Interroll CFO Heinz Hössli on Half-Year Figures 2024

Thank you, Julia. It's a pleasure to be here today.

Yes, the first half year of '24 was marked by a solid performance in a progressively improving market environment. Our order intake of 286.5 million, which is 5.1% below last year's level; in local currency it's a minus of 1%. The invoice sales, the revenues, is local currency it's a plus of 0.1%, so basically flat compared to last year. When it comes to EBIT, earnings before interest and tax, with 29.9 million we reached a better result than last year with 28.7 million. The EBIT margin increased 0.9 percentage points to 12.1%. The result of 23.9 million is also better than last year's value of 22.0 million. This is mainly because of a positive financial result and slightly burdened by a higher tax ratio compared to last year. The result margin reached 9.7%, which is also above the 8.6% of last year. Our gross investments of 8.5 million are considerably below last year's level of 17.1 million, and our free cash flow of 11.1 million is also below the record value of 60 million we showed a year ago. There we invested now much more in networking capital, so it has a negative effect.

The picture in the region is quite diverse. When we look at the EMEA region, Europe Middle East and Africa, we see a rebound in the product business which is very promising. When we look in the Americas region we also see positive momentum on the product sales. In the APAC region the picture is even more diverse: we see quite good opportunities coming to life in Australia and Korea, whereas the rest remains more quiet. In general, however, there is still resistance to go for middle and big projects.

Yes, on the innovation side we have launched our high-performance solution HPP. We also launched our AMR top module for the LCP. In this area we partnered with two leading robotic companies. We have now also sold the first products for both innovations, so this is quite promising, and we got very good feedback from customers.

Sustainability for us is a journey. We started this quite a few years ago. When we look now at the first half year of '24, the highlights is that we did quite a few ISO certifications. For example, we certified our drum motor factory in Bahl, Germany with ISO 9001. We certified our factory in Chen, China with ISO 9001, 14001, and also 45001. And we are currently in process to certify our sales unit in Spain with ISO 14001.

Interroll is a very resilient company. The balance sheet is very strong. We have a very strong cash position and we are very well prepared. Whenever the market will fully recover, we are ready and we are there to seize the opportunities.

Yes, this year '24 is marking also the 65th anniversary of Interroll. Interroll as a reliable partner in the intralogistics market for 65 years. And it's also a good time to say thank you to our employees, to our customers, and to the stakeholders in general.

Thank you, Julia. And thank you to our viewers for tuning in to Interroll's half-year report 2024.