Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to the KSB earnings call on the results of the fiscal year 2025. My name is Sonja Ayasse, and I'm heading Corporate Communications.

Our main speakers today are our CEO, Dr. Stephan Timmermann, and our CFO, Dr.

Matthias Schmitz. Stephan and Matthias will do a deep dive into our financial performance of the last fiscal year, and they will also comment a little bit on the current fiscal year.

As usual, after the presentations, we will have a Q&A session, you will have the possibility to send in your questions in the chat window of the Teams meeting, or you can also raise your virtual hand, and we will call on you later on. For your information, this call will end after one hour.

Any question that remains open will be answered afterwards. As usual, we will provide a recording of this call on the KSB website under Investor Relations.

Now, enough said. I would like to hand over to Stephan.

Dear Sonja, thank you so much for the warm introduction and the welcome. It's my honor to open our report on the fiscal year 2025.

As I do this, I of course say I have the pleasure to address the opening words in the name of Matthias, Matthias Schmitz, who will join me on stage to have the deep dive into the figures, but also Stephan Bross and Ralf Kannefass. All of us, we again— We just have to come short interruption.

We're back on stage. Excuse me out there.

We were just given the signal that there is no video signal, but the video signal seems to be on back on track. Let me begin again.

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

Before I start, as every year, the small disclaimer: everything which touches 2025 figures dusted, these do not blush; everything which concerns the year 2026, especially in my second part when I touch the question how do we see KSB developing in the year 2026, this is of course into the future. These are the best guesses, the best prognoses that we do at the time.

Please, no guarantees. The world is changing at the moment really on a daily basis, this is the best guidance that we can give at the time.

Having said this, let me start. We have a short and sweet agenda.

I will start with an introduction into the fiscal year 2025. Then for sure, Matthias will do a deep dive into all relevant and important figures, and I will wrap it up with two or three slides to explain what the drivers of KSB are, which especially for me as person are extremely important, because we're not talking about one-time successes, we are talking about a company trend, a company development, and this gives me the huge optimism that, irrespective of economical hiccups, we will continue on our path.

I will of course wrap this up with an outlook into the year 2026 and with a short summary. Having said this, let me begin with an introduction.

I've used a few headlines. These are German newspapers, but I think you will guess immediately what the headlines are.

This is what 2025 was all about. Today we live in a world which changes extremely fast, and we're now in 2026.

Who still remembers 2025? In order to give you some guidance there, this was the year where the US got a new president, where in the middle of the year, of course somewhat attached to the new presidents, we had a lot of discussions and also disturbances due to taxes, which went to a level never seen before.

Connected to this, a lot of geographical hiccups in the world economy. As this was not enough, we had a sizable, feelable slowdown in China, which is of course one of the economic drivers of the world today.

Connected with this, the slowdown in Europe, which already started a little bit before that, especially in Germany. Here, two industries which are extremely important for us got impacted: this is the chemical industry and, of course, the automotive industry.

Here we talk about structural problems—not problems, challenges: the change in terms of electromobility, which costs a lot, which the automotive industry has to digest somehow. This is attached to legislation, which is changing day by day.

All of this, at the end of the day, a big turmoil. To put it back into a nutshell, the year 2025, irrespective of the fact that we did quite a good job, as we will show, it was a rough year.

If I were to summarize these headlines into more digestible words, this is what you would see. These are the headlines that you know: geographical uncertainty, armed conflicts, a lot of growth problems in China and in Europe, hiccups all around the world, which at the end of the day also led to the disruption of logistical chains.

We as KSB, once again in another year, the fifth year I would say after Corona, were truly challenged. We did it in a way which we now have practiced, which is really proven and dusted.

We showed that our troops all around the world, accompanied by fantastic management in our regions, in our markets, showed resilience. We proved once more that, irrespective of the fact that it was a very rough world, even in a rough world, we have confidence and we have optimism.

We are flexible, we are agile when it comes to changes, and last not least, we are staying grounded on the earth. A lot of pragmatism and staying grounded accompanied all of this.

Having said this, 2025, this is what today is all about: what was the result for KSB? It was again, in a nutshell, another best year ever.

This of course makes me extremely happy, extremely proud. I say again, is this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Did it come out of the markets? For sure not.

Was it a one-time issue? For sure not.

Because if you now look into how this fiscal year 2025 fits into the trend, this is the development of the order intake in the last years since this management board—Stephan Bross, Ralf Kannefass, Matthias, and me—have the possibility to put our energy into KSB. This is the development of the order intake.

Again, the €3 billion mark, it had been surpassed already in 2024. We now took it one level higher in 2025.

Matthias will comment when he touches those figures. Yes, this was an absolute increase, but this increase would have basically been of double size if we would not have had the impacts of currency fluctuations.

This I would like to stress also at this point: all the headlines that I showed you, the tariffs, the currency devaluations, they had a sizable impact, because KSB, as we at the end of the day add up our big bills in the eurozone. The dollar, which was the one which had the biggest impact—yes, it has repercussions on the Brazilian real, it has repercussions on the Indian rupee, of course on the Chinese renminbi.

All of this, when we then draw the big line, it is sizable and it is feelable in our accounts. Irrespective of this, our order intake, it grew once again.

Having said this for the order intake, I come to the turnover. Here too, we succeeded for the first time in the history of KSB—and this is not young, this is now 155 years—we succeeded to surpass the €3 billion line, and this is just a great achievement: a growth of 2.3%, double if we would not have had these sizable currency devaluations.

Currency devaluations you always have, this is normal course of business, but not in the magnitude that we had in 2025. Here too, absolutely good news.

Coming from the turnover, we come to the EBIT. Here, the EBIT again an all-time high: €252 million, jump of round about €10 [to?]

€12 million in comparison to 2024. A good result if I see what the world was all about.

It was not only a good result, it was a great result if I now don't take the currency into impact, but take the fact into impact that we are introducing SAP S/4HANA at the time. SAP S/4HANA, for sure the biggest transformation program and project that this company in its 155 years of existence has ever had, transforming our present worldwide landscape onto the new model basis, SAP S/4HANA.

This costs money. We decided at KSB rather early that we would not create a bill for the future, but take the costs as they come.

Let alone last year in 2025, in terms of external costs, we nearly had €27 million of external costs—so payouts which you see in our liquidity immediately at the end of the year to consultants whom we need in terms of their professionality to give us guidance in this important project. At the same time, near to 1,000 employees all around the world were working on the project, and these employees, these were not newly employed for SAP S/4HANA, they have been existent already.

Part of their work which they did of course had to suffer due to the fact that they were now engaged in SAP S/4HANA. This led to a loss of efficiency.

The same is of course applicable to the fact that latest by summer 2025, we froze all changes in our present software—we call this the software freeze. Why?

Because you have to come to a certain point where you just say the existing software is not touched anymore, that you can copy it, the golden copy into the new system as the test system which will go live at the beginning of the next year. All of this led to inefficiencies.

Irrespective of these inefficiencies and, of course, the big cost block of €27 million for the external consultants, we managed to grow our profitability. You see it here in hard-core absolute numbers: if I take the return on sales, which for us is an important figure, we reached a return on sales of 8.3% all included, including the HANA costs.

If I would carve out the HANA costs and here just these external consultant costs of €27 million, we would have been at a return on sales of 9.2%, coming up from 8.8% last year without any HANA costs to 9.2%. This shows you that, irrespective of this really shaky, difficult market, of all the boundary conditions that we already had in 2025, we managed to grow our company in terms of order intake, in terms of turnover, in terms of EBIT, and in terms of return on sales.

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

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

Danke, Stephan. Now first I have to take a look at the camera.

Am I positioned right? I get an okay.

Hello to everybody. This morning, we had the press conference, and we already have published our result.

Nevertheless, after the coverage story of Stephan Timmermann, I'd like to make a deep dive with you in order that you have a by far better understanding about our financial figures than you might have had up to now. Stephan highlighted it already: order intake as well as sales has exceeded the hurdle rate of €3 billion.

We show an EBIT reported of 8.3% return on sales, and even if you take into account the SAP S/4HANA project, which will at the end, in the mid of year 2028, will cost at about €88 to €90 million, the EBIT adjusted is on a margin of 9.2%. Equity ratio on a level of 48%.

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

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

I come later to these figures a little bit more in detail. Before, I have told you it's a figure we follow up year-on-year, but it's the first time that I show it today: since 2021, the return on invested capital has exceeded the cost of capital.

It means it has exceeded the cost of equity and, on top, the borrowing costs. We have created a value of approximately €60 million in the last years.

You might take a look to the year 2019, where our return on invested capital was at the level of 5.7%. You have to take into account we had Corona in the year 2020.

That means we really have a constant increase in our return on invested capital. I want to outline the figure is being calculated based on earnings after tax, one or two tax effects, special ones we had in the two last years, of course have an impact here.

KSB is a company that creates value. How do we create this value in the year 2025?

Here you see a really good overview. We have achieved €3.2 billion in order intake.

Stephan Timmermann before, he mentioned the influence of FX. On the right-hand side of this chart, you see the magic figure of €84.3 million.

What does this mean? It means if we calculate the order intake based on the ratio of 2024, then our order intake would be higher by €84 million.

In other words, taking the same FX ratio like in the year 2024, our order intake would have grown by almost €170 million. One major, one big driver we had, this was the water market, who really has increased its order intake.

One thing I want to highlight here—and this is also relevant when I talk later about sales—the strong euro, of course, had an impact not only in terms of US dollar. Everybody's talking about US dollar.

No, the US dollar impact on the group order intake was on the level of €13 million, Indian rupee €26 million, Brazilian real on the level of €12 million, and China €11 million. These are our big production countries where we are strong.

Of course, once the euro is getting stronger, this has an immediate impact on our order intake, on our sales, as well as on our P&L. These are effects we cannot escape.

Nevertheless, if you take a look on the left-hand side of the chart, you see the orders on hand have increased on a level of €1.7 billion. This is a very stable orders on hand.

I ask you to bear in mind, these orders on hand does not mean they will for sure be sales in the year 2026, because we have also long-lasting projects like the energy projects; they will become sales in the year 2029, '30, '31, and so on. Just as a calculation by thumb, you can say that five to six months sales is being guaranteed out of the orders on hand we already have, but it's just a rule by thumb.

Sales, we have mentioned it before, also here we have an order intake which is higher than €3 billion. Last year we promised, yes, we have an order intake higher than €3 billion, next year we also will have sales which is more than €3 billion, and this is what we made happen.

You can read our lips: it happened the way we have promised. Here we see the currency effect on a level of €77 million.

You also might see that SupremeServ—I know everybody of you is focused on SupremeServ, because there we make the biggest profit—with €1,013 million is €23 million beyond the year 2024, but please take into account two factors. We see that the spare part business in Mining as well as in the engineered business went down.

Secondly, we have a currency effect of €24 million. If you take only the €24 million into account, you see that SupremeServ is doing okay, and we are following our growth story.

EBIT, Stephan Timmermann mentioned before, we show a return on sales of 8.3%. When you take a look to Pumps and Valves, you see Pumps make a high profit; Valves are anywhere on break-even.

I want to show you these figures without the HANA effect, because you have to know that these €26.6 million we split or we dedicate them to the segments we are reporting. This view you see here right now means this is the profitability without the SAP S/4HANA project, and here we are on a level of 9.2%.

You see the Valve business is break-even, and SupremeServ makes 19.3%. Watching these figures and knowing you all ask: what about Valves?

Valves does not make any profit? There's also one thing I ask you to bear in mind.

Bear in mind means, when we talk about the segment Pumps or Valves, this is only new business. This is only new business; it does not include spare parts.

That means if you want to get an idea what is the profitability of the whole Valve business in this case, you have to add the profitability and the sales for Valves that are included in the KSB SupremeServ business. If you add sales or if you add the profitability for Valves new business plus Valves spare parts, the whole of the Valve business is on a level of something like 5% return on sales.

Bear that in mind when you are taking a look at these figures. The Valve business all in all is a positive one.

Let's have a view on some selected income statement items. You see here cost of materials 39.5% of sales, staff costs 35%.

I think these are reasonable numbers. When you take a look at cost of materials here on the right-hand side of the chart, you see that we came in the years before—we were on a much higher level.

In 2023, we were on nearly 41%. Now we are 1.5% below the figures of '23, here you see the outcome of a constant improvement.

Development of staff costs: yes, here we increased by 1% in relation to sales. We have hired people.

Most of them we hired in India: 50 people are coming out of new consolidated companies, and of course we hired 100 people, the majority here we hired in the R&D area, we hired them in the Energy business, yes, and also in the Sales area. Other expenses: what is other expenses for us?

You will see it in the annual report. We have administrative expenses, repairs, selling costs, other staff costs.

If you eliminate or if you adjust the costs for HANA, we kept them stable. R&D: 2.2%.

Here we remain on the level we had in the previous year. We feel confident with that, because these costs are for us absolutely okay to cover the needs for new R&D, for new products.

Stephan Timmermann later on will give you an idea about new products we are having. We had also besides the fact that we have a higher EBIT, we also have increased our earnings after tax with €166 million, also with lower tax than in the previous years.

I will come to this later on. You see, attributable to the shareholders of KSB show or have a profitability of €141 million, and this is relevant for the calculation of dividend I will show you later.

The finance income is more or less stable compared to the previous years. When you take a look at the income tax or at the tax rate, you have to bear one thing into account.

The tax rate in 2023 was very, very low due to written-down deferred tax assets. '24 we had some special effects, and now we pay tax on an amount of €74 million, which is 31%.

This is the tax rate where we are now, I would say, in the ordinary course of business. This is also the tax rate we expect for the year '26 and '7.

This is now where we stay. All these ups and downs in the last years, now they are all cleaned up: 31%, this is the tax rate we expect for the year 2026.

Balance sheet: you see the total sum of balance sheet is more or less the same than previous year. One thing I ask you to focus on, this is equity: with almost €1.4 billion, we have a €56 million higher equity than in the previous years.

What's the message here? KSB has a reasonable good balance sheet, and we have a sustainable balance sheet.

Whatever might come based on the crisis and all the things we might expect right now, KSB is secure, KSB has a solid balance sheet, and this is for us a precondition to go into the future. Let's take a look at the fixed assets.

You see an increase from €804 million to €852 [million] in the fixed asset. This is mainly due to the increase in investments.

You see it on the left-hand side: we have invested in the last year €182 million. On the one hand you might say, oh, this affects the cash flow, this is true.

On the other hand, if you take a look on the right-hand side of the chart to understand the material acquisitions of investment, I give you an idea: just take a look at the first line, warehouse expansion Richmond. This is what we're doing to invest in the United States.

We invested in the last year €10 million, because we are on our way to establish our strategy in the United States, and we are on our way. Could the circumstances, could the economic field be better?

Yes, of course. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the way we are going there, that we already started, is the right way for KSB to invest.

USA is a relevant market for KSB, there's absolutely no doubt. Working capital: I want to highlight that despite the fact we are growing, despite we have very difficult economical circumstances around us, we talk now about €860 million in working capital.

It's a little bit higher than previous year, and we are talking now about a cash cycle of 126 days. We are talking about 28.8% of sales.

Here you have to take into account, when we're talking about sales, we're talking about the average of the last 12 months; it's not a year-end calculation. It's not a year-end calculation.

When you see we decreased our cost of material in terms of sales, we are decreasing the level of working capital we have. These are two signs where you should really get an idea that we are working hard in order to improve our operational excellence.

We started, if you go back to the year 2018, then we had some 34% of sales, the cash cycle was at 134 or 135 days, we constantly improve step-by-step our operational key ratios. Equity, I said it before, now we have a level of 48.3%, which is one really relevant sign for the sustainability of our balance sheet.

You see here, how did the equity develop? We paid dividend for €53 million.

Of course, this does not go through the P&L—of course not, it goes directly into the equity. You also see on the other side, on the right-hand side, positively the net profit contributed with €166 million.

These are the effects we really have under control. What we do not have under control are the €85 million other comprehensive income.

This is of course linked to the interest and to currency. This is what we cannot control.

Despite the fact here we have a negative impact of €85 million, we anyhow increased our equity. I think 48% is an excellent figure.

Nothing more to say about non-current liabilities as well as current liabilities. You see the non-current liabilities went down by almost €30 million, €35 million.

Main effect are the pensions, because here we had the possibility to calculate with a new interest rate. This was the most obvious effect.

The rest is business as usual. Let's take a look at the free cash flow.

You see in the year 2024, we had €371 million; now our net finance position is at €315 million. This is a difference of €56 million, and where is it coming from?

It's coming from at about €20 million out of FX, not to be forgotten. It's coming out in a level of €26 million working capital.

Bear in mind, we have invested more in the year 2025 than in the year 2024. These are the three main effects for the change in our net finance position, and we are convinced that we have invested this money in good manners for the long future of KSB.

Share price: the share price at the end of the year was at about, well, more or less €958, let's say roughly €1,000. The market capitalization was at about €1.7 billion, the market capitalization is €500 million more than the equity that is attributable to the shareholders of KSB.

I think here this is a very relevant information to you: this is we are a €1.7 billion company, and in between the last weeks we were on a level of €2 billion. I saw that the share price went a little bit down today, or even more than a little bit, but I'm absolutely sure, as we are going our path, as we are implementing MT30, the share price will further increase.

That's my strong belief. Let's come a little bit to the dividend.

Take a look at the share-price-relevant indicators within KSB Group. At the end, the earnings after tax for the KSB shareholders is €141 million, and based off that, we will ask at the shareholders' meeting for a dividend of €26.50 per share, which is 33%.

I've spoken to maybe 80%, 90% of to all of you, and I told you all the time that we will leave the dividend minimum on the level of previous year. We will leave it in the frame of from 30% to 40%, and so we kept our promise.

May you maybe have expected a little bit more, you have to take one thing into account: in the year 2024, we have increased the dividend by 50 cents in order to set a sign, although the profitability per ordinary share was lower—this was because of special tax effect—and we thought in these times then it makes sense to offer a dividend at the level of €26.50. If you go back to the year 2023, there we had a higher profit per ordinary share than in the year 2025, and nevertheless, this year we kept the dividend higher than in the year 2023.

That's our way of thinking. For this reason, let's make a summary.

The order intake and sales, both exceeded the figure of €3 billion. The EBIT increased to 8.3%.

If you take out HANA, we are talking about 9.2%. We are on our way to exceed the 10% return on sales that we have promised in our discussions, in our presentations, also Stephan Timmermann did in the press conference this morning.

Equity ratio is at 48%. Yes, the net finance position is lower in the last year because of working capital, of all the investment we did, and of course it's being affected by the FX ratio.

We have a positive value added of €60 million, and our market capitalization is nearly four times as high as it has been when the four of us started in 2018 with a level of €1.7 billion. Now, I'm at the end of my presentation.

I hope that you got a little bit more a deeper insight in the financial figures than you may have heard had this morning when you only went through the press release. Of course, all the questions we might not answer today, as we have a little bit of lack of time maybe after one hour, we are happy to explain in individual talks.

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

Yes, with pleasure, Matthias. Unfortunately, our time is limited, I really have to summarize the drivers of success, but for me they're extremely crucial and important.

Matthias showed you the continuous development of KSB over the last seven to eight years which we have been able to manage the company. I gave you the indicate in terms of order intake, turnover, EBIT, and profitability.

All of this has a root cause. I'm now in management for more than 30 years.

I've seen it all. Today I have the confidence if you put the right things on track, and you give the company, especially a sizable company like KSB with 17,000 employees, the possibility to develop, you can take it to the next level.

This is exactly what we at KSB are doing. The measures that we have put in place—KSB SupremeServ, KSB Guard, KSB Climb 21, the red lists, and our positioning of the brand in terms of KSB Next Level—these are the things that have been started year-by-year, one rocket more, which slowly but surely are showing impact.

If you were now to ask me, when do your rockets stop to glow? I say we have a lot of glowing ahead of us.

All of these things are cultural changes of the mindset of the company, a lot of growth opportunities in our more than 100 KSB companies all around the world. We are about halfway through our possibilities, those which I see at the time, and this gives me the extreme confidence that this track record which we have shown in the last years, especially in the last five years from 2020 to 2025, which were extremely challenging economic years, this will continue.

We have put this into our House of Strategy. This you see, it has the title Mission 1030, or the 1030: latest by the year 2030, we want to have reached our 10% plus return on sales.

Matthias just showed it once more: we are at the time, if I exclude these one-off costs of HANA, which will be gone in two years, we're already at the time at 9.2%. This really gives me the bullishness to say, are we on the right track?

The best things is, we have the right troops in place. We have the right strategy, we have the right mission, we have the right mindset, we have the right subjects of focus, and this will push the company ahead.

If you now ask me to summarize a little bit more in detail what I would propose, these are the nine big cornerstones of the success. It starts with our product portfolio.

This morning, in terms of the press conference, I showed concrete examples of new products that we developed in the last year 2025: the Amarex Pro, the Multitec, our new solar-controlled water pumps which we sell out of India, the new controlled valves which come out of MIL, what we are now taking up as valve business, huge valves, mammoth valves in China—absolutely incredible. All of this is new business, add-on business which we're putting into the market, which drives our success.

Then we have this market orientation. What is market orientation today?

That we are thinking in eight markets: six markets in the pumps, then the holistic valve business and the SupremeServ business. This is headed by market presidents who really understand what mining is all about, what the water dewatering is all about, firefighting, building, the petrochemical industry.

They do it in a matrix, in a superb collaboration with nine regions. This makes us unbeatable.

KSB SupremeServ, of course, this is the big bracket, the aftermarket business, which goes from the valves and goes into every pump. We've started this journey.

We're the first company who has really put a strong brand label on all of this. Are we at the end of this journey?

Of course not. We're somewhere in the middle, and there's such a lot to come.

Do we have chances when big markets like the mining markets have a hiccup? Of course not, but we compensate it as much as we can, and we grow.

This makes this part of our business, based on 155 years of population put into the market, an extremely strong pillar of our resilience. Then our global presence: find a company in the pump and valve business which has more than 100 own entities all around the world.

It was started with the first generation of the founders of this company. Today it's the stronghold, especially as the world gets more and more disrupted.

We have our factories in China, we have our factories in India, we have them in Brazil, of course we have them in Europe, we have them in the US now with the investment that Matthias mentioned: our great GIW factory for the mining business in Augusta, and now the big warehouse with the possibility to go into knock-down assemblies in Richmond, where let alone at the time we're investing €26 million to get our foot into the world's biggest economy of the world with absolute great people, superb managers on place just making it happen. Having said this, the employees, I can only underline it again and again: our 17,000 employees running the extra mile irrespective of how strong the winds are.

We team up, we get what we can out of the markets. This makes me extremely proud, and this makes me confident that the money, the investment, the €181 million which we spent last year, let alone last year, which of course has an impact in our cash flow—you can only spend the euro, the dollar, the renminbi once, you see that—but it has a huge impact on our future, because we're investing into new factories, into extended capacity, into digitalization, of course into sustainability, but also into working environment for our employees, because company culture is just extremely important for us.

This touches corporate culture, which is, as I said, one of the cornerstones of KSB, and I'm extremely proud to be part of this. Corporate culture also means, when the times get rough, get that cost awareness into place and push that brand, and these are the things that KSB is really good at.

Having said this, I now come to the last chapter, and this is for you for sure the interesting part: the outlook and summary. Because the last year is last year; after the game is before the game.

Again this year, we thought it might be a little bit sweeter than the five years before, in the positive sense. Unfortunately, with the Iran war which took off a few weeks ago already, it has really become very challenging.

I've just put one picture onto the screen that you see what this is all about. We have sites in Dubai, in Abu Dhabi, in Qatar.

Of course, we have a big factory in Saudi Arabia; this is 150 km away across the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. All around this region, you have US military bases, and this of course explains that if you get into a war with Iran, you cannot just keep it in Iran.

This is happening, and the worldwide repercussions, I will not go into them. I tried to summarize it on a slide.

This slide you can actualize every day. The impacts, yesterday they were somewhat of a prediction, today of course they're feelable.

All of us feel the rising prices of fuel and gas and oil as we go to the gas stations. In countries like Pakistan and India, if you go to a restaurant, the restaurant will be closed, because today gas shortage is really already visible in your daily life.

If the war goes on for longer time, this impact will of course go all across the world. What we can already feel today is of course logistics.

We are an exporting company. We of course use the train, we use the ship, and we use the planes.

The plane freights have become extremely expensive, and if you try to export into the region of MEA, depending what port you choose, it has become really tough, because most of these ports are either completely congested or closed. All of this of course leads to inflation, this leads to an impact on the interest rates.

This you know: the European Central Bank has already put the foot onto lowering interest rates; the Fed has done exactly the same. It has, of course, an impact, depending on how long all of this lasts, on consumption, on payment morale, and last not least, on the investment climate that we have.

To say that KSB, despite the fact that we are an absolute great company and have a superb track record also in year of crises, will have the possibility to escape completely—I'm a born optimist, but this optimism I would not present in front of you. If I were to summarize this, what does it mean?

It means again a year which is impacted by market weaknesses, by currency fluctuations, by trade barriers, by high competition. None of our competitors, unfortunately, also not in the last years, have died away.

Now we have a very big one in a positive way: this is China, as the market in China, their own captive market is getting weaker, the Chinese go into export, the Chinese EPC. Today they're delivering good quality, and this of course is something that we have to counterbalance either by participating via our Chinese factories, which of course is a good choice, or by being extremely competitive wherever we meet Chinese competitors in South America or in Africa.

Last not least, geopolitical alliances: whether more armed conflicts will come out of all of this, I do not know. I can tell you, we stay resilient and we stay optimistic.

What I can tell you is that the first two months—and this is what we see at the time, January and February—in terms of what would we have wished in the best case, yes, the order intake and the turnover, they were weak. Would this have made me nervous in any way today?

No, because January and February, especially if Easter is very early as it is this case, are always weak months, especially in terms of turnover. Now of course, if you have a January and a February which forces you to catch up, the bet is on: how are the next 10 months going to develop?

This is the only part of the risk in the bet. We at KSB, we are resilient, and we are very optimistic that we will keep our course.

Why? Because the recipes that we have to put in place in order to safeguard our resilience and to play our cards as we have done in the last five years of crises, they are a proven pattern.

It's again batten the hatches, it's again pushing sales, especially short-term sales, and this is in our case the Standard Business, it's of course the SupremeServ business. It's cost cutting as the normal part of the exercise.

When you batten the hatches, you really rethink every spending: do you have to do it? Does it make sense, or can you defer it?

This is what we are used to and doing again: securing the margins, adapting capacity wherever is the important part. The most important part is to keep our troops together, to really focus on corporate culture, to inform, to have the commitment of all those on board, and then of course a little bit of luck and a lot of commitment.

Now having said this, what will this year be all about? Just doom?

No, of course not. We also have a lot of chances, and I've just written down a few of the big titles.

KSB, as from the heating cellar to the nuclear power plant, we're everywhere. Where we're extremely strong is in electricity production.

Today, growth in energy of all kinds, be it nuclear, be it conventional, let alone driven via AI and according data center, this is of course one of the big drivers also for KSB. You might have read it, one of the biggest orders ever received in the history of the company, more than €150 million, we booked it a week ago.

These are energy pumps going into a power plant which we will produce here in Germany. Then the meteorological change of the weather due to global warming, it will not be impacted by the conflict that we see at the time, and thus all activities, all growth opportunities in water and wastewater, for flooding, for desalination, for irrigation, they are still there, and we will take our part of the cake.

The same of course applies to the valves. Matthias, you already mentioned it: for us, the valves is a growth opportunity.

The good thing about it is we know how to fix the valves, we are fixing the valves, and this will be a part of our not only growth story, but also profitability stories, as we sweat out the losses which we were used to in the past in the valve business. Last not least, in terms of business chances, there are a lot of business chances.

We are present all around the world. The Iran conflict, even if the repercussions are all around the world, there are a lot of growth opportunities in countries where we are present today already, where we have just not taken our share of the pie, and now we're doing this.

Having said this, what is our guidance? The guidance corridor that we have given to you and all of our shareholders: in the best case, of course—this remains my hope—we can achieve another best year ever.

This is basically the top of our corridor. In the worst case, we will end a little bit below the results of the last year.

Where do my hopes lie? That we maneuver very solidly through this corridor that we have given.

Having said this, I start to summarize. Once again, today it's about 2025.

Again 2025, it was a tough year. Luckily, we forget all of this, but we continued our superb success story in 2025 despite all of these boundary conditions.

We will do the same job in 2026. Unfortunately, again, no winds out of the markets which propel us to success, we have to put a lot of energy into it by ourselves, but I think we're very good at this.

Because in a nutshell, what is KSB all about? What makes KSB so good?

KSB, we have a plan, we have our strategy. We don't change that strategy, we follow up this strategy, we're executing this plan, and slowly but surely, we're reaping the success, which in my world will take us where we belong: to fly with the eagles.

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

Yes, we do. Thank you very much, Stephan, and also Matthias, for your insights.

Now it's time to open the Q&A session. For that purpose, we move to our little Q&A corner in the back.

This will take approximately one minute, please bear with us. We already have a lot of questions, I hope we can answer as many of them as possible in the remaining 5 to 6 minutes.

See you in a minute. We are back in our session.

Let's start with the first question. It's actually on the profitability of valves.

Matthias, can you please explain what caused that, what practical measures have been taken to improve the profitability, and what is the realistic timeline to bring the operating margin to a decent level, say above 5% of sales?

Okay. The 5% of sales, we already have achieved.

That's the good news, because one thing I really want you to bear in mind, and I mentioned it during my presentation: when we talk about Valves, where we see more or less the break-even, this is only new business. Taking into account also the spare part business, the whole of the Valve business all over the world makes a return on sales of anywhere at 5%.

Again, I really want to place this message here: the whole of the Valve business, new parts as well as spare part business, has a positive return on sales of 5%. Secondly, what are we doing right now?

We have started several measures in order to increase profitability, especially in our plant in La Roche. Secondly, we are shifting products to China.

Third, we got rid of the cryogenic valve business, which is a very special business where we made no profit. I'm absolutely sure the profitability of the new Valve business will be positive in the year 2026.

We are on our way to reorganize the business and to bring it back in a good position.

Thank you, Matthias. Then let's move on with our transformation project on SAP S/4HANA.

First, what are the costs for the year 2026? Then, is the SAP S/4HANA project meeting its deployment and cost milestones

as of year-to-date 2026? Are there opportunities to lower the total deployment costs by using AI?

Yeah. The answer is yes, yes, yes.

What does this mean? We expect the costs in the year 2026 for SAP S/4HANA for the implementation on almost the same level as in the year 2025.

Once we're talking about cash flow and the expectations about cash flow, you also have to keep in mind that these costs are one-to-one cash affected, because they are only external costs and no internal costs. Secondly, the SAP project will go live in January 2027.

Nevertheless, in '27 and '28, we will also have some process improvements, but we will spend in '27 approximately €12 million for this project, and in the year '28 maybe €6 million. I can say regarding cost, this project is in budget.

Habe ich alles?

Yes, thanks.

Okay.

Stephan, let's move to the region Middle East and Africa. It saw the fastest growth this year.

Do you think this growth will continue? Are there any risks finishing projects in 2026?

Let me start with the risks. There are risks everywhere and anywhere.

Of course, in Middle East, there are risks at the time. Finishing projects, this mainly depends on the length of the war and the possibility to freight into the region.

At the moment, I already said that that's extremely difficult, but today we are in March, and the year luckily still has nine months, I remain rather optimistic. It highly depends on how the war will now continue.

Middle East, Saudi Arabia, if you would have asked me six weeks ago, this was one of our hottest growth spots in the KSB world. We have a big factory, a sizable factory in Riyadh.

Saudi, as has a lot of very big investment programs which will not be changed by the war: these are the Olympic Winter Games, this is a Football Championship, this is the Ben Salman Park, the biggest green area in a city worldwide. These are huge projects which are of course executed.

If you want to do business in Saudi due to their very stringent and consequent Saudification project, you have to produce in Saudi Arabia. We are the only pump and valve producer, to my knowledge, who has a full-fledged factory at place, and we profit from this.

Will this continue? Will this be impacted by the unfortunate war at the time?

Maybe yes. Will the growth be stopped?

Of course not. It will in the best place be deferred.

Is this going to be a sizable impact for KSB? I do not think so.

Thank you very much. There's another question on our forecast.

Mid-February, at your preliminary figures, you still expected growth for sales and EBIT for the year 2026. Now you expect flat sales and declining EBIT at midpoint.

What changed, actually?

I think this is also what Stephan said: growth is still possible. For example, if you take a look at the order intake, it's a €200 million order, in fact the biggest job in energy KSB ever got.

One thing of course is now even more obvious than it has been at the beginning of February: this is the crisis in Iran. Of course, at this point of time, we did not oversee what it means for the Near and Middle East, and we did not also not foresee what this can mean for the whole of the world.

We see kind of reluctancy regarding further investments. Honestly, this is a situation we cannot really foresee, we cannot quantify what that means.

For this reason, growth in terms of order intake we see still is possible, but of course taking all these aspects Stephan Timmermann thought into account, we have to be a little bit more cautious, definitely. Yeah?

We want to stick to our guidance, we want to appear reliable, and so these are the reasons why we see the world a little bit different than six weeks ago.

I think this is very understandable. You are the beneficiary of inflation.

You have pricing power. Is it still the case?

We have the same pricing power as our competitors. Nevertheless, we have to take into account that the price pressure that is coming from our competitors, also especially in China, not only in Europe, but all over the world, is increasing more and more.

It's not in the last years that we can say we want to have 2%, 3%, 4% higher prices and we get it from our customers. These times are over.

Yes, we will increase the prices, but on a level of maybe 1.5%, something like that. It depends region on region.

Thank you. Then we have another question regarding CapEx.

Do you see CapEx in 2026 relative to the €150 million in 2025? Should we expect further progress on the net working capital days in the next 2 to 3 years?

Who would like to comment a little bit on the investment and the net working capital?

No, we will do it combined. We are extremely prudent in terms of the money that we spend, and every euro that you have spent is gone out of your cash, and we think this through.

At the same time, we realize, first of all, if we want to grow the company, we have to invest. Today growth is about new market opportunities, new technologies, new countries, and all of this has to be done by presence on the ground.

The time where we could fly out of Germany into Chile in order to business is over; today we have to be present. From all that we see at the time, the globalization that we knew yesterday, it will not come back.

Being local and investing locally, this is absolutely imperative. To be local, but also in many cases like in the case of Saudi, but today also in the case of Indonesia, yesterday already in the case of Brazil, possibly also in the case of the US, to just be able to produce locally because local legislation asks you to do this.

This costs money. Either you skip this part of the game or you take the bet.

This has been somewhat accompanying our investment decisions in the past. Of course, it is accompanied by digitalization, of course it is accompanied by sustainability, of course it is accompanied by the fact that we need working environments which are attractive for new talents, which we need.

Employees, I can only underline it again, they are the backbone of our success. We're a qualification-driven company, and thus we must invest into workplaces.

Will this stop tomorrow? No.

Will we do it very consciously in line with the way that we have done it yesterday? Yes.

Of course, we now have a very special focus on our cash flow, because cash is always limited, and we want to go secure through every rough water. This would be my summary, Matthias.

Yep.

No.

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

The guidance already reflects the situation in the Near and Middle East. This is the reason why you maybe expected a higher guidance.

This is all we can say regarding this. We took the crisis into account, expecting that the crisis is not a long-term crisis.

Okay.

Schließt

jetzt nicht.

Thank you very much.

Then

we have a question on KSB SupremeServ: can KSB SupremeServ get back to a growth trajectory that exceeds the growth of the rest of the business as more after-sales business is captured? Or has KSB reached the ceiling on providing after-sales for existing business and therefore grow in line with the rest?

I start with the last one: has KSB SupremeServ reached the ceiling? Of course not.

As we said during the presentations, KSB SupremeServ, this is the backbone of all of our business. In every one of our big market areas, we harvest whatever KSB SupremeServ possibilities there are.

There are certain markets, and this is the mining market, where the spare part proportion of the market is extremely big. It's part of the business model: we put pumps into mines in order then to very professionally serve the customer with the according wear and tear parts which come in the aftermath.

If markets like mining—or in the last year also energy and petrochemicals—are weak due to the boundary conditions, then of course we have this impact, and this cannot be compensated overnight by the growth in SupremeServ which takes place. Are we at the end of any road?

Of course not. I said that I personally presume we're somewhere 50% down the road.

We have such a lot of opportunities, and it's not about technical service, it's not about spares; it's about digital services today, online monitoring, it's about efficiency consultancy services, it's about a lot of new things that we provide. We do this all around the world, and everywhere the seeds are being planted, and growth is taking place.

I'm very optimistic. This is really the backbone of KSB, and KSB is very fortunate that we have a product which has an aftermarket, and this is good.

There's another short question. I'm not sure if this relates to SupremeServ as well: what was the €28 million provision outflow?

I also do not know whether it's related to SupremeServ. In general, I can say we had some reduction in provisions because, for example, we have lower costs of quality and also for standard business as well as for project business.

I think this is what the question means, I'm not that sure.

Okay. What could be an impact from energy and logistics costs in 2026?

Regarding energy costs, I do expect a smaller impact, because of course the energy costs are rising, but we do not, in our cost structure, depend too much on the energy costs. I think the amount is at about 2% in our P&L.

Regarding logistic costs, honestly, yes, they are increasing when we see the rates in ships, but what is more important for us that the logistic will deliver our pumps, our products to the customer in time, and that we get the parts in order that we can keep on running with our production sites.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Stephan, you mentioned Chinese competition earlier.

Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Yes, of course. I do this with full respect for Chinese companies, which today are providing top quality, unfortunately to an unbeatable price.

This is of course where the sentiment then steps in. Since the captive market China is down at the time, and there are a lot of drivers which will tell you it will not go up in at least the next months to come, maybe years, the Chinese, who are by nature international tradesmen, go into the world, and we meet them as new competition, accompanying the established European, US competition increasingly all around the world.

This is now where our value proposition has to step in, and it's not just about price: it's the combination of local presence, SupremeServ, and absolute high-tech quality products, reliability as an OEM. We stick to our promise.

This must be our value proposition. I respect the Chinese competition, I notice how it is increasing all around the world, but it's another challenge, and we're taking up this challenge.

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

It's already nine past, but okay. Another one on KSB SupremeServ: did the shutdown of the Grasberg mine had any impact in 2025?

If so, could you give us a sense of the magnitude of the impact on EBIT, and do you expect any catch-up effect in 2026? Where do you see spare parts inventory levels at your key mining customers at the moment?

Of course, what we're not doing here right now is to give impact on our profitability which are due to some special effects. In general, you can say that the shutdown of Grasberg or also if you take, for example, the problems when the mine in Indonesia—Freeport—had this big accident, this of course affects our sales and profitability, also especially in the region of Asia and of course in our spare part business and of course at GIW, no doubt about it.

These are effects we had to compensate, and a little bit of this you can see in the P&L in the year 2025. When I take a look at the Freeport mine, it will not be opened before end of this year

or

beginning in 2027, this of course has an effect on our spare parts business, but is already included in the budget 2026, because we have been aware of this. It has not been impacted in the budget 2025, because the accident happened in the year 2025.

Thank you. I think you also answered another question on that mine.

Good. Then there is a question on La Roche, our valve plant: on the restructuring of the La Roche plant, can you update us on where you currently stand in the process, what additional measures still need to be implemented?

Yes, I think with pleasure. La Roche, first of all, a plant, 450 employees near to Bordeaux.

You might still remember, three years ago, they had a huge impact due to a hailstorm. This hailstorm was very local, damaged the roof, which would not have been that bad.

Unfortunately, the roof contained asbestos, which in France still sometimes happens, and this led to the fact that we basically had to close the factory for a year. These repercussions, they took, yeah, 2.5 years in order to fix, and this is now totally irrespective of restructuring.

This meant a new roof, complete new cladding, now really taking out every asbestos fiber out of this big plant, and putting the workplaces back into track, luckily using the chance to optimize the workflow and to invest into clever things. Having said this, La Roche consists of two big parts: it consists, one, of the standard business—these are standard valves which go into the European market, sold by many KSB entities all around Europe.

This part is now back on track, it is profitable. Here, the hiccups from this hailstorm, they really have to go out of the system now.

These hiccups are that we now have to regain confidence with the customers, because if you're not able to deliver for more than 1.5 years, the customers looks for alternative, which is normally. Here's our job now to bring back these valves into the market, and we're being increasingly successful there.

The second part of La Roche, and this is the really painful one, it's high-technology valves, it's cryogenic valves—these are valves which you operate at -170° in LNG tankers, extremely specialized mechanical engineering in terms of the proprietary knowledge of the materials that you use and the way you engineer these things. Unfortunately, this LNG market is not in Europe anymore; it is today in Korea, increasingly in China, and a little bit in Japan.

To export out of La Roche into these markets with increasing competition again out of China, but today out of Korea, this is not a good idea, because, one, you have the European costs, and two, you have the delivery time. The delivery time today for everything that we do is becoming more and more essential.

This brought us to the decision, now two years ago, that we would step out of the cryogenic business in La Roche for these super complicated valves for LNG tankers. LNG tankers, on top, it's a very cyclical business.

This is another boundary condition that you have. We said all of this we will not be able to make money, being KSB, we will fulfill our order book, but then step out of the market.

This is what we're doing. As we're doing this, the profitability comes back into place.

We're talking now about the new products, not the after-sales business, which also in the cryogenic valve business is extremely profitable, and which we will of course safeguard.

Thank you for the explanation, Stephan. Let's take one last question.

It's a question that just came in, the last question actually: is the price pressure from Chinese competitors part of the weaker EBIT guidance, or is the weakness only related to the situation in the Middle East?

No, for sure not. We do not take competitors' pricing to give our guidance.

This is just something that we are aware of, which I do not blush to communicate again in full respect in regards to very professional Chinese EPCs today. Our job is to follow and contribute to these EPCs via our factories which we have in Shanghai, in Changzhou, in Dalian, and of course to bring our costs into competitive holistic value packages which today also include KSB SupremeServ.

This is the big differentiation criteria of KSB: we have KSB SupremeServ, and it's not just about selling something, it's also about taking care of the product in the aftermath, and this for decades. This is the stronghold of KSB worldwide.

Thank you, Stephan. I think now we really stretched our and your timeline a lot: another quarter of an hour.

I think there were so many questions, it was really good to take this time and to answer your questions. If you have any further questions, please get back to our Investor Relations team.

Now I want to draw your attention to the 6th of August. That's actually the date of our next KSB earnings call on the half-year results 2026.

For the moment, we would like to say thanks a lot for your attention, for your interest, and your questions. We wish you a wonderful springtime.

Be safe, and goodbye.