Yes, thank you very much and welcome to our press and analyst conference for the Bechtle AG second quarter and first half of 2026. I'm very delighted by your interest shown in our conference call.

Certainly, you've all seen our ad-hoc announcement of July 28th in which we already announced the key figures for operational performance in the second quarter and, in particular, an increase in our guidance. Today, we would like to take a closer look and analyze this very positive development in greater depth.

Because I would like to say something upfront: the framework conditions have not improved, they remain challenging. Despite these challenging conditions, Bechtle has performed very positively.

We have a traditional proximity to our customers and a close partnership with all relevant technology vendors, and this is paying off. Our business model is broadly diversified geographically and also across customer groups in our portfolio, and this contributes to our success that we would like to talk about today.

Let us have a look at our agenda. We have three main sections.

We're going to start with an intense, more detailed look at our business performance and development and the key figures of the second quarter of the current fiscal year and also the first half of this year. This will be presented to you by my colleague, Christian Geyer.

The second part is going to cover the latest news and current updates on important strategic events and topics, to speak, that go beyond the actual figures, but that are highly relevant for our future business development. Then, of course, we will have an outlook on the second half of this fiscal year and also put the guidance raise into context and the aims that we pursue and how we actually look at the next six months to come.

Now let's turn to business performance. Mr.

Geyer, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Dr. Olemotz.

Q2 saw double-digit year-on-year growth in almost all relevant key performance indicators. This shows that Bechtle continues to manage the storage crisis very successfully.

The customers still have a very high demand for consultancy and support discussions, and the encouraging performance is broadly supported across all customer segments and also across all regions. We've also been successful in terms of cost management, and as a result, gross margin and EBT margin remain stable.

Let's first take a look at the trend in our order intake and order backlog. Order intake increased by 26%.

This means that the demand remains high, and we've been able to further expand our order backlog. Bechtle is not living off its reserves, but has benefited significantly from high demand.

A high order backlog gives us greater certainty also looking ahead to the current quarter. The reasons for the high order backlog are twofold.

On the one hand, we have longer delivery times for certain hardware products, in particularly servers and storage. The project start-up sometimes takes longer due to the need for discussions regarding increased prices or the allocation of the available IT budget.

Let's now look at our top-line performance. Business volume rose by 18%.

Organic growth was also very strong at 13%, and part of the growth was driven by higher hardware prices. Sales also performed well, driven by a higher proportion of hardware.

Nevertheless, software has also recorded consistently high growth, and organic sales increased by 10%. Overall, a very strong performance from Bechtle at top line.

Let's now look at the performance over the course of the year. If we look at the two quarters, we can see that momentum picked up in the second quarter, but price effects are also playing a role here.

June in particular was very strong. Discussions with customers to initiate projects are currently rather long-drawn-out compared to the past, though some were successfully concluded in June.

For the first half of the year, business volume has an increase of 15.6%, which is well above the previous forecast and one of the reasons for the upward revision of our forecast. As we've communicated in March of the first quarter and after the second quarter, we have positive proof points for our positive business development.

Let's now look at the development in the segments. I think the most important thing you can see here, that all segments inclusively contributed to growth with double-digit figures.

We have a very sound and broad basis. It's not driven by individual segments.

France continues to perform well, albeit at a lower level. Other Europe, we see a key growth driver at 51%.

This includes growth from M&A in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. We also see strong organic growth at 22%.

The good news here is, as I've said before, growth is broadly supported by all customer segments and all regions, which is a clear indication of a sustainable trend. I'm sure you followed the press releases, and if you look at the growth of our competitors, the smaller and the bigger ones, and if you focus on Germany, well, we can safely say that we have gained market share, above all in the first quarter.

This brings us to the earnings performance. If we look at earnings, we can see that gross margin remains at a high level.

We are still able to manage the current difficult situation effectively. Dr.

Olemotz has mentioned the difficult situation. Cost of materials shows slightly disproportionate increase, but gross margin remains at a high level.

This, of course, reflects our successful cost management. Let's look at the trend in operating profit.

EBT is also seeing double-digit growth in the second quarter by 2 20%, which means that the first half-year increases 16%, which is well above our previous expectations, a further reason for the forecast upgrade. A stable gross margin is the basis, but cost management measures are also having a positive impact.

In a nutshell, the positive message here is the EBT margin remains stable. Now, let's look at the different segments.

Here too, growth is broad-based, with all segments showing strong growth. Particularly strong in the segment Other Europe.

This is not only driven by acquisitions, but also by very good results in existing units and great synergies between existing and new units. The cooperation with their headquarters is also great.

Case in point is the Iberian Peninsula. What's also encouraging, Germany is largely maintaining high profit margins.

To conclude our review of the key figures, let's take a look at operating cash flow. Operating cash flow was under pressure in Q2.

The reasons are obvious. Operative cash flow reflects our strong operational performance.

As I've said before, June in particular was very strong, hence significant effects relating to the reporting date. On the one hand, order-related inventories rose, and on the other hand, contract assets also increased.

That's related to the reporting dates, and I'm sure you all understand this. Here we see the development of the business in the second quarter in particular.

Structurally speaking, the picture is positive. If we look at our DSO performance, this has improved from 39 to 37 days.

Also working capital sees an improvement. Despite an absolute increase, the relation to business volume has improved from 7.3% to 6.8%.

All in all, we are fully confident of and assume a positive trend in OCF for the financial year 2026. Let's look at our employees now.

Headcount growth is exclusively driven by acquisitions. In organic terms, we see a decline by 1.4%, and over the year, we see a drop from Q1 to Q2.

We continue to make a conscious decision to adopt a measured approach to new recruitment as part of our cost management strategy. We see positive development and are very conscious here.

Let us now turn, as is customary, to look at our non-financial special events. I shall hand back to Dr.

Thomas Olemotz.

Thank you, Christian. The following selected current updates show examples, just examples, that contribute to our sustainable and profitable growth.

We will have a look at a successful acquisition, three important milestones in our AI activities, a sales success in our public sector business, a very successful capital markets transaction, and last but not least, another step in implementing our sustainability strategy. Let us start with M&A.

With the acquisition of Interforce, that we've already announced, we are once again expanding our market presence in the Netherlands. Interforce is one of the established managed service provider for medium-sized companies in the Netherlands and employs 38 people.

Interforce's business model is based on a high degree of automation, and this explains the relatively low number of employees, and it focuses on integrated cloud and managed service solutions for small and medium-sized customers. With this acquisition, we strengthen our own managed service offering portfolio, further increase our share of recurring revenue, and we gain an experienced team with strong technological expertise.

The plan is to bring Interforce's standardized solution also to other European country markets in the future. Let us now focus on three particular success stories in our AI business.

First, we are expanding our cooperation with Nvidia, and this strengthens our position as a provider of AI infrastructure. We're achieving the highest partner level with Nvidia, and this confirms Bechtle's comprehensive expertise in designing, deploying, and scaling high-performance AI solutions.

Second, together with Dell and, yes, Nvidia again, we're also opening a central Dell AI Factory, which will include a demonstration and proof-of-concept environment, as well as a competence center for consulting and workshops. The aim is to help customers with validated reference architectures to bring AI into productive use more quickly.

A remarkable success has also been achieved by our subsidiary, Planet AI. This is our AI research and development company, and it has won the world's most demanding competition for document-based AI systems.

Planet AI came in first both in the overall ranking, but also in seven out of eight competition categories. Quite impressive.

Let us now have a look at our public sector business, ladies and gentlemen. In the second half of the year, this will be especially critical for our business performance.

Bechtle has been awarded the contract by the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice for the operation and further development of central IT services. The framework agreement centers on the operation of the central BayTech IT platform.

This is essential for digital workplaces and IT services for the Bavarian justice systems. Managed services, project and consulting services, and provision of IT hardware are included in this framework agreement.

The contract commences on January 1st, 2027 and has an initial term of six years. The maximum contract volume amounts up to €250 million.

This project also includes the support of two data centers in 220 locations in Bavaria with a total of more than 17,500 IT workplaces. This is a long-term contract, and through this, Bechtle will support the courts and public prosecutors' offices in Bavaria to further advance digitalization and providing employees with a secure, modern, and high-performance IT working environment.

Also on the capital market, as already announced, we've been quite successful. In May and June this year, we successfully placed our second promissory note transaction since 2018.

The demand was very high, the originally target volume of €250 million was increased to 450 million. The order book was oversubscribed several times and was closed early for new orders.

In the binding phase, the order book was approximately 3.5 times the original target volume. A total of 84 domestic and international investors participated in the transaction.

The promissory note bonds have maturities of three, five, and seven years in six clusters. This is how they were issued.

With this transaction, we're optimizing the maturity profile of our financing structure, and we're strengthening the company's long-term financing, particularly with regard to our M&A strategy. Last but not least, let us have a look at some progress with regard to our sustainability strategy.

Bechtle AG has joined the Responsible Business Alliance as an affiliate member. This supports the vision and objectives of one of the world's largest industry initiatives for promoting social, environmental, and ethical standards in global supply chains, with a focus on electronics and IT industry.

By joining this alliance, we commit to progressively implementing the code of conduct of Responsible Business Alliance in our own business processes and also to involving our direct suppliers in compliance with these requirements. Joining this alliance reinforces Bechtle's sustainability strategy 2030 and the corresponding ESG objectives.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us now turn to the outlook for the remaining months of this year. As I already said, the second quarter was very positive and significantly exceeded our own expectations.

It is quite remarkable how well we've been able to navigate these difficult, challenging framework conditions in the IT market. Let me emphasize again: these conditions are and remain challenging, they have not changed.

I would also like to remind you that the GDP growth forecast for the European Union and Germany have been revised downward, as well as the growth expectations for the IT markets in Germany and France. However, the first half of this year was extremely successful.

We have a record order backlog ahead of us, we look confidently towards the second half of this year. What does that mean specifically for our outlook?

We are raising our guidance from March 2026, our forecast. The demand for future-proof IT solutions and the corresponding consulting services remains high, and our proximity to customers is a major asset here.

In the public sector, we expect a seasonal pattern and further positive momentum in the second half of the year. We know that in the second half of the year, and particularly in the fourth quarter, we're facing very high comparative figures.

Nevertheless, we're convinced that we can maintain our successful course. For the overall fiscal year, we expect a business volume growth of more than 10% and revenue and EBT growth in the range of 5 to 10%.

The EBT margin is expected to decline slightly, mainly due to investments in our own IT infrastructure. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the review of our performance in the second quarter and first half of 2026 and our outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year 2026.

Thank you very much for your attention, and now I'm happy to take any of your questions.

Yes, great, thank you. Congrats to this strong quarter.

Three questions. The first: organic growth in the second quarter was double digits, very strong, but the organic development of employees was flat.

What are the cost expectations here? The ratio of hardware prices to your revenue development, can you comment on that?

The third question refers to the public sector. Do you see new tenders due to the increase in hardware prices?

Thank you, Mr. Wolf, for the questions.

Let me start, and then my colleagues will add details. As regards organic growth, indeed, the second quarter was extremely strong.

You've seen it, we had a close tab on the costs, that is why we don't expect significant cost increases for the remainder of the year. If we show an increase in employee costs, that's due to the variable part of the remuneration and the provisions that are necessary for that.

If we continue the same performance throughout the remainder of the year, then, of course, our sales colleagues will want to have a share in that. We have the provisions on a monthly basis, and that might mean that for the back end of the year, employee costs will increase.

We don't assume, however, that we'll see an organic increase in headcount for the remainder of the year. If the number of FTEs increase, then that's only due to acquisitions, like in the first half of the year.

Second cost,

of course, if we deconstruct growth, there are two essential effects: volume growth and price growth. More than 50% of our growth is driven by price effects.

However, you can't distribute it equally across all product groups. There are certain product groups where we grow both in terms of volume and price, and there are other product groups, above all where the shortage is biggest, where we see tremendous price increases.

We expect further in the back end of the year. What's really strange about the situation, we have other product groups where prices drop.

We have a rather complex situation if we look at the price development at product level, something we haven't had before. Usually these effects are in line during these phases, and the reason why this is different this time is simply due to the supply chain restrictions, which is different across the different product groups.

The price effects is an essential driver here. As regards the development of the public business, we generally report about tenders we've won once they exceed a certain level.

I've already mentioned it in my explanations: for us, the development in the public sector business sees the usual seasonality. You've been following us for years or even decades, you are aware of the seasonality in the public sector.

That's decisive for the performance of the second half-year. We expect this to continue.

The public sector business in Germany and abroad has developed solidly. We didn't expect more for the first half-year.

For the second half-year, we expect growth rates to increase, above all in the fourth quarter. We need this, because we know that year-on-year we have a very strong effect, above all in December, because from today's point of view, there are no reasons to doubt that the momentum will continue towards the end of the year.

The tender volumes don't drop significantly. Our public sector customers don't respond to the price increases by tendering less volumes.

We don't see this. Of course, the structure changes slightly, and customers need to be flexible in terms of manufacturers.

Some produce more and another less, but that's just the usual fluctuations we see here. We don't see any special effects for the second half of the year, and that is why we are rather bullish in this assessment of the development.

Thank you.

Good morning, gentlemen. One question regarding to the non-public sector.

You've clearly indicated that Germany and the public sector are successful here. If we look at the H1 figures, the non-public sector dropped year-on-year in terms of revenue.

Was Q2 better than Q1, and do you expect a recovery in H2? The second question refers to pricing.

If we look at the guidance, 5 to 10% revenue, and you said more than 50% is driven by pricing, and you also said that the pricing continue to increase, is that ambitious to look at the low edge of the new guidance, or is 10% or even more to expect that because we see this backed by tailwind by the prices?

Dear Mr. Treisch, that's how I'd like to start my answer.

I would have been surprised if you had not asked this question, because we know each other quite well. We know each other really well.

Is our guidance too conservative, yes or no? Please think back three months and recall the discussions we had back then.

We said right from the start, and with hindsight, we see the development as a confirmation to be rather conservative due to the high level of uncertainty. That is why we've been revising our guidance in shorter distances.

We do this on a monthly basis, not quarter by quarter. That is due to the fact that the order backlog is at a historic high.

However, there are certain reference values that are still lacking regarding how order backlog translates into actuals, because we still expect disturbances in the supply chains with longer delivery times. At the end of the day, if you want to invoice a specific project which consists of several components in terms of hardware, it depends on the deliverability of individual products.

It's no good if in some product groups there's less pressure, but in terms of storage the pressure remains unchanged and high, because storage is part of any project we have once it exceeds a certain size. In terms of guidance, this means that we look at this very carefully.

We've been blamed for being too conservative at the beginning of the year, but with a view of the development, we can explain why this was the case. The framework conditions haven't changed in the back end of the year, apart from the fact that there are first vendors who commit to certain delivery times.

That's not generally the case, but individual vendors do that, and for tactical reasons, I'm not giving any names here. That is why, as regards the top-line development, we are quite confident that we achieve our targets.

The first question, the development of the non-public sector, you're absolutely right: Q1 was rather hard, but you have to make a distinction between SMEs and corporate business. In the second quarter, the industrial customers have developed better, but we still see, and I don't want to hide this, we have a difficult situation in our own industry, and we have a difficult demand situation in the classical SME, which still accounts for almost 50% of our business.

Right now, we're compensating this quite successfully by our corporate business with individual big customers and with the public sector business. If in the second half-year, due to the economic development which shows some slight improvement, should we see a change here, then we will have to assess the development towards the end of the year.

Yes, thank you very much indeed. That's what we do, Mr.

Treisch.

Yes, good morning. I do have a question on customers' reactions to the hardware price increase.

The order intake and business performance, is this driven by pull-ins, and will this have effects for the second half of the year, or do you also expect a strong order intake in the second half of the year as well? How do the customers change their procurement behavior with regard to critical and non-critical infrastructure?

What do you expect to happen whether the customers even adapt their budgets for 2027 with regard to the higher prices?

The first point, customer response. We see customers that put everything on hold, and there are other customers that go through this process step by step and are rather careful.

What you say is practically what I intended to say: there is an uncertainty. Yes, we do have quite a high order backlog, historic high, but how this translates into top-line growth might not be at an equal level, and this is exactly what you're referring to.

What does that mean? It might be that individual customers might place several orders with different providers.

This is what we've seen during COVID. Customers can place orders that are non-binding and can cancel them depending on their own economic development and the industrial development.

The order backlog might be high, but the delivery times might also be pushed into the future.

This could translate into effects onto the materialization into top-line growth. This might be quite significant, and this is why we cannot say where everything that we have got with a certain deadline can be materialized in this fiscal year.

However, we do not expect a decline in order intake. Since the end of the second quarter, we see a positive development for July, we can confirm this already, and the third quarter will most likely see positive values.

We started positively just as we ended the first half of the year, we do not see any weak signals into this direction or that direction which might lead to a totally different investment behavior in the second half of the year. How do the customers respond to higher prices?

Most of our customers, and irregardless of us having framework agreements with them or project-related agreements, they, of course, do not have endless options to expand their own budget. At the same time, we're not seeing any reductions either, because there is a necessity of investment into platform services and IT infrastructure.

This demand remains high. The buzzwords, and we've mentioned them time and again in our quarter reports: we need increased storage capacity and computing capacity due to AI, edge computing.

The CPU and storage volume needs to be increased, but on the user side. These are structural trends that have not changed.

This is why most of the customers use the existing budget and reallocate their spending according to the prices. Some vendors might be taken into consideration that were off their chart in the past because now the vendor can actually provide them with the equipment and didn't raise the prices significantly, or maybe some projects are pushed to the back burner.

We do not know. However, the investment budget remains the same, but it still remains a potential market for us, and this is how we look at the current customer side of the market.

Yes, thank you very much.

Good morning. Thank you very much.

I would like to ask several questions. Number one: incremental EBIT in the Other Europe segment, we see €10 million year-over-year.

Could you shed some more light onto this, how much comes from acquisitions, because this seems to be a highly profitable business that you acquired, and what you expect for the second half of the year? This is question number one.

Question number two: the cash flow figures, can you give us some more details? Strong June, what is its impact on the cash flow or the belated project implementation, we can sort of get an impression for the development of the third quarter?

Thank you very much.

My colleague might add some more details on the cash flow, because when we look at it superficially, this is actually the only flaw in our figures of the second quarter. We also announced it in the press release, also in the quarter's report.

Cash flow actually doesn't worry us in the long run. I'm not saying this against the backdrop that the promissory note bonds, which actually puts us in a quite comfortable position.

Christian Geyer already said it, we see an improvement in the DSO, what's the underlying message? We're actively managing or quite aggressively managing our cash flow and the capital.

What is this cash flow and capital increase been about? We have the project-bound inventory, and they increase, but this doesn't mean any risk with regard to depreciations, because we have specific projects backing this up.

To do this in these times is only possible for companies that are very well financially set up, because we do have a buffer. We have longer delivery times for individual components and projects, but we can buffer this.

This can lead to the fact that at the deadlines, and yes, it's been the case for a couple of projects, that network components and notebooks that were in our inventory for specific customer projects, but the project hadn't started. Maybe the docking station couldn't be procured.

In such a case, in such a scenario, we can put this into our balance sheet, but it doesn't entail a depreciation risk, but it gives us the possibility to show to our customers where the added value is when cooperating with Bechtle, because some of our competitors do not have this room for maneuver. We have this room for maneuver because we have a sound balance sheet.

This is what I wanted to say upfront when it comes to the underlying mechanisms for cash flow. Christian Geyer said that we can be quite optimistic that we will see an improvement in the situation by the end of the year, because we have special effects, deadline-related special effects that sort of had this negative impact on cash flow.

Yes, I would like to comment on the Other Europe segment question. Let us take top line as a proxy, because you said where does the contribution to the result or the earnings come from?

We have a 50-50 situation, organic growth 50%, but we see an overall positive trend. The acquisitions in this segment are driver growth, and the EBIT contribution is also to the amount of 50%.

You asked about the second half of the year. We are seeing a positive development.

The acquisitions that we've made pay off, especially on the Iberian Peninsula, they develop positively. We see a trend in line with our acquisition plan, we expect positive contributions in the second half of the year to our balance sheet when you look at the margins.

The segments show a little less than what we see on the German market. This is due to two factors: one is maturity and the organization, as it has been active on the German market for 40 years, we have a different interaction of the different market elements.

The acquisition, of course, needs a sort of ramp-up time until we reach the margin level that we are used to. The positive effects of the first half of the year will be continued in the second half of the year, and we expect a further increase in 2027.

90 to 100 companies, give or take a few, which we have to shift to SAP S/4HANA, and a high number of them have been acquired.

This migration will be part of the post-merger integration, and you don't do this over the weekend. I assume that the figure Christian has just mentioned will be in the books not only next year, but in the years to come.

We have a rollout plan that will cover several years.

Thank you. One final question: due to the extreme high prices for new devices, I hear that refurbishing of old devices is getting more interesting.

Do you see the same with your customers? Would that mean that you can have higher margins than just selling new hardware?

We see it with our customers, too. Yes.

There are a certain public tenders where it's part of the tender requirements to offer a certain refurbished part. The problem with the demand for refurbished products or refurbished infrastructure is, that the offer, not the demand.

We could do much more if we'd get more old devices or used devices. We have a certain certification that is relevant here for data elimination.

We have consolidated this in Hamburg, and our Dutch colleagues have a great focus there. The limiting factor is the offer of used products.

Customers also think about a longer use of their devices so that they're not forced to accept price increases combined with uncertain delivery times, and that leads to a further reduction of the limited offer. I don't want to hijack this call, but if you talk about offer as a problem, the customers don't want this, is the demand slide,

or is that a misunderstanding?

No, offer means that we need to have returned products. You can only do business if you have old products you can refurbish.

Of course, we want to take back leased products. If the customer says they want to keep the leased products, they extend the period, that's what I'm talking.

Okay.

The alternative to refurbishing is to extend the leasing period.

Yes, thank you.

I almost hijacked this call.

That's what you say, and then all of a sudden we're faced with a bill.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the interesting discussions we've had.

I enjoyed it, and my colleague is nodding his head, it was fun. I think we've addressed all relevant aspects that will make it easier for you to assess the current situation.

On behalf of Christian Geyer and our IR teams, I wish you a beautiful day and a nice week, and all the best for the future. We meet at the latest when we report on Q3.

Thank you very much, and bye-bye.