GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft (G1A) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GEA Group AG Q2 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advise that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Oliver Luckenbach, Head of IR.

Yes. Thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our Second Quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO; and Alexander Kocherscheidt, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the second quarter, and Alexander will then cover the business and financial review before Stefan takes over again for the outlook 2026. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session. Please be aware of the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement as in the material that we have distributed today. And with that, I hand over to Stefan.

Thank you, Oliver, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference call today. Before starting with a review of our second quarter results, let me share with you some important news which we published last week. The Executive Board has resolved that we will start another share buyback program in the amount of up to EUR 500 million. Keeping in mind that we have already bought back and canceled shares with an aggregate volume of EUR 700 million in the last 5 years. The new program brings us to a share buyback volume of EUR 1.2 billion between 2021 and 2027, an impressive volume in relation to our market cap. The new program will be split into two tranches and will run until the end of '27. The first tranche of the program was up to EUR 250 million starts tomorrow, and will be executed over the next 7 months. Like the last program, all repurchased shares will be canceled once the program has been completed. These news clearly demonstrate our conviction in GEA's growth opportunities. We are growing our top line, improving our profitability further and making continuous progress towards our Mission 30 targets. Thanks to our strong cash generation, the share buyback is not limiting our investments, R&D spending or potential acquisitions. As in previous programs, there is an ESG feature linked to the buyback, we will donate part of the guaranteed outperformance, which is the difference between the purchasing price and the volume weighted average price of our shares over the duration of the program to the Deutsche Universitätsstiftung. It will be roughly EUR 250,000, which will be used to support exceptionally talented students in steam education. I'm turning now to our second quarter release. After having already reported a strong first quarter, we accelerated top line growth and improved profitability further in the second quarter. Order intake rose significantly by 14.2% year-over-year to EUR 1.5 billion. This performance was driven by strong growth in all order sizes. Base orders, however, had by far the highest absolute growth contribution. Large orders, the orders above EUR 15 million had a total value of EUR 34 million, while no large order had been booked in the prior year quarter. Sales grew strongly by 10% to EUR 1.4 billion. Organic sales growth was even higher at 11.0%. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased by an excellent 15.6% year-over-year to EUR 251 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin improved to 17.4%, this marks a new record level for GEA. Return on capital employed continued to rise from an already high level in the prior year quarter to 36.8% in the quarter. This marks a new record too. Due to an excellent cash generation in the quarter, Net liquidity turned from a net debt position at the end of the second quarter in 2025 into a net cash position of EUR 71 million at the end of the second quarter in '26. To sum it up, a very strong second quarter with improvements in all key performance indicators. Due to this very positive operating performance and confident expectations for the remainder of this year, we raised our guidance for the fiscal year '26 as announced on 21st of July. We are now guiding organic sales growth to be between 6% and 8% for the full year '26, up from the prior range of 5% to 7%. The new range is well above our midterm target of more than 5% organic sales growth. EBITDA margin before restructuring expenses is expected to be in the range of 17% to 17.4%, up from the prior guidance of 16.6% to 17.2%. This brings us already close to the low end of our Mission 30 target. Even if you have to consider that this year's EBITDA margin is before restructuring expenses, while from next year onwards, the EBITDA margin is as reported. The new guidance for return on capital employed is between 36% and 40%, clearly above the prior range of 34% to 38%. And as you can see, we are once again delivering what we promised or even more than that. This is one of my favorite charts. Once again, we have been recognized as one of the world's most sustainable companies by Time magazine and [ Statista ]. Over 5,000 companies were evaluated globally to identify the top 750 companies. And GEA not only made it to rank 17 globally but was ranked first among all German companies. This is a special honor for everyone at GEA as it underscores our position as a real front runner in sustainability. And it is exactly this distinctive aspect, sustainability as a driver of long-term value creation that we strive to communicate to the capital markets. Over the past few years, our Investor Relations team together with my Executive Board colleague, [ Dr. Naren Stella ], has done a fantastic job in transparent and understandable ESG communication. It is especially rewarding to see that this work has been recognized and appreciated by you, our investors and analysts. Receiving the German Investor Relation Award for Best ESG communication is a great honor to us. It reflects something we truly care about engaging openly with our stakeholders and bringing our shareholders along on our journey towards an even more sustainable company. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your vote, your trust and your continued support. We see this award not only as a recognition of what we have achieved but also as encouragement to keep pushing ahead on our journey guided by our group's engineering for a better world. And now I hand over to Alexander, who will give you more insights into our performance in the second quarter.

Thank you very much, Stefan, and a warm welcome from me as well. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now walk you through our business and financial performance in the second quarter. Let's have a closer look at the group performance. As Stefan has already highlighted, we had an excellent second quarter throughout all key performance indicators. Order intake increased significantly by 15.4% organically with all divisions contributing to this positive development, except for PSA. From a customer industry perspective, once again and for several quarters in a row, dairy processing and dairy farming continued to be strong. In addition, food and other industries were showing good demand. Translational FX effects became smaller. While we had an adverse translational FX effect of more than 3% in the first quarter, it shrunk to 1% in the second quarter. Sales grew organically by 11.0% driven by excellent performance in both new machine and service sales. Organic growth in the new machine business reached 11.6%, supported by double-digit growth rates in almost all divisions. The service business continued its growth trajectory and reported an organic growth rate of 10.2%. This marks the 30 -- sorry, the 23rd quarter -- such a high number, it's difficult, 23rd quarter in a row with organic service sales growth, an impressive performance. On the back of the slightly stronger growth in the new machine business, the service sales share declined by 0.5 percentage points to 39.6%. The EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 23 million to EUR 251 million, resulting in a corresponding year-over-year margin expansion of 0.9 percentage points to 17.4%. And significantly higher volume and better gross margin were the drivers of the profitability increase. Moving on to the divisional performance. I will start with pure flow processing, which reported very strong top line growth. So order intake and sales, while the EBITDA margin declined slightly at a high level. Order intake grows organically by 9.8% year-over-year, driven by orders below EUR 5 million. Demand was strongest in food, dairy processing and marine, but also beverage, energy and distribution and storage contributed to the impressive growth rate. Thus, order intake strength was broad-based across different customer industries. Organic sales grew significantly by 12.9% year-over-year, driven by very strong growth rates in new machines and service business. As the new machine business grew even more than service sales this quarter, the service sales share decreased on a high level from 47.0% in the second quarter of 2025 and to 46.2% in the second quarter of 2026. EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 13 million year-over-year to EUR 145 million, driven by higher gross profit, which was partly offset by increased operating costs, such as higher selling expenses in line with our order intake development. The corresponding EBITDA margin declined on a high level by 0.5 percentage points year-over-year to 27.5% in the quarter. Turning to nutrition plant engineering, which caught up strongly from a slow first quarter. The division reported impressive numbers across all key performance indicators, significant order intake growth, strong sales as well as a substantial EBITDA margin expansion. As a result of this performance, all key indicators turned from a negative performance in the first quarter to a positive one in the first half. Order intake for the second quarter was up organically by more than 40%, this was driven by a very strong performance of orders between EUR 1 million and EUR 15 million as well as two large orders from the dairy processing industry, which totaled EUR 34 million. The prior year quarter contained no large orders. In terms of customer industries, dairy processing remains strong. And this is not only driven by the two large Asian dairy processing orders, even without these two large orders, this customer industry would have been a strong growth contributor. In addition, Pharma showed good demand in the quarter. Sales increased organically by 10.6% year-over-year. Service sales continued its growth trajectory, increasing organically by 11.5% year-over-year. At the same time, new machine sales rebounded as expected and promised after reporting a decline in the first quarter. As mentioned already in our first quarter call, we expected an improvement in new machine sales kicking in, in the second quarter. EBITDA before restructuring expenses increased from EUR 45 million in the prior year quarter to EUR 56 million in the second quarter of 2026 on the back of higher sales volume and better gross margin. The corresponding EBITDA margin rose strongly by 1.3 percentage points year-over-year to 11.3%. Continuing with pharma and food applications, which delivered strong sales growth and a substantial profitability expansion. Order intake, however, declined organically by 9.6% due to timing of orders. Base orders, which are orders below EUR 1 million, we're growing by more than 6% in the quarter, while medium-sized orders were down. Sales grew by 8.5% year-over-year in organic terms driven by both strong new machine and service sales. The new machine business delivered an organic growth rate of 9.2%, while service grew at 7.2%. As a result, the service sales share decreased from 34.5% in the prior year quarter to 33.3% in the quarter. The impressive track record of continuous profitability improvement which the division has built up over the last years continued in the second quarter. Absolute EBITDA before restructuring expenses and the corresponding margin reached new record levels for the quarter. EBITDA rose substantially by 30% year-over-year to EUR 45 million, driven by volume and significantly higher gross margin. For the first time ever, the respective margin crossed the 16% mark and reached 16.2%, an outstanding achievement. Finally, Farm Technologies. Farm Technologies reported another quarter of double-digit growth rates in order intake and sales. Let me give you some more details here. the favorable market environment for dairy farmers, which began in December 2024, continued steadily throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026, this translated once again into a notable increase in order intake. Order intake rose by 11.4% organically due to strong demand for both automated and conventional milking systems in the new machine business area. In terms of order sizes, base orders were the growth driver. Organic sales rose significantly by 15.4%, and new machine sales continued their strong performance since middle of last year with a substantial year-over-year organic increase of 22.6%. Service sales grew organically at 8.6%, and as a result of the significant outperformance of the new machine business, the service sales share declined from a high level of 51.1% in the second quarter of 2025 and to 47.8% in the second quarter of 2026. On the back of higher sales volume, EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 3 million year-over-year to EUR 30 million. The corresponding EBITDA margin declined slightly by 0.2 percentage points to 14.2% because of the lower service sales share and product mix effects. Let me close the divisional chapter with an overview of the EBITDA growth contribution in the first half and in the second quarter of 2026. There are two important messages. Firstly, we have been able to increase our EBITDA before restructuring expenses in both time periods considerably. Secondly, all divisions contributed to this positive development. This underlines our broad-based strength resulting from our price and cost discipline as well as savings from our procurement and production optimization efforts. Let me now turn to another important topic, net working capital. Year-over-year, net working capital declined by EUR 27 million to EUR 396 million. This reduction was driven by a combination of higher trade payables and higher contract liabilities. The high volume of large orders over the last 4 quarters led to higher advanced payments, which are reflected in the increase in contract liabilities. This resulted in a net working capital to sales ratio of 7.0%, placing us at the bottom of the guided corridor of 7% to 9%. On a rolling last 4 quarters basis, which smooths seasonality the ratio was even lower at 6.3%. Free cash flow reached an outstanding level, marking the highest second quarter free cash flow in 6 years. Let's have a look at the main drivers. After a moderate net working capital outflow of EUR 12 million and a EUR 26 million outflow in the others position, which mainly results from miscellaneous balance sheet movements like Operating cash flow stood at EUR 185 million in the second quarter. CapEx related cash outflow was relatively low at EUR 39 million compared with our full year 2026 guidance of around EUR 240 million. As in previous years, we expect CapEx to ramp up in the second half of 2026. As a result, free cash flow was very strong, amounting to EUR 151 million. After deducting lease payments and interest paid, net cash flow amounted to EUR 131 million. The strong net cash flow was offset by the dividend payment. But even so, we ended the quarter with a net cash position of EUR 71 million. In the first half, free cash flow was still negative at EUR 39 million. However, we saw a very strong catch up in the second quarter. We are, therefore, on track to achieve roughly the same level of free cash flow for the full year as in 2025. Free cash flow generation over the last 4 quarters has been strong, reaching EUR 483 million. the corresponding cash conversion ratio, which indicates how much we -- how much of the EBITDA before restructuring expenses has been converted into free cash flow before restructuring expenses landed at a solid 54%. With that, I hand back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thank you, Alexander. As already mentioned at the beginning of today's call, we have increased our guidance for 2026, based on the very positive performance in the first half of this year and the promising expectations for the second half of '26. Despite the volatile environment driven by geopolitical tensions, around the world, GEA's positive journey is not only continuing. It is even accelerating. And this is based on the various levers, which we initiated with our Mission 30. Finally, our road map for 2026. The next important date will be the release of our third quarter results on November 9. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at upcoming roadshows and conferences Alexander, the Investor Relations team, and I will be meeting investors until the end of September. This concludes my presentation, and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you very much, Stefan and Alexander. And yes, let's start with the Q&A session. And therefore, I'm turning the call back to you, Madalena.

[Operator Instructions] And this question comes from the line of Akash Gupta from JPMorgan.

My first one is for Stefan. Stefan, you earlier touched base in your prepared remarks that you are technically hitting the bottom end of your 2030 target of 17% to 19% already this year. And I know margin guidance for 2030, excluding restructuring -- including restructuring, and this year is excluding restructuring. But I'm wondering if you can talk about the timeline for potentially revisiting 2030 targets, which looks conservative. And then my second question is for Alexander, which is on Farm Tech. Your new revenue guidance is 8% to 10% organic after more than 20% in H1, and that would mean that even at the top end of the revenue outlook, you are guiding a modest revenue decline in second half. Farm Tech has seen more than 1x book-to-bill for 3 consecutive quarters and backlog is at highest level since 2023. So maybe if you can help us understand what is driving this revenue guidance for Farm Tech.

First of all, I think the positive message is I think there is no question mark that we can make the Mission 30, this question marks might be finally gone. And I think if you also -- we know each other very well casing a long time. And if you see this performance now, I think it proves that we can deliver what we promise. It -- let's first finish now the year '26 and let's see where we finally end. And as I said, we are definitely touching the lower end of the Mission 30 already at this year's end. And then at the right time, we might think twice, and we will see what we -- if there is any room for recalibration. But the company has, of course, a lot of potential like you can see.

So second question, Akash, regarding the FT sales We, of course, are running also against second quarter of last year. That's also always the case if we then compare the two numbers. and this has been quite a strong one last year. So that's the first one. And yes, the comparison in Q2 -- in H2 is quite high. So that leads to our overall guidance of 8% to 10%.

But still, like when I look at your last 3 quarter order intake, even if we have similar revenues in second half, we should get growth in Farm Tech revenues in the second half. So just wondering if there is anything we are missing there?

No, there's nothing that you're missing. So that's the guidance we are giving, and that's based on the current expectation. I think with the yearly growth rate, we are still within the growth trajectory that we are needing also, also in comparison to last year's growth in FTE. So that's where we currently sit.

This question comes from Megan Yang from Goldman Sachs.

I just have to -- so I think on your previous earnings call, you talked about the acceleration in organic sales growth throughout the year. I wonder if given your strong first half performance, are you see expecting this? And in that case, be still further room to upgrade your full year guidance of '26? And my second question is if you could give us a bit more color on how much visibility you have now for the order to support future quarters at current high-growth organic orders growth rate or even higher?

Well, you are right. Normally, we can accelerate organic sales growth in the second half of the year. Like also profitability that makes us very optimistic that we will achieve the guidance which we promised. We know each other not so long time. But if you follow GEA during the last years, we always deliver what we promise. So for us, it's not an option to overpromise and under deliver. So we rather like to do it the other way around. So that is what I can say. There are always some risk in the air, not coming from our company coming from outside development, but we are very optimistic that we see sales growth, which is in line with the guidance we just gave. And the order pipeline or let's say, of course, we are -- the second half of the year is a little bit of an uphill battle, let's say, because we are comparing against especially a very strong Q4. So it is very like -- very unlikely, let's say, like that, that we can beat last year's Q4 because last year, we also booked Baladna here in this fourth quarter. So just also to manage expectations don't expect Q4, which might be even above last year's Q4. But as I always like to say, a quarter is it's very difficult to judge in our business because it happened so fast that we can book something in Q3, what we expected in Q2 or vice versa. So more important is the 12 months period, I would say, and we are very optimistic that we can see at the end of the year, a significant growth also in order intake. It doesn't matter when we book it.

This question comes from Klas Bergelind from Citi.

My first question is on your exposure to the data center build out. It seems like you haven't seen much growth here yet. But we're hearing from others of increased orders here in the slow end of the business. So these are pumps, valves, fittings, et cetera. Could you talk through your exposure here, Stefan and to what extent you can make this sort of commercial -- to commercialize this opportunity. I'll start here.

Well, I cannot comment on what others are promising or telling or whatever. For us, from today's point of view, we don't expect any significant business from us for the -- in the data center. But this is not a big problem for us because, as you know, we have a lot of other verticals where we have really interesting growth. Also, just to mention that we are extremely successful in the topic of continuous tablet pressing where we have a unique position. And you also could maybe read that now -- and Novo Nordisk is also starting with the GLP-1 tablet in Europe. This is something where we might benefit significantly from. So there are different verticals for us, which are very interesting, but most likely data center is not.

My second 1 is sort of linked to other questions in that your guidance feels competitive. So if you look at pure flow processing, the one-off, but it's a little bit it beside second half full year midpoint shows a sharp operation to 2% below around 5%, and there is comp that is effectively conservative as through the cycle? Or are you seeing anything here that would suggest slowdown? Or is it linked to tougher come from pacing or something else. The implied margin. It's very good for [ PFP ]. But there is on the sales comp.

Okay. First of all, I was maybe too fast in giving you kudos for the good connection because it was quite, quite bad again. But I think I've got the point. Well, what should I say, we -- you know Klas we know each other also very long. You know that we are always guiding what we can achieve. And there might be -- if everything goes in the right direction, there might be upside potential not only in [ PFP ]. This is, I would say, how I can comment it, but there is nothing which you don't know and should know to be sure that we might be worse than expected. We do our job. We like always, and it might look conservative, let's see where we end up.

Okay. My very quick final one, if you can hear me okay, the very strong orders ex the large orders in NPE, which seems to be driven both by dairy processing and pharma, did any of these two segments ex large orders accelerate more than the others quarter-on-quarter. And the debate now in GEA, sort of moving on from large orders to base orders in you have a tough comp from large orders in the second half. But the question now, do you see this underlying order level sustain into the second half? Any comment on the sort of base order pipeline EUR 1 million to EUR 15 million would be useful and across geographies.

Yes. I think that's good what you mentioned because we see a very good base load in NPE. By the way, also here when -- while we are talking about verticals and growth drivers. Also the whole high protein trend is something which is very favorable for us at the moment. There is a lot of investment going on in the world needs to have high protein. And also many people are moving to dairy-based products, which might not have consumed it so much in the past. So this is what we see. And on top of that, we have an interesting and very promising pipeline for large orders in NPE. So also here, we expect a very good second half of the year in terms of order intake and of course, also in sales.

This one comes from Max Yates from Morgan Stanley.

I just wanted to ask firstly about your services growth. So 10% organic growth in services in the quarter. It's obviously -- it's a very impressive number and I guess, far above what your installed base is growing at. So I guess my question is you laid out in your sort of previous plans, moving up the service ladder trying to kind of recapture more of your installed base, higher value per machine. I guess I just wanted to understand how far along are you in that process? And maybe if you could give us any sort of quantification of how much were you capturing of your deliveries into your installed service base versus today? How much is that kind of capture rate? Just any sort of quantification about how that kind of process has evolved and how much more you think there is to do?

Yes. Our service is a very important part of our success story in the last years. Of course, we achieved meanwhile in percentage of roughly 40%. Can it be larger? Yes, I mean -- but it also -- it depends on how successful we are in new installations. We don't want to outgrow it to, let's say, 45% or 50% because that would mean that we are selling too little -- or too less new installations. But we promised in the Mission 30 to grow service business to EUR 2.9 billion in 2030. We are very well on track here. We also are increasing our number of digital products, which we sell. This is a very interesting part for us and where we can also accelerate service growth, but it's also that we do a lot in all the traditional areas that starts with creating more transparency of the installed base, really capturing and deploying the potential of the installed base being more aggressive in sales and end. So the journey is not yet over. and we see very good growth rates. And as I said, on top, we have all the digital products, which we are more and more bringing to the customers where we have a lot of recurring revenue coming out where we don't sell software anymore like it was in the past where we have only license agreements where we charge per month per unit, per cow whatever, and that will also help us to boost service also further in the future.

And maybe just a sort of conceptual question about your margins. If I look at your margins kind of it looks like you're going to be trending towards the upper end of that target that you gave by 2030. Just conceptually, when you look at your peer group, I know kind of previously you churn charts of kind of benchmarking where you were versus the kind of best-in-class peers. It's kind of implied that you will have closed most of that gap. When you look at sort of how the business is running and the path over the next couple of years, do you still see kind of major opportunities to improve efficiency? Are there still divisions, maybe things like rolling out the SAP systems that can really unlock a huge amount more margins or really see kind of once you get to those levels, you really are kind of operating as best-in-class and it really then moves on about to investing in the business. I'm just wondering kind of conceptually beyond the midpoint of those targets, how do you think about it?

Understood. Understood. The journey is not yet over. And I think there will also be a mission beyond the Mission 30 whenever it has been completed. And this is, I think, I also can say there's only one GEA. It's very difficult to compare us to peers. When you look at the fuel flow processing part, for instance, we are definitely best-in-class and outstanding the average might be a little bit lower than so-called best-in-class peers. However, they don't have businesses like we with nutrition and engineering, where by purpose, we have our operating model with lower margin but with extremely favorable net working capital this is the business unit and other division which we run with a negative network capital, which brings us to a ROCE of almost 40% already now. So this is also what we don't have to forget. And I give you also maybe a little bit shade of gray when we talk about the SAP program, which we call Transform 360. At the moment, we are spending a lot of money in medium size of double-digit million what we spend per year for the introduction and rollout costs. And we have, at the moment, not yet any synergies made out of that. And this is all in the P&L. And if you think about once we have completed the rollout, we don't have this cost anymore, though you can add that to the EBITDA immediately. And on top of that, we have the synergies which we will create out of one common system. So even if we would see no improvement in the operational business simply by completing our Transform 360 journey by saving the money we spend today for the introduction and at the same time, leveraging the potential we have from the synergies that will create another level of profitability.

Understood. Just one really quick housekeeping question. Restructuring for '27 once you take it above the line, how much do you think that number will be next year?

Next year, 0 because we don't exclude it any more next year. And even if you look at the numbers you are used to, these are things which are not recurrent. It's not that this company must have 50, 60, 70, whatever restructuring cost a year because this is also what we promised at the end of '26. We will be done we will be ready with our transformational system and our great formational journey. And then there is only a very, very small number, which might kick in. But it's not that we will see huge impacts here.

So you're not going to guide to flat margins because you've just taken 50 bps of restructuring above the line or something like that?

No, what we guide is that from next year on, we don't have EBITDA before restructuring anymore. We have all in.

No, I understand. But if suddenly the restructuring is above the line, it will be margin dilutive if it's there. So I'm just trying to understand I'm just trying to understand.

You're absolutely right. But also today and in the last years, we disclosed both numbers. So you always have the number, EBITDA all in. And you also have the number we obviously guide EBITDA before restructuring. But what I can say, if next year, we change to EBITDA all in, you should not expect any significant decline based on that fact. So we will be ready and done with everything we need to do, and that's the message.

This question comes from Uma Samlin from Bank of America.