Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Traton's Q1 2026 results call. My name is Ursula Querette and I am Head of Investor Relations at Traton SE.

With me on this call is Christian Levin, our CEO, who is dialed in from Sweden. Dr.

Michael Jackstein, our CFO and CHRO, is here with me in Munich. Christian will start today's presentation with the key results and highlights of the first quarter.

Michael will then guide you through the financial performance in more detail. As always, we will conclude the call with a Q&A session open to financial analysts, investors, and media representatives.

To register for questions, please click the blue Q&A button on the webcast and follow the instructions. If you want to enter the queue via phone, please dial one of the country-specific numbers and enter your individual PIN followed by the hash key.

To register your question via phone, you need to press 01 on your keypad; to cancel the question, press 01 again. Please note that this call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded, and a replay will be made available on our website later today.

You can find our three-month interim statement, which we published this morning, and the slides to this call on our IR website. Before we start, let me remind you of the disclaimer with respect to forward-looking statements on page three of our presentation.

With that, I'm handing over to Christian Levin. Christian?

Thank you, Ursula, and welcome also from my side, everyone. Yes, as you saw already from our unit sales prerelease, we had a somewhat slow start of this year.

You could see unit sales falling by 6%, -6%, to 68,600, largely coming from last year's and the hesitation in the US demand, which we then later saw starting to turn up, but more of that later. The decrease is also marked by a continued difficult South American market environment with low order intake spilling over from last year.

Looking at sales revenues, we saw a somewhat smaller decline with a -4% to €10.2 billion, keeping up compared to unit sales mainly thanks to good growth in our services business. Operating profit and net cash flow declined overproportionately as anticipated, our adjusted return on sales came in at 5.7%.

That's at the lower end of our guidance for the full year, but still somewhat better than expected. Earnings per share were very low in Q1 due to certain items that were adjusted but fully impacting our net result.

We come back later in this conference to these adjustments. The highlight of the quarter is the significant increase in order intake with an increase of 18%, as you see on the slide, up to 87,800 units.

Let's turn to the next page and have some more details on the growth of order intake. We saw encouraging demand increase in all three of our core geographical regions, although Germany, which everyone keeps asking about, is still somewhat lagging.

Also, across all of them, order intake exceeded deliveries in Q1, supporting a raise in our book-to-bill ratio up to 1.3. Starting in Europe then, in a year-over-year comparison, truck order intake in Europe remained stable at around 29,000 vehicles.

Remember, this compares to a very strong start of Q1 also last year, which was before the tariff announcements from the US and it was also marked by initial German market stimulus optimism. Turning to North America, truck order intake nearly doubled, up to 18,800 units in Q1, and after more than four months of consistently strong US demand, we are increasingly confident that we have passed the trough of the cycle for this time.

Finally, in South America, truck demand was boosted by the so-called Move Brazil program, which provides subsidized truck financing in this unusually high interest rate environment. Strong starts in both the agriculture and the mining sector supported the higher truck order intake in Q1, and as a result, we recorded around 15,000 trucks, 25% up, despite the ongoing broader economic challenges in this region.

As explained before, while our group order intake grew by 18%, global deliveries fell by 6%, which was sharply driven down by lower deliveries in both North and in South America. Meanwhile, Europe recorded a significant increase in deliveries on the back of healthy order intake starting already in Q4 last year.

The group was led by MAN, and especially strong in the truck segment. Before we continue, let me also clarify that the Iran war just had a minimal effect on the Q1 delivery and order intake figures that you see on the slide.

Few deliveries in the Middle East were postponed, and in a few markets, customers showed hesitation when placing new orders. Let's take the next slide.

Despite this rising geopolitical challenge, we remain focused on our long-term success. Hence, we continue to drive our group-wide technology initiatives, such as the development of a unified software-defined vehicle platform that will eventually be implemented across all of our brands in partnership with Applied Intuition.

This platform is scheduled for launch in the year 2028. Also, our brands continued to make good progress within their various strategic initiatives.

Scania delivered the first Next Era trucks according to plan in the Chinese market and started to receive first positive customer feedback. MAN launched the so-called MAN 2030+, a program to continue to drive efficiency gains and enhance competitiveness for future vehicles based on our TRATON Modular System.

International partnered up with Ryder to launch a Level 4 autonomous truck pilot deploying factory-integrated autonomous vehicles in the state of Texas. Volkswagen Truck & Bus celebrated its 45th anniversary, aiming for continued growth and success, remaining true to their philosophy, less you don't want, more you don't need.

Then finally, TRATON Financial Services, expanding again into two new markets, this time Belgium and Lithuania, where now also supporting MAN, thus underlining our consistent geographical growth strategy. At the same time, and turning the page, we continue to advance on our battery electric vehicle transformation journey.

Total BEV unit sales rose by 38% in the first quarter to 857 units, and incoming orders increase even more by 45%, reaching a total of 1,252 units. In Europe, our BEV ratio therefore reached a 1.9% of total European vehicle sales.

Given the lack of speed in this transition, at least compared to our planning, I'm pleased to report that the EU Commission finally decided on a so-called targeted amendment to the CO2 rules, acknowledging the specific needs of the truck industry ecosystem. In practice, it encourages early market adoption of heavy-duty BEVs through a more flexible credit mechanism in operation already from this year, while at the same time maintaining the long-term decarbonization trajectory.

Nevertheless, or even more so, we need a faster rollout of charging infrastructure, and we need policymakers' support to address the TCO challenge. A good initiative by our Milence joint venture mid-April, where several heavy-duty e-trucks drove 1,000 kilometers, an all-electric road from Paris to Berlin, drew a lot of attention exactly to this point.

With great public visibility, it highlighted the urgency for clean transport corridors and demonstrated that long-haul BEV transport is feasible. It underscored that establishing a Europe-wide fast-charging network for heavy-duty vehicles is both achievable and critical for an energy-secure Europe.

Meanwhile, on the operational side, MAN secured its largest electric bus order to date in Austria, underlining growing confidence of public transport operators in our BEV solutions. Also in the US, more explicitly California, International secured a large number of electric school bus orders.

In China, where BEV adoption is rapidly increasing, Scania continues the development of an all-electric Next Era truck. In summary, our battery electric vehicle transformation strategy is on track.

As is typical for emerging technologies, development risks are higher, changing conditions require selective readjustments, and in our case, this has led to one of the one-off effects, as I mentioned earlier, and which Michael will come back to in just a moment. Before handing to Michael, also a few words on our truck market outlook.

Although there are signs of recovery both in the European and North American truck cycles, we leave our forecast ranges unchanged for now, as uncertainty remains elevated. In April, Scania, but now also MAN, observed some cases of customer hesitancy, a bit slower order intake that is connected to high fuel prices and related to the uncertainty coming from the war in Iran.

Far, less than what at least I feared. Overall, good order intake momentum, which supports our confidence in a growing European truck market this year.

At the midpoint of our outlook, we see European trucks above six-ton at 345,000 units, and heavy-duty trucks also well over the 300,000-unit mark in 2026. In North America, the significant order inflection since end of last year is indeed promising, but the downside risk remains, especially given conflicting signals from both manufacturing and consumer demand.

Following record truck order intakes in March, International is seeing healthy volumes also in April, main reason being higher transport pricing and better balance between capacity and transport demand. The magnitude of EPA27 pre-buy within these orders is at the moment probably minimum, but also difficult to assess.

At the midpoint of our unchanged North American market outlook, we assume a 2.5% growth, which would translate into 265,000 Class 8 trucks in 2026. With that, Michael, I hand over to you.

Thank you very much, Christian, and good morning, good day, warm welcome from my side as well. As already mentioned, unit sales dropped -6% in the first quarter, while the decline in revenues was less pronounced, mainly due to a growing vehicle services business.

MAN delivered a strong top-line performance, especially in European truck sales, which increased by 31% year-over-year in the first quarter. German truck sales were up 14% at MAN.

Scania, with a different customer and product mix, still lacked European growth in the first quarter. This, combined with significant declines in North and South America, prevented a positive group top-line performance in Q1.

As Christian showed before, the order book is developing well, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.3 in Q1, last seen during the post-COVID catch-up. These orders will translate into unit sales and sales revenue in upcoming quarters, helping us to recover from the slow start.

Let's not forget, TRATON Financial Services are constantly delivering on their growth strategy. The next slide shows that more factors than declining volumes contributed to our lower operating result.

While revenue decreased by 4%, the adjusted operating result declined by 10%, resulting in a 0.4 percentage point lower return on sales of 5.7%. That is at the lower end of our guidance range, yet somewhat better than expected.

It was clear that US tariff costs would hurt our Q1 results, especially with Section 232 US content approval still pending. Section 232 and IEEPA tariffs totaled €110 million in the first quarter, compared to €6 million basic import tariffs a year before.

Higher foreign currency headwinds, mainly from the Swedish krona and the US dollar, negatively impacted our year-over-year results by €84 million, and increased R&D needs also led to higher expenses, although they were partially offset through capitalization. Positive effects came from a better price mix and improved fixed cost absorption.

Scania's China plant was roughly cost-neutral vis-à-vis last year's first quarter. In addition to the just-mentioned effects, our profitability was burdened by certain items which were adjusted and sum up to €521 million.

TRATON Group's unadjusted operating result was €60 million in the first quarter, corresponding to an operating return on sales of 0.6%. The four main adjustment items were: first, write-offs and supplier claims following adjustments to individual e-mobility projects; second, impairments and labor expenses in connection with the sale of International's Springfield site; third, expenses for civil lawsuits in connection with EU truck cases, consistent with previous quarters; and fourth, provisions for the announced restructuring at International.

These items are non-operational in nature and do not change our underlying long-term view on the business. Therefore, let's concentrate again on the adjusted return on sales and how each of our four brands performed on the page you see now.

As in Q4, MAN, with its strong focus on Europe, was the only brand to see a year-over-year increase in sales revenue. The 8% revenue growth in the first quarter contributed to a 2.9 percentage point higher adjusted return on sales, reaching 7.2%.

This result was supported by ongoing cost management measures and a solid vehicle services business. Scania saw lower sales in Brazil, but stable units in Europe.

Revenue decreased by 4% in the first quarter, while the margin remained nearly stable at 11%, with lower fixed costs year-over-year and a higher vehicle services business. As anticipated, International reported a negative margin, decreasing by 5.6 percentage points to -4%, while sales revenue declined by 19%.

Although fixed cost absorption was reduced due to the low production volumes, a recent restructuring of central functions contributed to lower absolute fixed costs. Volkswagen Truck & Bus also recorded a severe revenue decline of 18% year-over-year.

At the same time, the adjusted return on sales fell by 2.8 percentage points to 10.2% in Q1. TRATON Financial Services delivered a 9% return on equity, while sales revenue increased by 13% with the ramp-up of the business.

The weak early-year operating performance also weighed on our cash flow, and Section 232 tariffs even more heavily as we paid the full 25% amount until a US content agreement is reached. At the same time, the negative working capital performance in Q1 reflects typical seasonality.

The investing cash flow is half-half influenced by CapEx and capitalized R&D. The position other changes in cash flow includes net proceeds of €170 million from the sale of Sinotruk shares in January.

While net cash flow at TRATON Operations was -€240 million, overall we managed to achieve a slight reduction in our net debt by €10 million at the end of the first quarter. Looking ahead now, we have nine months remaining to deliver on our 2026 full-year outlook.

I reiterate that the second half is expected to show a stronger performance than the first half of the year, as the higher book-to-bill ratio clearly indicates increasing top-line performance, especially at International. Scania and Volkswagen Truck & Bus will benefit from the so-called Move Brazil orders converting into revenue.

There's good order momentum in Europe, except for Germany, where we are still waiting for the anticipated demand recovery. Discussions regarding our US content rate with the US administration are still ongoing, second quarter will still be affected by higher tariff costs with our prudent accounting approach.

The economic impact of the Iran war is yet difficult to assess, although we already planned for higher input costs taking effect towards midyear. While unexpected geopolitical effects are excluded from our full-year guidance, nevertheless at this point we feel confident with our full-year guidance, which is based on broader forecast ranges.

We maintain our unit sales and sales revenue outlook between -5% and +7%. We still see an adjusted operating return on sales for the TRATON Group between 5.3% and 7.3%, where the midpoint is at last year's level.

TRATON Operations net cash flow is expected between €900 million and €1.7 billion. With that, happy to hand it back to you, Ursula, to moderate the Q&A session.

Thank you, Christian and Michael. Before we start with the Q&A session, let me remind you that you need to click the blue Q&A button in the webcast and follow the instructions if you want to ask a question.

If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press cancel. If you're dialed in via phone, you need to tap 01 on your keypad; to cancel the question, press 01 again.

Please ask your question once I announced your name and activated your session. In respect of the time, please limit yourself to two questions.

Now let us take the first question, which comes from Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. Nicolai?

Hi, it's Nicolai from Deutsche. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Perfect. Great.

First question on the US market. International Motors holding up better than expected and given the high orders we've seen and comments from peers, do you expect to return to the positive territory on earnings already in Q2?

Then my second question also on the US market. How long do you think until you're kind of sold out for this year?

The orders I think already probably cover Q2 and you have some good visibility into Q3. Would you say only some slots for Q4 are left or how much more visibility you have for this year?

Thank you.

I think Michael, you'll take at least the earnings question?

Happy to do so. Hi, Nicolai.

Thanks for the question. The development of the margin last year where unfortunately due to the tariffs we saw a negative margin in Q4.

You're fully right. It's a little bit better, also the Q1 margin, than we thought it could be.

As we mentioned during the presentation, certainly the order intake momentum that basically started in December and continued in the first quarter is promising for the remainder of the year. With regards to the second quarter, I cannot really say if we see positive margin or still a negative margin there, but what I clearly can say with regards to the full year, as we said also during our annual press conference, we want to see a better margin for the full year than the break-even margin we have seen in 2025, and certainly, again coming back to what we said during the presentation, the order intake momentum there should support us with regards to the top line, especially then in the second half of the year.

You also know we have the tariff effects here. We talked about this at our annual press conference.

Both with regards to the P&L and especially to the cash flow, we expect a better second half of the year than the first half. Tough to say with regards to the second quarter, but I'm positive for the second half of the year.

Christian, will you take

the

capacity question, International slots open?

We're not sold out, Nicolai. We are still taking in orders now for after summer, we're in Q3.

Of course, it's really positive to see this order momentum coming in. Our principle in the US is the same as in Europe, that we're happy when we manage a lead time in the range of let's say, two up to three months or perhaps even six week up to three months.

We're at the same time a little bit cautious, of course, to increase too much production given that big uncertainties that we see, not just in the US, but globally. We're of course also keeping an eye on the negotiations ongoing in Washington for us about the 232 and specifically related to our production in Mexico.

Yes, there are plenty of more orders to bring in before we're sold out for this year.

Thanks, Christian, and thanks, Nicolai.

Thank you.

Next question then would come from Klas Bergelind from Citi.

Thank you, Ursula. Hi, Christian and Michael.

Klas at Citi. I just want to kick off on cost inflation.

It's been a bit of a theme this result season in trucks. Peers of you are talking about likely better gross margin through the year as build rates improve, but that we also need to consider the inflation from energy, steel, aluminum, other raw mats going higher as a sort of result of the conflict.

Truck pricing are set to move higher because of EPA27, might go higher because of Section 232, and now we have raw materials on top. It feels like quite big price increases here are necessary at a time when the recovery is still fragile.

Can you please talk through about timing, in magnitude, how much more pricing do you need to put through to offset this higher cost inflation? I'll start there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Klas. Maybe I can start a little bit on the cost side and then Christian can complement on the pricing side.

We can do it like this. On the cost side, I can confirm basically what you are saying and what you picked up here, obviously from others who have pretty much the same view.

What I can also say, typically when we talk about supplier contracts typically have a duration something six three to six months, so that we don't expect immediate effects, let's say, in the upcoming weeks or months, but from the mid of the year, and then especially in the second half of the year, we expect the effects that you are mentioning. Linked to the Iran war, we have done an internal risk assessment, and you mentioned a couple of the commodities here: steel, aluminum, a couple of these aspects.

Also copper we can mention. Some products where oil is needed, linked to the Iran war, we can expect that we see higher prices here.

Our internal assessment at this point comes to a low triple-digit impact, triple-digit million impact here. This is what I can say and where I can give you maybe a little bit more insights how we assess this.

We could add potentially energy costs from our point of view. When we talk about energy costs, also with regards to our factories, we believe that the effect is significantly lower, potentially only a low double-digit million impact.

Energy costs will play to some extent a role, but the much more significant effect we certainly see on the commodity side. So.

That is a gross number, right? You said low triple-digit, Michael, that was gross, not net?

Sorry, Christian, because you're going to talk about the net effect now, Christian, on pricing, so that I just want to confirm.

Yeah. That's gross,

yeah.

Yeah.

As Klas, it's been a bit tougher price-wise in the environment, particularly in the US, but also in Europe, price increases have not been easy to push through. Lately, we see that necessity goes up, but that also eases a bit the resistance, let's say.

We have already launched price increases in Europe. Then as always, you need to wait a little bit before you see how much of that increase that sticks, but we're pretty dedicated this time that it needs to stick, and it's not a huge price increase.

It's in the normal range that we increase prices every year, but just with more dedication. In the US, it's been very particular on the price side.

We were early out, as you remember, last year tried to compensate for the 232 through pricing, didn't manage as the market didn't follow. Now, the sentiment has changed as there is a big appetite for placing orders and at least in our case, we managed to get the pricing through that we need.

Much better development in the US. I would not be able to give you a number and translate that into how many double- or triple-digit millions et cetera percents that you have to assess for yourself, but it is a better environment to operate in and particularly in the US.

I stop there.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

That's very helpful. My second question and final one is on the European order trends.

It seems like April was holding the same level as in March, and then March seems to be stronger than Jan and Feb. At the pre-close call, we learned that there was some hesitation among some smaller carriers in Europe.

Is that still the case or have sort of sentiment improved here last couple of weeks? It's obviously very fluid at the moment.

One of your key peers recently upgraded its European outlook, it seems like a bit of a mixed signal. By country would be very useful.

Thank you.

I can give it a try. Christian here.

It is tricky, of course, to read the situation in Europe. January good, February very good, March good again, April we see some hesitation.

Particularly we see it with smaller hauliers and in countries where the transport contracts are not typically containing fuel clauses. If you take perhaps UK as the most developed market in Europe from a financial point of view, basically 100% of all hauliers run with a fuel clause in their transport contract, meaning that they are not directly affected or not at all.

Let's see how the economy moves long term, but not at all affected by the increase in fuel prices. That's all transferred over to the transport buyer.

If you take then on the eastern side of Europe, and especially southeast side of Europe, a lot of smaller customers don't have this protection and then they need to negotiate. That's where we see a bit of buying hesitation, that's also where we see a bit of trying to push forward vehicles that are in the delivery pipeline and negotiating conditions with our financial services companies to postpone a couple of weeks to really see where this is going.

That's of course because their cash flow is hurt by the fuel prices. I'm expecting nonetheless a relatively good April.

What we see so far is a continued good market, not perhaps on the same level as we have seen on average in the first quarter. Not the scenario from last year.

I thought we would see the same movie as we saw when Trump announced the tariffs, where we had such a good first couple of months and then a dramatic fall. We don't see that at all so far.

Then, of course, all depends where this situation in the Middle East is going. To be honest, I'm a little bit positively surprised that we're keeping up as well as we are doing in Europe on order intake.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christian. Very helpful.

Next question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs.

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, thank you. Two questions.

First, just wanted to ask if in North America you have seen any benefits, I guess, from the cost actions you had been doing, centralized development costs, etc., and/or if we're still to see a run rate of savings from that? Then maybe second question, actually, following up on the P&L impacts in China.

I think before you had mentioned €400 million. How much have we seen in 1Q, and then how should Scania dilution from China evolve in the rest of the year?

Thank you.

Michael, I think both are for you.

I happy to start. Hi, Daniela.

To start in North America before I move to China, I can say, yes, we see positive impacts on the cost side, which is one aspect of the better-than-expected development at International, I would say. That we started to take action already last year.

We took out a second shift in Escobedo in Mexico, and we continued the cost work, taking into account especially the headwinds coming from the tariffs. We mentioned that at our annual press conference, that we did some sort of adjustments, restructuring at International where we took out roughly 300 people, and really talking about let's say top and high management positions here.

As we said before, since we are in the cyclical industry, we have the playbook if we are in stormy waters. We apply all the aspects to work on the cost side and to be as sensitive as possible here.

Again, we see the positive effects from this cost work in the P&L, and we will continue to do so. I'm quite confident because, as I said, this is a focused topic for us, working really on the cost side.

You also mentioned or asked if there is any effect from decentralizing of our development efforts. It's starting, but at a very early stage.

We did the so-called carve-out 1st of July last year, but this is like a starting point also to look into further efficiencies. We are certainly on this journey, but you don't see that effect in the P&L yet.

I would say that's pretty much it when we talk about here North America linked to your first question. Second question, moving to China.

You asked about the P&L effect. We said that we plan to invest roughly €2 billion into China.

In the end, we invested a little bit less, roughly €1.7 billion until the end of last year. We also said when we look at the investment last year, roughly €800 million that we expensed, again around 50%, talking about €400 million.

What we can say for the full year 2026 that you should expect a very comparable P&L effect in 2026. There are slightly different aspects to this, of course.

Last year, it was about investing and ramping up the China factory. This year, we are in a different situation.

Depreciation starts. We of course are investing less, but we are ramping up now the sales efforts in China, and this is why we are talking about a comparable amount, but with different cost aspects.

Thank you. Sorry, just following up back on the centralized development costs, the impacts, I guess, we should expect them maybe more into '27, but sort of what's the magnitude of those, if you can remind us?

I cannot give you a precise magnitude. What I can say, of course, coming back to the efficiencies we talked about in light with the TRATON Modular System, we clearly stated here that we see efficiency gains of roughly 25% moving into the TRATON Modular System.

This is partly linked to the fact that we don't develop chassis, a cab, and electric electronic architecture twice or three times anymore, but just once. Then, of course, we differentiate with what we call performance steps, we will certainly not create the same products here, but we make use in a smart way of the synergies or scale effects.

That's one aspect, and the other aspect is coming from simply using, for example, same IT tools to give a very simple example, and to align on processes. The fact that we decided on working together in a group R&D setup can unleash even more potential, but this is a little bit too soon to assess, but I can assure you that we are looking into this right now since we started, again, 1st of July last year, and there might be even further potential that we are exploring at this point in time going forward.

If there's further potential, then gradually, you could see some effect '27 onwards, but let me come back to the 25% also efficiencies from the TMS. You recall what we mentioned in previous calls.

There are two aspects how we can deal with that, black or white. The one is that you see lower R&D spending thanks to the efficiencies, but this is not what you're going to see because we are in the transformation and, of course, we want to make sure that we have the right products for our customers in the future, and this is why we will use these efficiencies to invest into autonomous driving, digitalization, electrification of our products.

This is why you should expect a constant, let's say, significant level of R&D spend in the future because this is clearly linked to our strategy, transforming transportation together for a sustainable world.

Got it. Thank you.

Okay. Then we come to Harry Martin from Bernstein.

Morning. The questions that I have left relate to the US.

The first one, if I could ask for your crystal ball when it comes to demand and orders, if the uplift that we've had in recent months has very little pre-buy in there and is all underlying demand, then would you expect orders to continue at similar levels in the coming months? Then when we think about next year, can we think about 2027 being a strong year of growth for the market despite the EPA change?

Then the second question I had on the International and the new engine, could you give an update on the penetration rates for the captive powertrain there and also on your discussions with customers around the attractiveness of that engine in the post-EPA 2027 regulation world? Thank you.

Christian, do you want to start?

That was a lot of questions. I can start, and then help me to remember, but yeah, US orders, will they continue?

We remain a little bit cautious, although we must admit that we have perhaps been overly cautious here in the view of the first quarter, and again April coming along strong, would be surprised if the association again posts a total market order intake on a high level. At the same time, as I said on the previous question, there's so many uncertainties surround both US and the world economy that yeah, it's really hard to draw a conclusion, but it seems that the combination of that capacity has been taken out of the market, that we see way more than 20% increase in spot rate pricing, we see also a higher and higher refusal rates on full truckloads, meaning that capacity is kind of missing and hauliers can increase pricing.

We see rental fleets ordering, and then of course we have the potential pre-buy for the EPA. A lot of this coming together is creating a strong demand.

There's no doubt about it. It's very hard to assess what is what.

What we know is that there are very few customers, especially amongst the big ones, the one we talk directly to, that explicitly talks about pre-buy. They more talk about that they have a capacity constraints and they need to increase or they need to replace and renew because their trucks are getting old.

If that's the case and we see a bit less price sensitivity, then you could very well see that this is the start of a new cycle. In that case, typically that cycle will continue into 2027.

I think that was your second question, despite EPA. Of course, that depends on the price increases that will be announced, I guess, within short in the market, because that will, of course, then draw the fuel demand for '26 if it's high.

If it's not that high, I guess it will have less impact and I guess then one could expect also 2027 to be in the US on a continued good level to fill the replacement need and to fulfill the higher demand. Super hard to read.

I don't have a crystal ball, as you know. You were into the attractiveness of the EPA27 engine.

We are more or less ready with our engines. We are still not fully ready with the EPA's way forward here.

We thought it was 100% clear. We must say that it's again not 100% clear how this is going to be implemented, and I guess that's also why you don't see any announcements yet of price increases or pricing of the EPA27 platforms.

We still believe that we have a very competitive, from a technology point of view, engine based on the newest platform in the market based on the fact that we have developed this platform with good knowledge of what EPA27 and Euro 7 would require. I think we're in a good place, but again, that will be known within quite short, I assume.

Then I think your last subquestion was on the penetration rate of our so-called S13 then, and we reached in Class 8, we reached the 44% during the full year of last year, and we are so far Q1 a bit higher, we continue to increase. We are on 47% in the first quarter, and we think that as we have launched this on more truck variants, also outside of the pure tractor units, we believe that that could go yet a bit higher throughout the year, and we have an internal forecast or goal, if you like, to come up towards 50% or very close to 50% of the Class 8 trucks.

If you translate that including our total sales, where we of course don't put this engine in Class 6, 7 or school buses, we're aiming at 20% of the overall volume. I hope I covered.

Help me there, Ursula, if I've forgot some part of the question.

No, I think that covered everything. Harry, are you happy?

Yes, thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks.

Then the next question comes from Alexander Jones from Bank of America.

Great. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Two if I can. Maybe first just on the tariff costs.

If you could split for us the 110 between Section 232 and IEEPA just to understand sort of the flatness quarter-on-quarter, and should we expect that sort of run rate to continue in Q2 as well? Then secondly, just picking up on your peer comments overnight on aftermarket, how you're seeing that developing the service sales in North America and Europe since the start of the Iran war, and whether there's been any impact given higher fuel costs for fleets?

Thank you.

Michael, tariffs? Yeah.

Alexander, thanks for your question. Let me start with the tariff question, and let me say one more time what we said multiple times also last year.

Obviously, this is a highly volatile environment with a lot of back and forth. What we have seen last year, tariffs that have been announced, increased, decreased, there was quite some back and forth.

You can say in a way the newest chapter is then the Supreme Court ruling end of February regarding the IEEPA tariffs. New tariffs were announced immediately, with a lower rate, which are now effective for 150 days, and then potentially new tariffs will be announced.

Again, a highly dynamic environment. This is why, in general, I would like to come back to what I said a couple of times last year.

We could mention a couple of numbers about tariff effects, impacts. There is a good chance that each and every number that we are giving is wrong because, as I said before, the landscape here is changing constantly.

To give you some sort of a reference point, maybe let me come back to what we said for, let's say, the full year 2025, roughly a month ago, if we take the fourth quarter and extrapolate just the fourth quarter, not knowing about potential changes back and forth also this year, but if we extrapolate the fourth quarter into the full year 2026, and then I'm happy to translate that a little bit into what we have seen in the Q1. Basically, what we've said at the annual press conference is that two months last year, only two months were affected by the 232 Section tariffs, both months each with a net amount of €20 million, so that you can multiply the 20 million, and then you end up at a rough figure of 20- €250 million for Section 232 tariffs if they stay, let's say, as we know them from the fourth quarter.

With regards to IEEPA and steel, aluminum tariffs, we said that we accounted €50 million per quarter here, but we also mentioned that in the fourth quarter, the volumes were not that high. If that trend changes, and we are hoping for that based on the order intake momentum that we have seen in the first quarter, then if you want to make a calculation, you should potentially add something to the €50 million per quarter and multiply it with four.

We said based on these effects, the rough ballpark figure is in the ballpark of roughly €500 million per year. Again, the tariffs are in a way changing and we see quite a back and forth here.

If we look now at the first quarter and compare it with the fourth quarter last year, then we see pretty much the same amount, meaning €110 million, and your question here, this was linked to the 232 Section tariffs as well as to partially IEEPA tariffs until they were stopped linked to the Supreme Court ruling. There is a slight effect from less IEEPA tariffs included.

There is of course an higher effect for 232 Section tariffs because they're included now for three months and not only for two months, like in the fourth quarter, and we don't see a higher rate linked to the volume, which is the main driver also for the margin at International, why the margin is negative, because the volume in the Q1 was not that high linked to the low order intake momentum last year. This is, I would say, the guidance that I can give here so that you can maybe get a better grip around the tariff situation.

Christian, do you want to say something about aftermarket service sales?

Sure. That question was in relation to the Iran war or

Yeah.

Yeah. No, we don't see any immediate effect on the service business.

Service business is holding up very well in Europe, and we count on continued growth, but I'd say that's in general due to good job done on the contract sales, penetration, but also on an aging vehicle population. In the US, unfortunately, our service sales are moving backwards as we lack the ruling fleet, the proprietary drive lines that we are currently building with the the S13 and the connected components.

There we have more work to do, but we're doing, I think, a great job to advance on our strategy to capture the also US market from a services point of view. Nothing particular because of or due to connected directly to Iran.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Then the last one in the queue is Christina Amann from Thomson Reuters, a media question. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. You have already answered quite a bit of my questions.

I have two left. Mr.

Jackstein, you said it's for the full year about €500 million tariff impact. How much of that is IEEPA tariffs and how much refunds do you expect from that?

Goldman Sachs General Motors has talked about $500 million yesterday. I assume it's a little bit less for Traton, but how much do you expect to get back?

The second question relates to the competition situation in Europe. Mr.

Levin, how do you view the competition situation in Europe, especially regarding new entrants, like the Chinese companies coming with electric trucks right now? Is that of serious concern or is that still some time ahead?

Thanks.

Thank you very much for your question. Maybe I start with the first one, and maybe let me say there is a difference there between what you're referring to, the passenger cars and the truck industry.

In our case, the effect completely different one, I'd say. With regards to the Supreme Court ruling, we are at the stage that we will follow here the refund process and continue to monitor the situation.

In our case, as I was into, the IEEPA effects don't play that kind of significant role for us. The 232 Sections, as I indicated before, when extrapolating based on, let's say, the Q4 into the 2026 full-year amount of roughly €500 million, you see here that roughly 50% of this amount is linked to 232 Section tariffs, and the other 50% are linked to IEEPA and steel and aluminum tariffs.

I hope that gives you a little bit more clarity here.

Yeah. Okay.

Competition?

Should I continue with competition in Europe?

Yes, please. Okay.

Then, yeah,

competition in Europe remains, of course, tight amongst the incumbents. We are, of course, expecting Chinese entrants in to Europe, as this remains also an open market to anyone, as we do expect perhaps one American player to be here in Europe.

Far, as you say, it's a bit early days, but we see a couple of startups with full battery electric vehicle trucks entering the European market, and we also see some of the more traditional Chinese OEMs establishing themselves, and BYD, you can discuss whether that's a startup or whether that's an incumbent, but they are also building industrial capacity in Europe. I think it's a fact that we will see Chinese competitors entering into the deals where we are today active.

We should, of course, watch them carefully. They come, as we know, with a lot of good, advanced technology, with extremely low cost levels and therefore quite low pricing.

From our point of view, it's nothing new in a way. We have to continue to stay super close to our customers, develop our products, keep costs under control, innovate, and be the best partner to our customers' own competitiveness.

One trump card we have in the TRATON Group is that we are now, since short, active in the Chinese market. We have an R&D organization of roughly 800 engineers located in China and being then embedded into the Chinese ecosystem of researchers, universities, but of course suppliers.

Then in direct competition with all of these Chinese brands on their home market, and I think that's the best training camp or the best fitness center that you can have. If we find out that we cannot be competitive in China, we will, of course, have a huge problem around the world.

Now you pointed to Europe, Christina, but we of course have Chinese competition all over Africa, Middle East, they're showing up strongly in Latin America, and I expect, of course, to see them all over perhaps except for the United States. Yes, they should be watched closely.

They should be respected, and we should stay close, but we should certainly also learn whatever is possible, and that you do best inside of China, and there I think we have a good position to do so. The question of when remains of course open.

I don't know, but so far we don't see much in Europe in the ongoing deals, but that's just a question of time. I stop there.

I hope that answers your question.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Then I see no more questions in the queue.

With this, then, we are concluding our event. Thank you for joining us today, and for any further questions, please contact the Investor Relations team.

Enjoy the rest of the day. Goodbye.

Thank you.

Thanks. Bye-bye.