Kontron AG

Kontron AG

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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 26, 2026

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Kontron earnings call annual report 2025. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode.

The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Mr.

Clemens Billek.

Clemens Billek

Hello, and a warm welcome from my side. Let me guide you through the 2025 financial year results and the most recent company highlights.

We made a big leap in operating cash flow. It jumped from €99 million to €168 million.

That's an operating cash flow on a record high for Kontron. We've also made a leap in EBITDA.

It jumped from €192 million to €237 million, including one-off impacts of the COM transaction amongst others, though. The backlog increased again, we had a book-to-bill ratio of 1.26, and the backlog reached a record high of €2.5 billion.

The working capital is pretty much fixed. It improved from €350 million to below €300 million, now stands at €287 million.

We look at the company highlights. One of the company highlights is definitely the portfolio streamlining for 2025 and the reduction of low-margin EMS, IT service business revenues, and the deconsolidation of the COM business.

At the same time, we've strengthened the Software Solutions business significantly. It increased significantly, resulting in a book-to-bill of 1.47 at an organic revenue growth rate of 15.5% for 2025.

Obviously, this was driven by two divisions, by Defense and by Transportation. At the same time, on the lowlight side is the GreenTec division.

We started the GreenTec restructuring in light of the recent weakness of the Solar division. The software is gaining momentum, we have several Cyber Resilience Act compatible products on the market already, powered by KontronOS and AI Shield.

We have yesterday announced a share buyback program with expected duration until September at the latest. The total amount is up to €50 million and a maximum of 2.9 million shares, or 4.54% of the share capital.

We might further extend the share buyback program depending on market conditions and the further share price development. Why did we resolve that share buyback program?

You've probably seen the current volatility and weakness in the stock market in general, but in particular for Kontron. Therefore, we've resolved, given the attractiveness of the current share price, to do a share buyback this year instead of a dividend.

The decision is reevaluated every year, as you're aware. We have, as a rule of thumb, around 50% of net profit, at least the operational net profit, to be provided to shareholders either in form of a dividend or a share buyback.

Dividend was last year 60 cents a share, or €37 million, this is significantly higher with €50 million for the share buyback program, but the profit is also significantly higher, also on operational level. We are buying on stock exchange and also MTFs with the MAR-compatible price caps and maximum 10% above the average share price over the last five trading days, and we're buying up to €24 a share.

The lowest price we pay is the 10% of the average price over the last five trading days and at least €1 per share. The KPI for 2025: if we look at the revenues, we achieved €1.6 billion, slightly down 4.6% against the backdrop of discontinued assets and discontinued activities of around €129 million.

It's in line with expectation on that side. At the same time, we booked new orders of €2 billion with a book-to-bill of 1.26.

The gross profit is slightly down 2.5% on an absolute basis to €676 million, but if we look at it on a relative level, the gross profit margin increased from 41.2% to 42.1%. If we look at the EBITDA, it jumped sharply from €192 to €237 million, but there are one-off effects included, obviously.

If we deduct that, we get to an adjusted EBITDA of €220 roughly. The net result also jumped, €91 to €141 million, an increase of 55%, but there again, there are one-off effects included, and if we deduct that, we get to adjusted net profit of around €109 million.

Last but not least, the operating cash flow, 70% jumped, €99 million to €168 million. Looking at the Kontron Group balance sheet, you see that the equity 14% The equity ratio jumped from 35.8% to 41.8%.

The total net debt is down again, went down from €163 million to €147 million, and the working capital also improved by €63 million from over €350 million to below €300 to €287 million. You have to bear in mind that that does not include yet the cash-in we expect from the COM business deconsolidation.

We expect the cash-in from that deconsolidation in the third quarter in the amount of €126 million. That net cash-in is yet to come.

Let's have a look at the numbers in more detail, additional disclosures on the one-time effects. We had reported one-time other operating income, €87 million.

At the same time, there were further one-time costs associated with the income amounting to €66.8 million, and we had one-time income impacting net income of €15.5 million. All in all, the total income on net income was €32.4 million.

If we look at the R&D, you see that the R&D is particularly impacted by Software Solutions, we invest heavily in this segment. Over 50%, €145 €146 million was invested in R&D in this segment.

We also invest 37% in Europe and 22% and 10% in Global. The R&D spending for 2025 was also very high.

Revenue growth breakdown: if we take out the EMS revenue reduction where we went out of low-margin business and the closure of several small entities, we have to take those €60 million into account. Then we obviously had the COM business deconsolidation and the disposal of the very small one, IT service business in Hungary, where we left €70 million, resulting in an organic growth on that basis of 3.2%.

The status of the liquidity: we have €260 million cash on hand and around €200 million available lines, and we expect the €126 million of additional cash inflow from the COM business deconsolidation. Let's also have a look at the KPI development over a longer period of time, from over the last two years from 2023.

We had a 30% revenue growth, €1.6 billion €1.26 billion to €1.6 billion from 2023 to 2025. The gross margin increased from 38% to 42%.

We continue with the shifting revenue mix towards Software Solutions, and the EBITDA jumped from €126 to €237 million. Obviously, also with a one-time effect of €70 million.

The net profit also improved significantly. It's 80% up, but obviously operationally only 40% up, in line with the development of the operating cash flow.

The operating cash flow is also up 40% if you compare it from 2023 to 2025. The equity ratio is almost at the same level.

It went slightly down in between from 34% to 36% to 42% currently and is poised to further improve in 2026. You may remember that second quarter 2024 it was at over €450 million, so that is fixed after many quarters of reduced inventory and improved working capital.

We've been working on that quite heavily. The personnel has decreased.

Obviously, we have started restructuring of the Solar division in order to align it with the business and make it more agile. The net debt is currently at around €150 million.

Target is below one times EBITDA. We are within the target range already.

The portfolio streamlining, let's compare that. We've shown that already after the Q3 result presentation.

We give here an overview of what revenues have been discontinued over the last couple of years, starting obviously with the IT service business deconsolidation, the disposal to VINCI in 2022, which resulted in discontinued revenues of €390 million because we didn't have the IT service business anymore on our balance sheet. That discontinued business had a related gross margin of 30%.

The group gross margin increased by year-end 2023 already to 38%, had seen a continuous rise over the last couple of years, and that was further supported by the discontinuation of the low-margin EMS revenues and some IT service revenues. We discontinued €60 million in 2024 at a related gross margin This was very low, obviously, of only 15%.

Reported absolute gross margin increased despite that because we've acquired KATEK as well to almost €700 million. It's almost on the same level in 2025, despite the fact that we have also discontinued the COM business, we've deconsolidated of that, but the gross margin rose a bit and is expected to rise further to 43% in 2026.

All in all, we have discontinued €579 million of low-margin revenues. We used the proceeds of the disposals for acquisitions, and we made several share buyback programs as well as dividend payouts.

Looking at the development of the design-win and the backlog development: well, the design-win pipeline increased to over €8 billion for the first time, and the backlog increased also versus the third quarter to around €2.5 billion. What was driving that growth?

Obviously, Software Solutions, and in Software Solutions, in particular, the Transportation, the Defense division, but we also had some impact from 5G network access devices in the automotive sector as well as in the energy equipment manufacturing sector with power control systems, poised to get to €100 million of revenues in the coming years. With that slide, I'm handing over now to my colleague, Hannes.

Hannes Niederhauser

Good morning also from my side. I will tell you more about the strategic topics, what's happening and where we are going.

First, an overview on the three segments, what we present. Segment 1 is Europe, and Europe has most of this reshaping of the portfolio issues.

Let's say also bigger part of KATEK is in that segment. Here, we have over €109 million or we have €109 million of revenues what we reduced in the streamlining.

Still, it increased in an increase in EBITDA because we are focusing on more profitable areas. What we did, we deconsolidated this year Jumptec or computer modules as well as some EMS locations and IT business.

We closed eight companies within 26 with minor or negative profits. Europe is, by definition, the broad base of IoT products, represents half of the total revenues, and it includes a lot of pan-European, cost-efficient engineering, which is still the let's say highest USP of Kontron that we have 3,000 engineers at reasonable costs.

In those devices, it's a big step very important also for our software rollout because we are installing on all of our devices KontronOS. Some comments on '25: also in this division, at the moment, the highest volume business is defense for Bundeswehr and Bundesdruckerei and security.

If we talk about the order entry, the first six months in this segment, the order entry was soft, but in H2 came back quite reasonably, and we see, let's say in the second half of '26 and '27, in this area good growth again. Another topic what I have been asked a lot, it's not so important like for competitor Advantech, but we have currently €30 million of delinquent backlog.

That's shipments what customers ordered and we couldn't ship because of missing DRAM DDR4 or flash chips or special CPUs, all on allocation because of the AI data center trend. Finalize quite of a lot of restreaming.

Besides that, still increasing gross margin and in profitability. Next segment is Global, that's for us USA and China.

We reduced here from €238 to €213 million of revenues. That is the divestment of Jumptec what we did this year, and in reality, the revenues were flat in that area.

Profit raised a lot from €23 to €37 if we reduce the special effects from Jumptec. It's around the 10% 11% of EBITDA margin.

We see in Asia and USA and especially Southeast Asia much higher growth potential than in Europe, and we started a program to increase our revenue share outside of Europe from 14% to 30% in the next four years in our strategic program. Very proud and very helpful for us that we are ITAR approved.

ITAR is a standard for the US Army. Only let's say loyal, good companies to NATO are allowed to deliver to the US Army, and we are considered as a US company for that.

We have the ITAR approval. There's very little European companies who have ITAR approval.

In the future, we will change our segmenting, but I will come to that in a minute, and we will report more KPIs on that. If we talk about North America itself, everybody talked about the tariffs of Mr.

Trump. We don't see them because most of our products are critical and important, they are all exempt by the NAFTA free trade agreement, and we don't really have tariffs at the moment.

I don't see any big impact from all this observations tariffs up or down or whatever. The second thing in North America is especially defense and aerospace is very strong in that area, and we're going to put even more effort on that.

Asia and China: well, it's not so easy for a European company. We're doing 5% of our revenues in China.

We recently just came up with some more cooperation with Foxconn, one of the biggest companies of the world, to expand and help us to sell more in Asia. We also will start a penetration program for Southeast Asia.

That's dynamic regions like Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, which have the highest growth currently on this planet. Foxconn will help Kontron to get more footfalls in that.

The most important segment for us is Software and Solutions. It's our focus.

We are spending in that area almost two-third of the total engineering dollars, even though it's only 30% of our revenues today. We see the fastest growth in that area and especially the highest profitability.

Just with the change of the product mix, our gross margin is going on and going up all the time, increasing let's say 1% per year or more every year. We do half of our profit in that area.

Per our '23 midterm plan, that should increase to 75% of the total group's EBITDA. The group consists of IoT technology specialized for vertical markets.

Regular Kontron connects devices, robots, and everything, but here we do special functionalities, special software to meet the requirement of vertical markets. This gives the higher value for the customer and the better gross margin for us.

We do that in four areas: in defense, it's growing heavily; in high-speed trains, which is growing even more; in cybersecurity, which we hope will grow a lot; and in GreenTec, where we did hope it will grow a lot, but it did not. This segment, despite the very good result, was still burdened by the performance of GreenTec, which is shrinking and losing money.

We had a EBITDA margin in this segment of 17.5%. Excluding GreenTec, it would be 23.

The growth was 12.5%. Excluding the shrinking of GreenTec, would be 18.

Why is it so profitable? There's also a significant software share, but not just software, it's the mix of the whole solution.

Kontron is a technology leader in that area. If we talk about the four different areas within, software, as I mentioned, is profitable, but it's not exploding yet.

We think this new initiative of Cyber Resilience Act and more and more demand for security, also in our unsecure times and what we have at the moment, will give us tailwind in that area. Transportation was very successful in '24, was also very successful in '25.

We are, meanwhile, undisputed market leader for high-speed train data communication. We still have a book-to-bill of 1.34 this year.

We're the only one who really pushes and adopts to the standard of FRMCS. We're not the only one at all, but we're the only one having the full solution from the train to the radio access network, to the RAN, and to the server center.

Particularly, there's no a tender in Europe without asking Kontron to participate. Defense and aerospace have a lot of order entry in 2025.

It is growing, but we see even faster growth in '26 and '27. Today, it's also doing extremely good.

For GreenTec, we decided to start a restructuring program and to stop this huge R&D spending what we usually do in Software and Solutions. Kontron today consists of a segment Europe, a segment Global, and a segment Software and Solutions.

We're going to unify this let's say mixed structure of regional/product-wise separation to a new structure of Smart IoT, including Europe and Global, and Software and Solutions. The segment GreenTec we will adjust and redimensionate and add part of it to the Software division and part of it to ODM and Industrial division.

Part of this restructuring program. As you see, €804 million in Europe and €213 million of Global together will make the €1.077 billion of the new Smart IoT segment, because it includes also some part of the GreenTec.

Why we do it? We want to be more transparent, and this is all a product segmenting.

We still will give information on Europe and on the regions, you will get on top a second segmenting or key performance indicators on the region where we sell our products, but the segmenting here will be split in the two in the future. You see the same calculation also with the EBIT.

If you do the math, you will see that we lost €8 million in GreenTec in '25. What are the challenges of Kontron?

We feel safe because we had €164 million of cash flow, and we're really in a good financial situation to buy companies, to invest in technologies, and to buy back shares. There's two challenges what we face.

The one is solar, the other is the chip crisis. About solar, we missed the '25 plan by 28%, which had been picked up by the good performance in Transportation, high-speed trains, as well as Defense.

We generated losses in that area, and we will not bear that for the long run. We will redimensionate solar and combined activities with other divisions.

We use a lot of the wallbox/solar engineers to also support our cybersecurity activities. Some of the years also will be added to Defense.

We will maintain the business, we will not withdraw from solar. We still see some chances with the raising oil prices to participate in that.

We still have this, let's say, very good order backlog in the car industry, which is supposed to raise in '26 with wallboxes. The restructure will be complete in '26.

We will reduce our 6,600 people to a range of 6,100. There's areas like Defense and Software and Transportation where we'll still significantly grow in FTE, but in this area, we will reduce.

Seeing that program, we think we'll be back in this business to profit in Q4 '26. It will create also some restructuring cost, and as I said, 500 people.

We will try keep the wallbox business and current business and transfer to the Software division, we will find it in that in future with KPIs to give the exact numbers. Second challenge is the supply chain.

A lot of high-tech companies are facing that. If you talk about fast DDR4 DRAMs, for example, they multiplied the price.

A DRAM which costed $20 is now $110. Similar to flash chips.

The lowest problem, but also problem, is CPUs. They're all on allocation.

There's a lot of AI data centers built on this planet. They consume a lot of high-integrated semiconductors, what we also use.

This, just to see the impact on that, we were in a range of €12 million of unscheduled orders in Q4. Delinquent orders not shipped.

Currently, it's €29 million, which we will not ship in Q1 because we don't have the material. This is not losing that revenue, it's a delay of revenues.

One month ago, I was in Asia, and we started a program to Foxconn to help us on the allocation. The situation there is better.

A lot of semiconductors they do themselves, and Foxconn has better access than us on that. That's the two challenges.

Combined with other companies in that area, like Advantech or SECO, I don't see that big impact. €29 million is something like 5% of our business, it is not that crucial.

At least in Asia, they told me, "Yes, it will be expensive, but I can help you that you will be end of Q2, beginning of Q3 fully current, have no delinquent backlog." The promise is we will get all the chips what we need, but they will be more expensive.

That's to our problems. Now I talk about the technologies.

Why is solar not doing as it should? We are a high-tech company at the edge of technology.

We have really leading technologies, and we start several approaches of them. Just if one of them works, Kontron has the growth what it had the last 10 years.

If two of them work, we explode. There's always things which do not develop as we think, and that's more unsecure than, let's say, generating food or car tires or whatever, yeah?

Currently, we put our investment dollars into four areas, and we will not do any longer in connected solar systems. The highest chance for us is cybersecurity, where we see a lot of pressure.

There's the NIS 2 standard which came, there was the NIS before. Now '27, they will put the CRA standard, Cyber Resilience Act, which forces all critical components.

All our customers are only critical, yeah? We do not have simple applications.

All of them are forced to be Cyber Resilience Act compatible, which is security standard so data cannot be stolen. We even have more secure systems for defense area.

This is one of the key technologies where we spend a lot of our engineering dollars, where we see a lot of chances. At the moment, we see especially a lot of interest in that technologies, and it's on the way to come.

If we talk about 5G connectivity, this is, for example, our railway technology. There is the European target of getting 30,000 km of high-speed railways.

They all have to be controlled and connected by computers because human beings can do mistakes and destroy life. There's a lot of business to come.

I would say this business is very secure. We don't want to lose it because we are already market leader.

Defense, we spend a lot of effort this year developing special encryption method. Kontron is not doing weapons or whatever.

We do data communication systems for tanks, for airplanes. We do control systems for high-speed drones, and that's about it.

Communicate data between computers in different military equipment and encrypting it so it cannot be hacked. That's our specialty here.

The general trend, IoT, edge computing, where we see the trend which ongoing, which is growth since 10 years, 10% to 25% every year in the amount of IoT devices. Dive a little bit deeper: cybersecurity, as I said before, European Union regulations see it as a necessity to sell products in Europe.

It's software which is installed and which is paid on runtime licenses, the more we have installed, the more money we will get. In '25, we had installed some millions of devices.

We see 80 million by 2030 to come, which have huge subscription fees possible because there's €1 to €2, depending on the package what customer wants, on fees per month. Competition, since the market is just on the rise, there's many startups.

Companies like Microsoft and so forth are even cooperating with us. They're not interested in that market because it's dedicated to machine- and mission-critical.

We are in the process, in July, we will start to install on all our devices. Just to give you an idea, we sell 2 million devices a year.

Each of them has the software on it for free. Our target is everybody who wants to be Cyber Resilience Act compatible, he will enable the software and pay us €1 to €2 per month.

That's the business model. We have three products in this area: our KontronOS, it's operating system, it's very powerful concerning security, and it's quite small and focused so it can guarantee the security.

It's not a powerful multi-gigabyte software like Microsoft Windows. It's a small software, but very hard for hackers.

After we have that out, and one thing is the more we have the installed base, the more successful we will be. Advantech tried that.

I remember Software AG had a product like this. They failed in really going in that market, probably were too early.

The market is coming now strongly, and we convinced also ENERCON, our biggest shareholders, will deliver KontronOS on all its systems, even Foxconn partially, and congatec, the partner where we sold our modules, we're also cooperating to install KontronOS. All together, that will be 4 million devices per year having installed that, starting July of that year.

For our defense activities, we run VPX. This is a special standard of high-speed redundant computing.

To make it simple, a computer like this, if you take a big hammer and Mr. Rambo or somebody very strong crashes it into it, it still will work.

It's redundant in all areas and really harsh and so forth. The second thing is it has very high data bandwidth up to 40 GB to send a lot of data.

Why do we need so much data? It's a simple equation.

The more bandwidth you have, the more bandwidth you can use for security, and with higher security, you can do a lot of encryption and making the data safer. If you use, let's say, 80% of the bandwidth just to secure it, it will be almost impossible to hack it, yeah?

You need high security to be high data bandwidth to be secure. The spendings are coming in not as fast as people say, but they're coming in heavily like I never have seen it in my last 40 years of career.

With all the countries, it's not just Germany, everybody is spending money in defense. FRMCS, let's say it's the lowest chance of our key technologies in terms of market potential, but the highest chance to materialize because we have already 50% of the market of the data communication.

This new standard, FRMCS, will help us to extend it to service technicians along the railway, equipment, and signaling equipment, and so forth. Yes, with FRMCS, it will grow, and I feel we will win in that because we're the leader in that.

Key customers, just to mention: Deutsche Bahn, SNCF, Network Rail UK. It's all the rail companies in Europe, which is our customers.

Which brings me to the forecast. This year, we plan to achieve a €1.74 billion of revenues.

Here stated 1.8. Why?

Because we have some quite good chances that wallbox will take off this year, but we don't know if it will be this year or next year, depending on that, we see 1.74 or €1.8 billion. EBITDA plan is €225 million, but in an operative way, organic way, which will be burdened by the solar restructuring cost for this year.

I talked a lot about the technologies for the future, where, as I said, we hope that two of them will explode. Based on that, we see by 2030 €2.6 billion of revenues, so that's growing of 50% 60%, but we see another doubling of EBITDA to €420 million and an increase in EBITDA margins.

We will release also numbers on that because the whole thing is driven by Software and Solutions, which should be, by 2030, 75% of our total EBITDA. We will release, obviously, the numbers on the three divisions in Software and Solutions, we'll release the number of devices what we ship in that area, and also the numbers of software and cybersecurity installations, which gives you also the transparency to see which of this three key technologies grow up heavily and which are more slower going, yeah?

Good. Thanks for attention, and if you have questions, please go now.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press 9 and the star key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to cancel your question, press 3 and the star key again.

If you have questions, please press 9 and the star key to ask the question. The first question is from Mr.

Orlof Price from OK Consult. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much for the open presentation. Two questions basically.

Very few people understood that the share buybacks are not in addition to the dividend, but instead of it. Given your rich cash position, is that decision final, especially regarding quite some fund managers are allocating only dividend-paying shares and so Kontron would not be eligible for them anymore?

Of course, in the long run, your earnings are the value creator, but on the short run, for the price of the stock, it only matters if there are more sellers than buyers, or the other way around. That would be the first question.

The second one regarding defense: do you see any chance in getting business in that huge mess that Rohde & Schwarz created with DLBO business, wasting about €20 billion and not getting anything done? My understanding of the situation is right now it's being decided if that can be helped with external help, or basically you need to increase dependence on American technology by buying the Harris systems and basically waste all the efforts that have been undergone so far.

You say that you're the leader in cybersecurity, and especially you're deploying easy software, so that would be a match. Do you see any chance on capitalizing on that?

Hannes Niederhauser

Yes, we see a chance. We are, let's say, more in the boat and in bed with Rheinmetall than Rohde & Schwarz.

We are a supplier of those kind of companies and not the person selling directly to the different defense companies like Deutsche Bundeswehr. We see a chance, and for sure, also this DLBO business will be distributed to other German suppliers.

We're also with Hensoldt and several companies in that area, I think it's positive, and we see that also already in our order entry. Talking about the dividend: well, as you see, we already stated that this program of share buyback could be extended to even more than €50 million.

We talked to several major shareholders of Kontron, and they preferred in the current situation where Kontron is trading at four, five times EBITDA to gain more value by buying back shares. If you have more money, we will buy more shares than €50 million rather than paying a dividend, yeah, at this level.

This is also coming from our current investors, and obviously, there's also investors who would have liked to get more dividend, but we got a clear voting spending as much as possible in share buybacks.

Do you think there might be some middle ground of paying at least a very small dividend just for people to be able to stick to the stocks and still follow their own rules? Because if they like it or not, if you have a fund that only considers dividend-paying companies, you have to sell, if you're convinced in the stock or not.

A minimum dividend might be a middle ground to resolve that problem.

Hannes Niederhauser

That might be a argument, yeah. Cash-wise, Kontron can easily do both, but at the moment, it is what it is, and our shareholder meeting will take place in two, three months.

Thank you for considering. That's fine with me.

Thanks a lot. Bye.

Operator

The next question is from Mr. Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF.

You can go ahead.

Adrian Pehl

Yes, hi, gentlemen. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. Actually, first of all, on the topic around the Asian strategy, let's call it this way.

Kontron has never been a stock necessarily where the Asian revenue share was so high, finally. Now it seems like that this strategy is coming a little bit late in my view.

I just wondered if you had already any kind of binding agreements, both to do more business in terms of revenues, and secondly, on the component procurement that we're talking about, like DRAMs, etc., that would really secure that you have the supply in place. That's my first one.

The second one is on the Europe segment. Obviously, we had the discussion in Q3 about EBIT loss, and it seems that in Q4 there was another EBIT loss and significant decline of revenues in Q4, even if you take out the Jumptec revenues finally.

I was wondering if that is something we should be considering also some cost measures and structural measures to take place. A question associated with that, I've got a little bit confused with all the kind of in the presentation on divestments, etc.

What is the status, please, of the disposal of the remaining Austrian IT service business here? Then I might have one or two follow-ups.

Hannes Niederhauser

Okay. The Austrian IT services, well, let's say it's something what does not fit in the focus of Kontron.

Times are not very good to get high prices. We are still talking to several interested parties, but we will not sell Austria under price because it's a performing entity making profit.

There's no need to donate it to somebody, yeah? Once we have a good opportunity, we'll do it, but not at a too low price.

The other thing what we really wanted to do is we are currently, let's say, cleaning up and some of the KATEK business what we acquired was not really that fulfilling our expectation, let's put it this way. This we are currently reducing, and there is the most portfolio cleaning.

As a high-tech company, you will have a constant mix of product portfolio, particularly if you have the strategy to go from 25% what we had 10 years ago to 50% what we will have in five years, yeah? That needs different product, that needs more technology, and that's what we call portfolio cleanup, but that's not something what ever will stop at Kontron because there's a long way to go to the 50 or later even more percent of gross margin.

If we talk about the revenues what you mentioned, well, there's one issue that, for example, our Software and Solutions business did grow 23% in '25. That's doing extremely well.

We had GreenTec losing 28% this year, and the other areas are more or less slightly growing, 5%, yeah? That's the mix what we see, we have light and shadow.

And 50% of the profits generated by cybersecurity, trains, and defense, and that 50% grow a lot. Now we have other areas like GreenTec, which is shrinking, and we don't, let's say, waste our time to try to get that rolling.

It's much more dollars spent in defense will bring us better return.

Adrian Pehl

On Asia?

Hannes Niederhauser

Asia, it was never important for us. We had some business.

For example, our solution for airplanes went well. This Asia is still a good growing market, and that's why we are seeking a closer cooperation with Foxconn on the market.

Foxconn helped us to get Air China and those solutions. We're currently talking to some railway applications.

With specialized technology, price is not so important. There's also good chances in China.

I would say the lower-hanging fruits is really at the moment USA.

Adrian Pehl

Coming back actually to the GreenTec business, or let's phrase it the business you bought from KATEK actually, on the side of wallboxes, what's the status with Volkswagen in that way? Obviously, call-offs have been very low, we have seen this already quite a while.

Is there a kind of a breaking point where you at some period say, "Hey, it doesn't really make sense anymore"? On the other hand, Volkswagen, I understood, has to fulfill finally the obligation of the volumes that have been put into contract.

Is there any chance to do this? A question linked to that, which is, I think, going to the same kind of logic, you've been saying that also the inverter business, you might see some good growth.

On the other hand, I was just wondering, isn't there a chance now to put a good end to it and stop both wallbox and inverter business? Wouldn't this be more clear-cut?

Hannes Niederhauser

The wallbox, for sure, we will not stop. Volkswagen call-offs have been low, and we stated in our revenues €740 to €1,800.

There is considerations inside Volkswagen to equip every car with a wallbox. If that works, the volume will work very good, and so the new models coming, which is CUPRA and ID.

Polo, they might be equipped with wallbox forever car what you buy, and then the volume is, let's say, growing a lot. If they don't do that, then the volume will be not as high, and we have to talk about how to solve the situation because our contract is binding.

We see a chance that will happen, and that would push wallbox sales a lot. If we talk about solar inverters, well, Hello?

Adrian Pehl

Yes, still here.

Hannes Niederhauser

Yeah. From our major customers, 60% are in major financial troubles.

Even despite the good share price, the numbers of SMA Solar are not good, this business is not coming back that fast. We significantly reduce our costs, that's what we do, point one.

We don't put big money in new developments, that's the second thing. In case of this let's see Iranian war will take in the next 5 years, we see a renaissance of photovoltaic, and we will be able to participate, that's the idea.

At the moment, we don't spend big money in great products we'll ship in four years because we believe more it will not happen than it will happen. That's the situation.

We will save the cost, yeah? We have around 1,000 people in the area, and it will be, let's say, almost half after it, yeah.

Adrian Pehl

Right. Two final ones before I jump in the queue, very quick ones.

Actually, in that guidance of €1.75 to €1.8 billion, how much of that is wallbox-related? Is it €100 million roughly,

Hannes Niederhauser

or— €60 million.

Adrian Pehl

€60? Okay.

Hannes Niederhauser

No, the Volkswagen is the gap.

Adrian Pehl

All right. Understood.

Then, not sure if this is a question for Clemens, actually, just a bit of housekeeping, on the one-offs, obviously, you had in 2025 this €220 million adjusted EBITDA. I guess the market might have been expecting rather something like reported 270, the delta being obviously the Jumptec gain, but it was lower.

I got a little bit lost on what else you put in as a negative in terms of the adjustments that you did.

Clemens Billek

Sure. This is yeah, slightly different than we anticipated when we announced the deal because taxes and the goodwill was not finally booked, there was a shift of taxes and goodwill in the end.

Eventually, if you look at the figures, there is this €87 million of one-off impact of the one-off operating income

Adrian Pehl

on

Clemens Billek

this transaction. Then you have obviously also one-off costs this year, and that's around €25 million of obsolete inventory, staff, and other operating expenses.

Then we have €11 million of provisions and R&D overstated. We had to write it off in the course of the winding down of that business lines.

We had €19 million of closing costs. It's not related to the COM business only, but we also winded down some subsidiaries, for example, in Lithuania, which was acquired by KATEK, but which didn't make sense in the long term.

We have €5 million of account receivable write-down as a one-off and €10 million other costs. That sums up to the around €70 million of one-off cost effects you have to deduct from the €87 million conceptually.

Adrian Pehl

So—

Hannes Niederhauser

On the other side, well, we said we have €40 million of special effects,

Adrian Pehl

but

Hannes Niederhauser

those effects are not impacting all of them EBITDA. If you count together the EBITDA impact and the other impacts which are below EBITDA in the finance and in the tax cost, we come to €33 million again or 34.

It's also that we estimated all the effects in EBITDA, but some of them are below and some are above. If you look at the netting comes the special effects was €33 million, yeah?

All right.

Adrian Pehl

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Tim Wunderlich from Cantor Fitzgerald. You can go ahead, please.

Tim Wunderlich

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Good morning. I have only a few questions left.

Sorry if I missed this, but you talk about an M&A contribution in your guidance for 2030, and could you quantify the impact that you expect from M&A on your midterm guidance? Then also, when would you expect to execute a larger transaction once again?

Is that already something that could happen in the course of this year? That's my first question, and then I have a follow-up.

Hannes Niederhauser

On M&A, yes, we had a very good cash flow this year, we are looking at M&A again, and there will something happen in '26, might be also something bigger. Let's see how it goes, but we are talking to some applications.

If we talk about the whole plan until 2030, we assume usually our growth always in a mix of M&A and organic, let's say, half half M&A and half organic. I would say slightly more organic.

Tim Wunderlich

Understood. I think on one slide, you talked about the cybersecurity, the AI Shield, and the subscription fees that you're getting from that and the targets, the goals that you have for 2030.

I don't know if I saw the number correctly, but I think it was €500 million subscription revenue by 2030, which seems to me to be quite high. Is that a blue-sky scenario, are you just talking about the total addressable market for you, and if that is the case, what is the kind of realistic scenario that you're pricing into your 2030 guidance?

Hannes Niederhauser

We're doing, at the moment, €140 million in our Software department. Out of that, the subscription fees depending how they are calculated for part of product or whatever, I'd see for this new product is in a range of €20 million at the moment.

It is a cumulative numbers because if you install a software, let's say, '26, you still will get subscription fee in '28. Whatever we ship, all of that will come, and our idea is to convince a certain percentage of the shipped products and to have this 80 million installations.

They usually will buy the cheapest packages, only KOS. Currently, we have people who pay €10 per month also, yeah, depending on application.

The assumption is the big volume will be €1 per month. That's where it comes from.

What do we need for that revenues? For sure, we need to send patches, updates, and so forth, we assume here a gross margin of 80% in that area.

Tim Wunderlich

Okay. I think you said the true revenue inflection point will only happen in 2028, right, because first you give or at least some of the software capabilities to the customers for free, and then after a certain period, you're going to charge?

Hannes Niederhauser

This is the volume, but we ship already KOS in '25. We have already revenue in this product.

Tim Wunderlich

You're going to grow this business significantly already through 2028?

Hannes Niederhauser

Yes.

Tim Wunderlich

All right, understood. Then my last one, it's just once again regarding the IT service business in Austria and talking about selling this.

I understand you're not that advanced in the process, but I just want to make sure. The possible divestment of this service business is not reflected in your revenue guidance 2026, is that correct?

Correct.

Hannes Niederhauser

Correct.

Tim Wunderlich

The revenue that you generate with IT services, Austria?

Hannes Niederhauser

€78 million in last year.

Tim Wunderlich

All right. That was very helpful.

Thanks. Thank you so much.

Operator

The next question is from Malte Schaumann from M.M.Warburg Research. You can go ahead, please.

Malte Schaumann

Yes, good morning, gentlemen. The first one is on the margin guidance.

You guide for 1 percentage point decline in the adjusted EBITDA margin from 13.8% to 12.8%, but at the same time, you indicate to expect growing gross margin up to 43%, this is 1 percentage point ahead of last year. In between, you're losing then 2 percentage points in additional costs in the personnel expense or operating expense.

Maybe you can add some more color what are the moving parts here.

Hannes Niederhauser

Can you repeat?

Malte Schaumann

Yes. You guide for €225 million in adjusted EBITDA on sales of 1.75 or 1 1,800,

Hannes Niederhauser

so

Malte Schaumann

that's a 12.8% EBITDA margin, which compares with the 13.8% margin achieved last year, so that's 1 percentage point less. At the same time, you indicate to expect 1 percentage point increase in the gross margin, in between, you then have to lose 2 percentage points elsewhere, and color

Hannes Niederhauser

would be good. Where do they come from?

Malte Schaumann

Yep.

Hannes Niederhauser

Two issues. We planned again to increase our spending in this key technologies what I mentioned, here we see a 10% 15% increase in R&D cost what we do.

The second thing is, despite the product mix, Well, the restructuring is in anyway, yeah, the 25 what I mentioned. It's mainly R&D cost, let's say.

Restructuring is taken care of.

Malte Schaumann

Okay. Okay.

I think you need nearly 1 percentage point, and restructuring is probably after adjusted, but yeah, I can understand.

Hannes Niederhauser

It's the 25, it's not more. The number is calculated, yeah?

Malte Schaumann

Yeah. I think the 225 are excluding restructuring, including, it's probably 200.

Yeah.

Hannes Niederhauser

It is mainly the R&D spendings what we talk about, yeah?

Malte Schaumann

Okay. Then on the memory part, can you share what is the memory volume you're buying per year for your products, semiconductor memory?

Hannes Niederhauser

I have the number of parts in allocation. This is not just memory, but also flash chips and some CPUs, and that volume is in the range of $120 million.

Malte Schaumann

Do you have a gut feeling, the pure memory figure, would that be more than half? More than half.

More than half. Do you see a price impact?

Memory prices are surging quite significantly, is there a kind of margin headwind coming from that area?

Hannes Niederhauser

Kontron is not impacted on this as much as, for example, Advantech or other embedded companies. The reason is simple: like for high-speed train, which consists a lot of it of software, nobody cares if the memory is $100 more expensive or not in a system of $50,000, yeah?

I don't see us impacted as much as others, but we are. We have quite good pressure and market power to pass on that prices to the customers.

Malte Schaumann

Okay. Are there some contracts maybe left where you're not allowed to pass forward the increased memory prices,

Hannes Niederhauser

or

Malte Schaumann

you think you can mitigate these effects

Hannes Niederhauser

largely? Yes.

Malte Schaumann

Yes.

Hannes Niederhauser

There will be a area of one to two months depending on contract where we cannot pass on because we are already in the shipping period, yeah, and but also the memories what we buy, the higher prices come with some delays. At the end, at the ramping up of what we call PPVs, purchase price variances, we have this in our contract clauses all the time.

There is some impact at the beginning, but that impact is already swallowed and done.

Malte Schaumann

Okay. M&A '26, is something included in your guidance on the M&A side, or is that purely organic?

Hannes Niederhauser

Organic.

Malte Schaumann

Are there potential targets? Is there something you're currently looking at and which might be realized during the year?

Hannes Niederhauser

We're looking at Software and Solutions. We have targets in the train business, we have targets with more targets in the defense business.

The software business is too expensive, we cannot pay for that, yeah? The security business, it pays very high prices.

That's where we look at. As I said before, we invest 65% of our business in Software and Solutions for R&D, and M&A we will also invest in Software and Solutions only.

Malte Schaumann

Yeah. Thanks.

Operator

The next question is from Veysel Taze. The floor is yours from Metzler.

Veysel Taze

Hi. Good morning.

Veysel Taze from Metzler. Few questions left from my side.

The first one really on your Q4 performance and more on the revenue side. In November, the guidance was around €1.7 billion sales, and now we ended up the year with €1.6 billion, €100 million in shortfall, to say.

What was exactly the weakness? Where did this come from versus your expectation?

Hannes Niederhauser

Wallboxes to Volkswagen where we had the contract, and they didn't call off enough. The second is solar, it came almost everything out of that.

Veysel Taze

The entire miss, the €100 million basically, to your GreenTec business, right?

Hannes Niederhauser

We had a plan of €300 million. We had last year €200 million.

We came this year to €160. The plan was to ship a lot of wallboxes to Volkswagen, which might happen this year if the Volkswagen Polo will ramp up.

Most of it is that area where the call-offs didn't come as expected.

Veysel Taze

Got it. Related to this also your 2026 guidance basically implies incremental sales let's say midpoint roughly €50 million or €60 million increase.

This is really also again dependent from the wallbox business, right? You said I think in one of the questions, it's around €60 million in your guidance, the wallbox business.

Yeah.

Hannes Niederhauser

No, it's not in the guidance. Our guidance is 1,740.

We guide conservative, and we say there is the Volkswagen business not in.

Veysel Taze

We say there's a chance

Hannes Niederhauser

€60 million more could be if it pops up, but the guidance is €1,740, yeah?

Veysel Taze

Got it. Basically, your guidance would be positively inflected if you get the wallbox business from Volkswagen.

Hannes Niederhauser

Yes.

Veysel Taze

Okay. A €60 million from this.

Then this €60 million, I understand so far from your press release that this is loss-making still till Q4 2026, right? The €60 million if it would come.

Hannes Niederhauser

That would not make losses, the €60 million, because then we don't make losses. The wallboxes will make money.

Veysel Taze

The wallboxes will make

Hannes Niederhauser

The gross margins in GreenTec are not bad. They're quite quite good, but the fixed cost is too high, the R&D cost is too high.

If we just ship the material, it will almost everything go to profit, and we're not losing on that. It will help us on the bottom line.

Veysel Taze

How much is in your guidance total GreenTec for 2026? Can you give a number?

Without the €60 million, right?

Hannes Niederhauser

GreenTec will not go on and be a own division in '26. There will be €60 million going to—

Veysel Taze

Really, if you take the old business, right? I just want to get a sense how your GreenTec business in your expectations is expected to develop year-over-year.

That's just what I want.

Hannes Niederhauser

From the €160 in '25, it might reach €120 in '26.

Veysel Taze

Okay.

Hannes Niederhauser

And

Veysel Taze

100 Sorry, €120, right, you said?

Hannes Niederhauser

Maybe in that range. If this big contract is shipping, it will be €180.

Veysel Taze

Got it. Got it.

Got it. Then on your pure software business, really not the solutions, just a software, how much was that in 2025?

I think you mentioned the number, but I—

Hannes Niederhauser

140.

Veysel Taze

€140 million, okay. In your 2026, what is your expectation this number will look like?

Hannes Niederhauser

It should grow in a pace of between 180 and 200.

Veysel Taze

180 to 200, okay. Got it.

This explains the gross margin improvement you are alluding to, right? Okay.

Then on your order backlog, your order backlog keeps growing, but at the same time, it does not really translate into sustainable top-line growth. Can you just remind me a little bit from design-win to order entry, when do you consider something as order entry and really tangible order book?

Hannes Niederhauser

The gap is basically on three different three bigger contracts. One is the Volkswagen, that's a contract of almost €300 million, and it's not shipping as it should.

That's obviously in the backlog because it's a legal order. The second is the NADs, the 5G for the autonomous driving systems.

We got a 200 and no, 300 in We have two contracts, yeah, for the new generation of data connectivity for autonomous driving cars, and we got that contract 1 year ago, or 12 months ago, and we have to develop a lot for this. This is currently in design, and as we always stated, we'll start to ship in Q4 '26.

The third is a lot of defense contracts for VPX, which are simply slow in the installations with Bundeswehr and other armies. That is also very not bureaucratic, but let's say very conservative areas how they ramp up.

We have a big pile of defense contracts in front of us, we have the NAD contract with us, and we have the Volkswagen contract with us, that contract who is, let's say, delayed by the customer and not by us, yeah.

Veysel Taze

Okay. The 5G module part, you were going to give a number, but if you're willing to share a number, if not, it's okay, but in the backlog.

Hannes Niederhauser

I told you, it's around 300. We ship something, probably 280, yeah.

Maybe 280. We're getting in hearing cost in that area.

Veysel Taze

Got it. Got it.

Okay. Then, I think Tim Wunderlich was asking the question for 2030 software, the €500 million.

Are the €500 million in your 2030 midterm outlook, or what is the software part there?

Hannes Niederhauser

In this outlook, we included €300 million.

Veysel Taze

€300 million software, okay, great. Thank you very much.

Hannes Niederhauser

Not software, but KOS. Software will be more.

That's

Veysel Taze

the cybersecurity part.

Hannes Niederhauser

Yes.

Veysel Taze

Cybersecurity 300, and what would be then software?

Hannes Niederhauser

We have currently €140 million and €20 million in this cybersecurity, there's a regular business and more than €100 million on top of that.

Veysel Taze

Got it. Then both with gross margin like you alluded to, around 80%, right?

Makes no difference.

Hannes Niederhauser

The standard business what we do in software has 67 at the moment.

Veysel Taze

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

At the moment, there seem to be no further questions.

Hannes Niederhauser

Oh, good. Thanks for your interest in Kontron, thanks for your listening to our explanations, and hopefully to talk to you soon again.