Bilfinger SE (GBF) Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Bilfinger's Q2 2026 Results Webcast. My name is Martina Kalkhake, and I'm here today with our CEO, Dr. Thomas Schulz; and our CFO, Matti Jakel. We will start with the presentation today on the quarterly highlights and then open the call for your questions. [Operator Instructions] And the event will be recorded. I will now hand over to Thomas.

Thank you. So hello, everybody. Welcome to our Q2 2026 results here out of Mannheim in Germany. Let's start with the highlights. We had actually quite a good order intake in the Q2 with around EUR 1.5 billion. And that's in a quite volatile market environment, especially with the Iran war. Our revenue has a quite good run rate. And we foresee that definitely with more dynamic, positive dynamic towards the second half and the end -- second half of this year and then, of course, the end of this year. Our EBITA was not on the level as expected and actually moved down to 5.3%. Our earnings per share is up to EUR 1.47, which is quite a nice improvement. And the cash flow for the market situation, with the Iran war, is the EUR 48 million, quite a good one. Our outlook is confirmed, especially on the revenue, where we see quite a dynamic in it. And on the EBITA margin at the lower end of the range, but of course, within the range. And from the 1st of April on, our M&A Teknokon is included in the figures. Before we go into the market and different business analytics and so on, something which is very important for us. It is the safety of the people we work with, our own people, suppliers, customers. And again, we had an improvement versus the Q2 '25 on the Total Recordable Incident Frequency Rate and a fantastic improvement on the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate, which is close to nil. Actually, our ambition is to be on both on nil, no accidents in work. And our organization is doing here a fantastic good job. When we then go into the different industries and we always show the 4 main industries for the Bilfinger Group. You see on the left side, the production index. Actually, the figures are from Standard & Poor's index to 2023. And the color code is, of course, corresponding with the more information per industry on the right side. Let's start with the chemicals and petrochem, actually ones by far the largest part of our top line. That changed. It's down to 21%. And the 21% and the revenue share in the outlook is slightly flattish as we call it. What does it mean? We have, especially in Central Europe, Germany in the lead, quite a pressure in the market with cost reduction programs where we help customers, where we work with customers quite intensive. But of course, the size of the orders and the demand is smaller than we are used to. So in other areas like in North America and especially in the Middle East, it looks completely different. Then we come to the energy. Energy has a very good run for the Bilfinger Group. But energy as an industry, we see quite positively for the years to come. It makes now 28% of the top line and actually replaced in a large extent that what we had as additional work in the chemical and petrochemical industry. The demand is quite favorable for that what we offer. For both industries, the outsourcing potential, the potential what we as Bilfinger have to take over, especially asset performance, maintenance, turnaround business from our clients and their organizations is quite good. That is what we, by the way, see in all the industries. The next one is oil and gas, stable good development, 19% of the top line, good demand for us, good customer relation and with some differences in the region, but especially the run for LNG and investments in the Middle East out of the situation what we have since end of February are driving here a good demand for the future. Then, last but not least, our green ones, the pharma and biopharma, it's 10% of the top line. It's a smaller business and a little bit more cyclical, but a quite good demand. Nevertheless, that this year with some European impact slowed the growth a little bit down, but from '26 on quite a good outlook up to 2030. Out of this, we go into some selected orders. On the left side, you see out of the chemicals petrochem from one of our long-term well-established customers that we have the task to install an air preheating system with the pure target to improve efficiency. This is asset performance at its best and actually proves our high quality, what we deliver to our clients. In the mid is Germany with energy sector. It's EWE Hydrogen. We are responsible for the engineering, installation and commissioning for the integration of a new 320-megawatt production plant for hydrogen. On the right side, with our new M&A, we actually were successful in the second quarter to close an order with a mining company, a gold mining company for some mechanical, electrical and insulation work in the gold processing plant. Mining will have, for the Bilfinger Group, as well as data centers and other smaller industries, an important role in the future and actually a bigger and a better dynamic. Out of that into innovation. Innovation for us is important because we have a lot and we can offer to the customers a lot. It's a big differentiator in the peer group. It makes actually quite a lot of our good reputation. This time, we are proud to present to you the Bilfinger Automated Gas Analyzing System. When you have large gas production sites, processing plants and so on, it can go over several square kilometers. To test the product, that means the gas and what you have in the gas, you use so-called analytic gas bottles. These analytic gas bottles get a content of gas and then they normally take that together and bring it to an external laboratory to check how the content of the gas is. In other words, how good the quality is. We offer a system, a mobile system, which can 24/7 do that on the site there where you take the gas bottle and on top of it, collecting the data digital and on top of it, certifying the product what the customer is producing. This is a significant improvement for our clients in the gas industry. Out of that, we come to the demand. And here, you have our opportunity pipeline at the top left, and it starts indexed in April 2024. When you now compare the 3x quarter 2, '24, '25 and on the right side in dark blue, '26, you see the difference. We are more or less on the same level in the opportunity pipeline. Opportunity means what do we have in front of us where we can bid on and where we have a good chance to get the order. And you see as a difference to the others that in the quarter 2 '26, the first and the second month was fairly low and the third month really showed an improvement. And that is what we mean that the quarter 2 showed at the end a significant improved dynamic. But what you see too is that actually the order pipeline up to November, December in '25 was slightly increasing and showing quite a good development for the business to come in '26. Then we had the winter downturn, a little bit longer and stronger winter than we actually calculated, which is only a few months or maximum 1 quarter, 1.5 quarter deferral time impact. But the Iran war at the end of the February actually brought hesitation, prolongation, deferral, postponing of necessary work as projects, maintenance turnaround in the industry in Europe and, of course, in the Middle East. That is nothing which is canceled. It is a time effect what you always have an unexpected bigger crisis. People are getting more hesitant. Our customers are getting more hesitant. They need more approval from Supervisory Board. They crunch their budget multiple times instead of giving directly the order. So what we foresee is that the second half of the year creates a significant better dynamic and business environment for that what we have to offer. If we then look into the order intake, this EUR 1.5 billion for the second quarter 2026, the third best with and without Teknokon, by the way, in more than 10 years for the Bilfinger Group, shows that we already saw good signs at the end of the quarter 2. The backlog improved to the quarter 1 and of course, to the year-end and is slightly down to that what we saw in quarter 2, 2025. And with that, I would like to give to Matti, our CFO.

Yes. Thomas, thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will run you through the group numbers and then the segment numbers to provide some more color on the reports that we have issued early today. Revenue is up 7% to EUR 1.45 billion for this quarter. The book-to-bill at 1.03 is better than what we have seen in the last 3 quarters where we were below 1.0. And obviously, with a very huge order intake in quarter 2, 2025, we were at 1.31. But I come to the effect for quarter 2 last year, again, when we go through the segments. Gross profit is down by 80 basis points. Thomas talked about the temporary effects that the Iran war has on almost all of our industries. And the delays that the uncertainty has caused and that's delays not only in CapEx, but it is delays in OpEx spending. So -- and that translates into some sort of underutilization within our operations. And that's the main reason why gross profit margin slightly slipped to 10.7%. Conversely, on the SG&A expenses, they were up EUR 2 million. That's related to the Teknokon acquisition. But as a ratio, we improved from 6.3% to 6.1%, continued integration of the acquisitions that we had continued, efficiency or effects from the efficiency program, which gave us that improvement. Overall, profit margin slightly down from 5.5% to 5.3%. Obviously, looking at our guidance, that's below what we had expected. But the reasons, I think, are fairly clear and should disappear in the second half of 2026. Let's take a look at the segments individually. Orders received in Western Europe, EUR 482 million. Last year, we won a big contract in the United Kingdom for a chemicals customer. That's an effect that we did not repeat this quarter. But if you look at it sequentially, quite an uptick over the last few quarters in orders received, underpinning the increased dynamic in the market. Revenue flat at 1% up to EUR 477 million, book-to-bill at 1.01 and the profitability up 50 basis points in Western Europe. Here, we see, as I said before, further efficiency improvements from the integrations of the acquired businesses. Over to Central Europe, which includes the DACH region, so the German-speaking countries as well as the Nordic countries. Here, orders received minus 10% to EUR 646 million. Again, last year, we won a fairly large contract also for a hydrogen production facility, but much larger than the one that we showed earlier for EWE. So that makes up the difference and the change in the numbers. Revenue up 9% to EUR 664 million, quite nicely, given the circumstances and the environment. Book-to-bill close to 1.0, showing a better dynamic than in the past quarters. And the profitability down 90 basis points, 5.2% to 4.3%. Here, particularly in the German-speaking countries, we saw quite some delays and quite some hesitancy in spending CapEx, but more so in OpEx causing temporary underutilization throughout the operations across that geography. And lastly, segment International, again, on the orders received. Last year, a 3-year contract renewal in the United States, which happens every 3 years in the second quarter did not repeat itself, but at minus 12% organically, overall, minus 32% organically. What we have here included is the addition of the gold mine contract in Turkey that was also presented a few minutes ago. Revenue, nice growth, at 10% to EUR 302 million and the book-to-bill 1.15, also quite favorable and showing good dynamics in that market. Profitability, an uptick of 0.1 percentage point, 3.8% to 3.9%, EUR 12 million. So despite all the issues that we have in the Middle East, we saw a stable development in the profit margin for our segment International. How does that translate into earnings per -- for the year -- or for the quarter, sorry, EUR 54 million in the second quarter compared to EUR 48 million last year, 2025 in the quarter. So earnings per share up at 15% to EUR 1.47. That has been helped by a lower tax rate in the second quarter. For you who have been with Bilfinger for a longer period, see that the tax rates may fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter depending on where we record income tax or taxable income throughout the various tax regimes in the countries. So that may fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter, as you can see here. But EUR 54 million, nice profit for the quarter. Cash flow at EUR 48 million over EUR 53 million last quarter, so a good performance, but also lower because we didn't receive as many large contracts, so lower advance payments. And we have timing effects when it comes to billing when our customers are hesitant not only with awarding contracts, then they also slow down on approving our invoices. Again, it's a timing effect that will disappear in the second half of 2026. Finally, a quick look at sort of cash, net liquidity and leverage. You see a drop in cash in hand and you see a drop in financial debt. We repaid a large part of our promissory note loan in German Schuldscheindarlehen. I was told by our lawyers that's a huge difference. But then that's why we set a German law governed promissory note loan, so that everybody knows that this is different to what you understand in the U.S. or U.K. by a promissory note loan. Anyways, it's debt. We paid back the debt. So that reduced net cash and that reduced the cash and it reduced the liabilities, financial debt. We reissued the same instrument. And we collected EUR 300 million in early July. So you will see the reversal of all of this when we get together back in the third quarter, EUR 300 million increase in cash in hand and EUR 300 million increase in financial debt. Net liquidity typically is low in the second quarter when we pay out the dividend, which we did. And we also paid the purchase price for the Teknokon Group straight after the closing on April 1. And that pushed up our leverage a little bit. But compared to last year, 0.6, now 0.7. So not a big movement there. And that, I hand back to my colleague.

Thank you, Matti. So now the group outlook for 2026, the outlook is confirmed. The EBITA margin is expected at the lower end of range and Teknokon acquisition is included. When we look into the revenue, we have a 5% improvement versus the first half of the year 2025. And of course, the guidance what we gave with 5.4% to 5.9%, we are on a good run with the revenue. We, of course, target that what we said before. When we look into the EBITA, it's the same level. It's 5% EBITA. As we said and explained in the presentation, we expected more. But the second half of the year, regarding that what we see in the market dynamics with all the things what we have on hand. It looks good that we are then in the guidance, not outside the guidance, in the guidance, in the EBITA one, at the lower end of the range. The free cash flow with EUR 69 million looks quite lower than last year. But of course, there is no repeat of a special case, what we had out of the normal payment and cash inflow in the quarter 1, 2025. But with the run rates, what you already saw in the second half of '25 with all the growth and all the activities what we do is clear indication that we are well in the range of EUR 250 million to EUR 300 million. To finalize, a short feedback or a short summary of that what we had in the quarter 2. Orders were the third largest in the quarter since more than 10 years. Revenue was 7% up. EBITA margin, a little bit lower than expected, earnings per share up. Cash flow in the market conditions quite on a good level and the outlook, of course, confirmed. So with that, Martina, I think we can go to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] So the first question comes from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

A couple of questions from my side, please. First of all, obviously, it's very reassuring to hear that you saw orders start to pick up at the end of the quarter. You showed us the opportunity pipeline really picking up in June. But I'm just curious if you could provide some color on what has changed that has made your customers now, also here in Central Europe, to be more willing now to move forward with both their OpEx and CapEx investment plans? Is it just simply optimism that the Middle East conflict will soon be resolved? That is the first question. And the second question is, now if we look at your guidance and the implied EBITA margin for the second half, it's pretty high, 6.7% versus 6% in H2 last year. And I'm just curious what gives you the confidence in the current environment, given where you come from H1 to be able to achieve this.

Yes, Craig, I'll take the first part of the question. We see actually in global business always the same situation is an unexpected crisis of a larger extent. In that case, the Iran war is happening out of the nothing. Then you get a kind of a shock. Customers are stopping a lot of things. They actually asked their supervisory board 2, 3 times. They pushed back on acting. And in that case, in the Middle East, for the Middle East, of course, a lot of people were at home and not going back to the offices. In, especially, Western Europe, the rollercoaster with the energy cost significantly up, then down, then subsidized and all the very difficult to read outlook for the energy costs to go, customers were going on a break. And that lasts, as in oil crises, a few weeks. And we saw then in and we got -- and I was -- you know that I'm going out quite often to clients. Then in June, we saw actually that the society in the industries got used to that rollercoaster used to: We have a deal, we have not a deal, we have a deal. And then, of course, looking into and knowing if they postpone maintenance, if they postpone turnarounds, if they postpone their project, everything gets postponed, efficiency improvement too and to finalize the project. So out of that, there was then more push, more dynamic in the market to go on with things and to inform us in discussion with us when things will happen so that we can organize it. And that explains in a second. The under-absorption because the people we have under-absorbed not utilized enough to make it like this. We need more than double in the months to come to organize that what the customers have a demand for it. And then you are, of course, from a profit point of view in a different spot. But for that, I give to Matti.

Yes, Craig. If we look at how we set out the year for 2026. And if we look at the midpoint of our guidance, the profitability that we had intended was 6%, and that is what we said all along. If you compare this to last year, that's a 50 basis point uptick. If I look at last year's second half, we delivered 6.0%. So that 50 basis point that was already in the making and in the plan. So now, because of some of the delays and a bit of an underachievement in the first half, we need to step up to the plate a little bit stronger and harder. And we rely on what has not happened in the first half is going to happen in the second half. And when we go into overabsorption, then everything we make there drops straight to the bottom line. You could see on our SG&A, we're better off than last year, and that will continue. So given that mix, that gives us the confidence to deliver to the lower end of the range at 5.8% with obviously an implied margin for the second half of 2026.

Okay. I just have one quick technical question and I'll get back in the queue. If we look at the consolidation and other operations line, there were some large moves in that second quarter in both directions, but both basically reporting 0 contribution. I just wonder, because it's a pretty meaningful amount, particularly on a quarterly basis. I just wonder were there any special factors here and how we should think about these 2 lines developing in H2?

Well, those lines, they do fluctuate a little bit. And we had a few movements here in sort of opposite directions last year and this year. Nothing to be concerned about. Maybe one thing that I should add here is other operations. Our business in South Africa really benefited from a very high demand in 2025, first quarter, second quarter. That didn't repeat itself for various reasons. I'm not going to go into the detail. But that's normal fluctuations and we find ways to compensate for that.

So we expect more normal progression in H2?

Yes.

So the next question comes from Pal Skirta from Bernstein. It seems for me that Pal probably dropped out of the telephone call. So let's continue with the next person on the queue that would be Michael Kuhn from Deutsche Bank.

It's kind of follow-up. So on, let's say, the postponed work in the first half and I think we discussed in the last call already. Let's say, by how much can your clients usually push out those decisions? So when are they actually like forced to come back? And if you look at the opportunity pipeline that obviously improved towards the end of the quarter. Let's say, can you like give an indication on how much was just about delays? And how much is like generally new projects that come into the market?

Very good question. Michael, at first, a lot of the business what we do is actually creating additional business. And that comes on top of it. In crisis situation, business what we do doesn't get a lot of additional, if at all, additional business. In crisis, the orders what we get and the work what we do normally is very much regulated to a smaller amount. So these kind of additional work, especially in the maintenance part, asset performance part. That is what has to come in the second half of the year, because it is very much impacting the efficiency. Then we have larger orders, new orders, projects. And the projects, you can move. But you can't move it for half a year or 2 years or so because you have work permits. And you have certifications and permits to do additional work on a respective, let's say, area or land or location. And if you don't fulfill time milestones towards the authorities, your permit is gone. So one of the things where we always work with clients in the -- actually in the pre-feasibility and the feasibility and actually in the pre-engineering phase is the time schedule, so that we really hit the milestones. Otherwise, our clients get the permitting problem with the authorities. That describes a little bit that we actually foresee quite a revenue improvement in the second half of the year. We are in close contact with our clients to organize it. So from that point of view, our visibility on that is actually quite good.

Maybe let me add, Michael. We distinguish between discretionary spend and nondiscretionary spend. And on OpEx, you can delay to a certain extent, doing maintenance work or fixing one thing or the other, but that really has limits, time limits. And we're not talking quarters or even years, we're talking months. And so what we have seen in the first quarter, second quarter, some of the work has already come back and there's more to come in the second half.

Understood. And then maybe a smaller thing. I think in Central Europe, on one of the slides, you mentioned some softness in pharma. I think for a couple of years, you benefited quite a bit from onshoring efforts. Is that wave already over? Or is that also rather a temporary thing in your view?

Yes, we can be very specific with that. The figures are, of course, Standard & Poor figures. And they are 2 big markets in Europe, where we are actually more or less not really in. And they had a setback based on taxation and other things. It's not Germany, it's not Austria, it's not Denmark and so on. And that has an impact on the overall. And it is history. So it's past, it's over, then we didn't see it in our figures. So -- but from a pure reporting point of view, it, of course, is in the data of Standard & Poor's.

So the next question comes from Olivier Calvet from UBS.

Maybe the first one, just on your thoughts on organic growth going forward. If we see order intake remaining under pressure over the next few months. And just to confirm that your forecasted guidance assumes an improvement in orders in the second half. And perhaps if you could comment how much of your backlog do you expect to convert into revenue this year? That would be question one. And then just secondly, on the Teknokon acquisition. I think good to see an order here from that gold mine here. You've had control for a quarter now. But I'm just curious if you are seeing increased discussions as a result of your expanded footprint in the region? If you're seeing new customers or if that's mostly with existing ones? And I just wanted to check if the organic order growth in international that was with that gold mine or not? Just out of curiosity.

I come with the second part first. Yes, it is in the gold mine order. And as we said for the Teknokon for the Turkish acquisition, we are not only having in the target Turkey. We actually have countries around Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and so on in the focus too. But you need a base because we need people on customer sites. When you look into these countries, Turkey included. One part of the process industry, which is our main industry, is the mining industry in these areas. And there, high-quality work, digitalized, is very much appreciated. And we have a quite motivating model for customers in that area by -- with our training and education program to take local colleagues in and educating them on the Bilfinger standard. So that makes us in the market expansion, which is one of our 2 main dimensions in the strategy execution, very attractive. So then if it comes to the order intake, the order intake. What we see in the second half of the year, as we always say, the order intake fluctuates for us, goes up and down. But of course, we expect that the full year for 2026 is a quite positive development on the order intake despite the Iran war.

Yes, Olivier. And your question on backlog conversion into revenue. What we measure month to month to month is what we call the coverage. That is how much have we already realized in revenue and how much of the revenue that we forecast is already in the backlog. And that percentage tells us quite clearly where we are going in terms of revenue in relation to our guidance and our budget. And that ratio is 90% at the end of the second quarter and it was 88% last year. So to be very specific. It's not a number that we do publish all the time. But I think under the circumstances, it's the right thing to be very transparent here. So what we have on hand and what we have placed is in line with previous years where we always hit our revenue guidance in the midpoint. So that gives us confidence. And I hope that does give you confidence that we're on a good track for 2026 when it comes to revenue.

Okay. So in other words, you're confident on your visibility in the second half and you're not relying on incremental orders in the second half to hit the midpoint of your guidance?