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Stabilus SE
XETRA:STM

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Stabilus SE
XETRA:STM
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Price: 56.2 EUR 2.18% Market Closed
Updated: May 17, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2022-Q2

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Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Stabilus S.A. conference call regarding Stabilus' financial results and second quarter of fiscal year 2022. [Operator Instructions] The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Mark Wilhelms.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

Yes. Hello, and good morning from my side from the Stabilus management team to the audience of this call. From the Stabilus side we've got here Dr. Michael Buchsner, the CEO; Andreas Schroder, for Investor Relations; and myself, CFO. It is a Q2 results call, on the other hand it's the first call. It's the first call with the new name Stabilus S.E. after we changed the name over from S.A. to S.E. It is now formally registered in various documentation of the Luxembourg authority. This is a good one to tick off in our actions to relocate the company over to Germany. With this I hand over to Michael Buchsner, who will take you through the initial slides of the presentation. As you see, we will have 4 agenda points, operational highlights, financial results, results for operating segment, and outlook. We will not speak to point 5, the appendix. So with this as said, I'll hand over to Michael Buchsner.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Thank you very much, Mark. Hello, and welcome also from my side to our call today. As usual I'll start with from operational highlights. We had seen indeed a record quarter, quarter 2 financial year 2022. We closed with EUR 281.2 million revenue, which is by far more than last year same period of EUR 244 million. And at the end of the day, we had a fantastic organic growth, organic growth of more than 11% year-over-year in this quarter. And yes, it's a record quarter for Stabilus and it's also a record first half year for Stabilus with more than SEK 0.5 billion. We have a very strong business in APAC. 75% year-over-year organic growth with a high share of Automotive Powerise. So despite of the lower vehicle production, as you know, which was down by 4.5% year-over-year, Stabilus achieved an outstanding growth and performed by far better than light vehicle production. And the Automotive Powerise revenue was growing extra-high, so with more than 34% year-over-year organically, predominantly in Asia Pacific. However for the complete year, as you all know there are some uncertainties still in the air, semiconductor supply, the Ukraine war and also the COVID lockdown in China, which currently is the cloud on the sky. However, that's what we'll talk about later in the presentation. I will switch to the next page with the financial results. As stated also on the highlights, EUR 281 million, that's the number, the number of revenue we had in the second quarter this year, 15% year-over-year growth, extremely high given the current business circumstances on global scale. There were acquisition effects, and we had some effect of currency translation, which is in the range of 3%. Organic growth, as I said before, more than 11%, extremely good year for -- a good quarter for Stabilus. The adjusted EBIT number came in with EUR 39.3 million, which is 3.4% more than last year, and this basically brought us to an EBIT margin of 14% for the quarter, also extremely good for the given circumstance. Profit, EUR 26.2 million, which is 1.2% better than last year. And the free cash flow is EUR 10.2 million. This leaves us with a net leverage ratio of 0.8x, which in the same range than the quarters before and also towards the end of last year and the net financial debt at EUR 148 million. Yes, as I said, ladies and gentlemen, forecast for '22 remains unchanged. Revenue of EUR 940 million between -- and -- between EUR 940 million and EUR 990 million and the EBIT margin of 14% to 15%. As I said there are still some, and you all know this, clouds in the sky for the rest of the year. But as I said, bottom line is, an excellent second quarter for the Stabilus group. With that, I would hand over back to Mark for some details on the finance.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

Yes, thank you, Michael. Let's flip forward to Slide #8 on the presentation. For blocks of information that we've already talked about, the revenue and as well a bit about the EBIT number mentioned, already 14% EBIT margin in this tough quarter, 1.6 points below versus last year. This still fits well within the guidance we are giving of 14% to 15% for the full year. Base line profit after tax at EUR 26.2 million, about the same number as last year. Cash flow. Cash flow looks a bit weak as you take a view on the chart here on the bottom right-hand side. Last year, we had EUR 28.8 million. This year only EUR 10.2 million. What's happening there is, of course, the question. One sees that we are building up working capital receivables to support the strong growth. We heard from Michael, strong growth in China. Chinese customers pay substantially later than the European or the American customers. And specifically now in the times of COVID lockdowns, the payment system do not seem to work from home office. That's the explanation we are given by our partners in China as a reason for them kind of delaying some payments. The other reason for lower cash flow is continued buildup of inventory. As the supply chain looks weaker and weaker, we feel it's adequate to increase the stock of materials that potentially could go up. The following slide, which is Slide #9, talks about the first half. Again, Michael has already mentioned it, kind of EUR 525 million sales in the first half. We never had more revenue in the first half than this EUR 525 million, still a 6.5% organic growth, underlining clearly that the products, specifically the Powerise sees a lot of interest from end customers pulling the demand, and of course, the OEMs then ordering those products from us. In terms of margin, right-hand top box, 13.1% for the first half versus 14.7% last year, again, 1.6 points behind last year's number. Going forward, as mentioned, we are looking for an outlook of 14% to 15%. The second half ought to be stronger: A, because we've always seen that the second half is stronger; B, because that is when a lot of the pricing actually should have kicked in and we also expect to come back to more stability in the manufacturing process. Then moving on and talking to the lower right-hand box on cash flow again, year-over-year, EUR 33 million, down to EUR 18 million. As mentioned for the Q2, clearly burdened by higher working capital. That will reverse out during the back of the year, during the remaining now 5 months of the year. The other point to keep in mind is, we ended up paying like EUR 5 million more income taxes in this first half. And also our claim for VAT reimbursement has come up quite a lot in the year-over-year. All those points burdened the operating cash flow, and specifically the working capital reverse out during the remaining 5 months of the year. And then move on and take a look at the results by operating segment. We are Slide 10. Go forward to Slide 11, which is with the clearly numbers. You will see light vehicle production down year-over-year by minus 15%. Our revenue, as you see on the left-hand side, is down by 0.7%, so quite clearly we're doing much better than the overall market. We've seen this in Stabilus Auto division were clearly impacted by the lower light vehicle production, nevertheless, performed better than the underlying vehicle market. Automotive Gas Spring unit minus 9.1% and Powerise only year-over-year down by 2.3%, as I said in the market that is overall down by 15%. Interesting to see, if you take a look at the European numbers versus our global numbers. Last year, the European share was 52% of our global revenue. This year, it is 44%. Those numbers are not shown on the slide. It clearly shows Europe is taking pressure here from the overall economic issues that create [ deal ]. It makes life difficult for the coming, effects our net sales and China is doing very well. The share of the European business comes down. In terms of margin, left-hand side bottom, yes, under pressure by increased material costs as well as energy cost here in Germany as well as in Romania. And us kind of seeing a bit of price lag in getting the sales price negotiations on the [indiscernible], extremely difficult. Some customers are not easy to deal with, require strong negotiation skills of our team. And as we see today, I actually hope to see a lot of positives in the second half as some of those impacts will -- also those pricing impacts will cover periods of the first 2 quarters. Moving forward, we come to Americas on Slide #12. Americas in euro terms, clearly benefiting by the stronger dollar, year-over-year up 12.8% or 5.8% organically. Talking to the right-hand side, the American light vehicle production is down 3.5%. Our revenue, as mentioned, up organically by 5.8%. And talking to on the right-hand side to the third bullet point. With the revenue going up, we clearly see again as we go through the various different pieces of our revenue set up that Powerise revenue up 14.9%, for example, reported revenue increased thereof 6.6% organically. That is supported by higher production for Powerise for vehicles like the F-150 Lighting, the electric version. Tesla Model X coming back on stream. Tesla Model X you may recall, it has 9 Powerise, 8 for the doors, 1 for the tailgate, plus 2 DA.90s for the electric door opening and closing. Our strongest revenue vehicle, so of course, we are more than happy to see that Tesla is bringing this innovative model back to the market again with good production data. Americas Industrial revenue is up by 13.6% or organically 6.4%. Strong growth in all of the market segments, a bit lower in energy and construction. You may recall from previous calls, we've taken over the distribution of our products to the independent aftermarket into our own hands. It is clearly helping us. In terms of profitability, we stand at the same number as prior year, EUR 13.6 million in Americas. Moving forward, we come to Asia Pacific, last regions to talk about, was those -- they are the best in terms of cost. We do the slides in the same historic format with old European numbers starting when the American and then the APAC region. In terms of growth, here we see, if you note that in the blue box, 75.2% organic growth year-over-year. In euro terms, it's almost 90%. That brings the region APAC to 22% of our total revenue. Fantastic number. Compare that to the overall vehicle production -- you see the comments on the right-hand side -- light vehicle production up by a tiny bit of 0.2%. So all rest is additional organic growth. In the third bullet point, you see all the vehicles we are currently supplying to. Our team in Asia Pacific has done a fantastic job in securing many interesting models, many interesting orders for us be on this our product. And that will secure the revenue stability for the moment to come. Organic growth of industrial revenue looks highly compared to the Automotive Powerise, but then still at 7.2%, which is above our long-term organic growth rate of 6% we want to achieve as a group, as a whole, as a total. In terms of profitability, our Asia Pacific region went up from 14.9% EBIT margin to 17.7%. Of course, that the plants are tank full, fixed costs are spread over many more parts and that is where we see that the fully loaded business always makes a better margin than half empty plant. Moving forward, we come to revenue by business unit. Where do we see the growth? Let me start on the right-hand side with some overall comments. Global vehicle production hit 19.7 million units, that is down 4.5%. Our automotive business, and it's of course, was impacted by that people selling less cars, they need less gas, they need less Powerise. And then our actions to actually stay more to be on the right vehicle to win order, et cetera, to see an Automotive Gas Spring that is at bottom on the left-hand chart, the dark blue 1.2% plus. So clearly ahead of the market growth and in light blue Automotive Powerise with 34.5% organic growth. Again, well ahead of vehicle production. Interesting, as you look at the 2 bluish kind of things, which is our automotive business. Powerise, it was more revenue. A good EUR 10 million more revenue in Automotive Gas Spring. Year ago, it was the other way around. Automotive Gas Spring at EUR 10 million more revenue than Powerise. Industrial business shown in light yellow, up by 5%, so it less growing than in our automotive products, which in the end, if you take a look at the cake diagram, in percent of overall revenue, moves industry from 41% to 38%. Or more positively worded automotive is benefiting in the overall business share from our moving from 59% to 62%. We all know that automotive business is less attractive margin wise than the industrial business, which also with the mix and margins to blame. But before mentioned 1.6% lower year-on-year EBIT margin. As you get to the details on the industrial business on the industrial market, I'll hand over back to Michael Buchsner, who will give you more information in regards to Slide #15.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Yes, thank you very much, Mark. Yes, let's talk little bit about industrial revenue by market segment. The overall revenue of industrial is now EUR 407 million, which is solid and stable beyond the EUR 100 million or 6.1% year-over-year growth, which is in the range of plus EUR 6 million growth, mainly driven by distributors, aftermarket and e-commerce. Whereas as the automotive business still suffering electronic strategies and whatsoever, many people focus also on bringing the service activities up on the vehicle side. And that's why particularly the aftermarket business for us is growing good and as stable. On the other hand, distributors. Distributors we see a lot of distribution in terms of the automation and other business and industry-related topics, which are running pretty well. And then e-commerce. E-commerce is definitely something which is [ done ] by Stabilus because you think channels like Amazon, eBay and many others provide to us a different magnitude playground to distribute our components and products to the customers and here we see superior margins with business which is easier to handle for us with less sales for across and higher impact on the margin. That's why you see the portion of distribution independent aftermarket and e-commercial in the cake diagram on the left-hand side, taking up from 37% to 41%, a plus of EUR 7 million year-over-year, same quarter. And that's actually a positive thing for us, and this [ small ] perspective continues to grow as we are putting here a lot of focus in terms of distributing our products in e-commerce channels, aftermarket channels and also via our distributors. On the mobility sector, also some growth here going up from -- yes, in a decent level on the chart here on the left-hand side, going up by EUR 1 million. Also, I would like to draw your attention on the energy construction, industrial, machinery and automation sector, which also was going up in the last quarter compared to the prior year from 16% to 17% as a share, and this is mainly driven by automation. Automation as business is coming back is a high focus of our customers. They want to renew their equipment, driven not only by the automotive sector, but everybody producing in the industry, commercial goods they basically maintain their equipment, they expand their capacities as business coming back and they invest in new machineries, and this is why this segment is also growing for us. And certainly a point of focus for the coming quarters. Which is also a short or small reduction in terms of sales on the health care, recreation furniture. So why is that? That because in the past 2 years of pandemic, you all know that there was a short term focus on the home activities, including home offices, which did pull ahead -- some of the demand that we see there, we saw they had some growth in the past 3 years. And this is kind of balancing out this time around with a negative impact of EUR 3 million year-over-year, same quarter. However, the utmost good margins we have in the other 3 segments anyway so this contributes to a good and healthy quarter. So quarter-over-quarter, as I said, 6.1% growth comparing close to 2% this year to last year. Also here, in terms of the view into the future, we see stability for the coming weeks and months due to the fact that the company continued to increase their capacity out there. And also, we still see a strong demand on the aftermarket side. People are maintaining and seeing some service actions on their existing car fleet due to the fact that the semiconductors are missing in the industry. And that is the end. Yes, in terms of e-commerce, definitely very interesting playground for us. We're investing a lot in different sales channels to also be customers' choice in the future. Now this is kind of the summary on the financials side. The reason is the outlook, which you see here in terms of the guidance and for the segment. Our guidance, as I said at the beginning of the session remains unchanged. It's in the range of EUR 940 million to EUR 990 million with an EBIT margin of 14% to 15%. This is at an FX rate of 1.25, we can see still some growth on the light vehicle production for the financial year. However, if as you all know, with the given circumstances of the Ukraine war, the lockdowns in China and also the still evident semiconductor shortage out there in the industry, for sure better in terms of target. When it comes to the light vehicle production, it's still around EUR 80 million. This is what we count on. However, there is some uncertainty towards the rest of the year, as you all know. As I said, we stick with the guidance, which we published in November, EUR 940 million to EUR 990 million with an EBIT margin of 14% to 15%. That's for sure in terms of the long-term strategy that we've been talking about that topic also in our last quarterly meeting. We did put a lot of emphasis and work in our strategic pyramids, which confirms the long term plan of 6% growth year-over-year average between 10% and 25% and beyond and an EBIT margin of 15%, a long term EBIT margin target set for us. So this is basically the pack for today in terms of the financial pack, the summary and the outlook. And as you know, we have a pretty strong cash position. And we've been making up our mind about considerations in terms of allocation of this cash on hand, and for some of these considerations, I will hand over back to Mark.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

Yes. Thank you. So as you can see from papers end of March, we had over EUR 200 million from [indiscernible] with the net debt below 1x EBITDA. It kind of doesn't look too smart as a balance sheet. So we put in a few considerations for our capital allocation price achievement. For sure, we want to deliver value to the various stakeholders as well as shareholders, customers, employees, society in general. Now part of that is used in the effectiveness projects that have good returns to support our organic growth and of course, also limit the risk, which could jeopardize the company's development. For example, having enough cash to sustain through a crisis like now or a COVID issue when you look back. Other considerations are we want to do -- want to stick to the dividend policy. We have communicated that at the time of the IPO of paying between 20% and 40% of group's net profit in dividend. And strive for stable over the year in absolute terms, increasing dividend. Cash liquidity on the balance sheet, we want to have at least EUR 100 million cash on hand to -- before we can mitigate these tricky times, hard times that, for example, as mentioned before. We are now seeing. In terms of leverage, we want to keep the leverage below 2.5x EBITDA. And on the other hand, the target leverage should be like 1x EBITDA. In case we have a leverage below 1x or the long period of time, we strive to distribute those excess sums to the shareholders, whether that will be a share buyback of a special dividend, something we would need to decide as the time is there and we are forced to make a decision or we are well advised to make a decision on that one. So those considerations, let's keep that in mind going forward in case you're asked, what are they doing with the cash on hand. And of course, one action to invest money besides organic growth is an investment which really is another key point in our strategy and we've been working on that over the past year as you very well know. With this we open the floor to question. The host or the moderator will take the point there she will also explain you what numbers you have to dial for the keypad.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we have a couple of questions coming in. The first question comes from Akshat Kacker of JPMorgan.

A
Akshat Kacker
analyst

Akshat from J.P. Morgan. 3 questions from me, please. Firstly, congratulations on a very strong quarter and I think sustained impressive growth in the APAC region. So firstly, on the industrial business, you have definitely seen sustained growth in distribute independent aftermarket and e-commerce. Can you just generally comment on the inventory levels at distributors now? And if you could also talk about the order intake in the last few months, just a broad sense across subsectors. And if you're also seeing some recovery now in energy and construction. That's the first question. The second question is on cost inflation. If you can give us an update on your discussions with OEMs, specifically on raw materials. Has anything changed? Or do you still expect to recover most of the inflation pressures in the negotiation process? And secondly, and importantly, on energy costs in Europe, you flagged this in the presentation today. How should we think about energy inflation for FY '22 as well as next year, please? How much energy do you buy at spot prices versus long-term contracts? And what kind of price hikes are built into your guidance?

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Thank you very much for your questions, Akshat. And I will start answer your questions and then later on I'd also hand over to Mark for some additions. In terms of the industry business, when we talk about inventory levels and order intake, focusing also on energy and construction sector. So if I understand you're right, in terms of the inventory levels and order intake is rather giving you an outlook from how we see the coming next quarter. And in terms of energy and construction business, particularly you all asked ourselves the question, how will it this increase in price levels, an increasing inflation, the order intake will look like in the next coming quarters due to the fact that some of the construction companies already are pushing back in terms of pairing houses and other ventures due to the increase in prices out there in the market. When we talk about our business, particularly the business on the industrial side, our inventory levels are I'd say, on an average of 10 days of finished goods. And you're working such a fine line when you work with inventories on 10 days because on some parts, you have parts which are off the shelf where the customer expects that you have higher inventory levels. On the other side, some of the customers, they have indeed very specific orders and a specific applications, which you can build on to the shelf, you need to build it to order. And so I'd say, in terms of inventory levels on our hands, it's 10 days in average on the industrial side finished goods. And on the customer side, we see many of them having almost no inventory. So there, at the end of the day, waiting for deliveries all over the industry, which is of our advantage, because including shipment time, typically, you're talking the industry about good delivery rate, if you deliver to an order in the range of 4 to 5 weeks. So typically an order is split between off-shelf and then customized part. That means our average delivery time is in the range of 4 to 5 weeks, which is acceptable by the customers, and this is kind of by nature of products that we take off the shelf part and then we complete the order with the customized part. And at the end of the we need to balance always this inventory on standard parts with being kind of agile for orders out there. And the customers on their end, they're still lagging part which brings me to the order intake. Here our order intake is still very strong on the industrial side and other competitors of us have significantly worse or majority of other competitors have significantly longer lead-times like up to 10 weeks. And here it's extremely volatile because if a customer who works on the industrial side gets back the lead-time of 10 weeks then he is willing to take higher prices and get supply within 5 weeks from Stabilus and even is willing to pay a higher price for the product, which we certainly materialize upon. So the order increase is close for the next 2 quarter -- for next 2 months, that the horizon we have visibility about inventory levels in the market are very low. Inventory level on our hand is for standard part kind of 10 days, for a build to order for sure only a couple of days. And in average, we fulfill the orders in 4 to 5 weeks, which is superior to what our competition can do. Akshat, does this answer your first question?

A
Akshat Kacker
analyst

Very well. Very detailed.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

And then I would jump directly to the next question, which is cost inflation, and how are we going with the OEMs in terms of inflation coverage. Also here, I would like to divide this question into 2 sections. One is on the industrial side and one is the automotive side. Let's start first with the industrial side, right? We are now in the third wave of price increases throughout the year. So we have been increasing 2 times already and within next week a third time price during this year, which seems high. However, our competitors are doing the same, if not having a little higher or more terms in terms of price increase. Also a tricky situation and thin ice to work on, because we need to find the fine line in between positioning ourselves in terms of getting all the inflation recovered. In some aspects, as I said before, working with superior margins due to the fact that we are better than others in terms of delivery timing and not losing any customers because of prolonged delivery times to high price. So here, in terms of the industrial side, we've been able to increase our price, it's been up 4% in this range for majority of our customers and there is another way coming. On the automotive side, it's quite different. Because here, we see also a big impact in terms of material, energy, and also nowadays logistic costs. We have been working with our OEMs on price increase initiatives. We've been doing the first loop of price increases and completed them after the first half of the year. We found a good solution with the customers, which basically go into the direction of cancellation of typical gift pack rounds, onetime payments, price increases in general terms. And then in terms of particular deals when it comes to new business award and thereby related onetime payments, we typically would need to do to the customers. We also put that into the basket of negotiation. So in terms of concrete numbers, when you talk about inflation on the material side, we see an inflation in the range of 20% on steel and resin. On the other hand, in terms of energy, we see an upswing of 30% plus for energy, spending on gas oil electricity. And in terms of logistics, it's in a range of 3% to 4% above what you would see in a typical year. So this is basically the numbers we are fighting with. As I said, on the industrial side, we've been doing 3 price adjustments already, or in the progress to do so. And on the automotive side, we've been having the first wave of increased discussions with the OEM. And to the fact that within this quarter, another big impact happened in terms of inflation driven by the COVID lockdown in China, and also the Ukraine war. We are up for another round of pricing discussions with our customers as we speak. Mark, from your side, anything, go ahead.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

No, I think we've covered everything in the first question to note. Just as in terms of regions, keep in mind the energy price inflation is very specific to Europe. In China, we are not seeing this.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Yes, absolutely.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

And of course, in our tries to go to greener energy, we have some on cost here and there as we switch fossil towards electricity.

A
Akshat Kacker
analyst

Just one quick follow-up. How much energy in Europe do you buy at spot prices versus long-term contracts?

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Actually, a long-term context with a policy to lock in 50% roundabout for gas and electricity. And 40% to 50% we buy on the spot market.

Operator

The next question comes from Mr. Marc Tonn of Warburg Research.

M
Marc-Rene Tonn
analyst

First would be the EBIT related perhaps to customer demand, to the pricing negotiations you have with your customers and looking back as this tremendously strong in the second quarter. I think you mentioned several times, both for industry as well as also for automotive to some regard that business is developing kind of stable in the months ahead, either you are expecting to be stable. We now look at the second quarter and try to take square this outlook with full year guidance, which you provide particularly for the top line. It seems to me that you want to be presumably rather cautious when we also look at what IHS is expecting in terms of video production for the second half year. Perhaps you could give us some more feeling on how conservative your guidance now is on the top line? And what may happen for you to just even reach the upper end of that guidance? That would be helpful. Secondly, we have seen also related to growth is very strong development in Asia. And I think presently, the growth will remain very strong for the quarters ahead. But could you give us some indication what you would expect for this region going into next year or at which stage you would see the absolute growth rates to come down a bit? Thirdly, that's a bit more housekeeping. You mentioned in the appendix that the EBIT result for the second quarter was a bit weighed down by an FX effect in the other operating income for the second quarter. This year -- could you give us the number where the EBIT margin would have been without these figures? I think it would have been even higher than the 14.0% you were able to report for the Q2.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Thank you very much for the question. I would start answering the first 2 questions and then Mark will answer the EBIT, FX related topic. Yes, in terms of our customer demand going forward, you mentioned or mentioned the word cautiousness in terms of forecast. We all know that we are actually in a big impact by not only the semiconductor issue, but also the Ukraine war and also for us extremely relevant the lockdowns in Asia. So how does this look like in the 2 businesses, industrial and automotive? I start with industrial business, and then I'll talk about the automotive a bit also covering your APAC question in terms of May outlook and next year's outlook after the last half year which was certainly on the APAC side good for us. So in terms of customer demand for the future, we still see that as business is coming back, as semiconductor shortage is kind of coming down that the customers are seeking for comfort in the vehicle. And that OEMs try to build cars with higher segment rate. So that means our products, which are pretty much centered around the aspect of comfort, they are superior in the market in terms of market demand. So this means we also see for the future a good take rate of Powerise compared to normal Gas Spring. That's something we see not only for this year, but also for the coming years. In terms of current situation when it comes to the industrial side, we see a stable situation for the next 2 months. And this is kind of the horizon we see in general terms, right? Normally, you would get the demand from the customers for the next 2 months because that's typically when the industrial companies do their project work, their refurbish work, their even smaller tool shops, the kind of order parts. So that's typically a 2-month window you see into the future, and that appears to be quite stable as well for us. Also something to put into consideration, but this is something also Mark will talked about our EBIT rate for the year was 1% to 1.25%. And this also drive some effect, but not to a big effect. On the other hand, where is the biggest growth for us coming in terms of automotive? It's certainly APAC. And that's the question you've been raising. APAC is, for us, a question from marketing point in time, because we've seen that in April, the economy in Asia was starting to be impacted by the corona lockdown in China. So this question mark we have reached into May, because there are certain opinion, which the lockdown could last until middle of May, end of May or even beyond. So the question mark we have is a question mark for the next 2 months. After this lockdown and coming back to your question on how will the Asian region perform in the coming years. We think that there -- that the Asian region is performing strong, and we continue to perform strong for the coming year in a high 1-digit percentage growth. And this is superior to the other regions, which actually underlines our overall growth account of 6% year-over-year for the overarching total business of Stabilus and have a lot. And we have also -- by the way we have been investing a lot in our new facility in Pinghu centered around a Powerise system. We are now in a good position. You saw it on the chart that we have 3 or 4 time more sales even than planned. We are staffed very well there. We have had pickup. Even in lockdown times we managed to supply to the customer, and we managed to stabilize our supply chain. And for the coming years, we are confident that with the current setting of management, equipment and building, we can secure this growth until the year '24-'25 where -- when this new Pinghu plant completely filled. So bottom line is that from our perspective, the Asian region will outperform for the coming years also in all businesses, however, primarily in the Automotive Powerise business. So these are some considerations at that term. And I would hand over to Mark for addition and also taking the time to answer this EBIT, FX related question.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

Yes, thanks. We will always see whether it was starting as many, many other companies businesses with the lockdown of China big impact. On one hand, it was faithful. On other hand, it was really painful. We are in a specific situation that the way we have set up the excellent benefit from the strong end consumer demand, which gives us good push we require the car companies to keep on producing. It is very hard to forecast, as Michael said in the current time in China. Overall, our Asia business sits on the good footing. And on some of the pages in the appendix everybody can do is own calculation and people will see if the share of the Asia business has constantly been hoovering to extent of our total business partly because Europe was partly, but for us it was because the Asian set up is very good. Now coming to your last question with regards to the other income FX good news. What we had there last year in Q2, the 2.6%. What we show in that line is the valuation change from the -- specifically from our Mexican company, they raised invoices in dollars and book sales in pesos. And as then, over time, the dollar is expected to the changes, we either good or bad deals there. To me, it's nothing that is really something we can control. And with a different accounting system, you may actually see those good or bad news directly hitting our revenue and indirect be revenue-related or material cost related. So the lines are there depending on how the exchange rate work. 2 things that are worse when considering year in Q2 is 1 is in the first half, we had a number of the costs for the relocation, preparation, advisory work, discussions, with workers council, et cetera has amounted to like EUR 0.5 million in our first half results as a burden. And the other costs that are worse to notice, you've seen the M&A Cultraro and Synapticon. The adviser cost that leads to the M&A has not been capitalize but actually the expensed. So this is another like EUR 400,000. That used in that quarter, that's in the precise like-for-like compares to people may have wanted to adjust that number in the first half of our number. We're open for another set of questions. And let's go to the operator.

Operator

Yes. At the moment, there are no further questions. [Operator Instructions]. And we have one follow-up from Mr. Kacker.

A
Akshat Kacker
analyst

Akshat from JPMorgan. One follow-up, please. The Powerise capacity in China, can you just tell us what the utilization of the plant in Pinghu is today? Like what is the current production or ship structure? And are you already putting in more lines to further expand capacity?

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

In the past couple of weeks with the increase in demand, it's close to full utilization of the existing equipment. And this is why also we will invest and continue to invest in capacities going forward. Lately, we won the Tesla demand of Tesla 3. And this actually requires the buildup of a set of completely new lines. However, in terms of the capacity utilizing have the building, we're in the range of 50%, which will require or will allow us to still put lines in there until '24-'25. So there is sufficient room in there to maneuver and the next full automated line will be rolling in next year to deal with this high demand.

M
Mark Wilhelms
executive

And we are nicely on plan there with regards to our outlook provided to the Pinghu regional government, which was to means we will get over time all the support from the -- as we commented part of this total investment into the Pinghu ground.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Are there further questions?

Operator

There are no further questions.

M
Michael Büchsner
executive

Then thank you very much from our side. It was a pleasure for us to talk to you again about our second quarter, which indeed was a very, very good quarter for us with record sales and record first half of the year. In terms of sales, we see uncertainty out there in the industry on the automotive side and the industrial side. However, with the setting we have at Stabilus, and you see that in the numbers, we are stabilizing that situation and taking the utmost out of the currently unstable environment, particularly on the automotive side because we managed in difficult times, even with the lockdown in Shanghai to supply to our customers and OEM and have significant better lead times than our competition on the industrial side. So that we are absolutely positive for the rest of the year. And as I said, confirmed the guidance for the year as stated. We wish you all a good day and a good week. And see you next time. Thank you very much.