Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Andreas Schaller speaking. On behalf of Fuchs SE, I wish you a very warm welcome to today's conference call on the results of the first quarter 2026. With me on the call today is our CEO, Stefan Fuchs, and our CEO, Eswar Zaglich, and the IR team with Teresa Landau and Maximilian Seidel. Maximilian is the successor of Niklas and is with us since two weeks now. So also a warm welcome to the conference call, Maximilian. We are very happy to have you with us. Thank you very much. As always, Esma and Stefan will run you through the presentation, which is then followed by a Q&A session. All the documents for this call are available on our homepage, and we assume that you have them in front of you. Please be also aware of our disclaimer on page two of our presentation. And now it's my pleasure to hand over the call to Esma. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Andreas. And hello, and also a very warm welcome from my side. I will now walk you through our financial performance for the first quarter of 2026, starting with the key highlights. I can say we had a very good start into the year. Organic growth continued and even accelerated. In a volatile environment, we once again demonstrated operational resilience and financial strength. Sales reach $934 million, up by 1% year-on-year, which is mainly driven by an organic growth of 5%. And this result has been achieved despite significant currency hedges. Our EBIT came in at $125 million, up by $17 million, or 16% versus last year, which marks another new quarterly record. Additionally, it also underlines the quality of our earning and the effectiveness of our cost. Free cash flow before acquisition was very solid at $54 million, an improvement of $37 million year-on-year, and this despite usual seasonal buildup in net operating working capital during Q1. earnings per share increased by 15 percent to 68 cents per share now turning to the next slide let me briefly comment on quarterly sales as usual you see a seasonal increase quarter on quarter which is fully in line with prior years nevertheless sequential sales grow by eight percent and at the same time sales year-over-year increased by one percent. Let me have a closer look at the main drivers behind our sales development. Sales in Q1 reached 934 million at that one percent up year-over-year. At the first glance, this looks rather modest, But the underlying performance was much stronger. Organic growth contributed 42 million or 5%. With that, volume growth was particularly strong with mid to high single-digit range. This organic growth came from all regions, which reflects successful business wins and especially the strong demand in March. On the external growth side, the acquisition of Irmco and Azjol in 2025 were the main contributors. Currency headwinds remained significant, with a negative impact of around 4%. We expect these headwinds to continue into key two and to ease thereafter. Overall, we can say that the underlying sales development was clearly positive. Looking at the EBIT on quarterly basis, we see the same seasonal pattern. However, what stands out is the strong EBIT improvement by over 15% both year over year at quarter over quarter. With 125 million, EBIT marked a new all-time high for a single quarter. This performance was driven by further improvement in our gross margin, contributed cost discipline or continued cost discipline, and the $7 million one-off gain from the sale of our property in Australia. Let me now turn to the KPI summary, starting with gross margin. Our gross margin improved to 35.1%, that is an increase of 80 basis points year-on-year and fully in line with the development we saw in the previous two quarters. Functional cost declined by 7 million. This was mainly driven by the gain from the Australian land sale. As a result, EBIT reached $125 million, which is an increase of 16% year-on-year, with an EBIT margin of 13.4%. Capital expenditures increased year-on-year as well, but is still in line with our full-year guidance. Net operating working capital showed the usual seasonal pattern, built up in absolute terms quarter over quarter. But at 21% of annualized sales, it remained stable and unchanged compared to the end of last year or last quarter. Finally, free cash flow before acquisitions was very solid with $54 million, an increase of $37 million year on year. Then let's have a look to our regional development. development. Sales in EMEA increased by 5% driven by organic growth and stronger demands in March. Most countries in EMEA recorded higher sales. Particularly strong growth came from South Africa, Germany, Poland, Italy and the UK. External growth was supported by the acquisitions from our former distribution partner, Asiol, in Switzerland. EBIT improved significantly, mainly due to margin expansion and higher volume. The main contributors were Germany, Sweden, and South Africa. So, in summary, the Q1 performance in EMEA was very positive. Now, moving over to Asia-Pacific. Organic growth remains strong at 6%, mainly driven by China and Australia, but also many other smaller countries contributed to it. This clearly shows the benefit of our investment in local production. However, strong negative currency effects almost fully offset the growth. As a result, reported sales increased by only 1% to $266 million. From a profitability perspective, the region developed very well. EBIT increased by 38%, with China and Australia being the main drivers. That said, the Asia-Pacific results include the $7 million one-off gain, as mentioned before. But anyway, overall, we can say Asia-Pacific recorded a strong organic growth and a high EBIT, which underlines the solid performance of the region. Now turning to North and South America. Sales declined by 6%, mainly due to significant depreciation of the US dollar over the past 12 months. At the same time, organic growth was 3%, reflecting new business growth, particularly in North America. External growth was driven by the acquisition of Irmkuhl. EBIT declined by 2 million, and that mainly due to negative ethics effects. We also saw positive business development in South America. Overall, the operational performance of the region is more solid, and we expect ethics effects in South America to fade after Q2. In summary, America has delivered a solid operational performance, which unfortunately was offset by currency headsets. Now, moving over to the net operating working capital. Looking at our operating working capital, we see the usual seasonal pattern, a buildup in Q1 after a low point in Q4. Compared to Q1 2025, net operating working capital improved, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of sales, from 22.4% to 21%, reflecting disciplined working capital management and also the higher demand. turning to net liquidity we achieved the free cash flow before acquisitions of 54 million driven by strong earnings and a moderate increase in working capital capex in the first quarter was almost in line with our depreciation level overall net liquidity increased by 52 million to 250 million at the end of Q1. A very solid result for the first quarter. But please keep in mind, there was no major cash out in Q1. In Q2, we will see the dividend payment and the cash out for our acquisition of OpetFox. Before turning to the material price development and the outlook, let me briefly summarize Q1. We had a very strong start into 2026 with positive organic growth development and the highest quarterly EBIT ever. We more than compensated for significant currency headwinds and once again proved our resilience in volatile market environment. Now moving over to the material development. As mentioned during our capital market day, since the conflict in the Middle East, oil and petrochemical supply chains have come under pressure. High crude prices, longer transport routes, and rising logistic costs are putting pressure on input costs, especially for base oil. We see raw material pricing increasing sharply, and to counteract, we have implemented price increases and expect further increases in Q2. Even if the conflict were to ease, supply conditions are unlikely to normalize before year-end or even by 2027. Our sourcing setup is globally diversified, and this gives us flexibility. We are confident that we can secure volume to serve our existing customers, who remain our top priority. And as a result, we remain cautious by taking new businesses. So in summary, the visibility regarding price development is currently not given. and it is currently impossible to give a clear direction how it will evolve. And as you all recall, in 2021 and 2022, we faced a similar situation and we managed it quite well. We have proven that we can handle inflationary challenges and we are confident that we will manage this situation also successfully. Our key learning was to act faster on pricing, which we are currently doing. And now, let's move to the outlook. Based on the current market and pricing dynamics, and also assuming there will be no further disruptions to the global economy or supply chains, we update our outlook as follows. We now expect sales to increase significantly above 3.7 billion driven by price increases. As the final extent of the price adjustments are still uncertain, we refrain from getting a precise target. By significant, we refer to double-digit growth. The sales number includes the OPAT-FUX acquisition, which we expect to close this week. And we have considered two-thirds of their annualized sales of $100 million. Our EBIT guidance remains unchanged at around $450 million. We expect to offset raw material inflation by price increases. With $125 million EBIT in Q1, we have laid a solid foundation. However, this figure should please not be annualized as Q1 includes the 7 billion one-off gains. In Q2, we expect further one-offs related to OPEC-FUX, which will broadly offset the positive effect from Q1 in the P&L, but without cash effects. Please take into account when you are modeling your 2026 full year numbers. FBA is now expected at slightly below $250 million, reflecting higher capital employed costs. Free cash flow before acquisition is expected to be significantly below $270 million, mainly due to inflation-driven working capitalists. For cash, the reduction should be modeled consistently with our sales crisis. Based on our strong start into the year, we are confident that we will achieve our EBIT target as previously indicated. We remain committed to grow our dividend year after year as we have done it over the past six volatile years. With our Fuchs 100 strategy, we are well positioned and will drive for organic growth, margin improvement and cash generation going forward. And with that, I hand over to Stefan for some more company news.
Thank you very much Esma for the positive update. My news will be relatively short because we had a significant exchange with most of you two weeks ago in our capital market date. I think if we go to the next slide, you all remember that about three months ago we made a press release to take over the remaining 50% of our Turkish joint venture. And as it was stated in the press release, that's a company with about 100 million euros in sales and 250 employees. It's located in Istanbul. The plant is in Al Yaga, nearby Izmir. And if everything goes well today and there's nothing to be expected differently, we will close the deal tomorrow and we will be the proud owner of 100% of our Turkish subsidiary which will also change consolidation from equity towards a full consolidation moving forward so most likely you will see a press release tomorrow afternoon to just say you know that this will be closed as planned and we have a wonderful relationship with our partners you know our partner is is oped uh oped you know runs filling stations they run refineries in in turkey and they themselves is a is a championship between the large coach group and the earth to family so we have a good partnership and friendship with them but we both thought you know that we as the lubricant specialist focus fully on on that company and i think that's what we execute them finally and then the other little update but i don't want to go deep we had i think a really good fox 100 kickoff two weeks ago most of you attended our capital market day you could see all of us engaged you know we had the six colleagues on stage on our on our focus areas in a few words this is not a revolution it's an evolution of fox 2025 so whatever we have learned and done during the last seven years we can now build on so we really mainly focus on on growth but obviously also on people and and sustainability two days before we met we had the internal kickoff and that's really cool because we had a 30 something minute video which was recorded with watch parties all over the world so all our people got at the same time the same amount of news and i think this was very very a welcome and gives our people direction especially in challenging times like we like we have now and if you remember i said the last seven years were volatile since the end of february we know that also 2026 will be volatile so that's the eighth year in a row so i always say volatility is the new normal but i think with our you know business model which is very resilient we can cope with that that was the update from from esma and i and now i hand back to andreas yeah thank you very much Esma and Stefan and now we can start with the Q&A session please operator.
Speaker 2
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again. We will take our first question and the question comes from the line of Anil Chanoi from Barclays. Please go ahead your line is open.
Hi, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you so much for taking my questions. My first question is on any pre-buying that you've seen in Q1. We have heard a lot of other chemical companies say that they have seen some panic buying, which has led to some kind of upside in their Q1 numbers. So have you seen any kind of uptick in your volumes because of this pre-buying and if so, in which regions? So that's my first question. And second question is on your guidance. If I look at the clean EBIT of 118 million in Q1 after excluding the 7 million one-off, and if I extrapolate it for FY, I still get to about 470 to 480 million, but your guidance is still 450 million. So does that reflect the lag between the price increases and the raw material inflation. And is that why you are a little conservative or is there any other reason? So if you could just help us bridge the Q1 EBIT to the FY guidance. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions. I think they're very, very valid. The first one with the pre-buying, if you compare large chemical companies, you talk about a few products only, which are large bulk items. and normally their customers have significant tank capacity or they can rent tank capacity. Our customers are involved with a lot of rather small and medium-sized deliveries. They don't have the capacity. So even if you go to our larger customers, they have a few bulk tanks for the product, but this is it. When they're full, they're full. And we have maybe in the automotive aftermarket one or the other distributor who orders a little bit more. We have made sure that we do as much as we can do to, you know, not oversupply because we also want to have the pricing stick. But on over 100,000 customers and over 10,000 different products, I can't tell you whether there was no impact. But all in all, this whole pre-buying and, you know, to put large inventories aside is for us not a big deal. I would say the other opportunity for us that so far we have secured supplies of our customers which is always more important than the pricing and we see more of our competitors being in a limbo situation and instead of saying overstocking maybe I would say we probably have also picked up the other delivery which we would have probably not had in the Q1 in normal times. But all in all, I would say, you know, when we look back in 2024, we had a lower digit amount of volume growth. In 25 was a mid single digit amount. Now we were in the higher mid to higher single digit amount. So for me, this is still an outflow to Fox 2025 strategy. When you look on the guidance, I think you feel comfortable with the overall guidance because you can't just extrapolate a record quarter to the to the full year times four you always have seasonal impacts in some countries in the summer in some countries is more towards the christmas time so i will be careful with that and i i don't want to detail now all the single reasons all in all we feel comfortable uh and i think you know we have made that that outlook in March. The situation has not done any better or didn't come to a conclusion in Iran. Therefore, I would say that we keep an uphold that is a good signal to the market, but I would be, you know, a little bit hesitant to just accept it.
Thank you. Thank you so much for those answers.
Speaker 2
Thank you. We will take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Konstantin Hefe from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Speaker 3
Thank you very much for taking my questions. Just a couple from my side. Can I just confirm that the guidance implies or assumes that you'd expect a price decline in base oils in the second half? The question would be, if they stay at this level because the conflict just continues dragging, are you able to keep prices relatively elevated and you should be able to keep your event or would that put further pressure in your event that's the first question second question is on I mean obviously you're holding back on new business which is probably holding back your growth potential so if I think about further disrupt the current disruptions even impacting your sourcing into 27 how should we think about these opportunities lost would they potentially go to your competition and as a result they would higher switching costs in order to go back to folks so do you see this more of a
temporary disruption with potential new customers or could disruption last longer because they would then move to your competitors as a result of it thank you thanks Constantine I think two good questions since it's fresh I start with the second one nothing gets lost at the moment because all our competitors face the same challenges but then you have to understand when you have 10,000 product there's also a lot of reformulating going on so our procurement team is fully absorbed to secure whatever volumes they can get our product management and R&D teams have to reformulate and have to also then talk to our customers with regard to the approvals and the documentation because we can't do anything in the grey zone and the other part is for our salespeople to negotiate all the sales prices. All of that goes on and at that moment I think it's clear that the time of our salespeople to focus on new business is limited compared to the other times what we have initially planned for. But we don't lose any opportunity because all our competitors are in the same area and as you see it in the first quarter, volume was good. And therefore, this lost opportunity, I do not see this keeping the prices up and the whole guidance. We do not see that the raw material will go down immediately. There are always two potential scenarios. The one is that people order now and then the consumption goes back in the market because the economy will suffer. I mean, this whole inflation, and people now also talk about how are higher interest rates potentially coming up, does the economy normally not good, based on already existing tariffs and many other things. This is the one risk, you know, where we need to be careful. The other risk that people, you know, now do stock certain products, and then the economy goes down and then the raw material prices fall sharply. That's the scenario we have seen in the Lehman crisis, 2.8, 2.9. But there's nothing we can do about it. The pricing we put in now will stick until the raw materials go down again. And if you really look back on the large two scenarios, the one was Lehman, the prices skyrocketed and then they fell back. It was like really a huge But in 21 and 22, the raw materials went up by 70% and they actually never came back significantly. A little bit, they came back in 25 and also in the first quarter. That's why ESMA said, you know, the volume growth was bigger than the 5% because there was still in January, February, certain price adjustments downwards. But that's all I can answer you with that regard.
That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Speaker 2
We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Angelina Glassova from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much for taking my questions. I just have one at this stage. Could you give us a bit more color on how the second quarter is shaping up so far? And maybe to zero in a bit more on the raw material price dynamics. So you have referred quite a bit to base oils, price inflation in your opening remarks, but how are you seeing the additives? Are there also price increases? And if you could compare and contrast the magnitude of those compared to what you're seeing in base oils, that will be helpful.
Thanks, Angelina, for that question. I think I answered the first half, and then maybe Esma answers the second half a little bit to give you some light on this consolidation change in in in turkey because she made a comment earlier that there will be a one-off charge due to absorbing the one-off gain in in q1 with regard to the trading so far we see it unchanged obviously you are right first of all the base oils go up then the chemicals go up with a certain time delay and and then we are out you know the second round of price increases all over the world and we do it based on product type based on region because some regions it's not only the raw materials but it's also the currency fluctuation because they have to import certain petrochemicals but base oils they jumped up immediately and now that the rest of the of the petrochemical supply chain follows but with a slower cadence but the one thing is you know we we always explain to you and i want to emphasize this is not a normal time but in normal times if prices go up we run behind for six months to a certain extent and then or three to six months and if they come down we have the tailwind what we have learned in 21 and 22 we can't have this period of running behind too long and therefore the sequence now is much shorter compared to 21 and 22 so i see that uh that run behind thing a little bit more limited but obviously you always say the larger impact probably comes end of q2 and in q3 and then to be seen how the economy develops and maybe it's more put a little bit of light on this on this turkey acquisition yeah maybe one uh or let me start this way um there will be three key drivers for Q2.
Number one, like Stefan said, it's the sequence of the price implementations we are doing to counteract on the material price increases and the inflation. Other than that, we expect actually a good Q2 as we have performed in Q1. And in regards to the OPEC Fuchs, as you know, right now OPEX is in our ad equity results. We will take that from the ad equity results up and it goes into our normal AIDED, where you will see higher costs because we have the full consolidation of the costs, but accordingly the sales and the profitability. In Q2, due to that we are consolidating now 100%, we expect some accounting topics. Like I said before, it will be a negative in our profitability. It's a balance sheet cleanup, but it has no cash implication for our financials. And summing up, all in all, we expect Q2 to be also solid. I mean, of course, nothing changes all of a sudden, a solid performance. But as Stefan mentioned, the main kick in the raw material crisis, et cetera, we expect towards June, July, I would say, kicking strong a little. I hope that answers the question.
Great. Thank you very much for your responses.
Speaker 2
Thank you. We will take our next question, and the question comes from Christian Bale from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, hello, and well done on the really strong result this quarter. I've just got two questions, thanks, and my first one relates to your guidance. So, yeah, you obviously have started the year really strongly. Underlying margins improved this quarter. But yet the guidance implies a meaningful margin compression over the remainder of the year, obviously. So just given the strong demand backdrop and the pricing power you've highlighted, can you just help us understand what is driving the conservatism a little bit more? Like, is it an assumption that not all cost inflation will be passed through? Is it the timing lag? or is it sort of more caution around feedstock availability? So, yeah, just trying to understand that given how much sales will be going up. Sorry, I'll wait for the second question.
Thanks, Christian. You know, this is for me crystal ball reading. I can't tell you how much sales go up and especially this year will be a transition year. So let's say you go up a certain percentage in April, a certain percentage in may and then maybe in june july and then again in the fourth quarter you will only get a pro rata increase for this year but the the impact will be fully there and therefore also esma made a comment with the free cash flow because this is the year and number only and and you get a full hit on the let's say on the receivables and on the inventory from from whatever the december increase then said but we have some some very high increases in certain countries on oil-based products already now but I have really no visibility on where we go and therefore you know we say yes sales will go up the EBIT will stay in line I think that's a solid statement you know bearing in mind where we are you know with all the risks in the market but I can't really put more light onto this I also sitting here I couldn't say you know how much sales price increases we will have at the end of the year.
Okay, fair enough. And then my second question, are you just to comment on volume elasticity at current pricing levels? Are you seeing any signs of resistance as some of these price increases that you're talking about are flowing through? And also, if possible, could you please break down where you're seeing the strongest demand by end market auto or industrial and by region?
I think ESMA has lined it out by region. I mean, we saw good growth in the U.S. or in North America, but in the region of America, we were hit by 12% currency, you know, headwind in Q1. But also in Asia was good. You know, Europe was good here. With regard to certain, you know, industries, I don't think anything has changed, you know, what we told you at the end, analyst call, or on the capital market day. So far, I think we are in a good situation that we have the stuff available. We see some smaller and larger competitors who have fallouts, and therefore, as I said before, to keep our customers running is the most important, and many of our customers in 20, or most of them in 21 and 22, were really happy for our performance. not all the price discussions go through easily, but we push them through and then even if it has to be up to the board level, but we don't hold back. As I said, it's not normal times. And in times of availability, price increases normally go through easier than in normal times where the availability is fully given.
Sorry I was more trying to understand that I guess the auto versus industrial by end market but are you basically saying that demand is strong across both auto industrial I guess in equal amounts?
I would say so and you know as you have spelled out also in the capital market they auto is for us a lot of aftermarket you know folks branded customer brands, industrials, also specialty, rotor remotion. So I would say the answer is yes.
Right. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2
Thank you. We will take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Julia Winkleman from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have to you said that you already did several rounds of price increases. How does this work for your larger contracts for example with the oems because these are typically indexed so then pricing could usually come with a lag what if what kind of lag can we expect here and can you indicate how large the share of index contracts is just to give an idea and my second question is on the guidance the 7 million one-off was it included when you initially guided the 450 million EBIT for this year or is it or have you just included it with your you confirming the guidance okay maybe um thanks julia maybe i i come back on the on the price variation course
we don't have the one price variation clause but we have definitely a number of them you know always based on if there's more base oil in the product is there more chemicals in the product What we have done, we have shortened the cycles. I can't really give you more details on that, but we have shortened the cycles compared to 21 and 22, which is really good now. I would say, Andreas, how much of our total business is under a formula price variation? The standard answer is around about a quarter or so. So that's a number I would look at. Normally, you have it with large mining customers or with large OEM or industrial customers. So if you count about on a quarter, it's good. But we have significantly shortened the cycle time. That was the important part. And to the 7 million, I think Isra can come back.
Yeah, I mean, the 7 million, as I've mentioned, is the one-off in regards to the sale in Australia. It is cash relevant, Julia. And the OPAT we have imported as well, which is a similar amount, more or less, which is not cash-relevant. So it will balance out each other with the positive side that we are actually getting cash in, but don't need to feed energy.
Speaker 2
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1, 1 on your telephone. We will take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Michael Schaefer from Odder BHF. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. First one, I want to come back on your implemented price initiatives. And I think, Stefan, you also at the CMD, you said that you have implemented two price runs in the meantime. I'd like to understand when we look into the respective regions, whether there is a kind of different speed of implementation to be expected in the in the quarters ahead. So this would be my first question. The second probably goes to Esma. I think your your networking capital to sales ambition is 20 percent or remains 20 percent as outlined at the CMD. 21 was the rate in 25. So I wondered whether you, given all the constraints, whether we should think about maybe a kind of extra security buffer in raw mats or finished products, which you allow and have baked into this kind of significant free cash flow or significantly below the 270 million type of new guidance. This would be my second one. And the third one, last not least, I want to come back on the America's performance. I mean, you posted 3% organic sales growth in the first quarter. Obviously, this is significantly below what you have at the group level. So I just want to understand what holds back there, the kind of organic sales growth if you compare this with other regions.
Thanks, Michael. I start with the last question, what holds us back there with regard to other regions is the economy. When you read about certain large customer segments in North America, they're still not at full throttle. And then also what we had is we had a significant freeze, especially in January and the beginning of February, where we have a lot of water-based products, either for metalworking or for the mining industry, which really shut us down for a few weeks for those product lines. So those were the main part of it. Price rounds, I would say the speed is the same around the globe. But it's different steps we take in different regions because the U.S. is also hit but a little later and they are not as much hit from the street of Homo than other countries. then you have certain countries where you need to increase more because the currency is a secondary impact not only the raw material oil based price so to say. So I would say speed is the same but different timing and different amounts in the different regions.
And if it comes to networking capital, Michael, we said the 21 or the 20 is our target but we know in such volatile times, we cannot actually drive for additional reduction in the inventory. It's more about securing raw material and make sure that we can deliver to our customers. But what we are modeling or what we have modeled in, and I said that also in my speech, please have a look how the sales is evolving and model that in your cash. Accordingly, we are looking, of course, how we think the price increases will be and model that in our inventory and respectively to our receivables and payables. We haven't put in our net working capital any assumptions of office stock or anything.
I think, you know, mathematically, there will be an increase in the percentage. I mean, the ESMA takes it very seriously. You've seen it at the end, end of the first quarter. But you just have to bear in mind that the inventory and receivables at the end, we have the value of the inventory and receivables in the month of December. or maybe in November also. But the sales will still be in a dynamic stage because, you know, if you have increased certainly at the beginning of November another 20%, you only have, let's, two months. So you look at the lower sales number with a tough balance sheet number of the cash and the NOWC. So mathematically you will get such a year, a higher percentage at the end of the year.
I think the denominator will actually change.
Okay, good. That's understood.
Speaker 2
Thank you. We will take our next question. The question comes from the line of Martin Rodiger from Kepler-Chevro. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Just one question left for me regarding Asia-Pacific.
If we take out the 7 million one-time gain from the disposal of this property in Australia, the, so to say, underlying EBIT margin in Asia was good with close to 15% margin. Is it fair to say that you now have exceeded a certain threshold in your business in China and Australia, which are the two most important countries in Asia, so that any additional sales is falling down to the bottom line, so you have a big leverage effect? Is that the right understanding? I would say, Martin, my understanding is that they perform very well, especially with regard to China and Australia, but that things just fall through is never the case because you need to manufacture still, you need to ship it still. But I think they run at a very good dynamic at the moment. This is for us the high-performing part. But aside of that, also really India is worth mentioning and a lot of other countries in Southeast Asia. So this is at the moment our positive horse in the stable. We are also proud of our European and American business, but definitely from an efficiency standpoint, they do very well.
And let me maybe add one thing that was also mentioned in the capital market day. And as P&D said, that's one of our key elements. We are going to use our existing asset rates, which will automatically bring a better conversion of traditional sales-level profitability. And that's what we are seeing right now as well. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2
Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Lars von Klaff from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Quick follow-up question for Esma, and I have to apologize in advance that I did not properly pay attention. You quantified significantly as above 10%. So above 10% with regards to revenue, if I take the 3.7 billion you were guiding for, you would already reach the lower end of your 2031 targets this year. or was significantly, i.e. 10% meant as a year-on-year change compared with 25 sales being the basis?
Thank you, Lars. Number one, with significance, I said it's a double digit. It can be 10 plus, plus, plus. We don't know where it will end. We know it's unforeseeable what the dynamics will be. But you are right. But when we put the guidance out with the 3.7 million, there was no inflationary increase and not such a volatile market environment considered. For us, it's right now important that we hold our profitability. And yes, the sales will be inflated due to the market dynamic. And probably you are right. It can hit the 4 million, the lower end of our guidance, or even, I don't know it yet.
Lars, I think also you know what is true. If you look at what Timo said at the end of Fuchs 100, there is a small print and the small print is the assumptions we have taken with regard to Fuchs 100 for the financial targets. And one assumption was stable currencies based on August 2025 and stable raw material prices. And we also said we will review each year where we stand. It's much too early now, but I think every year we will review it. We compare it to our plans and we are also willing to do updates at a certain time. That's what we missed in Fuchs 2025. I think it's only fair if you make a six-year projection that you put it under certain assumptions. And obviously, we are way out of the assumption on raw material price stability.
Completely understood. It was neither meant as criticism nor. It was just for me to understand. And I mean, Esma, you're still relatively cautious, but 3.7 billion multiplied with at least 10% easily brings you to about 4 billion. That was the only point I'm making.
Thank you. I'll go back into the line. Thank you.
Speaker 2
This concludes today's question and answer session. I'll now hand the call back to Andrea Schenner from Four Closing Remarks.
Yeah, thank you very much, everybody, for your questions. I think we had a very strong start into 2026, and there will be a lot of work now going forward to manage all the supply and demand, but we are very positive that we can do that based on the experience from the past. If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the IR team. and with that I would close the call. Thank you for your interest and participation and you may disconnect now.
