Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Palfinger AG Earnings Release Full- Year 2024 Conference Call. I am Valentina, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. Our today's hosts are CEO Andreas Klauser and CFO Felix Strohbichler of Palfinger AG. I would now like to turn the conference over to Andreas Klauser, CEO. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning everybody and welcome to our 2024 earnings release. I mean, it was a heck of a year, but a great and very successful year considering the circumstances, the huge volatility, and the tough conditions. We managed to achieve the second best result in our history, which is a great and unique achievement and supports our growth. I think this EUR 2.36 billion revenue speaks for itself. This was managed as well thanks to 12,350 employees, which are really dedicated and focused to deliver these results in 2024. As well, the revenue distribution by region is quite interesting, further improved. So less dependence on Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, further growing in North America, especially the United States, and then Latin America, CIS, and the Asia region as well, in distribution of 5%. Yeah, as I already said, it is the second best fiscal year in the company's history, and we are quite proud of that. This means in terms of numbers, the EBIT is EUR 186 million, which is also quite important to mention here despite the lower sales volume we had. On the other hand, we as well managed to increase the order intake in Q4, which as well counts now for 2025. In terms of free cash flow, I'm happy to report that we managed to get here EUR 120 million, which is also quite a significant and positive number. Yeah, in terms of resilience, and this was proven through this industry diversity that we are focusing on, very well-balanced results from the different industries. On this chart, you can clearly see where the results, where the revenues are coming from. Just to mention here, one is waste management recycling, which counts for 11%, nearly EUR 260 million. On the other hand, marine business, 12%, which counts for EUR 280 million. A solid base for our growth in 2024, but as well looking forward. In terms of our product portfolio, I think here again, and the results are speaking for itself, we really managed quite successfully this quite complex product portfolio. Nine product lines on the land side, six product lines on marine, in common together digital solutions. Together, these 15 product lines are quite well established, quite well managed. Even we have a huge complexity in itself, but this is where we are building a sense for and as well, which is a part of the focus of our management team. The focus of growth, and here I think it's also important that we are not forgetting about our customers, but as well our profitability. This growth focus is clearly coming from our service and parts revenue, which is expected to double until 2030. This is also an important number, which you should recognize. As I said, the balance between customer satisfaction and profitability. What does this mean as well in terms of area of growth? Here's just one example. We are further expanding here our North American network, especially in the United States. We are having currently 300 service locations. We are further increasing the number of dealers in terms of coverage. As well, what's important to mention here, and you see here these red dots that we are already having four U.S. plants, employing more than 1,100 people over there, which is as well important considering the challenges the U.S. President throws out to the industry and to international companies. At the end of the day, we will have one centralized spare parts hub, which will as well be a part, as already previously mentioned, in terms of service and parts business. Also important and another important part in the area of growth is our APAC strategy, which is dedicated and focused on Asia. Here we expect to double our revenue by 2030. The key focus, and I think some of you already heard this a couple of months ago when we had other earnings releases, the key focus is here in India. We have a quite focused strategy for India. We are not, let's say, changing our approach versus China, but Indian strategies play an important role to double here the revenue in the Asian region. As well, we are investing further here, roughly EUR 25 million, creating 180 jobs so that we can really start our production assembly in Q1 2027. What does it mean as well here now in terms of sustainability? I think just two key KPIs which are brought with me. This is the working safety, so the famous TRIR, and the low carbon emissions. These are two measures we have taken into account and rolled out, and where I'd say Palfinger is as well contributing quite well in terms of success. All these accident rate went heavily down, the carbon emissions went down. I think these are two quite significant numbers. Our focus, further focus in terms of sustainability, is clearly called lifting positive impact. We want really to pull forward positive impact to the environment and as well being an important part of our long-term growth and as a driver of our business. This is not only something which we just focus on and roll out. This is as well an important part of new businesses and the results we are expecting to achieve in the future. In terms of strategy, we are focusing here on five areas. It is the governance and compliance. It is about product safety and security. You have seen the numbers before. Climate action, then as well circular value chains, also very important to reduce waste and people, value, and culture. This is as well heavily related to diversity. At this point in time, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Felix Strohbichler, and to see and get more insights about the numbers. Please, Felix. Thank you, Andreas. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am pleased to be able to present you once again a very positive set of financial KPIs despite the challenging market environment in 2024. Palfinger has three segments. Let me start with the segment sales and service, which comprises all the sales and service activities except sales of components Palfinger is selling to other manufacturers in our manufacturing for third-party activities and also not comprising our tail lift numbers. First of all, let me walk you quickly through the development in the individual regions. North America, we saw increased revenue in 2024. However, after the Presidential election, actually prior to the Presidential election, demand slowed down in the second half year due to uncertainties which arised in connection with the Presidential election. In APAC, we saw very good growth in the Indian market, a market we will also invest in heavily in the near future. On the other hand, this is not a uniform development. In APAC, for example, in China, we still do not see any recovery. Marine, we saw huge growth in service, also very good development in offshore cranes. Most importantly, we saw a significant increase in profitability and not only in revenue. In EMEA, the circumstances have been difficult. The core markets, especially Germany, Scandinavia, France, have remained at a low level. However, what is very important, we saw a significant increase in order intake in the fourth quarter. This also continued throughout the first weeks of the year 2025, which makes us very positive about the ongoing developments for 2025. In LATAM, we saw a stable earnings situation despite lower revenue in Brazil as well as in Argentina. Last but not least, at least we were faced with a hike and a peak in inventories of finished goods during 2024. Here we have seen a massive reduction, especially at our own dealers in Germany, Spain, and in the U.S. in Q4 2024, which was a major contributor to the very positive cash flow number I will talk about later. What does this mean in terms of figures? External revenue in the sales and service segment went down by 5.2% to EUR 2.1 billion. The EBIT declined more or less to the same extent. The EBIT margin at 9.2% was more or less stable compared to the previous year. More important to highlight here is that the order book has come down quite significantly from 2022, when we had EUR 1.5 billion to less than EUR 1 billion at the end of 2024. About two years, we have seen on a monthly basis a decrease of the order book. In Q4 2024, the order book started to recover and to stabilize. Now we are at the number which is on the one hand reasonable in terms of delivery times. On the other hand, we now see again an increase in order book. Last but not least, our share of the service business has increased by two percentage points compared to 2023 to 17.1%. Andreas Klauser already mentioned our ambitions to increase this number to substantially over 20% in the coming years. Let me now talk about the second segment, the segment operations, which includes all the assembly and manufacturing activities of Palfinger and also the sales of Palfinger components or the Palfinger components produced by Palfinger to other manufacturers and production for third parties. On the one hand, we had reduced production capacity in EMEA due to the market demand. On the other hand, also the market environment affected the external revenue in production for third parties. In LATAM, on the other hand, we already have been busy with expanding our capacity due to the good order intake in Brazil and Argentina. We also have been focusing on establishing a supplier structure in Mexico to optimize costs and also to prepare our future growth in North America, where we are targeting 1/3 of our revenue within the next years. In terms of numbers, you can see here in the external revenue, our activities manufacturing for third parties. Obviously, there is quite some decline compared to 2022. We expect here clearly a rebound at the latest in 2026 to similar numbers as we have seen them in 2022. Of course, the lower utilization and also reduced sales to third parties are reflected in the substantially lower EBIT number for the operation segment. Last but not least, we have the segment other non-reportable segments. Sounds a little bit difficult in the end. This is the holding unit with strategic projects plus the segment tail lifts, which has been carved out from the GPO in 2024 and which has been restructured since. In the numbers, you can see on the external revenue line, more or less the tail lift revenue. You see here almost a 100% increase in 2024. This is not a proper picture of the reality because we included the North American business of tail lifts only in 2024, and it has not been possible to readjust due to the carve-out for 2023. Actually, the 2024 figure is not comparable to the previous years. However, what you can see is that the EBIT of this segment has significantly improved. You can clearly see a positive earnings contribution from tail lifts of more than EUR 8 million compared to the previous year. Coming now to the KPIs of the Palfinger Group, revenue declined slightly by 3.5%, EBIT at EUR 186 million, and EBIT margin of 7.9%. It is important to highlight that also this EBIT number looks like there has not been a big change. Actually, this is a dramatic change from the past because we are faced with around EUR 60 million of decline in EBIT coming from the EMEA markets in 2024, which has been largely offset by the increased profitability in marine and also by the improvement in tail lifts. This clearly underlines we do not only have a lot of different customer segments which make us resilient, but also our regional diversification, our global setup is a major factor for our resilience and our profitability. Going down on this chart to the consolidated net result, it is an underproportional decrease in the consolidated net result, around EUR 100 million of net result. The reason for this good number is that we have a tax rate of only 22%. Despite high interest cost, we were able to achieve here a very good number in consolidated net result. This leads to the second highest dividend in history. We will propose at the general meeting EUR 0.90 of dividend, and we are convinced that this will be perceived very positive by our shareholders. Coming to the balance sheet, you can see that there is also an increase in equity from EUR 715 million to EUR 753 million. Equity ratio accordingly went up to 35.3%. A very stable balance sheet gearing also improved slightly to 88%. Netted EBITDA went down slightly because EBITDA was lower than in the previous year and ROCE was at the level of 10.3%, a slight decline. Clearly, here we have to target to substantially increase the ROCE, and we will hear about this later. If you look at our financing, you can see on this slide the average interest rate at 3.76% is still high. We do expect further interest rate reductions throughout this year. Those reductions will benefit us to a rate of around 50% because we have about half of our financing fixed and half of our financing is variable where we will benefit from interest rate cuts. The average remaining term of our debt is almost 3.5 years. Our financing is very solid and long-term. Net debt reduced slightly from EUR 668 million to EUR 662 million in 2024. It is worth mentioning here that we had a huge peak in inventories and also in net financial debt. We have been at around EUR 750 million in Q3. This was a substantial improvement of the net financial debt in the fourth quarter. This improvement will continue, as you can see on this slide. We still have exceptional levers to significantly reduce our net financial debt. We have another potential of around EUR 50 million coming from working capital, mainly especially inventories. We have another lever of more than EUR 30 million from non-core assets. For example, we have real estate, which is not needed for further expansion, which is at sites where we do not want to invest further. This will bring us to a net financial debt of less than EUR 600 million until the end of 2026. On top of this, we still have 7.5% of the totally issued shares as treasury shares. We will not sell those shares at a price below EUR 35 for sure. In case the share price will reflect the proper value of Palfinger, we will, of course, be able to also monetize the treasury shares, which will bring us down to the targeted net financial debt level of less than EUR 500 million. Coming now to my favorite slide of the presentation, the cash flow slide. We could achieve, due to the optimization of working capital, especially in the fourth quarter, a free cash flow of EUR 120 million, to be precise EUR 119.5 million. Obviously, the first line was lower than in the record year 2023. Profitability went down slightly. In the third line, you can see the big impact of change in working capital. After several years of negative impacts due to massive inventory peaks, due to the fact that in COVID we had supply chain constraints and we had huge finished goods inventory due to a bottleneck in installation, you can see that this development has massively been reversed. As already mentioned, there is further potential, which we will address in 2025. Going then down to cash flow from investing activities, we spent around EUR 25 million less for investing activities compared to the previous year, which in the end led to this very positive free cash flow number of EUR 119.5 million. Our long-term target is also to sustainably achieve a free cash flow of more than EUR 100 million. Of course, CapEx is here a major factor. As you can see on this chart, we had quite a high percentage of CapEx to turnover over the last years, especially 2023. It was a heavy year of CapEx, also 2024, with 6.5% of revenue spent for CapEx. Our target is to go down to less than 5% until 2029 and to remain there. In the coming years, we still will be at around 5%-6% because we have some major strategic investments ongoing. On the one hand, we are investing in a plant and a painting facility in Slovenia, in Maribor, which will allow us to substantially increase our cost position in our manufacturing. We are investing in an assembly plant in India, which will cost around EUR 30 million. We are also heavily expanding our sales and service footprint, especially in the U.S. With this, I would like to hand over back to Andreas Klauser for the outlook. Yeah, thanks, Felix. I think there's no doubt these are really great results in 2024. Now we need to look forward, and we are looking forward into another quite successful year, which we expect here, 2025. No doubt, the first quarter will be a challenge, and we have already announced that we are a little bit behind 2023. Nevertheless, a full year we expect here good results again. We already can clearly see on the order intake, which we are receiving mostly from our European core markets, these are already heading towards a quite positive direction. Here, again, I can already confirm and reassure that the market is back. On the other hand, we as well see a quite positive momentum in terms of our share price performance, which is year-to-date up by 25%. We want to continue and we will continue our path of success, which we have already started 25 years ago. If we look into the performance of our shares and of the company, I think we can be quite proud of that. What does this mean then for our 2027 financial target? Here again, no change. As we said, in terms of customer focus, keeping our number one position in terms as a market leader in crane and lifting solutions, achieving EUR 2.7 billion revenue with a 10% EBIT margin and a 12% ROCE. I think this is important that you get this clear commitment from the company that you understand the plan of our growth. I want to say thank you for your attention. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The first question comes from Jorge González from Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe Investment Banking. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is regarding the tariff situation in the U.S. I know that you license or you produce some of your forklifts in the U.S., which obviously is quite good news. I was wondering how you sell or where you produce the mounted cranes that you are selling in the U.S. at this point, or if you can give us some color of the percentage of the production that you are selling in the country. What is your view, if you can give further color on U.S. demand in the future months, if there is any driver that is supporting your products independently of the current concerns on the economy? That will be my first question. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think it is important to mention, and you saw it as well in our presentation, we are having four U.S. plants which are mostly covering all our products which we are introducing in North America/United States. I think this is important to mention here that we have a quite successful footprint where we can quite well manage all these tariffs. The impact will be minor and is a disruption just in the industry itself because people are getting nervous. On our side, for our business, clear strategy, clear plan, clear solution, that the impact will be reduced to a minimum. We are as well further investing here in a spare parts hub. I think this is also quite important to mention. On the U.S. side, I think we are quite clean and can as well provide quite successful numbers as well in future. As you have seen, U.S./North America is accounting for 27% of our revenue, and we expect this to further grow. On the other hand, in terms of order coverage, as I mentioned as well in the core markets like even Germany, France, the market is coming back. We have quite good order coverage. We are ahead of our plan. Unfortunately, in Q1, because of the low order intake last year, we are a little bit behind 2023. No doubt we announced this. The way forward and as well looking into our 2025 targets and goals, we are fully confident that we will have another successful year. In terms of content, I imagine that all the players now are importing several parts from outside the U.S. In terms of content, you do not feel you are at a disadvantage for the pricing in the following months. You are, in fact, in a quite competitive position, is what I understand from your words. We are quite competitive, and we know, as I said, on one hand side, how to manage the situation in terms of tariffs in the United States. As well, on the other hand, the business coming back here in our core markets. As you have seen, in terms of diversity in the different industries we are in, we can quite well balance it out. We expect another successful year in 2025. Thank you very much for the color. My second question, that is going to be my last question for now, is regarding the growth for the second part of the year and next year. I see that you are quite confident that we have seen the worst and that you are going to probably expand again the sales in construction. I was wondering how you see the impact of the new infrastructure investment plans in Europe, how this can benefit you, if you see yourself as one of the major beneficiaries of these potential investments. Also, if you also see Palfinger benefited by a potential reconstruction in Ukraine, how you see your product, your portfolio for these events. Thank you. I think also these areas you mentioned, Ukraine, but as well infrastructure, Europe, Germany, whatever, will heavily benefit to our business. Okay, it's just a question when it's kicking in, what we have already seen. The infrastructure projects in Germany and France have already started. Ukraine is on hold for the time being, but as soon as the relevant agreements will be signed, we are ready to go there. We have a demo fleet already prepared. We are really ready as well to deal with any rebuilding Ukraine. I think both elements, we will heavily benefit in future in our business. As I said, mostly for 2025, the infrastructure projects in Europe and beyond that, as well Ukrainian rebuilding situation. Thank you. Next question comes from Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. First one would be a follow-up on the Ukraine topic. You said as soon as the agreements are signed, you're ready to go there. Which products do you believe would benefit the most? Everything. It is the hooklift. It is the loader crane. It is waste management, recycling. We have to remove stuff which is destroyed. I think there is maybe with the exception of marine, there's not one product line which will not benefit from Ukraine. Also, maybe it's a bit too early, but in terms of volume, you could imagine in Ukraine? Will be huge volume. I can't tell you at the moment, but we are ready. We have access to different organizations which are working rebuilding Ukraine. We expect a lot out of Poland. We have a quite important setup in Poland with mounting component centers. We can heavily influence this out of Poland as well. We have all the respective contacts and information. It's just a question when the peace agreement will be signed, and then we are ready to go. Okay, fair enough. Last question, in terms of working capital to sales, could you give us a target for 2025 and the midterm? We are now in a situation, as I said, where we still have around EUR 40 million-50 million of improvement potential in working capital. This is then the ratio which will probably be a sustainable ratio. There are always possibilities to optimize. However, we also are pushing business, for example, to the U.S., where we have a higher percentage of working capital. This means that the regional shift, the regions outside of EMEA will, to a certain extent, be a counterweight to optimization measures we will take on the other hand to further reduce working capital. I would say that with the reduction of another EUR 40 million-50 million, we will grow proportionally with revenue in the future in working capital. Okay, okay. Understood. Thank you. The next question comes from Lasse Stüben from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Just a question on capacity. I know you took some capacity out last year just getting the market. It seems like everything's now going back in the right direction. How flexible are you just to increase capacity in the event that Germany comes back online, Ukraine, etc.? The second point, I guess, again, on working capital or generally, if you're expecting, should we expect top-line growth already in 2025, or do you expect that to mainly feed into 2026? What that means, I guess, for the, if you do get a quick return to growth, what that means for that working capital situation, because I guess you might be building up some more working capital once growth returns. Thank you. Maybe to the first question, luckily, we managed to keep our key resources. In terms of workforce, we managed to keep the key resources even if we reduced the number of people by nearly 400. This as well brings us in a situation when we are now recovering and when we have to increase capacity. We can manage this, obviously, in a couple of months. It will not go overnight. That is as well the reason why Q1 is expected to be behind 2023. Looking forward, we have all the resources. We have all the actions taken that we can fully deal with the market now, which is coming back. Perhaps coming to your question regarding growth, we do expect in 2025 that we see more or less the inverse development of 2024. We had a very strong start in 2024, and then we had to decrease capacity. Now we have a rather low output, and we are constantly now increasing capacity again. As we also announced recently, we are planning to improve our output and also our profitability throughout the year. In total, you should not expect a massive growth over the previous year, simply because the previous year started extremely well, and we had a record half-year 2024. However, the growth will kick in then mainly in 2026. We do expect from today's perspective that in 2026, we can show significant growth compared to the years 2024 and probably also 2025. In terms of working capital, as already mentioned, we do expect a further reduction this year in working capital. In 2026, working capital will grow in line with the output. We do not expect a major peak in working capital. Of course, if there would be such a peak in demand that we see again supply chain constraints and need to have to build up additional safety stocks, this is another story. Other than that, we do not expect an extraordinary development in working capital. All right. Thanks very much. We now have a follow-up question from Jorge González, Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead. Hello. Thank you for taking my follow-up. It is regarding the backlog. You ended the year like around 20% below 2023 and even like, I think, 40%, 30% below 2022 and 2023, sorry. I am wondering how you see the order intake developing through the year. Have you seen already a sequential increase in the first months of the year compared to the Q4? If there is any reason you are this confident, I mean, if you are having conversations with your clients that are already pointing to this strong jump in orders in the following weeks, months, or is it more an optimism related to the fact that you have seen already the bottom and you are more like following a little bit the better momentum in general in the market? What is making you this confident? Yeah. First of all, we see already clear recovery. I think it is not only wishful thinking and expectation. We see already a recovery, which is, yeah, minimum 20% ahead of what we have seen last year. This means the bottom of the market was reached, and we see a recovery. Considering now the output, we are planning full year and all the actions we have taken, I think we see quite a positive development. Okay, full year, we can't tell now, it's a guess. What we are seeing for Q1 in terms of order entry, especially as well, as I said, and that's important as well in the core markets across all the product lines, is a very, very positive development. How do you feel about the consensus at this point? I don't know if you have checked recently the consensus, maybe at Bloomberg, but basically, it's pointed to quite a flat year in sales and a decline to levels of 7% EBIT margin. Is this something that you think is possible to achieve, or is there any comment on this that you would like to do? We have not given any guidance except what we have communicated recently in our ad hoc message, where we said that we do expect a decline of EBIT in the first quarter of about one-third, that we will see a certain recovery of profitability in the second quarter, and that we do expect that in the second half year, there will be compensation to a relevant extent of the decline of EBIT in the first half- year. This is what we communicated. We do expect in total a good year, but we have not given any guidance on the percentage of EBIT margin or whatever. Okay, understood. Thank you, Felix. Thank you, Andreas. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. There are no more questions from the phone. Good. Thank you, operator. I think to the entire audience, thanks for your attention and as well for your question at this point in time. As you can see, we are having a plan for 2025. You can fully count on us, on Palfinger, on delivering another great year of results and looking forward to seeing you soon again. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Coruscal, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.