TAKKT AG Stock

[Audio Gap] of TAKKT AG. The company CEO, Andreas Weishaar; and CFO, Timo Krutoff, will guide you through the presentation in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via online. And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Weishaar.

Thank you, and welcome to our earnings call for quarter 2. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Timo Krutoff, who will present our financials in detail in a few minutes. To start the call, let me give you a brief overview of our key financials in the first half of the year and our progress in implementing our TAKKT Forward strategy. Overall, we're seeing visible progress that the measures we have implemented as part of TAKKT Forward are beginning to gain traction. We're not yet where we want to be, and the market environment remains challenging and volatile, but the direction of travel is improving.

On the top line, we continued the stabilization of our business in the second quarter. Organic growth for the first half stood at minus 5.4%. This number is still affected by the deliberate discontinuation of our Foodservices bid contract business by more than 1 percentage point. Over the course of the first half, we saw clear improvement in sales development, supported by our targeted go-to-market initiatives. Excluding the bid contract effect, like-for-like growth in the second quarter was at minus 3%, which gives us confidence that the underlying business development is moving in the right direction.

Profitability was supported by a solid gross profit margin and disciplined cost management, despite headwinds from higher energy and freight costs. We continue to streamline our cost base while, at the same time, investing into processes, systems and capabilities that strengthen our business for the future. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 3.3% for the first half of the year. Looking at cash generation, the picture is mixed. Free cash flow for the first 6 months was clearly negative. However, we achieved a slightly positive free cash flow in the second quarter, and, with that, are on prior year's level after the first 6 months.

Let me also provide an update on our strategic progress. First, we continue to simplify and focus our portfolio with the divestment of XXLhoreca at the end of June. We will come back to this in more detail on the next slides. Second, we're increasingly seeing encouraging results from our go-to-market growth initiatives. The continued stabilization in Industrial & Packaging and the improved development at OF&D indicate that the commercial measures we implemented are starting to translate into better business performance.

And third, our performance initiatives remain on track. The savings we're realizing through a leaner operating model and more efficient processes gives us the flexibility to keep investing in the business while improving profitability and cash generation over time. So while the overall environment remains far from easy, we see increasing evidence that our actions are delivering results. The improvements are gradual rather than step changes, but what we see supports our conviction that we're moving in the right direction.

Let me now comment on 2 progress steps under our focus agenda in a little more detail. First, the strengthening of our core business, I&P. In May, we expanded the Management Board and appointed Helmar Hipp as a member of the Board. With this decision, we're underlining the strategic importance of Industrial & Packaging, our largest business area and the core of TAKKT. Helmar has been leading the division since the beginning of the year and has already been driving a number of targeted commercial initiatives to support the return to profitable growth.

Having worked very closely with him over the past months, I'm very pleased to continue this partnership now on the Board level. Helmar brings extensive international leadership experience and a strong commercial background. In previous leadership roles at Zwilling and Cyberport, he successfully drove omnichannel and e-commerce initiatives and helped accelerate growth. These experiences are highly relevant as we continue to develop our customer-centric go-to-market approach and unlock the significant growth potential we see in Industrial & Packaging. With this appointment, we further strengthen our leadership team while reinforcing our focus on the continued development of our most important business area.

The second element of our focus agenda is the ongoing simplification of our portfolio. Over the past 2 years, we have taken several steps to sharpen the strategic profile of TAKKT and to reduce complexity in the group. End of 2024, we sold MyDisplays. In 2025, we integrated our PostUpStand brand into Displays2Go and decided to discontinue the bid contract business in Foodservices. These were all deliberate steps to exit less profitable or less strategic activities and to focus our resources more clearly on areas with stronger value creation potential.

The next step in this process was the sale of XXLhoreca, which we completed at the end of June. XXLhoreca was our European Foodservice business and generated around EUR 15 million in sales in 2025 with a negative EBITDA margin. The business had a different setup from the rest of the group, with its own commercial model, systems and operating structure. Following a careful review, we concluded that a sale to GastroHero is the best path forward.

For TAKKT, the transaction further reduces complexity and sharpens our portfolio. It also allows us to concentrate management attention and resources more clearly on our core activities. So overall, this is another consistent step in executing our focus agenda: fewer distractions, a simpler portfolio and a clearer allocation of resources to the areas that matter most for TAKKT's future development.

Let me now turn to Industrial & Packaging and provide an update on the progress we're making in our largest business area, starting with the market environment. Conditions remain challenging, particularly in Germany. The conflict in the Middle East has increased uncertainty and weighed on economic expectations across our markets. At the same time, we have seen a gradual improvement in manufacturing PMIs over the course of the first half of the year, suggesting a somewhat more constructive backdrop for industrial activities going forward.

However, developments remain uneven. While Europe overall has shown some signs of stabilization, Germany continues to lag behind. Industrial production remains weak, and many large companies, particularly in the automotive sector, have announced material job reduction programs. As a result, customer investment decisions remain cautious and demand visibility is still limited.

Against this backdrop, we are encouraged by the progress we have seen in our business. Most European countries recorded higher order intake than in the prior year, which we view as an important signal that our commercial initiatives are beginning to gain traction. However, performance varies across countries. Germany, in particular, is marked by a challenging industrial environment. So this is clearly not a mission-accomplished moment for us. We still have a lot of work ahead. But it is an encouraging step in the right direction and provides further evidence that the measures we have implemented as part of TAKKT Forward are starting to have an impact.

We're also seeing improving trends in our packaging business. The actions we have taken include the rebuilding of the ratioform brand, the formation of a dedicated packaging leadership team, and the extension of customer growth action. With these measures, we're contributing to a stabilization of performance and supporting our confidence in the opportunities within this category.

Looking ahead, our priorities remain focused on execution. Under our go-to-market boost program, we're deliberately concentrating on initiatives that can generate a direct impact on order intake and sales in the current environment. This includes a strong focus on customer reactivation and on deepening relationships with existing customers. We are allocating marketing spend more selectively towards channels where we see an immediate commercial return and where we can drive customer engagement most effectively.

As part of this approach, we're also increasing the use of print marketing again. In the coming weeks, we will launch a larger catalog mailing to existing customers, complementing our digital activities and supporting our efforts to stay close to the customers and stimulate demand. Overall, while market conditions remain difficult, we're seeing initial positive signs that our actions are gaining traction and that Industrial & Packaging is moving in the right direction.

Let me now move to the growth activities of our U.S. businesses, starting with the market environment. Compared to Europe, the overall economic backdrop in the U.S. has remained somewhat more supportive, with GDP growth still at a higher level. At the same time, the environment is far from easy. Inflation remains elevated, energy costs have increased following the conflict in the Middle East, and overall demand across our end markets continues to be restrained. As a result, customers remain cautious and continue to scrutinize investment decisions carefully.

Looking at our individual markets, in office furniture, spending remains subdued. In displays and promotional products, demand remains dependent on marketing budgets and event-related spending. And in Foodservice, market conditions remain challenging as operators continue to balance cost pressures with a cautious customer environment. Against this backdrop, the Restaurant Performance Index moved around the expansion threshold of 100 points during the first half of the year and stood at 100.1 points in May, indicating a market that is stable but not yet showing meaningful growth momentum.

Next, let's now look at the progress we've achieved, starting with NBF. NBF delivered a strong performance in the first half and clearly remains the best-performing part of our U.S. portfolio. We continue to gain traction with our commercial initiatives and achieve positive growth. This development is being supported by the investments we've made in our sales capabilities, the continued expansion of our commercial organization, and our strong customer focus. Going forward, we will further strengthen the sales organization, expand customer acquisition activities, and continue to improve commercial productivity. At the same time, we will continue to invest selectively in the business to support sustainable, profitable growth.

Turning to Displays2Go. After the positive development we saw during much of last year, performance at the beginning of 2026 was impacted by adverse conditions. For example, externally, snowstorms at the beginning of the year that temporarily interrupted operations. Quarter 2 development was noticeably better, while still remaining below prior year. We remain confident that the actions the team has taken to strengthen customer acquisition, improve traffic quality and enhance commercial execution will increasingly add to our top line development in the coming months. Overall, we continue to see good progress in the execution of our strategy. We're further improving our assortment, strengthening our digital capabilities, and focusing on initiatives that enhance the customer experience and support conversion rates.

Finally, let me turn to Foodservice. Foodservice, with our brands, Hubert and Central, continues to be our most challenging business. Unlike the development we discussed for I&P and OF&D, we have not yet seen a meaningful stabilization of top line performance. At the same time, our reported development with an organic growth rate of minus 13% is still significantly affected by the discontinuation of the bid contract business. Adjusted for this effect, the underlying run rate is similar to prior year at around minus 7%.

Obviously, this is not yet where we want the business to be. And while we accelerated existing and introduced new measures, we continue to execute the turnaround measures rigorously. Our priorities are clear: improving the website and call center performance, converting the chains pipeline and expanding the spare parts business. These are the areas where we see the most relevant levers to improve customer acquisition, strengthen repeat business and gradually stabilize the top line.

So looking at the U.S. development, overall, it differs across the 3 businesses. NBF continues to perform very well. Displays2Go is slightly below prior year. And Foodservice remains our key turnaround priority. Overall, however, we believe the actions we are taking across all 3 business units are improving our competitive position and laying the groundwork for stronger performance going forward.

With that, I would like to turn to the performance lever. One year ago, we communicated our target to achieve more than EUR 30 million of sustainable run rate savings by the end of 2026, and we remain fully on track to deliver this target. To date, we have already achieved roughly 2/3 of the expected savings. This progress reflects the broad range of measures we have implemented across the group and gives us confidence that we will realize the full savings potential as planned.

A key contributor is the new operating model in Industrial & Packaging, which we started rolling out in mid-2025. The objective is clear: simplify our organization, standardize and automate transactional processes and allow our teams to focus more strongly on customers and commercial execution. At the same time, we continue to expand the capabilities of our TAKKT Competence Center and further streamline workflows across the organization. These measures reduce complexity and costs, and they also improve flexibility, scalability and create a stronger foundation for future growth.

Another area where we are making good progress is the use of automation and AI. We're implementing solutions in areas such as order processing, translations and product descriptions. These initiatives help us work more efficiently, reduce manual effort and support a leaner organizational setup. Looking ahead, we continue to see meaningful potential, particularly in sourcing from best-cost countries, stronger category management and supplier consolidation, which remains an important lever that should gradually support profitability and further improve our overall cost competitiveness.

That said, not all developments are moving in our favor. Higher energy prices following the conflict in the Middle East as well as increased freight costs create headwinds. These effects partially offset the savings we are realizing through our performance initiatives. Overall, the picture is clear. Our performance measures are working, we're progressing as planned. And we remain fully committed to further improving efficiency, strengthening our cost position, and creating additional flexibility to invest in the future development of the business.

Let me finally also briefly touch on cash generation. After the expected cash outflow in the first quarter, free cash flow turned slightly positive in the second quarter. As a result, free cash flow year-to-date was therefore virtually unchanged compared with the prior year level. Going forward, our priorities remain unchanged. We will continue to focus on reducing net working capital during the second half and on improving cash conversion across the group.

In addition, we continue to evaluate options for further cash contributions. These could include selected asset disposals, for example, real estate transactions. However, let me be very clear, we will only pursue measures that make operational and economic sense and create value for TAKKT. The timing of such transactions is therefore not fixed and depends on market conditions and attractiveness of the respective opportunities. With our year-to-date performance and based on all the measures already implemented, we remain on track to achieve a positive free cash flow for the full year. And with this, over to Timo, who will present a more detailed look at our financials.

Thank you, Andreas. Let me now take you through the financials. Let's start with a brief overview for Q2. Group sales came in at EUR 228 million. Adjusted for currency, sales development was 4.1% below prior year. This means we are clearly seeing a continued stabilization. If we also adjust for the bid contract discontinuation in Foodservice, we would have been only slightly below prior year in Q2. Still not where we want to be, but definitely an improvement compared to the development last year.

On profitability, we achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.1% in Q2. This was supported by a strong gross profit margin where we saw several effects. Elevated energy prices negatively impacted freight costs and increases in some product groups, especially in packaging. Still, we were able to more than compensate these adverse effects with initial procurement savings out of our best-cost country sourcing strategy, and we had additional tailwind from the change in tariff regulations in the U.S. Together with continued cost management, this allowed us to slightly improve our margin compared to prior year.

Free cash flow was slightly positive in Q2, a clear improvement compared to Q1 and supported by the profit development and positive contribution from net working capital. Overall, we see improvements in each of our key financials. So a strong quarter, which we want to build on in the coming months. But without taking anything away from our performance, some of the tailwind we saw in profitability might not continue on the same level in H2. So we don't necessarily expect a 4% adjusted EBITDA margin going forward.

Let's now take a closer look at the group financials for the second quarter before we dive into the half-year financials in each division. I've talked about our top line performance and the continued stabilization on the previous slide. To summarize where we stand, we are not out of the woods yet, but the current trend looks promising. Looking at profitability, as you can see, the biggest detractor is the lower sales level, which reduced gross profit by around EUR 5 million year-on-year.

On gross profit margin, we were above prior year in Q2. I've already mentioned the various effects that played a role here on the previous slide. Some of these effects might be temporary and will probably not have the same positive effect in the coming quarters. But we continue to manage our cost position well, and we're able to fully compensate the negative impact from lower top line on earnings. Onetime costs were just short of EUR 5 million, up EUR 2 million from last year. They were mainly related to investments into a more efficient logistics network in Europe. As a result, EBITDA for Q2 this year came in at EUR 4.6 million.

Moving over to the first half of the year. Sales came in at EUR 454 million, 7.7% below prior year. Currency effects impacted sales by 2.3 percentage points. Organic growth was at minus 5.4%, adjusted for the Foodservice bid contract, we were closer to minus 4% in H1. On profitability, lower sales had a negative impact of EUR 15 million. Gross profit margin was flat year-over-year in H1, so no impact here. With the cost management initiatives we've implemented last year, we were able to reduce costs by around EUR 9 million and, with that, compensate a large part of the earnings impact from the lower top line. Onetime costs were slightly higher than last year at EUR 6 million. EBITDA reached EUR 9 million. The adjusted margin was 3.3%, down 1 percentage point to prior year.

Let's now take a closer look at the divisions, starting with I&P. As Andreas already mentioned, we saw a positive development here over the course of the first 6 months. While OI was already slightly positive in Q2, organic sales remained below prior year. This was influenced by below-average performance in Germany, while other regions and countries are already showing growth. Visibility here remains limited. On the one hand, we have manufacturing PMIs continuing their positive trend. On the other hand, job cuts and energy prices could negatively impact demand in the coming months.

Costs were at a similar level as last year, adjusted for one-offs with continued investment into our systems and processes. We also started to change our logistics network footprint here in Europe. We are planning to gradually transition the operational business of one of our warehouse locations to an external logistics provider to increase flexibility and efficiency. In Q2, this led to one-offs associated with this decision. Adjusted EBITDA margin for I&P was at 7.1%, down from 8.9% last year.

Let me now move on to OF&D where we saw a strong performance in Q2. While reported sales were still down year-over-year due to the currency impact, organic growth was positive in Q2 with a plus 4%, confirming the positive trend we already saw in the last few quarters. Growth was driven by very positive development with orders from business customers at NBF, while demand from other channels and the displays business remains subdued. On profitability, we see an improved gross profit margin, while cost positions were mainly at prior year levels. Onetime costs didn't have much of an impact, similar to prior year. The adjusted EBITDA margin improved significantly to 7.1%, up almost 2 percentage points from last year.

On to our third division, Foodservices. This is clearly the business where we will have a lot of improvements in front of us. Sales declined by 18.5%, impacted by currency effects from the weaker U.S. dollars and, additionally, from the discontinuation of the bid contract business. On a like-for-like basis, sales decline was similar to prior year's run rate at minus 7%. Andreas has already touched on the initiatives we are working on. We remain confident that we will gradually see an improved top line performance with increased contributions from both our parts business and the conversion of our project pipeline in the emerging chains business. On profitability, we were able to achieve substantial cost savings in personnel, marketing and other costs. Still, given the negative top line, this was not enough to keep margin levels stable. As a result, adjusted EBITDA margin was at minus 2.5%, compared to minus 0.7% last year.

Let me now cover cash flow generation in the first half of this year. Cash flow before changes in net working capital was lower year-on-year, mainly reflecting the weaker EBITDA performance. On net working capital, there was an increase in trade receivables compared to the low year-end level. Still, compared to last year, we saw less of a cash out here. CapEx was lower compared to prior year, partly impacted by a shift toward more cloud-based software solutions, which reduced the need for upfront investment spending. And in Q1, we had some contribution, not a huge one, but some at least from the sale of an office in the Netherlands.

Lease repayments were broadly in line with prior year. The slight increase you see here is due to a one-off payment where we prematurely terminated the lease of an office in Germany. In total, we now stand at the same level as prior year and continue to expect a positive free cash flow for the full year, with significant contribution in the last quarter.

Over to our balance sheet. There is no significant change since the year-end 2025. Net financial liabilities remain almost unchanged compared to year-end at EUR 134 million. Our equity ratio also didn't move much and remains at around 50%, underlining the continued solid capital structure of our group. And with that, back to Andreas for our view on the rest of the year.

Thank you, Timo. Looking at our current expectations, we confirm our guidance that we published and presented at the end of March. Still, the conflict in the Middle East remains an important factor and headwind for longer than initially expected.

Starting with the top line. As discussed before, we expect a gradual improvement in organic sales development as 2026 progresses. If you look at the first half, we already see an important indication here. Adjusted for the discontinuation of the Foodservices bid contract business, organic development in Q2 showed a clear improvement compared to Q1. That is the trend we want to build on as our commercial measures gain traction. At the same time, we want to be very clear, uncertainty remains elevated and visibility on demand across customer segments limited. Overall, we expect organic sales development to be between minus 7% and plus 3% for the full year.

Turning to profitability. We will continue executing the structural improvements initiated last year. Onetime costs related to these measures are now expected to remain slightly below EUR 10 million. This is lower than initially assumed, reflecting a better execution than expected at the beginning of the year rather than any reduction in scope. Timo talked about the tailwind we saw on gross profit margin in Q2, which will be partly temporary. This also implies that adjusted EBITDA margin will most likely not remain on the Q2 level in the second half of the year. For the full year, we target an adjusted EBITDA margin in a range of 2% to 5% for 2026. On cash, our focus remains on discipline and structural improvement. We will continue to release net working capital while, at the same time, evaluating additional options to further strengthen cash generation. Based on these measures, we expect positive free cash flow for the full year.

Let me finally address the impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The main effects we are seeing are elevated energy prices and inflation, which weigh on GDP growth and customer demand as well as on freight and product pricing. There's still uncertainty around the magnitude and duration of these effects. We've seen a high degree of volatility and elevated levels in the oil price just recently, for example. With the guidance I've just outlined, we assume these impacts to remain manageable and not worsen in the coming months. And with that, we're happy to take your questions. Over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And we do already have a raised hand by Christian Bruns.

Christian Bruns talking. Yes, of course, I can say a little bit congratulations to the improvements you have shown for the first time since a lot of quarters. My first question is on the order intake. I think it's -- you spoke that it was positive for most of the countries. I assume it's not Germany where the order intake is positive and has been positive in Q2. And I would also like to know if this positive trend in the order intake is continuing in July. We have seen improved purchasing managers' indices in the Eurozone and also in Germany. So I hope that you also see this development in the beginning of Q3. Can you confirm this?

Thank you, Christian, for your question. And as mentioned in our prepared remarks, we see in a number of countries in Europe a positive development throughout the prior months. As far as current trading is concerned and what we're currently seeing are different developments in our businesses, which, in our view, reflect the continued volatility in the overall market environment.

For the group, the current run rate is slightly below what we saw in quarter 2. In I&P, we had a relatively good order intake in July last year, so the slowdown we've seen in recent weeks has been in line with our expectations. In the U.S., we're seeing an improvement in our Foodservice division, while OF&D is not yet on the same level what we saw in quarter 2. Therefore, for quarter 3, we continue to work on executing our go-to-market activities and initiatives.

Some of these are obviously longer term, while others, which we're prioritizing, have more immediate impact. As mentioned earlier, we expect increasing contributions from these measures in the coming months. But of course, and nowadays it seems one always needs to make these statements with a little caveat: the economic environment will continue to play an important role in how fast we can further stabilize our top line.

Okay. Maybe can I continue with the question on free cash flow? Because I think I was surprised by the better improvement on the gross margin, and you also said that this could be -- could not repeat maybe in Q3. And also on Page 8, the cash flow picture chart shows that there might be a weaker cash flow development in Q3, but then a better one in Q4. Is it just by chance in this chart or will you -- are you going to prepare that Q3 will see another -- yes, some difficulties?

Yes. Timo, do you want to take this?

Sure. I can take that. I think with the cash flow, it's a good idea to also look at the development of last year. You can look at those quarters, right, because it's a pretty good comparison since we are now pretty exactly at the same amount we were negative free cash flow-wise as we were after H1 from last year. Luckily, at the end of the last year -- well, not luckily, but if you look at the trend, we did end up positive by the end of last year.

And we always have the seasonality, which is not quite the same in all of the different divisions, right? So some of them have their highest sales season right now, while I&P is a little later in the year. So therefore, we always have some net working capital effects now increasing -- still increasing net working capital a little bit in Q3, and then we usually sell off everything and get the cash in, especially in Q4.

So yes, your observation is right. We're expecting a rather -- I don't want to say difficult because -- but on the sales side, a good Q3 and then a negative cash effect out of that, and then a very positive Q4 again. So similar to last year, just that Q2 this year was a little better because we didn't end up quite as much the inventory in June as we did last year. But again, it's mainly seasonality, and we feel comfortable with a positive free cash flow for this year.

Okay. And then a last question on -- also related to the gross margin. You talked about the best country -- the best-cost country approach in sourcing. Is there still something to expect from this strategy? Or are you -- did you reap all the fruits from this approach?

No. So overall, this is an initiative that has gained significant traction, also thanks to the work of Timo and the I&P leadership team. We have seen very positive signs, and we expect further contributions to profitability from this initiative as we expand the products we stock in our warehouse and then also subsequently sell to customers. But maybe, Timo, 2 or 3 additional thoughts.

Yes, Andreas, you're completely right. So just for your analysis, I would say that is an ongoing thing where we say we're going to see more and more positive effects over the next 18 months because, of course, it takes a while to get the stuff in our warehouse, but then especially sell it, and only if we sell the product we bought cheaper, then we really see it on the profitability side.

So no, it's clearly not all the fruits are ripe. On the other hand, I've already also mentioned that we do see quite some headwind on the -- because of the higher raw material prices and the higher oil prices because of the Iranian war, which particularly hits our packaging business. So I would actually say, so far, we haven't seen in total that much. I'm expecting more over the next 18 months.

There is a question that reached us that I will read out. Following the sale of XXLhoreca, your exit from the European Foodservice project business, how much will this portfolio adjustment structurally lift the group's organic EBITDA margin starting in H2 2026? And what remaining baseline revenue should we model for Foodservices going forward?

Thank you for the question. As mentioned, XXLhoreca made EUR 15 million in sales last year. And in the second half of the year, it was approximately half that. So for the full year, we expect an impact on reported sales of a bit less than 1 percentage point overall. Please note that this does not impact our guidance as we guide organic sales adjusted for portfolio changes. As far as EBITDA margin is concerned, it was slightly negative and cash was at the same level, so slightly negative. It is upper-single, lower-double digits that you want to look at for your modeling. So on EBITDA and free cash flow level, on group level, the impact is limited.

[Operator Instructions] And since we do not seem to have any further questions, we are, with that, coming to the end of today's call. Thank you so much for your interest in TAKKT AG. A big thank you also to Mr. Weishaar and Mr. Krutoff for your presentation and your time. And should any further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. I wish you all a successful day and hand over to you, Mr. Weishaar, once again for your closing remarks.

Thank you for your participation today. We will keep you updated, and we're looking forward to speaking with you on the road or at upcoming conferences. We will publish our Q3 results on October 28. Thank you, everyone, and have a great day.

Welcome to the Q1 earnings call of TAKKT AG. I would like to welcome the company's CEO, Andreas Weishaar; and CFO, Timo Krutoff, who will guide us through the presentation in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line.

And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Weishaar.

Thank you, and welcome to our earnings call for quarter 1. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Timo Krutoff, who will present our financials in detail in a few minutes. To start the call, let me briefly talk about the current macro picture and key financials as well as give you a short strategy update.

As we entered 2026, we already assumed continuation of a highly volatile and uncertain economic environment, and this has broadly materialized. What we did not anticipate was the outbreak of the Iran conflict and its broader implications. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that our performance is not only driven by the external environment. Over the past quarters, we have been consistently addressing internal challenges and improving our operational setup, and we're seeing early signs of progress in several areas.

Looking at Europe, the macro backdrop remains weak, particularly in Germany with modest GDP growth and continued cautious investment behavior across industrial customer groups. Manufacturing PMIs have shown some recent improvement, but given the usual lag of 3 to 6 months, this is not yet reflected in our demand. At the same time, sentiment indicators such as the ZEW indicator -- for the German speakers among us, it's Zentrum fur Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung. The economic sentiment in Germany overall has weakened significantly, highlighting the fragile environment.

With the conflict, the trajectory of a manufacturing recovery has become more uncertain again given the geopolitical escalation and its potential impact on energy prices, inflation and export-oriented industries. In the U.S., GDP growth remains higher than in Europe, but the environment is also far from stable. For Foodservices, the Restaurant Performance Index is slightly above the expansion threshold, indicating some stabilization, but without a strong momentum so far.

In Office Furniture, demand continues to recover selectively by segment. But overall, investment decisions remain cautious and volatile.

To summarize, the key takeaway for quarter 1 is that the economic environment evolved largely in line with our expectations, except for the geopolitical escalation. The Iran conflict did not materially affect quarter 1 performance, but it clearly increases uncertainty for the macroeconomic framework going forward.

Let me now walk you through our financial performance in the first quarter. As we outlined with our guidance at the end of March, Q1 was expected to be a weak quarter, and that is what the numbers reflect. Starting with sales. Group sales came in at EUR 225.7 million, with organic growth at minus 6.7%, which is consistent with the run rate we have seen in quarter 4 and throughout last year.

What we see for the first time in quarter 1 is the impact from the discontinuation of the Foodservices bid contract business. This structurally reduces organic growth by slightly more than 1 percentage point. On a like-for-like basis, excluding this effect, we therefore see a slight stabilization of the underlying development compared to quarter 4 last year.

Turning to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 5.5 million, translating into an adjusted EBITDA margin of 2.4%, mainly reflecting the lower sales level. Importantly, we were able to hold the gross profit margin stable at Industrial & Packaging and at Office Furniture & Displays.

At group level, the gross margin of 39.5% is slightly below prior year, primarily due to Foodservices. At the same time, lower marketing and personnel costs helped to partially offset the top line impact, even though they cannot fully compensate for volume effects in a weak market environment.

In parallel, we're continuing to invest into the business and our turnaround activities, particularly in areas such as commercial initiatives, system and process improvements and the continued implementation of our new operating model and leaner cost structures. This will help strengthen our operational foundation and support the return to profitable growth.

Finally, on cash generation. Free cash flow was minus EUR 9.8 million, in line with our expectations and following the EBITDA development. Net working capital development was a headwind in quarter 1, mainly due to a buildup in trade receivables compared to the low year-end position.

Let's now continue with a quick look at our TAKKT Forward strategy and our progress against the priorities we've set ourselves. I will keep this deliberately short as we -- the content is largely consistent with what we discussed in more detail at our analyst conference. Let me, therefore, give you a brief update on the progress we're making across the 3 pillars of TAKKT Forward with a clear focus on execution.

Starting with Focus. Our strategy here is to further sharpen the portfolio around our core businesses, strengthen the independence and accountability of the divisions and consistently focus on activities that contribute to profitable growth.

This also means that we are actively reviewing and exiting smaller or structurally less profitable business areas. This included measures such as the sale of Mydisplays as well as the integration of Post-Up Stand into Displays2Go and the discontinuation of the Foodservices bid contract business. We will continue this process in 2026, further streamlining the portfolio and focusing our resources on those areas where we see the strongest long-term potential.

In parallel, we have strengthened divisional leadership in two important areas. At Foodservices, Keri Llewellyn has taken over as Division President. Given the challenging situation in Foodservice, this is a very important step. With Keri's deep industry experience and strong commercial track record, we clearly expect a noticeable improvement in commercial execution and performance over time, even though the environment will continue to be demanding.

At Industrial & Packaging, Helmar Hipp has assumed the role of Division President on an interim basis. Helmar brings extensive commercial, omnichannel and e-commerce experience with a strong track record in driving profitable growth, simplifying assortments and strengthening brand positioning. In previous leadership roles, he successfully combined customer focus with disciplined execution, exactly the capabilities we need to further accelerate in I&P.

Over the past months, I had been managing I&P directly alongside my group responsibilities. During that time, I had the opportunity to work very closely with the team, gain a deep understanding of the business and jointly define key strategic priorities and actions. With Helmar now in charge of the division, this provides strong continuity and execution, while allowing me to focus on the overall portfolio development and strategic steering of the group, while Helmar and the I&P team drive the next phase of commercial progress in our core business.

On growth, our priorities remain very consistent with what we have outlined over the past quarters. We're focusing very clearly on driving new customer wins and expanding business with existing accounts through targeted commercial initiatives across all divisions. In Industrial & Packaging, for example, we have recently won a new large enterprise customer by offering integrated service solutions, ensuring compliance with mandatory safety inspections across office and production environments, combined with full digital integration into customer procurement systems. These solutions address critical customer needs, generate initial order intake and create recurring sales potential.

In Foodservices, we are marking tangible progress in building our business with emerging restaurant chains. We have developed a solid pipeline and recently onboarded another customer with an expected contract volume of around $3 million annually. In addition, we continue to strengthen the positioning of our core brands in key markets. Overall, these measures are helping us to gradually rebuild commercial momentum, even in a cautious demand environment.

And finally, performance. Here, we continue to systematically advance our operating model. Our priorities are the further elevation of customer experience across the entire omnichannel while increasing efficiency through standardization, automation and relocation of transactional processes. As part of this, we progress the ongoing rollout of the TAKKT Competence Center and selective outsourcings where scale and efficiency benefits are clear.

In addition, we are deepening initiatives in procurement, freight and warehousing, building on the progress already made in 2025. This includes supplier consolidation, best cost country sourcing and footprint optimizations.

We're focused on quality and sustainability and sustainable structural improvements, ensuring that the measures we implement translate into lasting benefits. We expect the positive impact to build step by step and become increasingly visible over the course of the second half of the year. In parallel, we continue to make progress on our IT and systems road map, which is a key enabler for automation, efficiency and future growth.

With that, over to Timo.

Thank you, Andreas. Let me now take you through the financials for the first quarter. Starting with sales for the group in quarter 1. Group sales came in at EUR 225.7 million, down 10.3% year-on-year. The development was driven by an organic decline of 6.7% and a substantial negative currency effect, mainly from the weaker U.S. dollar.

The organic development is fully consistent with the run rate we have seen in recent quarters. And as mentioned earlier, we now see, for the first time, the impact from the discontinuation of the Foodservices bid contract business, which alone weighs on organic growth by slightly more than 1 percentage point. So as Andreas mentioned, we achieved a slight stabilization in quarter 1 sales if we look at it like-for-like.

Looking at earnings development, the largest negative driver is the lower sales level, which reduced gross profit by around EUR 10 million year-on-year. In addition, we saw slightly negative effects from gross profit margin, driven by Foodservices, while margins at Industrial & Packaging and Office Furniture & Displays remained stable. This was partially offset on the cost side. Personnel costs were lower, reflecting rightsizing and structural measures. Contrary to the rightsizing impact, we incurred higher bonus costs compared to the prior year. Marketing and other costs were also reduced, supported by FX, more disciplined spend and efficiency gains.

At the same time, we continue to see increased OpEx in line with our activities to improve processes and systems. Onetime effects came in at a very similar level to prior year at just over EUR 1 million and therefore, did not materially change the year-on-year comparison. As a result, EBITDA for Q1 2026 came in at EUR 4.4 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 2.4%.

Let me now turn to Industrial & Packaging. Sales in the division declined by 5.6% year-on-year with organic growth at minus 5.8%. This means the run rate remains very similar to 2025 in an environment where customer behavior in Europe continues to be hesitant, driven by economic uncertainty. The gross profit margin remained stable compared to the prior year, reflecting disciplined pricing.

On costs, expenses were largely in line with last year. This reflects two opposing effects. On the one hand, efficiency gains and a leaner cost base, and on the other hand, continued investment into commercial initiatives as well as systems and process upgrades. Onetime costs were very similar to the prior year at around EUR 0.5 million. EBITDA was at EUR 10 million for the division. Adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 7.8%, compared to 9.7% in the prior year, with the decline driven by the lower top line.

Let me now move on to Office Furniture & Displays. Sales in the division declined by 12% year-on-year. This headline number is significantly impacted by currency effects with the weaker U.S. dollar weighing heavily on reported sales. To provide a clear picture of the underlying development, we are, therefore, also showing the top line development in U.S. dollars. On this basis, sales were nearly stable in quarter 1 with 2.1% decrease, representing a clear improvement compared to Q4. Growth with business clients at National Business Furniture helped to compensate for weaker demand in other customer segments. Displays2Go came in slightly below prior year after recording positive growth in Q4.

On profitability, gross profit margin was slightly improved year-on-year. Cost positions were very similar to prior year when adjusted for currency effects. Onetime costs were significantly lower than EUR 1 million, well below the prior year level. As a result, adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 2.1%, compared to 2.6% last year. The decline is mainly explained by the lower reported sales level, while the underlying profitability of the business remains stable.

Sales in Foodservices declined by 21.5% year-on-year. This top line development was also significantly impacted by currency effects, but also by the discontinuation of our bid contract business as well as challenges in some of our sales channels. Organic sales were down by 13.9%. Around 6 percentage points of this decline are attributable to the discontinuation of the bid contract business. This is fully intentional and in line with our strategic focus on margin quality and volatility reduction. Beyond that, performance continues to be impacted by weak call center [indiscernible] with demand remaining subdued in the current environment.

Looking at profitability, the gross profit margin came in significantly below prior year. Despite substantial cost savings, particularly in personnel expenses, the lower gross profit could not be fully compensated. As a result, adjusted EBITDA margin declined to minus 4.9%, compared to the positive 1% in the prior year.

To summarize, Foodservices remains the most challenging part of the portfolio. The deliberate exit from low-quality project business weighs on the top line in the short term, while market conditions continue to be difficult. That said, the cost base has been adjusted. The strategic setup is now clearly focused on improving underlying performance going forward.

Let me now briefly cover cash flow generation in the first quarter. Free cash flow came in at minus EUR 9.8 million, compared to minus EUR 5 million in quarter 1 last year. This development was expected and broadly follows the EBITDA trend. Starting with cash flow before changes in net working capital, this line was lower year-on-year, mainly reflecting the weaker EBITDA performance.

Net working capital was a cash out in Q1, driven primarily by an increase in trade receivables. This is partially a seasonal effect and reflects the comparison with a very low year-end level. On capital expenditure, we saw slightly lower investments compared to prior year. At the same time, we benefited from proceeds from the disposal of noncurrent assets related to a real estate sale in the Netherlands, which provided a positive cash contribution. Lease repayments were broadly in line with prior year. The slight increase you see here is due to a one-off where prematurely we terminated the lease of an office building here in Germany.

Looking at our balance sheet, not much has changed here compared to the end of 2025. We can keep it short. Net financial liabilities increased slightly to EUR 138 million compared to year-end. This was mainly driven by the negative free cash flow in quarter 1, which, as discussed, was expected and seasonal in nature. Our equity ratio remained virtually unchanged at around 50%, underlining the continued solid capital structure of the group.

And with that, back to Andreas.

Thank you, Timo. Let me now come to the market environment and our priorities for 2026. Compared to our last call at the end of March, our overall market expectations and strategic priorities remain largely unchanged. Since early March, the Iran conflict has added a new geopolitical risk factor. We will discuss the potential implications for our guidance and risk assessment on the next slide, but it is already visible that this development has materially impacted macro expectations.

As a result, GDP growth forecasts for our core markets have been revised downward notably, reflecting higher uncertainty, inflation concerns and pressure on investment sentiment. Looking at PMIs, the signals are mixed. Manufacturing PMIs have remained relatively stable, which is important for our Industrial & Packaging activities. In contrast, service PMIs in Germany and the Eurozone have dropped, indicating weakening momentum in more consumer and service-oriented parts of the economy and declining business confidence.

Against this backdrop, our priorities remain clear and consistent. On the commercial side, we continue to push our omnichannel sales model, scaling initiatives that work well and roll out targeted go-to-market actions across divisions, regions and channels. The focus is on accelerating commercial recovery where we see traction while staying close to customer needs.

Operationally, we continue to leverage our new operating model. This means simplifying, automating and relocating processes, accelerating system improvements and further strengthening efficiency across the group. In parallel, we are continuing to work on rightsizing, procurement improvements and freight and warehouse optimizations, all aimed at structurally improving profitability.

Let me now walk you through our guidance for 2026. starting with the top line. As discussed before, we expect a gradual improvement in organic sales development as 2026 progresses. If you look at quarter 1 and adjusted for the discontinuation of the Foodservices bid contract business, organic development in quarter 1 showed a slight improvement compared to quarter 4. That is the trend we want to build on as our commercial measures gain traction.

At the same time, uncertainty remains elevated and visibility on demand across customer segments limited. Therefore, our top line guidance continues to reflect a broad range of outcomes with organic sales development expected to be between minus 7% and plus 3% for the full year.

Turning to profitability. We will continue executing the structural improvements initiated last year. Onetime costs related to these measures are expected to be slightly below the prior year level. Based on our volume planning for the course of the year and with measures further contributing, we target an adjusted EBITDA margin in a range of 2% to 5% for 2026, depending on our top line performance.

On cash, our focus remains on disciplined and structural improvement. We will continue to release net working capital while, at the same time, evaluating additional options to further strengthen cash generation. CapEx will be higher than last year, driven by targeted investments into processes and systems that support our IT road map. Based on this, we expect positive free cash flow for the year as a whole.

And with that, we're happy to take your questions. Over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] I already see that we have raised hands by Mr. Bruns. You may unmute yourself now. Mr. Bruns, can you hear us? I have sent you a request to unmute yourself. Now we can hear you.

I have a question on price increases for packaging materials. On the one hand side, they might, of course, burden your gross margins somehow. On the other hand, you are also a player in packaging. So could it be also -- could it help you raising prices for packaging products?

I can take that, I think. In general, I think, yes, of course, we are now being hit by price increases on the packaging side. And, I think, it's fairly normal in the packaging business that a lot of the supply agreements have an index associated with it. So whenever the raw material prices go up, unfortunately, we get higher prices. When they go down again, the prices lower. That's -- I wouldn't say it's a competitive advantage in either way because most of the big players have these kind of rules.

Having said that, of course, there is a -- let's see how the whole topic develops. It's always a question how much do you still have on stock or not? Do you need to do it right away? We're in tight negotiations with some of our suppliers that looking at cost breakdowns, wherever we don't have an index-based contract -- so I would say, yes, it is a topic. It's not huge so far. And yes, we'll have to look at what we do on the pricing side here. But it's the main part where we see a price increase hitting us in the whole of I&P.

And maybe can I add another question? It was not -- of course, we knew that the start of the year would be difficult. And so it's -- I would say the quarter is as expected, I would say. But you would expect an improvement for the year -- for the quarters to come. And therefore, it would be interesting how was the start in April and the start into Q2?

So thank you for the question, Christian. You're right. We saw quarter 1 broadly in line with expectations as we outlined in the prepared remarks, right? What we are seeing in April and as far as longer-term [indiscernible] order books are looking, what we're seeing in April turns out to be broadly equally in line with our expectations following the trend we've seen in quarter 1.

Maybe we should add -- let me add one additional comment to that. If I just look at quarter 1, I think we saw an improvement month-on-month. We had a very weak January. February was better. March was even better. So if we start -- so therefore, already within the quarter, I would say, it's moving in the right direction.

Thank you so much for your question, Mr. Bruns. Do we have any more questions from you? Because I cannot see any more raised hands at this moment. [Operator Instructions] but I think there are no more questions so far. And I guess, with no further questions, we come to the end of today's earnings call.

Thank you very much for your interest in TAKKT AG. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Weishaar and Mr. Krutoff, for your presentation and the time you took. Should any further questions appear at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. And I wish you all a good remaining day.

And I'm handing over to you, Mr. Weishaar, once again for your closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation today. We will keep you updated, and we're looking forward to talk to you on the road or at upcoming conferences. We will publish our quarter results on July 30. Have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the analyst conference call 2026 of TAKKT AG. The company's CEO, Andreas Weishaar; and CFO, Timo Krutoff, will guide you through the presentation in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line. And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Weishaar.

Thank you very much. Welcome to our analyst conference. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Timo Krutoff. We've already published and presented detailed quarter 4 results at the end of February. Today, we will focus on what's ahead. I will start with a high-level overview of the last 2 years to look at where we stand. Timo will then talk about our 2026 guidance before I discuss our strategic progress and priorities. 2025 was a year characterized by a weak market environment and high volatility. Across all major regions and customer segments, we continue to feel the effects of uncertainty, contracting demand and hesitant investment behavior. Despite this backdrop, we made significant underlying progress in strengthening the company and positioning TAKKT for more resilient and scalable future. During the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, we addressed and resolved a number of internal challenges.

We have, among other things, talked about the phase-out and integration of the ratioform brand, the ERP migration at FoodServices and the change in brand positioning in detail in prior calls. We brought back brands and improved positioning in the market while also fixing systems and resolving additional challenges. This helped us to achieve stabilization of the top line development in 2025, but it was not enough to return to positive growth in an overall contracting market. It's now on us to continue and to win back the trust of our customers step by step. We are now, in addition, also focusing on further structural improvements, the development and implementation of our operating model, improving core processes and upgrading our technology stack. While the external environment is difficult, we choose to invest time and resources into strengthening the foundation of this business. We upgraded workflows, enhanced systems and increased the scalability of our core processes. These improvements are not always immediately visible in short-term financials, but they are crucial levers for higher performance and profitability.

Another cornerstone of our progress is to strengthen emphasis on customer proximity. In a constantly evolving market, it becomes even more important to stay close to customer needs and to respond with tailored solutions. Across all divisions, we shifted decision-making closer to our brands and local organizations, enabling teams to react faster, implement commercial measures quicker and address the specific needs of their markets better. This divisional and regional ownership is a key part of our go-to-market approach going forward. In parallel, we continue to prioritize strategic investments in the business. This includes investments into people, technology, systems and our commercial capabilities, all of which are critical for enabling future growth. These investments demonstrate our long-term commitment to enhancing competitiveness, strengthening value-add for our customers and building a more robust organization.

Finally, we have established a leaner cost base supporting earnings and profitability. The efficiency measures we initiated and implemented, from process optimization to rightsizing and procurement improvements, will increasingly contribute to our results in 2026 and beyond. These actions increase our resilience, improve overall margin quality and ensure that we are structurally prepared throughout the economic cycle and very well positioned once market conditions improve. So while the headline financial numbers of 2025 reflect the challenges, we've made decisive progress in strengthening TAKKT, sharpening our commercial focus and improving the performance of our operating model. This gives us confidence for the path ahead. And with that, over to you, Timo.

Thank you, Andreas, and a warm welcome also to all of you from my side. Let's briefly recap the full year financials for 2025 before looking into the year ahead. Starting with the top line. Sales came in at EUR 964 million (sic) [ 964.3 million ], reflecting an organic decline of 6.6% in what remained a very difficult market environment. Demand was subdued across all major divisions, with continued weaknesses in Europe and muted activity in several U.S. customer segments.

Turning to profitability. EBITDA for the year was EUR 19.8 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 3.8%. The margin was primarily impacted by the lower top line and by a reduced gross profit margin. Finally, on cash generation, we delivered a positive free cash flow of EUR 10.3 million, driven by improved cash generation for the second half of the year. Before we talk about our guidance, let me briefly comment on the environment and our focus for 2026. The external backdrop remains volatile. We continue to see economic uncertainty, ongoing trade-related risks and persistent geopolitical tension. In recent weeks, the situation in the Middle East, especially the escalating conflict involving Iran, has added another layer of uncertainty. In our forecast, we assume GDP growth rates in our markets at a similar level to last year, with Germany hopefully seeing slightly higher growth. We will need to see how this develops in the coming months given these risks.

The picture for manufacturing PMI is similar. We've seen a positive trend over recent months and values were above the 50% threshold when we formulated our guidance. On the commercial side, we are pushing ahead with our growth initiatives across our omnichannel model, scaling what worked well for us last year and implementing additional measures where we see opportunities. We are focusing on our core customer groups, strengthening our value-add offering and accelerating commercial performance with tailored go-to-market approaches across channels and divisions. On the operational side, we continue to leverage our new operating model, simplifying, automating, and relocating processes to capture scale benefits and improve structural efficiency. Andreas will go into the specific commercial and operational actions in a moment.

Let me walk you through our 2026 financial guidance, starting with the top line. On sales, the discontinuation of the bid contract business in the U.S. will reduce organic growth by around 1 percentage point. After a modest start into the year, we expect to return to positive organic growth over the course of the year as our commercial measures gain traction. Organic sales development for the full year is expected to come in between minus 7% and plus 3%.

Turning to profitability. We will continue executing the structural improvements initiated last year. Onetime costs will likely be slightly lower than last year. Overall, we are targeting an adjusted EBITDA margin between 2% and 5%. Looking at cash generation, we will continue to release net working capital while evaluating additional options to further strengthen cash generation. We expect higher CapEx driven by investments in processes and systems that support our IT road map. Based on this, we expect a positive free cash flow for the year. Putting our full year guidance into context, we expect Q1 to be slow with sales, profitability and free cash flow coming in below prior year.

Our top line profitability and free cash flow are then expected to improve as the year progresses with a level of improvement depending on the impact of growth and performance measures as well as the overall market environment. At the same time, we assume that the economic impact related to the Iran conflict remains temporary and limited. While we have hardly any operational activities in the region, we could still be impacted by price increases for products and freight as well as by changes in GDP growth, inflation and customers' willingness to invest. And with that, over to Andreas for an overview of our TAKKT Forward strategy.

Thank you, Timo. Let me now give you an overview of where we stand with our TAKKT Forward strategy. Our strategy continues to be built around 3 core pillars: focus, growth and performance. Under focus, we're developing the TAKKT portfolio around a strong core in Industrial & Packaging. We are aligning our brands and streamlining our operating structures to serve customers with clear positioning, broader category relevance and consistent value propositions across markets. In 2025, we also improved our D2G business and will continue to leverage value creation and development opportunities for D2G.

On the growth side, our aim is to fully leverage value creation opportunities and unlock potential by expanding business with our customer base. We continue to enhance our omnichannel experience, broaden and refine our assortments and expand our service offering. Sustainability remains an important differentiator in this context as customers increasingly expect transparency and responsible choices. And finally, performance. Here, we are driving earnings and cash improvements by upgrading processes and systems and by operating more efficiently throughout the company. The new operating model, including the competence center and the increased use of technology and automation are all essential elements of this. These measures we implemented in 2025 allowed us to realize run rate savings of EUR 15 million last year, and we will continue to build on that in 2026.

Let me briefly touch on our midterm financial targets. Our overall direction and target setting has not changed, but the time line to achieve these targets has become more challenging. Given the ongoing volatility in our key markets, we now expect full target realization to be delayed by 1 to 2 years. The environment remains too inconsistent to assume a faster normalization. In terms of the individual metrics, organic sales growth, our ambition remains to grow above the market over the cycle. Market growth should be in line with GDP development. On profitability, we continue to aim for a significantly higher adjusted EBITDA margin over the midterm. The pace at which we can lift margins will depend not only on our internal execution, but also on a recovery in volumes.

This is why we're now formulating our margin ambition more flexibly. The overall goalpost remains unchanged. However, it takes the economic environment into account relative to where we are in the economic cycle. We confirm our target of a 10% margin in an economic environment with average growth. If GDP development is slower and operational leverage more limited, we target 8% margin. And in a more supportive economic environment, we remain confident that we can exceed the 10% profitability level. And finally, on cash generation, our target remains an average conversion of 50% to 60%. We remain committed to resuming substantial dividend payments as soon as earnings and free cash flow generation provides a sustainable basis for payouts. To summarize, the strategic direction remains intact and the measures we're implementing are focused on exactly these levers. Considering the current environment, we believe it is more realistic to assume a slower ramp-up before we reach the full midterm ambition.

Let's continue with our growth measures and an update for Industrial & Packaging. While we've made progress with our initiatives, the overall top line environment remains demanding and the recovery is slower than initially expected. Our ambition for the division is clear: to strengthen the business as a leading distributor for indirect MRO spend in Europe with a more focused commercial approach and a clearer product and brand offering. To move towards this ambition, we made progress with several measures during 2025. We focused on winning tenders with larger customers in our markets. One of the more recent wins was the result of a coordinated cross-functional effort with our key account management setup, where teams from product, fulfillment and sustainability work closely together to present a compelling integrated offer. With this approach, we were able to differentiate ourselves and to secure a multiyear contract with sales potential of up to EUR 5 million.

At the same time, we broadened and upgraded the product range. We added new items while removing approximately 20,000 lower-relevance SKUs as part of our 80/20 initiative. With these measures, we are broadening our assortment range while at the same time focusing on relevant products and reducing complexity from offering too many alternative options. We're making it easier for customers to navigate and are lowering supply chain procurement costs. We've increased our launch productivity by a factor of more than 3 compared to last year and generated EUR 12 million in additional sales with these products. Third, we worked on increasing brand visibility by strengthening the presence of regional and category brands. This includes the reintroduction of Vink Lisse for the Netherlands and Frankel for France where these brands have a long and successful history.

For our packaging activities, we have reactivated the ratioform brand and are continuing to strengthen our dedicated sales team and cross-functional responsibilities for this category within the I&P organization. These steps have contributed to stabilizing commercial performance in an environment that was challenging for some of our core customer groups, for example, automotive. Looking ahead, in 2026, we focus on scaling mid, large and group customers in attractive industries. We will do so by improving our regional go-to-market to position ourselves close to our customers.

Let's move on to National Business Furniture. 2025 was a difficult year for this business with the impact of DOGE-related cuts in quarter 1 and the shutdown in quarter 4. Despite the headwind, we were able to stabilize our order intake development over the course of the year. We especially saw a better development in the business segment, while government and related sectors remained weaker. Due to timing issues, the improvement in order intake was not fully reflected in our sales development in 2025. Good news is that the overall positive trend kept going into 2026. Our ambition for NBF is to position the business as the national partner for commercial furniture in North America, and that means offering something that many competitors do not. We serve both sides of the customer need.

On the one hand, we cover transactional business, individual purchase to meet an immediate requirement quickly, efficiently and with a competitive assortment. On the other, we can support project business where customers require advice, coordinated delivery of larger volumes, shipments to multiple locations and installation support from an external partner. In 2025, we focused on strengthening the transactional side of the business because this is where customer interaction starts, and where we can build momentum for project-driven opportunities.

Two measures supported this: a more strategic pricing approach, including freight integration and optimized entry-level products, which helped improve competitiveness in the transactional channel. After the upgrade of the web shop, we materially improved online performance and increased customer activity at the top of the funnel. Both actions make the transactional business stronger. And importantly, the customer contacts generated through this transactional volume give us more opportunities to expand into project work where advisory capabilities and larger orders play a greater role.

Going forward, our next steps focus on completing the sales team transformation with a fully aligned incentive structure and further strengthening lead generation to expand project revenue. The aim is to use transactional demand as a meaningful entry point and to gradually deepen customer relationships with a more complex, higher-value project solution.

Turning to Displays2go. We saw an encouraging development in 2025. While the market remained volatile, the improvements we made throughout the year led to a clear stabilization, and importantly, Displays2go returned to positive organic growth in the second half. This was a notable step forward even if the external environment continues to be inconsistent. Our ambition for D2G is to position the business as a one-stop shop for customizable display solutions, combining a strong product offering with a more service-oriented commercial approach. To support this ambition, we worked on specific measures during 2025. Our primary focus was on driving customer reengagement, and here we made visible progress. D2G is a genuine e-commerce business, and we operated with an agile team that continuously tests and iterates from AB testing on landing pages to experimenting with pricing.

This iterative approach allowed us to improve conversion rates and increased repeat buys from customers. Combined with more proactive outreach, these measures helped us to increase both customer counts and order activity over the course of the year. In parallel, we executed the first phase of our repositioning, including the launch of a revised web shop experience that better reflects our positioning as a value-add provider. This provided a clearer and more consistent brand presence. Looking ahead, the next steps are to focus on expanding customer prospecting by leveraging the strengthened brand positioning, deepening relationships with higher-value customers and continuing to refine the site experience to support sustained growth while keeping in mind that market volatility is likely to remain.

Let's move on to FoodServices, which remained the most challenging part of the portfolio in 2025. Unlike the other divisions, we did not see stabilization over the course of the year, and order activity in the call center channel, providing consultative expert sales advisory to customers, remained weak throughout. Our ambition for FoodServices is to position the business as a trusted partner for smallwares and food service equipment. To advance this ambition, we focused on specific measures in 2025. We worked on broadening the customer base, particularly by entering midsized restaurant chains with usually 20 to 300 locations and supporting them in the next step of their expansion journey. Building on our strengths of curated assortment, consultative services and on-time fulfillment, we're the right partner for openings and replenishment, and are leveraging customer touchpoints to increase repeat business.

In addition, we continue to scale our managed accounts business which is the core of our Hubert model. This business serves large operators of canteens and cafeterias and relies heavily on the value-added services we provide: project support, EDI connectivity, microsites, consistent product specifications and coordinated multi-location deliveries. These capabilities remain highly relevant for this customer group. And despite the overall market environment, the managed accounts business performed positively in the fourth quarter and ended the year only slightly below the prior year. Looking ahead, the next step is to focus on strengthening lead generation for the call center with increased web shop traffic and converting the sales pipeline we have developed with chains. In addition, we will extend private label equipment, accessories and parts offerings. While the market is not expected to help, the commercial priorities for 2026 for this division are crystal clear.

After the top line view, let's look at the performance measures we executed in 2025. Our new operating model is a key driver of speed, efficiency and scalability. In 2025, we made important progress in putting its core elements into place and establishing clearer structures that enable faster and more consistent execution. A central part of this is the strengthening of our core functions, the customer-relevant areas in marketing and category management and our central services teams. With clearer responsibilities, these teams can support the divisions and customers even more effectively and focus on commercial activities that truly add value. To enable this, we're consolidating transactional and repeatable processes in the TAKKT Competence Center.

Through standardization and technology-supported workflows, we reduce manual workload, improve reliability and create scale benefits. This frees up capacity across the organization and allows us to concentrate on activities that deliver high value for our valued customers. In addition, we work with an external partner for high-volume, highly standardized tasks. Outsourcing these activities ensures efficient handling of routine work and enables our internal teams to prioritize customer-facing activities. All 3 elements reinforce each other by centralizing and automating high-volume tasks and by leveraging external scale where appropriate. We give our core functions the focus they need to drive customer impact.

Let me briefly highlight what we have already achieved within the operating model. We have successfully established the TAKKT Competence Center and built the foundation for a more scalable structure. We have achieved substantial cost savings by streamlining processes and reducing complexity. And we have strengthened our capabilities in IT, data and AI, an important step toward a more digital and future-proof setup. In 2026, we will continue to roll out the operating model and take additional implementation steps to realize the full midterm savings potential.

Let me now briefly summarize where we stand with our performance program. In 2025, we achieved around EUR 15 million in structural run rate savings. These came in roughly equal parts from the 3 improvement areas. A significant portion came from the leaner operating model and rightsizing, where we streamlined structures, reduced overlaps and shifted more transactional work into the competence center. Another part stemmed from freight and warehouse improvements, including bundling of volumes and consolidation of warehouse footprint that reduced fixed costs. And finally, we achieved savings through higher sales and marketing efficiency, driven by more targeted spend, improved ROI tracking and a reduction in low-impact activities.

Looking to 2026, the next set of measures will build on this foundation. A key focus will be more efficient procurement, where we see meaningful potential from best cross-country sourcing, stronger category management and deeper supplier consolidation, areas that were only partially addressed in 2025. We will also continue the rollout of the operating model, migrating additional workflows into the TCC and increasing automation to capture future structural efficiencies. And finally, we will maintain our efforts in freight, warehousing, IT spend and other operational areas, ensuring that the improvements we achieve last year scale and continue to contribute. Together, these measures position us to reach the full run rate target of at least EUR 30 million.

And with that, over to the operator for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We have already received risen hands, for example, by [ Mrs. Wagner ]. Can you hear us? I don't think she can. Let me just check. Okay. I think we're going to move on to Mr. Bruns. Mr. Bruns, can you hear us?

I think it should be better now.

Perfect. We can hear you. Thank you.

You changed a little bit on your processes, I think.

Yes, we did.

Yes, Andreas and Timo, I think if I listen to what you are doing and saying, it looks -- everything looks really good. You have better processes at outsourcing, you streamlined, automated, relocated the business. It seems that the new operating model is in place. And I can't still see any really better performance, only slightly improving operating performance. And I just wonder what might be the reason. And I was wondering if you -- I think you wanted to become a customer-centric organization, and could you share with us your promoter score for your customers and employees? I mean I could imagine that employees which are in this transformation process, of course it's a difficult situation for the company, but I would also like to know what customers think about your company. Do you have any data to share?

Thank you very much, Christian. So overall, right, you're obviously correct, right? Our great employees around the world are the foundation for our continued progress, and I want to specifically thank them for really being the ones who make all of this happen. If we look at the customer net promoter scores throughout the world and we're looking at it a little bit differentiated between the different divisions, within the division of Industrial & Packaging, we're tracking around 60 CNPS, which is a very good result, but we're not done here just yet. We see opportunities to further drive this by providing even better services. If you look at the U.S. divisions, they are all well above industry standards, particularly within the FoodService division, we're seeing marks that are above 70, which is really industry-leading and speaks to the reliability and fulfillment that also our chain customers can expect from us.

Okay. This is really -- this is frustrating. Your customers are happy in U.S. FoodService and you still have double-digit organic declines, is the environment so problematic? Or is there -- I mean, who's taking share? Is it -- I mean, because this is not an industry which declines at 10% pace.

So we have -- as you know, discontinued as part of our focus activities, the bid contract business, even though it was not margin accretive to our activities. And we are committed to becoming a more focused and higher-performing company. So this weighs on our overall growth. Also, it will have an impact on the comps for this year. And then while we have resolved the technical issues, gaining back some of specifically the longer-term customers that we unfortunately lost because of prior actions takes longer than what we've anticipated.

I would agree that while the overall -- and if you look at restaurants, same-store sales, and other indexes, right? It's not a buoyant, great industry. It is not declining at the same rate we saw 2025, our FoodService business decline, why we share -- and why we've shared very clearly our disappointment. That said, we feel that we've got a very good set of measures in place. We've got new leadership in place to drive overall presence of 2 long-standing brands, Central Restaurant Products and Hubert in the industry and build on our very good fulfillment experience as demonstrated by the CNPS scores I just said.

And may I add, do you think you're still the best owner for this business?

We do see significant value creation opportunity in the short and midterm for this business that we want to be sure to unlock for us and our shareholders.

We have no other questions so far, no risen hands. So Mr. Bruns, you're raising your hand again, please.

One for Timo now.

What do I have to do? Can you hear me still?

We can hear you.

Okay, sorry. I thought I had to unmute myself again. Yes, I was -- for Timo, I don't have a question. But on I&P, I mean, this is obviously your core business and you said that you are delisting products, which might be a good idea, but I would also be interested in what new products you play, offer to your customers and the relation between new products and established products, has this changed?

So overall, right, we're continuously refreshing our assortment, offering alternatives -- better alternatives to customers, meeting emerging customer requirements, and also delisting low profitability or low demand products, and quite frankly also phasing out some products along the way. We have seen, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, a very good top line development as a result of our efforts that also allowed us to drive not only top line revenue but also acquire more repeat business.

Now to your question around the product types that we're introducing, it is including also selected consumables. It includes more innovative solutions in packaging. As you know, there is the new regulation around packaging coming on board as well as ensuring that we also provide customers with hazardous goods opportunities as regulations there continue to increase. These are just some examples. We're really focused on providing offering to existing customers that have existing and emerging needs, where we're the best partners to fulfill those.

Yes. I was not aware of the new regulation on packaging. Is it in Europe? Yes, obviously.

Verpackungsrecht.

In Germany, yes. Okay.

That's the German.

I have to look into it. Yes. Okay. That's a good idea to look into it. Maybe I have more questions then for Benjamin. And then maybe on the -- you also gave an outlook into 2026 and of course also in Q1, I mean Q1 is nearly finished. And obviously, there is no major improvement there, but could you also -- so you have had, of course, some headwinds for the start into the year. Is there also at the end of Q1, is there -- do you see a worsening trend? Or are there also some encouraging signs? Because I mean the macro environment obviously is not favorable.

Yes. So let me maybe talk a little bit about what we see in current trading, right? As we mentioned and commented on in our preliminary results, we expect a slower start to the year with a top line development for the group on a similar level to what we saw in quarter 4. Looking at the different divisions and business units, we see slightly positive trend from 2025 at I&P continuing into 2026, especially in March, also because of some timing effects, we see good development so far. At NBF, we see the stabilization we've shown for order intake in the presentation continuing. Compared to quarter 4, this is again a sequential improvement that we see in demand and order intake. Displays2go is a little bit spottier in the first months so far.

We're located in Fall River where the snowstorm hit, as you may know, that required a little bit of a shutdown for a good part of a week. And I've also talked about the volatility we see here with the current -- which currently translates to lower top line development. We've talked in detail about the measures we're implementing to get back to the positive trends we achieved last year and obviously eager to build on. FoodServices remains the most challenging business and is currently performing below the run rate we saw in quarter 4. As I mentioned, we have new division leadership here since January and are positive on the impact she's driving and remain confident to be able to gradually improve this business over the course of the year as the existing as well as new initiatives gain traction. So that's a little bit where we are towards the end of quarter 1.

Then maybe a question for -- also for Timo, what do you need to reach the 10% margin you target? So which -- what would be the steps? I mean, would this be additional cost cutting? Would you need maybe a run rate organic growth of 5%, or what do you need in your view to reach this?

Yes, I think there are, of course, both sides that are relevant. In general, I would say, we set ourselves the cost-cutting target of EUR 30 million. We're well on track on that. And by having done that, we are lowering our baseline from the cost perspective to set ourselves up for growth. So as soon as we see...

[Technical Difficulty]

I think we are just in 2 calls. Sorry, my colleague. But I hear you. Sorry. Can you mute me maybe? I can hear you.

Yes, I can mute you. Just a second.

So let me try again. So we did put a lot of effort in reducing our costs and therefore with our EUR 30 million cost-cutting target where we are well on track, also we are lowering our breakeven point. So having said that, I think the next real big lever coming from that, of course, again, we need to go the rest of the way. But coming from that, it is a lot about top line growth. With a lower breakeven point, as soon as we see additional sales, we should also see a significant part falling through to the bottom line of the contribution margin. So yes, in general, a good growth rate, and we don't give out precise guidance now over the last year and next years, but in the area a little bit above market growth would be needed to achieve the 10% margin target.

Mr. Bruns, if you have any further questions.

No, sorry. I'm fine with the answers and sorry for having 2 conferences here in this room. Sorry.

No worries. Thank you for the question and say hi to the other guy.

We have not received any further questions, no risen hands. [Operator Instructions] But I guess there are no further questions. So with that, I would say we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in TAKKT AG. And a big thank you also to you, Mr. Weishaar and Mr. Krutoff for your presentation and your time. Should any further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. And I wish you all a successful day. And handing over to you, Mr. Weishaar, once again, for your closing remarks.

Thank you so much. I echo your thanks for everyone's interest in TAKKT. Of course, the Investor Relations team and ourselves remain available for any questions. We will present our quarter 1 results on April 30. Speak to you latest then. Thank you, and goodbye.

Welcome to the Preliminary Full Year 2025 Earnings Call of TAKKT AG. The company's CEO, Andreas Weishaar; and CFO, Timo Krutoff, will guide you through the figures in a moment followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat.

And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Weishaar.

Thank you very much. Thank you, and welcome to our quarter 4 earnings call. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Timo Krutoff, who will present our financials in detail in a few moments. To start the call, let me briefly give you an overview of key developments and look back from the financial year 2025. To summarize, it was a difficult year, and we did not achieve the targets we set ourselves at the beginning of 2025. The market environment remains volatile and challenging. But we also must acknowledge that winning back customers and seeing the full impact of our commercial initiatives is taking longer than we had initially anticipated. We are progressing with our TAKKT Forward strategy and are seeing encouraging results from many of the initiatives we launched last year. I remain convinced that we're on the right track. More on that in a few moments.

Before that, let me first take a closer look back on last year. Looking at the economic environment, I want to highlight 2 topics here that you're all aware of. The first is the high level of uncertainty and volatility in the market, Liberation day and tariffs, the continuation of geopolitical conflicts, the impact of DOGE-related activities and the U.S. government shutdown, all affected the U.S. environment and, at the same time, weighed heavily on businesses in Europe.

The second topic is the continued weakness in European and particularly German manufacturing. Automotive and other export-oriented industries struggled significantly in 2025. Looking at the GDP growth. This resulted in very limited expansion in Europe with the Eurozone showing an increase of 1.3% and another year of stagnation in Germany at 0.2%. In the U.S., GDP growth remained higher at 2.1%, yet softened compared to the prior year. Despite the positive growth, job creation was very limited in the U.S. throughout 2025.

Having a closer look at the relevant markets for our divisions. Our European I&P business operated in an environment where manufacturing PMI values signal continued contraction in both the Eurozone and Germany. And where we saw a continuation, if not acceleration of negative order intake trends and job cuts. In consequence, our customers remain hesitant to invest in new equipment. In the U.S. office furniture space, we experienced a decline in demand from government customers but also from adjacent segments such as health care and education. This was a result of the DOGE activities. In Q4, the U.S. government shutdown in October and early November had a notable additional impact. Demand from business customers was also muted due to uncertainty stemming from import tariffs.

In Foodservices, the restaurant performance index remained below the expansion threshold for most of 2025 reflecting declining customer traffic at U.S. restaurants. The December report highlighted a 2% decline in restaurant sales and a 1% decline in customer traffic year-over-year. Foodservice equipment suppliers reported lower year-over-year sales in 3 of the last 4 quarters.

Let's continue with last year's results. Sales came in at EUR 946 million (sic) [ EUR 964 million ]. Adjusted for the sale of Mydisplays and foreign exchange effects, that is an organic development of minus 6.6%, significantly better than our run rate in 2024, but still a year-over-year decline. Looking at the different divisions at I&P, we saw an overall improving trend over the course of the year, especially in our focused customer segments and product groups.

Our Display business returned to positive growth and order intake in our Office Furniture business also improved steadily quarter-over-quarter. Foodservices remained more challenging with a double-digit decline in the second half of 2025. EBITDA was just below EUR 20 million, impacted by more than EUR 16 million in onetime expenses, a similar level to the year prior. The adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 3.8%, influenced by the lower top line and the lower gross profit margin. Cash generation was strong in the second half, especially in quarter 4, where we compensated for the slightly negative cash flow of the first 9 months and ended the year with a positive free cash flow of EUR 10 million. All in all, quarter 4 performance and the market environment were in line with expectations, and we closed the year at the lower end of our guidance.

As far as our capital allocation priorities are concerned, in the current environment, we are putting priority on investing into the business to accelerate and strengthen our processes and systems with investments in IT and AI as well as developing our great team. Consequently, we will propose to suspend the dividend for 2025 at the shareholders' meeting. We are committed to resuming substantial dividend payments in the future based on sustainable earnings and cash performance.

Before handing over to Timo, let me update you on where we stand and what we achieved with our TAKKT Forward strategy throughout 2025. We are focused on our core business and play to our strengths. We follow a management approach where we have allocated a greater degree of ownership and responsibility on a divisional and local level to operate even closer to our customers. This is both true for our approach within the Industrial and Packaging division as well as for how we run our U.S. businesses.

We have strong leadership teams in place. Earlier this year, we have further strengthened the division leadership for I&P and Foodservices by onboarding outstanding industry experts who both have ample experience in developing and running successful organizations and accelerating growth. Today, all leadership teams are closer to the customers, executing plans to improve our go-to-market and operating performance and are fully empowered to do so. As part of our focused efforts, we successfully wound down our Foodservice contract business. This was a very volatile business with very low profitability. 2025, we delivered most of the orders in hand for this business and stop bidding for new projects. This will help us to focus on our core strengths and better serve customers with our service and advice-oriented positioning.

And thirdly, we further developed our Displays business, integrating the much smaller Post-Up Stand brand activities into Displays2Go. This integration is the last step in a longer process, and we have made sure that we successfully moved customers from Post-Up Stand over to D2G. Going forward, this focuses our activities and streamlines our market position.

Looking at our commercial initiatives, we started to substantially improve our assortment last year. This includes our 80/20 simplification approach, where we reduced the depth of our product range and increased focus on items that really are in demand and that drive higher value. And we are step-by-step adding new products to offer our customers a wider range of categories and develop into a one-stop shop solution provider for them.

Within I&P, we revitalized the brand landscape to increase visibility and awareness in the market. For example, we reactivated ratioform as a category brand for packaging and brought back the national brands of Frankel and Vink Lisse under the KAISER+KRAFT umbrella to leverage the brand strength we have in our portfolio. This is an important lever to win back customers and generate new business in these markets.

In Foodservices, we made progress in expanding sales with private label products and restaurant chains in line with our strategy. Private label increases our relevance. It gives us better control over margin. Restaurant chains offer great repeat business potential. EUR 5 million in sales generated in 2025, underpin the potential we see with restaurant chains as does the growing lead pipeline for 2026 and beyond. At Displays2Go, we confirmed and accelerated the positive organic growth trend from quarter 3. This is supported by rebranding and the new brand positioning to pivot towards being a service provider and to unlock higher value and repeat customers. We are encouraged by the customer response and the improved commercial performance.

And finally, at NBF, we made multiple commercial improvements, including our Design My Office approach, that leverages our strength in supporting customers with advice and additional services. Even though the environment remained challenging, this demonstrates that targeted commercial initiatives can stimulate demand and lead to higher-value project businesses. Taken together, these examples illustrate that our growth initiatives are taking hold. While we expect tailwinds from the overall market environment, the traction we see in several parts of the business gives us confidence that we're moving in the right direction and that the commercial levers we are deploying will contribute more visibly as we progress through 2026.

Let me now briefly touch on the performance pillar where we continue to strengthen the foundations of our operating model and improve the efficiency of our processes. First, we successfully established the TAKKT Competence Center, this includes a captive part where we leverage scale advantages and strengthen our IT and AI capabilities in-house. We then roll this out across the group to support the divisions with expertise that helps them to operate more efficiently. And it includes and enables a non-captive part where we standardize and relook at transactional processes, improving scalability and efficiency. We see clear benefits from the setup and will increasingly move additional processes over to the TCC during the course of 2026.

Second, we made meaningful progress in automating and accelerating core processes through the increased use of AI and system improvements. We started with simpler processes like translation of product descriptions and order entry and will now move towards additional use cases. These upgrades will only reduce manual effort, but also improve reliability and speed, 2 elements that are critical for higher service quality and better customer experience. One example for more advanced use case is automation of supplier product data integration for one of our Foodservice brands.

Here, we are using AI technology to process vendor data that is provided in very different formats. We then use semiautomatic and AI-supported workflow that categorizes, enriches and translates the product information and then feeds the content into our PIM system. This significantly accelerates our time to market, reduces manual tasks and costs and helps us to boost growth by better reacting to market trends and customer demands.

Third, we streamlined our warehouse footprint in the U.K. and in Foodservices. These measures reduce complexity, lower fixed costs and help us run logistics operations more efficiently. The consolidation steps taken in 2025 are an important prerequisite to improving margin, especially in businesses that continue to operate in a critical market environment. With these efforts, we remain on track with our run rate savings now achieving more than half of our EUR 30 million goal. This shows that the structural initiatives we have put in place are delivering the expected impact. The savings are helping us partially -- to partially offset the consequences of the lower top line and create the room to continue investing in our transformation.

And with that, over to Timo for more detailed view on our financials.

Thank you, Andreas. Let's take a deeper look at the group performance in the last quarter of 2025 before we move on to the full year preliminary results as well as the divisions. In quarter 4, group sales were 10.4% below prior year and came in at EUR 228 million, impacted by the weaker U.S. dollar and the sale of MyDisplays in 2024. Organic growth came in at minus 6.7%, with continued stabilization at I&P. OF&D and Foodservice were in low double-digit organic decline. EBITDA in Q4 came in at negative EUR 7.5 million, biggest impact for lower EBITDA remains the lower top line and very high one-offs in Q4.

Gross profit margin was 0.8 percentage points below prior year, which is mainly due to one-offs related to inventory valuation. Adjusted for these effects, the gross profit margin is 0.3 percentage points above prior year. On adjusted costs, we reduced our personnel expenses and we continue to optimize and reduce our marketing costs while also investing in our transformation with systems and process improvements. The onetime costs of EUR 12.2 million in the last quarter were mainly related to the setup of the new operating model at I&P. In addition, there were some costs related to warehouse optimizations at Foodservice and in the U.K. Due to the continued top line decline, the adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 2.1%.

Now let's take a look at the preliminary full year results for the group. At EUR 964.3 million, sales were down 8.4% year-on-year. Currency effects and the MyDisplay sale negatively impacted top line with almost 2 percentage points. Adjusted for these effects, organic growth was at minus 6.6%. Both I&P and Foodservice showed a mid-single-digit decline, while OF&D is still down double digits. EBITDA was EUR 19.8 million after EUR 55.7 million last year. Again, we see the biggest impact coming from lower sales with an additional effect coming from the lower gross profit margin.

Looking at adjusted costs, we were able to realize substantial savings in personnel expenses. Significant savings and marketing expenses were compensated by increased IT prices. These were related to improvements in process and systems, but also by a switch towards increased use of Software-as-a-Service solutions. And with that, a shift from capitalizing these expenses and instead now booking them directly into OpEx. Onetime costs were at a similar level for the prior year, and therefore, again, very significant. Here, we show that we keep investing in our future setup. Adjusted EBITDA margin was at 3.8% after 6.9% last year.

Let's now have a more detailed look at our divisions, starting with our core business, I&P. In the fourth quarter, we saw a slight improvement in the top line development compared to the first 3 quarters. This is despite the environment remaining challenging for many of our customers. Germany had a tough year in 2025. At the same time, we are seeing better developments in other regions, especially the Nordics and U.K. were performing relatively well. Gross margin declined by around 1 percentage point in 2025, partly due to more attractive pricing.

Adjusted for onetime effects, I&P realized cost savings in personnel and marketing. Transformation-related costs were higher than prior year. This is true both for one-offs and for IT costs. Onetime costs added up to almost EUR 10 million. This was mostly to the implementation of the new operating model. On adjusted EBITDA, the margin was 7.7% after 11.8% last year due to the lower top line and the gross profit margin impact.

Continuing with our performance in the U.S. At OF&D, organic sales development in quarter 4 and the full year 2025 were very similar at just below 10% minus, unfortunately. We were -- we've talked about the difficult market for NBF in the last calls. As Andreas mentioned, we saw restrictive ordering from government, education and health care customers. D2G on the other hand is performing much better with now the second quarter of positive organic growth. Margin and cost management worked well at OF&D with significantly lower marketing, personnel and other costs when adjusted for onetime effects. This helped to compensate part of the top line impact on adjusted EBITDA margin.

At Foodservices, the low double-digit organic decline continued in the fourth quarter and led to organic growth of minus 6.6% for the full year. Gross profit margin is 1.4 percentage points below prior year and impacted by freight and tariff effects as well as inventory valuation. Adjusted for one-offs, cost management allowed us to compensate for some of the top line and gross margin impact. However, we remain in a very difficult situation with this business with adjusted EBITDA profitability at minus 0.7%.

Let's now continue with cash generation for the group, where we had a strong end to the year. Cash flow before change in net working capital followed the EBITDA development in 2025. On net working capital, we continue to release inventories and also saw cash in from decreasing trade receivables. Operational CapEx was lower this year, and we had a cash in of a bit less than EUR 2 million out of the sale of real estate that we no longer use in the Nordics. After the cash out in H1, we significantly improved our cash generation in the second half of the year and closed with a positive free cash flow of a little more than EUR 10 million.

Looking at our balance sheet. Net financial liabilities increased by EUR 17.5 million to EUR 131 million. Biggest impact here was the dividend payment in May. Equity ratio was impacted by the impairment but remains above 50%. We continue to operate a very solid balance sheet. As we have already anticipated in our update in November, we did substantial goodwill impairments at the end of the year. The total impairment came to EUR 125.5 million. More than half of the amount resulted from value adjustments at Foodservice. The rest is from OF&D with the adjustments at D2G being significantly higher than NBF. The remaining goodwill for the U.S. division is EUR 40 million. So the majority of the goodwill in the balance sheet was allocated to I&P, where value in use is significantly higher than book value.

And with that, back to Andreas for the first view into 2026.

Thank you, Timo. Let me give you a brief glimpse of what we expect for the current year before we open the Q&A session. Please be aware that this is just our current view on the year, and we will publish our 2026 guidance end of March.

Starting with the environment. We expect economic uncertainty and volatility to persist. This includes a continuation of geopolitical conflicts and as we have seen over the past days, also continued uncertainty around tariffs and trade disputes. We expect GDP growth broadly similar to 2025 in the U.S. and Eurozone with a gradual improvement in Germany. Manufacturing PMIs have been trending upwards at the beginning of the year. It remains to be seen if this trend will continue and stabilize. On fiscal and monetary policy, the U.S. is likely to ease conditions while Europe could remain more constrained. Against this environment, here's how we set our priorities within the TAKKT Forward strategy.

Focus: We will continue to strengthen local responsibility and accountability. Commercial decisions are taken closer to the customers and specific to each brand and location. At the same time, we will secure group synergies to further optimize cost positions and scale activities where possible.

Growth: For growth, we will push commercial measures targeted at our core customer groups. I've talked about what we are working on earlier in the call. We will also further improve procurement by expanding best cost country sourcing, notably and implement more differentiated and more competitive pricing enabled by [indiscernible] saving. And we optimized the assortment to concentrate on fast-moving items while adding new categories to better serve customers.

And last not least, as far as performance is concerned, we will continue to leverage our operating model to digitize and automate additional processes enabled by accelerated process and system improvements. And we will work on further increasing our efficiency in freight management and warehousing. This includes an integration of freight pricing into the overall pricing process and further steps to streamline our warehouse footprint.

Looking at financials, we will give a precise guidance at the end of March when we publish our annual report. Let me still share our current view on top line earnings and cash development. We expect a muted start to the year on top line with a continuation of negative year-over-year sales development. We foresee to gradually return to positive organic growth over the course of the year as our commercial measures gain traction.

On profitability, we will continue to execute structural improvements to our cost base, some of these performance measures will result in additional onetime costs from structural improvements, while potential for short-term profitability increase remains limited, we are convinced that these measures will ensure substantial margin improvements in the mid and long term.

On cash, despite higher CapEx to fund efficiency and growth and lower contributions from release of net working capital, we target positive free cash flow driven by disciplined execution and CapEx management. We look forward to sharing an update on our strategy progress along with an output into 2026 during our analyst call on March 26 with the publication of our annual report.

And with that, we're happy to take your questions. Over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you very much, Mr. Weishaar and Mr. Krutoff. [Operator Instructions] The first hand up from Christian Bruns.

My first question is on the loss-making Foodservice segment. Any specific idea of getting rid of this [indiscernible] bleeding there? Or is it the measures you set in your new operating model, Simplify, Automate and Relocate? Or are there specific measures there to stop the bleeding?

Thank you very much, Christian, for the question. As far as Foodservice is concerned, what we -- from an overall market perspective, what we're seeing are 2 trends or implications from; a, lower restaurant traffic; and secondly, higher input costs for restaurants that is driving lower demand overall as well as, obviously, price increases as providers pass on tariffs to their customers. In an overall subdued demand environment, we're not immune to this. This is what we're seeing. You know we spoke extensively about issues we had in 2024 and resolved in 2025.

Our business strategy does foresee, as I briefly outlined that we increased our private label as well as our parts activities, which will drive higher margin opportunities and more longer-term relations with customers as well as further expanding and building on the pipeline we've built when it comes to emerging restaurant chains who -- which are chains that are not only opening one but multiple stores and really require an excellent fulfillment provider such as ourselves. In addition, we obviously continue to work stringently exactly as you pointed out, also improving operations. We have consolidated our warehouse footprint. We've exited lower performing business so that we can focus our attention on what is driving future profitability and growth for this business.

Okay. If I may, a second question, just on the tariffs. I'm a little bit confused about the situation as I think some are. I know, of course, your -- the most important tariffs for you are for imports from China or from Asia. Is there anything -- has there anything changed from the judgment of the highest court in the U.S.? Or is there -- yes, is this also the 15% now, which is the new global tariff? Or -- just could you give some explanation?

So the announcements from the Supreme Court as well as from the administrations are still very recent with relevant information still unfolding. Frankly, not unlike what we experienced last year. Thus, it's very early to make reliable statements. As you can imagine, we're obviously tracking very closely the tariffs we pay, be it the fentanyl or the reciprocal or other tariffs throughout past years, and we're making relevant registrations to claim back tariffs should they be fully ruled out. As far as the 15% newly announced tariffs are concerned, it depends really on the business and import classification code if it results in a lower or a higher burden to the business.

As you correctly pointed out, and so does our calculation show that it's being equal to slightly positive. For example, for China, where we could see tariffs going from 20% to possibly 15%, and that is, as you will recall, only non-IEEPA tariffs under Section 301, those remain in place because they were from the prior administration. That said, we'll see how this is implemented in the coming days and weeks and we'll manage accordingly. This past year, our U.S. supply chain teams have become very good at this, I may say. And overall, we will continue to focus on best serving our customers by improving our business and our operations. What doesn't help our customers is yet another addition to overall uncertainty.

Thank you, Christian, for your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is yours. I will hold the room. And Christian, you have some more questions. Is that it?

Maybe can you a little bit more elaborate on this Design My Office initiative? I think this could be a good idea to become more relevant to bigger customers or to have an additional -- a good idea for an additional service element. What do you do there?

So overall, what you see us doing across the divisions is moving significantly closer to our customers with more differentiated services and -- where we also see the opportunity to set us apart from other market participants, right? We are an established omnichannel player that has an omnichannel experience, and as such for -- just to take the example of National Business Furniture where the team developed an on and offline service capability to cater to customers that do not really understand yet the requirements they have to fit out their office.

So they come with a budget requirement. They come with a certain room, size and they come with a requirement in terms of what number of people need to be fit in, what type of storage needs to be established and the like. We're able in record time to turn around requirements and allow for alterations and interactive alterations of demand, both on and offline, which we're seeing initially very positive results. And that gives us -- and I think that's part of the benefit of our business, the opportunity to also scale this initiative across other divisions, and other businesses where we sell furniture, but also leverage experiences into when we start fitting out restaurants.

Okay, that sounds promising. And then on your outlook, you said you are positive for the second half or to see a turnaround in top line there. But of course, visibility, I know I mean for the first quarter, your visibility will be much higher than on the second half. So what makes your -- could you add a little bit more flesh to the bone, what do you think what might trigger this turnaround?

So 2 things really. Obviously, we do have collected and built and implemented a lot of initiatives during 2025 that were set and are fundamentally improving business performance, as noted, in leading indicators we are tracking, be it performance of online channels, be it number of visits to customers, be it a number of project businesses. Leading indicators for tracking that we're seeing that we're generally moving in the right direction. In 2025, we saw that particularly larger project business decisions were pushed out given the overall market uncertainty.

And while some of the more transactional business held up, as we move into 2026, we're building on those foundations established. And we also put in place additional acceleration plans with a very detailed market by market, for example, in I&P program plan, where we play to our omnichannel strength, really leveraging the site of on as well as on-site offline with our customers and anything in between. Some of these initiatives and the additions we're introducing, they will require some additional time to materialize.

And please, overall, do not forget that our business starts rather slow into the year. The first couple of days in January, right, are general vacation days or holidays and then people return. So it's really starting the second half of January, specifically in Germany this year with the bridge and all bank holidays. So usually, that is then the time where we see additional progress. And also, we're bringing back notable commercial initiatives after the summer break that we are confident will equally support our commercial progress further.

Okay. And then maybe a last question to Timo Krutoff. The EUR 40 million left in goodwill. I assume they are related to the National Business Furniture, is that right?

Yes. The biggest -- you're correct. The biggest portion of that is related to NBF. So we have EUR 27.7 million out of those are related to NBF and then we have close to EUR 5 million at D2G and at Foodservice EUR 7.6 million. So there's a little bit left in all 3 of them, but the biggest portion is the NBF, yes.

Okay. I was -- that's really interesting because I think with this Foodservice performance, I was -- I thought it would already had been wiped out now, okay. But -- okay, it's only -- it's not so important this information, but just for my...

The next question has already arrived. The next hand is up from Stefan [indiscernible].

So just regarding the goodwill. I think there's still more than EUR 300 million goodwill or intangibles in Industrial and Packaging and also in Industrial and Packaging, of course, a margin decrease in 2025. And I just wanted how comfortable are you with the goodwill there? This is the main part of the intangibles? And what kind of scenario do you need to underline these intangible valuation that you got at the moment. So do you need to see an increase in EBITDA margin in 2026 in order to avoid any further write-downs?

So first of all, thanks for the question. And I think on the I&P side, we have a lot of headroom. So that was not at all anywhere close to any impairment risk so far. We do -- we could still even decrease the EBITDA margin by a couple of percentage points on the I&P side and still would be fine. So from our perspective, there is really no risk as of today. I&P still stays a very profitable business for us. That's also why -- one of the reasons why it is our core. So I don't -- again, as of today, there aren't significant changes in the environment, I don't see any risk.

Thank you very much for your question. And for now, we have no further questions. I will hold the room another moment if you should have any left, ladies and gentlemen, and that doesn't seem to be the case. We have come to the end of today's earnings call with that. Thank you very much for your interest in TAKKT AG. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Weishaar and Mr. Krutoff for your presentation and your time. Should you have any further questions at a later date, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. I wish you all a successful day and handing over to you, Mr. Weishaar once again for your closing remarks.

Thank you very much for the facilitation. And thank you, everyone, for your participation today. We will keep you updated, and we're looking forward to continuing our conversation when we publish our annual report and hold our analyst conference on March 26. Have a great day.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I warmly welcome you to the earnings call of the TAKKT AG following the publication of the Q3 figures of the fiscal year 2025. Therefore, I am delighted to welcome CEO, Andreas Weishaar; and CFO, Timo Krutoff, who will guide us through the presentation on the results shortly. Afterwards, we are happy to take your questions via audio line or the chat in our Q&A session. And with this, I hand over to you, Andreas.

Thank you, and welcome to our earnings call for Q3. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Timo Krutoff, who will present our financials in detail in a few minutes. To start the call, let me give you an update on our TAKKT Forward Strategy and key topics from the last quarter. We are progressing with our focus on the largest and most profitable division, I&P. In line with our strategic priority on I&P, I've taken over the role of Division President in September. I'm very much looking forward to now directly lead and manage our core business in Europe together with the divisional leadership team. Carsten Rumpf, my predecessor as Division President, stepped down from his role due to personal reasons.

We are very grateful for Carsten's contributions over the past year and wish him the very best in his future endeavors. In addition, we have simplified our organizational structure in recent months and moved TAKKT and I&P functions closer together and closer to the customer. To give you an example, responsibility for operations, our warehouses and logistics activities now lies on divisional level. It is thus better aligned with our divisional commercial activities while providing more flexibility and ensuring faster decision-making in a very volatile environment. On growth, we're targeting large group customers with more complex procurement requirements. Part of this is, for example, an intensified marketing push for a select group of high potential customers here in Germany. This includes customers from a wide range of industries, including automotive.

Despite the overall weak market, we were able to achieve positive growth with this group in quarter 3 by delivering an improved customer experience as well as a more specified product and service offering. Our actions include more personalized approaches, higher number and quality of site visits as well as tailored sales and marketing activities. This proves our strong position in the market and the excellent value proposition we can bring to our customers. We will continue to put customers first and increase our sales activities going forward. Second example here is D2G, where we have a strong and committed team that's doing an outstanding job in a challenging market. We're consistently improving our customer engagement, increasing second purchase rates and are growing our marketplace business.

We achieved a return to positive growth in quarter 3. We see this continuing in October and want to build on this success in the coming months. On performance, we diligently progressed the execution of our measures to improve cost structures and cash generation. On costs, we have made good progress with our new I&P operating model that we presented to you in July. We are building up capabilities in our TAKKT competence center in Hungary, and we've reached an agreement with the works council that includes the reduction or relocation of more than 100 FTEs in Europe, resulting in substantial cost savings in the coming years. On cash, we've delivered on what we promised in July and returned to positive cash flow in Q3, driven by release of net working capital. We will continue with these measures in the coming months and expect another good cash quarter in quarter 4.

Let's continue with a high-level view on our current priorities. We're operating in a challenging environment, but we are also seeing green shoots out of the commercial initiatives we have implemented. In I&P, our focus on serving large group customers with complex procurement requirements is paying off. We have secured several major project orders in recent months. One example is a customer for whom we supplied an individualized shelving system that came in at more than EUR 0.5 million. And we won or extended a number of preferred supply agreements with several customers, including well-known players from the defense and technology sector, making us an integral part of and partner in their procurement process for the coming years. At NBF, we're elevating our omnichannel approach using a broader and better aligned range of marketing channels.

This includes, for example, a rejuvenation of established print media. Here, we saw a strong performance of our newly designed summer catalog, helping us to achieve continued stabilization with this business in Q3. We mailed close to 200,000 catalogs. For the customers who received the catalog, we achieved almost 180% uplift in transactions compared to the holdout group that we used for comparison purposes. We continue our path of strengthening and better positioning our great and well-known brands. After reintroducing [indiscernible] in Europe, we're now bringing back [indiscernible]. In the U.S., we performed a successful brand refresh of our Hubert and our Central brands, playing to the unique and very complementary strength of each brand.

Hubert as the FoodService brand with personalized high-touch solutions as well as Central as the trusted partner for restaurant operators who need fast and seamless access to food service equipment. The feedback we receive and the early results we see confirm that we're on the right path with our brand strategy. Consequently, we will continue to strengthen and develop our brand portfolio in Europe and the U.S. In parallel to continuing with our commercial measures, we're intensifying our performance measures. This will enable us to keep investing in our business and improve profitability midterm. We're streamlining processes along the value chain and are increasing the use of AI throughout our organization. One example is that we increasingly automate the transfer of unstructured orders from e-mails into our systems.

This helps to not only save costs, but also to provide better customer service by fulfilling orders more quickly. Another example is that we now use AI for web and catalog design and creation as well as for the translation of product descriptions. Another area of focus is procurement. We're taking our procurement organization to the next level with improved capabilities and new leadership. We're simplifying our product range and are bundling purchase volumes with key suppliers globally. This will allow us to realize notable COG savings in the coming years. These activities make us a leaner, more nimble and more efficient company while supporting our continued investments into our business. The process and system improvements are well underway, and we expect further acceleration in 2026.

I will now continue with a recap of the current market environment. I can keep it short here and will focus on what has changed compared to July. In Europe, GDP growth remains subdued, especially Germany is lagging behind with recent estimates expecting Q3 to also show negative growth. PMIs have improved year-to-date, but are still in contraction territory. Businesses remain quite cautious and do not expect growth to accelerate substantially in the coming months. Looking at industries in Europe, automotive, chemicals and manufacturing remain weak, while defense, infrastructure and technology sectors are growing. GDP growth in the U.S. is slightly better than in Europe with an expected growth just shy of 2% for the current year.

However, a good amount of this is driven by the AI boom and investments in data centers. Looking at the underlying economy and our target markets, we see a more challenging picture. In the office furniture market, demand from government customers, but also from adjacent categories like health care and education remains muted. Volatility and uncertainty due to tariffs and the U.S. government shutdown is impacting customers' willingness to invest. In the FoodService market, we're operating in an environment where restaurants remain hesitant to expand and see lower traffic. The situation for larger players like Sodexo and Aramark is more favorable, which is also reflected in what we're seeing in our order intake.

To summarize, we're operating in an environment where we see more headwinds than tailwinds and that we expect to remain challenging in the coming months. Before handing over to Timo, let me briefly walk you through our financials in Q3. Overall, performance was in line with expectations. On the top line, our organic growth rate came in at minus 6.2%. And with that, it remained on a similar level to quarter 2. Both our I&P business and especially OF&D were able to continue their stabilization and improved their run rate compared to the previous quarter. This is despite the overall market environment, both divisions operate in. FoodService saw a negative growth after a slight positive growth in Q2.

In part, this is due to the higher level of previous year base in Q3. In addition to the top line impact, profitability was influenced by a lower gross profit margin. Here, we continue to see some effects out of freight and tariffs. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 4.3%, improved versus the very weak Q2, but significantly below prior year. I've already talked about our performance measures to improve profitability in the midterm. We saw better performance on cash generation, where we returned to positive free cash flow of EUR 7.6 million in quarter 3, supported by continued measures to release net working capital.

And with that, over to Timo for a more detailed view on our financials.

Thank you, Andreas. As we just said, our Q3 performance was what we expected heading into the quarter in July, given the challenging environment in our markets. At EUR 244.5 million, group sales were 9% below prior year, impacted by the weaker U.S. dollar. Organic growth came in at minus 6.2% with continued stabilization at I&P and a significant run rate improvement at OF&D. FoodService was weaker than in Q2 compared to a higher base in Q3 last year. EBITDA margin in Q3 was much better than in Q2. Compared to last year, we were down EUR 10 million. Biggest impact here remains the lower top line. Gross profit margin came in 1.5 percentage points below prior year. Here, we continue to see an impact from freight and, of course, the tariff effects.

On costs, we reduced our marketing expenditure, including personnel costs for sales reps. And we continued our transformation with investments into systems and process improvements, which will help us become more efficient in the future. Onetime costs were almost neutral in Q3 compared to EUR 3.6 million last year. Due to the continued top line decline, adjusted EBITDA margin was at 4.3% after 9% in Q3 last year. For the year-to-date development, it is very similar development as in Q3. Sales were at EUR 736 million, down 8% year-on-year. Effects from FX and the MyDisplays sales was a bit more than 1 percentage point. Adjusted for these effects, organic growth was at minus 6.5%. Year-to-date, both I&P and FoodService showed a mid-single-digit decline, while OF&D is still down double digits. EBITDA was at EUR 27 million after EUR 50 million last year.

Again, we see the biggest impact coming from lower sales with an additional effect coming from the lower gross profit margin. Looking at costs, this is very similar to Q3 with savings in marketing and personnel, while we continue to invest in our transformation. Development of onetime cost was favorable this year in the first 9 months. This will reverse in Q4, where we expect onetime costs of around EUR 10 million for structural improvements. Adjusted EBITDA margin was at 4.3% after 7.7% last year. Let's now have a more detailed look at our divisions, starting with the largest and most profitable business, I&P. Here, we see a continuation of the top line stabilization in Q3. This is despite the fact that the environment remains challenging for many of our customers. This is especially true for Germany and its automotive sector.

At the same time, we are seeing better order intake development in other regions, especially U.K. and the Nordics are performing well year-to-date. Gross profit margin development in Q3 remained similar to the first half of the year with a decline of around 1 percentage point. Adjusted for onetime effects, costs were similar to prior year at I&P. We executed on cost measures while continuing with our transformation push, leading to a higher tax spend, for example. Onetime costs were lower this year by around EUR 4 million in the first 9 months. This will, as I mentioned, change, however, with the implementation of a new operating model in I&P, resulting in substantial onetime expenses in Q4. Adjusted EBITDA, the margin was 8.4% after 12.2% last year due to the lower top line and the gross profit margin impact.

Continuing with our performance in the U.S. At OF&D, Andreas already mentioned the stronger quarter-on-quarter improvement on the top line. This is driven by both businesses, with NBF developing more stable in Q3 and D2G achieving positive organic sales growth for the quarter. With NBF, we continue to operate in an environment that is marked by uncertainty and restrictive ordering from government, education and health care customers. We saw order intake in September hold up relatively well. Some of this might have been forward buying due to the expectation of the U.S. shutdown. We'll have to see how this develops in the coming weeks. Margin and cost management worked well at OF&D in quarter 3 with a gross profit margin on prior year level and visible reduction in relevant cost positions.

This helped to compensate part of the top line impact on the adjusted EBITDA margin. At FoodService, we see organic growth of minus 5.5% year-to-date. After positive growth in Q2, the run rate was negative in Q3 against a much higher base and in line with expectations. Year-to-date, our gross profit margin is down around 1 percentage point and impacted by, again, freight and tariff effects. In addition, we also see an impact from lower vendor rebates due to lower purchase volumes this year. We managed down costs, but not enough to compensate for the lower top line. Adjusted EBITDA margin was slightly positive in Q3 and pretty much neutral year-to-date. Let's now continue with the cash generation of the group.

Cash flow before change in net working capital followed EBITDA development in the first 9 months and in quarter 3. On net working capital, we released net working capital in Q3 after the buildup in the first 6 months. Contributions here came out of inventories and trade payables mostly. Operational CapEx was lower this year, and we had a cash in of a bit less than EUR 2 million out of the sale of real estate that we will no longer use in the Nordics. With the positive free cash flow we generated in Q3, we mostly compensated the cash out of the first 6 months. We will continue with our cash performance measures and significantly release inventories and trade receivables in Q4. In July, we announced that we would also look at additional cost -- cash contribution opportunities.

We have evaluated measures, especially a potential larger sale and leaseback transaction. In the end, we decided against it. It didn't make sense economically. Looking at our balance sheet, it's pretty much unchanged compared to end of June. Net financial liabilities are at EUR 154 million, slightly higher than last year end of September. Equity ratio is at 54% and with that towards the upper end of our target range of 30% to 60%.

Let me conclude my comments with my personal view on our financial performance in Q3. We are operating in a difficult environment and see continued top line pressure that's impacting our profitability. We are working on structural improvements that enable us to keep investing in the business and successfully transform the business by improving processes and systems. This is not a sprint, but an endurance effort. This is a turnaround we are working on, but we remain a robust business and generate positive free cash flow. And we have a strong foundation in our customer base and a high degree of loyalty. And therefore, I'm very much looking forward on realizing our potential in the coming months and years. Thank you, and back to you, Andreas.

Thank you, Timo. Looking at the remainder of the year, volatility remains high. In this environment, we've narrowed our guidance today with an expected organic growth rate between minus 8% and minus 4%. This means that we expect quarter 4 to come in on a similar run rate to quarter 3. Our adjusted EBITDA margin will likely come in towards the lower range of the 4% to 6% margin corridor. We do expect profitability in Q4 to remain at the level we saw year-to-date, which was 4.3%. Given the current macro risk resulting from ongoing trade disputes and the U.S. government shutdown, we cannot fully rule out a profitability of just below 4% for the full year.

I've talked about our performance measures to structurally improve our cost base at the beginning of the call. We do expect notable onetime costs of around EUR 10 million out of these measures in quarter 4. This will likely result in a full year effect similar to that of the prior year of EUR 17 million. For cash flow, Timo already mentioned that we evaluated options for additional cash flow contributions and prioritize midterm profitability over short-term cash generation. For the full year, we expect free cash flow to come in between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million. Given the lower sales and earnings development, there is an increased risk for impairments towards year-end. We will finalize our multiyear plan in the coming weeks and then see where we stand.

Before we come to the Q&A, let me briefly summarize key points from today's earnings and my view on TAKKT. We're making progress with the execution of our TAKKT Forward Strategy. Due to the difficult environment and internal challenges, positive impact of our measures take longer to materialize than we expected at the beginning of the year. Our performance measures will allow us to elevate performance and increase investments into the business. We have a clear path going forward, and I remain confident that we will unlock substantial value for shareholders in the coming years. We have a clear portfolio focus addressing attractive markets with high margin potential.

We operate in a market-leading position with repeat and long-lasting customer relationships, offering opportunities to grow with our customers and beyond. We're working on performance measures for EBITDA and cash improvements and will return to improved and more resilient earnings in the coming years. We follow a clear strategy and road map underpinned by targeted investments in our capabilities and a clear execution focus. Our extensive and continuously growing sustainability offering is providing further growth opportunities. We remain committed to shareholder-oriented capital allocation, including dividends. As mentioned in July, we will decide on dividend payment for 2025, taking into account cash generation this year, expected cash flow for 2026 and CapEx requirements to further strengthen our processes and systems.

And with that, we're happy to take your questions. Over to the operator for the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you very much, Andreas and Timo, for your presentation and to dive into your numbers. [Operator Instructions] And in the meantime, we have one hand up from Christian Bruns. You should be able to speak now.

Yes. Thank you for the presentation of Q3 figures. And welcome, Timo to the management team. My questions are, could you give us an update on also your divestment candidate? So I think I haven't heard -- I wondered that D2G did a good operational development or at least okay operational development. And second, what's going on there? What are the options and plans for this business? And then you talked about the impairment risk. I think that's mainly on the FoodService, but maybe also on D2G division. And I think in FoodService, there's still a lot of goodwill in the balance sheet. Could you give us an idea how much impairment could be? That are my first 2 questions.

Thank you very much, Christian, for the 2 questions. I'll comment on D2G and then hand over as far as impairments are concerned to Timo. So as far as the D2G review is concerned, we're making progress. At the same time, we recognize that the market environment in the U.S. continues to be very volatile, which is also something we're considering as part of our strategic review. We have, as mentioned, a strong and committed team at D2G and their performance has notably improved these past months. We think there's a good opportunity to position ourselves as a one-stop shop offering a wider range of high-quality customizable display solutions. And frankly, we're not under any pressure to commit to a decision prematurely. So we will continue to work through this and keep you posted. Do you want to comment...

Yes, Christian, thanks for the welcome and for the questions. Yes, the impairment topic is a little difficult topic right now because we are in the middle of our budget planning and multiyear planning process, which we typically then present to the Supervisory Board beginning of December. So therefore, none of the numbers we're looking at right now are, I would say, well enough calculated to actually come up with a real number. But of course, since we've done the [indiscernible] impairment test last year, and we did have to do the impairment, therefore, there is no headroom left. Otherwise, that would have been different. In general, as you can see on the numbers, of course, we are in a difficult environment with all our U.S. businesses from the market perspective. And well, again, I can't talk about real numbers yet because they're just not done yet, but we are going to talk about a significantly high multimillion euro number on the impairment risk side. But again, as soon as we know enough or are fixed for that, we'll probably come back on that.

Okay. But it will be below -- it will not be a 3-digit number? Or is it too early to say this?

It is too early to say that. I can't rule it out. I can't confirm it we'll see. Again, you know how our budgeting process works, right? It's a couple of months of detailed calculations, so we're not done.

And I will move on to Thilo Kleibauer.

Yes. Hopefully, you can hear me now?

Yes.

Perfect. I've, yes, 2 questions. The first is on the gross margin. The gross margin further deteriorated in Q3, and you expect for the full year also a gross margin more below 39%. So what is the reason behind this? And is the gross margin pressure across all regions and business segments? Or is there a particular reason why the gross margin is down?

And my second question is regarding the plans for a larger sale and leaseback transaction, you said that these plans are stopped now. Maybe you can give us the background and what was the rationale to consider this and also to, yes, do not fix it.

So I'll hand over to Timo to address growth in further detail, right? As we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we're very focused on turning this business around, moving towards a solid performance in the outer years, which means we're really optimizing not for the short but really for the mid and long term. And this has been the backdrop for our decision on the sale and leaseback that Timo, maybe you want to comment on a little bit in further detail.

Sure. So let me start with the gross margin. So in general, yes, you're correct. Of course, the gross margin went down. The biggest effect on that is really the negative impact from the tariffs and the freight, especially the tariffs, even just mathematically, even if we pass through 100% of the tariff increase, the margin just from a mathematical point of view changes and is reduced. So that's the one part. Besides that, I mean, there's a short-term and a long-term answer. On the long-term effect, we do see a lot of stabilization now in the margin and also some improvement chances. I think on the pricing side over the last years, inflation was a topic.

So price increases, including tariffs were quite significant, but we also need to take care that we don't price ourselves out of the market. So what we're doing right now is focusing more on the cost of goods sold there, especially the efficient procurement is our biggest lever we are working on so that the cost savings on that side, hopefully, we're pretty confident actually on that one have a positive effect on the gross margin. So therefore, we do think that in the future, we will remain somewhere between 39% and 40% from the margin perspective. On the sale and leaseback, yes, I mean, we've done or looked at things like that. For us, we, of course, looked at different opportunities.

If we would need to raise money, there's always the potential of getting money from the banks through regular debt or a sale and leaseback and the terms of all the sale and leaseback options we saw were just not favorable. It was, to be frank, just too expensive. And at the same time, if you look at our balance sheet and our debt ratio, we are very well financed. There was really no current need for any additional financing and therefore, a very unfavorable rate of leasing it back just wasn't a good thing. It would have helped short term with the cash position, of course, but long term, we would have to pay too high amount each month, which we decided against.

Okay. But do you expect -- so you mentioned also a real estate disposal in the Nordics. Do you expect in the course of the restructuring now further facilities, which might be up for sale?

I think just to be clear, the EUR 2 million that came out of the sale in the Nordics, that's already in the numbers. So we did that. In the short term, there are no bigger effects to be expected. In the midterm, I think we'll need to see how we structure the business and what bigger restructuring effects are going to come. I'm probably going to talk about that next year.

[Operator Instructions] We have one more question in our chat box. Given the current earnings and free cash flow trends, could you please provide an update on your dividend policy? In light of the comments just made on dividends, is the previously announced minimum dividend of EUR 0.60 per share no longer valid? Can you at least confirm that the dividend will also be paid in 2025 regardless of the amount?

Thank you for the question. As I mentioned, we will discuss and decide on a dividend proposal when we have visibility on the cash generation in 2025 as well as our plans for 2026, including what our internal CapEx demands are for the coming year. As I mentioned earlier, shareholder return remains a high priority for us, while we will also make sure to continue paying out dividends responsibly and sustainably.

And we have one more hand up. Christian again.

Yes. If there are no other questions, I take the opportunity. Could you give us an update on the tariff situation and your pricing? Are you done with your pricing adjustments?

So thank you, Christian, for the question. As you know, we've got 2 factors that really come to play here. First, it's the direct impact from tariff that translates into higher freight costs, which we did see to some extent, also impacting, as Timo mentioned, our gross profit margin. And we were able to compensate that mostly through price increases, which we have done early in the process and where we also now see competition following the path of passing on the price increases in the U.S. And that said, right, there's obviously also the second indirect impact that we're seeing on the overall demand that is also driving an overall higher degree of uncertainty, right? But yes, we have passed on and will continue to pass on any price increases that we see or any tariff increases.

Okay. And maybe I would like to have a follow-up because also as I saw the questions on the dividend. I think you mentioned that you will look at this topic by looking at the free cash flow generation in 2025, which you have already gave a guidance of EUR 10 million to EUR 20 million. And also the free cash flow projection for 2026. So I would assume you would not choose a dividend, which is above your free cash -- projected free cash flow 2026 at least.

As an ingoing assumption, I think that's [ spot on ].

Yes. Okay. So because it should be sustainably...

Exactly. That's what we mentioned. That's what we're very focused on. We want -- we recognize the importance of the dividend. Having said that, we want to ensure we pay out sustainably and responsibly.

Yes, of course. And if in the years to come or maybe the short term, midterm, there will be a divestment of one of your subsidiaries, which are noncore now. Would you then consider prioritized acquisitions? Or would you also think about a special dividend you can release funds from the business by...

So our focus is on developing our divisions by improving these and then subsequently developing these over the coming years, right? We believe that there is a buy-and-build opportunity in the future for I&P primarily for -- given if you look at the market structure, indeed primarily within Europe that we will then have to see [indiscernible] against alternative cash and resource actions.

Okay. And also congratulations to your new job as more operational job, yes, even more operational.

And we have one more question in our chat box. Personnel cost was EUR 44.8 million for the quarter. Is this a sustainable level? Or was there any one-off effect?

So we didn't have any real one-offs, just timing, right? We're talking about below EUR 1 million in the quarter 3. So in general, we can say, well, sustainable on the personnel cost side is a little difficult to answer because, of course, there are a couple of changes. On the positive side, I think for the future, there is still some of the structural things we've mentioned before, outsourcing some of what we're doing and also moving some of the things we do to best cost countries, which in our case would be in Hungary.

At the same time, we are setting up, and this is what I mentioned earlier, we're in the process of now developing the budget plan for next year and the multiyear plan. And of course, we need to set up our organization ideally for the future. So therefore, again, is it sustainable? I think we'll need to look into different areas where we might invest some in the next years at the same time, use AI and different things we've implemented to reduce. But ballpark numbers, I would say it's an okay-ish assumption, might be some changes, but not huge.

In the meantime, we have received no further questions. That means we come to the end of today's earnings call. Should further questions arise at a later time, please contact Investor Relations. Thank you for joining, ladies and gentlemen. A big thank you also to you, Andreas and Timo, for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. Have a lovely remaining week, successful business. And with this, I hand back to Andreas for some final remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation today. We will keep you updated, and we're looking forward to continuing our conversation when meeting you on the road or at conferences in the coming weeks. Our quarter 4 earnings call will be on February 24. Have a great day.