Jost Werke SE

F:JST

Yes. Thank you very much. Good morning, and a very warm welcome here from Brazil, where I'm visiting the largest South American truck and trailer show the Fenatran in Sao Paulo, and it's been a quite interesting week so far. And I'm looking forward to inform you about another strong quarter and of our 9 months performance of JOST Werke SE.

So let's look at the highlights first. The profitable growth has continued. Our sales were up on a 9-month basis, 12% to EUR 1.284 billion in the first 9 months, and EBIT grew 18% to EUR 130 million, which is a margin of 10.1%. The margins grew despite the cost headwinds that we are experiencing. They improved in Q3 despite the increasing that we suffer in freight costs and material costs.

We were able to overcompensate that with the cost synergies that we are generating. Also on a Q3 basis, we have a strong quality of growth. Organic sales in Q3 are up 9%, again, driven by all 3 regions and by all business lines that we operate in. We are also actively optimizing our portfolio or continue to actively optimize our portfolio. We have decided to sell the Indian tipper body business and the sales has been signed.

At the same time, we have also purchased the remaining 25% of Usimeca, which is a company that's EPS and margin accretive also here in Brazil. So let's look at the financial highlights. Sales up 11% to EUR 426 million in the Q3, paired with an adjusted EBIT growth of 12% to EUR 42 million and the margin -- adjusted EBIT margin up 0.1 percentage points to 9.8%.

High capital efficiency. Our ROCE is up 2.5 percentage points to 16.5%, and our leverage improved to 1.78. The adjusted net income grew by 7% to EUR 21 million in Q3, and that is despite a one-off tax charge that we had in Q3 and that we did not adjust in the results. Oliver will give you a bit more detail to that later. The adjusted EPS in Q3 2026 is at EUR 1.24. That's compared to the Q3 of 2024, which was EUR 1.25.

And on a 9-month basis, it's up EUR 4.52 compared to the EUR 4.26 which we had the year before. These year's numbers are calculated on the 10% larger number of shares. The outlook we have raised for 2026. The sales are now expected to grow by 9% to 11% and adjusted EBIT expected to increase between 11% and 14%. Yes, the market so far has been stable to slightly supportive. European, Middle East and Africa on trucks, 5% to 10% over the course of the year. That was a little bit of a positive surprise.

Trailers, a little weaker, but still growing 0% to 5%. Tractors, agricultural tractors, a slight decrease between minus 5% and 0% and on our hydraulics business line, around 5% growth. Our business in EMEA has been growing 5%. There is some effects in sales that we account some of the sales that were in Hyva in Europe before, we now account them in North America. So you have to compare that a bit more in detail, but it's not a big influence. We can provide the details to that.

In Americas, you see the truck has turned around. We had a negative performance in the first month, but the third quarter has been growing quite well. So we are now in a positive territory between 0% and 5%. Trailers, slightly negative, minus 5% to 0%. Tractors, unfortunately, minus 10% to minus 5% and hydraulics also slight growth between 0% and 5%.

Our business grew 12 percentage points. Next to the effect that we are counting some sales now in North America, we also had market share gains, especially in the trailer industry, and that has helped the growth that we are experiencing in our JOST business. APAC, the markets have been quite stable in China and in India, we've seen a positive market development in China, mainly driven by export.

But in India, also the local market has been growing. So 10% to 15% on trucks and trailers, on tractors, 0% to 5% and on hydraulics, also 10% to 15%. Our sales in this region, Asia Pacific has grown 15% in the first 9 months of this year. So let's look a little more detailed into that growth on a 9-month basis. As you see here on the left side, we had organic growth of EUR 103 million. There is still an effect of the Hyva acquisition that's January of last year that we did not account because we closed at the 1st of February.

So those EUR 39 million are inorganic. And we have, for the first time, I think, in a long time, a slightly negative FX effect of EUR 6 million, and that leads to the EUR 1.284 million of sales. Looking at the business lines, transport grew 8% organic, 7% reported. Agriculture, 20% reported and 18% organic. Hydraulics, 15% reported. That is with the effect of the January of last year and 5% organic if we take that effect out.

And on the group, that accounts to 12% growth on a reported basis and 9% on an organic basis. And here on the right, you see the same for the regions. So also here, nice picture. We were able to grow in all regions. Europe, Middle East and Africa, 5% organic, 7% reported; Americas, 12% organic and 14% reported. Asia Pacific, 15% on an organic basis and 19% reported. And for the group, again, 9% organic. sales increase and 12% reported.

So the growth drivers in Q3 here at the bottom for the different business lines. In transport, 14% in Q3. That's an effect mainly of the North American Class 8 production that was up 54% compared to last year. And we are benefiting from that, obviously, with our fifth wheel business. The India demand is up sharply.

Exports continues to grow in China and Europe, Middle East and Africa has been robust on trucks and trailers, as already seen on the market slides before. Looking at agriculture, Americas is Leading, we won new customer projects, and we see a higher demand for our implement business. Europe, Middle East and Africa continue to grow against a higher prior year basis. We had already a quite solid basis last year.

APAC is down on lower customer exports to the U.S. on hydraulics, we see plus 6% in Q3. In India, we have a very dynamic development also in construction and mining and the sales is outpacing currently the local production capacity. So we are even importing products into India to supply and to meet the market demand. We have further cross-selling synergies and wins in Australia and in North America. That helps to grow in hydraulics, but we also have some discontinued products that we use to implement our strategy. But overall, that is still a growth in the hydraulics business line.

So overall, you know our business is quite stable. And I think a good basis for the growth is that we have a very nice setup, a very nice regional setup when we look at the sales by destination. Europe accounts for 45% of our business; Americas, 28%; and APAC, 27%. So a very good distribution to be able to benefit from the different trends in the different regions.

Also, that is where we earn our money. In Europe, 24% of our adjusted EBIT is generated in Americas, 35%; in APAC, 38%. And we also have a contribution of the joint venture in Brazil that accounts for about 2%. If you look at the business lines, transport is still the largest business line with 51% of sales, hydraulics with 30% of sales, also a big contributor and our agriculture around 20%, 19% over the last 9 months of sales. So also there, we are able to benefit from the different industries.

With that, I will hand over to Oliver to give you a bit more details on the financial numbers.

Thanks, Joachim. And yes, let's dive a little bit into it as usual, starting with the regions within the regions, focusing a bit more on the third quarter. And when I sum up for the group, then I will also give some insights on the year-to-date numbers.

So starting here with EMEA, as Joachim pointed out, market demand remains robust despite rising costs and despite all the influence that obviously, the Middle East conflict has into the region, EMEA. The sales were up by 2.5% to EUR 187 million on a reporting basis. That's also more or less the organic basis as M&A had not an influence in the third quarter. The transport demand was very robust in the third quarter for European level, and it was supported by both the truck and trailer market.

When you look into the number, 2.5%, just to give you a little bit of flavor on this. We had already a very high growth of agriculture last year. This is why there is a certain kind of a lower growth rate for whole EMEA. And also, and Joachim mentioned that a little bit for the business line hydraulics before, we are still continuing to clean up a little bit our portfolio. And this is why we have compared to 2025, discontinued also slight product groups, minor product groups in EMEA.

And that's why the growth rate is 2.5% and probably not 5% to 6%, which is the rate for the business line transport isolated, so to speak. The order book remains stable, and we also expect for a good EMEA sales figure for the fourth quarter. When we now look into the adjusted EBIT for the region, it's down from EUR 11.4 million to EUR 7.1 million, which is margin-wise, 6.3% last year's third quarter, now 3.8%. Why is that the case?

Yes, we are a little bit burdened in Europe by higher freight and input costs, and it takes some time to pass that on to our customer base. We have a very strong OEM business in Europe, and they are based on our contracts and so on and so forth. There is a time lag in passing that on. So that's a temporary effect, sub doing a little bit of margin on the third quarter.

The other thing is we are closing one site here in Europe, and that business is going to be shifted to other sites within Europe, and that creates some temporary inefficiencies in the receiving plants. And those costs have not been adjusted. So they are fully in the operational EBIT, but that's also only a temporary effect.

And probably the third effect to mention, we did mention that already with the half year numbers is that we have by the integration of the hydraulics business of Hyva into the region, also adjusted the business model to be more in line with the model, which is very decentralized and that had the consequence that we are now routing certain sales not anymore through EMEA. Those sales are directly rooted within the regions, mainly Americas, but maybe even more in APAC.

And that also is a very profitable business that's now handled via the other 2 regions, right? And as usually, I always like to mention that the group corporate costs are more than 80% allocated in the EMEA region. So that's the quick overview for EMEA. Jumping into Americas, super strong third quarter. I mentioned that already with the half year result. It runs like a well-oiled machine at the moment.

We have seen a reported growth of almost 20% in the third quarter to EUR 127 million. And even adjusted for FX, that's roughly 15% growth. And it was driven by a very strong transport business. Joachim mentioned that Class 8 production has gone up on the OEM level, and we were benefiting a lot on this in both truck and trailer industries.

And we also see here a continued strong demand for the first quarter, for the fourth quarter. But -- and that's why the overall region is very strong, even more than you would have might expected is that also our agriculture business and the hydraulics business is performing quite nicely at the moment. And this is also partially driven by our strong cross-selling pipeline.

So regarding sales, I'm super happy with the performance there. And also regards to adjusted EBIT, you see it down here. We are jumping adjusted EBIT from EUR 10.9 million last year third quarter to now more than EUR 80 million, which is a margin step-up of more than 4 percentage points to 14.5% in the region. And this comes along with many effects.

Now we have a much better utilization of our transport factories. We are realizing the cross-sell synergy effects from the Hyva integration. And also the business model change that I described from EMEA to Americas is slightly helping the region. So overall, record numbers for Americas in the third quarter, and I expect also a very good fourth quarter for the region.

Looking into APAC. Also here, we have seen very strong growth, almost 19% on a reported basis, 15% on an organic basis. is pretty much driven by the whole transport and hydraulics industry. We see strong demand in the Chinese export business still in the third quarter, although we see a certain, let's say, normalization for the upcoming months. The third quarter was very strong.

We also see a huge pickup in transport demand in India, which is helping our sales. I will come to that again when we talk about adjusted EBIT. And also, it seems that the Oceania, so especially Australian economies are picking up and stabilizing on a much higher level. And also here, the outlook is quite nicely for the next months. Regarding agriculture, that has been cooling down a little bit in the third quarter.

As you might remember, we were benefiting a lot over the past quarters in APAC that we are ramping up our agriculture production in India, which is then business mainly for the export to U.S. The ramp-up has now been done, and that's why the growth rates are coming down a little bit on that. But besides that, I'm super happy with the sales in APAC as well.

Regarding adjusted EBIT, also there, we see a growth from EUR 13.9 million to EUR 14.9 million. The margin is slightly down from 14.7% to 13.2%. And the main effect is the one that Joachim was mentioning here. We have a little bit of growth pains as we described it here in APAC as the demand, especially in our hydraulics business in India is so high and in order to protect our market share and our customer base, we have the need to import products from our facilities in China, and that comes with additional import taxes and higher freight costs.

So that's a temporary effect until we can increase our own capacity in India, but that subdued a little bit the APAC margin in the third quarter. Overall, again, a very record quarter for the APAC region, I would say. Summing now up for the group, that means we have grown sales in the third quarter by a little more than 11% to EUR 426 million. And for the full 9 months, that means still close to 12% of growth.

And on an organic basis, so adjusted for FX and the Hyva acquisition, that's then both for the third quarter and the 9 months, 9% organic growth, which I think is a very good achievement in light of the environment around us. We have seen in the third quarter that transport growth on a global basis has picked up, for sure, driven by the U.S. and is now taking the lead in terms of growth from a business line perspective. It's more than 14% reported growth for the business line and adjusted for 12.5%, followed by an organic growth rate of agriculture by 9.5% and hydraulics of 2.8%.

Again, hydraulics, that's the issue because we were phasing out certain products, as I explained before. For the first time, Joachim mentioned that there was a little bit of a tailwind in FX but overall, only a very minor impact. Regarding adjusted EBIT, that has grown by 12% to almost EUR 42 million in the third quarter. Adjusted EBIT margin is up slightly by 10 percentage points to 9.8%.

And that means -- and I think we can be proud on that despite the headwinds here and there, freight costs, material costs increase that needs still to be passed on as well as these growth pains in APAC by realizing the synergies, we were even able to slightly increase the margin.

And as I described, let's say, the issues are a little bit temporary, but the synergies are long term and sustainable. So we should benefit over the next months then from a normalization of that growth pains in APAC. And for the 9 months, that means, yes, for sure, it's a record 9 months of the whole group, almost EUR 1,300 million of sales, EUR 1,284 million and adjusted EBIT almost EUR 130 million, which means that's an adjusted EBIT margin of 10.1% in the first 9 months of this year. And that means still in the strategic corridor so far.

And the consequence you have seen, we have raised last year -- last week, the outlook for sales growth and for EBIT growth. And I think Joachim will repeat that again at the end of the presentation. So that's the sales and adjusted EBIT numbers.

Let's come to the net income. we see a further increase of our adjusted net income. The reported net income starts with EUR 45 million. Then as usually, we add up our tax and finance results and the exceptionals as well as the correction of the PPA charges and then we see the EUR 130 million adjusted EBIT. And then we deduct the adjusted finance results. There's only a minor adjustment in finance results this 9 months that steps from a put option in Brazil that we had to revalue. Besides that, there is no adjustment in finance result.

And then we deduct our actual tax expenditures, so corrected of any DTA and DTL. And that's quite high for this year also because we are making significantly more profits in China, where we cannot use tax losses carry forward. That's one effect. And the other effect was mentioned by Joachim as well.

We had a tax audit settlement in the Asian region, and that caused a one-off tax expense, which we booked in the third quarter. By doing this, we end up with an adjusted net income of EUR 74 million. That's EUR 10 million more than compared to the same period last year. And with that, adjusted EPS for the 9 months went up to EUR 4.52, which is a growth of 6% despite the higher number of shares.

Just as a footnote here on the very right side, if you would extract that EUR 3.8 million one-off settlement from the tax audit, the adjusted EPS for the 9 months would have been EUR 4.76 per share, which is a growth of much more than 10% even despite the higher number of shares. So quite successful 9 months also from a net income perspective. As usually, since this year, we give a little bit of glance on how is exceptionals and integration costs developing.

To be honest, nothing super special in the third quarter. Since the acquisition, that's 1st February 2025, we have now consumed around EUR 20 million of integration costs. That's still in the corridor that we announced with the acquisition. I still expect until the end certain costs and expenses for integration.

We are still cleaning up, and we are still deepening the integration of Hyva in our organization, but I don't expect that we are significantly above that EUR 24 million. That's still the range we are targeting for the 2 years of integration phase. Then quickly to our balance sheet and cash flow numbers. Joachim mentioned already, ROCE is nicely up again, 16.5%, and we are approaching then step-by-step towards our strategic corridor.

For sure, the sequential improvement in adjusted EBIT, but also the, let's say, the leaner balance sheet as PPA charges reduces the intangible assets help to increase that and increase the capital efficiency. The equity ratio is up by 6.7 percentage points versus end of last year, predominantly driven by the capital increase we did in February, but also the net income that I explained on the slide before.

There is some minor negative effects in equity. The one is, for sure, the dividend payment that consumes equity, but also we did for an investment in a company that we did a couple of years ago, we had to do a revaluation and that consumed EUR 10 million equity directly in OCI. So that's not through the P&L. That's directly booked into equity.

So that's predominantly the effect of the equity ratio. Net debt is down to EUR 381 million, which is a leverage of 1.78. So clearly within our strategic corridor. And as we described in the calls before, we are now feeling comfortable to further pursue our Ocean 2030 strategy and are actively looking in our M&A pipeline for the next 12 months.

Then coming to free cash flow and CapEx numbers. Free cash flow has been EUR 7 million in the third quarter and EUR 23 million for the first 9 months. And to be honest, this for us, not unexpected. We explained already end of last year that we will see a stronger working capital growth in 2026 because of the projects that are ramping up and because of the organic growth that we see, and that's actually what is happening.

On top, we were dealing a little bit with safety stocks in one or the other region, and that's then here the consequence. We do expect some unwind towards the year-end, so positive tailwind from working capital normalization and reduction in the fourth quarter. Nevertheless, we have to be honest here, we will not see the same conversion rate that we have seen last year, which was extraordinary high. So -- but let's see for that.

For us, this is a clear investment in our growth pipeline at this moment in time. CapEx is with EUR 27 million for the first 9 months, 2.1% of sales. So well around our strategic target, slightly below, I would even say there really a slight catch-up towards the end, but this is just because of timing issues.

And for net working capital, we have seen a ratio of 18.7%, which is already very close, even with the high absolute growth of working capital close to our strategic corridor and our expectation for this year, which is between 17.5% and 18.5%, which underlines, right, the whole working capital growth is not coming from a structural super shift. It's more coming directly from the growth of our top line. And just for your modeling, factoring has been broadly unchanged versus the end of last year.

Then 2 separate topics I want to highlight here. Joachim already mentioned that briefly in his summary. We -- when we acquired Viva, we acquired a 75% shareholding in a company called Usimeca. That's a market and technology leader for that sanitation equipment in South America. And with that acquisition, we hold a put option or the seller hold a put option, and that has been exercised in May 2026, and there has been some negotiation on final settlement.

And with effective of 15th of October, we have acquired the remaining 25% shares in Usimeca. The final purchase price has been set with around EUR 17 million. And when you translate that into an EBITDA multiple that's more or less exactly 7.0 EBITDA multiple, but it's more important to link that to the margin profile of the company. When we would say our strategic margin corridor is between 10% to 12% EBIT.

Usimeca is producing EBIT margins of above 14%. And that's why we say it's a very nice valuation and was a very nice possibility for us to even increase our control in that entity as well. And it will be directly from the beginning, EPS accretive for our shareholders. And we will benefit with that acquisition then even more from the leadership position of that company in South America. There is structural market growth expected just from megatrends that Usimeca is serving for.

But also through the EOS network, we have now much more possibilities for NAFTA and further LatAm rollout of that business. That's one topic. And the next topic is the one that has been already public and announced via press releases. And I think we already mentioned that a little bit on the first half year call. There is a business in India where JOST and Hyva are producing tipper bodies for customers in India, so a very local business.

And we have decided to sharpen our portfolio in India here and focus more on the cylinder and hydraulics business. And that's why we have signed an asset purchase agreement at the beginning of August to sell this business. The closing process is still underway. We expect this until year-end. However, we cannot exclude that it might even go into the first weeks of 2027.

But up to now, I'm still quite confident that we can do this until year-end. The rationale is it's a low-margin business. You see that here, EBITDA margins are around 2% to 3% and it is a very local business and has also a very high working capital.

So although from a customer base, et cetera, et cetera, we cannot say it's not core. These are all your existing customers. It's more a make-or-buy decision for this moment in time. We believe that the new owner, which is the company, Bel, Indian listed company can produce those bodies much better for our customers than we can do. And that's basically.

And with that, I will hand over to Joachim again for explaining us the outlook for 2026 and sum it up.

Yes. Thank you, Oliver, for the details. So let's look at the market, how we expect the market to continue. You can see for Europe, more or less, it will continue in the same way as we've seen in the first 9 months, slight growth in truck and trailer.

We have a very stable environment there. And the call-offs that we've seen lately are also stable. So that will continue as we've seen more or less the first 9 months. In America, you see a change in truck. It's now 5% to 10%, and not 0% to 5% growth expected for truck, and that is because we expect a very strong Q4 that's more or less the same as Q3, where we had 50% more than last year. So we expect that also for the Q4.

And with that, the full year will be growing stronger in trucks than it is in trailers in Americas. And that's mainly a effect from North America only. In South America, the market will continue to be more or less as it was in the first 9 months. Looking at Asia Pacific, we had strong growth in China and India. We will continue to grow, but not at the same strength.

So the expectation is that for truck, 5% to 10% and trailer also 5% to 10% for the full year 2026 and tractor 0% to 5% and hydraulics continue to grow also with 5% to 10%. So far for the market outlook, what does that mean for our financial outlook? And as you know, we have increased the guidance and the outlook for the fiscal year 2026. We now expect sales to be up 9% to 11% compared to 2025 and the 2025 base is the EUR 1.534 billion.

Adjusted EBIT, we expect to be up 11% to 14%. That was last year at EUR 145 million. And therefore, the margin will grow, and we expect it to be between the 9.5% and 9.9%, and that's above the 9.5% that we had last year. CapEx ratio in percent of sales, we expect to be around 2.5%, mainly effect of the higher sales and the working capital, Oliver elaborated already a little bit on that.

We expect to be between 17.5% and 18.5% of sales. So that's the new guidance that we've guided last week. To sum it up, the first 9 months have been a record for JOST. Sales up 12% to EUR 1.284 billion in the first 9 months, adjusted EBIT up 18%, EUR 130 million adjusted EBIT and the margin improvement of 0.5 percentage points to 10.1% in the first 9 months, so well inside our strategic corridor of 10% to 12%, which we expected to be in 2027 after the Hyva acquisition. So very happy that we're on a very good path here already in 2026.

So the organic growth of 9% happened across all the regions and all the business lines, and we were also able to pair that with market share gains and benefit from synergies. So we believe that integration is going very well. And if you look at the rolling last 12 months versus the fiscal year 2025, we see a 9% growth on sales to EUR 1.67 million -- I'm sorry, EUR 1.67 billion in sales and adjusted EBIT EUR 165 million, which is a 13% increase with a margin of 9.9%. That's compared last 12 months to fiscal year 2025.

Capital efficiency with the ROCE is up 2.5 percentage points to 16.5%, and that is also showcasing the efficient capital allocation. We expect that the synergies will continue to support our growth and our profitability and that we are able to offset the rising costs that we see with higher energy costs, higher freight costs, other inflationary effects, material costs and so on. And therefore, we were able to raise the outlook for the fiscal year of 2026. So that concludes the summary.

And with that, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we open the Q&A session.

I take that, Yasmin. Oliver here. So regarding the working capital increase, I mean, the minor effect is still from inflation. That's just started, to be honest. I can give you a real exact number, right? But it's probably a very low share, 10%, 15%. The biggest share is directly from volume, from increase of growth. That's definitely the case.

And in inventory, it's probably the same, right? It's probably 20%, 25% coming from safety stocks and the remainder of the share is simply growth. Plus the fact that, that growth is partially driven up by ramping projects. We have new projects won in South America and in India in our business line agriculture. And these are new products where dealer channels need to be filled up, where the pipeline needs to be filled up. So there's also structural growth in that inventory.

Regarding receivables, yes, September sales have been very strong. So that is probably a fair big share of receivables close towards quarter end. And the fact is also, and I mentioned that we have started to reduce a little bit of factoring usage because factoring costs have increased. So there's also a little bit of an opportunistic effect in receivables.

We would have been able, right, to lease a little bit more, but I didn't do that just for optimizing finance cost at this moment in time. And your third question was on do we see any overdue, not that much, to be honest. We have still -- I mean, the topic is most of our customers are big OEMs that are driving that growth at the moment, like HYCO, CNH, Caterpillar, et cetera, here and there. And the other thing is we are also insured. We have credit insurance. So that's not a major risk that I see at the moment.

Yes, I can take that. So we started that business model change around 1st of April, something like this. And a rough number is that we have shifted per quarter now EUR 3 million to EUR 4 million into the regions. The vast majority of this into APAC and a certain amount into Americas. So you can calculate with roughly, I would say, EUR 3.5 million per quarter.

Yes. Probably I would take the question with the latter sentence that you took. We are working on adjusting the steering model into next year, where we will do a, let's say, better steering and better view on the regions by looking into what is the operating margin in the region and then do a fair allocation of group costs.

When you would -- and for sure, then we will next year also disclose comparable numbers for 2026. When you would do this for the first 9 months, EMEA would be around 8% on an allocated EBIT margin. So a very decent margin. Gross profit margin is also very high. You see that in our reports. So it's a very profitable region, by the way. It's 80% of that margin dilution versus the other 2 regions comes just from that missing allocation of group costs.

Joachim?

Yes. I think that is actually expressed quite clear in the guidance, I would say. For sales, it's the 9% growth on the lower end and 11% on the upper end. And on adjusted EBIT, 11% is the lower end and 14% in the upper end. So that -- those are the borders of upper and lower expectation that we have. So I haven't done the math for absolute numbers, but I think that's very, very easy to do.

Maybe I can add 1 or 2 sentences. I think from Klaus. I would say the upper end is a little bit dependent on what is the China export economy doing at the moment. I mentioned that. We have seen the first signs of a normalization of the Chinese economy and that we have incorporated in our updated guidance as well.

I mean the Chinese export economy has been booming for the last 2, 3 years, and we are benefiting from that a lot. And it seems to be there's some kind of normalization over the next weeks and months. How fast that happens, that's probably one big impact on, let's say, are we then probably more towards the 11% or 12% of EBIT growth. If that is not slowing down too much, right, then definitely the 14% of EBIT growth is possible.

Our Chinese export business is a very profitable business. We are already at the very high end of capacity utilization. And that means, right, we can leverage that scale effect then as long as that booming export business is still there. And to be honest, what we have seen in October numbers is that it is still there, right? The sales numbers are still quite strong out of China. I hope that answers the question.

Correct. So the other exceptionals, as we described on the slide, the predominant part of that exceptional is related to the Hyva integration. which is all kind of restructuring costs, layoff costs when we close sites, when we merge offices. One example is we have already this year merged 4 Viva entities in Europe with full operations into used entities by -- and then that means closing offices, merging IT systems and so on and so forth.

So all kinds of integration costs where we realize out of that synergies and are already realizing those synergies. I expect that at the moment to run up to the overall EUR 24 million, which means roughly another EUR 4 million of exceptionals for the fourth quarter, rough numbers.

And for 2027, I don't expect much to be honest, Integration is done. We will always have slight exceptionals here and there as we continually do restructuring work, but the expenses from the Hyva integration, they should be then mostly done.

Yes. We continue with optimizing our portfolio. So there may be the small amounts. But yes, the big amounts, it's the PP&A and the rest is really minor.

Thank you for the question. The -- it depends a little bit on the OEMs. We have variable price adjustments in all OEM contracts in the transport industry, it's typically anywhere between 3 and 6 months that these adjustments kick in. We had in the past some that would be adjusted on a yearly basis, but we've converted them all to maximum 6 months.

So you can see the first effects really we expect them to be in the Q1 results and then may be fully developed in the Q2 results, where we then will have the higher cost base in transport cost in energy cost also reflected in our pricing with the major OEMs.

In the aftermarket business, we are doing price increases. There, it's more a question of what we can do in each individual market. But the big portion, and that is exactly your question, has the typical delay of 3 to 6 months.

No, it's mainly APAC, where we see the markets a little slower compared to the acceleration that we had in the first quarters. And we also may have the effect of the sale of the tipper business in India, depending on when we are -- when we will be closing. So if the closing is at the end of the year, then obviously, we have these sales longer in our numbers if we close earlier, which we cannot give -- we ourselves don't know a firm date at this point in time, then of course, that would be out of that effect, too.

But as I mentioned, Europe, we expect to continue more or less with what we've seen. So it's quite solid. North America -- we will certainly, on the truck side, have a growth. On the trailer side, maybe a little weaker. And in Asia Pacific, that's where we see it a little slower than we've seen in the first months.

And don't forget the technical effect, right, that the additional Hyva months, the guidance is a reported sales growth guidance. And there's just mathematically with every new quarter, a technical dilution on the reported growth.

That's because the additional January weighted more in the first quarter, and it's weighed less and less and less the further we go into the year. That's the technical effect.

Well, the orders are extremely strong in North America, as you mentioned. And you're right, not all OEMs are able to fully run the planned numbers because they have some material supply issues with other components. But we believe that they will be solving that. So we are still ready to support them. But indeed, it's probably not going to be as strong as we currently see in their call-offs because they will not be able to execute everything.

On EPA '27, the regulation has been changed and they are now -- the OEMs are still able to produce the old emission regulations, which a lot of them have chosen to do and bring these vehicles into the market at the penalty. So car, for example, will not launch the new product at all and just produce the existing products until the end of 2026 and with 2027 -- I'm sorry, until the end of 2027. And in 2028, there is also a possibility to bring the old vehicles into traffic, but that's with an extremely high penalty.

So I believe at this point in time that we would probably see a little bit of a prebuy effect in 2027 because the penalty for 2028 is that high that the cost in 2028 would -- no matter what, if it's the new regulation, the emission regulations, which is a higher cost and a higher risk for the operator or if it's the penalty, it will be beneficial for the operators to buy in 2027.

Yes. Maybe to sum it up quickly, I see majorly 2 effects. One is the emission regulation effects, that's the EPA 2027 that I just elaborated. The initial EPA 2027 regulation had an extreme cost increase in the products and also in the cost of operating because it had warranty requirements and a lot of other things that the OEMs would have to fulfill.

And there was an extreme price increase expected for these vehicles. And that's why everybody expected a big -- and that's what's happening right now, a big prebuy effect in the second half year of 2026. Now the effect is not as big because they've changed the regulation. I've elaborated a little bit. It's not a firm registration now. They can still bring the vehicles into service in 2027 and 2028 with a respective penalty. So that effect has been smoothened out a little bit.

The other effect was an underlying effect of an uncertainty that was generated when Trump went into office beginning of last year and a lot of tariff regulations kicked in that made it unpredictable for the OEMs to understand what their real cost was. So a lot of them reduced the capacity because they didn't know how to price for all these effects in their products.

And that is why the build rates have been down for the last 2 years considerably over the last -- over the long year average. And that created some additional pent-up demand to that prebuy effect. And that's what we're seeing right now. That's why the volume is going up that much. So it's an effect of those 2 levers. One, the reduced build rates because of the tariffs uncertainty that we've seen for 1.5 years and the other one, the emission regulations. I hope that answers the question.

I can do that. Fair assumption will be, Klaus, there will be definitely growth. So we will definitely outgrow 2026 even adjusted for that Tipper body business. If you look on our current consensus in sales for 2027, I'm not feeling uncomfortable with that number, Klaus.

So yes, definitely, there we see at the moment growth. Although China might be a little bit flattish next year, plus the TA body carve-out, we will see strong growth in Americas and also solid growth in EMEA, and that will outgrow the other 2 effects.

Yes. And we also expect in India continuous market growth. So there are still some regions where we expect growth.

I can do that, Joachim, and maybe you...

Yes.

No, you should not assume that. And I think we partially elaborated a little bit in the presentation is mainly 3 effects. We have in EMEA that integration work. And that is -- that's a topic, especially for the fourth quarter as we are continuing to close some integration work here, and we are closing that plant that I mentioned, which creates certain expenses in the fourth quarter, which are not going to continue into 2027.

The other effect is that Joachim and myself were mentioning that in APAC, we have reached a capacity limit for certain products in the business line hydraulics. And that has driven the need to import product from our Chinese facilities. And that means with that product, we cannot reach the same margin because that comes with import duties as well as with additional freight. That's also going to stop by year-end, early next year. So that's also not going to continue.

And the third effect, Joachim already mentioned, we see that rising inflation in the third quarter already, but even more in the fourth quarter that is increasing top line. And although we might handle this from a cost perspective, artificially, right, it destroys a little bit your EBIT margin. And as Joachim mentioned, we should see the first positive effects from pass on to customers on those costs. So we don't expect to continue those topics into 2027.

Yes. Thank you very much for the interest in Just. And as I said, we had very strong first 9 months of this year. We expect to close the year with the -- with also a record year given the new guidance that we've distributed and very happy to see the integration going.

Thanks again for your interest and enjoy the rest of the year. And it's too early probably to do some Christmas wishes even though you see a lot of the Christmas goods and shopping already going on, but we're preparing ourselves for -- to close a successful year. All the best for you. Thanks for your interest. Bye-bye.