Jost Werke SE

SWB:JST

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining JOST Werke Q1 2023 Results Conference. [Operator Instructions] Our speakers today are Joachim Durr, CEO of JOST Werke AG (sic) [ SE ]; and Christian Terlinde, CFO. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joachim Durr. Please go ahead.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the JOST Werke SE Q1 2023 Investors and Analysts Conference. As I mentioned, it's now JOST Werke SE, and we have changed our name and our form. And we've also had our general -- Annual General Meeting last week, where we have, again, got the approval from our shareholders with the capital measures that we need to follow the business. So with that, thank you very much for your interest and your attention. And Christian and I will report to you the results of the Q1 2023.

And we go to the next slide. Highlights for Q1 have been -- sorry, I'm not following the slides. I assume that you are looking at the highlight slide. Now it's back, okay. Just in Q1 2023 has achieved a new sales record of EUR 342 million. That's plus 10% in 1 quarter. We've had a very strong growth in our Transport section with plus 18%, and that helped us compensate the somehow softer demand in agriculture with minus 12%. The adjusted EBIT margin improved by 0.6 percentage points to 11.6% compared to prior year, and the adjusted EBIT reached a new record of EUR 40 million in 1 single quarter. The adjusted earnings per share went up 9% to EUR 1.99 per share in Q1 2023. Based on those, that strong quarter, we are happy to confirm our positive outlook for the financial year 2023.

How do the markets look? The markets that we've had in Q1 were more or less on the same level, a bit stronger in Transport and a bit weaker in Agriculture. So for the truck market in Europe, we had a plus 6%. We still had a strong demand for trucks, driven by the pent-up demand, the replacements that have not occurred in the last 3 years and have to occur because of the utilization of the fleets that is ongoing and that has been -- has brought us a very strong quarter in the truck market in Europe.

On trailer in Europe, it was a bit softer as expected. And also the tractor market was softer compared to the very strong year 2022. For JOST, we've achieved a 5% increase in turnover in that market environment. For North America, North America again benefited from a very strong truck market with plus 16%, also a stronger trailer market with plus 7% and a somewhat weaker market in agricultural tractors. In JOST North America, we achieved a plus 12%. Asia Pacific, Africa, the official numbers from the institute is a minus 10% for APA driven by still a softer demand in China. Actually, we've seen China come back a little bit already. So we don't see it quite as dramatic.

On the trailer market, plus 11% in that region, JOST performed with plus 24%, driven, as I said, by a somewhat upcoming demand in China. So overall, we've managed quite well in a market that was also supportive on the transport business and a little weaker on the agricultural business.

With that, I would like to hand over to Christian for the key financials for Q1 2023.

[Technical Difficulty]

[Operator]

And sorry to interrupt the operator, we currently cannot hear Mr. Terlinde.

Okay. Could you please retry? I think the line is open now.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the technical issues we are encountering here. I hope you can hear me now. And I can repeat what I just said. A warm welcome also from my side. I'm standing here at the JOST Studios in Frankfurt, Germany, and I have to excuse some of the technical issues we are having. Joachim, our CEO, is visiting our customers and our subsidiary in Australia, and there may be some time delay and you've seen that before.

So let me quickly go through the numbers for the first quarter. Yet again, a very successful quarter, and I'm very happy to report the numbers to you. So let's start, as always, with the different regions before I come to the overall company.

And starting with Europe, our largest region, you can see that we have achieved another growth quarter, both compared to the Q1 prior year, but also to Q4 last year. So basically, the growth story continues. And that means we have recorded sales of EUR 189 million. That is an organic growth of 7.2% and this is also a lot more than we were able to generate in Q4 2022, where we recorded a number of EUR 160 million. Obviously, Q4 is always impacted by higher vacation month or holidays. But overall, this was a very, very successful quarter for Europe.

What we see here in terms of the different channels, we are seeing a very high demand coming from the truck industry, where we have basically increased our share of the overall sales to 25% versus 20% in Q1 2022. And also our aftermarket sales grew quite well to 30% of overall sales. We see a slight decline in the tractor market, and that was something Joachim was already pointing out when he was speaking about the markets. There is a certain weakness in the ag markets right now, and we can certainly see it here in Europe.

If I come to the results, the result was EUR 16 million in the quarter. Yes, that is 8% lower than the year before. However, compared to the EUR 4.9 million that we achieved in Q4, it's significantly better. Also our margin is now back in the 8 plus percent territory, we achieved a margin of 8.5%. Please everyone -- those of you who are familiar with the company, you know that we, in the region Europe, bear the majority of the headquarter costs. So that's one thing to bear in mind. But overall, yes, Europe is still suffering from higher input factors predominantly compared to Q1 2022, we -- where we did not yet have the major impact of the outbreak of the war in the Ukraine. We are seeing increases in energy. We are seeing increases in material and also in freight, but things are normalizing, especially if we continue through the year.

So with that, I would like to come to the next region, North America. And North America had yet another very strong start into the year. Quite successful, 7.8% growth organically to EUR 103 million in the year. That is even more than we generated in Q4 2022, obviously, much more than in Q1 2022. So a very, very successful start. And contrary to what we've seen in Europe, this growth is really driven by the trailer business, where we have a significant increase in trailer business. That is something that we already saw coming throughout the year '22, where the trailer product sales increased tremendously in North America. And we're obviously quite happy with that, especially if you look at the margin and the result where we are now achieving a EUR 10.8 million adjusted EBIT and that converts into an EBIT margin of 10.5%, which is probably so far unachieved number and much, much higher than the 8.6% we achieved in Q1 last year or the 7.8% we achieved in Q4. So good start into the year.

Also here, some weaknesses in terms of the market, especially tractor market. So agricultural tractors also here, we're seeing some weakness. It seems like farmers both in Europe but also in North America are currently somewhat hesitant and reluctant to invest in Europe. It's mainly driven by the fact that the higher energy prices during the year 2022 also caused an increase in prices for fertilizers and seeds. And that, of course, is something that most or almost all farmers need and therefore, there is this reluctance to invest. And we believe in North America, where we didn't have such a big impact on energy prices, what we do have there is simply somewhat a shift of investments from lower horsepower tractors into higher horsepower tractors, especially into tractors above 150-horsepower, and 150-horsepower that become very dedicated machines that typically do not have a front loader. But we all believe this is just a temporary market weakness and that should go away sooner or later.

Coming to Asia Pacific, the region with the biggest growth with 28.3% organically coming to overall sales level of EUR 50 million is something that we are seeing here. This is not a record number, especially because the Chinese market, which is a very important market in Asia Pacific in terms of sales for us is still much, much weaker than it was last year or the year -- especially the year before. However, we are seeing first positive signs that the markets are recovering.

First of all, we are seeing much -- many more exports going out of China into other countries. So this is supporting. And overall, we also believe that the market within China should come back to a level that has been there before. So in terms of profitability, you already know that, especially driven by a different product portfolio with much more heavy-duty and off-road couplings. The development in China is -- or in Asia Pacific is now 53.3% higher than last year, where we achieved an EBIT level of EUR 7.3 million. We have now achieved EUR 11.2 million. And that is also better than what we have seen in Q4 2022 where we -- I'm sorry, where we achieved a level of EUR 10.6 million in terms of profitability.

So overall, adjusted EBIT, very strong development. The markets outside of China and Asia Pacific remain quite stable on an extremely high level. Australia, New Zealand, India and also South Africa are developing very, very strong results and especially when it comes to India, we are expecting even further growth.

So overall, I would like to come to the group. The group has achieved a new record sales level of EUR 342 million in 1 quarter. That is a 10.1% growth compared to the year before and even 11% better than Q4 2022. So we are now at a level of EUR 342 million, EUR 75.7 million out of that is coming from the Ag business, slightly lower than the year before. And then we already spoke about that. And EUR 265.9 million out of the Transport business, that is EUR 30 million higher than in Q4 and EUR 40 million higher than in Q1 last year.

So very strong development on the transport business side. And we're certainly quite happy with that. Also when it comes to the profitability, we have a growth of 15.5%. The overall margin is at 11.6%. So that is now better than the 11% that we achieved a year before and certainly significantly better than the 8.9% that we achieved in Q4. We are satisfied with the development. There is still further room for improvement, and we are certainly trying to do our best to gain those improvements. But overall, it's been a successful first quarter, I would say.

Let me now come to some more financial numbers. First of all, the bridge between net income and adjusted EBIT and back to adjusted net income. You see -- also in comparison to last year's Q1, you see not much of a change. So net income now EUR 24 million, taxes EUR 4 million as it was in Q1 '22. What we are seeing is a EUR 2 million higher finance result, and that is -- yes, to some extent, it's noncash driven by derivatives, but there is certainly an impact that we are also facing when it comes to the cost of our borrowed money. So the cost of debt has increased due to the overall market rates, and that means we are now paying somewhat more interest expenses. Then that brings us to an EBIT of EUR 32 million. The EUR 32 million then gets adjusted by EUR 6 million for purchase price allocations, another EUR 1 million for other exceptionals and that brings us to an adjusted EBIT of EUR 40 million in Q1 2023.

Now downwards to the adjusted net income, we subtract EUR 2 million -- EUR 4 million out of the finance result and now I would like to raise -- to bring to your attention that we have now slightly changed our reporting. We have, instead of using the pro forma tax rate of 30%, we decided to use adjusted -- an adjusted tax rate that is also considering a difference in adjustments. And that brings down the adjusted taxes to EUR 6 million, and we believe that's the better KPI to be used, and that's why we are now using adjusted taxes compared to a pro forma tax rate.

That means we are now at an adjusted net income of EUR 30 million, and we -- obviously, we've also made the same adjustments for the prior year, and that's why you don't see the EUR 22 million of adjusted net income that we reported in Q1, that you see EUR 27 million. But overall, it is an improvement of EUR 3 million. So with that, the reported net income increased by 12% and reported earnings per share went up to EUR 1.61. And as Joachim already mentioned, our adjusted earnings per share are at a record level of EUR 1.99 close to the EUR 2 for 1 quarter.

Coming to the next page, some balance sheet KPIs. ROCE, now at close to 19%, much better than it was in Q1 '22 and also in -- at the end of the full year -- last year. The equity ratio now at a healthy 37%. Yes, we are distributing a record level of dividends tomorrow. However, we believe that this 37% is a good measure going forward, and the profits should support that. And therefore, I don't expect that despite the dividend payout debt to decline significantly. So that should remain on a similar level. And our net debt is now, for the first time ever since we acquired the Ålö Group, at a level of 1.18x EBITDA.

So again, getting close to the one and I think it just proves yet again our deleveraging capacity. And we're very happy with this development because it basically adds more room for further investments that we are certainly targeting and actively looking for future investments for the company.

Coming to cash flow. Cash flow, without any doubt, was a weak spot last year. And you see it here in Q1, we had a cash conversion rate of minus 0.5%. Overall, minus -- close to EUR 13 million in free cash flow, and that has been turned around. And very happy to report that we have generated EUR 26 million more in free cash flow. That means after investments and our investments are much more than we did in the year before. So overall, a positive cash conversion rate of plus EUR 0.4 million, free cash flow of plus EUR 13.3 million. And that is basically driven by improvements in working capital. And we -- when we talked about working capital all year long last year and I'm very happy to say that our inventories are finally going down. We are below the threshold of EUR 200 million, at EUR 194 -- sorry, at EUR 199 million, and that is just necessary to further deleverage but also to generate more cash from operations. So net working capital stands at 20.6% of sales. Again, as I -- as we said with our guidance at the beginning of the year, and we are confirming our guidance today that net working capital should be below the 19% threshold at the end of the year.

And that is basically it from my side. I would like to use this opportunity to say farewell to all our shareholders. Thank you very much for your continued support during the last 5 years that I've been with JOST, and it's been a pleasure to be speaking to you. I will remain with the company until the end of June and more than happy to take any additional questions that you may have. And with this, I would like to turn it over back to Joachim for the outlook.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Christian. Thank you very much. And yes, let's go to the outlook for the fiscal financial year 2023. From the market, what do we expect? As I said, we had a very strong first quarter. We expect for the year 2023 that the truck market in Europe will continue to be a bit stronger than last year. As I said, we have a certain pent-up demand because of the replacement need of the fleet. They have been operating the trucks and the truck industry was not able to deliver all the trucks needed to replace in the last 3 years, you could say, because of COVID in 2020, of computer semiconductor shortages in 2021 and wiring harnesses that were not available in 2022. So there is a pent-up demand, and that will fuel the truck market to a certain degree for the remainder of the year.

The trailer market, we expect to be a bit weaker. We still have very high production rates at our trailer customers, but according to them, their order books, they are consuming a little bit, so they don't get as many orders as they are shipping. So therefore, we expect a somewhat weaker -- a little weaker trailer market. And agricultural tractors will also be weaker over the course of the year.

For North America, we see truck and trailer continuing to slightly grow. We've had -- the market really is hitting on all cylinders; is how you would describe the situation. Still a very strong market.

Also, there is -- there has been talks about a certain softening of the market. But so far, all OEMs, be it truck or trailer are still very positive, and therefore, we continue to believe that we will have a somewhat stronger market over the course of the year in transports, so truck and trailer. And in tractors, as similar to Europe, it will be somewhat weaker. We've had extremely strong agricultural tractor markets in the years 2021 and '22. And there has been a historic high, and therefore, it will be somewhat softer also in North America.

Asia Pacific and Africa Christian already described how strong the markets have been, and China is adding to that because China is coming back. So we expect all markets to continue and China to add a little bit on top of that. And therefore, we see a growth in truck and trailer in the Asia Pacific and Africa markets, may be -- mainly driven by the performance in China.

Based on the strong quarter 1 and on the market outlook that I have just described, we have a very balanced business between transport and agricultural business, so we compensate the somewhat softer agricultural markets with a strong transport market. We're also very well balanced across the regions. And therefore, we can confirm our outlook for 2023. We expect our sales to grow low single digits over the 2022 numbers where we've had EUR 1.26 billion in sales. We see the same growth in our adjusted EBIT and a slight increase in our EBIT margin, where we've added -- ended last year with 9.8%.

CapEx will be around 2.5% of sales. We will be able to fund the high investments that we have in India, for example, within that range. So we don't expect to be outside of that normal range that we have. And working capital, we will further improve and be below the 19% that we had in last year. So that's the outlook for 2022 -- 2023, I'm sorry.

If -- you then -- let's then come to the total summary of the call. We've had a very good start into the year. We have posted new record sales and new sales and adjusted EBIT despite the decline that we are seeing in the Agricultural business, the strong demand for trucks and the recovery of the Chinese market as well as the high demand in North America have been the drivers for that growth. Our operational flexibility and the strong aftermarket business allowed us to limit the negative impact that we saw in the declining sales in agriculture and increased the EBIT -- adjusted EBIT margin.

As I explained, our market expectations for 2023 continue to be positive for the JOS Group. The softening in agriculture is being offset by a stronger demand in transport. Therefore, we confirm our guidance for the fiscal year 2023. And we're confident that we continue to be able to flexibly manage the demand and the shift in the market, be it between transport and agriculture or between the regions where as I said, we have a very balanced setup. And with our local-for-local strategy, we're able to adjust very quickly our operations to shifting demands.

I'd like to add 2 things. We were very happy with the Annual General Meeting. We got the support from our shareholders for all the requests that we've had, including the capital measures that have been renewed for 3 years but also for all other points on the agenda. So I'm very happy that we got that support from our shareholders.

And last not least, Christian, I would like to thank you a lot for your professionalism over the last years where we've been working together. I think the drive that you brought to the business and the professionalism has made a real impact on JOST and you've shaped or you had -- your big part in shaping the current setup that we have with JOST and so that is a very strong fundamental for the company. So thanks for all your efforts. We'll be working together for another almost 2 months. And I'm sure we will not lose contact after that. But at this point, already for this group, thank you very much for that.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Thank you, Joachim.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Thank you very much for your attention, and we are open for questions now.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Jorge Gonzalez from Hakan Aufhäuser.

[Jorge González Sadornil, analyst]

Can you see me?

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Yes, we see you.

[Jorge González Sadornil, analyst]

If you don't mind, I have 3 main questions for you. And the first is regarding margins for the business. Very positive margins in all regions, but especially in Europe, if we took into account the headquarters. And I was wondering how you see these margins evolving through the year. As these -- obviously, these levels, if you were able to manage to keep them, the guidance will be very conservative. So that will be interesting to know how you see this going forward.

Then in the -- for the agriculture business, I understand the mix, what you were commenting that the big tractors are not using the forklifts, and that is explaining the volumes are lower than it looks like, we're looking to the average of the market. And I was also thinking how the second part of the year compares as you are normally reporting only sales and not volumes. I'm not sure if we should expect the second part of the year to show not such a strong decrease, how we can -- how we should take this into consideration for our models?

And finally, and this is obviously the EUR 1 million question that I always do and is regarding the cycle. So listening to your comments, it looks to me that the situation now is really good with very, very high utilization levels. And I mean it looks to me that every quarter is the same story. It looks like it's never ending. So my question here is that, if there is real -- really something that makes you think that this time, the volumes are going to go down? Or that could be the case that maybe we have also a strong end of the year? And how this also do you think it's going to save '24? Are these levels for truck production and trailer production sustainable at all for next year? Thank you very much.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Joachim, if you don't mind I'll take the margin question, and you can comment on sales levels, if that's okay for you.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Yes. Okay. Go ahead.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Okay. Jorge, absolutely. I mean, we are getting back in Europe to where we have been in the past. We're not there yet, very clearly. And we are still suffering from especially higher material cost. Material cost is something that has been haunting us over the past year. And unfortunately, also due to the fact that we're using a weighted average, moving weighted average for our cost of goods sold, we have not yet seen the full effect of the higher material price in our books. So that is coming to an end, hopefully, but -- so this is probably the biggest lever that we still have in Europe in the transport business.

In general, one general comment on the quarterly development. As you also know, typically, our seasonality is that Q1 is the strongest quarter in terms of profit followed by Q2, followed by Q3, and the weakest is typically Q4. And therefore, we have really no reason to believe 2023 will be otherwise. We still believe that this was the best quarter for -- during the year, but I mean, we're 0.6 percentage points better than last year. So that already gives you a good indication where we should end up by the end of the year. And we've said it more than once that our target must be that this company will end on a double-digit EBIT level. And that is the target, and we believe we can achieve it.

And in terms of our guidance, I -- yes, I understand why you say this may sound conservative. On the other hand, you also know us. And we prefer to be on the safe side in terms of margin guidance, and we'll see what will happen.

I would also like to comment that despite the lower sales that we're currently encountering on the agricultural side, the profitability has not suffered. Our colleagues on the ag side are doing everything they can to keep profitability high. And it is -- it's amazing to see how they do it and what they do and so no big risk there.

And with that, I would like to hand it back over to Joachim to talk about the sales development and certainly the cyclicality that is may coming.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Christian. And I think everything is hopefully said, Jorge, for Europe. The -- you've asked for agriculture. The numbers that we are showing are lower than what you've seen from the market. That has been your question. And as I said, we've enjoyed very strong agricultural markets in 2021 and '22, especially on what we call the compact tractors. These are the tractors for the nonprofessional users. These are large houses, very small farms that use those tractors.

And after COVID, a lot of these guys wanted to have their own small tractor, and that has been a boom that is now flattening somewhat. The remainder of the business, the professional business is also a bit slower, driven by higher prices for fertilizers, for seeding, for fuels and farmers are a bit concerned to do high investments. They typically don't lease the tractors, they buy them or they finance them. And if they finance them, the high interest rates on top of that is letting them think twice before they do an investment. So we see that a little weaker.

Now concerning the cycle, and that's mainly a question for transport, I assume, we don't really see the cycle coming to an end. We see that there has been -- that the utilization of the vehicles is still very high and I'm in the industry since 20-something years, and it was always cyclical, but most of the time, the cycle was driven by a lower demand of transport. So when the industry was shutting down and the transport demand was going down, then is when the fleets don't replace. And we don't have that situation.

So despite the high energy prices in Europe and so on, we still see that the industry is working quite well. Especially in North America, there's a lot of investment going into America, also foreign investment going into North America. So yes, we're running at a very high level. And of course, you would expect that it would soften some -- in some places like we see in European trailers right now where the -- where we are consuming order books. But I cannot really see an end of a cycle because I still see the demand of the industry, the transport demand being there.

And therefore, I'm not too concerned that we are at the end of any cycle. As I said, we will see people be a little more cautious also because the prices for the customers went up quite a bit and interest rates went up. But I wouldn't call that end of the cycle.

[Jorge González Sadornil, analyst]

Okay. Very interesting. One follow-up on the agriculture business. So in this case, Christian, I understood well that the profitability, let's say, the adjusted EBIT of agriculture business is comparable to last year despite the decreased results.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

The margin is comparable. Obviously, we are losing some sales compared to -- especially to Q4, but the margin is comparable. It's quite stable. We've executed certain measures in our plants, reduced shifts and we do see some improvements in terms of freight cost, which is an important factor on the ag side, more so on the agriculture side than on the transport side. And this is all leading to a profitability that is quite stable compared to prior year.

[Jorge González Sadornil, analyst]

I have not seen any comment on the potential growth into Latin America for agriculture. Is there any news you want to share with us in that regard?

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Like I said, I think we are looking at different targets. Some of them in Latin America, and hopefully, we can close some of them, but you've -- we've been in discussions about this now for the past 2 years or 3 years actually. And it's quite challenging to find targets that are -- or owners that are willing to sell.

As I've said, the majority of the targets are almost 100% of potential target companies is owned by families and such family owners are very hesitant and reluctant to sell the business, especially if they have children, then it's even more challenging for them to sell and -- but we're hopeful. That's what I can say and reiterate, if the right target is there, we do have the financial power to acquire targets smaller and bigger ones, and we wouldn't shy away from a good acquisition, certainly not.

[Jorge González Sadornil, analyst]

And Christian, all the best for your new challenge. And I hope -- hopefully, we can talk very soon.

[Operator]

And the next question comes from Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank.

[Nicolai Kempf, analyst]

It's Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. And first of all, also let me thank Christian Terlinde and all the best for your future, it has been a pleasure working with you.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Thank you very much, Nicolai. Likewise.

[Nicolai Kempf, analyst]

So my question is also a bit more on the guidance. And also, do you expect further pass-throughs to come to the OEMs? And what do you think about material cost when could they have been back? Or in second or third quarter? Or when could we see an easing year?

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Yes. I -- well, as I said, the -- in light of the fact that we achieved an 11.6% EBIT margin in the quarter, yes, the overall guidance seems to be somewhat conservative. But let me remind you again, typical seasonality is Q1 and then the -- is the strongest quarter and then the other quarters will follow. So it's too early to say that we have to raise our guidance, but the target remains to be ending the year in double-digit EBIT territory.

With your questions of pass-throughs of lower material costs from OEMs, yes, we are seeing that. I mean, those are contractual pass-throughs that we've had in our contracts with truck OEMs now for very many years. And these pass-throughs is something that are also being executed as of now. And therefore, yes, we are seeing record sales on the truck side. On the other hand, the profitability is certainly not -- at record level because we are seeing pass-throughs because the material markets are declining, and that is good for us. But on the other hand, that also leads to lower sales prices on the truck OEM side.

We're doing our best we can to pass on those -- the lower -- or to make sure that we also get lower material cost from our suppliers, but it's a challenging discussion because they acknowledge the fact that the raw material is getting cheaper, but they also let us know that energy is higher, that labor is more expensive and certainly, in some cases, freight rates are more expensive.

So right now, it's too early to confirm that material prices for us as the one using the final material are going significantly down but I think we've turned the corner, especially in Europe where it's most important and where we had a decline of profitability over the last quarters. I think that is now coming to a slow stop and we should see improvements going forward.

[Nicolai Kempf, analyst]

Okay. Maybe just let me follow up. I mean will there be more pass-throughs coming in the next quarter? Or is it kind of done so far?

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

I can maybe answer that. We typically have quarterly adjustments with our OEM customers. On some, it's longer, but typically, it's quarterly adjustments. So what we do is we take the material surcharges. We take now the energy cost, that's now also part of our contracts, and we calculate what was the development in the last 3 months, and then that's the amount that we get paid for the next month.

So yes, there will be adjustments every quarter, but they don't have a big impact on our profitability because they -- we have more or less the back-to-back agreements between customers and our suppliers. So we don't -- you cannot expect that, that will have a big impact on our profitability. While material costs have peaked and energy cost too in Q2 of last year and since then, we have seen it come down somewhat. But that, as I said, we have more or less transferred between our suppliers and our OEM customers.

So yes, we will continuously update that mostly on a quarterly basis. But as I said, I don't expect a big impact on profitability or anything on that.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] So there are no further questions at this time, and I hand back to Joachim Durr for closing comments.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Okay. Thank you very much. Yes, sorry about the few technical issues that we had during the call, but I hope that everything else was according to your expectations. We are, as I said, quite happy with the result. We also think that we are well set up for the remainder of the year. And therefore, we would like to thank you for your interest. And as you know, if there's any additional questions coming up between the calls, our Investor Relations always has an open ear and is reachable.

So thanks in the name of Christian, who I want to thank again, and myself for your interest in JOST and enjoy the rest of the day.

[Christian Terlinde, executive]

Thank you so much.

[Joachim Dürr, executive]

Bye-bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.