NORMA Group SE

NORMA Group SE

15.03
EUR
-0.04
(-0.27%)
-0.89EPS
1.91P/E
509.88MMarket Cap
Nov 03Next Earn

Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 5, 2026

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your patience.

Welcome to the NORMA Group Q1 2026 results webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone.

You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To ensure that the session runs as smoothly as possible and is easy for all participants to follow, we kindly ask that you raise your questions one at a time.

In other words, if you have more than one question, please wait for the answer to the current question before moving on to your next one. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to Birgit Seeger, Chief Executive Officer of NORMA Group. Please go ahead.

Birgit Seeger

Thank you. A very warm welcome from my side to all of you listening to this call.

This is actually the first full quarterly report as the new CEO of NORMA together with the new CFO, Okan Celiker, today. As usual, after the presentation, you will have the opportunities to ask your questions, and we are very happy to answer them.

We will share some of the results we have in our Q1 and also share some of the changes we have introduced since the start of new NORMA, which we see some effective already in the Q1 results. Here you see our usual disclaimer.

Please pay attention to this one. As we've done in the full earnings call from 2025, we will differentiate between new NORMA and former NORMA.

The focus is on new NORMA, and some topics we still talk about the former NORMA, and this is highlighted in the presentation. Now we have a look at the Q1 milestones and achievements.

I have to say I'm very happy that we see a very good improvement in our profitability, which is 3.1 percentage point year-over-year improved. This is basically coming from a cost discipline in all cost areas, and a big thank you to all of our colleagues who made this happen with us.

We see also secondly from the pricing efforts we have taken in positive effects, which is also, of course, contributing to the profitability. We see in our sales still some slight issues which we are working on.

Debt repayment, a very positive, based on the water divestment, we are net debt-free currently. A very good basis for new NORMA.

The transformation program is progressing exactly as we have planned and as we have communicated and announced to you. We are simplifying, streamlining our organization.

The cost measures are well underway according to plan and committed. We will share with you in a moment some new business wins, just some examples.

We see also in M&E strong contract, and I will share one example from our Industrial Applications business area what we could win, which is just an example from several wins in this area. We confirm our guidance, our outlook for the financial year 2026, also based on the results we have seen in quarter one.

Of course, we are still careful with the year going ahead. However, we are confident to confirm and to see the financial year guidance.

Now let's move our attention to our business win. This is an example from Mobility and New Energy.

We see a very nice sale here what we could achieve actually with a very nice profitability for one of our customers, a major contract. SOP is in 2029.

Now you may say, "Well, this is only in three years." However, this is important for us.

This is the nature of our business. This case quite in 2029, and some of the sales we see an SOP in '27 and '28 already.

However, the duration is for seven years, it gives us a very nice and stable business. The fluid lines we have sold to our customer are improving the emission regulation and are used in internal combustion engine and in hybrids.

This is very nice and very important. I think we are all aware hybrids are gaining attractions and will stay in the market, the forecast for quite many years.

With this, we move on to our Industrial Applications area where we have several industries in focus. Actually, we have seven focus industries where we are working on.

This is one achievement of our sales team, which we have really positioned in a different way now. We have sold to a company building machines to basically clean bottles.

Our FGR, what we call it, a very nice sale. We could actually win this because our service is really better than the competitor.

Our price was acceptable, and we have a fantastic relationship and could give technical advice which convinced our customer that we are the right partner for this kind of business. This is actually a product, the FGR, what you see here on the slide, what we have on hand.

This proves again that we have the right products. In some cases, we will work on adaptations.

This is a nice case where we have the product on hand and we can use this in this industry, and there's several other industries which are out to sell this kind of products. Let's move on now to the new NORMA, to the industrial powerhouse, what I shared last time with you.

This is basically a reminder and giving some more insights what we have achieved so far. The pillar number one to the left is the restructuring.

This is a transformation project. We have simplified the organization in a first step.

We are not done with this, but we have started and see first achievements. Basically, we want to have SG&A which are competitive, which fit to new NORMA, and this is what we are working against.

The new organization will be really oriented against the performance. We have done this in the sales organization already, and the whole organization will be also measured against business KPIs, and the one NORMA business will be the focus.

The second pillar is the footprint. We reported already that we could close our footprint measures in China already very successfully.

In North America, in Mexico, we are on the way currently as we speak, and we are evaluating currently what is the right footprint setup for plants and for sites for the NORMA Group. We will in the second half of this year also present our targeted operational and also structural measures to come up with a new NORMA footprint.

The third pillar is the sales push. As you have seen already, we confirm already this measure that we are having a bigger order intake.

We could improve here, just shared these two examples. We will increase also our plant utilization, which is very important to use the capacity we have, to use the assets we have already, and to have a strong customer focus.

Here, I want to give you some insights in what we do. Actually, in February, we have brought together our sales team here and had a start of the year with clearly identifying what is the new way of selling, what is our pricing strategy, what is our calculation methodology.

We need to be fast. We need to be competitive, of course.

We need to be really profitable, and we have seen already the first results of this. Actually, I was two weeks ago at a customer, and they really confirmed that they see different behavior and they have given us now additional business and really show and give us more RFQs, we could gain more business.

The fourth pillar to the right, which is called growth, this is currently running on a low key, is more for the midterm, which could include an M&A transaction. We are building the pipeline currently.

However, because we have a lot of homework in pillars one, two, and three, which is the focus this year, and this is what we are focusing on, and with a little bit of resources, we are also working on the fourth pillar. From this one, we go on to give you a concrete example what we have delivered already in the transformation.

We have implemented the SBU structure or more the business-orientated structure as focus on the SBU, giving more responsibility there. We will change our reporting as of the year 2027 to a business unit segment reporting, which follows the steering we are currently implementing in NORMA Group.

Secondly, the shared service center, and you see a photo from Novi Sad in Serbia, what we are expanding. We have about 80 people working there in different functions, from HR, from sales, from supply chain, and various other functions, where we are bundling our resources and sharing really also processes, making use of digitalization, and run this shared service center where we see very positive results.

SG&A improvements we have seen in the US and in Europe headcount reduction with voluntary leavers program, which are running according to plan, a little bit better, and we foresee that we go ahead as planned and communicated to you already. Performance orientation, this is basically the sales push based on the agreements with our sales team.

We see really that we can build on the very strong gross margin we have in NORMA and really fix our top-line situation. Then to give you the key KPIs, our net sales in the Q1 2026 is €208.6 million, slightly lower than one year ago.

The basic effects are exchange rate effects, also some organic or some volume effects. Lucky enough, or it's a good message, is that we are having an organic growth in industrial applications, which is, of course, our focus in the growth areas.

Adjusted EBIT with €6.3 million, a significant improvement towards last year's Q1, and this translate into the adjusted EBIT margin of 3%. This is really the big step forward we have made.

Of course, we are careful for the year ahead, and we are also very careful at managing the cost situation and, of course, also the sales side. Net operating cash flow negative, this is former NORMA, very important to notice, and we will later on explain how this comes together here.

With this, I will hand over to Okan to give us some more insight in the key financials.

Okan Celiker

Exactly. Here on the next slide, and also a warm welcome from my side, everyone.

Very happy to be here and very happy also to engage with you for our quarter one results. Let's deep dive a little bit more into the financial development of Q1.

As Birgit mentioned earlier, a quite solid quarter in the year 2026 in terms of sales. We reached €208.6 million, which is a year-over-year development of -5.7%.

As already mentioned by Birgit, main driver of this decline is attributable to FX headwinds we saw globally of €9.7 million, of which €6.8 million were related to the US dollar development and €1.9 million to the renminbi in the China region. In terms of volume and pricing impact, we managed to reach an organic growth of -1.3%, which represents €2.8 million.

That means on a volume basis, the business declined. However, we could offset this by positive pricing impacts, which led then overall to the -1.3% year on year.

Let's move to the next slide to deep dive a little bit more into the performance of our business units, starting with the Industry Applications business on the left-hand side. We ended the year with €66.3 million in quarter one.

This represents a decline of -0.6% year on year. Main drivers here have been, again, the aforementioned currency impact, which basically impacted the development by -5.4% year on year.

In terms of volume and pricing impact, important to emphasize here, also mentioned already by Birgit, we've been able to increase our performance in the Industry Applications business organically with 4.9% year on year, which was mainly driven by a stronger demand in the APAC region and a ramp-up of a major project in specifically the APAC region again. Let's look at the Mobility and New Energy business.

Here, we achieved €142.3 million in the first quarter. This represents a decline of -7.9% year on year.

Main drivers here have been a softer automotive demand, which led to a decline on a volume and pricing side represented by -3.9%, and again, a currency impact also in the Mobility and New Energy business at -3.9% year on year. On the next slide, we see the regional development.

Again, starting on the left side with the Americas region. Q1 and 2026, we achieved €65 million sales in the Americas region.

This represents a decline of -10.9% year on year, again mainly driven by FX and also by the softer automotive demand, as already mentioned. However, at the same time, we've been able to improve our EBIT margin by 1 percentage points year on year and with that reach 4.6%, which is mainly due to positive pricing impacts in the Americas region in the first quarter as well as tight cost management in the region.

Moving over to the EMEA region, here we reached €114.1 million in the first quarter compared to quarter 1 2025. This represents a decline of -2.9% year on year.

Also here, we achieved a very significant improvement of our EBIT margin, 4.6 percentage points compared to Q1 2025. Main drivers here have been operational improvements and also a tight cost management.

Next is the APAC region. The first quarter sales are at €29.5 million, which represents a decline again compared to Q1 2025 of -3.8% year on year.

Also here, we've been able to hold the strong EBIT margin that we saw in the full year 2025 above 10%, which is a very solid performance. Again, underlines the fact that we've been able to sustainably improve the operational situation in the region and at the same time are very disciplined with our spendings and cost structures.

Let's move to the next slide. On the next slide, we see more details on our adjusted EBIT development.

We already saw the €6.3 million of adjusted EBIT representing 3% EBIT margin in Q1 2026. From left to right, we see basically the main impacts or the drivers that supported this improvement, significant improvement from an adjusted EBIT in Q1 2025 at almost zero, which was mainly impacted, let's say, on a volume and price basis by the weakening demand that has been mentioned.

This basically led to a reduction of €7 million in terms of volume and pricing impact. At the same time, we can see that across the material, personnel costs, and other OpEx elements, we've been able to offset this negative impact from the volume reduction.

Starting with the material costs, the impact year on year was at €8.7 million. Main driver here have been a positive mix or favorable mix and at the same time also an improved material cost ratio compared to Q1 2025.

In terms of personnel costs, we could achieve an improvement of roughly €3 million, €2.9 million, mainly a consequence of a lower headcount and improvement in the personnel cost area. Other OpEx, plus €2.5 million.

This underlines again the aforementioned disciplined cost management across the organization and basically helped to support the improvement of our EBIT globally. D&A and FX, largely stable compared to Q1 2025.

Just to round up what Birgit already described in terms of the transformation program, in the first quarter, our transformation program contributed another €3.8 million to our results compared to Q1 2025. On the next slide, I will briefly walk you through the Q1 operational adjustments and outlook full year 2026.

In the first quarter, adjustments were limited and fully in line with our expectations on EBITDA level. We basically had an adjustment related to transformation, severance, and project costs of €0.6 million.

On EBIT level, we had an adjustment in total of €1.9 million, which includes an additional €1.1 million amortization of PPA. In terms of net profit, the adjustment is at a total of €1.4 million, and this is post-tax.

For the full year, this means basically that our expectations are remaining unchanged. We are still expecting a total of approximately €24 million of adjustments on the EBITDA level and €29 million adjustments on our EBIT level.

Here on the next slide, we will give you some more details, as mentioned earlier, on the Q1 2026 cash flow development. It's important to emphasize that on the left-hand side, our adjusted EBITDA in Q1 2026 is representing former NORMA.

So €20.7 million adjusted EBITDA includes the Water Management business. This is in line with the provisions of IFRS 5 that we applied, let's say, in context with the Water Management sale that took place in the beginning of this year.

Our net operating cash flow ultimately ended up at -€19.7 million, and the main driver of this negative development was the trade working capital impact with -€33.6 million, of which a significant impact was again related to the sale of the Water Management business. Here, particularly, we basically had to adjust for or could adjust for the supply chain financing program that have been reduced in the context of the sale, as well as a seasonal inventory-related effect out of the Water Management business, which is also part of the €32.7 million that you see here on the page.

From our net operating cash flow, if we then also deduct the interest and the tax, as well as the proceeds from the repayments of the derivatives, we get to our external free cash flow of -€29.2 million. Again, important to emphasize is here, without the one-off impact out of the Water Management sale, our net operating cash flow would have been positive, which underlines that new NORMA has a positive cash generation also in the quarter 1 2026.

On the next slide, we will briefly recap on the balance sheet reset and initial shareholder returns. Starting with the water management divestment, which has been concluded according to the time plan and schedule, we could basically get the net proceeds as planned of approximately €650 million post-tax in full year 2026.

With that, also according to our plan and previous announcement, we parked basically or earmarked a debt repayment of three of up to €300 million. In the first quarter, €290 million were already repaid, and with that, we are basically very close at the communicated €300 million.

The remaining debt is basically consisting of promissory notes with different maturities. Also included in the €98 million are basically leases round about €20 million.

In terms of shareholder return, we've communicated that we are committed to return to our shareholders a total of €260 million, of which €53 million have been returned already in early Q2 2026 via public share buyback offer, as you know. With that, we can basically conclude that all in all, we are on track to reach the €70 to €90 million net cash position by the end of 2026 and again also confirm what we've shared with you within our communication 31st March this year.

With that, Birgit, back to you.

Birgit Seeger

Thanks, Okan, for giving us these insights into the key financials. You heard it was an encouraging start for NORMA Group in the year 2026.

We have clearly defined actions on our transformation journey to build new NORMA, to build an industrial powerhouse, and we are fully engaged to make this happen. The year 2026, we have quite volatile external surrounding, but we are working fully on our homework to make this a successful complete year in 2026.

Given the situation, we confirm our guidance, and just to remind you, the net sales we foresee in the range of 0% to 2% growth. The adjusted EBIT margin we see in the range of approximately 2% to 4%, and the net operating cash flow we see approximately between €10 million and €20 million.

We have promised, and we still keep this, that in the second half of this year we will invite and give a strategy update with more insights on our target vision for the year 2028. With this, I say thanks for the attention, and we open up for questions.

Thank you.

Okan Celiker

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press *11 on your telephone.

That is *11 to ask a question. We will now take our first question.

One moment, please. Our first question today comes from the line of Nikita Papaccio from Deutsche Bank.

Please go ahead.

Nikita Papaccio

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions.

The first one, it's on your guidance. With your EBIT margin, you're already in line with your guidance range, while the sales are significantly down compared to the 0% to 2%.

What are you seeing going forward this year? Do you expect H2 to be stronger, for example, compared to H1 due to orders kicking in and restructuring measures, or what should we see here?

Birgit Seeger

Yes. Thanks, Mrs.

Papaccio, for this question. Yes, we see the next quarters actually to be somewhat stronger.

We have some measures in our hands which we are working on to ensure that we can meet the guidance of 0% to 2%. As you have seen in the Q1, we are quite lower.

Of course, the exchange rate was not playing in our favor, but also without exchange rate. With the EBIT margin, as you said, we are in line.

We are, of course, also working on this to keep this. For this reason, we keep the guidance and we confirm the guidance.

Nikita Papaccio

Thank you. If you think about your adjusted EBIT bridge for the next quarters, should we expect a similar tailwind from material and personnel cost as we saw in Q1?

Okan Celiker

Shall I take that? In terms of material costs, as of now, we expect a similar situation.

However, due to the, let's say, very volatile situation in terms of geopolitical crisis and also economical impacts out of that, yeah, it's hard to predict as of now, let's say, what will happen. With everything we know as of today, we don't see any, I'd say, immediate impact on our material costs.

In terms of personal costs, I've mentioned the €3.8 million. For the full year, we've communicated a €15 million incremental sales out of the transformation program.

We are here fully in line with our quarterly performance, if you will. Here, I would assume then that this will stay more or less the same.

There will be a ramp-up, let's say, towards the end of the year. Also here, we confirm again the €15 million that we have communicated earlier.

Nikita Papaccio

Thank you. My last question, we are have already May.

How is Q2 evolving so far? Are you seeing any signs of improvements in the environment in a specific region or business segment?

Okan Celiker

I couldn't get the first part of the question.

Birgit Seeger

Q2.

Nikita Papaccio

How the Q2 is evolving.

Okan Celiker

Okay. Currently, we don't see any specific improvements of the situation.

At the same time, we also don't see, let's say, any negative impacts that will have an impact, let's say, on our performance. Again, getting back to what I said earlier, it's a volatile environment we are in as of today.

Far, and I think we proved that also with our Q1 performance, we are basically in line with the expectation. As of now, as of today, this is basically what we can confirm.

Nikita Papaccio

Thank you.

Okan Celiker

That also means without any, let's say, a dramatic or significant changes, yeah, we would basically expect or assume that the situation would more or less stay in line with our expectations.

Nikita Papaccio

Understood. Thank you.

Okan Celiker

Welcome.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone.

That is *11 to ask a question. We will now go to our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Yasmin Steilen from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Yasmin Steilen

Hello. Many thanks for taking my questions.

I have also three, if I may, and I will take them one by one. The first one on the net operating free cash flow, I just try to get my head around the net operating free cash flow guide.

According to the slide in the presentation, the cash-out is almost solely attributable to the water management. Adjusted for this, the net operating free cash flow was already around €13 million in the first quarter.

Even assuming the cash-out related to restructuring measures, the €10 to €20 million guidance looks not very ambitious. Could you please walk me through your assumptions there?

Thanks very much.

Okan Celiker

Sure. Thank you for the question, Yasmin.

Also here, as of now, we are fully, let's say, in line with our expectation. When we came up with our guidance on our financial KPIs, we try to incorporate, of course, the situation with everything that we can predict in terms of external factors.

As of today, we can basically just underline and confirm that we are very comfortable with our guidance for all the three elements. Net sales, EBIT, and net operating cash flow.

As we don't know, let's say, how the situation will develop globally and also for us then as NORMA, the first quarter might look positive, and yes, as you mentioned, there's also, let's say, another impact out of the transformation program. As of today, with everything that we know, we feel comfortable with that guidance also in terms of net operating cash flow.

Yasmin Steilen

Okay. Thank you.

Then the second one is on the new pricing strategy. Could you share more color on the measures by segment?

What is your target in terms of volume-price mix? Is this more geared towards Industrial Application, or do you also focus to increase the prices on the M&E segment?

Birgit Seeger

It's actually for both segments relevant. Maybe starting with M&E, M&E is, of course, a highly competitive market we are in.

We have actually the right products which our customers are confirming. We have capacity.

We have the assets installed, and so we worked very diligently through our numbers what pricing we can offer to have the right market share and to work on our top line, as we have seen also in Q1, we are not where we want to be. This is on the M&E side.

On the Industrial Applications, it's a little bit different, and it's also different industry by industry. We have currently seven focus industries plus, of course, our distribution business, and we do the pricing following each industry, what is the competition, where are we competitive, and also following our cost basis in our plants, in our company.

Based on this, we have worked out very individual pricing strategies that we are covering our costs, of course, that we are profitable, and that we are competitive in the market. We see here actually the first results that we can achieve nice new business in different areas.

However, pricing is very different if you talk about data centers, if you talk about white goods, if you talk about aviation. It's for each industry it's a different pricing what we are applying basically.

Yasmin Steilen

Okay. Perfect.

I know it's very early stage, but after the first discussions with customers in the Industrial Application segment, how should we think about the midterm growth trajectory in this segment? What is possible also based on the order intake you have realized already?

That's my last question.

Birgit Seeger

Yeah. Thanks for this.

We worked out really focus industries, seven focus industries. They have different growth potential.

Sort of in terms of numbers, of course, we will share more in our strategy update. To give you a first flavor, the addressable market we see in this focus markets for Industrial Application is significantly bigger than we have in M&E.

The next question would be, do we have the right products which fit for this application? We can broadly say yes, there may be normal adaptations required, and we have the right engineering capabilities in-house to make this happen in a really good timing, which also our customers appreciate a lot that we have this.

There's really very nice growth potential in this Industrial Application industries.

Yasmin Steilen

Okay. Thanks very much.

I'll step back into the line.

Birgit Seeger

Thank you.

Okan Celiker

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone keypad.

That is *11 to ask a question. There are currently no further questions.

This means this concludes today's Q&A session and today's conference call. Thank you for participating.

You may now disconnect.