copper, gold, iron ore, coal, cobalt, nickel, the list is huge. So except in the Sahara desert or in the middle of Australia, you will see that mines are everywhere in every single country. And KSP's reach is global. We are a global company. We attempt to be at everybody's doorstep, and that is how we reach the mining customers. So this is a map that you have seen. If you've attended any KSB presentation, you've seen this map. I've modified it a little bit to show you what is KSB Mining doing. So we have 4 production sites just for slurry pumps. So the asterisk means slurry pumps.

So we have 4 production sites in 18 countries. Worldwide, KSB has 33 manufacturing facilities that can also produce pumps that can be used in mining. We have 3 foundries on 3 continents. We have a total of 9 foundries. We have 850 staff worldwide working in mining. And we have 15 spare parts warehouses. Why is this important? We talk about SupremeServ. SupremeServ is about the aftermarket. SupremeServ is about spare parts sales. That is what is driving the profitability of this company.

In mining, the lifeblood of mining business is spare parts. And spare parts is an inventory business. You have to have the spare parts ready when the customer needs it. Mining pumps start wearing the moment you push the button. Why? Because they're pumping rocks, solids, sand, mud and sometimes paste. So it's very important to have spare parts ready as soon as the customer needs it. That's the reason for us holding millions of dollars worth of spare parts in 15 different warehouses all over the world, some of them in KSB warehouses and some of them consignment stock at the customers' premises.

So this is an aerial view, a partial aerial view of KSB Mining's flagship manufacturing complex. I don't call it a factory because it's a manufacturing complex. It's located in 140 acres in Georgia in the U.S. In this complex, we have about 650 employees. We can start with research and development, start with a clean sheet of paper, design pumps and go all the way through a foundry machine shop, heat treatment until you ship the pump, you test and ship the pump, all of that in that campus, 140-acre campus. And KSB has invested well over EUR 100 million to make this the world's leading one-stop shop.

None of our competitors has anything like this. They have a dispersed supply chain model. They buy from China, from South Africa. They put it together in Phoenix, Arizona, and they supply to a customer in Canada. We, KSB, have taken a different approach. We have it all in one place, so we can bring customers to this great facility and showcase the technical ability of KSB. We have a lot of plans for expansion here. It's a great investment for us, and it is turning out to bring us a lot of profits as well.

So what are the facts and figures I want to present to you. Quick look at the global marketplace for mining, for pumps. So in 2023, the actual was EUR 2.3 billion -- sorry, EUR 2.5 billion, and it's expected to grow at an annual rate of 3% and end up at EUR 3.2 billion by 2030. This includes the addressable market for KSB because there are other pumps that are running in mines, positive displacement pumps, load pumps, diaphragm pumps, injection pumps. There's a lot of little stuff that we don't make that's available there. But from an addressable pumps, spare parts and service, this is the total market, EUR 3.2 billion by the year 2030.

So what is KSP's share? [indiscernible] already mentioned, we have a #2 position for slurry worldwide. So last year, we had EUR 316 million in pumps and parts. So you can see that parts are EUR 225 million. So the main business in slurry in mining is parts, and that's what drives the profitability. And so our approach has always been SupremeServ before SupremeServ name was given to us. So it was -- it's a very important part of how we do it. Now we also have non-slurry pumps. Wherever you have human beings, they need to transport water. And slurry pumps need water to be added to the slurry in order to be able to transport them. Those are the laws of physics. So we have EUR 213 million in slurry pumps and parts and over EUR 100 million in non-slurry.

So typically, KSB sells 2:1 ratio between parts to new pumps. So KSP's order intake, KSB Mining's order intake and sales, we started at 283 in 2022, and we have grown to 326. There was a little softening in 2024, but we see because of a lot of geopolitical reasons, projects have kind of disappeared. But if you will see, pump parts continue to grow, which means we are putting more and more new pumps into the field. They are operating -- the price of commodities are at a very healthy level. So customers are pushing these pumps very hard, which means these pumps are generating more spare parts, which means our business is in a very healthy position.

The same thing with sales, you see the same pattern going from 278 to 317. So this is a trajectory we expect to maintain in the coming years. So what are the fundamentals for mining? And are the fundamentals still valid? Have they changed? This is a question I get a lot. So the fundamentals start with increased population growth. We heard about South America. We heard about India. These are great -- and China. These are great population centers. So when you increase the number of people on this planet, they need more things. In order to make these things, they have to be either grown or mined. So mining will continue to grow because of that reason.

Our dependency on fuels and metals continues to grow. Everybody wants to travel. There's more traffic on the roads these days. There's more people flying. Airports are full. So dependency on fuels and metals will continue to grow. Life continues to be modernized. Everybody has a cell phone. Everybody wants to drive, everybody wants to have modern amenities. So that will continue. And urbanization, people are moving more and more into cities. If the cities don't fit these people, then they build bigger cities, we build newer cities. So those fundamentals will not change. They continue to grow.

But there are also megatrends, and I will start with the trend on 1:00 position, sustainability. This is something that's a big push that we are receiving from a lot of governments, from a lot of companies because of global warming. And we are a responsible company. We talked about the corporate social responsibility. So our CO2 reduction is important. Water is a scarcity in a lot of places. Pumps consume water. So customers come to us and demand what can you do to consume less water, so we can be more efficient. So that is a trend that is continuing to happen.

Green energy is a big topic. It's not a fad anymore. It is a real thing. So carbon dioxide reduction, decarbonization and electrification. There's a lot of push even for remote pumps to be electrified. And resource scarcity. Mining has been going on for a long, long time. But the grade, the quality of the ore is getting less and less. All the easy mining has been done. So what's happening is they have to process more and more rock in order to get the same amount of copper, gold, iron ore, whatever you're doing. So what's happening is pumps, mills, processing plants, concentrators are getting bigger and bigger.

And KSB Mining is ready to answer that question. And also, while we have water scarcity in one place, there are many places like Indonesia or Brazil and India where there is flooding. And there is a big demand for how will we control the water level, how will we control the level of the lakes? How will we prevent flooding to our mines. KSB has the answer to that in many places.

Digitization. This is a question, especially as the generations change, nobody wants to work in mines. So customers come to us and say, how can I monitor my equipment from far away? How can I make sure the health of my equipment is good? How can I control and operate pumps from 10 kilometers away from the comfort of an air conditioned office. So these are questions that we have answered, and I will show you some examples of how we have done that.

This power struggle is very important to understand between countries. Minerals and metals are so important as we see power struggle there, between global companies and local governments, between indigenous people and mining companies. We are small fry, but it impacts our business. So we are mindful of how we deal with all of this. We are extremely mindful of how we manage our money and our risks, but this is something important that we have to take care of.

And last but certainly not the least is technical service. People are losing competence at the mines. They cannot find young people to go and do the hard work, the blue-collar work there. That is where we step in. We have qualified employees who can step in and do these services for customers that in turn can be monetized.

So who are our main competitors? I divide this into 3 portions. One is the slurry circuits. This is where the big rocks, the solids are pumped. The big 3, we are Metso and FLSmidth. I told you earlier that we are #2 in that group. So we are a solid #2 and pushing hard for #1. Dewatering, I told you flood control, water is always -- when you dig, you're going to hit the water table and water has to be taken out. So Xylem, Surumi, Grindex are some competitors that we face. And there's a lot of process water. And sometimes you also have acids. For example, in gold, you do leaching, acid leaching in order to extract the gold. So there, you have competitors like Flowserve [indiscernible] gold pumping.

Now the mining market, like a lot of other things, is also highly commoditized. So you have a lot of fragmented local manufacturers in China, in South Africa, in Asia, in India, who also participate. They form a very large portion. Sometimes we really don't work there. But in many cases, we are faced with these smaller manufacturers in a very fragmented market. So what are the key opportunities and risks? We divide our big mining market into 3. One is hard rock mining. So hard rock mining is copper, gold, iron ore, nickel, moly and battery minerals, lithium, cobalt, graphite, things like that. And then we have another section called the industrial minerals.

The oil sands, some of you may have heard of it, it's very particular to about 100-kilometer radius in the province of Alberta and Canada. Their oil is not available like in Venezuela or in Saudi Arabia. It is meshed in soil in bituminous rock. They have to extract it. And then with the high-pressure, high-temperature steam, they have to extract the oil from that. JW has long been a leader there, and now KSB is providing a lot of equipment there. So we have a strong leadership position in the oil sands. Phosphate started in Florida and now we also found in Morocco in Saudi Arabia, some parts of Russia, which is unfortunately not available to us at the moment.

Potash is the same. This is all necessary for agriculture. And then last but not the least, dredging. Dredging can be in lakes, ponds, rivers, ocean-going dredges in order to build, reclaim land in order to get sand. So these are 3 areas in which KSB Mining is focused on. But if I were to tell you that everything is hunky-dory, we are on a rosy path, I would be lying. There are challenges. So the main challenges, one, system integration by our competitors. They make more than pumps. So they try to put it all into a big box and say, we will take care of all of this. So that is a challenge that we have to overcome.

Geopolitics, with all these tariffs, we have all these questions about which block do you belong to? What tariffs will you pay? So these are some challenges that are beyond our control, but we have to find ways to navigate through them. And then changes in mining technology. There's always people looking at, can we move material from one point to another without using pumps. There's always research going on. So we always have a finger on that pulse. And last but certainly not the least, Chinese ownership of mines all over the world. They want access to those metals and minerals. So they go and buy those mines, and they like to provide Chinese equipment. So that is a challenge certainly for us.

So what is our strategic roadmap to 2030. First, people first. You've heard that multiple times from the Board, from the rest of my colleagues. We have a mining academy that trains people. So in front of customers, you have highly trained people, and we also engage our people to stay with us. Number two is we are exploring new markets. For dredging in aggregate, for copper, phosphate, battery minerals, we are opening up more and more fronts. The primary markets, Canada, U.S.A., Chile, Peru, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia. But in addition to that, we are getting into Morocco, into Zambia, into Ghana, into a lot of different places where there is mining.

Number three is new products. We have competitive advantages in some places, but price becomes a big factor in some areas. So we are building a whole range of new products in order to be able to do that. We're also doing a marketing branding. We want to be recognized as best-in-class and give our customers a 5-star treatment. So that's a marketing campaign that's going on. We are bringing new technologies, Internet of Things technology, which allows us to remotely monitor the health of our pumps and report to our customers. And then we have also started a global supply chain. We have a foundry coming up in India. We have a foundry in Brazil, in South Africa, where we can also produce cost-competitive product for the local markets.

So success stories. I'm just going to show you some big pictures. These are stories that we are really, really proud about. The first one, the IoT technology I told you about, you see some harnesses that are attached to this big pump. The pump is able to read those -- through those sensors and through an edge device, communicate to the cloud and call the factory or send information to the factory to tell us what that information is about. That little cartoon I created using AI is the pump calling the home and saying, this is my health. Sometimes I wish I could attach this to my children who are in college because they don't call mom and then I'm in trouble. So I wish I could attach this to the children, so their health is reported on a daily basis back home.

This is one of the largest pumps that we have sold into the oil sands. I told you in Alberta, they pump large rocks. This pump is delivering 6,000 tons per hour. They have 12 of these pumps that are delivering oil laid and bituminous rock to be extract -- for the oil to be extracted. So this is a very successful pump. I was in Canada 2 weeks back when I took this picture. So this is a great success for us. It establishes our market superiority and leadership. This is in Escondida. Escondida is a mine in Chile. It's at about 8,000 feet altitude. This pump is delivering 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes per hour with copper in it, copper and gold in it.

And we have 8 of these pumps running. These are typically operated with about 2,500 horsepower electric motors. So these pumps have been extremely successful for the customer, and we are looking for more expansions there. So these are our medium-sized pumps. They are running in a gold mine called Peñasquito in Mexico. We have over 60 of these. These are helping in the gold extraction process, very successful, been running for the last 15 years. And with their expansions, they continue to buy slurry pumps from us.

So these are the dewatering pumps I talked to you about, flood control. When coal mines get flooded to the monsoon season, they have these floating platforms that are built by KSB Indonesia. They put a slurry pump on it, and it removes the water to prevent the mine from getting flooded. This is where it all started many years ago. These are phosphate mines in Florida, where they dig up the matrix, extract the phosphate and then put the tailings back into a tailings dam. So these are long-distance pumps. These lines are about 10 miles, 15, 16 kilometers long, and they provide excellent service for the customer.

These are dredges that remove soil or sand from the bottom of lakes. And then the sand is classified and used for construction, for road laying and things like that. So this is also a big business for us. This is worldwide, wherever construction happens, aggregate business is alive and well. And this is a tall pump. It's in Australia. This is going -- is a borehole pump, UPA pump that is used for dewatering and maintaining water levels in mine sites and not allow the water to come in and flood the mine.

And then, of course, last but certainly not the least is a giant of a pump. This is on an ocean-going vessel called the Spartacus. It's owned by a Belgian company. We have 3 of these pumps. One of them is actually underwater behind the cutter that's almost half the size of this room. It is cutting rocks in order to create ports. So when the cutter cuts the rocks, these pumps pick them up and pump them to the shore. And these pumps have been providing excellent service for this customer, these 3 pumps that they have just recently signed a letter of intent with us to buy 3 more for a new vessel that they are building. So these are some success stories I want to highlight, and thank you for your attention. Appreciate it.

I'm very happy to be here presenting SupremeServ. I'm very proud to help on this journey. As said, we are somewhere in the middle of where we want to be. A great start over the last couple of years. Before that, since I was asked to also introduce myself real quick. My name is [indiscernible]. I'm working 25 years in our various roles in aftersales in the industry of automotive agriculture and now here dealing with Pumps, Valves, fluid systems. So I'm excited to lead you through our journey.

Originally, I was planning to ask you what is the term that you've heard in all those presentations. Until now, it's obvious, it's KSB SupremeServ. Dr. Timmermann elaborated why this is because this is absolutely key for the health of our company. And with that, I'm here as I'm representing all our SupremeServ global activities with an absolute clear focus on service excellence because in service, you say, do it right or do it twice, no one wants that, right? So we need to make sure that our service activities are top-notch industry-leading and driving into the right direction.

Why is that? Of course, to retain customers, to make customers happy and to make sure they stay with us. But as I said, there's also another reason. I don't bore you with the financials you have seen them. But I'm proud to say last year already, order intake is above EUR 1 billion with 3,500 SupremeServ colleagues. And of course, looking at EBIT, it was closed already discussed already. It's a big portion of our company. Hence, we need to do the right things, not only today, but also for the future. We need to work with Dr. Bross and his team on the technology side, making sure that we are on top of things that we are connected, that we know how our pumps are doing because, of course, if we get data from the pumps, we get the aftersales business.

Just to mention one example here. What's our regional focus? Of course, it was also mentioned, we are truly global around the world with the impact of Russia these days, but the rest of the world. We are very active with our own service technicians, with partners, making sure that we are close to our customers and to our operations because also there, uptime is key. None of our customers wants downtime. None of our customers wants unexpected downtime because that is highly impacting their operation. And that, of course, what we are focusing in day in and day out.

Right now, obviously, we are very strong in Europe and growing, as you heard earlier in Asia Pacific and in the Americas with all those challenges that Stephan Timmermann elaborated at the beginning. But due to our setup, we fight them, and I think we're doing great compared to our competition. Talking about competition, what is our competition? If we talk about SupremeServ, we have various competition that we face. One is, of course, the other pump manufacturers, right? That's a natural competition. That's what we have to fight, right?

On top of that, what we are seeing, and I specifically put the company of Hydro here are those independent service players. What do they do? They also want to service pumps, all sorts of pumps. They come up also with digital solutions, putting their sensors on our pumps, for example. Do we like it? Not really because it's the same. If there are sensors on our pump, there's a certain risk for our SupremeServ business that we don't want. That's why on the technology side, we need to be cutting edge.

And we, of course, also have customers that are doing their own service activities. And that is, of course, what we support. At least in this scenario, we typically sell our parts. But we have various types of customers that we need to deal with and various demands that we need to fulfill. So from that perspective, it's slightly different if you compare that to automotive, for example.

But the good news on this one is as much as other pump manufacturers want to go on our pumps, we can do the same in return. So obviously, we are not only looking on KSB pumps, but we also are in a position to service others. And I always put myself into the shoes of the customer. Customers typically don't want to deal with too many service providers. That is a plus for us typically if we do the job right, if we are ahead of competition. And that's why we focus not only on KSB pumps, but also on others.

How we do that, I will talk in a minute. Just a little bit more facts. I mentioned already 3,500 people working in the SupremeServ world. We, by now, have more than 190 service centers around the world that we do ourselves. We have 10 SupremeServ academies. Rajiv was already mentioning the one in India that we also invest into. Why is that? Because obviously, enabling our people is key in this game. I'd also like to highlight our additive manufacturing facility that we have in Germany here in Pegnitz, which, of course, gives us some flexibility on producing parts and being fast in case needed.

Nevertheless, our world is changing. And that means we always need to make sure that we are ready for those changing market demands from the different big directional changes that we are seeing. Just mentioning a few nuclear business, which is very good for us. We have countries that stopped completely like Germany, obviously, not so good for us. Then we have the conventional power plants same thing also going into the direction that we don't favor too much.

But therefore, we look into other alternatives opportunities where we do not only sell pumps, but make sure that we service them and that we actually provide additional value to our customers. How we do that? I will elaborate a little bit later. But I mentioned, for us, it's key that we have the right people, that we have the right workforce. And this is exactly why we put quite some focus on what we call the KSB SupremeServ Academy.

As said, we have 10 around the world. And the target of this academy is not only enabling our own people. That is, of course, absolutely important. That's what we do with people around the world. But we also use that for strengthening our customer relationship because we also offer those trainings for our customers. How to operate pumps, how to make sure they have a good life, how to optimize them in the various environments. And typically, this is where we see a very strong customer relationship. If we help them enabling their -- 10 minutes, okay. Thank you, Sonja. If we help them enabling their people, they typically come back with questions. There is a strong relationship. They typically buy our parts. So that is one of the major focus that we do.

And of course, we need to make sure that we deliver standardized, unique, supreme service around the world. And this for us is one of the tools how we enable the people to ensure that if they are being called and say, KSB SupremeServ service that the quality is there, that people know what to do and that they know how to do it fast because speed is obviously one of the key drivers when it comes to service, especially when it comes to unplanned service and that we also have, of course.

But with the Academy, we had some challenges because we're a global company. We have people that do not necessarily speak English and German. And in the past, most of our trainings were in English and German. That means you have stuff that is very difficult to reach. And in order to overcome that, luckily today, there is the technology that we can use in order to overcome that, in order to provide the training in 25 different languages.

And therefore, we upgraded the whole academy with the help of artificial intelligence. We created virtual people that are doing the training that can speak all sorts of languages, all sorts of languages that we want them to speak, and that is why we initiated a new sales excellence initiative with the help of the academy and the respective trainings, making sure that everybody who has customer contact gets the information, what do we have to offer on the SupremeServ side, what is relevant for the specific customers so that we ensure that whoever has customer contact knows what they can sell.

And that is an upgrade that we [Audio Gap] so this is obviously not a real person. And this person can speak, I said, 30, 40 different languages with very limited effort, we bring those messages in the organization, making sure that we are fast, making sure that we are to the point and that people know what they can sell. And of course, we do not also do that ourselves, but we also work with our business partners, sales and service partners. We have almost 800 around the world. Also there, we use training because we want to make sure that they are up for the job.

And we continue, as Ralf Kannefass mentioned in his presentation, we continue that growth because for us, that is a very important part of our growth strategy that we have ahead of us, obviously, not only on the pump side, but of course, also on the SupremeServ side. What is our goal? Our goal are our products, knowing where they are. We are on a journey to find them because in the old days, it was not too common to make sure that we know where all our pumps are.

We have initiated this initiative, which we call registered products. We have established a digital tool where we can not only find them, measure whether they are doing okay or not and get the geolocation. We then can compare it with our data that we have. And guess what, we generate business right through this approach, right, through that. Just one example that we had recently, late 2024, we were finding some pumps in North America.

We were sending our team over there. Customer was very happy. It was serviced by independent players the last couple of years. We took over. Already now we have SupremeServ business of more than 2 million generated with this customer alone. So that's what makes me optimistic that we can continue that journey and that it has a very, very positive additional impact supporting our growth story. Stephan Bross already mentioned the monitoring centers that we have around the world.

Also there, we are extremely closely working with the team of Stephan Bross making sure that we also continue to develop next solution. But there, we definitely drive into the direction that we do not only put those sensors on guards that -- on pumps that are out there in the field already, but that we get to the point where we put them on straight from the factory because also here, the more we connect our pumps, the safer our aftersales business is. There is the next level coming in 2026. So that helps us ensuring our business.

I said already, we also tap into new businesses. One of our customers is helping with the transformation that we see in the energy business, and they were asking us if we want to support that meaning we had to establish a service center in the north of Germany to be able to service offshore installations. We quickly enabled our staff because there's all sorts of certificates, safety and so on that needs to be done. But we tapped into it also a very successful business. We started probably a year ago, 1.5 years ago, now it's fully in operation. customers happy.

And of course, that is something that we want to tap into further because that's the future, and that is probably making up for the business that will go away due to the different political decisions that we are doing, that we are seeing. But also in the interest of time, I skip a little bit more here. We are focusing on what we call optimization services. What is that? We help our customers to optimize their installation. If we look at energy costs that we are facing, especially in the Western European world, that becomes more and more interesting for them.

So we help them analyzing how can the customer optimize the installation that they have, of course, with a clear focus on pumps, but not only on pumps. We tell them with our measurements, with our technology that we use there, how they can save money. And that is something where even big customers, big chemical customers, for example, had always said in the past, we can do it ourselves, ask us now for support. For me, this is showing how important that topic is, and it's also showing that we are ahead of competition there because those big chemical customers, they work typically with all the other players as well. But in the end, they decided to go down that route with us. So that's definitely showing another step into the right direction.

And typically, if you position yourself as a trusted support as a trusted service provider, there's more business to come. So right now, with this big chemical company, we are also talking about taking over additional business, not only for additional pumps, but also for additional services. And I think that is how I see our business to grow, not only looking at how can we provide spare parts, but also how can we add true value to our customers and to their operation. And that is what we are focusing on next to the traditional service that we provide.

Of course, we also do additive manufacturing, as said. There, we are ahead of the game from a technology perspective, of course, that is something that we continue to grow. And so do we on the reverse engineering side because if we focus on competitors' pumps, then typically, we need reverse engineering because buying the parts from competition is probably not the smartest thing. We can do always. We have the knowledge. We have the technology. We are ready to go. We have lots of projects with that, very happy customers because that customer then has one service provider and not multiple ones. The downside there is that, obviously, competition is trying to do that themselves.

But nevertheless, I think our positioning is there. And how do we ensure that positioning is even better? Very simple things. You have heard them all. But what we do different now is we power them with artificial intelligence. What do I mean with that? Sales approach, I mentioned it already. We enable -- we upgrade our sales force through knowledge, through additional knowledge in their local language. So we meet them where they want to be met. This will be a big game changer going forward. We do the same on the lead time reduction. We do not use AI just to do nice slides. We really put it into our processes. Example, when it comes to quotation, right now, it's a process that's relatively manual.

Sometimes it has to be manual if you don't have data from pumps that are 70, 80 years old, it needs to be manual. But all the new stuff, which we have today in our systems where the drawings are available that can be done by the machine, and that is the direction we are going to ensure that whenever a customer has a quotation, he gets immediate feedback, not in a week, not in 5 days, but like in almost no time for those standardized quotations.

So we take AI away from just knowledge management or from making nice PowerPoints. We integrate it into our processes right now with a clear benefit for the customer. And that is, again, my major driving. I want to be that we are even more customer-centric than we are today. And that is one enabler. And last but not least, we look at our processes to optimize them also with the focus on being faster in front of the customers because that we produce quality, I think everybody knows, but we need to focus on speed because quite often, competition is very aggressive, and we need to win those games by providing speed by being fast, especially in those unplanned activities, unplanned events that we have and that our customers have.

And if we then react fast, we have an even stronger customer relationship. Just a quick run through where we are, what we are doing, what we are focusing on. So I want you to take away from this message. We will be the worldwide best service for Pumps and Valves. We put the various activities into place. We were already coming from a great journey, but we ensure that we even speed up more, that we elaborate further on that journey and that we make sure that we leave competition, whether it's another pump manufacturer or the independent player behind us.

With that, we are very confident we can do that. And you saw SupremeServ as a topic around the world, all my regional and market segment presidents inhaled it. They elaborated on it, made it very transparent how important that is for KSB. And my role in this or I see it is make sure we enable the various organizations around the world with the right tools, look at where we have state-of-the-art tools already. If we look at India, there are obviously a totally different focus on digitalization. China, same thing. So...

Moving closer and closer.

I get the message. So from that perspective, thank you very much for the reminder. If there is further questions, of course, there's the Q&A session afterwards where I will be present. happy to answer further questions. Thank you very much.