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R&S Group Holding AG reported robust growth in its second-quarter earnings for 2025, driven by a significant increase in net sales and a strong order intake. Despite a slight drop in stock value, the company continues to expand its market presence, particularly in the data center and renewable energy sectors. The Swiss-based company saw its stock price decrease by 2.19% to 34.3 CHF, amidst broader market movements.
Key Takeaways
- R&S Group’s net sales surged 88% compared to the first half of 2024.
- Order intake increased by 74%, with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.2.
- The company is expanding its operations in Germany and opening new factories in Poland and Bosnia.
- Stock price dropped by 2.19% in recent trading.
Company Performance
R&S Group demonstrated strong performance in the second quarter of 2025, with net sales reaching CHF 206.3 million, marking an 88% increase from the first half of 2024. The company’s organic growth was slightly above 10%, and its EBIT margin stood at 19.5%. The order intake rose to CHF 244.8 million, up 74% from the previous year, highlighting the company’s successful market expansion efforts.
Financial Highlights
- Net sales: CHF 206.3 million (88% increase from H1 2024)
- EBIT: CHF 40.2 million (19.5% margin)
- Profit after tax: CHF 28.8 million (more than doubled)
- Order intake: CHF 244.8 million (74% increase)
- Order backlog: CHF 306 million
Outlook & Guidance
R&S Group has set ambitious targets for the coming years, with EPS forecasts of 2.23 USD for FY2025 and 2.58 USD for FY2026. Revenue projections are 532.74 million USD for FY2025 and 593.42 million USD for FY2026. However, the company anticipates missing its Bosnia factory sales target by CHF 10-12 million, which could negatively impact EBIT by approximately CHF 4 million.
Executive Commentary
CEO Eduardo Terzi emphasized the company’s strengthening position in the data center market, stating, "We are becoming stronger and stronger in data centers." He also highlighted efforts to improve cash conversion and productivity across facilities, aiming for a stronger second half of the year.
Risks and Challenges
- Potential sales shortfall at the Bosnia factory could impact EBIT.
- Margin compression due to the Kite PowerTech acquisition.
- No direct presence in the U.S. market limits growth opportunities.
- Operational challenges in ramping up new factories.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the challenges faced in the Bosnia factory ramp-up and the margin compression from the Kite PowerTech acquisition. The management addressed these concerns, highlighting the potential in German and Polish markets and their strategic approach to framework agreements.
Full transcript - R&S Group Holding AG (RSGN) Q2 2025:
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for R&S Group’s Half Year 2025 results presentation. My name is Doris Rüdeshauser, and I’m the Investor Relations Officer. I’ll be guiding you through the agenda and introductions before handing over to our CEO and CFO. Before we begin, let me remind you that today’s presentation contains forward-looking statements, and I’ll let you read the disclaimer by yourself. Joining me today are our Group CEO, Eduardo Terzi, and our Group CFO, Matthias Weibel. Eduardo will start with an introduction. Matthias will then review the half-year results in detail, and I will turn to moderate the Q&A session. Looking at today’s agenda, Eduardo will begin with his first impressions of 100 days and an overview of the key highlights of the first half of 2025.
Matthias will then walk you through the financial statements in detail, and finally, we will cover our outlook for the second half of the year before opening the floor to questions. With that, I now hand over to Eduardo.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Thank you, Doris. First, just good morning to everybody, also from my side. Thanks to all for joining us today. I kindly ask everybody that is in this call to switch off your microphone. Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here with you and talking directly to you, my very first investor and analyst call as the CEO of R&S Group. Before we start, I would like to say a few words on my education and career background. Go to the next slide. I was born and raised in Brazil, and I graduated in electrical engineering. Later on, I sharpened my business skills with a master’s in business administration.
On the career side, my very first job was working as a student in a power transformer factory in Brazil, close to my hometown in São Paulo, where I was for one year going through all the departments of the factory, from sales to production to the test field to deliver to the customer. There, my passion for transformers started. Over the following years, I had a chance to move to different departments with different products and solutions, all within the transmission distribution industry, but also in different types of functions, from procurement to engineering to project management, sales, and strategy, which later on gave me a better basis for future general management functions with profit and loss responsibility.
In 2005, I came to Europe, to Germany, and in 2008, I took over my first profit and loss responsibility back to the transformer business as the Head of Power Transformer Services in Europe, based in Nuremberg, doing retrofit repairs, diagnostics, and semi-spare parts. I went to Italy as the CEO and board member of a power transformer factory from the company. Power transformers similar to the ones that I had in the beginning of my career. I did that for three years. When I came back, I took over the global responsibility for distribution transformers of Siemens, similar to what we have here in R&S Group, the dry-type transformers that we produce in Tesa, and the oil distribution transformers that we have here in Switzerland, in Kite, and starting now in Bosnia and Poland.
Later on, I took more of the responsibility, adding all the high-voltage products, including power transformers, not only the ones that I’ve seen in Brazil and in Italy, but also the very large ones for HVDC and extra high-voltage upgrades. I left Siemens and came back to R&S Group on the 1st of June of this year, and I would like to share with you now my first impressions. I’m completing right now the first 100 days, and I would like Doris to present my very first impressions and share with you. The first thing that impressed me very positively is the people. We have across the board here in all our locations, passionate people. They are very open, they are informal, dedicated, and very customer-oriented. Regarding the markets, the company has been addressing very correctly and successfully the megatrends in the decarbonization, decentralization, digitalization, and modernization of the grids.
We have very good customer proximity in all our markets that we focus on. As I said before, good customer intimacy and high market share in most of our markets. The business model that we have has a foundation in great technology, high quality of our products, high-skilled people, and material intensive and manual work intensive, but with high efficiency and productivity. We have been enjoying the implementation of a strategy that is bringing the results that we’ve seen in the last years. It’s a strategy that has been correct, but I believe that we have the potential to sharpen it a little bit, which leads to the next block in the slide, which is the improvement potential that I see based on my background.
First of all, we are moving from a holding company through the acquisitions that we had in the past to a more integrated company, and I think we can strengthen that to leverage all the muscles that we have as a group and not only the sum of individual companies. We start with a go-to-market approach. I believe that we can sharpen our market intelligence to define what are the profit pools where we can be really addressing the higher margin market segments. Also, market intelligence is the basis for several decisions of the company. It’s a decision on CapEx investments, investments in our factories, it’s decisions for research and development projects, and decisions of potential M&A activity as well.
Part of the go-to-market approach that I believe that we can sharpen is to improve our setup to have a stronger presence in some market segments, not only the ones that we identify as profit pools that I mentioned before, but the ones that we know already, where we are already, like data centers, photovoltaics, battery storage. I believe that we can have a more focused approach there. A second lever that I believe that we have potential to get more out of is procurement. Between 60% and 70% of our costs is material. We now are much bigger with a second power transformer factory in Poland. We have nine production sites. I see good potential for us to bundle procurement, sign global agreements, develop new suppliers, and renegotiate existing contracts. In operations, our business is capital intensive and very labor intensive, and it’s a competitive market.
We need to be continuous on the edge of operational excellence and quality to remain competitive and compensate any price changes in the market and also increase in labor costs that happen every year. I believe that if we work as an integrated company and share more of the best practice that we have in-house, we can achieve much more from the operational side as well, increase efficiency and productivity. Finally, the culture, as I mentioned, we have great people. We have many projects in place for talent development, competence management, and performance orientation that I believe we can sharpen and go to a deeper integration, for example, with the job rotation between our businesses and factories, more best practice sharing, and competence management from the shop floor up to the top management of the company. That, I go to the key highlights of the first half of this year.
I will talk about the three topics here: the top line development, the development of Kite, and the capacity expansion in our distribution transformer factory in Bosnia. I will hand over to Matthias to talk about the lower three topics. If you go to page 10, our top line for the intake was very strong with the CHF 245 million. As you can see on the right side, please note that the Asia portion includes also the Middle East, where we have a strong presence and growing presence in right-up transformers for data centers and infrastructure. We have very good demand. The exorbitant intake was across the board, especially in the markets where we have production sites in Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Ireland, and the UK. We also have good development in new markets like Germany, Nordics, Baltics, and France.
In Germany, in the first half of this year, we represented 13% of our sales. If you compare to the first half year of last year, it was only 6%, and two years ago was basically zero. We see a shy recovery of German and Polish construction sectors, which might be getting hotter in the next months. I want to reinforce that our group has no sales exposure to the U.S., nor any dependence from American suppliers. As I mentioned before, we have a good order, a very strong order intake of CHF 245 million, and that led to an order backlog of almost CHF 306 million, which is a good base for the upcoming months, for the second half of the year, and also for the next, starting a good base for 2026.
Talking about Kite PowerTech, the form integration was concluded successfully, and now we are focusing on integration of operational functions like manufacturing, engineering, and quality that we are further deploying. This takes longer than the form integration like IT or HR, and this is our focus now with a main target to increase productivity in operations and get more output with the same number of employees in the same area so that we can turn the strong order backlog, strong market demand that we have in Kite into real business. Of course, we continue pursuing cross-selling opportunities, not only from Kite outside of the home area, but also from the other companies of our group in the region of Kite, Ireland, and the UK. The third point that I would like to highlight here is the expansion of Bosnian, our distribution transformer factory in Poland.
As informed in documents, there is a delay in the ramp-up. It was now rated in April. The delay came from a slower recruiting of the employees and delays in the delivery of machines. We are already producing transformers. We have already a capacity of 100 transformers per month, and we have orders, and we are delivering already orders to customers. At the same time, we need to get the certifications. We obtained the ISO 9000 certification, but we also need the certification from customers. Top customers require certification of prototypes. We need to produce a prototype and get it certified by the customer before he starts putting orders. There are factory visits where the customer checks our processes and certifies the factory. It’s the normal process.
That’s why, from my experience in the transformer business, the speed and the ramp-up that’s happening in Bosnia is totally in line with what Greenfield factory ramp-up happens normally. There are more delays in the delivery of the machines or the recruitment of personnel. It’s not the main reason for that. I believe we are on the right track, and next year, we’re going to have a much better position than this year. These are the three highlights that I would like to present to you, and I hand over now to Matthias to talk about the other three highlights that we selected for you. Thank you very much, Eduardo. Let me now take you through the financial results for the first half of 2025, following up on the last three slides. This slide here shows a summary of the key figures as per June 30.
I will comment on these in more detail on a later slide. However, it can be noted that it was a good performance with all key figures pointing in the right direction and higher than in the previous year, not only because of the contribution of Kite PowerTech, but also due to our organic growth. All products with continuing order intake. As you have heard from Eduardo, we continued to see strong momentum across our product groups and geographies with consistently high monthly order intake from our key markets in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, resulting in an order intake of CHF 244.8 million, including Kite PowerTech. Order intake was 74% higher than one year ago. Having said that, the ramp-up of our new plant near Bosnia faced delays, which reduced order intake and sales for the whole year 2025.
We expect that Bosnia will miss its sales targets by CHF 10 to 12 million and will have a negative impact on our total EBIT of around CHF 4 million. Despite this temporary impact, our book-to-bill ratio stood at 1.2, underscoring healthy market demand. Our order backlog also remains very strong. Power transformers are fully booked until the second quarter of 2027, while our oil distribution and cast resin transformers as well have an adequate coverage. This strength of the order backlog provides us with a good medium-term visibility. This slide here outlines the financial figures compared with the numbers at the end of H1 2024. Let us compare the reported numbers only. We discussed order intake and backlog already. Now looking at net sales, which amounted to CHF 206.3 million, including Kite PowerTech, versus CHF 109.9 million in the prior year period.
This increase is close to 88% with an organic growth of the old R&S Group slightly above 10%. This is in line with our guidance despite the slower than expected ramp-up of our new plant. EBIT amounted to CHF 40.2 million, equivalent to a 19.5% EBIT margin in line with our ambitions and also with our guidance. This compares to $24 million in H1 2024 and an EBIT margin of 21.8%. I will comment on profitability in more detail later on. Profit after tax more than doubled, up to $28.8 million after $12.1 million in H1 2024. Earnings per share was up to $0.77. This number reflects the effect of the full conversion of the redeemable warrants in the second half of 2024, so the increase of the number of shares. The only, so to say, the downer is the development of the free cash flow in the first half.
Free cash flow was impacted by investments for future growth, such as working capital, the build-up of the stock base in Bosnia, but also capital expenditures, new machines. I framed the relevant sections in the balance sheet and the free cash flow statement on the next slide. Last but not least, our net financial debt stood at $104 million as a result of the financing, the Kite PowerTech acquisition. One year ago, we had a small positive net cash position. Let me briefly comment on the items impacting R&S Group profitability. Most of the other points here on this slide commented are self-explanatory or had already been predicted and announced previously. Just like last year after the acquisition of Kite PowerTech, when we said that we would see a portfolio effect on gross margins. This has now been materialized compared to net sales.
The gross margin went down from over 51% down to 46.4%. This decline is mostly attributable to the acquisition of Kite PowerTech, the portfolio effect, as I said before, but partly also because of more deliveries in the first half of the year, especially in Poland and Germany. If we go to the balance sheet, I want to particularly highlight the position of the equity. The equity in the first half of 2025, we turned equity from negative $5.3 million Swiss francs that was a result of the goodwill write-off from Kite PowerTech against equity last year into a positive number, $8.4 million Swiss francs. By the end of 2025, the equity should be back at a reasonable ratio of around 15% to 20%. Let’s have a look now at our performance from a cash flow perspective.
This slide shows our free cash flow, and it is quite similar to last year’s, but high working capital had an impact. I have eaten up a bit more money than we would have liked. This was mainly due to the higher business volumes and the ramp-up of the new plant near Bosnia. We have to be very clear about that, but at the same time, we can be confident that this will improve in the second half of the year 2025. We have defined measures, and the stock base in Bosnia has been built up now. The second point concerns the capital expenditures, CapEx, which were significantly higher in the first half of the year than in the previous year. However, this was the plan from the very beginning, and we will continue in the second half of the year to invest in our future growth.
Let’s have a look at the share price and the shareholder structure. You see here the share price development since the beginning of the year. Our market capitalization currently stands at around CHF 1.3 billion. Following the full exit of CGS at the beginning of May, our free float is now at 90.5% with more than 2,100 registered shareholders. This ensures good liquidity, a high free float, and a broader, also more internationally diversified investor base. We’re very pleased to see significant institutional participation, including UBS Fund Management, Capital Group, BlackRock, IANU, Sanderson, and others. Overall, the strong share price performance reflects the confidence of our investors in the company’s strategy, execution, and our growth potential. That concludes my review of the financial results and the shareholder development. With that, I hand back to you, Eduardo. Thank you, Matthias.
Let’s have a look into the outlook for the second half of the year. What are the focus topics that we are addressing? First of all, from the market side and the go-to-market approach, we continue to drive the order intake and increase our order backlog for our normal business in the markets that we are addressing today, but also to implement what we discussed before, a deeper market intelligence and addressing new profit pools and defining a roadmap for research and development and becoming a more focused, implementing a setup that can strengthen our sales power in some market segments, as I mentioned before, like data centers, photovoltaics, and battery storage.
In the second pillar of our strategy, where we want to more drive the operational excellence in all our factories, not only in the processing and cost optimization, but also on the quality side, not the quality of the product, but the quality, like waste, eliminating waste. Of course, Kite is a focus there because we have the potential to get more output due to the strong order intake that we’re seeing there. The factory close to Bosnia is one focus topic because it has a huge potential, and we’re already producing, delivering transformers. What we need now is to really ramp up, get the certification from the customers, but we will do that without compromising quality. I always say here that the quality comes first, then just rush in and get the output. We’re going to have a good balance between both of them.
We need to continue with the progress on construction of the new power transformer factory, also in Poland. I’m going to see in the next slide a little bit more details of that. Finally, a big topic, as Matthias said, we need to work on the best balance of the working capital and cash conversion. Yes, we are investing in all the factories. We’re investing in two new plants, and this has an impact on our cash. We are growing very fast. There’s also an impact on cash. We define measures already to convert better the cash so that the second half is much stronger than the first half of the year. The next slide is a picture of our future brand new power transformer factory in Poland. This is not a real picture. This is a computer model, but it’s exactly like it will look like in the future.
We plan to start operations already in the last quarter of next year. With that factory, we will double the output of power transformers in our group. With that, Matthias and I, we finish our presentation, and we look forward to answering your questions now. Doris?
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Thank you, Eduardo and Matthias. We will now begin the Q&A session. We ask you to please raise your hand in the Teams function. We will take the questions in the order received. In case I don’t see it, you could state your name and your organization. I believe we already have questions here. I see there’s one, Sebastian Vogel from UBS Fund Management. We will unmute you and you can go ahead, Sebastian.
Sebastian Vogel, Analyst, UBS Fund Management: Great. Good morning. I’ve got three questions. I would ask them one by one. The first one on Poland and Bosnia. In that regard, can you remind us what sort of revenues you were looking for for the second half of 2025, and how does that compare with the first half?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: As I said before, we expect that the impact of the delayed ramp-up in Bosnia on the top line this year will be around $10 to $12 million. I think we have never disclosed the total volume, which we want to achieve, but it was around $20 million. We will be around half of what we expected this year.
Sebastian Vogel, Analyst, UBS Fund Management: Got it. The second one is on Germany and the sales over there. It seems like, as you said earlier on, your sales quadrupled in the first half compared to the first half of last year. Where is all this growth coming from, and how do you see that evolving over the next 12 to 18 months?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Yeah, it’s basically power transformers from Poland. We start now to get the first orders of distribution transformers from Bosnia.
Sebastian Vogel, Analyst, UBS Fund Management: Okay, got it. The third one is, can you give us a bit of an indication, at least on a ballpark level, what were the sort of the margins that you have seen on EBIT level at Kite in the first half?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Actually, we do not comment on and not disclose the results per factory for several reasons. One of them is that it would allow competitors to know and customers to know the margins. That’s why the company decided to report the numbers at the group level.
Sebastian Vogel, Analyst, UBS Fund Management: One follow-up, if I may, then in that regard, is it fair to assume somewhere in the area of the mid-teens range to be a fair assumption?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Can you say it again?
Sebastian Vogel, Analyst, UBS Fund Management: Would be some sort of mid-teens margin assumption for Kite be a fair assumption?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: As Eduardo said, we do not disclose the margins of our plants. However, you can be sure that we were happy with it, and they are basically more or less on the same level as our other plants. With everything else, we refer to our guidance.
Sebastian Vogel, Analyst, UBS Fund Management: Got it. Many thanks for that and the questions.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Thank you, Sebastian.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Thank you. We see the next question from Adrian Pay from Odobia HF.
Adrian Pay, Analyst, Odobia HF: Yes, good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me well. Actually, I’ve got also three questions. The first one is again on Bosnia. Obviously, I just want to make sure that this revenue delay that you’re seeing, you’re hopefully not missing out on any longer-term opportunities by not being able to deliver on time. Maybe something that could be relevant, but any thoughts on this would be helpful. Secondly, on the same topic, how can you improve in the second half or accelerate the ramp-up? Is there anything that’s possible? Maybe you could remind us again on what are the main issues? Is it like personnel? Is it other topics we should factor in also carrying us into 2026? The third one is actually on the opportunities that you mentioned on the data center side of things.
I mean, given that the majority of the investments are actually taking place in the U.S., I was curious to hear your thoughts on how you would allocate your resources to grab that potential potentially then overseas, and who are the competitors that you would be facing in the U.S.? Thank you.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Okay. Thanks for the first one. In Bosnia, the delay of the ramp-up, based on my experience, it’s basically, it’s not that there was a delay. I think the expectations were a little bit too optimistic. Coming from the transformer industry, I can say that building a green field factory from the earth moving up to delivering the transformers is a huge effort. To expect that the factory would already deliver that large number of transformers with that volume in the very first year, starting production in the middle of the year, was a little too optimistic in my opinion. I don’t see it as a negative. This delay is basically going back to what it should have been if you want to deliver with quality and do not burn your image with customers with bad quality equipment.
To your question, there’s nothing long-term that is burned, that is destroyed with that. The orders are normally small orders. There are no big frame agreements that we participate on. We are selective. We do not participate in huge tenders where the prices are very low. It’s more a distributed pulverized market and orders. There’s nothing big that was damaged by this delay at all. Your second question is how can we ramp up in the second half? How can we speed up? We have a dedicated team working on that where I participate also from time to time to get the right actions in place to eliminate the bottlenecks. As I said, some things take simply time. When you get one large customer that needs to certify the factory and they have time only two months later, we need to respect that.
Everything that can be driven and changed is being done. We are pulling all the levers. I believe that we will, with high quality, ramp up and then be ready for 2026 in a very good position in Bosnia. Your third question, opportunity data centers, especially in the United States. We are becoming stronger and stronger in data centers. I believe that we can do more. We are very strong in the Middle East. We are a preferred supplier of a large data center builder. This builder of data center, we are the preferred partner. We have 100% share of wallet with them in the Middle East, and they are coming out to Europe. We will join them as a preferred partner to build the data centers also in Europe. Regarding the U.S., we do not have a presence, a location in the United States.
It makes it very hard to deliver from Europe to the U.S. due to transport costs and delivery time. Since the products are smaller, the transport cost is a bigger portion of the cost of the product compared to a larger unit. A power transformer you could send from Europe to the U.S. There are a lot of suppliers of power transformers from Europe in the U.S. because the transport cost is a smaller percentage of the price of the equipment. For distribution transformers, it’s very difficult. We need to have a presence in the U.S. Data centers are being built in Asia, in the Middle East, in Europe, everywhere. I think we have enough market potential here to explore. The competitors in the U.S. are the biggest ones that we have.
We have Siemens, we have Hitachi, we have SGB, and the big ones, Eaton and Howard and many other local players in the U.S. They are all addressing the data center market, which was a very, very fast-growing market, but became even faster with artificial intelligence now.
Adrian Pay, Analyst, Odobia HF: All right. Many thanks. The company you mentioned from the Middle East is an EPC company, or?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: It’s a data center bureau. It’s a focus on a, yes, it’s like an EPC, yeah.
Adrian Pay, Analyst, Odobia HF: All right. Another question for you now that you are 100 days active as CEO. I already met you at our Interlaken conference there. You were pretty new to the company. Maybe you could share with us your views on, let’s call it, the most relevant surprises, both on the positive and negative side, and where you think you can improve now after these 100 days would be helpful. I have two smaller CFO questions. One is on the CapEx phasing. Obviously, the net investing cash flow was like $9 million in H1. Is it fair to assume that we are running then into, what is it, $20 million this year, or is it a different phasing on CapEx? The second one is really a small one on the tax rate, obviously. There have been some effects on the tax rate last year in H1 when I saw that correctly.
Now we are running 21%, which seems low. Is it something that is persistent, i.e., we’re going to see a low tax rate, or how should we think of it going into H2? Thank you.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: I’ll address the first question. As I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, my first impressions, there’s nothing that was a big surprise or a body in the basement here that was discovered. There’s no bad surprises. What I see here is that I’m positively impressed how much was achieved on the sales side. We still have great potential to improve our go-to-market approach and our sales setup. I was positively impressed. It was a surprise to me how much we achieved without this focus setup. I was surprised that for the potential that we have to get more output, for example, in Kite PowerTech with the same area, same number of people, that we have the potential to upgrade the machines and get a better workflow there and get more out of it.
The other surprise that I have was potential for improvement in procurement, as I mentioned as well. I believe that there was no critical issue that we have, only potential for improvement. I’ll pass to Matthias for the.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: Regarding the other questions, CapEx, yes, correct. As mentioned before, $9 million in the first six months, cash CapEx, and around $20 million per end of this year, correct? Tax rate around 20% as always communicated, yes.
Adrian Pay, Analyst, Odobia HF: All right. That’s it from my side. Thank you.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: Thank you.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Adrian, I see the next question is from Nate Lavrek from Octavian. Nate, go ahead, please.
Nate Lavrek, Analyst, Octavian: Yes, hi. Thank you for taking my questions and hi to you all. Maybe the first one, when it comes to the current market dynamic, can you maybe speak about the current development? Where do you see good growth in which regions and also which transformers? That would be my first question.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: As I mentioned, our growth is across the board. There’s no single market that has a fantastic growth compared to the other ones. Regionally, we are growing very fast in the markets where you have good presence with high market share. These markets are doing well. We see a recovery, as I mentioned, in Germany and Poland for the construction market. It’s a specific market segment for more dry type transformers. The biggest growth that we see is actually a place where we were not before there. It’s in Germany. We have been penetrating Germany very successfully. If you imagine, we have now 13% of our sales, and two years ago, it was 0%.
It presents a big potential. That is why we are investing in two new factories in Poland, which is not a walk in the park to build two greenfield factories from scratch, but the potential to address Germany, Poland itself, the Baltics, and the Nordics is very good. We are taking the consequences of the cash impact in the first half. We will catch up in the second year where we have defined measures. We are doing this for future growth. I think the results in Germany and in Poland in the first quarter show that we are doing the right thing.
Nate Lavrek, Analyst, Octavian: Okay, thank you. Maybe my second question on the backlog. Are you happy with the backlog? If we look at some of your competitors, they have backlogs even going up to three years. There are a few that have at least a year. How do you feel about that? Maybe as a follow-up to that, you said framework agreements don’t have good margins. Can you maybe elaborate what kind of a margin you could get if you entered some of these framework agreements that potentially could increase the visibility mid-term for you and also fill, let’s say, some of the pipeline? Thank you.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Absolutely. Absolutely. To your first question, it depends on which competitors you are looking at. If you’re looking at competitors like Hitachi or Siemens, and it has the biggest portion is power transformers. The power transformers have a longer backlog. If you look into our factory in CREV in Poland for power transformers, we do have orders until 2027, some for 2028. The distribution transformers have shorter cycle times, delivery time with 14, 16 weeks. Even frame agreements signed with distribution transformers, the orders are not booked. It’s not in the order backlog. The customer makes a three-year frame agreement, and they call off the orders, and the order goes to the backlog only when he calls off and says, "Look, now I need this transformer of this type." Probably the comparison with the competitors is that we are very, very, the large portion of our business is distribution transformers.
If you look into our competitors, a large portion of their business is power transformers. Most of the distribution transformers, they are not stock listed. You don’t get this information. It’s hard to compare. Answer your question?
Nate Lavrek, Analyst, Octavian: Yes. If I may, my last question on the margin, how do you expect it, let’s say, going into the second half of the year? Obviously, you’re ramping up. You have the 20% guidance. Do you expect it to stay more or less stable, or could we see some surprises?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Challenge, if you saw margins, we can compare to other transformer competitors. We are in the higher end of the margins that the market achieves. We are selective. We have local champions in our markets. It is a challenge to defend this margin, but we are confident to keep in the guidance.
Nate Lavrek, Analyst, Octavian: Thank you very much.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Of course, when I said this, we are working on several topics that are normal in our business that have to be continuously worked on to compensate any price press or increase of labor costs that happens every year.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Thank you, Eduardo. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. I see there’s Alessandro Foletti also from Octavian. I have a question, Alessandro. We’re going to unmute you. Just one second. Now you can go ahead.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: Yes, good morning. Thank you for the demand question. Maybe follow up to my colleague’s question here. First on the margin. Last year, the second half, there was already some effect from Kite PowerTech, right? Because you had around $50 million sales from Kite PowerTech in the second half of last year. The margin was higher than now. On an adjusted basis, so including the M&A effect that you had last year, it was like in the 23%. Why did it go down so much? H2 over H1, H2 2024 over H1 2025, given that Kite PowerTech was already there. Not for six months. I understand that, but it was already there.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: First of all, I’d like to point out that we mentioned already at the Capital Market Day last year that we expect that the margins will drop a bit, especially the gross margins from over 50% to around 45%. This has now happened because the cost structure at Kite PowerTech is slightly different to other plants. For example, building the tanks in Ireland, of course, it’s not fully comparable to our other plants and to the previous, to the old R&S Group cost structure. That’s the main reason. Now in the first six months in 2025, we have seen this impact. Last year, for four years, we’ve always said, for four months, we have always said it’s a snapshot. You cannot one-to-one compare to what will happen in 2025.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: Last year’s margin, for whatever reason, was higher than normal in H2.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: Yeah, not with regard to Kite PowerTech. We see the impact of Kite PowerTech now, the portfolio effect. We saw that from the very beginning, and now in the first six months of 2025, we see it in particular.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: The second question is on Poland. You mentioned this recovery in the construction sector. When I look at your numbers that you have presented now on different occasions in your presentations and calculate the amount of Poland in Swiss francs, it was down really significantly, like 30% in my calculation. Is this all due to the construction?
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: No, as Eduardo mentioned it before, it’s not only the construction sector. It’s also due to the power transformers, which we were able to deliver to Germany. Both of it, the construction sector shows positive signals now. How do you mention it? A shy recovery.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: A shy recovery.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: We have been saying until now that we were still suffering from the construction like this, the freezing in construction in Poland and in Germany, with little investment in Germany. We start seeing a shy start of the construction in both countries. What is driving the growth is really the power transformers and now the first orders of distribution transformers from Poland into Germany. The construction is something that was on top of that, but it’s a small portion.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: Do I have to understand that for whatever reason you decided to sell certain power transformers to Germany rather than Poland and then maybe wait in Poland, which is why Germany went up so much and Poland went down so much?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: No, we sell both. The growth is both in Poland and in Germany. The demand potential is very good in Germany. That’s why we are building a second factory in Poland for power transformers.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: Poland is catching up. All right. My last question is on the second power transformer factory in Buch. You mentioned earlier that the delays in Bosnia were not really delays, but it was maybe more due to too optimistic expectations. What you are communicating with respect to the ramp-up in Buch, are these expectations now in line with the correct ramp-up, or are there also risks that it might be delayed at the end of the day?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Very good question. No, there’s no risk there compared to Bosnia. First of all, the timeline is longer than what we had in Bosnia. We have a running factory nearby, produce power transformers, so it’s much more easy to send, let’s say, you can send 30 employees from one factory to start a plug-and-play in the second one. You can have the central functions you can use from the main factory. There are a lot of advantages, or it makes it less risky and easier to ramp up the second power transformer factory than starting a greenfield distribution transformer factory where we didn’t have any factory close by. We can have people with the same culture, with the same language. They can be trained. You have a place to train the employees there. It’s a much, much better situation.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: All right. I guess the real bottleneck remains on the machines or the winding machines.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: You mean about Bosnia?
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: In general, in general. Now, Bosnia, you still have two that have to come in, if I understand correctly. I guess in Buch, you don’t have any machine yet, right?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: The machines were ordered. We have a long delivery time for machines. The delivery times of machines are between 8 and 15 months. They are all ordered, all the equipment, ovens, winding machines, cranes, everything. The construction is happening already. Everything is on time. There’s no bottleneck, no risks at the moment. In Bosnia, we already have a capacity of producing 100 transformers per month. The 1,200 transformers capacity is already there. We just need now to get to the certifications I mentioned before, the certifications and the approval of the factory to most of the customers that require that. We will be ready to go for next year to fully utilize this capacity.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: Thank you.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Thank you.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Thank you, Alessandro. There’s another question. We have Jan Martinek. We will unmute you and let you go ahead with a question.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: Hi. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my question. I would like to ask you in Ukraine. Your Poland is very close to Ukraine, and I understood that there is a special Swiss government program for supporting reconstruction of Ukraine electricity network destroyed by Russians. Can you elaborate? What do you see? How do you see the Ukraine reconstruction opportunity? Thank you.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: It’s a good point. We see this opportunity. We decided with the board that we’re going to do what’s necessary for the formalities to participate in the program. There are some requirements with a local presence, office through a partner, or having your own location there. This is what I can say, but we decided that recently. Do whatever is necessary.
Matthias Weibel, Group CFO, R&S Group: Perfect. Can I have a follow-up question on your capital market activities? Are you expecting, or shall we expect, an increase of research coverage? How are you planning to communicate with investors in the future? Are you planning to attend any investment conferences, and will you be announcing your participation? Thank you.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Maybe we can start with the question on research. As you know, we have four analysts covering stock currently. As you may also know, since Mifid II, it has become more challenging in the brokerage world from the broker side. We cannot comment on what their plan or which broker may have plans to cover us or not cover us. I would have to say that we’re happy with the coverage that we have currently.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Regarding participation in conferences, I do that very gladly. I participated in several conferences already this year, even within my first 100 days, out of the priorities, the operation, the business, yeah, and to deliver what we are promising to everybody. I plan, yes, indeed, to continue participating. This is what I can say.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Okay. Thank you, Eduardo. Does that answer your question, Jan?
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Yes, perfect. That’s all my questions. Thank you.
Doris Rüdeshauser, Investor Relations Officer, R&S Group: Good. Thank you. This actually concludes today’s presentation on the half-year results of R&S Group. We thank you again for your interest and your questions. Please do not hesitate to follow up with me if you have further points that you would like to have clarified. Thank you very much, and have a good rest of your day. Bye-bye.
Eduardo Terzi, Group CEO, R&S Group: Thank you.
Alessandro Foletti, Analyst, Octavian: Thank you very much.
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