Stephen Kimmich
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to anyone on the call. Very happy to welcome you to our Q1 financial call to present to you our business development in the last three months or in the first three months of this calendar year.
We've quite a lot to talk about today and we'll just jump right into it. On page 2 in the presentation, you see our typical just summary of what are the major highlights in Q1.
As you've already seen the figures, it's clear that we're very happy to publish strong order intake. There's a lot of pressure in the markets.
We see it all over the newspapers, the press, our competitors. Various industrial companies are really suffering under weak order intake and under market difficulties, we're very, very happy with the order intake development in Q1, 21.4% above last year and a similar number above two years ago.
It's the best order intake we've had in several years in Q1 to start the year, and this is not driven by one-off major orders from, for example, banknote or other major projects. This is really solid basis business in our major business units across the board.
We'll go into that in more detail. I think it's a very strong vote of confidence from our customers in Koenig & Bauer that even in these difficult times and in a weak economy, they're willing to place orders and buy from us.
On the operating side, we see two different trends that we'll also talk quite a bit about today. On the one hand, we're very happy to finally show significant progress in the operating performance in the Special and New Technology segments.
This is something that even in the old segments with Digital & Web and now in the new segment with S&T, this has been our focus for the last roughly two years of the Spotlight program, and our product strategies and cost-cutting initiatives have really had the strong focus on improving the S&T performance, and we're finally able to show you that significant year-on-year improvement, also there driven by several business units, not just one or the other, and despite headwinds in some of the businesses in S&T, which we'll also talk about in a few minutes. On the other hand, the Paper & Packaging segment, which we already started to talk about in Q4 and in publishing our full-year figures earlier this year, the Paper & Packaging segment with its strong reliability on the global sheetfed offset business continues to be under pressure.
We've had an insolvency in the competitive environment with manroland. We've had several other competitors that have announced weaker earnings, and we're seeing that the weakness in the global markets is finding its way into our margins in that segment.
Q1, on top of the typical seasonality we see in that segment, shows that drop in profitability that we'll talk about as well today. The third, we started to roll out our new strategic framework.
This is not a program like a P24 or a Spotlight. This is really our strategic framework for how we're going to align our various and many initiatives going forward to transform the company and secure our long-term stability and competitiveness.
I'll go into it a little bit today, but this is something that will follow us over the next quarters and even years. This is a strategic framework to guide us in the time to come.
Finally, despite this softening in Paper & Packaging in Q1 that we saw, we're also very happy and very confident, based on our order intake, our order backlog, the ongoing cost-cutting programs and initiatives, that we can confirm our full-year target for 2026. Despite this seasonality at the beginning of the year, we still see Koenig & Bauer at a stable group revenue of around €1.3 billion and an operating EBIT at around €80 million for the full year.
We're off to a good start on the order intake side, on the profitability in S&T on the Special & New Technology side, and P&P with the typical seasonality not off to a good start, but still confident by the end of the year we're going to meet our targets. Again, I won't go too much into detail today on IMPACT.
We've presented it already during our year-end closing and in our annual reports, and we will be talking about it in our General Assembly in June. At the end, this is a strategic framework for how we're going to structure our initiatives.
We have over 40 initiatives ongoing at Koenig & Bauer already, from products, the cost cutting, to AI programs, to go-to-market strategies, technology developments, people, etc., and this is the way we're going to talk about it. Today, you'll hear about a couple of them, particularly on go-to-market and on competitiveness, some of the things that we've pushed forward on in Q1 that we want to highlight for you as usual.
On page 4, you see a new way we want to kind of talk about how to separate how do we see the short-term or the actual business environment in some of our business segments or business units compared to the more long-term trends in those business units or segments. What you see at the top left is our banknote business is really performing well.
It's one of the upsides of the geopolitical crisis and countries fighting for national sovereignty and reducing risk that we see that the banknote security business is strong. We had strong order intake in the last couple of years.
We didn't have exceptionally high order intake in banknote in Q1, but we see a very, very strong pipeline going forward in banknote business. This is not only an anchor business for 2026, we see going forward through the end towards the end of the decade that the banknote business is going to remain stable in the long term, which is very good news for Koenig & Bauer.
The offset business, we're also confident it's going to stay stable. We see growth in the packaging business.
We see declines in the commercial graphic arts business, but that in the short term, these are the little round circles in the bottom right of each box, in the short term, the offset business is very much under pressure just to the general economic environment and the competitive intensity we see in there, but we're still confident going forward. I won't go into all of these to highlight some of the other topics.
We're still seeing a strong performance in metal prints and in our glass and hollow containers in the long term, but I would point out that one of our very good businesses in S&T the last few years, the last few decades, has been our glass and hollow container business under Koenig & Bauer Kammann. That's not something we talk too much about in these kinds of calls, but that, for example, is a business that in the long term, we see it very attractive.
In the short term, it's under a lot of pressure because glass production is down worldwide due to high energy prices, plastic hollow container pricing is down in the short term due to high petroleum prices. This is a business that's under short-term pressure, but long term, we're not concerned.
I think the other thing I would point out, similar digital printing, we're still seeing a long-term trend and that it will grow. It will drive our business going forward.
In the short term, there is some low impact. Again, this shift to new technologies in uncertain times, we've talked about in the past, is always a little bit more uncertain than in good times.
That's a new way to look at our businesses and trying to separate where we see the long-term growth for the company and the strategy compared to the short-term economic environment. On page 5, you see some of the new highlights, and as mentioned, we'll talk about go-to-market.
The M in IMPACT really means we've spent, a lot of effort, a lot of money, and a lot of time developing a new and broad product portfolio throughout the last 5 to 10 years, and we're confident that portfolio is ready to scale more rapidly than it has done as then in the past. It's about selling what we have and selling what we have to offer our customers now and pushing that into the market with more efficient sales structures and sales pushes throughout the globe.
In some cases, it's taking regional successes and making them global. In other, it's about just launching new technologies.
Two examples: we had a very successful trade show in Brazil, which is with the Mercosur deal that's still going through, but confident to go through the European Parliament, that is going to push sales in South America. We had a very successful show that helped us in Q1 with order leads, a few orders as well, but this will also help us going forward in Q2 and Q3 as some of those leads turn into fixed orders.
We also, just last week, had a very big—the last week of March, we had a very big trade show in Radebeul with the VariJET. This is our new digital printer that we launched at drupa in 2024, but are now, again, focused on go-to-market.
We have the fourth installation ongoing. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's about moving from our first two machines that were the beta production, now having the first production machine, and installing now the second production machine, the fourth in total.
More important for us at this VariJET 106 Executive Summit, two of those customers presented at our summit about how they're satisfied with the VariJET performance, how they're producing in a production environment with our digital printers. Again, with 80 experts from the industry at the summit, we're pushing now our VariJET digital printer to the market.
The same goes for the Special & New Technology segment, particularly our Digital & Web business unit that we continue to report separately, and Alexander Blum will show in a few minutes. We had Technology Days in Würzburg with a strong focus on launching our CI Flexo XD Pro.
This is a program that many of you that have followed us for years is familiar. This was the program we transferred from Italy to production in Würzburg, and during that transfer, completely upgraded, revamped, reengineered, and now relaunched this XD Pro CI flexo machine.
Also here, an amazing presence from our—we had roughly 150 visitors to this trade to this open house and Technology Days, presenting not just the XD Pro, it's about our digital solutions, also presenting the RotaJET, which is not pictured here, but is on the left side of this room. Again, it's about go-to-market and scaling up the machines we have in our portfolio.
Finally, on page 7, an announcement we made in January and showing also that IMPACT is not just a strategic framework, it's about initiatives and delivering. We announced the closure of Albert-Frankenthal GmbH.
We announced it in January with the intent to cease operations by May 31st, 2026. For those of you that are familiar with German industry, you know how hard it is to close plants that are run that are that are highly organized with labor unions, with works councils, to negotiate social plans, and to close on time is quite difficult in Germany.
It's just a fact. Also here, we're proud to announce that not only did we announce that we will close it and cease operations on May 31st, this will now happen.
The deals are done, the contracts are signed, the employees have been released or have at least been informed of their release, and we will completely cease operations on May 31st. This is of course cash out and it's restructuring and it hits the P&L.
€6.6 million were recognized in the first quarter. It seems perhaps like a small topic with 75 affected employees, but this is over 100-year-old factory.
This was the last step of closing it and was a difficult task for the operations team installed, and they did a fantastic job, and this is all about increasing competitiveness by increasing resilience and reducing structural costs and reducing our footprint. This is a project that, it's never fun to close plants and dismiss employees, but it's simply necessary in the times in which we're in.
Again, just to show you, we're not just talking about our strategy, we're implementing it and doing that quite quickly. The final highlight that I brought with me is our decision on how to proceed with our Koenig & Bauer Coding operations.
We announced in the summer of last year that we are opening up a strategic dialogue with the market on how to manage Koenig & Bauer Coding going forward. We were open for various solutions, from a full sale of the business to potential joint ventures, strategic partnerships, and at the same time, we also evaluated the going concern under Koenig & Bauer management with Koenig & Bauer ownership: what can we do better and how can we develop the business?
The result is, I think, twofold. The first is through this process, we recognized how well-positioned Koenig & Bauer Coding is and how much potential we have for this business going forward.
That's the good news. The the fundamental use of 2D QR codes, the regulations ongoing throughout the world, not just in Europe, about track and trace packaging require and will drive significant growth in the market in which Koenig & Bauer Coding is underway.
On the same side, the M&A market in Germany for German industrial companies is very, very weak. We did evaluate a potential sale, we did have interested buyers, we had a lot of interested buyers, but we came to the conclusion that the pricing being offered and the multiples being offered for German industrial companies in the current environment, especially after the start of the latest crisis with the Iran war and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, we saw a rapid deterioration in the robustness of that M&A process starting in February, that we had to come to the conclusion we're not willing to sell Coding undervalue.
Therefore, considering that coupled with the second view, it is a great market, it has great growth opportunity, we've are now announcing to the capital markets and and to the team in Coding that we've decided to continue to develop the business as sole owner. We will continue and are are discussing with various strategic partners how to cooperate better and and scale the business faster, but we will remain the full owner in the coming years and we'll develop the business on our own.
We're happy to report more about our initiatives there in future calls. The foundation is great.
The business is profitable, it's generating cash, it is growing, and therefore, we'll keep down that path. That's the last update from my side, and I would hand over for the last business highlights to Alexander Blum before he presents the figures.
Alexander Blum
Thank you very much, Stephen. Information technology is at Koenig & Bauer as important as engineering technology.
That's why I'm I'm very happy to start my my presentation today to you with two examples that we have recently that we have recently conducted. One is the one all of them already knows.
We have a close partnership with with Google with regard to information technology. It's our technology partner and is offering a whole wide range and and of of technologies from from desktop to the cloud via the Google via the Google technology.
We have continuous talks together with Google how we can improve our operations, how we can improve the dealing with our with our information, with our data, with our operational operational flows and our our operational systems. On the other hand, also artificial intelligence is is very very important, and it's a strategic initiative for us at at at Koenig & Bauer.
It has has the highest priority in order to explore what we can do with AI in with regard to our to our bread and butter business to improve operations and be more and to be better for our customers and more efficiently internally with regard of with regard of generating our our our services and machines. I had the pleasure to to present our AI champions or the our AI house of of our house of AI at Koenig & Bauer with a with a recent conference of our IT service provider, Public Cloud Group.
Having a look at our financials, the order intake, as as as Stephen Kimmich already mentioned, was was very strong and it increased by by over 21% from from €245 million up to €279 million. We've seen increase of order intake in both segments.
On the one hand, Paper & Packaging had an increase by by over 12%, and on the other hand, the the Special and New Technology segment had a very strong plus of over 40%. That gives us a very good tailwind for the rest of the year, and that's why it is that's why we are we are still confident, due to all the crises and uncertainties, with regard to the development the further development of the year 2026.
Order backlog increased is decreased slightly, but is again over over €1 billion. You probably remember end of last year, it was below €1 billion.
Now again, it is over €1 billion, and and also we need to we need to remember that an order backlog above €1 billion is not the normal state of case if you have a look back into the last two three two to three years with the history of of Koenig & Bauer. This also is an important anchor for us in the volatile market environment that we are living in.
Top line slightly increased as well by by over 3% and and it brought us an an increase in revenues up to €260 million. If you have a look at the split of regions, first of all, the export group ratio increased from from 84% to to 88%.
Export is is of course very important to Koenig & Bauer. It always is.
It always it always was and it still is. It's still working.
I think that is a good the the good the very good the very good message. You also see in the graph on the left-hand side that the North American share also increased again by a quarter-on-quarter basis.
We had last year a lot of trouble within the United States, probably not only we, but but all the exporters from from Europe or from from from outside the US USA due to the tariffs. What we see right now is that the situation situation is is getting back to normal.
On the on the other hand, Germany is under pressure. You see this on the very right hand side.
It's on the bottom line. You see a decrease from nearly 19 19% 19 to €39 million down to to 30 down to €31 million.
With regards to the profitability and our operating EBITDA, we we see a decrease in in the after the first three months. I will I will show you in in a second a little bit more deeper insight into into our segments, because this is twofolded why where the development arise from.
You see it on the in the bridge that our Special and New Technology segment improved its profitability by by 4.1%, and on the on the other hand, the the pressure within the market of Paper & Packaging, as a consequence, the profitability decreased on a year-on-year comparison by by 8. €8.4 million.
That basically is the reason why we see, even though we had a very good order intake and and a slight increase in in revenues, that's the reason why we see as a group a small minus with regards to operating EBITDA after the first first three months. Please keep in mind, the first quarter always is by far the weakest at Koenig & Bauer.
It was the same situation as last year, only a little bit a little bit bigger minus this year, but in in general, the seasonality is is is what it is, and it's still the seasonality also in or the the the known seasonality from last years. It's still the same in in 2026.
One remark, one one comment to the non-operating extraordinary items: they amounted to €6.6 million for the closure of the operations at Albert-Frankenthal GmbH. Of course, within the number of the operating EBITDA, this is adjusted, you don't see this cost within these numbers, but to be to be here very transparent also with regards to the reported EBITDA, there is is is is a non-operating extraordinary items of €6.6 million included.
Having a look at our our long-term trends with regard to the last 12 months' development, and even though Q1 in in 2026 was weak, you still find there a positive trend with regards to profitability. Now with regards to last 12 months' operating EBITDA, we still reaching after the first quarter, we still reach a margin of 5.9%, and this is better than the last two years.
Cash flow, also with regard to strong order intake, cash flow was negative, as usual as usual as this is usually the case with regards to the beginning of the year and and and and with regards to the to the development or the the stronger expected revenues in the following quarters. That that's why we we always need to increase our working capital position at the beginning of the year in order to make to make the realization of our revenue growth happen during the during the last nine months of the of the year.
The equity ratio is still is still in line more or less with the with the year-on-year figure with 20 22.3%. Our our net working capital ratio improved to to 23.7%.
This is for the the classical machinery businesses. Each and every ratio which is below 25% is is a good KPI.
Even though the the overall working capital position increased by by around €5 million, the ratio was below due to the higher higher revenues. Our net financial position is now with -€171 million.
It reflects the the negative free cash flow from the first quarter. Having a look in our segments and let us start with the Paper & Packaging segment.
You also see there the the increase in order intake by by 12.4% after €172 million order intake last last last year quarter, last year's quarter. It is now €194 million, the increase by 12%, and also the order backlog is is is is slightly higher than the order backlog compared to on a year-on-year basis.
The revenues decreased. It was a very a very weak and and and small cash flow, a small a small revenue in the first quarter 2026.
This also is one of the reasons why the result is is negative at first quarter with Paper & Packaging, next to the reason that there is a lot of a lot of dynamics in the market, there's a lot of pressure in the market. Stephen mentioned the manroland insolvency.
This was the number three in in in Germany and also worldwide probably number four in the offset market. That is a that is a big player which is disappearing from the market as it is announced by the solicitor.
This is an example why this market is also is under pressure. However, order intake is is stable, or not even stable, it's also increasing.
That's why we see that we feel now temporarily the pressure in the market, but we we we don't fear we don't fear that this market will will will decrease in future. Also, as as Stephen Kimmich has has told you within the market analysis, it is it is expected to be stable on the long on the long term, and our results with regard to order intake and order backlog also also is is supporting this this thesis.
Special & New Technology is also very nice development with regard to order intake, plus 40 40.6% compared to last year's quarter, year-on-year quarter. That is really a very good result because it is it is not only provided by the Banknote Solutions business, but also by metal print and our Digital & Web business unit.
The this the Special & New Technology segment was always under pressure, and it was in in in the high high intensity care with us at management, and finally, we see positive results. Order intake is is taking is increasing.
Revenues increased by by 24%, and also the operating EBITDA increased tremendously by over 12 €12 million with regard to operating EBITDA. That is a fantastic development, and once again, not only supported by Banknote business, but also by by other other business units within the S&T within the S&T segment.
We feel very confident that this strong development and this operational turnaround will also help us through the year 2026, but also in the following years, 2027, '28, '29. We still stick to the good old tradition to show you also details on the on our business unit Digital & Web as part of the segment S&T.
You see there that the the the Digital & Web business unit could could double its its order in intake compared to first quarter 2025. That's a very good that's a very good result.
The revenues have been more or less stable with only an increase by plus 1.6%. However, the increase in profitability was huge and it was plus 80 88%.
Nearly nearly the operational break-even was reached within the first quarter, and it shows really a very very very nice and great increase in profitability. It it also demonstrates that the measures taken in the past were the right ones, and and finally, we also see the result.
Current uncertainties: yes, it's a little bit a repetition of what we have said in the past unfortunately, but however, we still see all the geopolitical escalations. We also feel the global trade impact.
Of course, this has operational consequences. However, with an with an export ratio of nearly 90%, with an with an high with a with a good split of our operations throughout the whole globe, we feel prepared to also steer steer safely through this this crisis or this ongoing crisis.
On the one hand. On the other hand, we we have a we have a broad range of products, not only one segment, but two segments with different business units and and different and products that address different market markets within different regionalities.
This will help us in order to mitigate crisis in in in in in one or the other regions of of the world. That's why we also we also stick to our guidance.
It remains what we have said for the year 2026. We expect group revenues of €1.3 billion.
We expect an operating EBITDA of of of 80 €80 million as as in the last year, and we keep up to have an high operating resilience with regard to a great order backlog of over €1 billion. Allow me to summarize the key takeaways of of the first quarter 2026.
Koenig & Bauer grew against the market trend, which is a very important proof point for us as management to see that our business model is working. This was due to the growth in revenues, but even even more important with regards to growth of order intake.
Secondly, strong order backlog: this is the anchor and it is again over €1 billion. It offers us planning certainties with regard how to use our our internal operations.
Last but not least, we saw we now see the turnaround. We see actually the turnaround within the S&T segment, and that also helps us to mitigate some pressures within other other market market segments that we are working in as well.
Thank you very much for your attention. This is the end of our of our presentation.
On the following slide, you also see the the current timetables of the of our of our financial calendar, but this also there is no news with it. The next big meeting is the general the annual meeting of Koenig & Bauer, the annual the Annual General Meeting with June 17th.
Operator
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone.
You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two.
Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast when asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time.
The first question comes from the line of Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Stefan Augustin
Yes, hello. Thank you very much.
Congratulations to the Digital & Web performance and the reduction of the losses. I hope it's going to continue, and it would be quite good.
Coming to the first question, it's actually a bit on a broader situation. You elaborated that there is the manroland insolvency that had put pricing under pressure.
Still, we have a very good order intake. My question is a little bit did you grab opportunities from the insolvency of manroland already?
Were you able to let's say get on some orders that had been available due to their insolvency? How do you look at the possibility, if I see that correctly, there is possibly a sale of the service business later in the year of manroland?
Would that be something you could be interested in? How do you see the situation?
That would be the first question.
Stephen Kimmich
I think in general, manroland, depending on the market study, had between 4% and 5% market share. They were the fourth largest, at least based on our market data, between Heidelberg, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, Koenig & Bauer, Komori, and manroland.
manroland was the fourth largest with, call it, around 5% market share. Considering that the offset business itself is not a growing market, it's overall, it's a slightly decreasing market, we see it for ourselves as long-term stable.
Part of the answer is that as manroland disappears from the market, that market share has to be sorted out among the remaining players. Obviously, our expectations on our management team and our sales team is to take our fair share of that market share that is now open.
I'm 100% sure that Komori and Heidelberg and Druckmaschinen have the exact same strategy to also capture as much of this market share as possible. It's too early to talk about expectations on that.
Obviously, it is a chance for us, for our competitors to fill our plants a little bit better, and we expect that also to happen. It's, again, it's 5% of the total market share is now up for grabs, and it's much too early to talk about how that's going to play out.
Stefan Augustin
Thank you. Coming back here a little bit, if the pricing is so strongly under pressure in the offset market as we can see also on the competitors' side, still you have that good order intake.
How shall we look at the pricing quality in that order intake in the first quarter? The idea was if you would have been able to capture some of the orders from manroland, that would be an explanation that bring that question a bit more to this point.
How should we look at the quality in these orders, it's P&P?
Stephen Kimmich
I think I'll answer the first part of that question, then I'll hand over to Alex to talk about the price-quality question. The manroland insolvency didn't happen until I think the second week of March, it had no impact on order intake in Q1.
There's nothing that happened in Q1 that we would attribute to us taking order from manroland. That's a clear answer from my side.
I think to the price pressure, Alex Blum can discuss.
Alexander Blum
Also in addition, our sales teams are fighting against manroland also in the months before and in the years before. It was clear that manroland was not extremely strong, and we always try to get as much clients from manroland and shift them to Koenig & Bauer.
Probably one of the reasons why they are now insolvent. With the price pressures, we do not believe that the price pressure will remain for the full year 2026.
We also see that, yes, at the end of last year, prices were extremely under pressure. This was also especially true for the fourth quarter of last year.
We also had a slow start in 2026, but it became better and better with regard to March, we see that prices are recovering. Hopefully, that trend remains the same.
That is the assumption that needs to be proven, but we have good reasons to believe that this prices will again stable on a decent level. That
Stefan Augustin
the price remark is a good news. Another one I have is actually on Frankenthal.
What I had in the back of my head that this was let's say mainly web-fed business, at least in the past. What did you, in the end, finally produce there, and where is it shifted to?
Will the 6.6 million in charge we have at the EBITDA level, will there be a cash out later in the year, or is that mainly noncash?
Stephen Kimmich
I think we split that question. The answer is again among ourselves.
I'll answer the first part and Alex can answer the second. We produce, in English, rollers.
It's Walzen in German. The rollers are basically in all machines, sheetfed and web machines, for how to transport paper or transporting the substrate across rollers and through the machine.
There's thousands and thousands of these produced every year for our various machines. It's, with the exception of different types of rollers depending on the technical requirements, whether it's on the coatings and various other technical requirements.
Around 2/3 of these rollers, we would call commodities, and those have now been outsourced that we will be purchasing them from our supply base throughout the globe. About 1/3 of them, which are more highly technical and less commoditized, that's open knowledge, we are shifting that production to our component manufacturing facility in Würzburg as just an on top additional volume for our facility there.
About 2/3 gone to outside suppliers and 1/3 to in-house production, and that 1/3 is again the most technically demanding where it's difficult to purchase them in the free market.
Alexander Blum
With regard to cash effectiveness, yes, most of the €6.6 million will be cash effective until end of the year.
Stefan Augustin
Thank you. Then I have one more left, which is on the coding business.
Since that you're going to develop ideas on strategic cooperation, is there a possibility to think about solutions that in this cooperation, you would be able to monetize part of the value of coding as an idea, for example, you make a joint venture and insert IP?
Stephen Kimmich
Clear answer: no. We're no longer looking at equity participation in Koenig & Bauer Coding.
Our current plan is to remain 100% shareholder of the company and develop with arm's length strategic contractual partners throughout the globe, whether that's sales organizations or product development or suppliers or development projects. That's the big question.
This is now a multiyear project, we are now fully committed to the business in the years coming forward. It was a clear result of this process, which was important to us.
To be honest, when you put a company like this up for sale to the market, you also learn a lot through the process, through the feedback. We had strategic players looking in depth at the company and evaluating us and telling us where the strengths were and the weaknesses were.
We learned a lot through the process as well. We're happy, and I will be at the General Assembly with the employees tomorrow morning at Koenig & Bauer Coding, and we're happy to keep them in the company.
Again, the market dynamics are great. We would have also been happy with an M&A transaction at a fair market value, but again, it's a great business, great team, great products, and now we're committed to further developing it in the coming years as a 100% shareholder.
Stefan Augustin
All right, understood. Thank you very much.
Operator
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Patrick Speck from Montega.
Please go ahead.
Patrick Speck
Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for taking my questions as well. My first one is also on your coding business.
You explained how you see the market potential, etc. I was wondering if you see the need for any additional investments, by that I mean CapEx, to get the business ready for new markets, or are they already, yeah, state of the art?
Stephen Kimmich
No, I think certainly nothing that we would plan or you should plan or absolutely no plans in that direction whatsoever. Koenig & Bauer Coding is a profitable business, generating free cash flow on its own, and our intention is to develop the company through our own strength and not with additional capital injections or additional major measures.
We'll see what comes out of the development in the next couple of years, but it's certainly not part of any plan, nor should you plan it in any way.
Alexander Blum
That's why we also target strategic partnerships that also is limiting the need for own investments.
Patrick Speck
Could you let us know what is the share of your order backlog that refers to coding?
Stephen Kimmich
Maybe Ms. Landenberger can take that as a homework, but for just Koenig & Bauer Coding, let me stick with that: it's less than 3%.
It's low.
Alexander Blum
It is low because it is much more a serial production that we see with the coding business, and the production time and the lead times are much, much lower than within our other businesses. Don't expect this to have a very high influence in our order backlog.
Patrick Speck
Okay. Secondly, we know your seasonality is very back-end loaded, but you gave the comment that you saw the price pressure coming down a bit from March on.
I was wondering if you would be able to reach an EBIT on a break-even level in Q2 already? Do you see that?
Alexander Blum
Honestly, with regard to EBITDA, we are very close to the break-even, and we see improvements quarter on quarter. Kindly understand that we do not guide on the performance on each and every quarter.
Patrick Speck
You see at least the improvement on a quarter-on-quarter level despite the new headwinds coming from the Iran war and yeah, pressure in the supply chains, etc.?
Alexander Blum
That's at least our management goal to be better and better each and every quarter and to improve and also to stabilize the situation. You can also see this having a look at our LTM performance.
That basically shows that with regard to the first quarter 20 20 25, the first quarter 2026 is better. The trend is showing definitely in the right direction, even though the first quarter 2026 had some, let's say, some special developments.
Patrick Speck
Lastly, will there be any more extraordinary effects from the closure in Frankenthal in Q2 or anything else extraordinary?
Alexander Blum
Yes, but they are much, much lower than the 6.6 million that you've seen in the first quarter.
Patrick Speck
Okay.
Alexander Blum
There will be some more left, but yeah, much lower than the 6.6.
Patrick Speck
Good, thanks a lot.
Alexander Blum
Thank you.
Operator
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We now have a question from the line of Johannes Ries from Apus Capital GmbH.
Please go ahead.
Johannes Ries
Yes, good afternoon. Maybe some more words about the recovery for the RotaJET market, from what customers you have seen the recovery, from what region, what has been the driver, and what is maybe special effect?
Do you expect this could go on in the coming quarters?
Stephen Kimmich
I think your question refers to Digital & Web overall, it's not For
Johannes Ries
overall, yeah, definitely.
Stephen Kimmich
Not just RotaJET.
Johannes Ries
Yeah. RotaJET was the highlight, yes.
Okay.
Stephen Kimmich
I think the Spotlight program, which you're familiar with, really addressed across the board at Digital & Web all of our structural costs, employee count, product costs, product strategies. It's not one thing.
It's across the board, and I think that part of your question is very important: it's not one-off quick wins that don't recur. This is stable cost reduction and margin improvement.
I think you can't expect 6.7 a €6 million improvement every quarter, but the general trend is heading in the right direction. We also had good orders in Q1, also sold another
Johannes Ries
That was also a question, also the order intake side, yeah?
Stephen Kimmich
Yes, order intake in Q1, it's mentioned on one of the slides, included also an additional RotaJET, which is very important. Also, we've seen our order backlog the HP programs, which is digital printing, which is strong, and the customer technology days we did in Würzburg a few weeks ago was focused only on digital web technology, the flexo roll printers and RotaJET web digital printer.
Again, 150 guests at this kind of event is a very large presence, and we left those days with a strong pipeline. We have a completely new management across the board in the Digital & Web segment, from sales to engineering to operations to the CEO of the business unit.
We have supported it strongly out of our holding and our strategy groups to really turn it around, and that new management team has now been in place for I guess just over a year, the CEO for now two years, and these things take time, and we're finally seeing it happen, and we have to keep the momentum.
Johannes Ries
That was mainly the question, if maybe the demand or maybe the order intake should stay at a higher level even going forward looking at the pipeline, what you have done. Costs is the one part, but it was also a revenue question and a problem in the past,
Stephen Kimmich
and
Johannes Ries
if they are targeted not only in one quarter, maybe even in the future could get better. That was the question.
Okay.
Stephen Kimmich
Right, actually, the positive trend not just on sales and profit, the positive trend on order intake is one of the key focuses. We need volume, and I think the pipeline and the reaction from the customers gives an indication that we're heading in the right direction.
Johannes Ries
Right. Second question: on your digital activities, you have been quite positive, say even maybe are in the positive area.
Maybe you can update a little bit what happened in the first month of the years here, how you maybe developed further this business?
Stephen Kimmich
Kyana is on track in terms of since the launch, we're signing up customers every month, every quarter. More customers go online for Kyana business.
It's a developing business since we carved that out about a year ago. The visual protection, we're seeing also if you've seen quite a few press releases the last several months and quarters that the first customers are signing up for it and in the program.
ROBO is ongoing, but I think there's nothing new to talk about there today. Overall, there's several digital projects between Kyana and visual protection and ROBO, and they're moving forward, and more to come.
We'll keep you informed.
Johannes Ries
Super. I believe nothing to say on the Volkswagen business like you said some weeks ago with the full-year report?
Stephen Kimmich
Yeah. Also there, the project continues, that's the most important message, and we continue to repeat it.
The project is ongoing. The cooperation with Volkswagen is ongoing, and that's the news we have to publish, and also there, we'll keep you updated when there's anything new to talk about.
Johannes Ries
Forward to broadly. Thanks a lot and all the best.
Stephen Kimmich
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Dr.
Stephen Kimmich for any closing remarks.
Stephen Kimmich
I'll keep it short. Thank you very much for joining, and I think Q1 showed, in a lot of ways, we're heading in the right direction despite the difficulties in the market.
A lot of things we've talked about with you the last one, two years are starting to show up on our figures, which is important to us here, and I hope you were able to get some insights. Q1 is always seasonally our weakest quarter or has been in the last decade, and we're looking forward to publishing our Q2, Q3, and Q4 results in the coming quarters and to show you that we are remaining on track.
Thank you very much for joining, and talk to you next time.
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