Good morning, everyone, from Berlin, and welcome to today's press call for Q3 from Siemens Energy, not Siemens AG, which was incorrectly mentioned. This format will be the same as last time around.

There will be no presentation. We will just go directly to the Q&A with our CEO, Christian Bruch.

We published our financial figures at 7:00 this morning. We increased order intake and revenue and we have EUR 17.9 billion, and this is the amount of revenue we had.

Profitability increased considerably once again. Profit before special items was triple that of last year and the margin before SI was 14.2% in Q3.

Wind for the first time in 14 -- in 15 quarters, achieved a positive result. And preparing for our transition to a stand-alone brand, we will -- Siemens Energy that is and Siemens Gamesa will be using the name Omterra.

A lot has happened, and I'm quite sure that there are some questions for this quarter. So now I'd like to let you ask -- you can ask your questions of CEO, Christian Bruch.

[Operator Instructions] I'd just like to remind you once again that this is only for journalists. Only journalists can ask questions.

We've seen that some shareholders have also asked questions. These will not be answered today.

Analysts can ask their questions later on today in the analyst calls and employees can ask their questions at town hall meetings and shareholders, of course, at the AGM. For the sake of completeness, I'd like to remind you of the safe harbor statement with regard to future related statements.

You can see this in the webcast now. And now we can enter in to our Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And I see that we already have a question from Christoph Steitz from Reuters.

I have a couple of questions. Maybe I'll start with the Middle East.

Mr. Bruch, can you tell us how the demand from the Middle East has changed?

So can you quantify that? What was the impact of the Middle East in Q3?

Because it's been mentioned before. And it would be good to understand how the gas business was dependent on the Middle East.

And the second question, the increasingly important slot reservations for capacities is something that's very critical. Can you squeeze more out of your customers?

Because usually, it's 10% to 15% of revenue that is relevant for reservations. Now my question would be, given the current demand in the market, could you get more from them?

And if not, why not? I have another question on Transformation of Industry.

There are considerations to carve out that segment. Now my question would be from your point of view, what would be the advantage of a stand-alone business of transformation of industry.

You don't want to do it for Siemens Gamesa, but Transformation of Industry has a good margin, 17%. So it's going well.

What would be the advantage of a stand-alone business of TI? Is it -- does it not fit into your portfolio?

And if so, why not? And if I may, a final question on Siemens Gamesa.

Can you give us some gist here because the guidance says breaking even in 2026? And the first month in the third quarter now so the fourth quarter, do you stay with your optimistic guidance?

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Steitz.

We mean Mr. Steitz, we can do these calls on our own, can't we.

Now the Middle East and how has that driven our business. Let me try to say that on the top of my head.

It's several gigawatts of large projects for the overall quarter on gigawatts, it would be 30%. I mean, that's a rough estimate now when it comes to gigawatts.

So it's very substantial. Those are large power station things happening in that part of the world now.

And the Middle East has always been an important region, especially Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and Qatar. And that truly is something that we see going forward now.

Now the conflict hasn't changed anything to that, I have to say. Quite on the contrary, there is now a discussion of creating a resilient energy structure in that region.

And this will preoccupy us going forward. Can you get more from customers?

No, we are not squeezing anything out of our customers, if you want to put it like that. What we are trying to do is to tap this positive market momentum and at the same time, also to arrange for a good setup with our customers.

Let's say, 10% to 20% that is currently discussed about in terms of reservation agreements means that at the end of the day, we want to make sure that this looks like a down payment, but that down payment will lapse if you don't buy the turbine in other words. But of course, we are interested in the cash profile of the entire project, and it has to be right and has to fit our balance sheet.

So if you will, this is a rather calm process. We are not doing any windfall profit optimization.

That is not our business model. We have a long-term relationship with our customers, and that's very important because we're in a business here that is done for decades, and it's not a short-term optimization thing.

TI. Well, let me contextualize that.

And generally, if you look at Siemens Energy as a company, this is an organization that over the past 6 years has changed a lot, and we're going to change going forward as well because we are working in 2 areas and 2 business areas, which are certainly different. There are some segments that are driven by electricity, by gas, wind, grids.

And transformation of industry is a segment that is focusing on industry and industry development. Both segments are working differently and they're subject to different cycles.

But the beauty of Siemens Energy at the moment is that both segments are very profitable. They're growing.

They're very successful, but they're battling for the same resources when it comes to capital investments. And we need and want to make sure that in the next 3 or 5 or 10 years, those businesses can compete well in a competitive environment that is ambitious.

And this is always the question we're asking. And when we are seeing an opportunity where not everyone can be catered to accordingly, we need to respond.

But we are not doing this -- seeing quick wins at the moment. If we want to be successful in electricity, we need different portfolio elements.

And these discussions will be here to stay going forward, and that's quite a natural thing. And of course, there will be questions from our investors about what will happen to the wind business.

But I'd like to take this rushness out of it. This needs to be a calm business.

Every business needs to have a good opportunity to flourish in the future, and we'd like to do just that. And this is how we are leading this discussion at the moment with very successful turnarounds in mind or the experience of that we've had.

Now the question is, how do we make sure that our business continues to flourish in the next 3 or 5 or 10 years. This is what our discussion is currently focusing on, and we are proceeding step by step.

In terms of our guidance, we're very confident because we said before, at the upper range of our profit margin is where we're going to see the guidance. And you have seen, if you look at the first 3 quarters of the year that we're doing really very well.

We assume that there will be a certain seasonality in our profits. And this is also why we didn't change the guidance range.

But as I said before, we're very confident because all the general conditions bode very well. We are on a good way forward.

On the other hand, there's always fluctuation between the individual quarters, and that will also mean for quarter 4. And Mr.

Steitz also asked the question about breakeven in the wind business. Yes, we're on a good way.

If you take the total of the first 3 quarters, it's a small double-digit loss. But the team is working very hard on it.

I'm totally proud of what our wind team has achieved, but still tough work ahead of us. And it's to turn that into a highly profitable business.

A lot remains to be done, but it's a super milestone, I must say that.

Next question comes from Axel Höpner of Handelsblatt.

I have 2 questions. First, the data center effect, can you quantify that in that quarter?

And can you tell us what your time line will be for transformation of industry?

Data centers. Now when we look at gas turbines, because gas turbines is what most of the discussions focus on, if I remember correctly, it was 20% of our orders when it comes to capacities.

So a little less than in the previous quarter because we are trying to strike a balance here consciously. And when it comes to transformers, it's always lower than it is in gas as far as percentages are concerned.

So what I'm saying is it's an important segment, and we believe it's here to stay. But it's not as dominating as some reporting would suggest out there.

Albeit this is a market that no one has seen 5 years ago. So this market will be here to stay.

So it fits nicely with our balance sheet. As far as the time lines are concerned, you're always well informed, you guys, I must say that.

But we don't have a time line saying something is going to happen now or at a certain date. We are rightly now in discussions with our supervisory organizations, with our employees, with employee representatives, works council.

So this is an internal discussion more than anything right now. And we're looking at the long-term future of this business.

But of course, we are very much interested in being very clear to our workforce and tell them, look, this is how we are going to continue. But one thing is still abundantly clear, nothing is going to happen rashly overnight and quickly because what we are talking about is so important.

And when things are up for discussion, we take our time. But let me say this again very clearly.

We are here -- we are working in 2 very good segments, but those are entirely different in terms of how they work, how they operate. And we need to massively invest in all segments and competitors are doing this as well.

So we need to address that. But again, this is going to happen step by step.

As soon as we have decisions and we have more clarity, we'll reach out to the press. But today is not the day to do that, and we cannot talk about decisions yet.

The next question comes from the chat from Michael Duelund from EnergiWatch in Denmark. And he's basically got 2 questions.

We hear about a possible European merger in wind and the Chinese competition there in order to counter the Chinese competition. How do you see that?

How do you see the discussions? Would Siemens Gamesa be interested in such consolidation?

And he would also like to know about what Henrik Andersen said from Vestas, and they said that the European antitrust law might have a problem with regard to such a giant in the wind section.

Well, this has been a discussion that's been going on as long as I've been with Siemens Energy. And this is something where -- well, I can't really comment on that.

And Henrik is correct. This, of course, is a question of antitrust questions.

What do we want in Europe. And the point we have to deal with here is we're in a market now where the Chinese competitors are massively joining the market, and we cannot beat their prices with regard to the assets cost, for example.

And that, of course, is quite obvious. But this is a discussion which I think it's not the manufacturers to have this discussion.

I think it's also the EU that has to discuss this. What do we want in this respect?

I don't see the underlying conditions there right now where we really can have such a discussion successfully if we say, I'm going to take all of the wind companies in Europe together, put them all together. That won't work in terms of antitrust regulation.

So we have these discussions in European Airbus, for example, or wind Airbus. And here, this is something we haven't gotten there yet.

And I think at the end of the day, this is a political discussion.

Christof Ruhrmair from the German Press Agency.

The first question is, we're talking about transformation of industry. And this reminds me of Mr.

Kaeser when he spoke about energy. So it sounds quite similar that something is going to happen.

And I probably won't get any information from you on that. And when we talk about the question of order intake, is this something that is below revenue?

It's not only the EUR 3 billion project from the previous year that you don't see this year. Do we have to be concerned about that, about order intake being under revenue?

Well, thank you for the question. I wasn't there when Mr.

Kaeser said something many years ago. But let's -- remember this, of course, it's our job.

We're managers, and we have to see how we're going to continuously develop our portfolio. And you've seen that in the last quarter or a couple of quarters ago, companies were acquired to add to our portfolio.

That's my job to see what will secure our company and keep us successful and secure jobs over the next several years. That's my job.

And we have these discussions quite frequently. And that's why I believe that -- well, I put the question somewhat differently.

Of course, it's a natural process, and that's management's job to do this. Gamesa order intake.

We mentioned this a number of times. In terms of -- well, let me put it this way.

We have a very careful look at order intake at offshore. A lot of projects that were originally planned are slipping and because companies -- and we also consider interest rates, they play a role there as well.

They're not willing to make the final investment decisions right now. Offshore wind projects tend to be very large as individual projects.

So once one project is shifted, then it's a big difference, and it's different with onshore. That's where we say we really have to add some speed to this.

That's why we're calling upon the government, the 16 gigawatts that were auctioned. These are not going to be constructed.

And that's why we can only say this again and again. The other thing that you have to see, and this is a question of timing.

Of course, in onshore, we have a very slow ramp-up after we interrupted and said stop. Now this is beginning to pick up again.

Yes. We can see the first projects are coming in.

And of course, that's the second effect that you see. But offshore, absolutely something needs to happen there.

There's been a lot of discussion what's going to happen in '27 and '28. But we really need to make sure that we don't just say in 6 months or in 12 months' time.

No, what we need now is the awareness that offshore wind is to be added on.

The question as to order intake came from EnergiWatch. So that question has also been answered.

Now we have [indiscernible] from [indiscernible].

I also have some questions on the possible carve-out of transformation of industry. The first question is, what -- didn't it surprise the head force that things were so well advanced and that the employee representatives are not excited about this.

They seem to be rejecting it. How do you want to get them on board?

My second question on this would be, can you imagine transformation of energy and splitting it up and having -- selling it to different -- to various different purchasers. You could say that there are very many different businesses included in transformation of industry, Marine, for example.

This is something which is very sensitive and you can only consider certain purchasers for this. My third question would be, if you sell them, then you'll be losing your hydrogen business.

And that's an important building block in your green story and a good supplement.

Are you still there? You seem to have -- we seem to have lost the connection.

But I think the question was asked, but is the conference still -- I think we've lost her. Can you see what's going on?

Can you hear us? If you can hear us, there seems to be -- you seem to have been cut off.

I apologize for that. Can you hear me?

Is the journalist still with us? Can you hear me?

Can the participants hear me as well? We're going to put -- we're going to continue.

Okay. I hope you can hear us.

Apparently, we have had a technical glitch, we apologize. But I see all journalists are still on the line.

[indiscernible] had asked 3 questions before on the Supervisory Board and the rumors about TI, whether a breakup of TI would be an option. And you also referred to the hydrogen business, which is an important sustainable factor for the future.

That's what you said. Did you have -- were there more questions?

Yes, 3 questions. And Mr.

[indiscernible] is here with us now?

Yes, I do. I do.

Those were exactly my questions. You're right.

Sorry. Sorry, I thought I said something wrong because no one answered.

No, no, no, no. We're very transparent, very open, no doubt about it.

Now obviously, this is a discussion because there are always changes here and there, and we need time in order to address those change processes. Now the best example for a successful business, a stand-alone business is Siemens Energy.

We would not be at this point where we are now if we had to fight for funds from Siemens AG. So we have to explain this very well, of course.

And I very appreciate this exchange with our employee representatives because they have good experience with working for this company. They know the business really well.

And yes, it is a critical but constructive discussion we're having. So with that in mind, we need to explain that there's a price you need to pay for inaction.

And we need to tell people where we're headed, what we want to achieve. And I'm not going to say, and I don't know what the result is going to be.

But again, this is about different scenarios we're looking at. And it's a process.

A process that rightly so will take time. But I am confident because at the end of the day, this is about keeping a successful business successful.

And that is different from earlier discussions. We're not talking about -- because we always got this sticker when it started that we are the junk store of the industry.

We're not. It's not a junk store.

We have 2 extremely profitable businesses, lines of business, and we're investing money like crazy to continue growing. So this is a number of challenges out there that we have in the changing environment.

And this is what we need to understand. We're in the process, and I'm confident that we will continue this constructive discussion.

Now the breakup in the mixed bag or the general store, as you called it. Well, you have a product view on that.

I don't. I'm looking at the customers and the customer groups that we work with.

One is industry and the other one is electricity or power customers. Now in transformation of industry, the general line is that you always work with industry customers and industry customers will buy a compressor here and a steam turbine there and an electrification solution there.

And this is exactly what we are trying to keep together. We believe there's an intrinsic value in it.

And this is why we have set up transformation of industry. And I understand why this discussion is out there.

But our logic is we want to create an industry customer business. That's our idea here.

Now in whatever shape and form is a different discussion. But this is what transformation of industry is doing today, and we believe it's a good thing.

Now when you talk about hydrogen, yes, I agree. Hydrogen is important.

Unfortunately, it's a business where we need to witness that the market is not quite there where we expected it to be 3, 4, 5 years ago. We always said it's going to be difficult, but it's different now.

At the end of the day, this business in itself needs to be successful. And again, I said it before, it's not so much a question of do I believe in this business, but really what's the shape and form and structure of that business and who's focusing on doing one.

So we have to explain this. We have to discuss this and then take a decision, but we were not there yet at this point.

That's important to underscore again because sometimes the newspapers are saying as everything is cut and dried, it's not.

Angela Maier is next from Börsen-Zeitung. She's standing in for Mr.

[indiscernible], who is on holiday today.

I have a couple of questions. One on Siemens Gamesa.

We have good orders there, EUR 31 billion, which is melting down now just because you're getting fewer orders in now compared to revenue. Now can you say a word about your orders in terms of onshore and offshore?

Have you seen cancellations and delays? So just to get an understanding of what's happening in the wind power business.

Now the free cash flow of Siemens Gamesa in the third quarter is still minus EUR 518 million over 9 months. So it's EUR 1.7 billion of minus cash flow, so a lot of cash burn.

Why is that? Why are you still burning cash?

Why is it still so extremely high? And then going forward, how is that going to change?

So when do you expect a cash flow breakeven? Second question, you said there are portfolio elements missing in electricity.

So what portfolio elements would you like to see in the electricity segment? And the third question on your forecast.

Now in 2 areas, we are very much ahead after 9 months in margin. You already have 12.6%, which is actually much more than the 10% to 12% that you guided for the remainder of the year.

And for free cash flow, you're at EUR 7.2 billion after 9 months. So if you are still guiding for the EUR 8 billion for the overall year, it's only EUR 800 million left that you need to bake in, in the last quarter.

So would you, in the fourth quarter, expect any collapses in cash flow, but why don't you adjust your guidance?

Ms. Maier First off, of course, the order backlog will diminish.

We're executing it, of course. And in our press trip, we talked just about that.

'27, '28 is what we currently have on our order books. For '29, we have to obviously make sure that we win new orders for offshore, very important.

And this is also what we tell the federal government in our conversations with them. So we're very attentively looking at that because at some time, we need new orders.

And now we see projects as such. So we see something happening.

In terms of Germany, the challenge is that the old auction or bidding conditions were very difficult for companies. And there's a discussion now with the German government about addressing this.

Because it would be clear what was originally to be built and just the conditions are not right at the moment, and it doesn't work, therefore. But of course, if that were to continue, that would be a problem at some point when it comes to capacity utilization.

Again, it's not a short-term thing, but in the medium term, yes. As far as the portfolio is concerned, we always try to explain this.

For grid technologies, we try to broaden our base, especially for digital grids. You may have seen that we purchased Camlin, which is a company that works precisely in this area.

We did the closing just this quarter, and we continue to work on that and to broaden our portfolio. When it comes to gas services, we try to drive a vertical logic.

So in the sense, can we make sure as far as the supply chain is concerned, that we are in robust shape. I think it was 2 or 3 quarters ago, we purchased a company in England, CIC that are producing ceramic cores just to make sure that our service business is catered too well.

Now those are investments that are driving our service business on the long end, and there is this logic there, slightly different across the 2 segments. Now as far as the cash flow is concerned, please bear in mind that we have significant CapEx spending in the fourth quarter.

We continue to invest in our plants, out of which a few things will materialize in quarter 4. So those EUR 8 billion, I think, are still a robust guidance.

Cash breakeven, another question, right? Yes, I think we mentioned that at the Capital Market Day, 2028.

I think that's correct. 2028, that's when we expect cash breakeven to occur.

And this was quite obvious to us. And this is also influenced by order intake.

You have to keep that in mind as well, but that is our plan and continues to be the plan. One more question from the chat.

If you want to ask a question over the phone -- actually Bloomberg has another question. We'll have that in a minute.

[Operator Instructions] And from the chat from [indiscernible] from [indiscernible]. And this is a rather general question.

Could you explain to us why Siemens Energy is so successful? He wants to know the 5 main success factors.

Maybe you can give us 3.

Okay. Well, First of all, in the last 5 years, we've put a lot of effort and work into being good in operational excellence.

How do we do things? How do we execute products?

How do we reduce some of the costs? How do we carry out effective engineering?

That's much more important than many people think. How does a plant work properly?

How do we get good productivity and productivity gains? That's the most important thing in order to turn order backlogs into revenue and profit.

We've put a lot of work into this and our employees do an excellent job. And I think this is something that we cannot say often enough.

Now of course, we have a cycle, the electricity cycle. We would call this a super cycle.

And this is what we believe will continue. We're at the beginning of electrification, this major [ wave ] of electrification.

And we see that the share of electricity in the overall energy demand is growing continuously. This, of course, drives demand for our products.

And now -- and this is something that we're trying to achieve is that what we want is to say for the next few years, we really want to manage to have the best portfolio for this electricity market. And that brings me to the third point.

I think we've worked well continuously in adjusting our portfolio. Everybody talks about transformation of industry, but we've continuously been working on this to see we need to do something, where do we need to do something in order to be in the proper position.

And this is a lever which we have been able to use well and continuously over the last 6 years in a market that is growing. And of course, that is good.

And for me, it's a question now of taking the long-term aspects, long-term growth and continuous profitability, less a question from one quarter to the next. Long term, we want to have a strong, stable, resilient company.

Thank you very much. Let's move over to Bloomberg, Marilen Martin.

Maybe you could give us some information on free cash flow. In terms of structure, is it higher?

Or is this just due to reservation slots? That's my first point.

And then on 2027, maybe you could give us some more information on demand. Is this going to continue?

And what are your expectations there? And when it comes to order backlog, how much of the order backlog is reservations?

And what -- how much is this in terms of reservation fees and firm orders? Thank you.

Well, let me talk about cash flow structure. This is the reflection of order intake and revenue, and this is -- this reflects our business.

And I said this in Q4, we also have to consider how much capital is invested, and it's not the same in every quarter because it depends on when we begin and when we complete a project. So that CapEx in one quarter might be clearly higher than in another quarter, but this reflects "the normal structure of our business and good new orders."

Now for 2027, we are carrying out the plans right now. We see this as positive and the market will remain so.

And that's why we are also optimistic when it comes to 2027. And of course, these are our initial observations for Q4.

In November, we'll give you the outlook and guidance for 2027 and medium-term prospects. So we hope that you will join us again in November, we can give you more specific information then.

Order backlog and reservations. Reservations in the order backlog.

No, the reservations are not included in the order backlog. The EUR 162 billion that we have in the order backlog are orders.

And what we're trying to do is to not have too much in terms of reservations. That's our strategy.

We see more orders than reservations. Not every company does it that way, but that's our approach.

We have a final question from the chat. [ Richard ] wants to know whether the tender in Denmark is a positive one.

Well, maybe I can say that every bid that turns into a project is positive for the market anyway. But there is a question from [indiscernible] and EnergiWatch.

The onshore turbine, [ SG 7.0-170 ], which is the continuation of the 5.X. What about that turbine going forward?

So what's the plan? And what are the sales figures?

So just an outlook on the onshore market.

Now for the 4.X and the 5.X, we have the successor model 4.X. Obviously, the successor to the 4.X in sales numbers is higher.

SG 7.0 is currently launching now just -- well, because there have been a number of customer or approval processes until they turn out to be orders. So I'm still talking about smaller selling numbers at the moment, but a lot of discussions ongoing relating to them.

And across the different countries, we see future projects that will obviously make a contribution to this. But what I'm saying is we're just at the beginning of that whole process.

I'm very positive, though. The turbine is going down really well, very positively with our customers in the market, but it takes time, and that's the challenge.

Thank you very much. We have one more question from NTV coming in a second, but we need to wrap up.

You'll be live with NTV in a moment, so people can tune in there. Thank you very much to everyone for joining and for your interest.

If you have more questions, my press team and myself are available. Please talk to us.

And I need to apologize again for our technical glitches we've had before. Our analyst call with Christian Bruch and our CFO, Maria Ferraro, already begins at 10:00 today.

So please dial in, but you cannot ask questions. You'll find the link on our website.

The next regular meeting for journalists is our annual press conference on the 11th of November. So that's not long.

But before that, I'd like to wish you a great holiday season. I'll be on vacation soon.

Thank you very much, and have a great day.