dormakaba Stock price
Compare with Peer Group
📊 Peer Group
📈 What is it?
The peer group consists of the companies with the most similar business model. They serve as a benchmark for putting a stock into context.
🧮 How is it selected?
Based on similarity of business model, meaning companies from the same industry with comparable products and a similar customer base. That's the only way to compare apples to apples.
🏛️ Why does it matter?
Whether a stock is cheap or expensive is best judged by comparison. A P/E of 18 or an EV/FCF of 20 can look cheap or expensive depending on the yardstick. The peer group gives you the most accurate one: companies with a similar business model that operate under the same conditions.
🎯 What does it mean for investors?
When a metric sits below the peer average, the stock is valued more cheaply relative to its competitors, and above the average more expensively. A discount to the peer group can be an opportunity, but it can also have a reason (for example lower growth). The comparison is a starting point, not a verdict.
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Invest better with AI
StocksGuide Unlimited – full access to AI analyses
👉 More detailed insights
👉 Exclusive perspectives on opportunities & risks
👉 Clear answers to your questions
Invest better with AI
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👉 More detailed insights
👉 Exclusive perspectives on opportunities & risks
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Key metrics
📘 Market Capitalization
📈 What is it?
Market capitalization shows how much a company is currently worth on the stock market.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps classify companies by size (Large, Mid, Small Cap) and indicates their market presence and relative stability.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Large-cap companies tend to be more stable, often pay dividends, but may grow more slowly.
- Smaller firms may offer higher growth potential but come with more volatility.
- Market capitalization is a useful indicator of company size — but not a measure of whether a stock is undervalued or overvalued.
📘 Enterprise Value (EV)
📈 What is it?
Enterprise Value represents the total cost to acquire a company — including its debt and excluding its cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
(= Market Cap + Net Debt)
🏛️ Why is it important?
EV gives a more complete picture of a company's value than market cap alone and is used in key valuation ratios like EV/FCF or EV/Sales.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Enterprise Value shows the true cost of buying a company, including all financial obligations.
- It is more accurate than just looking at market cap, especially when comparing companies with different levels of debt or cash.
- Professional investors prefer EV-based multiples because they better reflect the company’s full financial footprint.
📘 Net Debt
📈 What is it?
Net Debt shows how much debt remains after subtracting a company’s available cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It indicates how dependent a company is on borrowed money and how easily it can service its debt in the short term.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low or negative net debt signals financial strength and flexibility.
- Companies with strong cash positions are better positioned in crises.
- High net debt increases financial risk — especially in environments with rising interest rates or economic downturns.
📘 Cash
📈 What is it?
Cash represents all liquid assets a company can access immediately — including cash, bank deposits, and short-term investments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It reflects a company’s financial flexibility and resilience — enabling investments, buybacks, or buffer in downturns.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A strong cash position means greater room for maneuver and crisis resistance.
- Cash-rich companies can invest, pay down debt, or repurchase shares.
- But excess idle cash might indicate a lack of growth opportunities.
📘 Shares Outstanding
📈 What is it?
Shares outstanding represent the total number of a company’s shares currently held by investors — excluding treasury stock.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s the basis for key metrics like Earnings Per Share (EPS), Market Capitalization, or the Price/Earnings ratio (P/E).
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Fewer shares in circulation typically increase earnings per share — making each share more valuable.
- Share buybacks reduce the number of shares and boost per-share metrics.
- Issuing new shares does the opposite — diluting shareholder value and lowering per-share figures.
📘 Price-to-Earnings Ratio (P/E)
📈 What is it?
The P/E ratio shows how many times a company's earnings per share are reflected in its current share price — in other words, how "expensive" the stock appears relative to its profits.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The P/E ratio is one of the most widely used valuation metrics. It helps investors assess whether a stock appears cheap or expensive compared to its earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
📊 P/E (TTM) = Based on earnings from the last 12 months (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/E may indicate undervaluation — or signal underlying issues.
- A high P/E may reflect strong growth expectations — or an overvalued stock.
📘 Price-to-Sales Ratio (P/S)
📈 What is it?
The P/S ratio shows how much investors are paying for $1 of the company’s revenue – regardless of profitability.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/S is especially useful for evaluating growth companies or businesses not yet profitable. It reflects how the market values the company’s sales.
🧮 Calculation
Market Cap = CHF2.54b | Revenue (TTM) = CHF2.81b
Market Cap = CHF2.54b | Estimated Revenue = CHF2.89b
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/S may indicate undervaluation — or low profitability.
- A high P/S can reflect strong growth expectations — or excessive optimism.
- Especially helpful when evaluating companies where profits are low, volatile, or negative.
📘 Enterprise Value to Sales (EV/Sales)
📈 What is it?
EV/Sales shows how much investors are paying for $1 of revenue — considering not just equity, but also debt and cash. It’s the capital structure–adjusted version of the P/S ratio.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s ideal for comparing companies with different levels of debt. It reflects a company's true cost relative to its revenue.
🧮 Calculation
Enterprise Value = CHF3.00b | Revenue (TTM) = CHF2.81b
Enterprise Value = CHF3.00b | Forward Revenue = CHF2.89b
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EV/Sales allows for capital structure–neutral company comparisons.
- A lower ratio may indicate undervaluation; a higher one may signal strong growth expectations or overvaluation.
- Especially helpful when evaluating high-growth companies with low or negative earnings.
📘 Enterprise Value to Free Cash Flow (EV/FCF)
📈 What is it?
EV/FCF shows how many years it would take for a company to "pay back" its enterprise value using its free cash flow.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It focuses on real cash generation, ignoring accounting noise — ideal for assessing profitability and value based on liquidity, not earnings.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low EV/FCF may signal undervaluation and strong cash generation.
- A high EV/FCF might reflect weak recent cash flow or aggressive growth expectations.
- Best suited for stable, mature businesses with predictable free cash flows.
📘 Price-to-Book Ratio (P/B)
📈 What is it?
The P/B ratio compares a company’s market value to its book value — showing how much investors are paying for each dollar of net assets.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/B is commonly used for asset-heavy industries like banks or industrials. It helps assess whether a stock is trading above or below its net asset value.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A P/B below 1 may signal undervaluation — or weak profitability.
- A P/B above 1 implies the market expects future value creation (e.g., brand, IP, growth).
- Best used for companies with tangible assets and strong balance sheets.
📘 Dividend per Share (DPS)
📈 What is it?
Dividend per Share shows how much cash a company pays out to shareholders for each share they own – usually on an annual or quarterly basis.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
DPS is the absolute value of the payout per share – crucial for income-focused investors and dividend strategies.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A stable or growing DPS often signals a strong, shareholder-friendly business.
- DPS alone doesn’t tell you how attractive the payout is – the stock price also matters (→ see Dividend Yield).
- Long-term dividend growth is often a hallmark of high-quality companies – like the dividend aristocrats.
📘 Dividend Yield
📈 What is it?
Dividend yield shows how large a company’s dividend is in relation to its current share price.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It allows investors to compare dividend payouts across stocks, regardless of price or payout size.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A stable yield can reflect reliable distributions.
- Comparing 1Y and 5Y yield shows whether dividend growth keeps pace with stock price appreciation.
- A low yield isn’t always negative – it can signal strong past performance or growth focus.
📘 Dividend Growth
📈 What is it?
Dividend growth shows how much a company has increased its dividend per share over time.
🧮 How is it calculated?
5Y: Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)
🏛️ Why is it important?
Consistently rising dividends are often a sign of financial strength and shareholder orientation – especially relevant for long-term investors.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Stable dividend growth is a sign of sustainable earning power.
- High dividend growth can significantly boost your total return:
- If a company pays $1 in dividends and increases it by 15% annually over 5 years, you’ll receive $2 per share in year 5 – twice as much as at the start!
📘 Payout Ratio
📈 What is it?
The payout ratio shows what percentage of a company’s earnings (per share) is distributed to shareholders as dividends.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps assess whether the dividend is sustainable – especially in relation to the company’s profitability.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low payout ratio means the company retains more earnings for reinvestment – typical for growth companies.
- A moderate payout (e.g. 25–50%) indicates a healthy balance between returns and reinvestment.
- High payout ratios may seem attractive but can carry risk if earnings decline.
📘 Consecutive Dividend Increases
📈 What is it?
This metric shows how many consecutive years a company has raised its dividend per share – without any cuts or pauses.
🧮 How is it calculated?
(Special dividends are not considered.)
🏛️ Why is it important?
A long track record of increases reflects financial strength, consistency, and shareholder commitment.
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A long dividend increase streak builds confidence – especially in volatile markets.
- Such companies are seen as reliable and income-friendly investments.
- The longer the streak, the stronger the company’s dividend discipline.
📘 Revenue
📈 What is it?
Revenue shows how much a company earns in total from selling its products and services – the gross income before any costs are deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Revenue is one of the key figures to assess a company’s size, market position, and growth potential.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing revenue indicates rising demand and can be an early signal of future earnings growth.
- Comparing actual and expected revenue reveals trends in the market environment and analyst sentiment.
- Note: Strong revenue alone isn’t enough – margins and profitability matter just as much.
📘 EBITDA
📈 What is it?
EBITDA stands for “Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.” It reflects a company’s operating profit before the effects of financing, taxes, and accounting depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBITDA is widely used to evaluate a company’s operating performance – especially across capital-intensive sectors or international comparisons.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high or growing EBITDA indicates strong operational profitability – independent of taxes, interest, or accounting methods.
- It’s especially useful for comparing companies across sectors or geographies.
- Important: EBITDA is not a net income figure – it excludes key costs like depreciation and interest.
📘 EBIT
📈 What is it?
EBIT stands for “Earnings Before Interest and Taxes.” It reflects a company’s operating profit after depreciation, but before interest and tax expenses.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT is a core profitability metric that shows how well the company performs in its main business operations – independent of capital structure and tax environment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT indicates strong profitability from the company’s core business – before financial and tax effects.
- It allows better comparison between companies with different debt levels or tax structures.
- Compared to EBITDA, EBIT already accounts for depreciation and reflects capital intensity more clearly.
📘 Net Income
📈 What is it?
Net income is the company’s total profit – the amount left after all expenses, taxes, interest, and depreciation have been deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the most comprehensive measure of a company’s profitability – showing how much actual profit remains after all business and financing costs.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing net income indicates that the company is managing all of its costs efficiently.
- It directly influences valuation metrics like P/E ratio and the company’s dividend capacity.
- Over time, net income trends reveal how resilient and profitable the business model really is.
📘 Free Cash Flow (FCF)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow shows how much actual cash remains after a company covers its operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High free cash flow means the company generates real, usable cash – independent of reported net income.
- It’s often the most reliable base for sustainable dividends and buybacks.
- Declining FCF can be an early warning sign – even when profits appear stable.
📘 Revenue Growth
📈 What is it?
Revenue growth shows how much a company’s sales have changed compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on forward projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected revenue ÷ Revenue in prior year − 1) × 100
Forward growth is based on analyst estimates for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Rising revenue signals growing demand, business expansion, and market share gains – especially important for growth-oriented companies.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growth is the engine of long-term value creation – especially in tech and growth sectors.
- What matters is not just current growth, but its sustainability.
- Forward projections reflect whether analysts expect continued momentum – or a slowdown.
📘 EBITDA Growth
📈 What is it?
EBITDA growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) has increased or decreased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBITDA ÷ EBITDA from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Growing EBITDA indicates improving operational profitability – regardless of financing or accounting effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Strong EBITDA growth signals operational efficiency and scalability – especially during growth phases.
- EBITDA growth can be an early indicator of margin and earnings expansion – but should be assessed alongside revenue and EBIT.
📘 EBIT Growth
📈 What is it?
EBIT growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (after depreciation, but before interest and taxes) has increased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBIT ÷ EBIT from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT growth is a direct indicator of a company’s business performance – taking into account capital intensity through depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Rising EBIT signals improving operating profitability – even after accounting for depreciation.
- It’s especially important for evaluating companies with significant capital expenditures.
- Combined with revenue and EBITDA growth, EBIT growth provides a well-rounded view of operational progress.
📘 Net Income Growth
📈 What is it?
Net income growth shows how much a company’s bottom-line profit has increased or decreased compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on analyst projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected net income ÷ Net income from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate reflects analysts’ expectations for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the ultimate measure of profitability. Growing net income signals stronger efficiency, cost control, and sustainable earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Stronger net income boosts valuation, dividend potential, and investor confidence.
- If profits stall while revenue grows, it may signal margin pressure.
📘 Free Cash Flow Growth
📈 What is it?
Free cash flow (FCF) growth shows how a company’s available cash – after covering operating expenses and capital expenditures – has changed compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Free cash flow reflects real financial strength. Growing FCF indicates more flexibility for dividends, share buybacks, and reinvestment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Declining FCF may point to rising investments, increasing costs, or weaker operating performance.
- Especially for dividend investors, FCF growth is critical – since dividends are paid from actual available cash.
- A negative trend isn't always bad, but it deserves closer attention.
📘 Gross Margin
📈 What is it?
Gross margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains after deducting the direct costs of goods sold (like materials and production). It represents the company’s “raw profit” before fixed costs, taxes, and interest.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Or simply: Gross Margin = Gross Profit ÷ Revenue × 100
🏛️ Why is it important?
Gross margin indicates how efficiently a company can produce or procure what it sells. It is a key measure of product-level profitability and pricing power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high gross margin suggests strong pricing power and efficient production.
- Falling margins may signal rising input costs or competitive pressure.
- Compared to peers, gross margin offers insights into the quality of a business model.
📘 EBITDA Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBITDA margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as operating profit before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.It reflects operating efficiency without being distorted by financing or accounting factors.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBITDA margin reveals how much operating income a company generates per dollar of revenue – independent of capital structure and tax effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBITDA margin reflects strong core profitability – before accounting distortions.
- It allows for effective comparisons across companies and sectors.
- A stable or growing margin signals efficient cost control and business scalability.
📘 EBIT Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBIT margin shows what percentage of revenue remains as operating profit after depreciation but before interest and taxes.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBIT margin reflects a company’s core profitability while accounting for capital intensity (e.g. machinery, infrastructure). It’s especially useful for comparing businesses with different levels of depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT margin shows that the company remains efficient even after factoring in depreciation.
- It’s especially relevant for capital-intensive industries.
- Stable or rising EBIT margins over time are a strong indicator of pricing power and business quality.
📘 Net margin
📈 What is it?
Net margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as bottom-line profit after deducting all costs, interest, taxes, and depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net margin reflects a company’s overall efficiency – across operations, financing, and taxation. It shows how much actual profit is generated from each dollar of revenue.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high net margin means the company is not only strong operationally but also manages financing and taxes efficiently.
- Peer comparisons reveal business quality and competitiveness.
- Declining margins despite revenue growth can be a red flag for rising costs or inefficiencies.
📘 Free cash flow margin
📈 What is it?
The free cash flow (FCF) margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as actual free cash after covering all operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This margin reflects the true liquidity generated by the business – independent of accounting rules or depreciation. It’s especially relevant for dividends, buybacks, and reinvestment decisions.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high FCF margin means a company consistently generates strong cash flow.
- It’s a positive signal for financial stability and shareholder returns.
- The long-term trend is key – a declining margin may indicate rising investments or weakening operating efficiency.
📘 Equity Ratio
📈 What is it?
The equity ratio indicates what portion of a company’s total assets is financed by shareholders’ equity – in other words, how much it relies on its own capital.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
A high equity ratio reflects financial strength and stability, especially during downturns. It’s a key indicator of a company’s solvency and long-term risk profile.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Companies with high equity ratios are generally more resilient and less dependent on external debt.
- Low equity ratios can signal higher risk or aggressive financial strategies.
- Important: Always assess the equity ratio in combination with the return on equity (ROE). This shows not just how stable the company is – but also how efficiently it uses shareholder capital.
📘 Return on Equity (ROE)
📈 What is it?
Return on equity (ROE) shows how efficiently a company uses its shareholders’ equity to generate profit. In other words: how much net income is earned per dollar of equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROE is a core profitability metric. It helps investors understand whether a company delivers attractive returns on the capital provided by its shareholders.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROE indicates that the company is using its capital efficiently and profitably.
- It’s especially meaningful for capital-intensive businesses or firms with high equity bases.
- Important: A very high ROE can also result from high debt levels – always interpret it alongside the equity ratio to assess financial health.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 What is it?
ROCE measures how efficiently a company generates profits from its total capital – including both equity and interest-bearing debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It evaluates the return on all capital employed, regardless of how it’s financed.
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROCE is ideal for comparing companies with different financing structures. It shows how well management uses capital to create value for both shareholders and creditors.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROCE means the company uses its capital efficiently – regardless of whether it's funded by debt or equity.
- The higher the ROCE compared to peers, the more value the company creates with its invested capital.
- Especially relevant for capital-intensive sectors like industrials, energy, or infrastructure.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 What is it?
ROIC measures how efficiently a company generates returns from the capital invested in its core operations – regardless of whether the capital comes from equity or debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
- NOPAT = Net Operating Profit After Taxes
- Invested Capital = Operating assets minus non-interest-bearing liabilities
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROIC is one of the most accurate indicators of capital efficiency. Unlike return on equity, it is not distorted by leverage and shows how much value is created for all capital providers.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROIC shows how effectively a company uses the capital that is truly invested in its core operations.
- Unlike ROCE, ROIC focuses only on the capital that is actively used to run the business – and that requires a return (i.e. interest-bearing).
- Especially useful when comparing companies with large amounts of excess cash or non-interest-bearing liabilities – giving a more realistic picture of capital efficiency.
📘 Leverage Ratio (Debt-to-Equity)
📈 What is it?
The leverage ratio indicates how much a company relies on interest-bearing debt (such as loans and bonds) relative to its shareholders’ equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This ratio helps assess a company’s financial structure and risk profile. High leverage can enhance returns – but also increases exposure to interest rate changes and financial stress.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low leverage ratio signals financial strength and independence.
- A higher ratio can improve returns in good times but increases risk during downturns or rising interest rate periods.
- 👉 Always interpret in the context of industry, capital intensity, and interest rate environment.
📘 Earnings per share (EPS)
📈 What is it?
Earnings per Share (EPS) shows how much profit is attributable to a single share – and is one of the most important metrics for evaluating a company's performance.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The diluted share count reflects potential new shares that could be issued through options, convertible bonds, or other rights.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EPS is the basis for many key valuation metrics like P/E ratio, PEG ratio, or payout ratio. It enables comparisons of profitability across companies, regardless of their size.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EPS captures per-share profitability and is especially useful for comparisons over time or with analyst estimates.
- Rising EPS may signal consistent growth or share buybacks.
- Important: Always use diluted EPS for more realistic valuations – especially in companies with stock-based compensation.
📘 Free cash flow per share (FCF per share)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow per Share shows how much free cash flow a company generates per outstanding share – after investments, but before dividends or debt repayments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Free cash flow is calculated as operating cash flow minus capital expenditures (CapEx).
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF per Share reveals how much real cash is available per share – useful for dividends, buybacks, or reducing debt. Unlike net income, free cash flow is harder to manipulate and often seen as a more reliable metric.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High FCF per share signals strong financial flexibility.
- It shows how much capital the company can effectively reinvest or return to shareholders.
- Particularly relevant for dividend payers and capital-efficient businesses.
📘 Short interest
📈 What is it?
Short interest indicates how many shares of a company are currently sold short – that is, borrowed and sold by investors who expect the price to decline.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It reflects the percentage of a company’s shares that are being shorted relative to the total shares available.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Short interest serves as a sentiment indicator: A high value may signal skepticism or bearish expectations – but also increases the potential for a short squeeze if prices rise unexpectedly.
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low short interest usually indicates market confidence in the company.
- High short interest can be a warning sign – or an opportunity if sentiment shifts.
- Especially relevant in volatile markets or ahead of key earnings releases.
📘 Employees
📈 What is it?
The employee count shows how many people a company employs worldwide – offering insights into its size, structure, and business model.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps assess operational scale, labor intensity, and cost structure. Combined with revenue and profit, it enables key metrics like revenue per employee or productivity.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high headcount can signal operational complexity – but also significant growth capacity.
- Revenue per employee is a key indicator of efficiency.
- Especially useful for comparing tech, industrial, or service-heavy companies.
📘 Turnover per employee
📈 What is it?
Revenue per employee indicates how much revenue a company generates on average per employee – a key measure of efficiency and productivity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The employee count is typically taken from the most recent annual report.
🏛️ Why is it important?
This metric helps compare business models – especially between labor-intensive and technology-driven companies. A high value suggests automation, operational efficiency, or strong value creation per head.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high revenue per employee indicates a scalable and margin-strong business model.
- A low figure may reflect labor-intensive operations or lower value-add.
- Especially helpful when comparing tech companies to industrial or service sectors.
dormakaba Stock Analysis
Analyst Opinions
16 Analysts have issued a dormakaba forecast:
Analyst Opinions
16 Analysts have issued a dormakaba forecast:
dormakaba Events
Past Events
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SEP
1
Q4 2026 Earnings Call
26 days ago
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FEB
24
Q2 2026 Earnings Call
7 months ago
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SEP
2
Q4 2025 Earnings Call
about one year ago
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StocksGuide Free
dormakaba — Q4 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the dormakaba Full Year Investor and Analyst Conference and Media Call 2025-2026 and Live Webcast. I'm Mattel, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. I would like to remind you that the conference call does include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Listeners and readers are, therefore, strongly encouraged to refer to the disclaimer included in the presentation. You will now be joined into the conference room.
[Presentation]
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Dormakaba's Full Year '25/'26 Analyst Investor Webcast. Joining me today is our CFO, Rene Peter. Together, we will review our financial performance and the progress we have made over the past fiscal year. Thank you for joining us today. Let me begin with the key highlights and strategic developments of '25/'26. Rene will then take you through our financial performance in more detail. '25/'26 marks an important milestone for dormakaba.
Not only we have delivered on what we promised, we are also proposing today steps to simplify the ownership structure of the group, another important milestone for the company. By aligning ownership and economic interest at the level of the listed holding company, the new structure will enhance transparency and comparability and is expected to strengthen dormakaba's capital markets profile over time to the benefit of all shareholders. This is a logical next step in our journey to reduce complexity and make dormakaba easier to understand, analyze and compare for investors.
You will find more details about the transaction in the dedicated media release published today. Let's look at our results. Over the past 2 years, we have consistently delivered on our commitments. successfully executed our transformation strategy while strengthening the business improving profitability. This year, we achieved a record adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.1% while continuing to invest in future growth. At the same time, we delivered 3% organic growth, demonstrating that growth and margin expansion can go hand in hand. Strong cash generation and leverage ratio of 0.8x EBITDA further strengthened our financial flexibility.
These results reflect the impact from simplifying the business, improving operational excellence and sharpening our commercial focus. With the transformation phase largely completed, our focus now shifts to accelerating profitable growth through vertical market expansion, the U.S. opportunity and targeted M&A. We look forward to sharing more about this next chapter at our Capital Markets Day on November 18 in London. '25/'26 marks 2 years of consistent delivery and strong execution. Through Shape for Growth, we generated more than CHF 235 million in savings and achieved a record 16.1% adjusted EBITDA margin.
We simplified the business through divestments, the exit from Russia, portfolio streamlining and operational improvements. At the same time, we continue to invest in the future growth through vertical market expansion, our U.S. strategy and 13 targeted acquisitions. Two years of disciplined execution have transformed dormakaba into a more focused, profitable and growth-oriented company. We are now ready to enter the next phase, accelerating sustainable and profitable growth. With the transformation largely completed, we are increasingly focusing on accelerating growth through our vertical market strategy.
During the year, we built a strong pipeline and secured several lighthouse wins across our priority verticals. For example, in aviation, we won projects with leading operators, including American Airlines in the U.S. with Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and major airports in Germany, Frankfurt, Munich and D sseldorf. In health care, we strengthened our position through projects such as a new Aker hospital in Norway and strategic partnerships with 2 major U.S. health care systems. We are also seeing strong momentum in data centers with more than 35 project wins globally.
We continue to execute our strategy with discipline and focus. During '25/'26, we completed 8 acquisitions, strengthened our portfolio, go-to-market and positions in key verticals. Airsphere is a good example of our approach. The acquisition adds software solutions for the automation of passenger processing, airport logistics and critical infrastructure security. It significantly strengthened our aviation offering and allow us to strengthen our position in the airport sector, not only in Europe, but also worldwide.
Another example, a more recent acquisition of AZURE in the U.S. a company developing next-generation adaptable electronic access control hardware for U.S. commercial market. This acquisition strengthens our component strategy in the U.S. and accelerates innovation in access control. With a strong balance sheet and significant financial flexibility, we remain well positioned to continue pursuing target acquisition to enhance our offering, deepen our presence in key verticals and support profitable and sustainable growth. Let me now turn to the U.S., our most important strategic growth market.
Over the past year, we have sharpened our strategy, strengthened our commercial focus and aligned resources behind the most attractive growth opportunities. We have strengthened our leadership team in the U.S. with the new appointment of Heather Torrey. We successfully enhanced our product offering, address important product gaps in the hardware with, for example, the launch of the BEST push exit device and expanded our access automation offering. We secured important project wins primarily in aviation and health care. We also completed our first U.S. acquisition with avant garde and AZURE, strengthening our capabilities in aviation and Access Solutions.
As a result, following a softer first half, primarily due to weaker hospitality demand, the business regained momentum in the second half of the year and delivered in the second half 5.5% organic growth. Taken together, these initiatives are building momentum to accelerate growth in the years ahead. Three years ago, we launched a transformation to reshape dormakaba. Today, the results are visible across the business. We delivered cumulative savings of CHF 235 million and improved our adjusted EBITDA margin by 260 basis points. While the formal transformation program is completed, the journey does never stop.
We remain focused on continuous improvements, further reducing complexity and driving operational excellence. Our commercial transformation starts generating first savings and together with door closure complexity reduction initiatives remains on track to deliver as planned by '27/'28. Throughout the transformation, we continue to invest in innovation and digital capabilities to strengthen our position in attractive growth verticals. Solutions such as Skyra, Lyazon and Argus are already supporting growth in critical infrastructure, multi-housing and aviation.
For example, in critical infrastructure, Skyra extends intelligent access to remote and off-grid sites through remote credential management. In multi-housing, Lyazon, our open API platform, allows property technology partners to integrate dormakaba access into the ecosystem, creating a scalable distribution channel across residential portfolios. In aviation, our Argus gate, or eGates, support the expansion of the aviation vertical in North America and helped secure several significant customer projects.
We also strengthened our core portfolio with solutions that enhance accessibility, convenience and compliance, including EasyAssist System, the BEST 5lb push exit device, the Apexx Strato and our keyless mobile credential ATM lock. Together, these innovations reinforce our competitiveness and support growth across our target verticals and markets. With that, Rene will now provide more details on our financial performance during year '25/'26. Rene?
Thank you, Till. And also from my side, a warm welcome to our financial year 2025/26 Analyst and Investor Conference. As Till said, 2025/26 marks an important milestone for dormakaba, and I'm very pleased to tell you more about our financial performance. Financial year 2025/26 was another year of consistent delivery with 3% organic growth, record profitability and continued value creation for shareholders. We achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.1%, the highest ever in dormakaba's history.
We continue to deploy capital efficiency, delivering a return on capital employed of 31.0%. Cash generation remained strong. Our adjusted operating cash flow margin reached 12.5%, again, an improvement year-on-year. Also, our balance sheet remained healthy with net debt broadly at the level of last year. Net sales reached CHF 2,792.4 million, delivering an organic growth of 3%, in line with our guidance. Growth was driven by strong pricing of plus 2.6% and the volume growth of plus 0.4%.
This demonstrates resilient demand in a challenging economic environment, supported by disciplined commercial execution. As expected, the stronger Swiss franc weighed on reported sales, reducing them by minus 4.9%. Net impact from mergers acquisition amounted to minus CHF 17 million. Positive contribution from our acquisitions was offset by the discontinuation of our Russian operation. Importantly, organic growth accelerated in the second half year to 4%, demonstrating improving momentum across the business. We entered the new fiscal year with higher volume and a strong order book. This provides a solid foundation for the continued growth.
Both business segments contributed positively to the growth and margin expansion. Access Solutions, our largest segment, delivered organic growth of 3.1% and expanded its adjusted EBITDA margin by 100 basis points to 16.7%. Performance was driven by strong pricing discipline of plus 2.6%. Growth was broad-based and accelerated through the year. Let me focus on some key markets. North America achieved organic net sales growth of plus 3.3%. Momentum improved significantly in the second half year with sales growth of plus 5.5%, driven by portfolio enhancement, hospitality recovery and major wins in aviation.
Switzerland again demonstrated the strength of our complete offering, growing 4.8% through market share gains and strong demand in health care, critical infrastructure and services. Germany outperformed the market with 3.4% growth led by data centers, health care, aviation, banking and marine. This confirms our strong position in segments where security, reliability and compliance are critical. U.K. and Ireland declined by minus 2%, mainly due to the completion of major hospitality projects. Rest of the World reported good volume-driven growth in North, South and Eastern Europe as well as South Asia. Sales declined in China and Southeast Asia.
Our second segment, Key & Wall Solutions and OEM delivered organic growth of plus 2.2% and another record adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.2%. While the segment faced a challenging first half year due to weaker OEM business and delayed movable wall projects in North America, improving market demand combined with diligent project execution drove a strong recovery, resulting in an organic growth of plus 5.6% in the second half year. Adjusted EBITDA increased to CHF 449 million, driving our adjusted EBITDA margin to a record 16.1%, an improvement of 60 basis points year-on-year.
This marks our third consecutive year of margin expansion, demonstrating the consistent execution of our transformation program. Excluding currency translation and M&A impact, adjusted EBITDA improved by CHF 33 million as price and efficiency gains exceeded inflation, resulting in a positive price over cost of CHF 31.6 million. The quality of this year's performance is reflected in a broad-based improvement across the profit and loss statement. Let's start first with the gross margin. We delivered a 20 basis points improvement year-on-year, driven by the continued benefit of our transformation program and pricing discipline.
This was partially offset by lower factory utilization as a result of our inventory reduction program and product mix. At the same time, functional expenses decreased by a further 20 basis points, reflecting our ongoing focus on cost discipline and organizational efficiency. Items affecting comparability at the EBITDA level amounted to CHF 53.3 million. This increase primarily reflects costs related to the closure of our Russian operation and increased merger acquisition activities, while the prior year benefited from onetime gains on real estate disposals.
Adjusted operating cash flow increased to CHF 349.6 million, resulting in an adjusted operating cash flow margin of 12.5%, up 80 basis points year-on-year. The improvement was driven by inventory optimization initiatives, enhanced payment terms and significantly lower tax payments. Our financial profile continued to strengthen during the year, supported by strong profitability and disciplined capital allocation. Despite completing 8 acquisitions during financial year 2025/26 and higher capital expenditures, net debt remained broadly stable at CHF 358.1 million.
As a result, our leverage ratio remained at the low 0.8x net debt to adjusted EBITDA. A major milestone during the year was the assignment of a BBB investment-grade rating by Standard & Poor's Global Ratings with a stable outlook. This rating reflects the progress we have made in strengthening the business, improving profitability and cash generation and maintaining a healthy balance sheet. Taken together, this achievement underscore the quality of our earnings, the resilience of our cash flows and our ability to execute our strategy from a position of financial strength.
We continued to deploy capital efficiently, delivering a return on capital employed of 31.0%, up 40 basis points year-on-year. The improvement was driven by higher adjusted EBIT and disciplined management of our capital base. Importantly, return on capital employed remained well above our commitment to sustainably maintain returns above 30%. For the financial year 2025/26, the Board of Directors proposes a dividend of CHF 0.95 per share at the AGM in October. This represents an increase of 3.3% over the previous year.
Additionally, I'm very pleased to announce that we will adopt IFRS accounting standards, including an early adoption of IFRS 18's new disclosure requirements as our primary accounting framework effective financial year 2026/27. Restated IFRS financials for the financial year 2025/26 are available in the financial section of our annual report. The restated values are also the base for our financial year 2026/27 financial targets. Our first results under IFRS will be published for the first 6 months of financial year '26/'27. Sustainability remains a core part of how we operate responsibly, safely and for the long term.
We have reduced our injury rate by 40%. We have cut our CO2 emission by 26% over the last 6 years, and we have reduced landfill waste by 74% in the last 5 years. This progress we continue to make are recognized by rating agencies and public. Among others, dormakaba has been named as one of the European climate leaders by Financial Times and Statista for the second consecutive year. Furthermore, dormakaba has been ranked among the top 4% of more than 22,000 companies by CDP for its disclosure of environmental data. With this, I would like to hand back to Till.
Thank you, Rene, for the detailed financials. Having delivered on our transformation commitments and created a stronger, more business, we are ready for the growth chapter. Supported by solid business fundamentals, a healthy order book, our guidance for the next year under IFRS is as follows: organic net sales growth above 3%, operating profit margin expansion above 11%, equivalent of a margin expansion by more than 100 basis points. On operating cash flow margin in the range to 10.5% to 11.5%. Now handing back to the operator and happy to take your questions together with Rene. Thank you.
[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of George Featherstone from Barclays.
2. Question Answer
Just the first question I have would be on the market trends that you're seeing. You obviously saw a clear acceleration or an inflection rather in the second half of your fiscal year across the business. I just wondered if this has continued so far in the first half of the fiscal year? And perhaps could you give us some color on the order book growth that you have given previously? And then specifically in Europe, at least one of your peers has identified a significant boost to organic growth from the NIS 2 regulation. So I just wondered if this can be a tailwind to demand for dormakaba in the near future? That would be the first question.
Thanks for the question. I think the market, we had seen a softer first half. We had seen acceleration in the second half, also in a very strong fourth quarter. The order book is very good. Rene can give some details on the order book. I think what we have seen is that we had a good start in the new year. And if you look at the overall performance last year, we had been strong performance in the DACH regions, which you can see like Switzerland and Germany, Austria. This continues. We will see some tailwinds from regulation. That's right.
So I think that's benefiting the companies who have maybe a bigger footprint. I think that should be supportive. And then clearly, the focus for us is to look at the U.S. where we have, over the last 2 years already invest into further products and closing our product gaps. So I think it's for us focus on the leading position in Europe, benefiting from regulations, seeing a continuous good development in Europe, same time, investing into more product and try to get momentum in the U.S. to close the gap to #1 and #2 in the U.S. On the order backlog, on the book?
On the order book, actually, what we have seen is a very good development towards the end of the year. When we look at the overall order book, it's about on a high single-digit growth higher than prior year, mainly driven by our core markets, in particular North America, Switzerland, Germany as well as Australia. The order book is strong on Access Solutions and slightly lower on KWO.
Okay. That's really useful color. And then just a couple of other things. On the pricing outlook you have for this fiscal year, can you kind of help us understand what's implied in your organic growth guidance? And then also just within the sort of mix as we're going through time, have you had any tariff-related refunds that have kind of been coming through the P&L or anywhere else, that would be super helpful, too.
So maybe on the pricing first, as mentioned, we are guiding above 3% organic growth. We expect about 2/3 to come from pricing effect. So that's roughly 2% to 2.5% and roughly 1% to 1.5% or around 1% from volume growth. Regarding the refund, yes, we applied for tax refunds. We have seen quite significant burden due to the tariffs over the last year. We have applied for refund. And so far, we have received in the lower mid-single-digit million amount of refunds in 2025/26.
Okay. And just on that tariff point, what's your plan to do with that money? Are you going to give that back to customers? Or will you retain it? What will you do with your pricing that you've taken for tariffs?
I think it's important to highlight that dormakaba was subject to multiple different U.S. trade tariffs, such as tariffs on steel, aluminum, copper of 50%. We also had the country-specific reciprocal tariffs, which created direct cost, but also indirect costs because we have seen particular businesses out of India struggling due to the 50% tariffs. And we also have seen quite significant disturbance in our way how we operate because of change in supply chain processes internal but also externally. So therefore, we consider that the refund rather than as a cost reduction on our side and something we have actually charged to our customers.
Next question comes from the line of Patrick Rafaisz from UBS.
My first question would be still with the guidance. On the previous answer, can you just clarify a bit also the semester outlook? Is it more back-end loaded in terms of price contribution or front-end loaded? I would have imagined H1 will have a bigger price component. And can you also reconcile your operating profit guidance, the margin guidance with the old framework to understand how this progression evolves? And how much of the margin improvement is actually attributable to a reduction in IACs?
Thanks a lot, Patrick, for your question. And I would like to take this question. As I mentioned, the year financial year '25/'26 is the last year where we are reporting on the Swiss GAAP FER. We will change our reporting scheme to IFRS effective '26/'27. And therefore, you also find in our financial report a section where we provide a detailed bridge from Swiss GAAP FER to IFRS. Please also note that we early adopt IFRS 18 new disclosure requirements, which has particular impact on the classification of some expenses between financial and operational expenses as well as in the cash flow statement between operating and financing cash flow.
Furthermore, and I think this is extremely important, as Till already mentioned, we completed our transformation program. Our focus is to manage the full P&L and to consider all costs related to our asset base. And therefore, we will stop to guide on adjusted figures, neither on the P&L side nor on the adjusted operating -- on the cash flow statement side. So therefore, once you start to consider and reconcile our financial guidance, please consider that this guidance are on reported and not anymore on adjusted figure.
Now based on the restatement we did, our financial year '25/'26 result on the IFRS is 10% on operating profit and 11.5% on our operating cash flow margin, again, not adjusted reported. We are guiding therefore 100 basis points, at least 100 basis points improvement on our operating profit margin for the year '26/'27 and 10.5% to 11.5% on adjusted operating cash flow margin -- sorry, on operating cash flow margin. Here it is important that we already included exit taxation we expect in this financial year as we are now centralizing our IP rights and also ensuring that our intangible assets are fully aligned with our operating model because over the last 2 years, we moved decision-making function to Switzerland.
So therefore, if I would exclude this exit taxation on IP rights, we would be actually in the range of 11.5% to 12.5% operating cash flow margin on the IFRS. Now regarding the timing, whether it's back end or the front-end loaded, I just would like to highlight that we will start giving you a trading update the first time for Q1 at 28th of October this financial year.
Very helpful. And then the second question would be regarding the agreement and the transaction around simplifying the shareholder structure. There was a roughly CHF 30 million payment included in this agreement to the family. Can you elaborate a bit what this is in relation to?
We are going to -- every meeting with investors, with -- in the research was related to operational performance, which was the third part of today's presentation. And the second part was always like dormakaba is still complicated. And you have to explain the structure, the corporate governance. And therefore, I think as many of you know, we're working on the structure for some time, and we have now reached an agreement together with both shareholders, the German shareholders, Swiss shareholders to come up with this proposal for the AGM.
I think, first of all, it's very important that both shareholders, the German shareholders and the Swiss shareholders are fully supportive of the structure. are fully supportive to further commit to dormakaba, which is very important that is so. The former Dorma owners and the former Kaba shareholders are both totally aligned with what we are doing and are staying very committed to dormakaba. On the structure, if you're going to propose, clearly, it's something where today, you have the 47.5% minorities. There will be a capital contribution and the capital contribution will have a share component and a cash component.
And therefore, in the end, you will have a shareholding, which is in the range of 52% approximately for the German shareholders. And the cash-related payment is something which is relevant for potential tax impact in Germany. And in the end, everything will be also justified by a fairness opinion, which we are prepared to show at the EGM in October.
We now have a question from the line...
Patrick, one comment which is important. I think it's the 52% in the end as shareholding, but also important, it comes to the contribution. So in the end, we will contribute the today's minority into the holding company, and that will generate CHF 2 billion of capital reserves. And we can, in the future, distribute dividends out of the capital reserve, which are tax-free for Swiss shareholders. So the CHF 2 billion will be ready for some time. So we have some potential to distribute dividends for the next years, very efficient for Swiss shareholders.
We now have a question from the line of [ Vitushan Vijayakumar ] from Baader Europe.
So just 2 on my side. So for the organic growth, it was a good organic growth in second half. So including a clear volume recovery, you highlighted a strong order backlog or order book. So what would be the main factors that are preventing you from guiding more confidently above the current above 3% level. So do you see any uncertainties based on some verticals or -- and also if you can give a bit of color about the order backlog that you gave, but I think I missed it. So if you can just give me some color on that one as well, please.
Let me start and maybe Rene can jump in. And I think we told you in the previous question that we have a good order book. So it means like give us confidence for the year. However, you still have to look about the volatile environment. I think what we want to do, we want to have resilient growth. We see that inflation is more sticky. We will see maybe until the end of the year, still higher inflation. We see geopolitics still being, I call it, not being foreseeable.
So I think it's more like that we are very confident to deliver up to 3%. We are early in the year. As Rene mentioned, we're going to give also like quarterly updates on the growth. And I think it's more like let's start the year, giving guidance that we want to be above 3%. Our midterm guidance is between the 3% to 5%. But seeing the environment, seeing the volatility around us, I think let's start with 3% and then maybe we can adjust on the go if we see that even there's more tailwind than today.
And the second question was about the data center vertical. So if I'm not mistaken, you were projecting for roughly 2% of sales in full year '26/'27 during your conference in the first half. So does it still stand? Or do you see any evolutions? And also in which ways? It seems like AI CapEx is beating consensus expectations. So the current CapEx for data center should be logically higher than what it was during your first half presentation. So I was just curious about the evolution of that vertical and your point of view on the underlying trends and if it did change something.
I think -- first of all, I think it is important you all have an invitation to our Capital Markets Day in November, where we can give more details on verticals, on focus areas. Data center is, as we all know, driven by AI, by compute power, one of the areas we focus on. With the TANlock acquisition, we have an end-to-end solution in the end from the entry point to the rack to have one seamless access solution. We have seen many project wins in the U.S. and also in Europe and Middle East that we're going to continue.
We are not depending on any single vertical, which is also important. But we see it like that we continue to grow year-on-year and would give you more guidance in November where we can go on what is solution, how we differentiate. So what is where is our offering better, who are the partners, clearly, the hyperscalers in the U.S., but also then the asset companies behind it. So I think it's something we see continued growth, accelerating growth. We have a good solution, and we give you more guidance on the number in November.
The next question comes from the line of [ Martin Husler ] from [ Zurcher Kantonalbank ].
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
You mentioned that you will no longer guide on adjusted figures, but you will still report on adjusted figures, I assume. And there, I mean, you have a basis point improvement guided for, but the one-offs were 290 basis points. So what should we expect there in the current year?
We will not report any more on adjusted figures. As mentioned, we consider that our P&L needs to reflect the total cost of our assets. And therefore, we are concentrating on reported figures, not adjusted figures. When we look at our improvement, we will expect part of the improvements coming from operational performance improvement and other part from lower items affecting comparability.
Okay. What should we expect from your Q1 update in October? What will you report then?
On the Q1 update, we will report organic growth, and we will provide a net sales bridge reporting on FX impact, M&A impact and organic growth on the group as well as on segment level. As well as we will provide an update on our strategic execution on our strategic elements.
But no profitability then?
No profitability, no.
We now have a question from the line of Lars Vom-Cleff from Deutsche Bank.
Only one quick question remaining from my side. I mean, so far, you guided for an EBITDA margin and now you're rather focusing on the EBIT. Just out of curiosity, does that have to do with the change of the accounting principles? Or was it a management decision?
It is clearly a management decision because we improve -- we want to improve our comparability to peers. But also we would like to better align KPIs with our value creation metrics like return on capital employed. So this was a poor management decision in order to reflect all expense items under control of the management.
Next question comes from the line of Remo Rosenau from Helvetische Bank.
Looking at the new ownership structure after the implementation, the 52% stake of the Mankel family, how free are they to reduce this stake in the future?
First of all, since we got this question very often in the past. So today, they have the 47% minority, which is in the end, not really liquid. And then you have the 10% out of 52%, which are in principle liquid but part of a pool agreement. In principle, the Mankel family is as flexible as someone could be, so they can reduce the shareholding below 50% would be in their court. They can decide how much they lower the stake.
Okay. So any placements in the future are not to be excluded, right?
I think it's more like you could ask in both directions. So in the end, it's always like the perspective you have today. They have 47.5% as a minority and 10 out of 52 adding up to 52.5%. And I think it's more like, first of all, any intention you have to ask the family. But in the end, it is something where we are very happy to have both shareholder groups, the German ones and the Swiss ones, and both are committed to the company. So there's no indication for any change. But in the end, you have to ask the shareholders about their intention. We got the commitment from both sides that they are very happy with the performance and are committed to dormakaba for the future.
Okay. But there are not any lockups in these shareholder agreements.
No lockups.
Okay. Then on the -- have there been any extra costs in connection with the change in the shareholding structure, which have been in the P&L of the last business year, which were included in the published EBIT already?
This is correct, yes, and they are part of the items affecting comparability. So they are not included in the adjusted figures, they are excluded.
Okay. So how much was it more or less?
We don't disclose this amount.
Okay. Because to be fair, the operating margin, the published one under IFRS is 10.0%, as you said. But one item which will be clearly -- which will go out are these extra costs. So the starting base is basically not 10.0, but a bit higher. So...
We expect that this is a very high amount. It's in the lower single-digit million amount.
[Operator Instructions] We now have a question from the line of [ Manuel Lang ] from [ Vontobel ].
I have one to clarify on your guidance and specifically on pricing. Do you therefore see any difference in the first half of fiscal '27 versus the second half? Or can we expect the roughly like 2% pricing for the full year to be spread more evenly? And the second one would then be also on the benefits of the simplified shareholder structure, the foreign capital contribution to your reserves, you can build from that. Are you also actually planning to distribute them as part of or as you can fully as a dividend? Or is there also any restrictions we should bear in mind for that?
So maybe the first question on the pricing. We -- as mentioned, we expect that we see that inflation remains high. We also see that therefore, also the pricing needs to be remaining a key element of our financial performance. And as indicated, we are expecting for the full year a price increase in the range of 2% to 2.5%. Now regarding the capital contribution reserve of CHF 2.1 billion. This is fully distributable because it's a foreign sourced capital contribution. And therefore, we expect that in the next years, dividend payment will be made out of the capital reserve without withholding tax.
Okay. Great. But on pricing, no difference in first half and second half?
No difference, no.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Till Reuter for any closing remarks.
Thank you for listening to our conference. Thank you for the question. Looking forward to seeing you in latest in November on the Capital Markets Day. And for this, thank you, and see you soon. Bye-bye.
dormakaba — Q4 2026 Earnings Call
dormakaba — Q4 2026 Earnings Call
Transformation completed with record margins; conservative >3% organic guidance and capital-structure changes that boost dividend flexibility.
📊 Quarter at a Glance
- Revenue: CHF 2,792.4m (organic +3%)
- Adjusted EBITDA: Record margin 16.1% (+260bp over 2 years)
- Operating profit (IFRS): Restated 10.0% (base for FY26/27 guidance)
- Net debt / leverage: CHF 358.1m; 0.8x net debt/EBITDA
🎯 What Management Says
- Ownership: Proposal to simplify held structure, align economic interest at the holding and create CHF ~2.1bn foreign capital reserve to enable tax‑efficient dividend distribution.
- Transformation: Shape for Growth delivered CHF 235m savings, better operational excellence and portfolio simplification.
- Growth focus: Shift to accelerating profitable growth via vertical-market expansion, a stronger U.S. push and targeted M&A.
🔭 Outlook & Guidance
- Top-line: Organic net sales growth >3% for FY26/27 (management’s starting-year guidance).
- Profitability: Operating profit margin target >11% (at least +100bp vs restated 10.0% FY25/26 IFRS).
- Cash flow: Operating cash flow margin guided 10.5–11.5% (management says excluding expected exit tax would be ~11.5–12.5%).
- Assumptions & risks: Pricing expected ~2–2.5% (≈ two‑thirds of growth); risks: FX (strong CHF), persistent inflation, tariffs and geopolitics.
❓ Analyst Q&A
- Order book: Management reports a high single‑digit order‑book increase vs prior year (strength in North America, Switzerland, Germany, Australia).
- Pricing & tariffs: Pricing expected to contribute ~2/3 of guided growth; tariff refunds received were low mid‑single‑digit million and treated as reimbursement rather than permanent cost relief.
- Shareholder deal: Cash component (reported ~CHF30m reference) and no lock‑ups; capital contribution creates distributable Swiss tax‑efficient reserves — specifics to be shown at EGM.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Conclusion: dormakaba exits a multi‑year transformation with record margins, strong cash generation and low leverage, sets conservative >3% organic growth and margin expansion targets under IFRS, and introduces a capital-structure change that increases near‑term dividend flexibility while leaving execution and macro risks to monitor.
dormakaba — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Half Year 2025-2026 Investor and Analyst Conference Call of dormakaba Holding AG. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions]. The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions].
I would like to remind you that the conference call does include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Listeners and readers are, therefore, strongly encouraged to refer to the disclaimer included in the presentation.
At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Till Reuter, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, and good morning, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our half year results '25-'26 analyst and investor conference call. Today, I'm joined again by my colleague and CFO, Rene Peter, and we are very happy to share with you our financial results of the first half year of '25-'26. I will start with the key highlights and developments of 2025/'26, and after that, Rene will give you more insights on the financial performance, and then we have enough time for Q&A.
In the first half of '25-'26, we continued to execute on our transformation while delivering adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. Let me point out some of the key highlights. In a challenging environment with uncertainties stemming from trade tariffs and ongoing geopolitical tensions, the company delivered organic net sales growth of plus 2% and adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.6%. We see great project wins in key verticals. We are strong on the partner with distribution, but we see strong wins in key verticals like Airports, Healthcare and Marine. And we are also very happy to announce that our data center sales are gaining momentum, and we'll have more to share with you later.
We delivered CHF 185 million of cost savings from the transformation program, somewhat ahead of plan, exceeding the initial target of CHF 170 million. Our M&A got traction. We have -- bolt-on acquisitions are gathering pace, and we completed 6 transactions since July 2025. Our U.S. growth plan is in execution with first achievements in the hardware and automatics business. I think I will also tell you more about our closing product gaps and also supported by first bolt-on acquisitions like Avant-Garde Systems.
Our outlook for the full year, we reiterate our guidance based on stronger volume growth in the second half, which is expected because of our good order backlog and order book, but also here more details for you later.
We have seen solid order intake for Access Solutions in the first half year, supported by project wins in key verticals. As a result, our order book is 6% up. Just some examples. On Airports, we have project wins around the world. We have major airports secured in Germany, Frankfurt Terminal 3, Munich, Düsseldorf. We have project wins in the U.S. Installation of state-of-the-art unmanned access lanes at Halifax and Fort Worth with some Argus eGates. We have project wins with American Airlines and iD4me. We have Canada upcoming. And then also airport related, we have a topic where we are modernizing the U.K.'s border control system.
On the Healthcare side, we gained market share in Switzerland. And I think here, it's very important. And also if we look about the broader picture, because we could focus on cross-selling and hybrid solutions, which are in the end, the portfolio of access control solutions, key solutions and automatics, where we really can have a full portfolio of products delivering for the hospital. And with this offering, we could secure multiple hospitals.
In the U.S., on AS and Healthcare, we closed the product gap with ICU doors, which are in the end, the emergency room. This has also been closed, and we got good project sales in New York and Texas. We made progress in Marine, a very interesting vertical. Cruise ships, we got some contracts. [indiscernible], Carnival, Disney. And I think that is a good progress on the vertical approach, which is in addition to, in our muscle, our partners business. And I think here it's very important, the more end customers we have, we are happy, and our partners we happy because we can deliver both ways, direct and indirect.
On the Data Center, last but not least, I think it's important to spend a little more time. In Data Centers, we gained momentum. Our exposure is still like smaller with below 1% of group sales. But I think here we see a big opportunity. And also you know that on Airports, we have something like CHF 60 million revenue in Airports here in Data Centers. I think this vertical will be bigger than Airports, and we have here -- I think we have the right ingredients to grow this vertical. We have already seen some project wins in the region just in the U.S. with Equinix, EdgeConneX in Germany, we have the Schwarz Group, and we have also in Middle East with Elysium in Abu Dhabi, seen many projects, and I think we will see more projects.
And what's important? When you look at data centers, everyone talks about data centers. In the German way, it was more like the relations center, which existed for the last 50 years. So we don't only talk about new data centers, but also refurbishment of relations center, which means like there's also a big potential for modernization and retrofit. Currently, we see an installed base of around 12,000 data centers, and many of them, with relations centers, have been there for a long time. And here, we see a rising need for security and technology upgrades. I think that is the driver for refurbishment. And here, we see a good potential, and we'll tell you why in a second.
In addition to the relations center and the older data centers, clearly, we see a big wave, especially from the hyperscalers with double-digit growth. And we see that by 2030, the amount of data centers around the globe will expect to increase to around 16,000, and this will result in a great potential and opportunity for dormakaba.
Why do we believe we have a good offering? Because we have a very complete and comprehensive product portfolio for the data centers to cover all security layers of a data center. From the perimeter and central security with our full-height turnstiles and Argus gates to racks lock produced by TANlock, one of our latest acquisitions, I think we have rack access being a key multiplier and allowing for multiple cross-selling. So I think clearly, the rack closing and the lock on the rack is one of the most important parts for the offering. And you will see that we are really part of the -- have a complete offering very much on the security side of the data center. We will help our customers to secure people flow from street to rack out of one hand, full compliance, allowing to exactly know who was where, for how long, as well as who was in, and higher safety standards in compliance with local regulations and requirements.
On M&A, just we talked about TANlock, but we have done 6 transactions since July '25, still smaller transactions, but I think we are speeding up and want to do more one, but it's very important to have the right balance between organic growth, which is our focus, and that has to be strengthened with additional M&A. TANlock, I talked about bolt-on acquisition, enhances our offering for verticals in data centers and critical infrastructure. You know our skyra approach, which is organically new offering where you can really send the keys to the person doing -- on the service line. I think with skyra, TANlock, we have a good offering. We are also in the U.S. We have something in addition to the TANlock portfolio, which also our competitors do have.
We acquired a minority stake in RealSense, spin-off of Intel, talk about how can we install biometric and eye technologies into our products. We don't want to own 100% of, whatever, a camera company or vision company, but it's important to have this part in our ecosystem that we together with RealSense can work on solutions for our customers. And MetaMatic, which is a service business to capture more market share in Germany. And then Avant-Garde, a bolt-on acquisition in automatics in the U.S. headquartered in Indiana. I think it's important that we have some low double-digit revenue number over Avant-Garde.
It's important for our growth plan in America to have more coverage in the U.S. in our automatics through integration and service. It will strengthen our entrance systems control capabilities and also help us to position in this high-margin business to grow in the vertical like Airports and more important or even same important Data Centers.
Vintech, it's a go-to-market hospitality in Australia, a smaller one. And then lately, yesterday, we were signing our SwiftConnect minority stake, which is one on the technology side once you have clearly one user interface for the customer and then you have an interoperability, means like you can align or you can connect different access solutions and have one user interface for the customer. I think it shows that we are working on the M&A side. And for all these acquisitions, it's important they are bolt-on. They are supporting in the market. They are not increasing complexity too much. And I think that we want to continue to have a good balance between organic growth and further M&A.
Another part which is important in our medium- to long-term strategy is the U.S. growth plan. And we all know that we have leading market positions in Europe. We have good position in Asia. We are a distant #3 in the U.S., and therefore, we focus on this single biggest, most lucrative U.S. market with our growth initiatives. We made some progress here. We see that in hardware and automatics, we are on a good track. We are a little softer on hospitality. We'll talk more about hospitality later, because here we had a refurbishment cycle last year and we see that the volumes are coming back in the second half of the year. But I think here we have kind of a special situation. But on hardware and automatics, we are on track and are doing what we had in our plan.
On the hardware side, we launched new exit devices. We closed portfolio gaps. And I think that's very important to be competitive in the core channels to have a full product road map. We have to have more products coming in March and in the second quarter to further close the gaps we have seen or we have in the U.S., and I think that's one of the key parts working on the portfolio, securing new wins, for example, University of Southern California, where you also need kind of the products. At the same time, working on the efficiency of our distributor program, having the right ownership and having plans to improve efficiencies to grow on the hardware piece, which is close to 50% of the U.S. business in the next years.
On the automatics side, we also had good project wins. I talked about the ICU door is one product already before, but also nice project wins with American Airlines. And Avant-Garde, the acquisition from December, January is helping to have more go-to-market and more reach over integration and service business. Both hardware and automatics are on plan to deliver what we were planning.
Hospitality was lower spending because we had, in the last year, a higher refurbishment cycle. We expect that the refurbishment in the next cycle will start in the second half and therefore, also volume will come back in hospitality.
Multi-housing, we had some good project wins. But if you talk about hardware, automatics, and then ACS, hospitality, we also came up with a new strategy. Besides the existing go-to-market, we are concentrating on our commercial component strategy, as commercial is a CHF 2 billion market, where we today only have CHF 15 million revenue, and we want to grow. And I think our goal is to have a market share of 5% to 10%, which is part of the program to come from CHF 722 million to CHF 1 billion. We're working on unified e-locks, e-key readers, and credentials platform, and having the technical building blocks we have with Farpointe, LEGIC, and TANlock in our hands.
So we're working on it, talking to the customers. I think here, we will have a focused go-to-market to the specs. And I think with maximum leverage and minimal complexity, and also besides hardware and automatics, also the commercial, the component strategy is accelerating, and we will have the IST BEST very soon to further work on the component strategy.
America, now coming to the cost side, we already achieved, delivered CHF 185 million of cost savings. Somewhere ahead of plan, but I think it's important cost savings. We are really on plan, on budget with the cost program. And it's very important, I think, to remind you and all of us, compared to the July '23 baseline on gross margin, we improved 100 basis points. And on the G&A expense, we went down 280 basis points.
What does it mean? I think we have our costs under control. And if you look at the half year, clearly, we are not happy with the volume, which is, on ACS, 0. We have an ACS 2.6 over pricing, and on the KWO, slightly negative. But we lowered our inventory at pretty low volume, same time increased our margin. That means we are very efficient. We're working on the cost side. We are ready to take the volume to, in the end, get the volume into margin. And what you see, the platform gets more efficient and leaner. And I think that is a very good base. And with the stronger order backlog for the second half, we expect to be on the corridor between 3% to 5%. And with this cost basis, we should deliver 16% and above 16% for the full year.
I think what we are doing on the cost program, it's going to -- the program stopped end of this business year, but it's very important that once the cost program stops, we are shifting from a program to a standard efficiency. So we will be becoming part of the normal business. So there's not a program, but there will be cost targets for all functions as part of the ongoing business.
On the cost program, you know that we were starting on operations, HR, IT and finance in '23. The commercial transformation was starting later. And clearly, we are continuing on the program and to have more cost savings in the coming year, until '27, '28, also from commercial, which we will then be part of our ongoing efficiency.
With this one, I will hand over to Rene for more input on the financial performance.
Thank you, Till, and also from my side, a warm welcome to our half year results 2025-'26 analyst and investor conference. As Till mentioned, our results reflect continued strong execution of our transformation program by the dormakaba team, resulting in a further adjusted EBITDA margin improvement.
Let's have a look at our key figures for the first half of 2025-'26. We delivered organic net sales growth of 2.0% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.6%, an improvement of 40 basis points over the last year. Return on capital employed increased to 30.3%. Net profit amounted to CHF 77.4 million. Adjusted operating cash flow margin stood at 4.5%. Our net debt declined versus prior year to CHF 458.1 million.
Let's look at some details starting first with the top line development. Net sales reached CHF 1.3627 billion, facing a challenging economic environment marked by trade tariffs and geopolitical tensions. Organic growth amounted to 2.0%, largely driven by strong pricing of 2.6%. Volume remained stable in Access Solutions, but declined in Key & Wall Solutions and OEM. The appreciation of the Swiss franc against all major currencies led to a negative currency translation effect of minus 5.0%. The total impact from M&A amounted to a minus CHF 13.8 million.
Now let's have a closer look at different businesses. Access Solutions delivered organic net sales growth of 2.6%, led by our European markets and driven by strong pricing of 2.6%. Germany, Switzerland and the U.K. and Ireland all delivered solid volume-driven organic net sales growth in tough markets and against a very strong prior year comparison. Germany grew 4%, supported by airport projects and market share gains in the access hardware solutions area. Switzerland was up 5.3%, leveraging its robust installed base in access control. The U.K. and Ireland saw 4.3% growth, thanks to strong hospitality business. Automatics performed strongly in all 3 markets.
North America saw good organic growth in the hardware and automatics business in the mid- to high single-digit range. However, this was partially offset by lower volume in hospitality. Australia and New Zealand recorded organic net sales decline of minus 0.4%, primarily driven by a downturn in the local residential market, in particular in Victoria. Rest of the World reported good volume growth in North, South and Eastern Europe as well as Middle East and India. China, there we saw a double-digit decline due to weak market demand, similar to Southeast Asia and LatAm where we also saw some decline in organic net sales growth.
Access Solutions achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16%, representing a further increase of 70 basis points. As for KWO, the business segment reported an organic net sales decline of minus 1.4%. Good pricing of plus 2.2% could not offset a volume decrease of minus 3.6%, which resulted from challenging market conditions in the OEM business and project delays in Movable Walls in North America.
Adjusted EBITDA amounted to CHF 211.9 million. Excluding currency translation and divestment impact, adjusted EBITDA improved by CHF 10.5 million. The impact from the negative volume was CHF 0.9 million negative. Price and efficiency gains exceeded inflation, investments and lower absorption due to volume and inventory reduction, resulting in a positive price over cost of CHF 12.3 million. As a result, adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 40 basis points and amounted to 15.6%.
Now let's have a look at our profit and loss statements, and allow me to focus on a few items. Let's start first with the gross margin. Even with softer volume and inventory reduction, we managed to maintain our gross margin level, reflecting strong contribution from our Shape4Growth transformation program. Functional expenses continued to decrease. We saw a solid reduction in general and administration expenses in percent of sales, leveraging our shared service centers for finance and HR.
Sales and marketing is still impacted by commercial transformation costs. We expect to see the full benefit in sales and marketing materializing going forward. Effective tax rate remained broadly stable at 26.5%. Adjusted operating cash flow margin amounted to 4.5%, representing a decline of 290 basis points versus prior year. Changes in other assets and liabilities, particularly relating to withholding taxes and prepayments, negatively impacted adjusted operating cash flow. These effects are expected to reverse in the second half of the financial year.
Capital expenditure increased due to investments in our process harmonization program and factory automation, whereas prior year included CHF 13 million from the sale of real estate in North America. Return on capital employed rose by 40 basis points, driven by higher adjusted EBIT over the last 12 months and stable capital employed. Finally, our balance sheet remains strong. We continue to strengthen our financial profile and further reduced net debt to CHF 458.1 million versus prior year. As a result, our leverage ratio further went down to a healthy 1.0x adjusted EBITDA, particularly driven by improved inventory management. Standard & Poor's assigned dormakaba a BBB investment-grade rating, confirming our strengthened financial profile.
With this, I would like to return back the call to Till.
Thank you, Rene. And now let's conclude with our outlook for '25-'26. What we see is a more challenging economic environment. And I think also like the geopolitical tensions are -- we are surprised nearly every day. And what we see that clearly the overall environment is getting more challenging.
What's good on our side? We are very much local for local. It means like that 60%, as an example, in the U.S. comes from U.S. for U.S. and 85% out of Canada, Mexico. So it means that we have a kind of a good hedge against any tensions, because we have a good position local for local. We have a good order backlog, a good order book. That means like even we see the challenges, we see stronger volume growth for the second half of the year, and based on the order book, but also based on this important project wins, which we talked about in the Airports, Healthcare, Marine and other ones, which we have to execute in the second half of the year.
Therefore, we reiterate our guidance for the full year '25-'26 to have organic net sales growth of 3% to 5%, rather on the lower end of the guidance, and adjusted EBITDA margin above 16%, and adjusted operating cash flow margin of 11.5% to 12.5% for the full year.
With this one, thank you for your attention. Last but not least, I did forget something before your questions are coming, which we are expecting and happy to take the question. But as we did in the last year, we want to do a Capital Markets Day to inform you about our next steps and what we want to do from a topline perspective, region-wise and also from operations side. Happy to invite you to Capital Markets Day '26. I will give you also an update on next for dormakaba. The Capital Markets Day will take place on November 18 in London. More details to follow by Swetlana and us.
And this one, thank you for listening, and we are happy to get your questions.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from George Featherstone from Barclays.
2. Question Answer
I just wonder, firstly, you're taking a lot of cost out of the business. And as you said, you're ahead of plan. You're also guiding some volume growth in the second half. So how should we think about the level of operating leverage you now expect for the business on that volume growth in the second half, please? That would be the first one.
Thanks a lot, George, for your question. If I understood you correctly, you were raising the question about volume growth in relation to also the operating leverage, which we have in our financials -- in our P&L. As you know, dormakaba is strongly vertically integrated. So therefore, we see, on the one hand, on operating leverage, actually a situation where we see that volume has an impact on our bottom line results. Particularly when we look at the complexity, however, we see not yet on the op side that we are able to really fully translate that into over-proportional improvement on EBITDA. However, when we look now at the second half year, we see very strong order intake. As mentioned by Till, very strong order book, good project pipeline. And therefore, we are confident that we will see a price over cost which will be exceeding what we have seen in the first half year.
Okay. And then just a second one on that pricing point. Your peers are guiding to a little bit lower price than what you're currently achieving. So I just wondered what it is about your business that gives you that entitlement for higher pricing than some of the other market leaders? And then maybe what the outlook there is for price as we go through the rest of 2026 here on a fiscal basis?
As we have in the past guided that our price impact will be in the range of 1.5% to 2%. What you see, 2.6% is actually including surcharges. I mean, if you were to exclude surcharges, we would be in that range of 1.5% to 2%. That's what we're also expecting for the second half year.
And I think, George, in addition to pricing, it's not -- we have a global number, but pricing is very much depending on the region. And we have this kind of a special situation in America, where I think the whole market is working with surcharges, giving pricing to the customers. And I think we see support on the volume side and could on the pricing side be relatively stable.
The next question comes from Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux.
I've got 2. First one is on the realized incremental cost savings of CHF 37 million. Now I'm a little bit confused. I thought I heard Till saying that you were on target with regards to the cost savings, but then we have seen that you've actually outperformed by, what, CHF 15 million or so compared to your CHF 170 million savings target. So I was just wondering whether you could provide some granularity where that CHF 15 million came from. Sorry if I've missed it in your earlier speech, but just wondering here what's exactly going on? And does that mean we're going to see less incremental savings from the other transformation programs? Or is everything else unchanged? That's my first question.
Let me talk on the cost. So yes, the initial program in 2023 was CHF 170 million, which was operations, finance, HR and IT. And then we had an additional CHF 40 million for the commercial side, another CHF 10 million for door closer complexity, adding up to CHF 210 million (sic) [ CHF 220 million ]. And we are fully on plan. I think if you look about where we also said we are doing CHF 170 million for '25-'26 with regard to this number, we are ahead. However, in our program of the CHF 210 million in total or CHF 220 million, we are on plan, and we're going to deliver in the second half and also some of the cost savings in '26-'27. We have CHF 170 million plus CHF 10 million. And we are...
Okay. So basically, you've pre-drawn some of the savings achieved earlier than expected. But the total of CHF 220 million is unchanged?
Actually, Martin, the higher saving realization mainly comes from procurement, where we have actually overperformed over the last 2 years. But there is no impact on the remaining Shape4Growth savings streams.
Okay. That's helpful. And then the second question is on -- I was wondering whether you could provide a trading update for the start of H2. What you have seen in the first 2 months or almost first 2 months with regards to customer sentiment and I guess also with regards to order intake in the first 6, 7, 8 weeks?
I think it is -- we have a call today, so it's in line with our expectations. And I think based on the first half year and also the start of the year, we are confident to reach our guidance.
The next question comes from Martin Hüsler from ZKB.
Yes. Two questions actually. First of all, on acquisitions in the U.S.A. So far, you rather did bolt-ons. My question here is, should we expect bigger acquisitions to follow in order to achieve your ambitious growth path? And maybe with the acquisition of, Avant-Garde, just to help us to understand what a platform or an independent solution provider like Avant-Garde is bringing to dormakaba? Will you replace other products by dormakaba products? Or how will you leverage this platform? That's the first question.
Okay. Thank you, Martin, for the question. And I talked about the U.S., and we have the plan from CHF 722 million to CHF 1 billion. And this we want to reach over organic growth. And I talked about the product portfolio and additional products we're doing in hardware. I talked also about the ICU door and automatics additional products to, in the end, fill our gaps and to work on the gaps. We will introduce more products in the coming months and quarter in the U.S. I think that is one part of it.
Avant-Garde is a good example of a smaller double-digit revenue, which is helping us on the service integration piece. So we are #3 in the U.S. And we have to work on the nationwide coverage and Avant-Garde is clearly someone who is helping us over service, over a new customer and our partners to cover a bigger area of the U.S. And I think there could be 2 or 3 more Avant-Garde style, like a smaller double-digit number of revenue to grow in automatics, which I would like. But I think it's more like it will be not one big solution, it will rather be a couple of smaller acquisitions which we are looking at, to grow in the businesses constantly and consistently.
Besides the hardware and automatics, hospitality, we have a leading position. I talked about the component strategy. I think that is the third pillar of our U.S. growth plan where we want to get out the commercial, again, organically to 5% to 10%. We have the product, but we were selling it only bundled. We are going to unbundle and work over APIs to connect to the big platforms like Lenel, Honeywell, like JCI, and other ones. And I think that's a different go-to-market with a focused approach on the tax, which we have not done in the past, which is a change in go-to-market. And consistent hardware, automatics product portfolio work, smaller bolt-ons plus the hospitality plus components will bring us to the CHF 1 billion. If there would be a big M&A, it will be even bigger.
The next question comes from Patrick Rafaisz from UBS.
Two follow-ups for me. The first on the cost savings. I think it was very clear how we explained the impact so far and what's coming with the commercial and the door closer business. But I was just wondering, what will then, after that, be the next bigger, let's say, complexity reduction opportunities after the door closer has been completed? Have you identified anything? And if yes, what? That's the first question.
I think, Patrick, if you remember, on our investor presentation, we had the 3 layers. One is the pure cost elevate performance. We have the CHF 170 million plus the CHF 40 million plus CHF 10 million. And then the second pillar is the complexity reduction, I'll talk in a minute, and we have growth. Whilst on the cost side, taking people out, working on shared service centers, low cost, which we're going to continue, just to be clear on this one.
Our assembly site in Sofia will be finished in September. So it will start. And we also continue to work on our shared service center in Sofia for, in the end, the white collar work. So I think that's ongoing. But on the topics we have on our list are door closer, if you start with the hardware. The door closer we talked about the CHF 10 million are only one part of the efficiencies. We have CHF 1.2 billion, CHF 1.4 billion of hardware. We look at the door closer first because it's one of the most complex portfolios which were developed out of this, whatever, 3 region strategy, and we have more than 10,000 SKUs. The door closer together has a revenue of CHF 300 million. We only looked at the CHF 100 million first rack-and-pinion.
And in the CHF 100 million, we're going to reduce CHF 10 million. So CHF 1.4 billion, CHF 300 million, CHF 100 million, CHF 10 million savings. Clearly, we looked at the one which looks most efficient, but we will also like expand the cost saving potential on the other door closer ranges. We already start other products on the hardware side. And there's more potential if you see the CHF 1.2 billion, CHF 1.4 billion on hardware. And I think the door closer is only the starting point. Here, we will educate you more in the full year and also on the Capital Markets Day, how much more potential we do have on the hardware side.
The same on the software side. We talked about this complexity of having more than 50 software platforms, which you have to maintain and you have to service. And same what we did on the hardware side, limiting or reducing the number of SKUs, reducing the number of platforms we are working on, and we will free up resources to work even on more top line. So more applications, more requirements. And this both is ongoing. The third part is still our procurement. With a project like door closer complexity, we are further working on our suppliers, having less suppliers, which means like we have more stake, we have better negotiation power. This is ongoing where our ambition on the procurement will be higher in the future.
And then also like on operations footprint, we did one step in '23-'24 on the footprint, and that we will do the next footprint because, I think Rene mentioned, still we worked on the footprint, but still also the complexity, we have some parts we are deeper vertically integrated and see some potential in reducing complexity on the operations side. And I think here, we have still lots of potential. We plan to be at 16%. You know that the competition has a higher number, and we see still lots of potential, not on only taking cost out, but on changing the way we work. And here, I think there's lots of examples where we have more details maybe on the Capital Markets Day.
That's a compelling teaser for the CMD. And then the second question would be on Key & Wall, where volumes were negative and you gave the reasons with the OEM business and the delays in Movable Walls. Can you quantify the dilution from these 2 -- or the growth dilution from these 2 headwinds? And would it be correct to assume that at least for the OEM business, after Q2 calendar '26, this dilution will be phased out, because that's when it started last year?
I think, Patrick, one topic before I hand over to Rene. I think it's very important also to emphasize that on the access, our core business, we are at 16% EBITDA, really improved our EBITDA margin in this business. I think on Movable Walls, we see project delays, which means like good performance. KWO really is still on a high level operationally and margin-wise. And on the OEM side, I think the impact overall like 1% comes from the OEM piece. I think it should level out, should be lower. And I think as mentioned, we have to somewhat get used to it to manage volatility. At least after Q2, it should be leveled out. But still, I think we have a very good MD in China, who is looking for additional business. So I think, yes, we also see opportunities there, not only the risk.
We take now the follow-up question from Martin Hüsler from ZKB.
Yes. A question on items affecting comparability. Can you maybe give us your guidance or expectations for the second half of this year and maybe for next year? And also, I remember that you alluded to shadowing costs, which are not reflected in adjusted EBITDA. Can you give us a ballpark what you think shadowing costs have been in the first half this year in terms of probably basis points on margins?
Thanks a lot, Martin, for this question. So let's start first with items affecting comparability. We reported CHF 28.6 million in the first half year. We're expecting for the full year in the range of CHF 40 million to CHF 50 million, and thereafter, as we already communicated, we will not anymore report on adjusted figures out of the year '25-'26, but for sure, you can expect it will be lower in the coming years.
Regarding work shadowing, the overall impact was about 40 basis points, 10 basis points still from finance and HR, from SG&A side, and 30 basis points from the commercial shared service center setup. On the commercial shared service center setup, you will see still a continuous impact on that, but we will see, now especially in the second half year, the savings coming through based on the first transition to Sofia.
The next question comes from Lars Vom-Cleff from Deutsche Bank.
Two quick questions from my side as well. Would you be able to tell us, with regards to your recent bolt-on acquisitions in the U.S., how much revenue, EBITDA, in absolute terms, that we'll be adding to the group? And are these acquisitions margin enhancing from the beginning onward?
We are not disclosing financial information by transaction. When we look at that acquisition which we did in the U.S., this was more a smaller transaction, except Avant-Garde, where we already mentioned about the low double-digit sales figure. When we look at the 2 acquisitions which we are disclosing now in the financial bridge, this is van den Berg as well As TANlock. TANlock is actually a project business. There, we are building up now the project pipeline. We have already won some major wins with the Schwarz Group in Europe. Here, you have seen the first 6 months was in line with our business plan, still dilutive, but we expect in the next 12 months to see a change in that situation.
Okay. And then you spent some time on your Data Center business and the impressive compound annual growth rate you're expecting. Are you also envisaging to gain market share? Or is that rather a growth in line with the overall market?
No, I think it's market share. We have the -- the strength of dormakaba from the past is the partner model that we have mainly in Europe, strong partners for the last 100 years, and people who are working over generations. We want to keep the partner business for sure, but we are strengthening with our vertical approach that we have, partner verticals like Airports, Hospitals, but also Data Centers, where we have an offering suited for the data centers. And I think as a good example, we have TANlock. So we can offer the customers, like from the entrance to the rack, the seamless integration of all the locks that you can go in. And depending on your, how you call it, freedom to operate or freedom to use part of the building, you are allowed to go in certain areas or not. I think it's something where we have a good offering, which is including lots of security and technical features which we have. And yes, this would be somewhere supporting the organic growth in the regions with our vertical.
And in the end, if you talk about verticals, it's important to talk to the end customer. Sometimes you serve them over a partner, but it's important, too, that people know our offering. And I think what we've seen in many examples. And you saw the hospital in Switzerland where we can sell automatic access solutions and keys. So I think it's always good that you have one way to enter the customer. And once you're in, you can sell the full portfolio. It seems like Data Centers, you might win over TANlock, which I think it's a solution where you can have a lock for the rack. It's not so many. So you're getting in with someone with a special and then you are selling more. And I think that's same for U.S., so to have something which is on the technological side leading, which others do not have. And then you are able to sell more standards, which is our approach.
The next question comes from Delphine Brault from ODDO BHF.
I have 2 and I'll ask them one at a time. First, can you remind us the size of your order book and the visibility it provides? I may have missed it.
I think the order book is something like 6% up.
Yes. But the size of it in months of sales?
Something like CHF 550 million to CHF 600 million.
And second question relates to your EBITDA guidance. Reaching an adjusted EBITDA margin of slightly above 16% would imply an improvement of roughly 80 bps in H2 margin, which is twice what you achieved in H1. So can you split out the main components of this improvement? Will it be only operating leverage?
I think what we have seen in the first half that our volume in Access Solutions is 0. We were growing our price. In KWO, we are slightly negative. And I think if we deliver on our volume in the second half, we are confident, because we worked very much on the operational leverage, we got our costs down, and that means like if we're growing by 1% for the full year to 3% to 5%, the volume will be driving our margin. I think that is the main impact. And that's also why you asked on the order book. So having the higher order book and executing on the order book should deliver our 16% plus for the full year.
The next question comes from Ingo Stössel from UBS.
Just one for me. Can you give us some background to your S&P rating? Other issuers here in Swiss franc often do that before they come in euro or dollar. Are you planning to issue in a different currency anytime soon?
Ingo, thanks a lot for the question. Yes, this is one of the considerations which we have. We want to be ready in case there will be maybe some inorganic growth coming. But we also felt that it is worth to really now get a public rating, which we cannot formally communicate, which is also provided by external source such as Standard & Poor's.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Till Reuter for any closing remarks.
Well, thank you for attending. Thank you for listening to our call, for the good questions. And hope to see you soon, latest on the Capital Markets Day, but for sure earlier. Thank you very much, and see you soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Good bye.
dormakaba — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
dormakaba — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our full year conference. It's a pleasure to welcome you in Rümlang in our head office and also via webcast to talk about the full year results of '25-'26. Today, I'm joined by our CFO, René Peter. Very welcome to have you here and to have questions together with you on René and myself. Also, just as you know, two gentlemen in the Steve Bewick and Carsten Franke are also here from the Executive committees, maybe you could also have a question to them if you would like.
Let me start with the highlights and the development of '24-'25. And then after the highlights, René will give more insight into the financial performance. And with this one, I think it's very important. We delivered very strong results and made major progress on our strategy execution. We are well on track to deliver our commitments for '25-'26. I think it's very important that dormakaba -- many of you know dormakaba much longer than me, but I think we are on a journey. And the journey was that we have targets of growing consistently 3% to 5% organically and to come up to a margin which is between 16% and 18%.
And this journey, we are on for some time. Now we come to the year '25-'26, where we want to talk about this target. I think that is -- but the journey is on. And I think we are very well on track, thanks to a strong team, thanks to what we have done. We reached our guidance for this year. Cash flow has been substantially improved. And I think we see that the momentum is continuing '25-'26. And I will come back later on the detailed numbers. I think it's very good that we are on this trajectory. We want to grow further 3% to 5%. We want to reach the first time an EBITDA margin of above 16%. And what you also can see on the page that we talked about the ROCE in the past, you want to have a more like even cleaner figure, which means like the adjusted operating cash flow between 11.5% and 12.5% for the fiscal year, which just started.
With this one -- this page is some when we were started. And I think it very well shows where we are on and what we are doing. On the first side, clearly, elevate performance. It's about the strict execution of our Shape4Growth program. And this year, until '24-'25, we realized like CHF 148 million. To come back and to put in relation, we came up with CHF 170 million, finance, HR, IT operations. Out of the CHF 170 million, we have CHF 148 million realized. We put another CHF 40 million to CHF 50 million on top for the commercial, which will come later, but we are well on track to work on the cost savings and have achieved a lot.
One topic on the cost saving was clearly working on the shared service centers and the best cost countries. Sofia, Nogales, Chennai. And it's important, if you talk about it, but you have to build a strong nucleus. If you have a nucleus, you can shift more people. And I think what we achieved in the last year is really we have now 300 and more people in Sofia, which means like you can hand over more functionalities and -- what we have seen that we are on the shared service on the -- without the commercial, 80% completed and more than 20 countries, the back office already moved to shared service.
Commercial, we launched last year on the Capital Markets Day, another CHF 40 million to CHF 50 million on top. And I think that's also where part is going to the shared service. A big part of the commercial execution comes from Germany, U.S. and we are same like cost saving, go-to-market. But I think all these measures show and the path to the 15.5% EBITDA margin. And what we delivered now year-over-year, half year over half year, I think it's really consistent and to be continued.
Complexity. So cost is one topic, but as you all know, complexity is something which dormakaba is very complex. On the product side, and I think we have to manage complexity on the go-to-market in lots of the processes we have internally. And I think it's an ongoing task to reduce complexity. While on the cost performance, the 80% on the CHF 170 million on the commercial, we maybe are 1 year [indiscernible], we are more because we start later. On the complexity, we are in the middle of it. And I think here it is very important. You will see later. We have a new terminal generation. It's about platforms. So you have many, many products and the question more like how many same parts, components you have to come up to the right number of products. And here's about toolbox strategy, modular strategy. And I think we show later one example of how we want to be more platform on the hardware side, on the software side and also on our firmware side.
Same like divestments. So divestments go-to-market. We have sold South Africa last year -- end of last year. We have done the U.K., the less profitable service in the U.K. The Brazil time and attendance we lately sold, and also the Kuwait go-to-market is about efficiency. We can go via partners. I think it's also where we made big progress and it shows we are continuously checking our total market, our portfolio on the product side but also on the go-to-market side.
Supplier base, big numbers 2 years ago. It's continuing. What does it mean? If you had -- I think there was a number of above 20,000 suppliers. If you have 20,000 suppliers, the amount you buy from each of them is small. If you lower the numbers, the amount is bigger, you have better negotiation power. Continuously working on the number of suppliers gives us more power, gives us more potential for cost savings.
Last one on complexity -- not last, but I think to mention here, door closer complexity. When I arrived, we knew they there close to 10,000 SKUs. And I think we will continuously work on this one as an example where we show that on the CHF 300 million door closer business, we believe that we could have above 20 -- close to CHF 25 million cost savings. We are advancing here. We see the potential. But this takes time because in the end, if you're putting -- if you have this complexity and you want to use to a platform strategy, you have to introduce new products. It comes over time, but at least something which is important. And it goes over product, hardware and software, it goes on a go-to-market and clearly also internally where we have to work on the complexity every day.
Not more important, but for me, which I -- in the end, innovation and growth is something which I really want to drive and which is important. We have already started to do small transactions, so four M&A deals. I think it's important to continue. Our competition is continuously acquiring companies. And I think we have to also be part of the consolidation, and we want to be part of the consolidation. We have to further work on the product portfolio. You saw today our announcement about a new CIO, David Fuller, who is joining us as new Chief Innovation Officer. At same time, I'm very happy that Magín Guardiola, who was doing for 2 years really helped us to put in a global product road map to really get the American, Asia and European business under one structure. He will focus on new projects. And David, his background is much more on the software side, having done robotic AI and software, focusing really on how we go to market on the software side and how further to improve our software offering.
The focused R&D. We talk more about verticals. So we have the indirect business, but the vertical, talk about airports, data centers, it's getting more important. And if you talk about product, think it's always you have to combine it with what is the impact on the customer, what's the customer journey. Here also we have progress and I will show a little bit more.
Today, we're delivering strong numbers. That's the one message. And the second message really, we believe we can do more and we have to do more in the U.S. We have well positioned. We have good positions in Europe, #1, 2 position. We have good opportunity in Asia. I think the benefit or the opportunity is for us really how we can grow in the U.S. and here I will show you more details on how we want to change our go-to-market in some areas and how we want to continue in other areas.
I think that's more like happy to talk more about the U.S. It may be one of the areas we also expect more question. I think it's someone when you are leading in Europe. And if you're this #3 in the U.S., you have to go to U.S. and to get more market share.
Talk about the verticals. So on the one hand, we are strong in distributing of our partners, where it's very important, we have delivery at the same time to talk about the end customers and about the customer journey. We are very well positioned in airports with our automation -- automatic gates and our automation business, we have last year closed more than 80 airport projects. For example, Noida Airport in India and Ireland to three main airports. And also, we have lots of installation, for example, with Air Canada. If you pass on a lounge at the airport in Zurich is a good example where you see our gates and our products in the airport.
Another one was the cooperation with Rohde & Schwarz, the security check, how we do border control and automated personal screening. I think airport, we see as one vertical where we are well positioned and we're in the future. Safety, security will change our habits, how we work at the airport, and we are well positioned to benefit from this change at the airport.
Another vertical where we also had nice projects in Singapore and also here in Switzerland, two projects is the health care area. And we have two children's hospital in Sydney and become one of the supplier of a major purchasing organization in the U.S. So also health care. It's more like touchless. When we think about like -- you think back about corona when you have to think how can I enter buildings? How can I efficiently have a people flow, health care is another vertical where we are very well positioned.
Everybody talks about AI. What does AI need? Data, it needs computing power. Computing power is data center. So everybody today, we discussed about the big 4 in the U.S. We talked about also like we see lots of demand in Asia. So here, we have more than 15 projects again. We can do it directly with the data centers. We can do it indirectly via partners. This is a big vertical. And in the end, what you have, you have different cascading of access. If you really can get at the heart of the data center or in different areas. And here the recent acquisition of TANlock is one way where we can also have the recs locked. So I think here, we have, in the end, strengthened our offering for the data centers, but also for critical infrastructure.
Another vertical where we have a nice project is the sports entertainment. Now we have the -- for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations, we have a couple of stadiums and also in the Melbourne Olympic Parks. So you see that's -- if you want to go the vertical, it doesn't mean that you only go direct, but I think it's important to have the offering and then the customer can decide if you work directly or via partners, but it's good to have the customer journey and to convince customers to go for dormakaba products.
So I love to get innovation into product, into customer journey. And there's a couple of examples, what has changed and how we can get -- introduce our new products. One is the Quantum Pixel, a new product for hospitality, for hotels. I think here you can see like a minimalistic design. I think it's a very nice design. And I think with design also comes a new feature like Apple Wallet and where we have like a digital wallet, it's important that you have a new experience. I think it shows like for modern hotel management, I think that is the right way to go, and it's we introduced last year.
Second one, I talked about the how to make it more like a modular system, the new terminal generation. In the end, you have different terminals for different application, and you have to find a way how can I get a terminal for various application. And what you see is one topic, but what's behind the whole firmware, the electronics, I think it's important that here behind, we have to be less complex. And I think here with this terminal generation, we reduce the complexity, have less firm variance and are much more efficient in introducing this product.
Third product, I want to show you and you heard before, Skyra. Skyra pays in on security, on critical infrastructure, on the topics we hear every day. And what does it mean, it means like simplifying access for critical infrastructure and utility. So you can send a digital key via cloud to the gentleman or lady doing the service. You need no additional key or device. It's simple programming. It allows very flexible. Think about in the past, people had to maintain infrastructure, their big bundle of keys and they have to think about which key fits. Now sending out you can change the route. You can be very efficiently sending the key on the mobile phone without putting the mobile phone to any device. So I think very flexible. And the first project we were starting is in Australia. We're a big partner. Utilities were also like Steve and I talked to the partner, I think it's a good change. And I think it shows that we are driving our DNA is security, critical infrastructure. I think that's where the DNA of dormakaba really fits into.
Transaction. So shifting gears, Shape4Growth, Shape to Growth. So we mentioned that we want -- we have to be part of the consolidation. We need market share in the U.S. We need technology to have a good go-to-market. So the Van den Berg was a smaller acquisition in February, go-to-market on the airport side. Safetrust is going in the direction of readers. It's secure identity, but I think what's important, the reader where you put your batch or your mobile phone is not only a reader, it's a data collection point. And then the question comes up for the customers, what is the customer journey? Can I do more services? And I think that is where Safetrust, and it's one of the -- it's a minority position, but we are together with Safetrust, we have a good innovation power in the U.S.
Kinlong, joint venture we signed lately in China. I think it pays off to China for China. I think I -- we told you that we -- our philosophy is to be local for local. So we have to win in the U.S. We are local 80% to 90% comes from the U.S. for the U.S. Same in Asia. So I think it's very important that also in Asia, we're doing the same methodology. And here with Kinlong potential, it's a go-to-market in addition to our direct go-to-market and we did this joint venture in April.
The latest acquisition TANlock. TANlock, it helps on the offering in data centers and critical infrastructure that you also have the recs closed and you have the same system and to have more locks in the end, a broader offering for data centers and critical infrastructure. And it shows a little bit like go-to-market. I think it's very important, how can we strengthen the go-to-market. We are very innovative as dormakaba. And I think it's important, what do we need to have additional go-to-market, and I think this is something where you should also expect more. I think we cannot give details, but I think we want to grow, we want to clearly grow in the U.S., and one is organically and the other one is clearly over acquisitions.
Simplification. I think I mentioned this one the four parts we sold. Here it's very important. If we are selling a business, for example, the South African business, and we had the business close to CHF 14 million, CHF 15 million, we continue to do business, and we do not lose top line, it's a different go-to-market. So if you're selling, we don't want to lose the business. We want to continue the business, but with partners. And I think it is important that this one has been very efficient and U.K. René will show you how we will grow in the U.K., in the country, and it shows also the sale of a part of the business does not impact the performance of the business. So with this one, handing over to my colleague and CFO, René for detailed financials.
2. Question Answer
Thanks a lot, Till. And also from my side, a warm welcome to our full year results 2024-'25 Analyst and Investor Conference. As Till said, a strong financial -- we had a strong financial year 2024-'25, and I'm very pleased to tell you more about this.
Let's have a look at our key figures for the fiscal year 2024-'25. We delivered a good organic net sales growth of 4.1% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.5%, marking now the sixth consecutive semesters of adjusted EBITDA margin improvement. Return on capital employed significantly increased to 30.6%, achieving our midterm targets 1 year ahead of plan. Net profit amounted to CHF 188 million. We delivered free cash flow of CHF 176.9 million and we managed to further reduce our net debt by 21.2% to CHF 358.2 million.
Let's look at some details, starting first with our top line development. Net sales reached CHF 2,870.1 million amid a challenging economic environment marked by trade tariffs as well as geopolitical tension. This amount represents organic net sales growth of 4.1% compared to a previous year's already very strong growth of 4.7%. This growth was driven by strong volume growth of 2.4% and robust pricing of 1.7%. The appreciation of the Swiss franc against all major currencies, except the pound sterling led to a negative currency translation effect of minus 2.3%. The total impact from M&A amounted to minus CHF 14.4 million.
Both business segments, Access Solutions as well as Key & Wall Solutions and OEM contributed to the organic net sales growth. Let's have a look at Access Solutions. Access Solutions delivered organic net sales growth of 4.4%, led by our core markets and driven in -- driven by a strong volume growth of 2.9%. The strong momentum that we have seen in the last -- in the first half of this financial year as well as on the second half of last financial year continued in the second half of this year despite the challenging economic environment. All core markets contributed to the positive organic net sales growth.
Let's focus on some key markets. North America achieved a solid organic net sales growth of 4.2%, driven by several projects in the hospitality and in airport verticals. Germany continued to outperform the market and grew organically by 7.4%. The country reported a strong automatics business and market share gains in Hardware Solutions as a result of dormakaba's comprehensive product portfolio as well as focused go-to-market strategy.
U.K., Ireland continued the great performance of the first half and closed the year with an organic growth of 9.7%. The rest of the world markets in Access Solutions recorded an organic growth of 3.1% with strong growth in India, China, France and other midsized markets in Europe. Access Solutions achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.7%, representing a further increase of 50 basis points, thanks to a strong adjusted EBITDA improvement in the second half of this financial year. KWO continued its of trajectory of good organic net sales growth and record performance with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21%. While Movable Walls managed to maintain the strong growth momentum from prior year, OEM was impacted by the drop in demand from North America as a consequence of trade tariffs and economic uncertainties, particularly towards the end of the fiscal year.
Adjusted EBITDA amounted to CHF 445 million in the financial year 2024-'25. Excluding currency translation and divestment impact, adjusted EBITDA improved by CHF 40 million. Volume growth contributed CHF 7.7 million. Price increases and efficiency gains from ongoing transformation program allowed us to more than offset cost inflation, resulting in a positive price over cost of CHF 31.8 million. As a result, adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 80 basis points and amounted to 15.5%, demonstrating a sixth consecutive half year of margin improvement. Our transformation program, as Till mentioned, continued to deliver with total cost savings of CHF 148 million realized so far. CHF 64 million of cost savings were delivered in this financial year.
Now allow me to focus on three items in our income statement. Gross margin first. Excluding restructuring expenses, our gross margin further improved by 30 basis points and amounted to 41.6%, mainly driven by operational efficiency improvement and net procurement savings. Functional expenses as a percentage of net sales improved slightly to 29.2%, still impacted by work shadowing expenses. Net profit, excluding items affecting comparability, net of tax, increased by 5.6%. As mentioned, we have delivered substantial free cash flow in the financial year 2024-'25. Adjusted operating cash flow margin amounted to 11.7%, broadly in line with the previous year. Free cash flow stood at CHF 176.9 million, CHF 20 million below previous year due to higher restructuring expenses paid.
To emphasize an increased focus on cash generation, we introduced the adjusted operating cash flow margin as part of our financial guidance. As highlighted before, we achieved a return on capital employed of 30.6%, 1 year ahead of plan, supported by a further improvement of our adjusted EBIT. We continued to strengthen our financial profile and further reduced our net debt, as mentioned by 21.2%. Net debt amounted to CHF 358.2 million resulting in a debt ratio of 0.8x adjusted EBITDA. The repayment of our CHF 320 million bond expiring in October 2025 is already fully financed.
Sustainability remains a core part of how we operate responsibly, safely and for the long term. We have reduced our injury rate by 33.5%, reaching our targets 2 years ahead of schedule. That's a direct result of our teams prioritizing safety every day. We have cut our CO2 emission by 25% since our baseline year 2019, 2020. This is an important and meaningful step forward as we continue driving towards net 0. We have also reduced landfill waste by more than 50%, which shows real progress in waste reduction as well as circular practices.
Our work is getting recognized. We were named as Financial Times Climate Leader in both years 2024 and 2025. We also have achieved prime status with ISS. And for the first time, we have earned a spot on the CDP's A List for supplier engagement.
To align with the company's strategy and with the goal for a long-term balance of profit distribution to the shareholders and retaining earnings for future growth, a new dividend policy will be proposed to the AGM. Reflecting our strong financial stability and our confidence into future earnings, dormakaba Group intends to gradually increase or at least maintain dividend per share each year. For the financial year 2024-'25, the Board of Directors proposes a dividend of CHF 9.20 per share at the AGM in October. This represents an increase of 15% over the previous year. Additionally, to enhance stock liquidity and to make ownership more accessible to investors as well as employees, a share split with a ratio of 1 to 10 will be proposed at the upcoming AGM.
This concludes the part on financial performance. With this, I hand over back to Till.
Thank you, René. And I think, as mentioned at the beginning clearly, we have a journey which is going to be continued, and we work on our efficiencies, we work on the complexity. Today, I want to give a little bit more insight into our North American growth plan.
We have -- everybody as a legacy tradition, and I think it's very important to get the good part of the legacy and where the opportunity is. And also with the legacy, our transition comes a different positioning globally. I think we all know that in Europe where our home is, we are dormakaba, kabadorma, Swiss, German, we have strong positions in Europe, #1 and 2 positions and also in APAC, in Asia, Australia, we have good position, good opportunities.
What -- if we look on the left side with America, I think everybody knows that in the Americas, we are a #3 player, and we are a distant #3 player. However, the biggest market, the biggest single market the most lucrative market is the U.S. And I think that is one of the topics we have to look in more detail and explain how can we do more? Why are we underrepresented? And I think how can we strengthen and that I want to go in more detail. It's our key strategy. How do we want to strengthen our North American footprint and what are new ways we want to go.
First of all, to give you -- about the size. So the biggest market, the most lucrative, we're talking about a $13 billion market. And our business, hardware, AHS, AS and ACS, you see that 50% comes from the hardware, 25% from automatics, and drive 25% from Access Control solution. Today, we are a distant #3. We did not buy the right company in the past. So our market share is roughly around 5% in some areas. The good thing is we have a good position on the hardware side, and we are strong in hospitality. We are leading in hospitality. I think what we want to do, we go through by vertical by vertical and how we want to more clear and we're going to start with this hardware business.
The hardware is the biggest addressable market, roughly CHF 6.5 billion. It's the product oriented, the door closer, door hardware. So we talk about it's getting more cost efficiency wise and the products are largely sold indirectly. Here, we have a sizable business and we have a strong position in architectural hardware. But we are #3 because we have not invested enough. We have under-invested in the past areas. And we did start already last year to invest in the portfolio. We have some regulatory gaps, for example, the exit devices and also in component feature sets that are specific to the U.S. market. Here, for example, locks, we are going to invest. I think it's very clear that we have product gaps in the portfolio, which we are going to fill. We are in the process. And the second part is the go-to-market. Our sales force has been reorganized in a customer-centric way. So we have, in some areas, really very profitable regions, and we have to focus on the right regions. Think about the go-to-market by region, not America as a whole, but we are looking by the regions where we are good, which metropolitan areas we are with the right distributors on the right track and what we have to change.
We have made progress already here. We see the order backlog with some gaps filled. Order backlog is growing. But we are just beginning at this. And I think here, we know it is an existing market. We have a good offering. We have to add to the offering, and we have to focus the go-to-market.
On the automatics, which is where I believe dormakaba, the hardware is not -- it's more commoditized. The automation is much more like where we differentiate, where we talk about the vertical, where we can talk about how to add AI into functionality. I think here, we have a great offering. And we see significant potential. But the same here, we have some product gaps, which are more on the lower end side. And we have to focus more on verticals.
Airport, where we have good global experience, much more to go to U.S. and data centers and health care. And I think here, it's clearly also kind of a product gap where we're talking to partners, but then the go-to market. Whilst the hardware business indirect, over partners on the automatics, it's much more the value contribution comes over installation and service. So we work on the service network. And also here, we have seen already last year some good development. So we got two major purchasing organizations for hospitals. We have seen two big retailers having more orders. So I think it's very important to have the right go-to-market and to engage with the right partnering.
Next one. The third one is the access control solutions. So hardware, automatics, product gaps and go-to-market concentrate. Access Control solution is a different picture. Here, you see it's still like it's -- the market is more than CHF 3 billion. We are very strong in the hospitality area, where we have a leading position. And here, we clearly further develop in the U.S. but also globally.
In the multi-housing, we have a good offering with partners, where this is something where we will benefit and have seen upside potential. Where we are today not really represented in the commercial area. It's 80%, so it's above CHF 2 billion. And what we are going to change here is, I think, is important to explain. Dormakaba from the history is selling engineered solutions. So the product comes as a bundle, and you only can buy the bundle. What we are going to change is that we have not only the bundle, but also the components. So you can sell locks, you can buy readers, controllers. And I think here, we have one customer, so we have the products. We have to adjust the products slightly for the U.S. market. But there's one customer segment, the PACS, the physical access control systems and the OEM partners, which we are not really serving today. So package solution in the past, now we're going to unbundle, selling components to a new customer group of the PACS, which is different than the past. And I think whilst in hardware, automatics, hospitality, it's about the existing go-to-market with more focus with product depth. Here, it's a new go-to-market to the PACS. And why do I believe that we have the right to win here? Because we have in our portfolio some companies which have not been really aligned on the dormakaba journey.
One is LEGIC, credential company, which is really like credential is one of the key criterias for secure access. Farpointe, the reader company, which is in the end run independent of dormakaba in the past. And here we have a good foundation to build on to if there is a solution or we can only sell locks, where we can only sell readers or controllers. I think here is the potential to really not only talk about you can sell the whole bundle but also going by component.
I think that is somewhere where you have some gaps to address on get the API on the product, but it's very important. We have lots of the components existing, but we are today not selling them as components. And therefore, I think it's to be important, open, interoperable. And I think this component will be a new way, and we believe that is a big potential. And this market is today a CHF 2 billion market. And we want to really win. I think the goal has to be to be 8% to 10%. I think that's the goal for the team to build up something here to be really represent in this market.
If you look at the U.S. total, today, CHF 722 million, and the clear goal must be organic and inorganic to go above CHF 1 billion. You have AHS hardware business with a very existing business, adding product, concentrating on the go-to-market, automatics, enlarging the service, the integration of the partner business, hospitality continue with a strong brand, continue with the market and then having the new component commercial part, which I think adds to today's business.
This one plus the M&A plus acquisitions. We are convinced as a team. We want to go above CHF 1 billion, and it's the biggest market. It's for us important. It will also a little change the way today we are very European-centric. We have to be more in the U.S. Also with David Fuller being the EC. He is a U.S. citizen. So he will be based in the U.S., clearly working with the team here. I think that's really like what we want to do and we want to shift gears to grow in the U.S.
Now clearly, continue what we're doing, Shape4Growth, Shape to Growth, complexity. But looking at the outlook, let me give me some comments. So we are -- the business here is already like 2 months old, 2nd of September. So we expect a robust trading environment despite geopolitical tension, discussion on tariffs, which are staying. So uncertainties, volatility stays. And I think it's very important to -- that we also have seen this in the last half year.
We believe that -- we see that interest in Europe could be lowered. The infrastructure package in Germany, we do not see today, but there should something come hopefully. We see increased activities in the U.S. on the investment side, and we see lots of opportunities to grow. The order backlog to date is unchanged. Good momentum, though the year was starting robustly. And then we will further advance on our commercial transformation and on the complexity reduction and want to accelerate profitable growth. And therefore, we expect for this year to grow organically 3% to 5%. We want to achieve an adjusted EBITDA margin of above 16%. We never did it before. So I think it's very important. The team is fully committed to go this next step. And on the operation cash flow margin, we want to be between 11.5% and 12.5%. I think that's a goal, which it's very important that it's a journey.
You've seen that on the complexity, we have lots of projects running, and it's about working further, continue on the cost efficiencies. It has to be part of our DNA. It's a not a cost program, it's efficiencies, continue to show that we can lower the distance to the -- our competitors globally and in the U.S. Thank you. And for this, I'm happy to take your questions for René and myself.
Thank you very much, Till, Rene. So we'll open the Q&A session right away here. We'll start with the questions from the audience first, just a small instruction from my side. [Operator Instructions] Patrick, I think you've got the first question.
Patrick Rafaisz from UBS. Three questions, if that's possible. First on the guidance, and you described a bit the world, right, for the outlook. But what do you assume in the 3% to 5%, the pricing contribution and the volume contribution to be? And in that context, can you quantify a bit what you mean by robust start, right? Because if you look at H2 on the country level in Access Solutions, most regions actually saw a slowdown in volumes. How did that change now into H1?
Maybe we changed the order of your questions. And René, you want to give more light on the second half year.
So when we look at the business, we saw in the second half year organic net sales growth of 3.1% compared to 5.1% in the first half year. However, you need to consider that we were substantially impacted by the trade tariffs in KWO business. And there, we were growing 7% in the first half year and 0% growth in the second half year due to the OEM business. And on the OEM business, actually one part of the business actually is that we are supplying OEM customer in North America out of China. And you can imagine with the significant tariffs imposed in the China delivery, this business was hit substantially. But it was fully compensated by Modernfold as well as our movable wall business so therefore, there you see 0% growth. But behind that, there were some substantial changes.
When we look at the Access Solutions business, the Access Solutions business is partly an indirect business, hardware business, partly also project business. Therefore, you have some seasonality as well in that business depending on some upgrades, which we are doing, like in hospitality, especially in the second half year and the first half of this financial year, which obviously, after a certain deal of time comes to an end. When we look at the business itself, we have seen actually still a very robust performance in the second half year in Access Solutions with 3.9% growth compared to a demand in prior year comparison of about 5% and 6% growth. Now so therefore, we see that there is still a very strong momentum. When we look at our business development in Access Solutions, but I think we need to anticipate that especially the trade tariff impact on the OEM business will continue in the first half of this financial year. But with this, I would like now to hand over to Till.
I think it was important that once you -- I did the same like you have 5% and coming up to 4%, what does the 3% mean? And Access Solutions business is stable on 4% and the impact came from KWO. I think that's important and that also should explain like that the momentum, the 4% growth, plus/minus, continues. So we don't see the 3%. So I think that's what I mentioned to be clear that we first look at the second half to have a clear understanding how to read it and then to understand that we continue on this trajectory.
And Patrick, you raised also a question about pricing impact. The pricing impact we anticipate a price increase of about 50% due to price, 50% due to volume like we have seen that in this financial year.
Yes. Maybe also the tariff will come in the second. So I think the surcharge topic, maybe you can also address because it's a bit pricing plus surcharge.
Yes. Obviously, the guidance on tariffs is difficult because at the end, nobody knows exactly how this will evolve. We have announced in April pricing as a surcharge, not price increases of between 2% to 10% of our product portfolio. And this will obviously help us in the range of 3% to 5%, maybe bringing us more on the upper part, but that's something we need to see how this evolves over time. But so far, what we have seen is good takeover or acceptance in the market of those surcharges.
And I think just on the tariffs to add, because this question has been raised also in the morning. I think it's still very important that we do local for local. So the impact on the tariff should be controlled. And in the end, with our local-for-local U.S., 80%, 90% local for U.S., same for China. I think the impact should be manageable.
Can I ask about the North America growth plan? You blurred the picture a bit right, but trying to understand the message from the bridge to the CHF 1 billion, was the message that it's about 50-50 organic and M&A-driven?
No, I think we have -- that would be -- I would not do this, but I think we have -- first of all, we want to grow above GDP, and I think we want to do a 2% above GDP in the markets. And when I try to lay it out is we have existing established go-to-market with hardware and where we exactly know the customers, where we have product gaps from the past, which we have to repair, which we have to close. And then it's about in some regions, we are very efficient, and we have to work on the regions which are not so efficient. How can we change the go-to-market, do we need new partners, different partners. While it's an efficiency game for me in the end.
On the automatic, it is much more differentiating product or a service of a direct. We talk to data centers, to airports. I think it's more direct, indirect and you need the right service network, you need people who can install it, who can service. So it's growing. There might be also some smaller partners to buy to really getting in the regions to have the right network because the value-add comes over installation. We know this. Same like we have some product gaps, more on the, how called lower-value products, but we need the full portfolio to deliver to hospitals and so on, known.
Hospitality, strong muscle, good product, well-established brand with our key customers. We continue in the U.S. and globally. Multi-housing, some new players like a Butterfly and so on, which are the user interface for you. And there, we have offerings now where we can include our products below the user interface and have an offering which options to grow. The spot which we are going to change is a commercial offering, a CHF 2 billion market where we today have close to a small double-digit number, 2 billion, I think that is I think our -- what our vision and -- what we want to do is we want to get the right market share. And a little bit like the philosophy being here in Switzerland, lots of solutions are engineered, means solution for a big customer, a great solution, sometimes Germany, I can talk about because I'm German-born, a little complex, and you have one fits all solution. And with this approach, we did not really win in the U.S. And I think what we want to do is, and it's more like the component orientation. So you can sell the whole bundle, but you also have the possibility to sell the reader, controller, the lock, you can also get the full one, but the customer decides.
And we have good components. We have with LEGIC with a credential. We have Farpointe. And I think that we want to go a different go-to-market. So are all the products today ready for this composite? No, but we -- it's not a far away because we have something available today to start. And this business is like a CHF 2 billion market and we want to get the market share of close to 10%. So I think that's one part. And so I think I would believe there should be more organically. However, the inorganic part, we can today not to share too many details because on the one hand, it's a consolidating market, yes, so everybody wants to consolidate globally, 35% are with the big 3. In the U.S., maybe the share is a little bit bigger, but we have to be part of the consolidation, and we have not been in the last -- in the last, whatever -- last half year, we did some smaller ones, but we haven't been really active. So we have to get more active.
There is another question here from Martin. Go ahead, Martin.
Martin Hüsler from Zürcher Kantonalbank. I have two questions, completely different from each other. Maybe first about the new dividend policy. Can you elaborate a bit why the Board came to the conclusion that it needs to be changed and that it's not related to any earnings or cash flow metrics? So that's the first question, maybe one by one.
The situation is that we have, over the last 4 years, substantially improved our balance sheet structure. We have a strong financial stability, while at the same time, over the last few years, we have seen some volatility in our dividend payment. And we wanted to care about our shareholders to give a guidance about what they can expect in the future about future dividend payments. This led to the fact that on the one hand, from a business point of view and you have heard about Till explaining our growth ambition.
And a nice ROCE.
We have strong cash flows, but also we need a strong balance sheet to support the strategic direction on inorganic growth, but at the same time, also, we have a stability in our balance sheet, which allows us to clearly indicate that we plan to gradually increase or maintain our dividend moving forward.
Okay. So then maybe we could say that the dividend is kind of a function of M&A opportunities as well. So first, M&A opportunities, and then...
I think dividend is a reflection of a sound financial management, which we would like to establish for future growth, yes.
I think it's expectation management. We want to pay shareholders dividend which is on the level of CHF 9.20 and should at least be stable or grow. I think that's more like expectation management. I think this is also -- and given our forecast and what we see we believe that we still have enough cash flow for investment.
And then the second question, and yes, you alluded to it, but for me, it was a bit too fast. Can you talk again about the shared service centers, where they are at the moment, I think, a plant in Eastern Europe. Do you also have plans for plants in the other shared service centers? And what about the ramp-up of people? So where we are today and where are we in like 2 to 3 years?
As a key element of the Shape for Growth strategy, the transformation strategy was movement of support functions into best cost countries. And we have established three shared service centers. The biggest one currently in Sofia with close to 400 FTEs. The second one in Nogales, Mexico for the North American market, with roughly about 70 FTEs. And the third one in Chennai, India, for Asia Pacific market with 50 FTEs. Over the last 18 months, we have actually migrated more than 20 countries to those shared service center. And this financial year closing was actually done completely out of those shared service centers for those 20 markets. But it's not only just finance, it's also HR. It's also product development. We have also moved IT function into those shared service centers. In addition, also, we have outsourced as part of business process outsourcing IT support functions as a third-party service provider. So this is a move towards migrating some of the transactional activities into best-cost countries. The same thing happens also on the manufacturing side as we have had the groundbreaking of manufacturing plant in North America in Nogales where we expand our production as well as in Sofia for the European markets.
I think just to add, the shared services also the journey and today, if you have 350 plus and also commercial will add to this one. So I think it's a sizable organization now. And even when you only have 20 or 30 people, it's not getting efficient. I think now we are also at a level in Sofia and Nogales where you see efficiency, people can be shared. So I think it was very important to build up this critical size and to further -- in the end, further move business to the shared service, but also to work on the efficiency in the shared service center.
I see there are also some questions from the web. Let's take some questions from there. Operator, please?
The first question from the phone comes from Rizk Maidi from Jefferies.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
A few questions. Maybe I'll start with North America. Sorry, there's a bit of echo, but I'll go through it. Yes, I think since we're shedding more light on the North American business, I was wondering if you could just share with us what this new growth plan will do to the margin. I think the last time you've given some transparency on this business, I think it was in 2021 when you said that the EBITDA margin was 17%, and you had a plan to increase margins by 45 percentage points there. Just thinking about your new strategy of unbundling added service presence, just perhaps what do you think that will do to the margin? And perhaps if you could just show where the margin is today?
Thanks for the good question, Rizk. I think it's two answers to the question. I think, first of all, we have a margin guidance on the 16% EBITDA, which we want to achieve in the coming year where the impact of the U.S. new components will be -- we will grow organically, hopefully, have some inorganically where we want to achieve the 16 plus. We all know that U.S. is the single biggest and the most lucrative business. So clearly, the U.S. business should be accretive to the margin. But I think it will be too early to give an indication of further guidance because the guidance is above 16%. But clearly, it will be beneficial and accretive. And I think that's also the reason why we have to be strong in the U.S. It will be too early to give another indication. I think it's very consistently delivering step by step and now getting the 16% plus, and then we maybe might have more details once we're getting closer to the CHF 1 billion.
The second one is just on the EBITDA for this year. So if I do my math, basically, there's CHF 20 million left in the CHF 170 million program. So this year -- then you have some proportion of nonreoccurrence of the shared service cost ramp-up that should not come back, I think. And maybe René can confirm whether a CHF 30 million number is the right one here. But if I do my math, I get to easily 16.4%, 16.5% margin, perhaps that basically assumes there's no overpricing or no volume drop through? Just if you could give us a little bit of details on how should we think about the margin?
Rizk, thanks a lot for the question. It's indeed, and we already mentioned that we have some additional cost this year, which is part of the normal operating result for work shadowing, but also product transfer into those best-cost countries. This is in the range of about 50 basis points for the full year of net sales. So therefore, obviously, there is some benefit, which we're expecting, especially now in the next financial year to see in the functional cost development, particularly in finance and HR and product development. Now I do not want to speculate on the exact figure, especially also when it comes to the adjusted EBITDA margin. Our guidance is very clear. We would like to be above 16%. We have never been on 16%, and that's our focus to deliver more than 16% for the next financial year.
I think Rizk, can -- I think we can follow your arguments, and we are on a journey, but it's very important that it is not one bullet in the wall. It's lots of small steps, lots of changes on projects, on go-to-market. So I think it's really like the whole team has delivered a great result for the last year. And it's about like to empower and to really do the next step. And as René mentioned, I think it's very important to get over the hurdle because then it means like also kind of a new time. And I think it's one that important, the legacy tradition. It's important to move on, but not -- first get it done and then we do the next one.
Perfect. And then the very quick last one is on the new dividend policy. And my understanding is the extra retained earnings here, likely to go to M&A, and you clearly stated your ambitions there. Just maybe perhaps you could just go back to the M&A policy. Are you ruling out any big transformational deals? And if you could just highlight a bit on your M&A criteria, just to avoid some of the mistakes that have been made in the past when it comes to M&A?
I think now the -- clearly, you want to look about go-to-market. You have seen that focus has to be on the U.S. So really when we look at U.S. targets, the acquisition should be accretive without the goodwill amortization. I think it's important that we talk about accretive, what we understand on accretive. What we do see the market is not really consolidated. So we see also a smaller acquisition. And I think the opportunity should be that we try to get the smaller on a better price, and also expect that once the target gets bigger that you have the competition from our, I'll call it, feathers in the market, which also will bid on it. So I think it is something where -- we have a couple of topics which we are watching on, but I think it's too early to guide. And as I think here it's accretive, go-to-market, U.S. preferred.
All right. I see there is another question from the web. Operator, let's take this one.
The next question comes from Martin Flueckiger, Kepler Cheuvreux.
I have got three, actually. And I'll take one by one. First one is a bit of a general question, more strategic in -- and I guess more strategic rather than tactical in nature. But anyhow, I was wondering, what do you consider to be the biggest challenges and opportunities ahead in the upcoming financial year in both business segments? That would be my first question.
I think it's a very broad question. A question that we like 1 hour or 2 hours. I think it's the biggest challenge which is...
Just key points.
I think the key point is we have a volatile environment. And we have to stay to be very -- stay on execution to continue on our product delivery, and delivery of the product from operations to the market and to win the customers very operationally. Same time, working on the software offering. I think that is two topics to focus on, but then also delivery performance.
Great. And the next one is, I guess, a question for the CFO. Just the number of smaller transactions you've done, some of them were indicated in terms of size. Some of them weren't. So just for updating spreadsheets here, what kind of divestment effect on sales and adjusted EBITDA we're talking about? And what's the kind of total transaction value we should put into our cash flow models for '25, '26, please?
When we look at the last financial year, we had four smaller transactions. These are -- were mostly bolt-on acquisitions. As from that point of view, there was a low single million amount, which we paid. On the divestment side, you have seen CHF 40.4 million divestment impact net as the bigger one was actually on the -- sorry, CHF 17 million. The biggest one was actually the service business in the U.K. And this will continue up to November, once we have announced it. So therefore, I think with these two parameters, yes, that's what is known today. Obviously, whatever new transaction comes up, it's not yet foreseeable and therefore, I cannot make any comments on the related impact.
Okay. And then with regards to items affecting comparability in '25, '26 and the year beyond that. Just wondering whether you could update your guidance there, please, including goodwill amortization?
The goodwill amortization will be in the range of about CHF 23 million. So therefore similar like we have seen that in this financial year. On ISC, we had this year CHF 44.7 million on EBITDA, and we expect for next year in the range of CHF 30 million to CHF 40 million. They are mainly driven by IT cost for our reside transformation program.
Let's doublecheck whether we have any questions in the room? Yes. Go ahead, please.
[ Ralph Caluori ] from ING Bank. We have heard quite something about, on the one hand side, your local to local approach. On the other hand side, also on the ambitions that you have in the U.S. Now I was wondering whether you could share anything around aside from M&A, but more on the organic side, aside from expected CapEx in the U.S. Will that be a ramp-up locally there? Any projections that you have over that foreseeable horizon? I understood it's more in the Access Solutions and less than the KWO, but then understood KWO basically it stalled growth. If you could shed any light on that CapEx over the coming years?
So maybe first on the KWO, the growth was stalled due to China, not due to North America. So therefore, in North America, we are growing positively. We have a good growth momentum in both businesses in the Key Systems as well as on the Movable business. When it comes to the investments, first of all, obviously, we need to invest on a normal operating business. So therefore, the strong volume growth, which we have seen over the last years, especially in North America led to some bottlenecks in the manufacturing environment, which also now requires some investments into especially machinery and equipment, but this is normally in the normal course of business. There's nothing extraordinary, but there is some additional investments currently going on.
All right. Any further questions here in the room? If not, we are heading towards our operator, once again. I see there is a question from Delphine. Operator, please.
We have a question from Delphine Brault, ODDO BHF.
I have two questions. My first question is a follow-up. You put some emphasis on M&A and also on the North America region. And in parallel, your net-debt-to-EBITDA ratio has significantly improved. So my question is, by how much would you agree to increase your debt leverage ratio as compared to the 0.8 at the end of June? Is the 2.5x still valid?
Yes, the 2.5x is still valid. In the short term, we could go up to 3x adjusted EBITDA.
Okay. And second one, I try -- can you be a bit more specific and comment on the trend in terms of activity in the months of July and August. How does it compare versus your guidance? You are in the middle of the range at the low end, at the high end?
As we are absolutely in line with our guidance. We have seen actually a good start in July, continue to in August with positive growth on the top line. And therefore, we are confident that we will also deliver on the guidance for the full financial year.
All right. Let's see. Any other questions from the room? It doesn't seem to be the case. Then there are a few follow-up questions from the web. Once again, operator, please.
We have a follow-up question from Martin Fluckiger, Kepler Cheuvreux.
Again, financial question. Raw material and component prices, can you talk a little bit about the development over the last financial year, what you're expecting best guess for '25, '26 and also update maybe your expectations with regards to wage inflation this year?
In this financial year, we have seen some, let's say, inflation impact overall on merit as well as on material of about 2% to 3%, higher on merit increases, lower on, let's say, on the material side. For next year, we do not see an easing of the situation. We further anticipate inflation to be in the range of 2% to 3% on raw material, but we see that the merit increase slightly comes down, but still, there is quite a lot of pressure in -- on the salary side, especially in some of the key markets. And therefore, the transfer to shared service center is a key, let's say, instrument and a key driver to address those developments.
There is one more follow-up question from Jefferies, if I'm not mistaken. Operator, please?
Yes, we have a follow-up question from Rizk Maidi, Jefferies.
Yes. Perfect. Two quick ones. Number one is, perhaps can we have a little bit more light on the OEM business? I think Key & Wall division overall was flat in H2, and I think the OEM part is quite small. So I guess the decline there has been quite severe. And this yet, we haven't seen an implementation of tariffs. So I was just wondering why do you explain such a big drop? And number two, how are you going to do to mitigate the performance here? And then secondly, just Till, perhaps if you could just elaborate on the journey long term. Obviously, you have the medium-term financial targets. Maybe if you could look at beyond that, so perhaps reducing the complexity of the business. I think you started with door closer was the -- I'm thinking whether there are other product families within the group where you can do something similar. Anything on elevating the performance of the business sort of further and potentially even improving the working capital management within the group as well?
Let me do it more or less on the finance side. OEM business was impacted by the U.S. tariffs in the second half, where in the past, there was 1 or 2 big customers in the U.S. I think we changed OEM that they are not only offering to the U.S., but also in China, but also to Europe. So it's about like how can I mitigate. I think we all know that it didn't happen overnight. And we also -- we relocated business from China to Mexico already last year in the light of what we see on geopolitical tension. So I think OEM they change the way they work. They had been like a work bench in the past for 2 or 3 OEMs, and now they are much more active in getting business on their work bench, which is very efficient in Taishan. So I believe that our leader in OEM doing a very great job in getting new customers. On the journey, I think I laid out, we have the cost efficiencies where you have the CHF 170 million and then the CHF 40 million plus CHF 10 million, which is CHF 220 million, where on the CHF 170 million, we had CHF 148 million. On the CHF 40 million, the commercial, we are starting, so we are working on it. In addition comes more efficiencies. And one of the first meeting, I was asked about what's about the IT system at dormakaba. So I think that everybody has in mind about like that we have a complex landscape that we had various IT programs in the past. Currently, our program reside is really getting traction, and we believe that over reside, we get lots of efficiencies on how we work and that we -- it's one layer of getting not only cost out, but also efficiency. The door closer complexity is maybe on the numbers much more precise. Door closer complexity in the end stands for the complexity, which we have to, on the one hand, manage, but also we think about how can we reduce complexity or find some ways to be better. So we had 10,000 SKUs for CHF 300 million, and we had looked in details and saw that on the CHF 300 million, we can get -- we were further narrowing it down, but we believe on the CHF 300 million, we could have savings of CHF 20 million to CHF 25 million, maybe even more. There's only CHF 300 million out of CHF 1.4 billion hardware. So be assured that we take this out where we see the biggest potential. But the same we can apply to further product groups. So there is more potential on the complexity reduction. And also remember, we did the same on the hardware also on software side, where we had more than 40 -- close to 50 software platforms reducing it to 12 or 14, which is also going on where we are migrating to this, whatever, top 8 or top 10. I think this shows we are on the door closer, we put a number behind. But then clearly, there is more potential. And I think it's too early to put numbers in. But if you have CHF 300 million out of CHF 1.4 billion, there's more to come. And we have more -- to give you more feedback on this one, but this is when you talk about the journey. So I think that the cost savings, more like what how to get to the bottom line. But also, I think it's important that besides the bottom line and these measures, we have to work on the top line, how to get more business also over new products and acquisitions.
All right. For the last time, I'm going to raise this question. Are there any questions left in the room? If not, then I would say, yes, with this, we're going to close our Q&A session. Thank you very much for your participation, for your questions. Please enjoy the light lunch with us. Just it's going to be served in front of the cafeteria there and use the opportunity, of course, to interact with our management. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Financial data from dormakaba
Revenue
Revenue is the sum of all sales generated by a company, e.g. for its products or services.
Revenue (TTM) metric explainedDirect Costs
Direct costs are the costs incurred directly in connection with the manufacture of the product or service.
Gross Profit
Gross Profit indicates how much of the revenue remains in the company after deducting direct production costs. If the percentage share of sales is calculated, this is referred to as the gross margin.
Gross Profit metric explainedSelling and Administrative Expenses
Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) include all expenses for marketing and sales as well as the general administration of the company.
Research and Development Expense
Research and development costs (R&D) provide information on how much the company invests in the research and development of its products. The costs are particularly interesting as a percentage of revenue and in comparison to direct competitors.
EBITDA
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) is the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The EBITDA margin is calculated as a percentage of sales.
Depreciation and Amortization
Depreciation represents reductions in the value of the company's assets (e.g. due to wear and tear on machinery).
EBIT (Operating Income)
EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) is the company's profit before interest and taxes, also known as the operating income. The EBIT Margin is calculated as a percentage of sales at
.
Net Profit
Net Profit represents the profit or loss after deduction of all costs.
Net Profit metric explainedStocksGuide Premium
| Dec '25 |
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| Revenue | 2,812 2,812 |
2%
2%
100%
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| - Direct Costs | 1,664 1,664 |
3%
3%
59%
|
|
| Gross Profit | 1,148 1,148 |
2%
2%
41%
|
|
| - Selling and Administrative Expenses | 744 744 |
7%
7%
26%
|
|
| - Research and Development Expense | 112 112 |
1%
1%
4%
|
|
| EBITDA | 407 407 |
8%
8%
14%
|
|
| - Depreciation and Amortization | 105 105 |
7%
7%
4%
|
|
| EBIT (Operating Income) EBIT | 302 302 |
14%
14%
11%
|
|
| Net Profit | 88 88 |
30%
30%
3%
|
|
In millions CHF.
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dormakaba Stock News
Company Profile
dormakaba Holding AG engages in the provision of access and security solutions. It operates through the following segments: Access Solutions AMER; Access Solutions APAC; Access Solutions DACH; Access Solutions EMEA; Key and Wall Solutions; and Others. The Access Solutions AMER segment includes the business activities for access solutions in North and South America. AS AMER also has overall responsibility across all segments for the global product clusters services, lodging systems, and safe locks. The Access Solutions APAC segment comprises the business activities for access solutions in the Asia-Pacific region. The Access Solutions DACH segment consists of business activities for access solutions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. AS DACH also has cross-segment responsibility for the following global product clusters: door hardware, interior glass systems, and entrance systems. The Access Solutions EMEA segment is responsible for the global product clusters mechanical key systems and electronic access and data. The Key and Wall Solutions segment offers keys, key cutting machines, automotive solutions, acoustic movable partitions and horizontal and vertical partitioning systems. The Others segment is involved in contactless identification systems and trusted service. The company was founded in September 2015 and is headquartered in Rumlang, Switzerland.
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| Head office | Switzerland |
| CEO | Dr. Reuter |
| Employees | 15,363 |
| Founded | 1862 |
| Website | www.dormakaba.com |


