Thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our second-quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO, and Alexander Kocherscheidt, our CFO.

Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the second quarter, and Alexander will then cover the business and financial review, before Stefan takes over again for the Outlook 2026. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session.

Please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today. With that, hand over to Stefan.

Thank you, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference call today.

Before starting with the review of our second-quarter results, let me share with you some important news which we published last week. The Executive Board has resolved that we will start another share buyback program in the amount of up to €500 million.

Keeping in mind that we have already bought back and canceled shares with an aggregate volume of €700 million in the last five years, the new program brings us to a share buyback volume of €1.2 billion between 2021 and 2027, an impressive volume in relation to our market cap. The new program will be split into two tranches and will run until the end of 2027.

The first tranche of the program, worth up to €250 million, starts tomorrow and will be executed over the next seven months. Like the last program, all repurchased shares will be canceled once the program has been completed.

This news clearly demonstrates our conviction in GEA's growth opportunities. We are growing our top line, improving our profitability further, and making continuous progress towards our Mission 30 targets.

Thanks to our strong cash generation, the share buyback is not limiting our investments, R&D spending, or potential acquisitions. As in previous programs, there is an ESG feature linked to the buyback.

We will donate part of the guaranteed outperformance, which is the difference between the purchasing price and the volume-weighted average price of our shares over the duration of the program, to the Deutsche Universitätsstiftung. It will be roughly €250,000, which will be used to support exceptionally talented students in STEAM education.

I'm turning now to our second-quarter release. After having already reported a strong first quarter, we accelerated top-line growth and improved profitability further in the second quarter.

Order intake rose significantly by 14.2% year-over-year to €1.5 billion. This performance was driven by strong growth in all order sizes.

Base orders, however, had by far the highest absolute growth contribution. Large orders, orders above €15 million, had a total volume of €34 million, while no large order had been booked in the prior-year quarter.

Sales grew strongly by 10% to €1.4 billion. Organic sales growth was even higher at 11.0%.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by an excellent 15.6% year-over-year to €251 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved to 17.4%.

This marks a new record level for GEA. Return on capital employed continued to rise from an already high level in the prior-year quarter to 36.8% in the quarter.

This marks a new record, too. Due to an excellent cash generation in the quarter, net liquidity turned from a net debt position at the end of the second quarter in 2025 into a net cash position of €71 million at the end of the second quarter in 2026.

To sum it up, a very strong second quarter with improvements in all key performance indicators. Due to this very positive operating performance and confident expectations for the remainder of this year, we raised our guidance for the fiscal year 2026, as announced on 21st of July.

We are now guiding organic sales growth to be between 6% and 8% for the full year 2026, up from the prior range of 5% to 7%. The new range is well above our midterm target of more than 5% organic sales growth.

EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses is expected to be in the range of 17% to 17.4%, up from the prior guidance of 16.6% to 17.2%. This brings us already close to the low end of our Mission 30 target, even if you have to consider that this year's EBITDA margin is before restructuring expenses, while from next year onwards, the EBITDA margin is as reported.

The new guidance for return on capital employed is between 36% and 40%, clearly above the prior range of 34% to 38%. As you can see, we are once again delivering what we promised or even more than that.

This is one of my favorite charts. Once again, we have been recognized as one of the world's most sustainable companies by TIME Magazine and Statista.

Over 5,000 companies were evaluated globally to identify the top 750 companies. GEA not only made it to rank 17 globally, but was ranked first among all German companies.

This is a special honor for everyone at GEA, as it underscores our position as a real front-runner in sustainability. It is exactly this distinctive aspect, sustainability as a driver of long-term value creation, that we strive to communicate to the capital markets.

Over the past few years, our Investor Relations team, together with my Executive Board colleague Dr. Nadine Sterley, has done a fantastic job in transparent and understandable ESG communication.

It is especially rewarding to see that this work has been recognized and appreciated by you, our investors and analysts. Receiving the German Investor Relations Award for Best ESG Communication is a great honor to us.

It reflects something we truly care about: engaging openly with our stakeholders and bringing our shareholders along on our journey towards an even more sustainable company. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your vote, your trust, and your continued support.

We see this award not only as recognition of what we have achieved, but also as encouragement to keep pushing ahead on our journey, guided by our purpose, engineering for a better world. Now, I hand over to Alexander, who will give you more insights into our performance in the second quarter.

Thank you very much, Stefan. A warm welcome from me as well, ladies and gentlemen.

I will now walk you through our business and financial performance in the second quarter. Let's have a closer look at the group performance.

As Stefan has already highlighted, we had an excellent second quarter throughout all key performance indicators. Order intake increased significantly by 15.4% organically, with all divisions contributing to this positive development, except for PFA.

From a customer industry perspective, once again and for several quarters in a row, dairy processing and dairy farming continued to be strong. In addition, food and other industries were showing good demand.

Translational FX effects became smaller. While we had an adverse translational FX effect of more than 3% in the first quarter, it shrank to 1% in the second quarter.

Sales grew organically by 11.0%, driven by excellent performance in both new machine and service sales. Organic growth in the new machine business reached 11.6%, supported by double-digit growth rates in almost all divisions.

The service business continued its growth trajectory and reported an organic growth rate of 10.2%. This marks the 30 sorry, the 23rd quarter, such a high number, it's difficult, 23rd quarter in a row with organic service sales growth, an impressive performance.

On the back of the slightly stronger growth in the new machine business, the service sales share declined by 0.5 percentage points to 39.6%. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by €23 million to €251 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 0.9 percentage points to 17.4%.

Significantly higher volume and better gross margin were the drivers of the profitability increase. Moving on to the divisional performance.

I will start with Pure Flow Processing, which reported very strong top-line growth, order intake and sales, while the EBITDA margin declined slightly at a high level. Order intake rose organically by 9.8% year-over-year, driven by orders below €5 million.

Demand was strongest in food, dairy processing, and marine, but also beverage, energy, and distribution and storage contributed to the impressive growth rate. Thus, order intake strength was broad-based across different customer industries.

Organic sales grew significantly by 12.9% year-over-year, driven by very strong growth rates in new machines and service business. As the new machine business grew even more than service sales this quarter, the service sales share decreased on a high level from 47.0% in the second quarter of 2025 to 46.2% in the second quarter of 2026.

EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by €13 million year-over-year to €145 million, driven by higher gross profit, which was partly offset by increased operating costs, such as higher selling expenses in line with our order intake development. The corresponding EBITDA margin declined on a high level by 0.5 percentage points year-over-year to 27.5% in the quarter.

Turning to Nutrition Plant Engineering, which caught up strongly from a slow first quarter. The division reported impressive numbers across all key performance indicators: significant order intake growth, strong sales, as well as a substantial EBITDA margin expansion.

As a result of this performance, all key indicators turned from a negative performance in the first quarter to a positive one in the first half. Order intake for the second quarter was up organically by more than 40%.

This was driven by a very strong performance of orders between €1 million and €15 million, as well as two large orders from the dairy processing industry, which totaled €34 million. The prior-year quarter contained no large orders.

In terms of customer industries, dairy processing remained strong. This is not only driven by the two large Asian dairy processing orders; even without these two large orders, this customer industry would have been a strong growth contributor.

In addition, pharma showed good demand in the quarter. Sales increased organically by 10.6% year-over-year.

Service sales continued its growth trajectory, increasing organically by 11.5% year-over-year. At the same time, new machine sales rebounded, as expected and promised, after reporting a decline in the first quarter.

As mentioned already in our first-quarter call, we expected an improvement in new machine sales kicking in in the second quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased from €45 million in the prior-year quarter to €56 million in the second quarter of 2026 on the back of higher sales volume and better gross margin.

The corresponding EBITDA margin rose strongly by 1.3 percentage points year-over-year to 11.3%. Continuing with Pharma and Food Applications, which delivered strong sales growth and a substantial profitability expansion.

Order intake, however, declined organically by 9.6% due to timing of orders. Base orders, which are orders below €1 million, were growing by more than 6% in the quarter, while medium-sized orders were down.

Sales grew by 8.5% year-over-year in organic terms, driven by both strong new machine and service sales. The new machine business delivered an organic growth rate of 9.2%, while service grew at 7.2%.

As a result, the service sales share decreased from 34.5% in the prior-year quarter to 33.3% in the quarter. The impressive track record of continuous profitability improvement which the division has built up over the last years continued in the second quarter.

Absolute EBITDA before restructuring expenses and the corresponding margin reached new record levels for a quarter. EBITDA rose substantially by 30% year-over-year to €45 million, driven by volume and significantly higher gross margin.

For the first time ever, the respective margin crossed the 16% mark and reached 16.2%, an outstanding achievement. Finally, Farm Technologies.

Farm Technologies reported another quarter of double-digit growth rates in order intake and sales. Let me give you some more details here.

The favorable market environment for dairy farmers, which began in December 2024, continued steadily throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026. This translated, once again, into a notable increase in order intake.

Order intake rose by 11.4% organically, due to strong demand for both automated and conventional milking systems in the new machine business area. In terms of order sizes, base orders were the growth driver.

Organic sales rose significantly by 15.4%. New machine sales continued their strong performance since middle of last year, with a substantial year-over-year organic increase of 22.6%.

Service sales grew organically at 8.6%. As a result of the significant outperformance of the new machine business, the service sales share declined from a high level of 51.1% in the second quarter of 2025 to 47.8% in the second quarter of 2026.

On the back of higher sales volume, EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by €3 million year-over-year to €30 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin declined slightly by 0.2 percentage points to 14.2%, because of the lower service sales share and product mix effects.

Let me close the divisional chapter with an overview of the EBITDA growth contribution in the first half and in the second quarter of 2026. There are two important messages.

Firstly, we have been able to increase our EBITDA before restructuring expenses in both time periods considerably. Secondly, all divisions contributed to this positive development.

This underlines our broad-based strength resulting from our price and cost discipline, as well as savings from our procurement and production optimization efforts. Let me now turn to another important topic: net working capital.

Year-over-year, net working capital declined by €27 million to €396 million. This reduction was driven by a combination of higher trade payables and higher contract liabilities.

The high volume of large orders over the last four quarters led to higher advance payments, which are reflected in the increase in contract liabilities. This resulted in a net working capital to sales ratio of 7.0%, placing us at the bottom of the guided corridor of 7% to 9%.

On a rolling last four quarters basis, which smooths seasonality, the ratio was even lower at 6.3%. Free cash flow reached an outstanding level, marking the highest second-quarter free cash flow in six years.

Let's have a look at the main drivers. After a moderate net working capital outflow of €12 million and a €26 million outflow in the others position, which mainly results from miscellaneous balance sheet movements like VAT, operating cash flow stood at €185 million in the second quarter.

CapEx-related cash outflow was relatively low at €39 million, compared with our full-year 2026 guidance of around €240 million. As in previous years, we expect CapEx to ramp up in the second half of 2026.

As a result, free cash flow was very strong, amounting to €151 million. After deducting lease payments and interests paid, net cash flow amounted to €131 million.

The strong net cash flow was offset by the dividend payment, but even so, we ended the quarter with a net cash position of €71 million. In the first half, free cash flow was still negative at €39 million.

However, we saw a very strong catch-up in the second quarter. We are therefore on track to achieve roughly the same level of free cash flow for the full year as in 2025.

Free cash flow generation over the last four quarters has been strong, reaching €483 million. The corresponding cash conversion ratio, which indicates how much of the EBITDA before restructuring expenses has been converted into free cash flow before restructuring expenses, landed at a solid 54%.

With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thank you, Alexander. As already mentioned at the beginning of today's call, we have increased our guidance for 2026 based on the very positive performance in the first half of this year and the promising expectations for the second half of 2026.

Despite the volatile environment driven by geopolitical tensions around the world, GEA's positive journey is not only continuing, it is even accelerating. This is based on the various levers which we initiated with our Mission 30.

Finally, our roadmap for 2026. The next important date will be the release of our third-quarter results on November 9th.

In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at upcoming roadshows and conferences. Alexander, the Investor Relations team, and I will be meeting investors until the end of September.

This concludes my presentation, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. Yes, let's start with the Q&A session.

Therefore, I'm turning the call back to you, Madalina, and please go ahead with some more instructions.

Yes, hi. Good afternoon, and thanks for your time.

My first one is for Stefan. Stefan, you earlier touched base in your prepared remarks that you are technically hitting the bottom end of your 2030 target of 17% to 19% already this year.

I know margin guidance for 2030 excluding restructuring and including restructuring, and this year is excluding restructuring, but I'm wondering if you can talk about the timeline for potentially revisiting 2030 targets, which looks conservative. Then my second question is for Alexander, which is on Farm Tech.

Your new revenue guidance is 8% to 10% organic after more than 20% in H1, and that would mean that even at the top end of the revenue outlook, you are guiding a modest revenue decline in second half. Farm Tech has seen more than one times book-to-bill for three consecutive quarters, and backlog is at highest level since Q2 of 2023, maybe if you can help us understand what is driving this revenue guidance for Farm Tech?

Thank you.

Akash, thanks for the question. I think the positive message is, I think there is no question mark that we can make the Mission 30.

These question marks might be finally gone. I think we know each other very well, Akash, since long time.

If you see this performance now, I think it proves that we can deliver what we promise. Let's first finish now the year 2026, and let's see where we finally end.

As I said, we are definitely touching the lower end of the Mission 30 already at this year's end. Then, at the right time, we might think twice, and we will see if there is any room for recalibration.

The company has, of course, a lot of potential, like you can see. Yeah.

Sorry. Second question, Akash, regarding the FT sales.

We, of course, are running also against a second quarter of last year. That's also always the case if we then compare the two numbers.

This has been quite a strong one last year. That's the first one.

The comparison in Q2 in H2 is quite high, so that leads to our overall guidance of 8% to 10%.

Thank you. Still, when I look at your last three-quarter order intake, even if we have similar revenues in second half, we should get growth in Farm Tech revenues in second half, just wondering if there is anything we are missing there.

No, there is nothing that you're missing. That's the guidance we are giving, and that's based on the current expectation.

I think with a yearly growth rate, we are still within the growth trajectory that we are needing also in comparison to last year's growth in FT, so that's where we currently sit.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. I just have two.

I think on your previous earnings calls, you talk about the acceleration in organic sales growth throughout the year. I wonder if, given your strong first-half performance, are you still expecting this?

In that case, would it be still further room to upgrade your full-year guidance of '26? My second question is if you could give us a bit more color on how much visibility you have now for the order book to support future quarters at current high-growth organic orders growth rate or even higher?

Thank you.

Thank you, Meihan. Thanks for your question.

You are right. Normally, we can accelerate organic sales growth in the second half of the year, like also profitability, that makes us very optimistic that we will achieve the guidance which we promised.

We know each other not so long time, but if you follow GEA during the last years, we always deliver what we promise. For us, it's not an option to overpromise and underdeliver, we rather like to do it the other way around.

That is what I can say. There are always some risks in the air, not coming from our company, coming from outside developments, but we are very optimistic that we see a sales growth which is in line with the guidance we just gave.

The second half of the year is a little bit of an uphill battle, let's say, because we are comparing against especially a very strong Q4. It is very unlikely, let's say like that, that we can beat last year's Q4 because last year we also booked Balatna here in this fourth quarter.

Just also to manage expectations, don't expect a Q4 which might be even above last year's Q4. As I always like to say, a quarter is very difficult to judge in our business, because it happens so fast that we can book something in Q3 what we expected in Q2, or vice versa.

More important is that 12 months period, I would say, and we are very optimistic that we can see at the end of the year a significant growth also in order intake. Doesn't matter when we book it.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Meihan.

Thank you. Hi, Stefan, Alexander.

Klas at Citi. My first question is on your exposure to the data center buildout.

It seems like you haven't seen much growth here yet, but we're hearing from others of increased orders here in the flow end of the business. These are pumps, valves, fittings, etc.

Could you talk through your exposure here, Stefan, and to what extent you can commercialize this opportunity? I'll start here.

Thank you.

Thanks, Klas. It's very good to hear you today, thanks for the good connection.

There had

been some hiccup in the last calls. I cannot comment on what others are promising or telling or whatever.

For us, from today's point of view, we don't expect here any significant business from us for that in the data center, but this is not a big problem for us, because, as we have a lot of other verticals where we have really interesting growth. Also just to mention that we are extremely successful in the topic of continuous tablet pressing, where we have a unique position.

You also could maybe read that now Novo Nordisk is also starting with the GLP-1 tablets in Europe. This is something where we might benefit significantly from.

There are different verticals for us which are very interesting, but most likely data center is not.

Thank you. My second one is sort of linked to other questions in that your guidance seems conservative.

If you look at Pure Flow Processing, one on Farm Tech, but it's a little bit similar. You're guiding second-half growth, full-year midpoint, it's a sharp deceleration to 2% below consensus, around 5%.

There is commentary that they just want to reflect effectively conservative as they split through the cycle. Or are you seeing anything here that would suggest a slowdown?

Or is linked to tough comp from testing or something else? The implied margin is very good for PFP, but I'm curious on the sales comp.

Thank you.

Okay. I was maybe too fast in giving you kudos for the good connection, because it was quite bad again.

I think I've got the point. What should I say?

Klas, we know each other also very long. That we are always guiding what we can achieve.

There might be, if everything goes in the right direction, there might be upside potential, not only in PFP. This is, I would say, how I can comment it.

There is nothing which you don't know and should know to yeah, to be sure that we might be worse than expected. We do our job, like always, and it might look conservative, but let's see where we end up.

Okay. My very quick final one, if you can hear me okay,

is

the very strong orders ex the large orders in NPE, which seems to be driven both by dairy processing and pharma. Did any of these two segments ex large orders accelerate more than the others quarter-on-quarter?

The debate now in GEA is sort of moving on from large orders to base orders in NPE. You have a tough comp from large orders in the second half.

The question now, do you see this underlying order level sustained into the second half? As in a comment on the sort of base order pipeline, €1 million to €15 million would be useful, and across geographies.

Thank you, Stefan.

I think that's good what you mention, because we see a very good base load in NPE. By the way, also here while we are talking about verticals and growth drivers, also the whole high-protein trend is something which is very favorable for us at the moment, yeah.

There is a lot of investment going on. The world needs to have high protein, and also many people are moving to dairy-based products which might not have consumed it so much in the past.

This is what we see. On top of that, we have an interesting and very promising pipeline for large orders in NPE.

Also here, we expect a very good second half of the year in terms of order intake and, of course, also in sales.

Thank you.

You're welcome, Klas.

thank you. I just wanted to ask firstly about your services growth.

So 10% organic growth in services in the quarter, it's obviously a very impressive number, and I guess far above what your installed base is growing at. I guess my question is, you laid out in your sort of previous plans, moving up the service ladder, trying to kind of recapture more of your installed base, higher value per machine.

I guess I just wanted to understand how far along are you in that process? Maybe if you could give us any sort of quantification of how much were you capturing of your deliveries into your installed service base versus today, how much is that kind of capture rate?

Just any sort of quantification about how that kind of process has evolved and how much more you think there is to do.

Service is a very important part of our success story in the last years. Of course, we achieve meanwhile an percentage of roughly 40%.

Can it be larger? Yes, but but it also, it depends on how successful we are in new installations.

We we don't want to outgrow it to, let's say, 45% or 50%, because that would mean that we are selling too little or too less new installations. We promised in the Mission 30 to grow service business to €2.9 billion in 2030.

We are very well on track here. We also are increasing our number of digital products which we sell.

This is a very interesting part for us and where we can also accelerate service growth. It's also that we do a lot in all the traditional areas that starts with creating more transparency of the installed base, really capturing and deploying the potential of the installed base, being more aggressive in sales, and and and.

The journey is not yet over, and we see very good growth rates. As I said, on top, we have all the digital products which we are more and more bringing to the customers, where we have a lot of recurring revenue coming out, where we don't sell software anymore like it was in the past, where we have only license agreements, where we charge per month, per unit, per cow, whatever.

That will also help us to boost service also further in the future.

Thank you. Maybe just a sort of conceptual question about your margins.

If I look at your margins kind of looks like you're going to be trending towards the upper end of that target that you gave by 2030. Just conceptually, when you look at your peer group, I know kind of previously you've shown charts of kind of benchmarking where you were versus the kind of best-in-class peers, it's kind of been implied that you will have closed most of that gap.

When you look at sort of how the business is running and the path over the next couple of years, do you still see kind of major opportunities to improve efficiency? Are there still divisions, maybe things like rolling out the SAP systems that can really unlock a huge amount more margins?

Or do you really see, kind of once you get to those levels, you really are kind of operating as best-in-class and it really then moves on about kind of to investing in the business? I'm just wondering, kind of conceptually, beyond the midpoint to those targets, how do you think about it?

Understood. The journey is not yet over, and I think there will also be a mission beyond the Mission 30 whenever it has been completed.

I think I also can say there's only one GEA. It's very difficult to compare us to peers.

When you look at the Pure Flow Processing part, for instance, we are definitely best-in-class and outstanding. The average might be a little bit lower than so-called best-in-class peers.

However, they don't have businesses like we with Nutrition Plant Engineering, where by purpose we have an operating model with lower margin, but with an extremely favorable networking capital. This is the business unit or the division which we run with a negative networking capital, which brings us to a ROCE of almost 40% already now.

This is also what we don't have to forget. I give you also maybe a little bit shades of gray when we talk about the SAP program, which we call Transform 360.

At the moment, we are spending a lot of money, a medium size of double-digit million what we spend per year for the introduction and rollout costs, and we have at the moment not yet any synergies made out of that. This is all in the P&L.

If you think about, once we have completed the rollout, we don't have this cost anymore, you can add that to the EBITDA immediately. On top of that, we have the synergies which we will create out of one common system.

Even if we would see no improvement in the operational business, simply by completing our Transform 360 journey, by saving the money we spend today for the introduction, and at the same time leveraging the potential we have from the synergies, that will create another level of profitability.

Understood. Just one really quick housekeeping question.

Restructuring for '27, once you take it above the line, how much do you think that number will be next year, roughly?

Zero. Next year, zero, because we don't exclude it anymore next year.

Even if you look at the numbers you are used to, these are things which are not recurrent. It's not that this company must have 40, 50, 60, 70, whatever, restructuring cost a year, because this is also what we promise, that the end of '26, we will be done.

We will be ready with our transformational system and our transformational journey. Then there is only a very, very small number which might kick in, but it's not that we will see huge impacts here.

You're not going to guide to flat margins because you've just taken 50 bps of restructuring above the line or something like that? No,

what we guide is that from next year on, we don't have EBITDA before restructuring anymore, we have a all-in.

I know. I understand,

yeah.

If suddenly the restructuring is above the line, it will be margin-dilutive if it's there. I'm just trying to understand.

Yeah. You are absolutely right.

Also today and in the last years, we disclose both numbers, you always had the number EBITDA all-in, and you also have the number we officially guide, EBITDA before restructuring. What I can say, if next year we change to EBITDA all-in, you should not expect any significant decline based on that fact.

We will be ready and done with everything we need to do. That's the message.

Very clear. Thank you very much.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question.

My first question is on the gross margins, that I guess you've had a really significant improvement in the past few years on your gross margins, and this quarter, if I'm correct, it seems to be the highest on record. Would you give us a bit more insight on what's been driving the improvement, if there's any windfall there, and how sustainable that is?

Yeah. Hi, Uma.

The gross margin has been definitely positively impacted over the last years, I have to say, by both the clear focus on the project side to drive, yeah, project execution excellence, and on the other hand, also by our COGS program, which we also talked about at the last Capital Markets Day. This is also continuing, yeah?

We are, of course, happy to see the margin having risen to this level, but we don't see that this is now a one-off top high level, and it should go down, not at all, yeah? We are continuing to focus on, yeah, execution excellence, and also to drive COGS down even further, engineer to design, yeah, projects running in our components business as well, this is an ongoing exercise.

That's super clear. Thank you.

That doesn't include any tariff refunds?

Sorry.

Does it include any tariff refunds on the...

In the first half year, we had a number of tariffs which we got refunded of a, yeah, mid-sized single-digit million euro number, and of course, this also works in a way that we are passing the refunds on to our customers where this is appropriate, and this was roughly half of this amount in the first half.

That's super clear. Thank you.

Another one for me is a follow-up on the Mission 30 targets. You mentioned that you're closing into the Mission 30 targets, and I guess you also mentioned that you're yet to finish the SG&A program and the COGS program.

I guess does it mean that you'll see further upside from here in terms of margins, given you still have, like, half of the COGS program left, and also, as I understand correctly, SG&A only expected, like, 28 to 30. If we add both of those savings into your margin trajectory, does it mean that you still have, like, a couple of percentage to go to 2030?

I think what we promise, we deliver. Let's say it like that again.

It is clear that we also have additional opportunities, like I just mentioned, when you think about the Transform 360 program, what comes out of the savings from SG&A costs here. On top of that, we will still continue to optimize our COGS.

Also here we are not at the end. This company is a fantastic company in really resilient markets with a lot of potential which we can deploy over the next years.

When we are faster than originally expected, everybody is happy. We will definitely not be slower.

Thank you very much, Stefan. Thank you.

Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is just on the buyback.

I was just wondering, of course, it's the biggest size so far. Should that tell us anything about timing of M&A?

Maybe can speak a bit about the M&A pipeline, whether that has changed, whether things are a bit less imminent on the M&A side? That's the first one, thank you.

Thanks for the question, Sven. No, nothing has changed.

It's simply that no huge acquisition is expected to fall from heaven which we would not know, where we would not have any idea that it would come to the market. Everything which might come also over the next months, years, whatever, is something we could easily digest and acquire.

We especially designed the share buyback program with this €500 million in a magnitude which is not limiting at all our M&A power. Whenever we feel that there is something which we should acquire, we see no limitations to do that.

That's what I thought. Just wanted to confirm that.

Second question is just, sorry for belaboring the point, but coming back to the revenue guidance for the full year. Did you have any pull-forward revenues from the second half?

Because I remember that part of the rationale for a back-end-loaded guidance originally was that you generate a lot of plant engineering sales where you got the orders late last year, and they would simply not come earlier in terms of revenue generation. Have you maybe pulled forward things into the first half somehow?

Sven, that's Alexander speaking again. The Q2 numbers were quite strong.

I think that's very obvious. At the same time, there were no significant effects that you were just mentioning.

Given the full-year guidance, I think Stefan has mentioned this already, we are here to deliver what we promise. That's exactly also the headline for the full-year guidance, I would say.

There's nothing more to add. I think that has been our logic over the last years and will continue also to be the logic for the next years.

Understood, thanks. The last question is just also coming back to what you said on the order intake, Stefan.

You said you expect significant growth in order intake in 2026, but is it fair to say that this significant growth in absolute terms will only come from the first half, and that in the second half, we're probably looking more for a stable absolute order intake? Is that fair?

Good question. I would say that it depends, yeah.

How it is with the large projects. I can say that we have a very, very interesting pipeline.

We expect really interesting big orders, potential orders. It's like the example of Balatna, I also explained many times, it's not always easy to say, can we book it still this year, might it flip over to Q1?

What I can say, we are talking to a lot of very interesting customers with huge projects, and it might depend on what can we still book this year and what might flip over to 2027. The most important message is, we have a good base load, and on top of that, we have an interesting pipeline.

Still, I understand you correctly that your order intake will be up either way, whether you land one of these big ones or not?

Absolutely, yeah. I think, of course, if everything goes south, it's bad, but normally this does not happen.

I expect an interesting growth rate at the end of the year. It might be, percentage-wise, not as high as it is now for the first half year, because we are beating against a very strong second half, especially the Q4 was extremely high.

You should not expect a percentage growth rates which is even accelerating. It might rather be a little bit lower.

Let's see what we can book. Anyway, the overall pipeline, the project activity is interesting and will go on also, not only this year, also next year.

Understood. Thank you, Stefan.

Thanks, Alexander.

Thank you, Sven.

Thanks, Sven.

Yes, hi, gentlemen. Good afternoon.

Just a couple of quick ones. Actually, on cash flow, I heard you say last time that actually you strive for keeping that stable versus 2025, which was a good year.

Now, actually, you increase the guidance on the margin side of things. Q2 looked pretty solid on free cash flow.

I was just wondering if you have more optimism here now on this number. The second one is, or maybe two, one very quick housekeeping ones.

One is actually on the financial expenses side. They were a bit higher in the second quarter.

I was just wondering if there's something special in there. It looks that you are a bit above normal run rate.

The same is probably the case a bit for the tax rate. It was kind of in the corridor of what you're guiding at, but I'm just thinking about if that's something where you see the upper end of your guidance, and how cash tax rate will look like versus the guided range.

Thank you.

Thanks for the questions, Adrian. Let's start with the cash flow one.

As said already, we expect cash flow, free cash flow, to be in the range like last year. We have to also look at the half-year number.

Free cash flow is still negative. The rebound in the second quarter was very strong, as you also said.

We also see, because it's also dependent on the level of prepayments we get in, which is dependent on also larger orders to land in the next two quarters. That gives us a little bit of, of course, uncertainty regarding the projection.

You asked about more optimism. I would state it like we are confident, and we feel confident with the guidance that we will be on the same level like last year.

On the tax rate question, I take this one first. The range that we guide for the full year is still intact.

We expect to be below 30% or in that region. The cash tax rate is somewhat lower or is also expected to be somewhat lower for '26 in total.

That's what we expect, yeah. The second question was around the financial result, if I understood you correctly, and is a bit not in the normal to be expected range.

I think if we look at the financial result, I think it was -€11 million in Q2. For the full year, the expectation is around -€30 million, so that's, I would say, is still within the range, or you should not just take it times four, yeah, let's put it that way.

Right. I'm just referring to Q1, which was significantly lower,

and

to get to the 30, obviously, you need lower levels. I was just wondering if there's, I don't know, €3 million, €4 million that were, I don't know...

No, that's nothing, yeah. It's nothing special in there, perhaps a little bit of timing topics, but the expectation is -€30 million, yeah.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thanks, Adrian.

Thank you for squeezing me in. I have three questions: one on biofuel exposure, one on Farm Tech, and one on tax rate again.

Now on biofuels, with the Middle Eastern crisis, do you see any incremental momentum from regions, clients to push stronger into biofuel and biodiesel, and what is your exposure there? That would be my first question.

I start with the first question. This is not really an issue for us.

We ourselves at GEA are anyway not really significantly impacted by energy prices because this is not a big issue for us, we are not so energy-intensive. However, our customers are, and we have developed a lot of brilliant and smart ideas how to save energy with various equipment.

This might be for us even a growth driver than a risk. With biofuel itself, we are not really so much involved, yeah.

Thank you. For the Farm Tech question, there were a few questions coming already, but I want to explore a little bit the midterm outlook.

We now have a very tough year for farmers, for crop farmers in Europe. A lot of crop farmers also are dairy farmers.

It's kind of a mixed business here in Europe. I was wondering if you see discussions amongst your especially European client base to maybe postpone, delay investments, or where you hear stories of farmers being cash-squeezed, and therefore maybe reducing investments that they would otherwise have done.

Is there any commentary you have on that? Thank you.

It's more that, due to the weather conditions in summer, it's lower, but we are very optimistic to see a good development coming back at the end of the year. The business is very solid, and this is mainly based also on the fact that farmers need to automate, farmers need to invest more and more in automatic milking systems because of the shortage of labor, of the reliability of labor.

We have the solutions, and we have especially the solutions for the larger equipment, for the DPQs, which at the end is only coming more or less from us. Therefore, we see a very good pipeline all over the world, and we are very optimistic that also this trend will continue, that we see good order intake and increasing sales and margin in Farm Technology.

Very helpful. Thank you.

My final brief question on the tax rate again. You still expect below 30%, cash tax rate is a bit lower.

I assume that's because of the use of certain tax loss carryforwards, tax assets, or activated tax losses. Could you update us, if you have the numbers in front of you, on the overall expectation of tax losses that you can still use, and maybe give us a rough number for the next, I don't know, years of how much those tax assets would reduce tax payments?

Is it €5 million, is it €20 million, is it €100 million?

Sebastian, I think the question is a bit difficult to answer now in this context. The tax loss carryforwards, especially in the US and also here in Germany, still are in our books, and we can also use them in the next years, but with a positive development of our business, this will come down, of course, in the next years.

Perhaps we can have a deeper dive in a session on this one. You are right, the difference, of course, between the cash tax rate and the overall tax rate is coming from this topic.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Most of my questions have been answered.

I just have, like, a follow-up on the 2030 margin guidance. Again, it's probably still room to expand margin, but I think one key element is definitely on the Pure Flow Processing segment, which is the biggest segment for us.

If I look at the margin profile for the segment over the past couple of years of a past couple of quarters, it has been kind of staying at similar level, and second quarter is actually a bit down year-on-year as well. I think my question is how far we can see this margin for PFP segment to go on, what will be the driver going forward?

That will be super helpful. Thank you.

Sorry, it was a bit difficult to understand your question, but I think we got it, that you were talking about the PFP, Pure Flow Processing, margin and the outlook for this, if this is right. As we already explained in the earlier part of the call, the year-on-year comparison of the single quarter is now no indication of, let's say, margins going down in PFP, because again, I think if we compare the comparable margin in Q2 last year, this was, I think, record margin over at least the two years or going back two or even more years.

We still keep the margin level quite high, now 27.5%. Also, our expectation is not to shrink the margin in the next years, but to slowly grow.

Of course, it is already on a very high level, which makes it more, let's say, challenging to even grow on this level, but still potential is there. I think the levers we were talking about, also on the gross margin side, yeah, efforts on the COGS side, as well as working on the mix of the business, is also still valid for the future.

That's the answer to your question, if I got the question right.

Yep, got it. Thank you.

Maybe I take this offline. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, operator. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and thanks for your good questions.

I'd like to summarize our call and tell you that it was really an outstanding second quarter and very good half year, with a broad-based improvement in order intake, sales, and EBITDA margin, so that really shows we are fully on track. On back of this strong performance, also our outlook for the second half of the year is very optimistic, and therefore we have increased our full-year guidance for all three guidance parameters.

On top of that, we launched a new share buyback program, reflecting our confidence in GEA's attractive growth prospects. With that, I will close the call for today and hand back to operator.