Thank you very much, Sarah, and a warm welcome from my side as well, both to the guests joining here physically in the room, as obviously also virtually participating. We had an very exciting bell ringing ceremony this morning.

We enjoyed it a lot and we are delighted to present to you our business results, latest developments obviously, and last but not least, the outlook for 2026 in more detail. However, before I hand over to Sebastian and Oliver to kick it off, let me take quickly the opportunity to introduce myself.

I'm Lars Völkel. I'm very delighted to be part of the Deutz family since mid-March, and I'm leading, with a great team behind it obviously, the communication, investor relations, and marketing.

Please feel free to reach out to me and the whole team at any time if you need anything. We're happy to be at your service.

Obviously, I'm very much looking forward to an exciting time ahead in the MDAX now, because Deutz has a great team, a convincing strategy, and fantastic products and services in place, and I would think it's the perfect timing to be here. Deutz is back in MDAX.

Deutz is successfully transforming, and Deutz is growing. How?

This, for sure, will be presented to you by our CEO and CFO, who will guide you through today's presentation. Afterwards, we're of course more than happy to take your questions.

Let's kick it off. Sebastian, over to you.

Thank you very much, Lars and Sarah, and also welcome to the team, Lars, in this exciting phase of our transformation. Yeah.

First things first, this morning was a great moment for us, celebrating here in Frankfurt entering the MDAX, ringing the bell, opening the the daily trading here, and you see a picture of Oliver and myself, Katharina, our HR boss, as well as three of our business unit heads who were with us celebrating, because it's a team effort, as we as we say with a lot of pride. Let's move on and, before looking ahead, let me look back, because that's the purpose of today's annual results conference, want to guide you through what we achieved as a company in 2025.

With a bit of an executive summary, and the headline shows it actually pretty nicely. We managed to achieve growth and we managed to achieve profitable growth without the support of our core markets, our long-term core markets.

Oliver and will guide you through that later. Now now presenting or represented in many, many attractive markets, but the core markets, which were extremely relevant for Deutz, like mainly between 2000 and 2021, 2022, they certainly didn't help, but even more importantly, that we actually managed to sail through quite successfully.

Let me guide you through that step by step. New orders went up almost 14% year-over-year to a level of almost €2.1 billion.

Of course, the changes, the growth, the additions of our portfolio, they did help to compensate our weak engine demand. I will come to that later.

Revenue slightly below new orders, some €2.044 billion, but also growth of almost 13% year-over-year, and here the driver was clearly our new business areas, as well as, and let's not underestimate that, our service business, which continues to grow in a healthy way, and will also give you more flavor on that later. More important from my point of view than only the top line growth is the bottom line growth, the 5.5%, so that's 1.3 percentage point better year-over-year.

For that increase in profitability, our margin-accretive M&A and also our cost reduction program, Oliver will talk about that a bit in his part, did help, and so, well, that's a good result given the circumstances in our core markets. Last but not least, we also managed to significantly improve, increase free cash flow before M&A to €44.2 million, that's also a significant increase of almost 50% year-over-year, especially driven by a strong cash flow in the final quarter of the year.

Important, and we'll give you a bit of a mixed a mixed view between purely sort of revenue, but also units. I know that many of the analysts and investors covering and and following us for years were always been looking at number of engines as a key driver, and it is still an important driver, but mainly and only for the engine business.

If you see that, and that's in this ellipsis in a way, you see that, from 161,000 engines 2021, and then up 181, 187, down 142, down 133 in '25, and you see that sort of in this core market, and that's what was exactly the point I was referring to earlier, the there was not much support from from the from the industrial activity, particularly construction equipment, agri, and so on. That means engine business becomes in relative terms less relevant to the group, 64% out of that €2.044 million revenue.

In turn, the service business continues to be in relative terms on a level a bit above 25%, but important is also that our new business units, particularly at this point in time, Energy, is becoming more and more relevant. I'll guide you through that later.

Let me summarize that: despite these lower volumes in the engine business, we actually managed to deliver one of the strongest results in our recent history of company. Performance quality improved, margins became more and more solid and strong, and that's mainly because in across our business units we were actually executing with a high degree of discipline.

The broader business mix increasingly pays off. We are not as dependent on the traditional engine cycle anymore, and that's, as I said, is driven by the service business, by the Energy business, and most recently also by the Defense business.

We are building based on what we already have shown in the last in the last months, we are building a significantly more diversified and also resilient setup, and we call that, our new strategy, our strategy update, let me put it that way, we're building here the next Deutz. The next Deutz, let me summarize that, that's both our vision and our strategy, and as we show later, also our structure, which in ideal world, and that's what we try to achieve here, follows the strategy.

The next Deutz will comprise and is already comprising of five business units and also five business models. On the one hand, the Defense business, that's still in absolute terms one of the smaller units, but with a high growth.

Here we're building an ecosystem. Then the Energy business, which we have grown also with acquisitions over the last years, I'll come to that later, here it's about really building a global business, moving from a fairly regional focus business to a global business.

Engines, of course, still, when we talk about revenue, when we talk about head count, that's still the largest business, but the profit pools are shifting, the new business units become more relevant, here it's about streamlining the business and driving performance, but still growing. NewTech is driving innovation.

It's a bit for me an option an option value in a way. The markets are not yet picking up as as we would like to, but it's important to be in that business in order to be ready when the market is is picking up, so that's here about innovation.

Last, but certainly not least, our Service business, that's really a global setup, our footprint, extremely strong asset of the company, where we want to broaden our position. The Service business traditionally or historically helped the engine business or the customers of the engine business, but we are ideally set up to also support our new business units: Defense, Energy, and NewTech.

That's our vision and strategy, and that let let us move on. I said it already, structure needs to follow strategy.

Since the beginning of this year, January '26, we are also we have reorganized the cell formally, since 1st of January, we have introduced five business units: the Defense business led by Marco Heller, the Energy business led by David Evans out of the United States, the Engines business led by Markus Fülling, the NewTech business led by Bert van Hasselt, and last, but again not least, the Service business led by Andreas Schmidt. Group-wide leadership, you will see you see here in this conference call, Oliver as CFO, myself as CEO, and last, but not least, Katharina, who focuses on human resources, strategy, and transformation, so that's a nice mixture between, let's say, a lean group-wide setup, group-wide leadership topic, and very clearly P&L responsible business leaders in their respective business areas.

Let me walk you through through the units item by item. When I look back at Defense, the contribution we had hoped for, we had planned for out of Defense, we managed to exceed, because there is, and I think that's not a surprise, strong momentum in that business.

We established our initial footprint now also in the DefTech area. We acquired SOBEK, as you all know.

We sealed partnerships with ARX Robotics for unmanned ground vehicle systems, and we secured and also executed first direct orders. That's very, very very, very promising, both in sort of the traditional field, i.e., we're delivering delivering Deutz diesel engines to defense customers, but also in this field of the defense tech companies, where we talk mainly over about battery electric systems in military drones.

We managed to establish ourselves as a player, and I can tell as much that we work on that and we continue on that, because here profitable growth lies ahead of us. The outlook, and that's, a number which we have in mind for 2030, €300 million revenue, step by step with high growth rates.

We want to further expand our footprint in DefTech, a lot through partnerships, potentially joint projects. Every now and again, we're also considering investing, but it's always important for us, when we enter into partnership, that we have a right to play and a right to win, that we bring something to the table to the partners.

Important is, of course, there is a extremely promising sales pipeline, both in traditional drive systems, as well as in the DefTech drive systems, and it's about, strengthening execution in here, but we are on good track here. Of course, there will always be opportunities around, because that field is developing quickly.

Budgets are there, budgets are growing. Everyone is aware that this is a field which is important to also support from governance side, from a from government side.

We're always open for partnerships and also M&A. Energy, really a highlight, looking back in 2025.

Blue Star Power Systems, our US our American footprint, has delivered above-plan growth and also profitability, expanding the network in the United States, improving in terms of growing, but also execution, the operations. Our Moroccan asset serving mainly Northern, but also Central Africa, it's a completely different market, but the turnaround we had to initiate here after this asset was a bit, yeah, left at the side for many, many years within Deutz, the turnaround is progressing.

Leadership has been set up, great guy we've got there leading that business now, and we already see now in the first weeks and months of 2026 that it's paying off, order intake is increasing, so that's great. We concluded the acquisition of FRERK.

Technically speaking, the closing was this year, but the signing was December last year. With FRERK, I will speak about that also later, we're establishing our here presence in in Europe out of Germany, but also growing into neighboring countries, particular in the field of emergency power supply for data center, and we're creating here a momentum for further growth.

Outlook is here very clear. Our objective, our target, is achieving €500 million revenue by 2030.

It's 20% CAGR, not a low number, but we are very, very optimistic to achieve that. We've got dedicated plan on that, and we're certainly ahead of the plan that we initially put in here.

It's driving the organic growth with the companies and the the operations we've got in the business footprint right now: Blue Star, Maghreb. Of course, now we have to execute the integration of FRERK, a light integration, because these companies, they have developed very well without the support of a corporate, we want to continue enabling them obviously their agile agility and their freedom.

On the other hand, we will bring what we really have to support the business, such as our service network, to the table in order to achieve that the equation 1 + 1 is above 2. That's what I also mean with synergies cross the business unit, because, we've got engines in the portfolio, as I will point out later, we've got the service footprint, here everything is set up for profitable growth.

Moving on to Engines. Looking back in 2025, I said earlier, the market has been challenging, demand has been challenging across the regions.

As our main regions or main sales regions is Europe and is are the United States, still, the recovery which we are were all waiting for hadn't picked up in '25. I will speak about the outlook in a minute.

From a portfolio and strategic point of view, we did launch a new engine, the 3.9, 4.0 liter engine. The customer response is extremely promising, a lot of orders we already we already caught and secured, so that's fantastic.

Also, our engines which come from Daimler Truck, the so-called HDEP and MDEP, heavy-duty and medium-duty engines, we've successfully integrated them both in our sales product portfolio as well as our service portfolio. That's important, because it's it's crucial for us that we are expanding our portfolio towards higher power ranges like that one, because particularly in medium and higher power ranges, the internal combustion engine will play significant role in the next not only years, but potentially decades to come.

Here we are extremely well set up. We did rightsize, i.e., reduce our R&D capacities.

Oliver will talk about the FutureFit program later, were ahead of plan here as well, and market consolidation efficiency plays an important role. If I look ahead for '25 and beyond, you see we foresee a growth here.

We foresee a growth, and why is that? Because we want to integrate or we will integrate more of our partner engines, large engines like a 24-liter engine, it's a V12 engine, in our portfolio.

We have already first orders from power generation customers, so that's great. We're driving further performance.

We're now with a business unit structure under the leadership of Markus Fülling set up really strongly in a way that we have now a strong focus on performance, also both in sales, but also in operations, like we we hadn't had that always, so that's a great progress going forward. Let me give a bit of a glimpse as well.

We're talking here, of course, about the long-term outlook, but we started quite well into the financial year 2026, we see a good order momentum, both from the United States as well as from the as well as from Europe, despite the geopolitical uncertainties. Order intake is quite promising, and that makes us also confident even in that field which was under dire under pressure in the last years going into 2026 and beyond.

NewTech, we acquired UMS in Holland in the Netherlands, we initiated integration. We managed first shifts from sort of small one-offs to small series, still not, enter into large series, but that's not because we are not successful, it's just because there's nothing like that happening in large series on the market.

We are continuously strengthening here our portfolio and also our production capabilities. Important is when, and that brings me to the outlook, we are able to convert a pipeline into revenue, we are also able to scale up the projects, bring product bring our production excellence here into force, into play, and deliver to the needs of the customers.

We want to be also more efficient in terms of R&D, faster, more cost-effective using artificial intelligence here, this is an interesting and very promising field to simply become better and faster, and that's also needed in that field where the change and shift of technology is certainly faster than in our traditional in our traditional fields. Last, but not least, moving to Service, and as always in the last years, Service is really a business where we're extremely proud looking at the development.

We further expanded our network. We integrated also the larger engines coming from Daimler Truck, the HDEP and MDEP index engines.

We completed further acquisitions in in Turkey and in the United States, we are because in terms of service, it's extremely important to be there where the customer is, particularly in rural areas when I think about the United States, we we are growing our US footprint in a in a very in a very good way, and are focusing now also on Europe, including the the DACH region, Germany as well. Going ahead, looking ahead, no, no, one back, please.

Looking ahead, we're continuously driving this growth, especially America and Europe, as I said, but also expanding here our portfolio, exchange, like the remanufacturing, where we're able to where we are able to to to bring new engines into a new life. That's something extremely important.

Now making use of our portfolio also for the new business units, expanding our offering in service business for the power gen business, with a focus of Europe and the United States. Let me conclude that we want to obviously confirm, reconfirm, give the confidence that we as management team remain more than committed to our 2030 revenue target, and we've got plans laid out in very much detail that every all of the business units has to make and will make their contribution to bring the status quo up to the target, and this so yeah, we are we are good on we're good on track, well on track here.

The support of Defense business, Energy business, Engines business, NewTech business, and Service business to bring up to that bring us to that target, to become more relevant and more profitable, but that's a perfect transition point to Oliver talking about numbers, and I will be back in a second.

Thank you very much, Sebastian. Good morning.

Welcome also from my side. Let's dip into the numbers immediately, and we heard that it was a good year, even though we were not receiving that much of support from the engine market at least.

It was a good year, and good year also means we met our guidance. That is what we are committed to, same as we are committed to our 2030 guidance, our targets, we are committed to our yearly guidance, and on the revenue side, we guided the roughly €2.1 billion.

We achieved it. On the adjusted EBIT, last guidance was middle range of the guidance range expected.

We made it straight on the point with 5.5% adjusted EBIT. Also the free cash flow, mid-double-digit euro amount guided before M&A, we met it with €44.2 million, very positive information on this slide.

Moving ahead, what was driving the results, and one topic we continuously report on as it's addressing directly our structural cost structure is our FutureFit program. Just to remember, we have a target of €50 million cost reduction, structural cost reduction 2026 compared to the baseline year 2024.

We are absolutely well on track there, we have more than €25 million already fully P&L-effective in the accounts. All measures are identified, implemented, running, effects are ramping up continuously into the results, and that will continue throughout the year 2026 as well.

Cost related to the FutureFit program, €25 million was booked, as you know already, in Q1 last year, Q1 2025. Looking a bit on the key figures of fiscal year 2025, we see, first of all, new orders ramping up, 13.7% plus.

That is a book-to-bill ratio once again higher than 1, which is good, a trend which seems to continue also in the current quarter. The order backlog at roughly €500 million, positive sign there.

On the revenue side, 12.7% increase, application areas especially construction 14%, agriculture machinery plus 10% compared to the year before. Those areas particularly benefited from the contribution of the Daimler Truck industrial engines, while material handling, which is mainly on the engine side in the US, was a bit weaker due to the overall economic situation in the United States.

Service business, very positive news, continuous growth path, plus 9% year-over-year, continuously contributing both in top and bottom line. Coming to the bottom line, talking about earnings, 5.5% adjusted EBIT margin, which is a 46% increase year-over-year, cost saving from the FutureFit program supported the results, but also the portfolio measures.

This was somewhat offsetting missing fixed costs absorption due to the overall lower production volume. On the net income side, €54.1 million.

This is higher than last year, but a little bit lower due to the FutureFit provision that was booked in Q1. On the next slide, we see further KPIs, or the same KPIs basically, on a quarterly development, and we see that new orders, revenue, and EBIT increased, and showed the strongest quarter in Q4.

Especially nice the trend on the EBIT side, with a very strong Q4 at a margin level of 6.8%. Several factors that were supporting us there: on the one hand, of course, the FutureFit savings, which continuously grew and grew over the year, but also higher sales volume on the engine side, roughly €35 million higher volume than the quarters before, so that also helped; a very stable production with a good shift model; and of course also M&A activities like SOBEK or service acquisitions which were kicking in in September last year or throughout the last quarter of 2025.

Looking a bit in the segment reporting, it's the last time we're going to see the traditional segmentation, here we look at engines and services. We see also here all KPIs growing.

Purely looking on the business unit Engines side, we sold 133,000 units, total sales volume was a bit lower, 5%, 5.5% lower year-over-year. Also in-house production was 4.5% lower than the previous year, there were kind of negative economies of scale.

These were, however, offset from Daimler Truck off-highway engines and also especially from the FutureFit cost reduction program. Very successful also HJS emission technology, the turnaround case we acquired, and we turned it positively, also contributing positively with the results.

On the business unit Service side, revenues at €545 million, 9% year-over-year, and also besides this year slightly lower organic growth, especially inorganic growth. The US acquisitions, Onsite Diesel, Double Down, which we reported earlier on in Q4, were supporting, but of course also the Daimler Truck service business we acquired, which is developing very well and nicely.

Looking into the second segment, DEUTZ Solutions, combining here, as Energy and the business unit NewTech, two quite different businesses. On the Energy side, order intake remained strong, €165 million, that's a book-to-bill ratio of around 1.

Order intake here is not naturally distributed equally throughout the quarter, there are some peak quarters. That's why it's overall growing even though book-to-bill is around 1 in the entire fiscal year.

On the revenue side, strong €170 million and a €15 million EBIT. Important to know here, this is an EBIT after these technical accounting purchase price allocation effects you can see in the footnote, purely operational it was even better, €23.7 million, which is a 14% EBIT margin on the Energy side and supports a strong growth endeavor of the group financials.

NewTech, still low on the new order level and also on the revenue level with only €14 million revenue. On the other hand, €34 million losses, same level as 2024.

On the one hand, R&D expenses came down, of course, as due to the FutureFit program, but we also built up a bit of a structure to be prepared and properly address the market side to be ready once orders are kicking in and, of course, also to ensure that orders are kicking in. Looking a bit more in the financial KPIs: R&D, capex, working capital, all KPIs go in the right direction.

R&D spending reduced to a level of €85 million, 9% reduction, direct consequence of the FutureFit program. Capex coming down to €95 million, this is including leasing, among others, some assembly lines, new test benches, logistics facilities, but also this year a bit of IT infrastructure.

On the working capital side, in absolute terms, it remained almost exactly on the same level as in 2024. However, the ratio significantly reduced, the trend is definitely going in the right direction, and also inventories-wise, we only saw a slight increase even though we had several acquisitions in, there was an efficient inventory management in place as well.

Looking on the cash side and net debt, cash flow from operating activities up by €33 million to a level of €143 million. That results in a free cash flow before M&A of €44 million, also here an increase compared to 2024.

Net debt position then going up slightly, going up, of course, mainly due to the M&A activities, where we spent between €160 [million] and €170 million last year, while on the other hand, the capital increase we conducted in September was, of course, contributing in the other direction. That brings us to the balance sheet, on the financing side.

Balance sheet remains strong, equity ratio remains strong, 51.3% equity ratio. Also leverage here, including leasing, at a level of 1.3.

If you exclude leasing, you are slightly below 1 in the leverage. This combination of the figures we present here of course shows that we continue to have strong financial firepower also for further acquisitions, for example, the acquisition of the FRERK Group, which we closed beginning of February, and which was financed via debt completely.

Dividend proposal is going to be €0.18 per share. That's the proposal supervisory board and management board will propose to the Annual General Meeting that takes place on the 13th of May.

Last, but not least, just a quick outlook on the change of reporting structure. Structure follows strategy, also reporting structure follows strategy.

We're going to report beginning Q1 2026 in the new logic here alongside our business units, thereby increasing again transparency towards the capital market, and also, of course, considering the differences in the business units, the different focus points and structures and challenges and opportunities those business units are having. Then I hand over to Sebastian for the guidance 2026.

Thank you very much, Oliver, for the numbers, and for all the details on capital structure and funding. I mentioned it earlier, we're building the next Deutz.

You see the next Deutz again at the left part of that chart, but like to also translate that a bit in what are the levers that will create value for the shareholders here. It's very traditional.

We've got a couple of important levers. We see growth, selective, what do I mean with selective, not at any cost, it has to be profitable, structural in areas which are ready for growth, and resilient.

We want to build something which is there for the long run, and not just for a hype. What do I mean with that in terms of our portfolio?

We will further scale up our Energy and Defense business, that is clearly backed up by market growth, not much cyclicity. We want to further gain market share in Service.

Service is also resilient and it's there for the long term. Even in the engine business, the engines will remain in the field for decades.

We will grow very focused also in our engine business, particularly in terms of using larger, more powerful engines. Then second lever, margins: quality before volume.

We like volume, but we like quality even more, quality before volume, ideally both. We will increase the share of our margin-accretive businesses.

Service is clearly margin-accretive, Energy clearly margin-accretive, and Defense is clearly margin-accretive. There will be a focus on performance, especially on engine, not limited, but especially on engine.

Is the big levers in terms of margin. Then, of course, cash is king: discipline, orientation on ROCE.

We've continue to allocate capital in a profit-optimized way. We will obviously keep the focus, let me put it that way, especially when there is a market uptick in the traditional engine business.

Managing working capital is key here, not to build up too much, but also be there when the customer orders. Of course, there is integration potential in our new businesses, well.

Then last, but not least, there is strategic upside on top of gross margins and cash. It's an option approach, leverage really partnership options which may appear on the road.

NewTech certainly is a market-driven strategic upside. We are there.

We invest in a limited, but focused way, but once the market is picking up, we are there, and then we will benefit. That's an extremely important perspective on our next Deutz.

When we look at '26, the outlook we will be giving in a minute, that's clearly driven by our strategic value transformation. Of course, you all know that macro geopolitical volatility and uncertainty is there and will likely remain.

However, all of the end markets are improving. Some of them are already on a good shape, like Energy, Defense; others are cautiously improving.

The engine business has been picking up already in the first days and weeks of 2026, these signs are very, very good. Time will tell how strongly we will continue there, but we are very positive right now.

The first time, quite frankly, in let's say 15, 16 months, I'm really, really positive in that outlook of the engine market. Then, of course, the Deutz perspective, the more resilient structure we have been building, the benefits will increase.

They're already there, but they will increase. We see in 2026 the full P&L impact of our acquisitions which we concluded in 2025, and FRERK we closed February 2026, it's almost a full-year effect, which will support our numbers here, and of course also other portfolio measures.

As well as, of course, efficiency and cost improvements, like we just heard from Oliver, FutureFit program. We wanted to achieve €50 million P&L-effective, we are above that, so that's one of the clear points where we talk to our investors as well.

We make announcements which we will deliver, yeah. With that, we are positive to also grow in 2026.

Let me give you the numbers now. Of course, let me start with revenue.

We're expecting here a range between €2.3 billion and €2.5 billion. We provide you also the midpoints for the business units, I will not read them in detail.

We see a margin range between 6.5% and 8%, also again midpoints in the business units. Free cash flow, we expect to be high double-digit million euro.

There are certain important points which I show you on the left-hand side. There is good, positive momentum right now in Energy, Service, and Defense, and also most recently in Engines.

I would be a bit more bullish than what's written here on the chart. It sounds a bit like, oh, let's see what happens.

Actually, first-quarter order intake shows in a very good direction. That gives us confidence already for the second quarter and also leading into the third quarter.

That's what we have somehow expected here. A bit of a stronger second half is actually well supported by the KPIs we're following here right now.

That's the look ahead, and I hope that you feel a bit the confidence we have coming out of a strong-ish 2025 with a new setup, with building the next Deutz. Now looking ahead or looking forward to lead this great company not only through 2026, but beyond with our ambitious, but yet realistic targets.

In that sense, I thank you very much for your attention, and of course, as usual, we are open for questions.

Thank you very much for guiding us through here, for giving the outlook, which is quite promising, if I may say so. Of course, we're happy to take your questions now.

We would like to start in this room to make it a bit easier, I guess. If there are any questions here, please go ahead, and afterwards, of course, we will also give all the colleagues dialed in the opportunity to ask additional questions.

Do you want to go ahead? You need to please use the microphone, switch it on, thank you.

I don't need to go closer, no? It's okay.

Thank you for the presentation, Sebastian, and congratulations on entering in the MDAX. It means a great milestone.

Regarding the guidance, if I may, I see that the target in terms of engines is more or less the same result than this year, I think, making the maths myself. This means that you are quite cautious even in the midpoint, or is there any reason to be this cautious apart, obviously, of the geopolitical events that we are suffering these days?

That will be my first question, please.

We really rather give an outlook and then slightly overdeliver. That's what I believe we've shown in the last 3, 4 years, it takes some time to build up trust, it takes a second to destroy it, and we want to remain within that sort of mindset.

Of course, as I said, February order intake in engines has been promising. March is not over yet, but it's also promising.

I look quite forward to Q1, but especially Q2. I'd rather wait until the end of Q2, when we have order intake numbers for Q2 in, and then to potentially be a bit more optimistic.

Right now at the moment, we see, and you're almost right, in the guidance for engines, it's a slight recovery expected, but certainly not a moderate or even a large recovery. The operating leverage, you know that very well, in the engine business is extreme.

We're coming from that 130,000, 135,000 engines, and once this is going up, we'll be certainly moving not only in revenue towards and potentially beyond what we have here as the upper end, but especially profitability will benefit significantly. Let me be a bit cautious with that guidance right now, and then see what happens.

The war in Iran, obviously we as Deutz do not feel any negative impacts right now, as terrible as that obviously is also from a personal perspective. However, we all know that a higher oil price is not good for the economy, so that's why a little bit cautious.

I believe this is not the moment with that geopolitical uncertainty to say, all right, there's only sunshine and sparkles in the second half of the year, and that's a bit the background for providing that. I would still say actually quite positive guidance.

In a year like that, 6.5% to 8%, Deutz has never shown numbers of 8% even in boom phases, don't make me feel too bad about being slightly optimistic, yeah?

No, no, don't take me wrong, but I feel also that the year has started in the right direction. I was curious to know how this was, yeah, fitting, no, into the optimism that you have or not.

Maybe following up with this, can you give us a little bit of feedback of your conversations these days with the OEMs, how they see the investment plans in Europe, if this is something that is still not driving really the demand or if you think that we can see at some point some good push to the demand, maybe end of the year or next year or something that is going to happen? I

always don't want to talk about individual customers yet or at this point in time. I think that those who are listed obviously provide their numbers also publicly.

What we see at the moment is a couple of customers, and a couple meaning more than two, ordering relatively large quantities, and this both comes from the US, there's one customer who's quite optimistic in the United States, but also a group of customers in construction quite optimistic in Europe. We still have to bear in mind we're taking off from a low level, yeah?

We're talking about numbers on a monthly basis maybe 13.5, 14,000 engines, what we see recently on a monthly basis, yeah? That's significantly more than what we've had through last year.

Again, it's 1 month, right? It's 1 month.

What I take positive is that this has not happened before the begin of the year anymore, but during or after and during. That means that we'll see some recovery.

It fits probably very much to what these customers, particularly in construction, say openly. Bear in mind, wait until we release the Q1 numbers, because then we've got the Q1 in the books and we've got already a good indication what's happening in April and also towards May.

Maybe a last one from my side. Regarding Defense, the target for 2030 is really strong, and it's interesting that you have already a number in your mind about it.

Also, you mentioned that the pipeline looks quite nice. How do you feel or see Deutz being recognized in the market?

Are you positioning all your different products together, or how you are managing this growth in Defense? That would be interesting to know.

Our Defense business unit, it's a small, but pretty fast-moving, fast-acting units. The guys a bit from several interactions.

I would describe them a bit as a market-oriented business unit, they don't have their own products, but they market the products we have in the portfolio towards defense customers. That's extremely important, because the go-to-market in defense is extremely different than a go-to-market in industry, right?

Let me give you an example. When it's about placing a diesel engine into a military vehicle, typically the go-to-market takes not just weeks and months, but can take years, because it has to be sort of baked into the specifications, and there's a bit of lobbying sometimes as well, as we all know, right?

That's why, and of course, on our side, also the application engineering is different. We do not talk about volumes as high in terms of units as in industrial applications.

If we manage to place, let's say, an order of 300 or 400 engines to a defense customer, because margins are higher and justified, because there's more work to be done, right, but if that happens, our engineering teams need to obviously do the work on the machine, and they need to do the work pretty quickly. Under normal circumstances, you would always prioritize the industrial customer who wants 5,000 or 6- or 7,000 units, but there the margin level is different.

It's a bit also managing internally the resources, and that's actually proven to be quite successful to have a dedicated team who work dedicatedly with the defense customers, but also who manage the internal complexity in a different way. That is just the example for the ICE, but the same applies for products for power, for gensets, for example, because there's also increasing demand by defense customers, as well as in the whole DefTech field with our battery electric products.

Go-to-market business unit, fit for market, and also managing the internal complexity, it's a proven recipe which pays off every day more.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions.

Actually would start with the guidance for this year, and if you could remind us of the unfolding of the remaining cost savings of this more than €50 million? Connected to this, lastly, we saw a rather linear development of profitability through the year in terms of margins quarter-by-quarter.

Would you expect the same picture or something like a seasonality through the quarters? That's the first step, please.

On the cost savings, so that €50 million, I called it €50 million plus, it's going to be rather €55 [million] or even slightly higher. €25 [million] to €30 [million] are already in the P&L, the rest will then come '26, so that is fully P&L-effective then, it's not like coming only in '27 with measures being in the last second, but it's really we want to see the full P&L impact '26 versus probably '24.

The ramp-up curve, I would expect that rather linearly, yeah, part of those savings are related to employees, majority are out already, some are still to come through the year, so that's a bit more front-loaded then, but on the other hand, there are certain other measures included, linear ramp-up is a fair assumption, yes.

Thanks for this. Second one would be on the, let's say, 2030 targets for the business units you're in.

In future we'll report on. You gave us the sales figures you're targeting.

Can you remind us also of margin ambitions for the

We gave the overall ambition level of a 10% adjusted EBIT margin,

and

that's going to be distributed accordingly. What we can say is that Service and Energy will be accretive, Engines will be probably below the 10%, but also not at zero, right?

Okay. Thank you.

Mhm.

Thank you. Any additional questions from the room?

Yeah.

Thank you very much for taking my questions. Lars von Plefke, Deutsche Bank.

New kid on the block here.

Welcome to the show.

Looking at your target of a high double-digit million euro free cash flow, I saw the working capital to sales ratio coming down from 21-ish to 18.7%. Is that the new normal, or do you have a specific target ratio in mind to improve cash flow even further?

On the cash flow side, I wouldn't consider that as a new normal, I would consider that as a rather careful guidance on that end. Free cash flow generation was not the strongest KPI of Deutz over the past years, we are a bit more cautious on that, but we are working on the right things.

Working capital, you mentioned it, is exactly one of those where we are getting continuously better. Also, new business models changing it towards a bit less working capital efficient model, we are targeting more towards 15% in the midterm there, and on the cash flow side, we are overall see continuous improvement.

15, no? 15% target?

In

the midterm.

Midterm

target, yeah, not for the year '26, there we gave the specific guidance in the report.

Perfect, thank you.

Also on the different business models or business units, the engine business typically comes with a very traditional sort of serial production, serial business model terms, whereas we have other business models which work with down payments or with milestone payments, it's even more difficult to purely say, all right, it's between let's say 15% and 20%, because the business mix changes as well. We want to, and that's the positive thing about that, obviously we want to also utilize this, this is one of the synergies in the group as well, mixing different business models, also that's what sort of meant when I talked about the cash lever to here mix and match in a better way.

Perfect. Thank you.

Then your service business was continuously mentioned as one of the growth pillars, high margin, of course, we appreciate that if it grows. How do you intend to grow that?

Is it digitization, predictive maintenance offerings, or are you also trying to take market share or convince your customers to do less and let you do more?

It's many growth levers. One lever is simply winning market share, mainly when you talk about the engine business.

Service comprises of pretty much three levers. One is parts, and we have already a good market share.

Still a bit room to grow, but not unlimited room to grow, of course. The other lever is work at the machine, sort of labor, technician work.

There we have a still fairly low market share over the last years. 50- 10 years ago we were not doing that at all, we were just selling parts, and now we're already doing much more work at the machine, so that's one of the focus points to grow.

Then certainly is indeed digital offerings, like telematics solutions, where quite a few promising opportunities in that. The fourth point is also a series of small-ish M&A, buying former external dealerships in order to increase the footprint and bring that margin in-house.

Of course, last, but not least, also offering or utilizing our footprint for the new business models, and that's why we're pretty confident on that growth, the number you just mentioned, because they're supported by at least four pillars.

Maybe last question staying with M&A. You said small-ish in service, completely understood, you were quite successful with your recent bolt-on acquisitions, also targeting higher margin product offering services.

Where would you see remaining white spots? Rather, I guess, it's rather products or technologies than regions.

Thinking about your leverage ratio of 1.3 times, what would be the maximum to accept in this regard?

Let me start with the areas, and then Oliver will talk on funding. As you said, Service, we'll continue to work on that, and these are not large acquisitions, we've shown a proven track record to be able to do quite a lot of them on an annual basis.

We are certainly open to grow also more in both Energy and Defense business, and we have quite a good overview what could happen in the next years, but you will understand that this is exactly the field where transparency has very strong limitations, and we can just say we are working on a lot of opportunities and options. With M&A, you never know, always takes two to tango, and we'll see.

We'll keep you updated as soon as we can.

On the leverage question, well, we have a strong balance sheet, we have a decent leverage with a level of 1.4 leasing, without leasing even below 1, we have debt capacity. That also means, and as you saw it with the FRERK transition recently, we added additional debt, because the balance sheet supports that.

We see increasing resilience of our business model: growing Energy, growing Defense, growing Service, volatility gets out of the results. That means we can support higher leverage.

Specific numbers, it depends a bit on if you ask the CEO or the CFO, the CFO is always a bit more careful, I can easily imagine a leverage of 2, 2, 2.5, but of course, it needs to fit to the development of the business.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your questions, and I hope you got the answers that you were looking for. There's one more in the room, and I think afterwards we're going to move into the virtual world, please.

Yes, you mentioned that your book-to-bill ratio in your new Energy unit was below the threshold of 1. You painted out a clearly growth path until 2030.

Can you give us an indication how this order intake is currently developing, where you stand at the book-to-bill ratio? Yes.

In Energy you mean?

In the Energy, yeah, yeah.

The book-to-bill in engines is more an indicator of growth if it's above 1. In Energy, we talk about a bit more or less sort of lumpy orders, there is a lumpy order and then you suddenly have in a quarter potentially even a book-to-bill of 2, and then in the next you have a book-to-bill of 0.4, 0.5.

That's why I would not put too much emphasis on the book-to-bill in Energy. Again, in engines and in service, it's highly relevant.

Here, what we can say is that with our two larger assets in Energy, which is Blue Star and FRERK, we do see very solid perspective on growth in both, both in the United States as well as in Europe, and also in our smaller asset in Morocco. Here, the book-to-bill is actually above 1, but the same applies what I just said earlier.

Here we rather think in a sales funnel, typical logic, you start with a fairly large sales funnel, you put in go and get probabilities on there, you calculate them, and so here we see quite a good of supporting information for the growth we put in here into the numbers.

Once again, thank you very much, and with that, I would hand it over to Sarah to the virtually dialed in colleagues. I don't know why my microphone has a bit of a weird noise, I hope you can still understand me, but Sarah, please take it.

Yes, thank you very much. The question is actually on the guidance and the new business unit guidances.

There is Defense, and it says Defense and others. Could you remind us what else is in others in there, and possibly also if there is a huge differentiation between the profitability of these businesses?

Maybe a technicality, but to understand the rest of it better, if you sell a genset to the Bundeswehr, is it then accounted for under Defense or under Energy? Maybe also then connected here, if I look at these business unit guidances, is there anywhere you include M&A perspective, or shall we take these separate BU guidances as organic growth opportunity guidances for '26?

Let me start with your first question on the Defense and other segment. Basically, it's Defense, but we also will allocate our recent acquisition HJS, which we acquired beginning of January 2025.

From a margin perspective, obviously Defense business is way more profitable than HJS, which is also slightly profitable, and that is then the combination how we derived that overall guidance, but that is basically the only relevant part which is covered by other. On the second question, if you sell a genset to the Bundeswehr, for example, yes, that's Defense.

On the third question, to which degree M&A is impacting the guidance here, naturally we see some M&A activities on the service side, where we have a good track record of two, three, or more M&A transactions per year. That is also what we are expecting then, a certain M&A contribution on the service side along what we achieved over the last years, while the other business units are not M&A-driven in the guidance.

That

doesn't mean we're not doing that, but we do not put unlaid eggs into the guidance, let's put it that way.

Oh, it's just that, very clear, but it gives a better picture of what you think is organically happening. Lastly is on NewTech, and how do you feel about the loss allowance here?

You outlined that some of the cost is for setting up structures. In case there would in first half or so '26 nothing materially happen on the opportunity side, how quickly could you reduce the cost base and how willing would you be to do so?

We couldn't reduce it to zero, obviously, we could, but that would not be wise, because I talked about an option value, and that would destroy the option value also to zero. In fact, we are obviously always evaluating here the cost base and the structures, because in the end cost is structure or structure is cost.

In case, and I'm not saying that is happening, but in case we wouldn't see a first sort of serial or small-serial order, we obviously would be able to stretch projects to reduce the losses here, and we're well-prepared to do so, but we are actually quite optimistic that this will not be necessary. It's important to be always ready for both potential developments.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for dialing in. Thank you very much for asking all these very valuable questions.

Thank you very much for accompanying us as Deutz, and it's really a great time in a way to guide and lead this company through this transformation. It's also great to see how our measures are paying off, and that's also bear in mind, it's been a challenging year in 2025 given the environment, and we have managed quite successfully through that, and we are with a bit of caution, as we just heard also in the Q&A here, we're going with a bit of core caution into 2026, but everything is set up to make this another success, and that's extremely important.

We need a bit of support from the end markets, from the traditional end markets, but we are ready to also grow both in terms of top line and profitability, even if that support is not as strong as we all hope for. We're looking forward to a great year 2026, and looking forward to the continuous dialogue with all of you throughout the year.

The financial calendar is here put on the chart. We'll release Q1 on May 7th, AGM in Cologne, this time a physical AGM again, on May 13th, where happy to welcome as many as possible for you also physically in Cologne, and then we'll be by H1, i.e., Q2, beginning of August.

Obviously, looking forward to talk to many of you through the, I don't know, more than 25 investor relations opportunities throughout the year. Thanks for your attention, and stay tuned.

There will be more to come.