Thank you, Anna. Welcome to today's call, ladies and gentlemen.

The corresponding presentation is available on our website, and I assume you have it in front of you. As we published select key figures in an ad hoc release already on February 17.

Nonetheless, there's still enough figures and news to share with you today. The figures usually relate to continued operations, with some exceptions that will be marked.

Our CEO, Jochen Weyrauch, will start on page 2, before Dietmar Heinrich, as CFO, will take you through the financials. Jochen, the floor is yours, please.

Thank you, Mathias, and good afternoon to all participants on the call. As the most important figures, as Mathias said, were already released, I would like to start with a wider perspective and share with you what I personally consider the most important achievements of 2025.

Basically, we delivered on what we promised. We simplified our group structure and turned Dürr in a more focused technology company with only three instead of five divisions.

This involved sharpening our focus on the core business, which is automating production processes and making them more sustainable and efficient, or sustainable automation, as we call it. In this context, we successfully sold the non-core environmental technology business with a high post-tax book gain of €227 million.

On top, we started resizing our administrative structure to adapt to a smaller scope of business and tackle cost savings of €50 million. This was, after the capacity measures at HOMAG, the further major step to systematically reduce our fixed costs.

The effectiveness of our cost-cutting measures is being testified by the improved operating performance in 2025 that was achieved despite the adverse macro environment. Next is slide 3.

The improved operating performance is reflected by a 100 basis points improvement of the EBIT margin before extraordinaries. At 5.6%, the margin even slightly exceeded the target corridor of 4.5% to 5.5%.

The group's net profit of €206 million benefited from the good operating performance and the high book profit from the environmental technology sale. At €227 million, the book profit was higher than assumed, mainly due to valuation and currency effects.

We met our revised order intake guidance thanks to a strong finish in the year. In Q4, customers have more flexibly adapted to the uncertain environment and started to place large strategical orders again.

However, I would like to underline that we might see quarterly fluctuations in new orders again, as the macro volatility remains high. Sales stood at €4.2 billion and were not satisfying, but given the fact that we were facing customer-induced project delays, I would still call them solid.

Free cash flow for the continued operations reached €162 million and was appreciably higher than projected, mainly because of very high premature payments in Q4 that were expected in 2026. For 2026, we see potential for further earnings improvement.

I'd like to talk about the drivers in a few minutes. Slide 4 shows the already released figures relating to the developments I just described.

I would like to highlight that we managed to increase operating EBIT by 19% despite the slight drop in sales. This was mainly supported by 50% earnings increase at HOMAG and further improvements in Automotive from an already high base level.

Moreover, we benefited from lower cost lower expenses for our ONE DürrGroup synergy program that will be closed in 2026. On slide 5, you see strong fourth quarters are not, as you can see or as we already mentioned a number of times, strong fourth quarters are not unusual at Dürr.

Nonetheless, Q4 2025 was a really good one. As I already mentioned the good levels of order intake and free cash flow, I would like to underscore the high 7.4% EBIT margin before extraordinaries, mainly resulting from an 11% margin in Automotive and an above 6% margin at HOMAG.

Automotive's high margin reflects the division's best-in-class project execution and the effects of the value before volume strategy, while HOMAG benefited from its self-help measures. Slide 6 shows that we met or exceeded all of our targets that had, in part, been revised in July.

Please note that the low reported EBIT margin of 0.7% was influenced by high extraordinary expenses of €204 million, while the book gain of €264 million before taxes was not considered in EBIT, as it is not attributable to the continued business. On the opposite, net income of the group includes the post-tax book profit, and thus doubled to €206 million.

Slide 7 reveals the strong impact of the tariff conflicts on order intake in Q2 and Q3. In both quarters, new orders were almost €300 million lower than they should have been in order to meet our initial guidance from March.

Q4 included two major automotive orders from the US and Eastern Europe, and the largest order ever for HOMAG in timber house construction equipment. This order from North America has a volume of not much less than €100 million and underlines the outstanding market position of HOMAG when it comes to really large projects.

Slide 8, please. The global distribution of order intake was well balanced.

We saw the expected declines in those regions that were very strong in 2025, that means Europe and particularly Germany. While the China share continued to decline, we benefited from higher dynamics in other Asian countries, especially India and Saudi Arabia.

Slide 9 underscores that the sale of the environmental technology business was a really successful transaction. This is mainly expressed by the high book profit.

Before 2018, Dürr's environmental technology activities were a low-performing business. Then, we acquired our main competitor, Megtec/Universal, shaped an integrated global player with best-in-class technology, and consequently created additional value.

This value is reflected in the high book gain we generated from the sale. When looking at the lower table, please keep in mind that the 12% margin in 2025 is not an adequate measure for assessing the selling transaction, as it includes €9 million of positive non-operating allocation effects.

Let's have a look on the divisions, starting on page 11 with Automotive. Looking at the 29% drop in order intake, please consider that the 2024 base was very high due to several exceptionally large orders.

On the opposite, Q2 and Q3 2025 were exceptionally weak, as automotive OEMs postponed capex decisions due to tariff-induced uncertainty. Q4 was appreciably better again, with customers resuming strategically important projects.

At constant sales, the operating margin exceeded last year's high level and reached a strong 11% in Q4. There were two decisive factors for this: our excellence in order execution under the umbrella of the combined Automotive division, and our value before volume strategy with its focus on margins strong projects in the sales process.

Page 12: at Industrial Automation, at Industrial Automation, order intake, sales, and earnings were mainly burdened by the market weakness in the lithium-ion battery business. We restructured this business and transferred it to the Automotive division at the beginning of 2026 to make use of Automotive's execution strength.

The negative EBIT includes impairments of €135 million. Of this, €120 million are attributable to the impairment of BBS Automation in July.

Further impairments of €15 million were recognized in the battery business in Q4, reflecting the weaker market outlook. A quick view on the other two businesses of Industrial Automation: Schenck's balancing technology business showed a very good earnings performance, while at BBS Automation, there's still room for improvement.

We installed new management at BBS at the beginning of 2026, headed by the former Chief Operating Officer of HOMAG. His task is to improve operating excellence at BBS and further develop the strategy.

He has a great track a track record at HOMAG, and I'm very sure he will do a very good job at Industrial Automation and BBS as well. Speaking about HOMAG, the main message on page 13 is that the division made excellent margin progress despite slightly lower sales, and was able to much better cope with the difficult furniture market environment than in 2024.

The margin increase of just under 200 basis points is the result of self-help measures and successfully reduced fixed costs. Order intake slightly grew on the back of the accelerating demand in the timber house sector.

Three years after the beginning of the market weakness in the furniture sector, it's still difficult to tell when there will be a real recovery. What we know is that HOMAG is well prepared for it.

Next is page 14. Service sales were almost on last year's level, even though the uncertain environment prompted customers to temporarily be more cautious in their service spending.

With this, I hand over to Dietmar, who will take you through the financials.

Thank you, Jochen. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome also from my side.

Page 16 basically presents figures Jochen already touched upon. Therefore, I would like to limit myself on shedding some light on net income.

You can see two net income figures here. The first one is -€50 million for the continuing operations, resulting from the high extraordinary expenses of €204 million, of which €135 million were impairment-driven.

We will get back to this point more in details later on as well. On the second topic, on the bottom, you can see the net income of €206 million of the group as a whole.

This additionally includes the post-tax book gain of €227 million from the environmental technology sale. Slide 17 contains information on the quarterly and regional sales split, which will certainly be helpful for your follow-up analysis.

For now, I would like to directly jump to slide 18 with the EBIT before extraordinary effects. As mentioned, operating earnings increased by a high 19%, spurred by a strong second half when HOMAG fully benefited from its self-help measures and Automotive contributed very high earnings.

High margin towards the end of the year are a characteristic at Dürr, but the 7.4% in Q4 2025 are really remarkable and came close to our mid-term target level of 8%. The main earnings driver in the full year was a gross profit increase of €23 million, based on lower material costs, good order execution, and well-managed personnel costs, and this despite a sales drop compared to previous years.

On top, we benefited from lower costs for the ONE DürrGroup synergy program, as well as from lower negative allocation effects of €9 million. On slide 19, we show the composition of the extraordinary expenses of €204 million in continued operations.

Two-thirds were attributable to the impairments and will not lead to any cash-outs. The second largest item was costs of €38 million for restructuring measures, mainly for the admin adjustments announced in mid-2025 that are well on track.

PPA decreased from €42 to €28 million. On the group level, the extraordinary expenses were opposed by the high book gain of €264 million from the environmental technology transaction.

Let's turn to page 20. Back in December, we announced that free cash flow would be in a range of €100 to €200 million and exceed the original target of up to €50 million.

In fact, it reached €162 million in the continued business. This resulted from very high customer prepayments before Christmas.

We were often asked about the reasons for this. The answer has a lot to do with customers' balance sheet and cash flow considerations.

If they expect lower cash flows in the year to come, they will bring forward payments to the old year to reduce future cash-outs. Beyond high prepayments, free cash flow mainly benefited from lower cash-outs for investments.

Page 21 shows that we kept net working capital under respective 2024 levels during the complete year, with very low days working capital of 27 at the year-end. While the business volume was almost constant, with a sales decline of just under 3%, we strongly reduced inventories, receivables, and contract assets.

This shows that we are able to keep a decent level of cash in the company, which is even more important when macro uncertainty is high. I am pleased to say that we saw strong progress in net working capital management at BBS Automation under the Dürr umbrella, and that the Automotive division managed to further reduce net working capital to less than zero.

Page 22 is next. In the group as a whole, free cash flow expanded to €193 million.

Based on this and the €295 million proceeds from the environmental technology sale, we were able to reduce net financial debt by €330 million to only €66 million. This equals to a low leverage of 0.2 and brought back debt to the very comfortable levels before the acquisition of BBS Automation in 2023.

My last slide, number 23, is on ESG. I would like to point out two important facts in our climate reporting.

The first one is a reduction of Scope 3 emissions by 27% in 2025. Scope 3 mainly includes emissions in the use phase of our products.

27% is an enormous decline. This figure illustrates the very high relevance of our painting equipment for reducing our customers' CO2 footprint.

The reason for the strong reduction is that a large share of the painting equipment we commissioned in 2025 features low-emission technology. The prime example is the world's first paint shop to operate entirely without fossil fuels that we handed over to a customer in Europe.

The second fact I would like to draw your attention on is related to the EU taxonomy. We were able for the first time to recognize sales from the spare parts and service business in our taxonomy-eligible and taxonomy-aligned revenues.

This means that almost one quarter of group revenues are taxonomy-aligned compared to 13% in 2024. With this, I would like to hand back to Jochen, who will make you familiar with the outlook for 2026.

Thank you, Dietmar. Slide 25 expresses that we expect the high level of macro uncertainty to persist in 2026, and looking at the war in the Middle East, this assumption seems absolutely justified.

Automotive, we see a solid pipeline with quite a number of capex projects in the field of painting and assembly technology. However, the lesson learned from 2025 is that predicting the timing of contract awards is difficult nowadays.

There's enough new business out there, but we cannot rule out that projects expected for 2026 might be postponed. Industrial Automation continues to see good prospects in the medtech and consumer sector, while new business with auto OEMs and suppliers is expected to remain volatile, given the slower pace of EV transformation.

At woodworking, HOMAG, it's difficult to predict when the furniture business will finally recover. From today's point of view, we would rather expect another challenging year.

However, HOMAG is strong enough to cope with this, especially given the upwards trend in the timber house business that will support utilization and sales realization. Page 26, please.

The war in the Middle East additionally threatens economic stability. This increases uncertainty and makes the outlook for 2026 even more difficult.

Provided that the war will not further escalate, but rather be finished in the foreseeable future, and under the assumption that no other international conflicts put additional pressure on supply chains and economic stability, we can give the following guidance for 2026. Sounds like a little longer disclaimer this year, however.

We see potential to increase both order intake and sales. In the best case, order intake could rise up by up to 8% to €4.2 billion, while sales could expand to up to €4.3 billion.

Looking at the ongoing uncertainties and the fragile geopolitical situation, however, we also included the possibility of declining new orders and sales in the guidance. With respect to earnings, our target is to further improve the operating performance and to increase the EBIT margin before extraordinaries to up to 6.5%.

This also requires that the world will return to a more stable state soon. Supporting factors for an earning increase in 2026 include further earnings potential at HOMAG, operating improvements at BBS Automation, positive effects from the capacity cuts in the administrative sector and the battery business, as well as strongly reduced expenses for the ONE DürrGroup synergy program.

On the opposite, we expect a one-time burden of around €10 million at HOMAG for the transition to a new ERP system and for ramping up a new factory in Poland that will yield efficiency improvements from 2027 on. For free cash flow, we are giving a guidance of €150 million minus to 1 to €0 million.

This considers the advanced customer payments at the end of 2025, higher net working capital needs for 2026, the tax payments for the environmental technology sale, and the cash-outs for the administrative adjustments. Moreover, there might be a payment resulting from a tax audit that we will have examined by court, however.

Upside potential for free cash flow may arise from customer prepayments in the course of the year that are not yet fully foreseeable. Page 27, please.

To keep it short, I would like to refrain from going into details on the divisional outlook. When looking at this, please note that the shift of the battery business from Industrial Automation to Automotive at the beginning of 2026 and the transfer of the Benz tooling business to woodworking.

The joint sales volume of both businesses is around €100 million. This brings us to the summary on slides 28.

2025 was marked by the transformation of Dürr into a leaner group with only three divisions and full focus on automation and sustainable production. Alongside with this, we improved our earnings resilience.

Our two largest divisions, Automotive and woodworking, were able to increase earnings in an adverse environment, based on operating excellence and self-help measures. Industrial Automation will go the same way and improve its performance under the new management.

Order intake was impacted by market uncertainties in 2025, but there is potential for improvements in 2026, provided that the extremely high level of uncertainty that we are facing right now will not last too long. Sales should, if at all, only grow slightly 2026, but are expected to accelerate more strongly again in 2027.

Provided that the geopolitical situation will calm down soon, there are good prospects for further margin improvements in 2026 and beyond, based on operating excellence and further cost reductions, for example, in administration. Free cash flow will probably be lower in 2026.

However, given our business model, it makes more sense to look at the three-year cash flow average, as this smooths out the high fluctuations in customer payments. Our balance sheet is very solid, securing the funds to grow and further develop our business.

In 2026, we will put full focus on further strengthening our efficiency and operating excellence, especially at BBS Automation. Large acquisitions should not be expected this year, but are an option to speed up top-line growth beyond 2026.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening. Dietmar and I will now be happy to answer your questions.

Hi, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions.

I would actually have three. The first one is on your service part of the business.

The share of revenues is fluctuating close to 30%. Are there any initiatives or plannings to increase the share?

The second one is on your margin guidance for your automation business. I understand that you installed a new management team, but could you explain in more detail the building blocks of the margin improvement in 2026, please?

My final question is on dividends. Maybe I oversee it, but any comments here would be really helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you for your question, Nikita. First, on service, we have always ongoing initiatives for the service business, and it's a bit different by division.

We have already a very good share of service revenues in Automotive, which we are further expanding with new offerings, for example, our spare parts in many cases now comprise RFID chips to make it easier for our customers to track the lifetime of our products on the one hand, but on the other hand, of course, make our business more captive as companies, let me simplify it like pirates, are more difficult to work on similar spare parts. We use a lot digital products in the service system now, partially based already on artificial intelligence.

This may be on Automotive. On the HOMAG side, because we have a very high installed base, a very complex installed base, we are developing very special, standardized service and upgrade programs that will help to support the service there as well, just given a few examples.

As you can see on our Industrial Automation business, especially at the BBS side, is not so much used to a strong service business yet. There, we're really kicking off programs to benefit from the potential that's out there.

Lots of programs, and this makes us really very confident that this business will grow. Actually, we've set this as a strategic target, even down to our remuneration for the year.

On the margin guidance for Industrial Automation, the blocks and the improvements, Dietmar, you want to cover the topics where we see improvements?

It's on one side continuing the optimization measures that are already established. We will as one impact have the negative impact from the lithium-ion business that Jochen mentioned before that was under stress and we had to do the impairment, actually is removed to Auto.

This helps then to lift already to a certain extent then the margin. The second topic is that we are working on operational excellence in project management, that we are improving the footprints continuously.

We are combining two locations here in Germany that are very close together that's already agreed upon with the works council there, so that we can realize synergies. That's why we are finally confident that we can reach a margin improvement, but it's not yet where we want to go.

There's still further steps to come finally beyond 2026.

On the dividends, I think there's nothing to be communicated yet, difficult to comment on this at this point.

Nikita, maybe to add, Jochen, we have the guardrails of 30% 30% to 40% of the net income, but you are for sure aware that in case of extraordinary charges, we did some adjustments. This year, we have an or 2025 an extraordinary benefit, we might consider this.

In general, we are a good friend of a continuous dividend policy and of course, nevertheless, having our shareholders having a share of the benefit that we produce. It's a very generic statement, I have to say.

We will discuss with the supervisory board, and when we get out with the final report at the end of March, you will get information in that regard.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for taking my question, and good afternoon, everybody. I also have a few questions.

Maybe if I can just follow up a little bit on the impairment that you were mentioning for Industrial Automation, if you can quantify that. Also with regard to the guidance that you provide per division, you give indications on the sales for 2025 in the lithium-ion battery system business and also for Benz, but looking at 2026, what would have been the kind of figures that you were anticipating for these in terms of order intake and also the margin impact, maybe the dilutive margin impact on Automotive and the relutive margin impact on Industrial Automation would help a little bit?

That would be the first question.

Philippe, in regard to the impairment, just to make sure, it's LIB that you're mentioned, yeah?

Yes.

Because I was still busy taking notes, sorry for that. It's the market situation in the battery market, in European market is very, very difficult.

That's the area that we focus on, because we have been of the opinion that we can gain a business in the European market with the drive also for independency in regard to battery supplies in the European Union. We can see that from a customer perspective, this did not materialize finally.

We could see the difficulties of Northvolt, we could see Porsche's announcement regarding their joint venture here, Cellforce, and we do see that last year the market in regard to new business was very, very low. At the very end then we reviewed the business opportunities, we reviewed the business plan, and we came then to the conclusion that for the foreseeable future, it's not going to build up then finally in the area that we really targeted.

We did then finally impairment of €15 million. The impairments as a whole is €135 million, as I mentioned before, thereof the €120 million for BBS or P&S at that time, that we already did at the end of the first half of the year, and the €15 million now in the fourth quarter for LIB.

Okay. The margin Yes, sir.

Yeah. Go ahead, Philippe, go.

No, I was just meaning the margin step-ups basically from the fact that we just reduced the amount of depreciation going forward.

It's also operational improvement. In the lithium-ion business, we really expect close to double-digit million improvement in the lithium-ion business as such operationally, independent from any depreciations on the business.

You were asking also on the dilution for the business, it's...

Based on last year, it would be around 70 basis points for Automotive,

yeah,

in the margin.

Okay. Basically, if I take the 7% to 8% margin target range for 2026, I would need to hike that by basically around 70 bps.

More or less... Yes, and it would be especially,

Philippe, when you look to 2020 figures, then you would go down from the 8.6% towards 7.9% in order to have it comparable.

In regard to 2026 guidance, as Jochen outlined, we want to bring the business to breakeven for 2026, the dilutive effect is significantly smaller.

More comes from volume,

yeah. Yeah.

You were asking about volumes. Both businesses are in the magnitude of €50 million or a bit more at the moment.

That was the order intake volume for the LIB?

Also, order intake on lithium-ion was lower last year. We had a good 2024 with a large order that we're currently still executing, and Benz would be around the €50 million roughly, yes.

Okay.

Perfect. Then I have one question, maybe on the large order that you had for timber house for HOMAG in Q4, if you can quantify a little bit that kind of impact.

That order was close to €100 million in order intake. It's coming from North America and will be executed this year and, to some extent, also next year.

All in all, in that area, what we call CS, which is the wooden houses business, we had an order intake of above €200 million last year, record order intake.

Okay. Including that order.

Including that order, yes.

Okay. Perfect.

I've got two more technical questions,

to say,

for you. The first one is on the announcement that you already preemptively make that you are to revise the 2030 sales guidance.

Obviously, there's a need to adjust anyway for the sale of the environmental business of CTS. Are there any other reasons also that push you to do that?

Say, for instance, the slightly lighter anticipation in terms of order intake for 2026 versus what one could have expected, let's say, me, for example [laughter], in terms of growth, and also generally the cautious stance that you have with regard to the geopolitical situation?

Yeah. All of what you're saying is valid in a certain sense.

However, €100 million up or down, maybe I'm a bit too generous now, in 2026 don't have much impact on 2030, at least I hope. CTS is a valid discussion.

We will be, of course, reviewing growth potentials, which currently we are really revisiting in order to, not too far in the future, redefine what would bring us to the €6 billion or whether the €6 billion are still the €6 billion.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Philippe, it's always including both organic growth and inorganic growth, which means acquisition. Jochen pointed out on the presentation you can see 2026 is on efficiency, but, of course, for the future, especially when opportunities coming up to strengthen business, we will seriously, diligently look into them.

Within the core business.

Within the core business, and with net debt being reduced to a level close to zero, we are also now having a good headroom again to act when opportunities are coming up in the future.

Okay. Maybe you will actually stop targeting such a fixed figure including, let's say, M&A and so on and rather guide organically.

That could actually be wiser, I guess, going forward.

We will take it into consideration.

Yeah. Good.

Finally, I've got a question for you, Dietmar, because you were mentioning the fact that contract assets were actually reduced. To which extent do you manage to proactively reduce or keep that under control versus what is it that you actually cannot control?

Because I understand there's always a relation between that item and also the sales recognition and the earnings recognition, and actually the market typically likes if contract assets are not too much inflated, it's good news here that we get that to be seen. I was wondering whether there's actually really something that you can control versus something that you have to actually deal with.

You're right, Philippe. When you look into the number, we had a decline of €84 million from end of 2024 to end of 2025, so that's a significant decline.

Basically, I would say the majority of this we can manage. I think one of the reason for this at the very end is in conjunction with the sales recognition, especially the excellent, excellent EBIT margin on the Automotive side in the fourth quarter business.

A couple of projects have been completed. We could then finally realize the outstanding sales, we could realize then also the profit with releasing contingencies that we had in there, and that was also making a contribution to the drop in the total contract assets as well.

Okay. Perfect.

Thanks for that. If you don't mind, just a little housekeeping stuff, you mention €10 million of costs for HOMAG for ERP transition.

Is it going to be recognized below the line, so, i.e., in earnings adjustments, or within the guided margin?

We had internally some discussion, but I'd say this way, the head of our audit committee is not too much a friend of it.

It really goes bottom line.

Yeah.

Okay. In the adjusted EBIT still.

That

is earnings before extraordinary effects.

Yeah. That's also Jochen mentioned that we had a decline or we expect a decline or had already decline last year in the ONE DürrGroup synergy program.

In that regard, we stopped the ONE ERP project, and we finally moved now to a brownfield approach regarding SAP R/3 to S/4 transformation that is division-based. We have on one side the savings, and we have smaller amounts due to the brownfield approach than in the division, but it's reflected and directly in the divisions, and it's shown there.

Okay. Perfect.

Thank you. I'm back to the queue.

Thank you, Philippe.

Yes, hi, gentlemen. Good afternoon.

Actually, two questions left from my side. On the cash flow guidance that you gave, just to get a sense of what defines really the very low end and the up end of that, because if you take the two years together, i.e., 2025 and your, let's say, very low end of 2026, there's hardly any cash flow left on an EBITDA of €600 million, so that seems very cautious to me.

Maybe also the moving parts and building blocks would be interesting on that number. Then, secondly, on the regional developments, throughout the year, we have seen, in particular, China quite soft, and I was wondering, also on the order side of things, actually now down to book-to-bill of 0.4 in Q4, first of all, how do you think of that business progressing?

Secondly, is that due to a structure of Chinese rather buying Chinese products, is that a structural thing, or how should we see it? Then, I might have a follow-up on the regional setup.

Shall I start with the free cash flow guidance? Yeah.

Adrian, in that regard, we mentioned that we received quite big early prepayments, or payments in December from our customer side that had a strong influence. You remember that the guidance originally was 0 to €50 million.

Now then we increased, we got out now with €162 million. Based on the past, maybe we sometimes could overexceed a little bit, you can roughly say that we received around €100 million more than we expected finally.

This, of course, is missing as a cash inflow in 2026, so that's why we are certain. On the other side, we will not, for ongoing projects, receive significant milestone payments because these earlier prepayments also, to some extent, are made.

Then we have, yeah, non-operating cash-outs, like we mentioned, for the tax on the environmental technology sale. We booked the net gain finally, but the tax payments will be made in 2026.

We have the expected payout from the tax audit in Germany that we will have it examined by a court. We don't want to mention the number due to the tax authorities not letting know our real position on this, but we build up respective provisions, no impact on the profit side impacted.

Of course, when orders are coming in towards the end of the year, we could have again the advantage that we get the initial down payments and then have a better cash flow development despite the fact that not much of the contract assets is being built up during that time. This defines the upper and the lower end from a verbal explanation.

On the regional distribution, especially China, of the orders, first, as a disclaimer, as in many cases, we have orders that are triple-digit million, this can fluctuate over time. However, especially on China, where we've seen some declines, China is a very competitive market.

From what we see, it's not about in terms of winning the orders, at least in the most cases, independent from whether you are local or not local. In fact, we're local for more than 30 years already in China.

It is competition, and of course, the market, after boom times around adding capacities with now dozens of producers, that it's natural that the investments have been somewhat down. However, I can note that this year we've already seen some upwind and booked one, two orders in Automotive, not the big orders, but activities there.

Let's see what's happening. China, of course, is the most competitive market on the planet.

This is why we are also continuing to play there, especially to learn from there, and not to forget, we're using our own Chinese facilities to follow Chinese OEMs into the world. If you look at China from a holistic point of view, it's a bit more than just the order intake making.

Right. More generally on that, how are you managing your capacities, in particular, on the Automotive side of things?

Obviously, your overall profitability was solid, in particular, in the second half of the year. Looks like you're probably also assuming or selecting orders depending on the margin profile.

Is that continuously the case, and how should we think of the margin profile in your order backlog going forward?

We continue to have a healthy margin in the order backlog. In many cases, with the excellence that we have in order execution, we turn or we even increase the margin that we have in the backlog when executing projects.

Then, in terms of capacity management, we are very much used still today to manage projects very globally. When we, just to give you an example, execute an order in Saudi Arabia, you would have colleagues from China involved, from Korea, from Italy, from Poland, from Germany, and probably a few more countries.

This is how we are used to execute orders, not saying independently from where they are, but to a large extent. This is why we can manage capacities quite well.

Second, also very important is that a lot of the P&L, especially in Automotive, is purchased goods, we are not so dependent in terms of load in factories because our value-adding, our own value-adding in terms of products is limited to the amount where we can differentiate with own IP.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you, Adrian.

Sorry. Thanks for taking my follow-ups.

The first one would be on the extra costs that you had on the continuing business prior to the actual sale of Clean Technology Systems Environmental. Could you quantify that again for the full year of 2025, we know what negative impact actually leaves the P&L?

This was around €30 million, Philippe, as a whole. A smaller amount, low one-digit million euro, I would say €3 million to €4 million, was already in 2024.

The remainder was in 2025. That's the amount that we spent, and this was related to the carve-out preparation, which was quite complex, and was then transaction-related expenses.

Okay. This also includes the impact of shifting the costs that were actually not recognized anymore in CTS Environmental, but rather in the existing continuing business, no?

Also,

it's

all together.

That's correct. It is recorded in the discontinued operations.

Okay. Perfect.

Second question that came to my mind as well as you were mentioning Saudi Arabia, but with the current situation in the Middle East, do you have any, let's say, significant projects where you have works on the ground and so on, and what's the situation like there in this kind of scenario that we are going through in the Middle East?

Philippe, we're having two projects in Saudi Arabia. They're not at the Persian Gulf side in the east, but they're in the west, near Jeddah, King Abdullah Economic City.

Our people are safe because we have the people there. We have all the plans to deal with the situation and escalate if necessary.

Second, in terms of the supply chain, we're carefully watching

and,

where necessary, we reroute goods at this point. Far, we're not, with a view on this region, expect any interruptions.

What, of course, we have to carefully watch is our supply chain in general. There, it's difficult to say at this point.

It is what we said before: if this conflict is managed within the foreseeable future, we don't see a real impact. If it takes longer, we will have to see.

Okay. Perfect.

Thanks for your statement.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Anna, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your questions and the discussion. If there are follow-ups, please don't hesitate to contact me.

The full annual report will be published on March 26, and the Q1 figures on May 12. We are planning a Capital Market Day in the course of the year as we are currently examining our midterm sales targets and working on a strategy update.

For today, that's it. Take care.

Goodbye.