SFC Energy AG (F3C) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Thanks for taking the time and joining us here for our half-year results, but also for naturally the discussion and presentation of our second quarter results here in 2026. We are obviously happy to present a good set of numbers. We are looking back at the best six months of our company since inception, and we are looking at an exceptionally strong Q2 here in terms of revenue, about 20% above our previous record quarter, but also naturally translating into a significant improvement and strong increase in profitability. Some of the highlights here, doubling EBITDA on an adjusted basis compared to last year and also more than tripling the EBIT by itself is a positive fact. We also looked at an increase of revenue by about 12% where we have to see that the second quarter was here having the key impact. Apart from actually looking back, I think looking ahead, a significant increase in order intake to more than a hundred and eight million euros compared to 43.6 last year. And also a solid backlog still now at the mid of the year are also the basis rust being able to narrow the guidance upward here within the previously increased ranges. Before going now into all the financial details, I think, let me put the result here in perspective very clear the market entry into the Ukraine has and will have also within the year a boosting effect. But overall this is following naturally the strategic positioning here of ourselves in structurally growing energy markets. It also shows a scalability of the business model as mentioned with an acceleration in profitability. We look at the background here, especially on the defense and security part of the business. What we are witnessing is a different format of combat, a different format of warfare, strongly unmanned and most of it electrically powered, so all going electric if we put it in more generic terms. Then, at the same time, in a very dynamic, agile and mobile way of implementation. All these requirements, all these changes are a very good fit for our fuel cell based energy supply. We are able to easy and fast deploy and move. We have a longer lasting than conventional energy source, and I think the element that we are not generating, or we are virtually not generating signature, neither temperature nor noise, is the changing element. This means low to no detectability and therefore increase, a significant increase of safety of all the operators. So what we witnessed here, and I think the examples we are getting here, especially also from Ukraine, but also other parts of our business, is we are moving from a nice to have to a must have. but beyond the fact that we are naturally happy with let's say a successful market entry here in the ukraine and the deployment is happening as we speak and i'll get back to the next steps here in ukraine in terms of what does it now need to perpetuate this kind of entry success let us also look into some of the other markets if we look into our industrial fuel cell business reliable, resilient, long-lasting, and commercially viable off-grid and backup power for areas like civilian security, all our CCTV customers, critical infrastructure, backup power, and also all our sensing and monitoring solutions here looking into the European part of the business and also what we are witnessing especially for example in Singapore we are looking at the range of growth of 10 to 20 some of it 25 growth solid momentum solid demand there oil and gas for both segments the clean energy with the fuel cell powered solutions and also the clean power management with our frequency drive business there um canadian oil and gas business based naturally also on the raw material and commodity pricing having a solid performance yeah we have to also see some impact and daniel will relate back to this later with some negative currency effect but a solid development there um still with all the uh good news i think it's even more important to look at the areas where we feel we are not at target not at plan not happy with the power management business for the time being compared to the plan here in europe although we have to say we had a very strong first half year last year and we are not quite at this level but we also seeing a softer demand from our our largest customer them facing some soft demand in in their end markets factoring this in for the for the remaining part of the year we are seeing already an uptick in in their forecast here so we are not expecting an immediate change here but we are factoring this in into our year end forecast here the other area if we look at that regional business here in In the US, customer diversification is the most important strategic initiative there Branching out from an initial customer here in the CCTV sector, we are now seeing half a dozen to ten leading CCTV mobile security players being already repeat customers. also a first timer here entering into Amazon MSU division here with with initial systems I think is an inspiring fact but at the same time we have to see volume wise we are lagging behind here means there is room to improve and we will focus here in the next six to twelve months to catch up and create the right momentum. Looking at India, after spending a couple of days together with our Indian partners here in July, I think we are seeing the right signs of call it recovery. We are seeing a re-initiation of procurement here in our existing programs. We are seeing new programs coming up. The expectation here is higher order activity now in Q3, Q4, and especially also in Q1 of 27. All factored in into our overall forecast. Coming back to Ukraine. As said before, the sequence is clear. We are right now in the phase of deploy. We are in the phase of train, and we are building up training support and backup activities and structures locally. We are talking about the training elements here, including naturally standard activities like documentation, videos, all in local language. but we're also talking about different local structures, redundant structures. We are setting up separate locations here. And, well, eventually in a case of emergency, they also have to be mobile to a certain extent. This is happening as we speak, and I think we are progressing well now in Q3. And the next step is a localization step, looking at local supply chain as other companies do it there too. And expanding our activities of sales also to other parts of the armed forces. Our team was there again now in summertime, and we are planning to get back end of the month. So, this is where we see the need here in terms of further allocation of resources from our side in order to be able to continue with repeat business also in this market. Strategically, I think we have taken the time also to invest in our growth platform. We were on site in Singapore with our partner OneBerry, I think the investment is in good We are seeing good activities, we are expecting 2026 on track and there are some larger opportunities in the pipeline here on a local basis for AI based unmanned security systems. The collaboration with General Dynamics, we published this together here at Eurosatury. The first platform where our Emily fuel cell is built in is the so-called Pandua. We went to see the General Dynamics team last week in Vienna to talk about, let's say, marketing initiatives and the sales strategy here together with them. Last but not least, we are also delivering on our M&A strategy. Just a couple of weeks ago, on 2nd of July, we announced the acquisition of assets of sequence, company active specialist in fuel cell and reform methanol fuel cell technology. A good complementary fit to us. So between one and five kilowatt solutions being positioned between our methanol, direct methanol fuel cells and our hydrogen fuel cell solutions at the end giving us good access to users who cannot, who are not allowed or who are not willing to use hydrogen to higher power methanol systems. um finally also a consolidation activity here with an upcoming competitor and besides the assets we are particularly happy to have a team of experts here who joined us now in july and integration is on its way target here is to get cost neutral with first projects being are executed in 2027. The product needs some touch-up and some finalization. I think our experience from an industrial perspective is really helpful. If we look at the order part of the business, as mentioned before, we had an active If first half of the year with about 108.6 million oil intake, well, compared to last year, a factor of 2.5x. But even if we net out the Ukrainian large project here, we would look at the factor of 1.5x. So, also here, one can see that we have the business growing also outside the Ukrainian project. Obviously, clean energy from a segment perspective is the growing element in the first six months, as mentioned with 22.7% of growth with a significant impact also from shipments to Ukraine, about 22 million, so roughly half of the project was shipped by 30th of June. And the shortfall on the power management, I mentioned this already, like two sides of this business, very solid and growing with the oil and gas market in Canada and the shortfall here in Europe. But also here, I think, factoring it into the outlook and seeing also an improvement of the forecast of our key customer here, we see, let's say, the turning point happening as we speak. For the clean power management, there is also one additional element that is, I think, worthwhile to mention. We have our first OEM defense project in-house with a European OEM for high energy laser systems also for the defense use. Usually this is for drone defense, either platform-based or portable. So, also there we expect some impact, maybe not in the short run here in the next couple of weeks, but then also over the next quarters. With this, I would like to hand over to Daniel to look into the earnings.

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our call. Let me run you quickly through our earnings through the Morrisons, a bit on the cash flow and give you some highlights and background on some cost positions. I think Peter already mentioned it, the growth momentum in the second quarter, as well as the first half year, were exceptionally strong with regard to revenue, but also with regards to earnings and margins. And these are reflecting on the one hand side the strong growth and the performance, especially of the segment, clean energy, as well as the attractive product mix that we had in the first half year in the second quarter, with a high share of defense revenue coming from the Ukraine order. The results for our key KPIs across the board were very strong, exceptionally strong, I would even say. Revenue growth, Pete, I mentioned it, 12% half year and a half year. We had a gross margin on the group level of 47.1%, which corresponds to a margin expansion of 4.6 percentage points compared to the first half year, 2025. The EBITDA adjusted margins increased to 22%, which is a 10.8 percentage points margin expansion compared to the same through it last year. We had an EBITDA adjusted margin of 17%, which is also a 10.7 percentage point expansion comparison compared to the same period of last year. We had a cash flow from operating activities, which were 4.6 million euros, and we had a very strong order and backlog of 105 million euros. Looking at the gross margin on growth level, I mentioned before, very strong with 47.1%. This is also significantly above what we've seen for the full year. Last year, we consider this margin to be on a reasonably strong level, with apparently – and Peter already touched on that – upside potential in the segment clean power management, where especially the notable drop in revenues led to a higher unit cost due to relative higher production overhead per unit. So that will reflect it in the gross margin per segment. The gross margin is a segment clean energy well above 50% with 52.6%, also well above what we've seen in the last year, whereas we had to realize a slight drop in the gross margin on the segment, clean power management, was going to 28.3%. That drop is really due to the lower revenue in the power management solutions, our Dutch slash Romanian business, and that lower revenue always leads or tends to lead to a lower dilution of the manufacturing overhead. If you look at the group operating expenses below the gross margin, we see that the functional or operational expenses decrease slightly year-on-year by 1.2%. The biggest positive influence on the cost factors were in the G&A expenses, and mostly due to lower spending on IT and the ERP implementation in the first half year. Remember, in 2025, in the first half year, we really had a lot of spending on that one. We did streamline the cost where we made some advancement here. Of course, these costs will also occur in the second half of the year. We had some negative effects on our operating expenses in spite of the fact that they decreased slightly. One of them was an impairment of capitalized R&D expenses. The impairment was 500,000 euros. It is shown in the R&D expenses that why you see R&D expenses being slightly higher than what we expected and also what we've seen previously. And subsequently also that impairment is shown in the depreciation, that's why you would also see a slightly higher depreciation in the second quarter. And the other negative effect were consultancy expenses of approximately 600,000 euros in context with closing the Ukraine deals. These are shown in sales and marketing expenses, a lot of advisory, a lot of legal expenses, big contract, a lot of consultancy expenses in context with closing that contract in the Ukraine. If we look at the capitalization rate of our R&D expenses, so 13% of our R&D spends were capitalized. That is still on the lower level compared to 50% of what we had in the last year, which already was on the lower level. But for the time being, we assume that this will not change. change, we won't have a higher rate of capitalized energy expenses in this year. When we look at the exchange rate income and losses, and if we look at the net effect, so we had a balanced result. We had a net gain of 67,000 euros, so basically the result is zero, and that compares to 2.6 million of net losses last year, so that you see that this will also contribute to the margin expansion on EBIT and EBITDA level. Braces to our adjusted EBITDA, I mentioned it, 22.4% is the margin, corresponds to 18.4 million euros. The increase in summary is the very good performance of the segment, clean energy, driven by the product mix, by the revenue growth itself. The overall positive operating expense effects, operating leverage kicking in, especially in that segment, and the margin of the segment, clean power. Depreciation, total depreciation is 4.4 million. Still, the structure of the depreciation is the same as we've seen in the previous quarters. About 40% is IFR-16, i.e. lease accounting related, slightly higher than what we've seen, simply because we are leasing or we have leased a new site in the Netherlands, which will bring up, and on top, as I mentioned before, you see the impairment of an R&D project. That brings us to the EBIT, adjusted EBIT, $14 million, and giving us a margin of 17%. CapEx, if we exclude the investment in one very, which happened, related CapEx expenses, We had $1.4 million in PPA, in equipment and machinery, which is really a normal level, nothing extraordinary or special. Cash flow, the operating cash flows before change in net working capital were $17.5 million euros, much stronger than what we've seen last year. If we look at the development of the working capital, the working capital ratio to last 12 months net sales increased to 42%. It's a little bit higher from what we've seen for the full last year, where we were at 37% with that ratio. And the largest impact on the networking capital had a strong increase in accounts receivables with a negative cash impact of 9.8 million euros. It has to do with the very strong revenues, especially towards the end of the quarter. However, our days of sales outstanding increased to 120, sorry, 139 days. We were looking at 120, 22 in the last full year. That number will go down in the next quarters. As I said, it really has to do with the strong rollout of sales at the end of the first half year. We had a very small impact from an increase of inventory, about 300,000 euros. So, by and large, inventory stayed at the same level. The inventory will decrease in the third quarter. Key reasons why the inventory stayed on the same level is that we purchased a lot of components in the second quarter for delivering, now, the last part of the Ukraine order. So, really, this is what has been driving raw material and components. And on the other hand, we also purchased quite a bit of platinum in the second quarter, locking in on the relative lower platinum prices. That platinum stock that we now have will carry us towards the end of the year into the first quarter of 2027. So, these are the key reasons why inventory has stayed more or less at the same level. Again, that will go down towards the end of this quarter and also towards the end of the year. And then we would see a release of cash. After tax payments and the change of inventory, we're looking at an operating cash flow of 4.6 million euros, much better from what we've seen in the last year. Cash flow financing activities, most related for April 16, again, to lease payments was negative $1.9 million. Slightly higher, and then the change in cash, we had minus $2.9 million, driven largely by the network in capital and development. And also the CapEx specialty investment in one degree. So that brings us to our cash position. Cash freely available is 44 million euros. The financial debt has decreased slightly. Never a big on our balance sheet, as you know and have you seen. Our net debt, in this case net cash position, is 41.2 million euros. at the end of the first half year with a lot of payments coming in right now we will see this position to increase still very solid we're still very comfortable with this position and with this quick summary I will give it back to Peter Kordeser.

Thank you very much Daniel well now looking at the forecast I think at the end adding up the performance in the first half year seeing what are the expected deliveries the current and the expected or the current backlog and the expected orders based on the order or project activity we are having we see ourselves in a good position to let's say narrow the forecast upwards on the basis of the race guidance of May 12th so revenue 166 to 175 million EBITDA in the upper half here of the previous guidance 31.5 to 34 million and I'd say the EBIT both EBIT and EBITDA on adjusted basis as usual is now expected in a corridor between 21.5 to 25.5 million. Looking at all of this, you see us really confident with this framework here, but you see us also very focused and cautious and conscious about some of the areas to improve. I mentioned the power business. I mentioned also the acceleration here of the diversification and scaling in the US. We are expecting, I think, good order activity in Asia, mentioning India and Singapore here. And for the US, we should not forget that we are preparing for the re-entry into the defense market. We will be present as of next week here talking to key parties there. So overall, I think a lot of activity. Ukraine, again, it's about deploy, it's train support and localize and view customers and all of this I think also leaves us in a situation where we still need to work on supply chain availability especially towards the year-end because there's also one fact with let's say focus strongly on fast shipments here to the Ukraine in Q2 but also naturally partially in Q3, we were clearing out stock levels with a number of customers here, apart from this business, and, well, we did not leave any customer without products, but actually we brought down stock levels here in the chain to the customer, and we're also expecting some catch-up effects here. And all this together naturally leaves us with an element of assessment in often times to see whether there is still a headroom to to to work on the forecast we have noticed that that some of you have seen parts of it especially on the revenue side as conservative again we feel very confident with this uh framework right now and let us work and look at it again in autumn Last one here, we have also sent out a safety date here for a capital market state planned on the 7th of October in our Swindon facility. We would welcome you all in best case naturally physically there to show our capabilities, the technological depth and breadth we have there here on the membrane development at manufacturing. but it naturally will be also a hybrid format here for those of you who cannot join us an official invitation will follow if you mark this in your calendars we will be more than happy to welcome you there with this as always we close here and open up the floor for Q&A thank you very much we will now begin the question and answer session anyone who wishes to ask a question may

request star N1 on their touch-tone 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 N2. Any other question may press star N1 at this time. Our first question comes from Usama Tariq with ABN AMRODO. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning again. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two small questions number one is mostly housekeeping so for h2 the it's the Vita you still have 20 million sales coming from the Ukrainian order if I calculate correctly but the guidance the midpoint implies 14.4 million my question is what is the reason for being slightly more conservative in my view especially on the adjusted ADDA for this year and my second question very quickly would be the last 2027 I know it's a little bit early but we have a

very big order in 2026 compared that 2027 do you do you see foresee any possibility that it would be repeated for other Ukrainian forces any color there would be really really appreciated thank you yeah I cannot I can start with them with the second one summer thanks very much for joining us well as mentioned before and every day is a lot of focus here on I say making sure we are creating the short-term and long-term basis here for repeating and perpetuating the business also in the ukraine just making sure that users can make proper use of our products now in in their day-to-day obligations i think that's fully on its way at the same time we are let's say present there uh consistently and and also travel there on a regular basis also to again uh look into expanding the customer base within the arms forces but then also look at repeat possibilities financing um from a german and european perspective has been let's say delayed over the last couple of weeks with all the changes in the leadership there but the decisions are there the resources and the financial means will be there also in autumn time so here overall I think we need to to work through the next couple of weeks and months to really assess what is the situation really for 2027 overall looking also at the demand outside of of the ukraine and and our initiatives here on a on a on a industry basis as well as on a geographical basis naturally we are looking at uh further growth there so for um the assessment of of the situation then in ukraine bear with us a couple of weeks i think September-October timeframe, we should have a better picture here.

Hi, John. So with regards to the EBITDA guidance and the lower end, or the more conservative version, as you said, well, the nature of the lower end is that it will reflect certain possible expenses and uncertainties that may or may not occur in the second half of the year. So if we take this a little bit apart, of course, lower end is always a function of also the lower end of the revenues, also to the lower end of the revenues when we come to the segment clean power management. As I mentioned before, you know, the impact of production overhead on that segment is a little bit higher than what we see in the segment clean energy, so this is something we factor in when we look at the low end of the guidance. Also, we are looking at potentially certain impairments on capitalized R&D expenses, which we will see or will not see in the next two quarters, something that we test every end of the quarter. Potentially higher IT spending, always in the third and the fourth quarter, I will most likely see a bit of higher IT spending, and that relates to the introduction of the URP system towards the fourth quarter. And, of course, Peter mentioned it's also building up support functions, service functions in the Ukraine, which is an investment on operating expenses. So, yes, it could be conservative, but naturally, the sum of those X or whatever expenses is then reflected in that lower moral conservative and that's really thank you thank you for the answer our next question comes from Carsten von Blumenthal with first Berlin equity research please go ahead good morning Peter good morning Daniel congratulations to the excellent results my first question is

regarding Q4 Peter you mentioned in the last call that you may face supply constraints and in this call you again said that you are working on the supply chain so what is lacking in Q4 and what could be the revenue impact of supply constraints good morning Carson thanks for being with us I think at the end working on it consistently also since last time we spoke it's not about our own production capacity it is really specific components for for for our products where we

still are in let's say the order phase and and some of the deliveries uh that uh they have to land here latest by end of september are not here yet but to clarify with the current guidance we feel very confident and so there is let's say supply chain constraints on the lower end factored in and whether we will see and have some headroom here I think that's that's I'd say the element of change so what we see as a forecast here and the ranges that we published or have published this morning. We are safe on this one.

Thanks for that. Next question is regarding the Ukraine contract. I was surprised to hear that you have already delivered 22 million. That's more than half. And so can we expect that the rest will be delivered in Q3?

Well, I think that the element of urgency here is the need on the customer side. And if you recall, we also did compromise on some some capacity already in Q1 expecting an even earlier closure of this contract and that's I think why we were able to ship approximately half of it. The expectation here would be that we can execute on I would say virtually most of it within end of September give it some residual revenues also in Q4. This is not yet fully, let's say, judgeable as some, as we said, some of the material is still on its way in, but we will see a significant part of it in Q3, which is already clear. So, we are looking at, again, a very strong Q3.

And your capacity is sufficient to serve all your other clients?

That's exactly the point and what I mentioned before and tried to explain. I think we are managing this to the best we can. We cannot, let's say, leave long-term growing customers here without the rate level of attention, without the shipments of product, and that's why we are balancing this. But with this also, we are clearing stock positions here throughout the whole chain until the end user. And this will result in some catch-up effect also in Q4.

All right. Thanks for that. You mentioned in your U.S. business that you were successful in a broader customer base, but that volume-wise you are lagging behind. Could you elaborate on that? What hinders customers from ordering larger volumes? Do you need more time to explain the product or is there any difficulties in the market? What is going on in the U.S.?

I think if we look at the CCTV market, we are in the favorable position that we have, let's say, all the top players in the CCTV market already. integrating our EFOY product but at the same time there is competition out there and they are at the end fighting for the same project so it's less call it regionally protected fragmented as we observe it in Europe here where you have clear market leaders in different geographies going for for the business There is more head-to-head competition, and we are seeing, therefore, people being less aggressive also than in their volume forecasts. Now, we had a head start here with our largest customer, LifeU technologies, but others are catching up, And therefore, I think that's an element that's on an intermediate basis, I think, slowing us down, seeing our integration in all their value chains here with the different competitors. I think we have a significant growth potential here ahead of us.

So it's not about, I'd say, being replaced by other technologies. is it's at the end of the day a competition on our customers level all right that sounds rather promising one last question regarding your defense business you said that your product has become a must-have so when do you expect further large orders be it from ukraine be it from other armed forces, yeah, that would, of course, help to get visibility into 2027.

Well, I think we have a signaling effect out of what is being used in Ukraine, and this is not SFC-specific. If I look who is all going to there and get an understanding of this, let's say, new format of a combat situation, more agile, more mobile, or let's say electric and not so much a monolithic warfare, we are seeing, let's say, all parts of armed forces from North America to Asia to the Middle East also being present in Ukraine, watching and trying to learn, and therefore we expect naturally also an impact, let's say, on our business. If we look at, let's say, what is in the pipeline, I think on the OEM part, we are expecting also for 27 the first programs to scale geographically in Europe. I mentioned already we are, as we speak, invited in the U.S. to look at the development program here for a new generation of portable systems, second element. And if we look at the activities now in Asia, I would say also most promising is the re-initiation and the refunding of our programs in place in India. So, that would be, I think, the conservative view of looking at it. If we now see, I'd say, what happens also in the Middle East and also our activities there, I think there's significant upside coming out of this region too.

Yeah, that is very helpful. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Kuhn with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A few ones. I'll start with, let's say, backlog and feasibility. Is your H2 guidance entirely based on backlog, or is there some elements in the business that have shorter order cycles? And if so, what is the amount and what of the current backlog do you expect to carry into next year?

Good morning, Michael. Well, we, especially on the power side of the business, we have also part of the backlog naturally ranging significantly also into 2027. If we look at what you have here and if you see where we are at the mid-year, you can say about a 25 million level of revenue is getting also into 2027. and therefore you also see that there is a residual part still, let's say, needed for the midpoint of the guidance, but that is mostly the industrial part of our fuel cell business, especially also the civilian security, the CCTV part. This is a business that in most cases is also intra-quarters, so within, let's say, 8 to 12 weeks, uh uh timeline we are turning this around here with our cctb customers and that's why we have factored this also in into our forecast and that's actually also that part where we are working strongly also on let's say removing supply chain constraints also above let's say the midpoint of the guidance that's right here thank you then on the clean power management you mentioned

and some softness of your key customer. Do you expect this to persist or that problem to dissolve over the next few months?

And also in that segment, you mentioned new use cases like drone defense lasers. maybe you could share some thoughts on timeline and the size of the business opportunity here Absolutely I think here on the power management side we have an extremely reliable industrial partner with a precise forecasting and we knew that it would be a soft year I think let's say that the fact that this was It's also now getting into, let's say, Q3 still was something that we had not factored in. At the end, we see their end markets. At the beginning of the year, still one of their core end markets, semiconductors did apparently not deliver the pickup. This is now changing. the mere analytical market from research institutes to universities impacted also by funding constraints, especially in the U.S., has an impact going further. And that's why I think having right now a conservative outlook for this year is the right approach. seeing the latest forecast we see let's say also the first uptick here towards the end of the year so under control I think also good communication here at the same time our biggest semiconductor company in this segment as the semiconductor customer in the segment is accelerating programs so we expect an uptick there and on the defense part i think we will see um first shipments here into into programs by 27 i mentioned the first oem partnership here we have um launched this program here on all the defense shows um throughout the first half year and we also seeing let's say beyond this OEM program here serious interest because it's not a new development it's actually an industrially matured power supply platform that is adapted for the laser use and for the laser application in defense so it is something that is ready to use with adaptions to the customer specific requirements and therefore yeah we expect shipments to start in 2027 as always with OEM programs we are at the end exposed to timelines that are out there with our OEM partners but as everybody's growing in this segment and the supply chain is limited I think it's a real real good thank you one more your acquisition so I think you elaborated are basically closing a gap in the portfolio here also where H2 fuel

are not usable maybe also a few words here on use cases on, let's say, the impact on your overall product offering, whether there's any replacement changes, and let's say by when you expect this new platform to be fully up and running within SSC and how much it could contribute.

Yeah. With all, let's say, Natalie, the limitations of just being in the process of finalizing the acquisition and starting the integration, I think strategically very clear, there are customers who cannot or who are not willing for whatever reasons, logistics, security, who are not willing to take, let's say, hydrogen as a fuel. And they are reformed methanol, converting methanol into hydrogen on site and then using the hydrogen in the fuel cell. and therefore also reduced the bill of materials in proportion to the output number in terms of watts or kilowatts, is a compelling solution. We did a classical make-or-buy assessment here. Instead of, let's say, going there and do, let's say, all the R&D from scratch, It was a very good opportunity to, let's say, make use of Natri, the difficulty sequence faced here in terms of commercialization of the product. Setting up and establishing an international sales organization, partnership structure, I think, was the major hurdle they had to face. combined naturally with some final improvements of the product stability longevity operations time and I think in both areas we can help immediately at the end customer use cases range from defense to the CCTV area to the oil and gas area we see the demand for this kind of power level. If you take CCTV, we are all looking at increased power needs because of AI based camera systems and computing power already on site and therefore it's a logical reaction then to increase the power levels of the fuel cell as the backup power source here to battery and solar. So, So we see, I'd say, initial projects where in some of them few, but still some of them we were competing, where we would clearly favor now the new platform and offer this. And we want to have first systems out. We're actually working with those customers already. And we might even ship some of those products still in Q4 of this year, depending on how fast we are in recovering here, let's say, the supply chain and do the touch-ups. But we definitely will be able to ship in 2027. But expect, let's say, a modest number here. We are not talking about 10 million sales. We are talking about, let's say, the first 20 to 50 systems. And we are talking about, let's say, from a 1 million to a 3 to 5 million impact here in this period of time. And it is also naturally about testing the systems out there. but still we are also consolidating the offering we are the only one now having this consistent full-stage offering here on a worldwide basis and therefore I think we are we are making ourselves more interesting for customers to go with us along the whole range of products thank you thank you our next question comes from Malte Sharman with Worldbook Research.

Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning guys. First question is on the gross margin. I mean, you had a pretty strong mix in the first half of the year, so what are your thoughts about the second half? I mean, product mix might look almost the same with still a big chunk of the Ukraine order to come into the third quarter. So what are your thoughts about gross margin development in K3 and K4?

Hi, this is Daniel. So, cross-margin development for the second half of the year, apparently, as you just mentioned it, we are looking at strong orders or strong delivery in Ukraine in the third quarter. So, we would have a very strong cross-margin again in the third quarter. Probably, you know, around the level what we've seen in the second quarter. Plus minus, of course, because we have some effects in there. And then the fourth quarter, it kind of depends. I would see still a very good cross-motion, but there is a big dependency, remember, on what we deliver, what we can deliver, in which markets we can deliver, mostly because of, you know, making sure that we have all parts available less because of our backlog more because availability of parts so to make it short third quarter very strong and good third quarter is a bit of a variety from good to strong okay then I'm exactly part of this we are down almost 15% here in the end the first half of the year I mean keep free should

It does not look like it will pick up immediately, maybe Q4, but Q4 last year was also strong. So that's why the minus 10, minus 15% sales growth, sales development, the right view to look at this business for the full year in 2026, and then hopefully pickup will happen next year.

Well, yeah, I would say we expect an improvement in H2. As mentioned, there are some signs of recovery here in the European part, and especially also from oil and gas customers we see consistent investments. So I think a range of up to 10% is what we would see as our assessment today in our year-end forecast.

Okay. Then I'm planning them. Did you implement some hatches earlier in the year or towards the end of last year? the hedge position still in place?

No, there's no hedge position. We did not implement any hedges, luckily, because we've seen the platinum pricing decline, so the answer is no. We just bought quite an amount of platinum, which is physically staying with us to lock in on the lower prices.

Okay. Dan, you mentioned the adoption of the power supply platform for defense applications. Can you elaborate on the opportunity? What revenue contributions might come out of that in one, two, three years?

As I said, there are a number of OEMs out there who are really looking for, I'd say, an acceleration of their supply chain, an expansion of their supply chain. we have a classical dual-use product here of high-tech industries using it and therefore we are fast to market and if we look at it and if you look let's say on a mid-term basis yeah this is a business where we we would expect let's say a lower double digit business coming out of this but we are also looking at procurement cycles that are let's say usually slow at the beginning and then start to scale so that's why we started with a with a conservative approach here for 27 and then we see how fast scaling goes there but yeah the market is there and i think we have a proven platform that is let's say the clear advantage of our dual use product strategy Okay.

Then, on the business in India, is that the need to gradually, gradual order intake, or is that, do you expect kind of a bigger order at some point in time in the third or fourth quarter?

Well, I think we are looking at really a re-initiation of those programs, that is at At least what we also learned from our partners when sitting together a couple of weeks ago. We also see, let's say, the activities on what we do on the support contracts where we see our products are fully in use. We are out there with all our service capabilities, supporting them in the field. And therefore, still, for the outlook, we are looking at a higher backlog than revenue impact in 2026. but as their fiscal year goes until our first quarter in 2027 I think this is where we will see let's say a biggest part of the impact not going back to let's say the level immediately of where we were two and a half years ago but catching up and getting back to those levels I would say within a period of 24 to 36 months is absolutely realistic because we have to install

base out there they need to refresh they need to restuff and as far as we see it right now funding is back in place thank you Martha as a reminder if you wish to register for a question you may press star and one patient gentlemen there are no further questions at this time I would now like to hand over back to Mr. Cordeser for any closing remarks.

Yeah, once again, you see ourselves here very confident for the remaining part of the addressing what needs to be addressed and for the time being, if there are any further questions on a bilateral basis with Daniel, myself, also Suzanne, we are at your disposal and we thank you very much for your time on this nice mid-August morning here. Thank you Thank you very much.