Amadeus Fire Aktie

Okay, let's start. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, for the conference call regarding the publication of our interim statement Q1 2026 of Amadeus FiRe Group. Robert Von Wulfing, our CEO, will give you some insights into the business development in the first quarter this year and will be available for a Q&A session afterwards and will be at your disposal.

So Robert, the stage is yours.

Well, thanks, Jorg. Good morning, everybody. So next round, Q1 figures, Amadeus FiRe. So first glance, we can take in new fiscal year 2026. And overall, I would say we saw a quarter where business, from our point of view, was in line with our expectations and in comparison to last quarter Q4 2025 stabilized. So we saw some positive signs in the continuation of the quarters, Q1 to -- comparison to Q4. In comparison to Q1 last year, in some key figures, we still see a decline because of the development over the course of the year last year with a declining trend.

So for us, a good start in '26. And overall, my picture for the next year, also next years, remains unchanged. Skills and qualifications will be needed. Scarcity is still existing. And the change we will see will accelerate. So overall, our positioning, doing both services, staffing and training around certain skills should pay off. So for this year, our commitment is to take step-by-step back to profitability and to regain the position for the strengths we saw within this Amadeus FiRe Group for many years.

Some market remarks. So the overall situation in Germany, well, was a weak one in Q1 '26, again, and not surprisingly, as expected. So GDP growth was around 0, give and take, and some cautious positive indicators we saw in January and February, in the end, after the war in the Middle East started -- fell back. So some glimmer of improvement actually was taken out by this geopolitical development.

And for example, the ifo Business Climate Index fell the last 2 months, March and April, to a level of 84.4 points in April '26 again, which is a low level and indicates that currently the situation in Germany within corporate clients still is not a positive one. Unemployment is ongoing high at a rate of 6.4% in April this year, so more than 3 million people in Germany unemployed.

So some highlights on -- just one second, switch page. Some highlights on Q1. So as I said, for us, a quite acceptable start in this fiscal year in a tight B2B service market in Germany. In training, we also do have the B2C and the B2G market, which were more positive and starting with a positive trend in '26. We have put in, in '25 and ongoing in '26, a lot of cost measures and structural optimizations. So they are paying off and showing their effects in the operational performance. So more looking at the top line, stabilizing over the course of this quarter.

So some key figures improved quarter-on-quarter, like revenues and gross profit and also some earnings. So we see here a picture of what we wanted to see for the first quarter to deliver what we forecasted for the full year. So in a year-on-year comparison, we are still 9% down in revenues. In a quarter-on-quarter comparison, we are 3.5% up. Margin is slightly declining, operating gross margin, but well, on a high level and also is exceeding prior quarters' level.

And the operating result is EUR 3 million for the quarter, in line with our expectations as well as the -- for the first quarter, negative earnings per share, EUR 0.16. Last year, we saw EUR 0.18 positive. Last year, that turned negative at the end of the year. This year, we see the picture the other way around to deliver earnings per share positively at the end of the year.

Some remarks on the business development in Q1. So as forecasted, the B2B markets, as I said, remained tight, more positive in B2C and B2G training. So the demand was cautious over the course of the quarter, and the willingness to change jobs also on the candidate side remained low. The gross profit overall declined by 10% year-on-year. Quarter-on-quarter, it increased by 6.3%. Within the quarter, we saw a slower start in January than expected, but then a stabilized and solid situation in February and March. So in the full picture of the quarter, exactly what we expected.

Diving in the 2 segments, and first some statements on the services, in staffing, temporary staffing, permanent placement and interim management. For all services, we still see the situation that the conversion, how inquiries or requests convert into actual hires and placements is subdued still. In temporary staffing, there is a cautious demand of many customers, and this still has a noticeable impact.

At the beginning of the year, we regularly, in temporary staffing, see a setback because a lot of orders do end overproportionately at year-end every year. But afterwards, so that was, well, a normal setback what we saw. Afterwards, we saw a stable order development to date. And well, this is a different trend than what we saw for, well, around the last 2 years where we saw months on months declining development in the number of the overall orders. So here, it looks that it is bottoming out and stabilizing in permanent placement.

Also, year-on-year, we see a decline still. Nevertheless, the quarter-on-quarter performance also for a couple of declines before, quarter-by-quarter, we saw an increase in revenues slightly above Q4 level. Here, specifically, we had a slow start in January and then a solid February and March. Interim management, our slowest -- sorry, our smallest service. Here the market is probably the most robust. We saw a small decline, but also a little bit like in temporary staffing, quite a stable development of the orders we have currently at the level of prior year at this moment.

Some more detailed figures in staffing. So the gross profits overall in Q1 was around 19% down, around 6% higher than what we delivered in the fourth quarter. The last 2 years before, we saw a decline in gross profits, Q4 to Q1. So the first year now, we see an increase in gross profit here around year-end, Q4 to Q1. So also in staffing, there's still a strict management of all expenditures, OpEx and CapEx, in place, and a lot of work on productivity and cautious management of the branch office organization.

Regarding our sales organization fee earners year-on-year, end of March, we are 17% down. So the trend, what we saw, that we cautiously replace fluctuation and monitor every position in detail is continuing. At the same time, we do some investments in systems and processes and in technology to, well, improve also step-by-step and use the opportunities we see in technology, in AI, also for staffing processes to position ourselves for the next years in the market.

So overall in Q1, the EUR 5.2 million decline in gross profit translated in EUR 1.0 million decline in EBITA. So we saw an EBITA of EUR 1.7 million for the first quarter. So overall, in line with our expectation, stabilizing or bottoming out in top line and improving profitability quarter-by-quarter over the course of the year.

Let's have a look at the training segment. Here, I would say we recorded a robust overall performance in Q1 '26. In the -- we saw -- if you look at the 3 different markets or client groups we serve, market-wise, we saw improved situation in B2G, a solid development within private customers. And also here, clearly, B2B services in Germany are under pressure. So the market environment for our B2B business in training also is not a good one. So in the B2C market, we saw actually in our business a slight increase. In B2G, we are still below prior year's level, which is because of the development throughout the year '25, where we saw a declining trend, but we have -- we are increasing the number of new participants, and there is a beginning dynamic development also compared to Q4 where sales are already increasing. So this, in the end, will translate in a positive top line development.

In the B2B market, year-over-year, well, we have significant positive momentum due to inorganic growth. Masterplan and eduBITES joined our group end of last year. But overall, with our -- all our B2B services and training, we are operating, obviously, in the weak B2B environment we have in Germany. Strategically, segment development continued consistently throughout the quarter in line with the AI-first orientation we have. So the goal is to systematically expand the service portfolio with AI-related training offerings and to address the growing need for companies' systematic AI skilling development throughout our corporate AI learning approach we have.

Some figures on training. So revenues increased by 3.4%. Nevertheless, it is a flat organic development and the growth is delivered by our new companies, Masterplan and eduBITES. We still see a declining volume at COMCAVE because after the development we saw especially in the first half year last year, the comparison year-on-year is still high. The trend also here is positive, but with the significant staff reduction we did and downsizing of the training facilities in the restructuring. We are now in a leaner company, which forms the base for back economic strength. And the Q1 results of COMCAVE are already above prior year's level.

The new business entities, they started in line with our expectations. Regarding the revenues, I already stated that the growth we saw is delivered by these companies, some over EUR 2 million sales. And the result for the first quarter was as planned, a small negative figure. For the full year, we expect them to slightly deliver also a positive result. Operating profit fell by 0.7%. And overall, in EBITA, we ended up at EUR 1.3 million for the quarter. Because of the training calendar, the first quarter is not the strongest one in terms of seasonality. And if you would have a look at the organic development, it is a flat development year-over-year and an increasing development in terms of profitability compared to fourth quarter. Overall, in training, we ended slightly ahead of our own expectations for the first quarter in sales and in result.

Some statements regarding our outlook overall. So the information you will find here is basically what is stated also in our annual report. So our picture about the framework and also some activities and milestones we take is unchanged. We are expecting or we set a framework also in our forecasting of a consistent weak year '26. Well, as I said, beginning of the year, we had some slight indicators of improvement. The current development in the Middle East took that out back again. And I think the assumption to see no real momentum in '26 is still an acceptable one. In case the sentiment will turn somewhere in '26, this, from our perspective, would be an upside. Further weakening, obviously a downside.

So in staffing, we will continue with the cautious management, but also focus on improving the usage of technology, which is, for, well, some time, already crawling in, in our business, and step by step, we see some effects and improvements and quite like what we see. And in training, the focus here is to gain also from the opportunities we now have in our organization. As I said before, we did the 2 acquisitions. It's 2 buy-and-build cases. So beginning of the year, some integration work and some integration cost, as I mentioned, which you have to take.

But the idea is here to use our good relationship with a lot of B2B clients around -- in Germany to deliver the full service of the Amadeus FiRe Group, which means that you can either hire qualifications or you can train qualifications. So here, it is starting that the, well, overall basket of services is served to our clients with some beginning success stories, but quite early to state on where this will end up end of the year. But we see some positive development in an overall weak B2B market, as I said a couple of times already in this call. But this is, I think, important to state that sales cycles, et cetera, are quite long these days in the B2B environment.

And also in training, a solid B2C environment where we want to improve our business step by step again this year, and positive momentum we see in the B2G environment. And in the end, a year-over-year significant higher result in training compared to prior year's development where we actually were not able to deliver a result, what we expect from ourselves in the end, including a restructuring we had to start in second half year.

This ends up in the outlook which we gave already. Publishing the annual report, it is unchanged. So we do see ourselves ending in a group revenue of, well, around EUR 380 million for the year and an operating EBITA of around EUR 25 million. So the range here is EUR 20 million to EUR 31 million, and following the Q1 compared to our planning and forecasting we did before, we are well in the middle of what we forecasted.

In terms of the 2 segments, in staffing this year, given the assumption that '26 stays weak, it is about repeating the results of last year. And in training, it is about to significantly improve the earnings situation to, well, EUR 11 million to EUR 15 million or around EUR 13 million. And as I said, at least after Q1, we were a little bit ahead of the middle corridor we saw at the beginning of the year in forecasting for that segment.

So for the moment, this would be it. A brief view in our development in Q1. Well, I know that year-on-year, the KPIs, sales and results declined, but we saw a year of -- with the downward trend in '25. So for us -- and this is what we said before -- in a year-on-year comparison, we will start slow in '26. But for us, the important, well, development and achievement is to improve the situation quarter-by-quarter, to have a solid start in '26, being able now to improve top and bottom line quarter by quarter over the course of the year. This would be it for the moment. And now very happy to answer your questions.

Thank you very much, Robert, for the deep insight into the first quarter. And I may give the word to Thomas Wissler for the first question.

I can't hear you, Thomas. I don't know whether we have to do anything, but...

I'm here, sorry.

Now we can hear you, Thomas. Okay.

Well, thanks for the presentation, first of all. And as you mentioned, the most important thing is that we have seen a sequential improvement because the year-on-year comparison that your numbers are down should be not a big surprise. Maybe you can give us some idea of the sentiment of your sales team and obviously also of your customers. Do you see kind of an improvement in the first quarter concerning the sentiment? And 2 months into the second quarter, can you maybe also give us some idea whether the situation has already also stabilized in the second quarter? And maybe the third question regarding leverage. Can we expect year-end leverage to be down versus 2025? Or would you also consider to spend more money on acquisitions if opportunities arise?

Well, Thomas, thanks. So first sentiment, you asked within our organization, our sales organization and clients. Well, here, I would say sentiment in our organization is -- I would call it somewhere in between acceptable and good. And I want to state that cautious because -- if you are a salesperson and you do less net fees, as we call it, and your incentivization is lower than it was -- you're used to, there is some feeling about that. Nevertheless, I do see and I realize that when I'm traveling around -- and in these times I do visit our branch offices more than I do in regular and good times, they are very positively Amadeus FiRe-minded, and they are positive regarding their market. But they are waiting for a turn in the sentiment of their clients. And this is what they do not see. This was the second part of your first question.

Here, I have to state clearly -- and I talk to a lot of our salespeople -- that they feel that the cautious behavior, the restrictions clients have given their management to allow recruitment activities, no matter whether with providers like Amadeus FiRe or with their own recruiting resources. This is still slowed down and limited. Same on the candidate side. In tough times, you're more cautious regarding taking a decision to change jobs. So here, the environment is unchanged. Second question was how we entered second quarter. B2B, market-wise, well, solid and stable, but no momentum. Different statement I said about the B2G market where we are quite happy with the development, but B2B is still burdened by the overall environment.

Leverage. As I said, earnings should improve over the course of the year. Deleveraging automatically, step-by-step on the one hand side. On the other hand side, you asked about capital allocation. Well, we did the 2 acquisitions end of last year, so I would call ourselves not hungry at the moment because we do have to do some integration. But even more, we said it's buy and build cases, and the build also takes some energy and resources. So this is what we want to do first. Nevertheless, we will have a close look at any opportunity. So acquisition-wise, you shouldn't expect too much of us this year. Hope that answers.

There are currently no questions in the chat, so I have to look back if someone raised the hand. No, it's currently not the case. There's a question from [ Olga Eichler ]. COMCAVE will start growing second half year-over-year, will be net income negative in first half?

Well, [ Olga ], I said that earnings increased already, but top line didn't. And here, it is our expectation for the full year is that we, well, should regain the level we entered last year over the course of the year. Will we exceed in sales? If this is the case, then in second half year. In terms of earnings, well, we are ahead of prior year already. And we want to deliver this year a clear positive result for COMCAVE following the negative result we saw in last year. And here, we are well on plan.

Will be net income -- here it is -- not planned. So will be negative -- will be net income negative in first half year. Well, we saw earnings per share below 0 in first quarter. Second quarter, in terms of seasonality, has just a few chargeable days. Let's put it that way, the dynamic development in earnings per share I do expect in second half year.

Thank you, Robert. Some more questions from investors currently not to be seen. So if there will be some more questions later during the day, we are at your disposal at any time for your questions. Robert, thank you very much for the detailed view into the development of the first quarter and the outlook for the current year. And so next time, we'll be available with half-year figures beginning of August. So thank you very much all for your interest in Amadeus FiRe and thank you very much for joining the call.

Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of Amadeus FiRe Group, and a warm welcome to today's conference call of the Amadeus FiRe AG following the publication of the consolidated financial statements of the fiscal year 2025, we disclosed yesterday evening after the closing of the German Stock Exchange.

Robert Von Wulfing, our CEO, will guide you through the presentation and will be available for your Q&A afterwards.

Okay. Thanks, Jorg. Welcome, everybody, to our today's call. So my first message for today would be that we confirm our preliminary unaudited financial key figures for the fiscal year 2025, which we presented already 5 weeks ago, middle of February. More details I will have in a few minutes.

So overall, the Amadeus FiRe Group, our company, shows, well, let's say, a good level of resilience in the past financial year 2025 within a persistently challenging economic environment, characterized by multiple weaknesses. Nevertheless, we found ourselves on a significantly lower level of profitability compared to historic levels we delivered before.

The sentiment within the company is even worse than the actual macro situation. Company's willingness to invest worsened throughout 2025. Expansion plans were put on hold and decisions also on staff recruiting activities were made with massive caution or staff was even cut in the view of the continuing uncertainty regarding future economic development.

Challenges such as demographic change, slow progress in digitalization and the aftermath of the energy price crisis as well as the deteriorating consumer confidence play a central role. The long-standing phase of economic stagnation in Germany is escalating into a profound growth crisis in which companies lack any sense of optimism. Well, lack any sense, not really, but to a very large extent.

The minimal growth in real gross domestic product of 0.5 percentage points fell far short from the expectations of the stakeholders. The unemployment rate in Germany increased already to 6.5% in February, representing 3.1 million people unemployed in Germany. In Q3 2025, we saw the first time since 2015, so 10 years ago, unemployment above 3 million in Germany. This is not a historic high, but the highest level of unemployment since the financial crisis.

Added to this are multilateral trade barriers in East and West and unpredictably volatile U.S. tariffs which are hampering the export business and, thus, one of the most important growth drivers for German economy. Global uncertainties and international trade conflicts are leading to geopolitical tensions, which are currently being played out in open armed conflicts. The new war in the Middle East is starting to burden the global economy again.

The sharply negative revenue trend in 2025 financial year across both segments of the group, so Staffing and Training, the one-off restructuring costs of around EUR 6 million we had and forward-looking investments in digital transformation of the Amadeus FiRe Group resulted in a decline in gross operating profit and a disproportionately large drop in operating EBITA in 2025.

Revenues of EUR 364 million is 16.6% (sic) [ 16.8% ] below the previous year figure of EUR 435 million (sic) [ EUR 437 million ]. Revenues ended up within the range of EUR 355 million to EUR 385 million, which we forecasted. Operating gross profit of EUR 187 million, previous year was EUR 237 million, resulted in an operating gross profit margin of 51.4%, which remains significantly above the market average, following 55.2% (sic) [ 54.2% ] in the previous year.

Operating EBITA in 2025 is, therefore, down to EUR 14 million from EUR 56 million in the previous year. The current forecast following the restructuring initiated in the third quarter '25 to achieve a result at the low end of the before forecasted range of EUR 15 million to EUR 25 million for the 2025 financial year, thus, has been realized. Operating profit, excluding the one-off effects of restructuring costs, ultimately, stood at EUR 20 million.

At year-end, we were able to complete 2 acquisitions, 2 technology and AI-driven buy-and-build cases in the corporate learning environment, Masterplan and eduBITES. The business climate in Germany continued to deteriorate in the course of 2025. We do see a generally weak economic momentum, which was noticeable in almost all sectors. Companies continue responded to this situation with great cautions. Investments were postponed, expansion plans put on hold and personnel decisions were made with extreme restraint. The number of registered jobs has fallen in most sectors of the economy compared with December '24, in some cases, in double-digit percentages -- in most cases, actually. The exceptions are the public sector, health care and construction, which are above previous year level.

Fourth quarter ended in line with our expectations. Staffing looks like bottoming out on a low level. And in training, we do see some momentum emerging, especially in the upper funnel. Walking down the P&L for the 2025 financial year below operating EBITA level, the Amadeus FiRe Group generated an operating profit after tax -- operating profit income of EUR 4.9 million. Previous year level was EUR 36.8 million.

The consolidated net loss for the financial year 2025 attributed to the shareholders of Amadeus FiRe AG amounts to EUR 2.2 million, following a profit of EUR 32.8 million in the previous year. Basic earnings per share, thus, amounted to minus EUR 0.44, following EUR 6 in the previous year.

Following the negative result and in line with the current dividend policy we have outlined, the Management Board and the Supervisory Board will propose to the Annual General Meeting -- Shareholder Meeting that in view of the negative result achieved, no dividend will be paid and that the retained earnings of Amadeus FiRe will be carried forward to new accounts.

Diving a little deeper in the segments, the Personnel Services segment continued to be significantly affected by the weak climate. In addition to cyclical pressure, changes in labor markets are becoming increasingly significant and are having a lasting impact on demand patterns. Despite the ongoing shortage of skilled workers in many sectors, there was no noticeable upturn in the short term. Furthermore, candidates remain remarkably reluctant to change jobs as job security and stability are the top priorities in the current uncertainty people are facing.

The interplay of cyclical and structural factors made filling vacant positions significantly more difficult and had a negative impact on the conversions of inquiries into contracts. As a result of these effects, the segment's total revenue was, as expected, below the previous year level, meaning that the downward trend continued into the end of the year. The revenue in Training segment declined during the reporting year against the backdrop of a challenging market environment and fell below the previous year level also.

While the companies within the B2C market were once again able to increase revenues, our providers of publicly funded trainings, Comcave and GFN, recorded a year-on-year decline in revenues. The pro rata revenues of the newly acquired companies, Masterplan and eduBITES, were included in the segment for the first time at the end of the year for 3 and 1 months, respectively.

Having a look at our Staffing business, temporary staffing services continued to face a challenging market environment once again in 2025. Revenue fell sharply by 23%. The decline in turnovers, which had been evident for some time, continued. The sector as a whole has been recording a decline in volume for some time with customer demand remaining subdued across all service areas. As a result, the gross profit margin achieved in 2025 financial year also fell below previous year level.

Like temporary staffing, also permanent placement is heavily influenced by the persistently recessionary sentiment in the German economy. Revenues here fell sharply by 30%. Many companies remain extremely cautious when it comes to new hires. Positions that would normally need to be filled are often left vacant with the existing workforce taking on additional duties instead. So we do face a backlog here in the German market.

The current uncertainty within companies overweighs the impact of the skill shortage, which has been a key driver of the market in recent years. No direct costs are allocated to the provision of recruitment services. Consequently, gross profit essentially corresponds to revenues.

In 2025, the interim project management also was affected by the general economic situation for the first time. Nevertheless, the interim management market turns out to be the most resilient. Amadeus FiRe revenues declined by 6% in 2025. The downturn and decrease in demand has reached the commercial and IT professionals. Conversion requests and placements are at a low level. As a result of these effects, the segment's revenue in total was EUR 208 million, 22.8% below previous year level. The segment gross profit fell by 26.9% to EUR 97 million.

Accordingly, the segment operating profit margin fell to 46.8%, compared to 49.4% previous year. Ultimately, an operating EBITA margin of 6.1%, previous year 13%, was achieved. This is an unusual low figure for Amadeus FiRe compared with the significantly double-digit profit margins of the past. Overall, the reduction in sales and administrative costs across almost all areas supported segment result.

Vacancies arising from natural staff turnover were only filled in a very targeted manner. Active staff turnover managed has led to a reduction of around 20% in the number of employees within the branch organization at year-end '25 compared to year-end '24. Thus, the maturity of the sales organization improved throughout the year '25 because a lot of the turnover was also performance management.

To point out very clearly, for Amadeus FiRe, an operating margin of 6% is not satisfying. But being able to achieve a margin of 6% in this staffing market environment is rarely seen throughout the whole industry. So we know what to do, but some tailwind is needed to regain ground in the direction of double-digit margin levels.

Having a look into Training. Against the backdrop of an equally challenging market environment in Training segment, particularly in the area of public-funded training, Training revenues in 2025 has also declined and fell below previous year level. The decline in participant numbers in public-funded training, B2G, continued in Q4 '25. But activities are improving and, as expected, revenue in Training segment slightly increased in the fourth quarter.

In particular, the reorganization of responsibilities for training vouchers and the delayed clarification of budgetary policy and clarity led to a cautious approach to funding and had a noticeable impact on demand. The reduced funding volume consequently affected capacity utilization and revenues. In the second half of '25, the restructuring of Comcave with the reduction of training facilities and a significant reduction in staff laid the foundation for the company's sustainable economic situation and stabilization.

Due to these effects, the segment's revenue in total of EUR 156 million was 7.2% below the previous year figure of EUR 169 million. Operating segment gross profit fell by 13.7% to EUR 90 million. Accordingly, the gross profit margin declined to a still solid 57.6%. Operating EBITA was additionally impacted by restructuring costs of EUR 6.1 million, meaning that the operating EBITA margin of 0.7% achieved in 2025 financial year is likely to remain an exception. The adjusted margin of close to 5%, nevertheless, reflects the challenging year 2025.

Briefly on the 2 acquisitions we made. The acquisition of Masterplan is a key component of the technology-driven B2B growth strategy and complements the Amadeus FiRe Group's existing training portfolio with an established scalable SaaS platform with a strong focus on B2B customers. Masterplan enables Training segment to accelerate the positioning in the B2B segment with a ready-to-use digital solution for our clients. The acquisition of Masterplan is a typical buy-and-build case with significant cross-selling potential.

The same accounts for eduBITES, also, from our point of view, a buy-and-build case and another key component of a technology-driven B2B growth strategy. EduBITES uses AI agents to conduct interviews during so-called knowledge sprints to systematically capture internal company knowledge. The AI-based automatic transfer of this knowledge into multimedia learning formats opens up a path for knowledge extraction and leads to multiple opportunities using this knowledge capture for improving the knowledge situation of the company. Just as an example, offboarding and onboarding can be facilitated significantly.

Let me touch one, from our point, very important and strategic element for the next years, and this is about corporate AI learning. Germany invests too little in AI expertise. Germany's AI offensive is in danger, already at the starting point of failure due to a lack of qualification architecture. This is the conclusion of the Corporate AI Learning study Amadeus FiRe Group conducted on behalf of the Allianz der Chancen. This is an organization representing a lot of the large caps in Germany, representing a huge number of employees throughout the German labor market.

Although 91% of the companies surveyed consider AI to be central to their business model and 82% plan to increase their investments, whereby only 25% are investing substantially in further training of their employees in the near future. We are investing billions in AI technology, but without a measurable and scalable skill strategy, productivity gains will remain random. And if training is not organized systematically, the business location will lose its competitive edge. Beyond analyzing the problem, the Allianz and the Amadeus Group presented accompanying playbook that can also be understood as a blueprint for Corporate AI Learning. It describes how companies can strategically anchor and operationalize AI training.

The playbook outlines key success factors from leadership, anchoring and governance to role-specific learning path and the direct integration of AI tools into day-to-day work. So it's about who and what and how. And we want to play a significant role in the how element. AI skill is a bottleneck in the future. Amadeus FiRe is building up an ecosystem around Corporate AI Learning and is the right partner for our customers to face this challenge.

Just recently a new element with this is the launch of a strategic partnership in between Amadeus FiRe Group and Leaders of AI to systematically train management levels in the use of AI. The economic impact of this depends largely on whether companies empower their management and teams to strategically integrate new technologies and use them productively. Everyone knows that we are in the middle of a change and that we have to learn around AI, but who is organizing the learning? We will and be part of that solution.

So let's dive deeper in the outlook for 2026 for Amadeus FiRe Group. Regardless of the current economic weakness, there remains a structural shortage of skilled workers that will persist in the long term. In the short term, however, this is overshadowed by economic uncertainty and a lower willingness to change jobs. A certain backlog of leftover vacancies is building up. Demand from corporate clients for further training services will continue to operate within an economically challenging environment in 2026.

Investment decisions are made selectively and focus on training measures with clearly identifiable operational benefits. At this -- at the same time, it is to be expected that training programs relating to digitalization and AI, in particular, will continue to gain importance as companies increasingly support the introduction and productive use of such technologies through targeted training measures. The integration of the 2 segments, Training and Personnel Services, will be strengthened, in particular, through the systematic incorporation of training programs into existing sales and marketing activities within the corporate client sector.

The current financial year will continue to be a year of transformation shaped by ongoing conflicts, in particular, the war in the Ukraine and the armed conflict in the Middle East. Rising energy price volatility and uncertainty on international markets are dampening the confidence of businesses and investors. These uncertainties are complicating economic planning and influencing investment and trade decisions across national borders.

The economic outlook for Germany remains weak overall for 2026 and is characterized by uncertainty and limited momentum. Although there are signs of certain stabilization in individual economic conditions, a sustained and broad-based economic recovery cannot currently be anticipated. Furthermore, productivity growth in Germany remains comparatively low. Delays in the digital transformation, high regulatory burden and investment barriers in key infrastructure sectors are holding back efficiency gains in the economy and public administration.

The market for Personnel Services in the skilled white collar sectors continued to be significantly influenced by the weak macroeconomic conditions and marked reluctance to make hiring decisions. Companies are proceeding cautiously when filling new or vacant positions, and are frequently postponing staffing decisions. At the same time, candidates' willingness to change jobs remains limited in the face of economic uncertainties.

Not a really nice picture, but this is the picture we are facing again in '26 as an assumption. Against this backdrop, demand for skilled temporary staffing remains subdued. Increased costs resulting from collective wage agreements and regulatory frameworks have noticeably reduced the appeal of temporary staffing solutions for many companies.

Flexible employment models are still being used, but in a far more selective manner than in previous years. Accordingly, a revival in demand for skilled temporary staff is not foreseeable in the short term. Overall, no relevant improvement in the market situation is anticipated for the coming financial year. Rather, the overall trend is likely to be similar to that of 2025.

This is the overall assumption for our Staffing outlook, whereas the Training segment expects an overall more positive performance in 2026. A key strategic focus will be on the consistent AI-first orientation of the Training segment. The aim is to systematically expand the service portfolio and include AI-related training programs to the -- into new target groups. The thematic development will be driven beyond traditional commercial and IT trainings.

The acquisition of Masterplan and eduBITES end of '25 strengthens the technology-driven training offering and the expansion of the corporate client business, B2B. The integration of the businesses with recurring revenue structures enables access to new customer segments, the development of individual learning pathways and the systematic use of AI-supported learnings and knowledge formats.

In addition to a slight increase in participant numbers and revenues in the private customer business, B2C, new enrollments in public-funded training programs, B2G, are expected to show a more positive trend throughout the year compared to 2025. Following the downward trend in the number of training participants and the corresponding decline in revenues in the previous year, the start of the year will be below the previous year level.

Current enrollments and those expected later in the year should generate positive momentum in revenue growth, leading to a further significant expansion in business volume by the start of 2027 and throughout the year 2027. Even against the backdrop of an assumed consistently weak market environment in 2026, the aim is to stabilize group revenues.

The revenue growth targeted for 2026 is in the range of 0% to 8%, so between EUR 362 million and EUR 394 million. A stabilized revenue situation and effective cost management are leading to increased earnings expectations. The target for operating EBITA for the '26 financial year is in the range of EUR 20 million to EUR 31 million. This corresponds to growth rates of between 46% and 130%.

Based on these expectations, the operating [ EBITDA ] margin would be around 5% to 9%. The earnings target is a first step on the path back to significantly higher profit margins and the level of profitability we have seen in previous years. Over the course of the financial year, a continuous quarter-on-quarter improvement in earnings compared with the corresponding quarters of the previous year is expected, following a start to '26 that is anticipated to be below previous year level, in line with the declining business performance in the course of the year '25.

The Personnel Service segment expects revenues of EUR 190 million to EUR 210 million with an operating EBITA of EUR 9 million to EUR 16 million. This corresponds to revenue development in the range of a decline of 9% to a slight increase of 1%. Uncertainty in the market is reflected in a wider revenue and earnings range for 2026. Overall, throughout the year, the development -- the negative development of 2025 will bottom out, which already started, and will achieve a slight increase by the end of the year.

The overall trend in earnings is expected to be similar. Potential decline in revenues should be offset by some cost savings. The expected operating EBITA margin is projected to be around 4% to 8%. An economic recovery starting earlier than expected would offer upside potential for the earnings forecast. Depending on the tailwind we will see, in terms of conversion and performance, this might be significant. But, again, from today's perspective, we cannot see this clearly for '26.

The Training segment expects a significant increase in revenues to between EUR 172 million and EUR 184 million. This will correspond to revenue growth of between 10% and 18%. Adjusted for inorganic growth effects from acquisition, this corresponds to a more single-digit growth target for the existing business. The forecasted operating EBITA stands at EUR 11 million to EUR 15 million.

This represents a significant increase compared to the operating EBITA for '25 of just around EUR 1 million, which was, however, significantly impacted by the restructuring costs. But also adjusted for this effect, it is targeted to somewhat double the earnings level this year.

This would be the round-up information for all of you of our 2025 year and the outlook for '26. So from this point, we do see that we saw probably our toughest year in '25. We see some positive trends in Training and stabilization in Staffing for '26. Nevertheless, in an, again, tough environment, but '26, we target as the first step to the way back to achieving operating profit levels and growth figures, which we saw in the past for the upcoming years. In the end, therefore, we need some tailwind in terms of development of the German and global economy.

So now happy to answer your questions.

Robert, thank you very much for the detailed analysis of what happened last year and the looking forward statement into the challenging tasks for this year and 2026. Ladies and gentlemen, now it's your turn. [Operator Instructions]

Well, we are still searching for some questions. No question would be unusual. So probably it's technology. You found someone?

No, we can't see anyone.

Sometimes it takes some time to type in.

Okay. We get the first question in the chat from Thomas Wissler of mwb research. Question is, are there any further plans to acquire more companies in AI?

I love that formulation, companies in AI. Let me start my answer with another remark. AI is something which is, obviously, impacting both segments and also something which is impacting our internal activities. So in Staffing and in Training, in terms of, well, top line products, but also in internal processes and technology used, this is affecting a lot of our activities and a lot of our resources we invest in our business.

Regarding acquisitions, I just said that the 2 acquisitions we just made are buy-and-build cases. Well, buy is done, build also needs a lot of effort. So priority here clearly is to focus now on, well, using the opportunity we have with these 2 companies and to build up these cases. So in terms of acquisition, I would say, we are not that hungry currently.

It does not mean that we do stop all our activities. And if there are some interesting targets, we will have a look at, but the probability that there will be acquisitions coming through short term, on the other hand, is low as we are focusing now on developing these 2 cases with a lot of resources and some other things we have to do in our established businesses.

So far, that question of Thomas was the only one in the chat.

If there are some more questions from your side to a later point of time, you're welcome to contact us and my Department of Investor Relations at any time. We are at your disposal and looking forward to discuss the challenges of the current year.

So if there are no additional questions, thanks. Here we...

There's another question from [ Olgerd Eichler ]. AI, if I add EUR 6 million restructuring costs to your 2026 guidance, I end up with your low end of EUR 20 million, no improvement for 2026.

Well, I tried to -- if you do the math on the low end, this would be the case. It's a range, as you know. And the range also includes, depending on the environment, we will find that in Staffing, it is not automatically an achievement of prior year's level again in '26.

Well, we are positive that we can bottom out the business and deliver results comparable to prior year's level in Staffing, but the math you did is actually -- would include a decline in Personnel Services. So in Training, taking in or not the restructuring effect, there will be an improvement in '26.

Well, now the questions are coming in. I try to read them.

Further activities and costs for restructuring in '26, no. The characterization of a restructuring is that you well describe the whole program and then you do the accrual for the whole effect, no matter how long these effects otherwise would impact your P&L. So the EUR 6.1 million is the one-off effect for the restructuring and no further impact by restructuring planned in '26. Also, the restructuring, well, basically is completed.

So there are neither unknown structural elements of the program. Well, not every position is finalized, as you might imagine, because if you lay off a lot of people, there are some following negotiations to be done, but most of this is completed already. So the restructuring accrual is very solid for end of year '25.

Initiatives to increase efficiency. A lot of we have done already in the last years, but further steps will be taken in '26. A lot of the initiatives include technology. And the idea is either to impact top line or to save cost. And here we are, in the middle of a couple of programs regarding our major business applications, but also multiple other projects throughout both segments.

Expectations for deleveraging in '26. Well, I said that the -- first on the profitability side that quarter-by-quarter, we expect the situation to improve on the one hand side. This will also generate some free cash and will, throughout the year, more the second half of the year, as I described, than the first half of the year, also deleveraging in '26, which basically also answers the next questions for debt reduction this year and the following years.

I think this is the current -- hopefully, that answered all questions in the chat room so far. Some more coming.

Revenues for the -- of the 2 acquisitions made, the revenue level of these 2 companies at current level is around EUR 10 million combined.

What level of sales must be achieved to achieve the old EBIT margins? Well, here, the answer is a little different. I prefer not to talk about the sales level, but about the conversion rates we need, especially in the Staffing segment. The sales level in the end depends on, first, the size of the organization, which is a smaller one, in the meantime, compared to peak levels.

And second, also, a question of mix of services because of the different gross profit margins they do deliver. But basically, it is about converting gross profits in operating results or operating EBITA. And here, it is more the positive sentiment we need than a certain level of sales.

I just said through -- during the presentation that the organization we have in Staffing is more mature than the years before, and it's actually the same people, so -- a lot of them and probably the best of the team, they are all -- they are still on board. So it is about conversion and expanding the gross profit level with the organization, and that will deliver back a normalized level of results.

In Training, what I said is that in -- throughout '26, we have to regain the full usage of our organizations and we have to overcome the decline of 2025, improving quarter-by-quarter, to find even better situation beginning of '27. And the comparison then beginning '26 to '27 will be more favorable. And from today's perspective, also, here, the outlook for '27 will be on a higher margin than what we do think that we can achieve in '26. So '26, in Training, I would consider more a year in between. Also, the new companies we have to lead in profitability. They are currently at a break-even level, and this will also deliver the upcoming years, but the following years more than in '26.

Headroom for further acquisitions, well, and statement regarding dividend payments or more, in general, capital allocation. First, well, the headroom, technically, we have -- what's the name? Revolving credit line, I was looking for the word revolving. We have a revolving credit line of EUR 121 million for free usage, which we used at a level of around EUR 80 million currently. So there would be headroom.

Regarding acquisitions, I just said, we are definitely less hungry than we were before we did the 2 acquisitions recently, and we are focusing on growing these opportunities.

And regarding capital allocation, well, first, throughout the year, we have to deliver results and build up capital. And then for us, it will be still always the 3 considerations in between dividend, share buybacks and allocating capital in the operating business by doing acquisitions or CapEx. But as you know, we are not that CapEx-intense.

The dividend policy forward, this, well, now we have to discuss and let the market know. But this year, on the -- with the background of a negative result, the decision was not to distribute because we always said that we distribute a part of the earnings.

Next question about the Iran war just started with a mild German recession. Is the outlook still possible?

Well, the outlook is given as of today, and this includes the information that we are in that war. The visibility and the uncertainty, well, increased by that information. In February, if you look, for example, at the BA-X index, this is an indicator of the job vacancies in Germany, we saw quite a positive momentum in February. Also, the business climate, on a very low level, was improving recently.

And the Iran war definitely is a counter-information, let's put it that way. And if it lasts, I do think that we will have, again, pressure on energy prices, what we see, but then it's longer lasting. So yes, the outlook is possible because the outlook is made with the information set we currently have. And the Iran war is part of the story. I tried to explain that we assume a consistently poor environment throughout the whole year '26 and try to be, let's say, cautious enough in terms of also including the risk portfolio we see in our outlook.

Thank you, Robert. As we have no further questions on the chat, we have come to an end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in Amadeus FiRe Group. And a very big thank you also to you, Robert, for the presentation and the discussion afterwards in the Q&A session. Should you have any further questions to a later date, please feel free to contact Investor Relations at [email protected].

Thank you very much for your interest. Looking forward to the challenges of the year. And I wish you all a successful day and upcoming weekend. And thank you, Robert. Maybe some closing remarks from your side.

Yes. Thanks, Jorg. Thank you very much. The last questions showed that we are in a, if I want to put it positive, in a very interesting environment. So we try day by day to do our work. We're forecasting a tough environment in Staffing and an improving environment in Training.

I do think we saw the toughest year for Amadeus FiRe already in '25, and we'll see -- despite the background of the weak environment, we still will be in -- we see an improving situation in '26. So our teams, my team, and we, as a Management Board, will work on that. And we will try also to harvest the opportunity we see in learning, but also in Staffing and in learning around what I tried to point out, Corporate AI Learning.

This is a gap which is opening up in terms of technology used and skills in corporations regarding handling technology. And I think here, in sourcing these people and in training these people, we can -- and skills, we can be a relevant partner also in the next years. So exciting times ahead of us. Thank you very much, and thanks for your interest in Amadeus FiRe.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Dear friends of Amadeus FiRe Group, welcome to today's conference call on the Amadeus FiRe AG publication of the preliminary unaudited financial key figures of the fiscal year 2025 we published yesterday evening after the closing of the German Stock Exchange. Robert von Wulfing, our CEO, would like to explain these preliminary unaudited financial key figures to you and will be at your disposal for some questions and Q&A discussion afterwards.

So may I hand over to you, Robert. The stage is yours.

Thanks, Jorg. Welcome, everybody. Well, that was the signal already. Sorry for maybe coughing in between and being hopefully understandable. I caught a little flu something, but I try my very, very best in the next hour.

So I would like to start with some general remarks regarding the German economy to give you a brief overview of the current situation we are operating in. Compared to the last calls and meetings we had, the situation in Germany is, I would say, basically unchanged. It was a challenging situation in 2025, running a business in Germany, especially in a B2B service environment. So the macro indicators remain at a low level. And there's actually no sense of change of the pessimistic sentiment we feel currently in Germany.

The long-lasting stagnation or recession in Germany is ongoing following the '23 and '24 recession. We saw a marginal statistic positive development in 2025 of around 0.2 percentage points. But basically, we saw now for many, many quarters, a flatline development in Germany without momentum. This pessimistic situation we have in Germany is still leading to a reluctance to invest. Decisions are delayed and the day-to-day business basically is slowed down.

And the companies, our clients describe the current situation as quite negative. This is what is indicated also in the German Business Climate Index by the ifo Institute, which in December '25 declined by another 0.4 points to 87.6 points and is on a continuous very low level, below 90 points, indicating a poor business environment overall. The unemployment rate in Germany is still high, at very high level at 6.2 percentage points or 2.9 million people unemployed. In Q3 last year, we saw the first time since 2015, 10 years ago, unemployment above 3 million people in Germany. This is not a historic high, but the highest level of unemployment since the financial crisis.

In addition to global uncertainties and geopolitical tensions, structural challenges such as demographic change, slow technological change in Germany, the aftermath of the energy price crisis and the gloomy customer climate are playing a key role. Added to this, we see international trade conflicts, and in particular, the ongoing U.S. tariff discussion, slowing down export business. Company's willingness to invest remains slow in 2025. Expansion plans were put on hold and decisions on hiring were made with extreme caution. [ All ] staff was already laid off in view of the continuing uncertainty about future economic developments.

The Personnel Services segment was significantly affected by the weak economic situation in 2025. Despite the ongoing shortage of skilled workers in many areas, there was no noticeable upturn, but rather a further increase of market weakness over the course of the year. Demand decreased and time to hire is expanding. Candidates continue to be very reluctant to change jobs as job security and stability are top priorities of people in the current climate of uncertainty. The interplay of these various factors made it significantly more difficult to find and fill vacant positions and had a negative impact on the conversion of inquiries into orders.

As expected, the segment's revenue and the gross profit in total was significantly below the previous year level due to these effects burdening the performance of the staffing organization. The size and headcount of the organization was continuously brought down throughout the year and additional cost measures were in place, but this could only partly counter the market-driven pressure on performance.

Regarding the Training segment against the backdrop of -- for different reasons, but also challenging market environment, particularly in the area of public funded training, revenues in the Training segment also declined in 2025 and were below the previous year level.

In the B2C environment, mainly the companies of Steuer-Fachschule Dr. Endriss, we were able to increase revenues once again, whereas the providers of publicly funded trainings, Comcave and GFN recorded declines in revenues. In particular, the reorganization of responsibilities for training vouchers or for training voucher issuing at the beginning of the year and the delay in budgetary clarity led to a cautious funding policy and had a noticeable impact on the issuing of vouchers.

So we found a poor market environment despite increasing unemployment in Germany. The decreasing number of participants in training had an impact on capacity utilization of the training organizations and as well on revenues. As a consequence, we announced the restructuring program for Comcave in Q3. It was executed within the remaining time of second half year in 2025. A reduction in training space and the layoff of a significant number of employees laid the foundation for the company's, so Comcave's economic stabilization and for growth and earning opportunities as of 2026.

Overall, this resulted -- the restructuring resulted in a one-off impact of just over EUR 6 million on operating results for the Training segment as well as on the group's result. Following the final set of measures taken and the execution of the program, the final restructuring cost increased by around EUR 1 million more compared with the interim booking status we had end of September in 2025 to the EUR 6 million I already mentioned.

According to the preliminary and unaudited figures, the Amadeus FiRe Group generated consolidated revenues of around EUR 364 million in 2025, down around 17% on previous year revenue level of EUR 436.9 million. Therewith, the revenues ended up within the forecast range of EUR 355 million to EUR 385 million.

Lower operating gross profit in both segments of the group and one-off restructuring expenses and forward-looking investments in the digital transformation of the Amadeus FiRe Group put pressure on profitability in 2025. The pressure was countered with multiple cost measures throughout the year, but only to a certain extent. Overall, this led to a disproportionate decline in operating EBITA in 2025 to a level of around EUR 14 million, down from EUR 55.5 million in the previous year.

Our latest forecast given by us as Management Board following the restructuring indicated in the third quarter or following the third quarter of achieving a result at the low end of the before forecasted range of EUR 15 million to EUR 25 million for the 2025 fiscal year thus has realized. Amadeus FiRe operating profit, excluding the EUR 6 million one-off effect of the Comcave restructuring ultimately amounted to around EUR 20 million. That would equal to a margin of 5.5%, actually far below the double-digit margins we were used to deliver over many years.

Let me please do just one remark on our acquisitional growth activities last year. The 2 companies acquired in September and November 2025, Masterplan.com GmbH, Software-as-a-Service based e-learning platform for corporate customers and eduBITES GmbH, an AI-supported platform for the structural extraction and processing of internal companies' knowledge into digital learning formats, are specifically expanding the group's offering in the digital B2B training market with a focus and clear focus on corporate AI learning.

The companies were acquired late in the financial year, so their contribution to 2025 results were just marginal as they were consolidated on a pro rata basis according to their respective acquisition date. Having these businesses on board, it opens multiple B2B opportunities in the next years, offering our client services around skills needed no matter if a company wants to recruit or train these capabilities in the fast-changing environment we will see in the next years. As an additional information, the consolidated annual financial statements, so the final figures, including the in-detail forecast for 2026 will be published on 25th of March 2026.

So at this point in time, thanks for your attention. Happy to answer your questions now in detail. Thank you very much.

Robert, thank you very much for the overview. And now it's your turn, ladies and gentlemen, we are opening the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

And there is already one hand up from Simon Van Oppen.

So Simon, please ask your question.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

So three questions, if I may. So first one, over the past couple of years, we have seen the number of direct employees in your temporary staffing division going down. Could you please help us understand to what extent this is a function of a slowing German economy and to what other perhaps more structural factors such as regulation or AI play a role in this slowdown?

Secondly, can you please elaborate on the integration of your recent acquisitions, eduBITES and Masterplan? What do you believe is the demand for these services in a still depressed German economy? And how much do you believe these acquisitions will add in EBITA in 2026?

And then lastly, on your leverage ratio. If we include lease liabilities, then your leverage ratio somewhat peaked in Q3 at 2.5x EBITA. And what level will you have ended the year? And to what level you believe you can bring it down over the course of 2026?

Thanks, Simon, for the questions. Very interesting, 3 of them. So first one, temporary staffing in Germany. What's cycle and what's structural? So regarding temporary staffing, and this is something I'm well talking about now for some years, also at the beginning of the crisis. Temporary staffing in Germany was at a peak level, clearly before the pandemic in 2017 or 2018 of more than 1 million people in Germany employed on temporary contracts in temporary staffing. And this almost halved in the meantime.

Well, the market overall is mainly driven by blue collar. So around 85% is blue collar and technical. Nevertheless, both in blue and white collar, the numbers came down. And here, I do think it's -- actually it's a mixture. The first years, the scarcity of personnel we have had in Germany. And from my point of view, we still have in [indiscernible] a lot of skills gave pressure on temporary staffing as the first choice of employees in Germany still is a perm direct contract with the company. And it's not that popular like, for example, in the Netherlands also to be on flexible contracts.

And also the wages in temporary staffing increased over the last year significantly. So it's also a question -- an economic question, whether you want to have a flexible workforce on your belt, for example, as a production company or whether this is, in the meantime, let's say, too expensive. So I do think there's a structural element in there, and this is what we saw for many years now that in normal environment in our business, permanent placement was outperforming temporary staffing every year. So in temporary staffing over the years, there's a structural element. But obviously, the cycle also brought down demand. So a relevant part of it currently is also cycle.

Second question, integration of the 2 new companies. Well, the integration work is ongoing from my point of view because in both cases, we said it's buy and build. So that we want to leverage the opportunity we have with our broad B2B customer base and our access we have in Germany to a lot of corporate clients via our staffing business and the reputation we built up here over many years is that we are also able to market B2B training product, e-learning platform and knowledge capture and converting that internal training material is something what we can do with our sales force.

And this process we started end of the year, we onboarded our sales team on Masterplan products. Currently or just the last few weeks, we onboarded on eduBITES products. And our teams in -- throughout Germany and our branch office networks now are starting to generate leads for these 2 companies, new companies throughout our sales force. So from today's perspective, I'm quite happy how integration goes. The results as lead times and converting leads into actually logging on corporations on these platforms takes some time. We will see the upcoming months.

And last, the -- well, the leverage, I mean, obviously, with declining results, the leverage is increasing. As you realized, I haven't -- I have not given a in-detail outlook so far for 2026. But what I can say is that in '25, first, we had this one-off impact. And second, in 2026, at least in the funded training, we feel that we will find a better market condition in '26 than in '25. So some upside potential throughout the year, step-by-step kicking in over the quarters will help also with leverage. A number in detail, I would like to postpone that to give that numbers in detail when we publish the full set of results, the outlook, and I can then be more specific on that.

Okay. Thank you, Robert. May I read the question we got in from [ Josh Wool ]. First question is, what are the annualized savings expected from the EUR 6 million of restructuring expenses?

As you can imagine, it's not the full EUR 6 million, obviously, as, for example, some rental restructuring provisions for rental contracts are affecting more than 1 year. And if you lay off personnel, you also have redundancy costs, which are one-off. But in the end, annualized, it's around EUR 2 million to EUR 3 million.

Okay. And the second question, by the end of 2025, with the government releasing B2G vouchers normally, and do you expect any benefit in 2026 from the release of delayed vouchers and/or just lapping the 2025 period where vouchers were delayed?

No, I have to be very honest. I don't know what lapping means. Maybe someone can give me a translation. But the thing is that it's not that if a voucher is not issued and an unemployed person in the meantime reentered the labor market, most of the times, these vouchers when the process was not completed in 2025. It's not that we have a significant backlog in terms of delayed issuing, but the process normalized and also the budgetary situation is clear now. So it changed from a dysfunctional market mainly in first half year 2025 to a normalized market in the meantime and also budgeting security we have now for 2026. So we -- in the end, should benefit from that by increasing number of -- well, requests turning into issued vouchers, so more participants, so we can counter the declining effect we saw from the impact of the first half year's effect last year.

Okay. Yes, I think you gave the right answer, Robert. Josh just said lapping means a favorable comparison period because 2025 was negatively impacted. That's exactly what you said. Thank you very much.

We got another question on the chat room from [ Simon Pliquett ] regarding the Personnel Services. Has the cost structure now been adjusted to the current demand? Or will further adjustments be necessary if demand does not pick up? If it gets worse, how are you going to scale down the cost structure? Which office locations to close first?

Well, it is -- in the end, it's not so much about locations, but about teams. But what we do is that we -- the focus is on low performance management, and that can be an individual person, that can be a team or this can be a location and no location closed so far, and we will see how the markets will develop. One remark I want to make clear. We do -- the staffing segment is delivering a positive result. Yes, the performance is on a much lower level, and we are not happy with that, but we are earning money. So a strict management of performance, turning every penny that will continue.

And when it is about to close locations, I just want to restate, this is more about teams in specific markets, and this is what we are looking at that we keep the high-performing part of our organization, and this is what we are managing now for almost 2 years, which brought down the staffing organization from a peak level in somewhere during first half year in '24, down a little more than 20% over that period of time.

Okay. There's another question, which came in from [ Simon Pliquett ] about the impairment testing of Comcave. Is it still pending?

Well, as you wrote in our Q3 publication, we already did testing there very much in detail. And there was no impairment in the end to be done or no write-off to be done. And well, the final information regarding that, you will see in the final annual result. From Q3 -- end of Q3 perspective till today, nothing significant changed. Let's put it that way.

Okay. Next question we got is are competitors -- from [ Sascha Gerhardt ]. Are competitors currently going bankrupt or out of the market? And is the market further consolidating? I think it's meant about Personnel Services.

Yes, yes, absolutely. But it accounts for both segments, but much more as a clear B2B market for staffing. On a regional level, yes, we do know a couple of competitors left the market. On a national scale, there's no large players so far we know leaving the market, but a lot of measures taken throughout the, well, staffing landscape in Germany because what we -- what is affecting us as Amadeus FiRe is affecting also our competitors. And as you know, Amadeus FiRe is starting from probably the highest level of profitability you find in the market. So if margins were already lower of some competitors before, I do think a lot of companies do struggle more severely, which is giving us some space in these markets and what we try to gain from.

Okay. So further on, I haven't seen any hand raised. For now, we have no further questions. So I will hold the room for a moment. Feel invited to place your questions in the chat or raise your hand.

The next one is coming from [ Cedric Schwan ]. How stressed is the current financial leverage and cash flow development? How much is left within the existing credit lines? How are the covenants defined?

First, the covenants we haven't disclosed and actually we're not planning to. So this is not disclosed. But what we did is before we did the Masterplan transaction, we reviewed also our financing situation. You know probably we had a revolving credit line of EUR 100 million. And well, we increased that before to -- now it's EUR 121 million revolving credit line. And we revised also the whole details of the contracts, including covenants. And we extended the revolving credit line for another 2 years. So this agreement now lasts till end of '29, so quite some time. And within this line of EUR 121 million, we still have a lot of headroom. So well, the balance sheet is more stressed than it was in the past. But this is the situation, increased revolving line, long-lasting contract and some place to move within that credit line already.

Okay. The next question from [ Gian Hessami ] is about the analyst report from mwb research, who says that the real operating recovery is not probably before 2027. Do you think also this way?

Well, I stated already that if you just look at the operating result, we have a one-off in '25, and we have more favorable environment in the funded training environment. So for these 2 topics, I disagree. And the rest of the business, especially the B2B business, the question here is, will we be in a poor market environment, the whole year '26 or not?

I would love to have that crystal ball. I don't have it. If the sentiment turns, I do think this will have a positive impact on all our B2B activities, so mainly staffing, but also training that we -- in the end, some way will have some tailwind and performance can start to recover. Will that be in '26? Yes or no. From today's perspective, it's simply impossible to forecast that element of a recovery. So timing also depends on the development of the cycle.

Okay. So thank you very much, Robert. For now, we have no further questions.

There's another one coming from [ Simon Pliquett ]. Do you see competitors leaving the market in Personnel Services?

Yes. Yes. As I said, no large players so far, although some large players left regions, so closed certain branch offices or merged brands, for example, to focus activities in a weaker market environment. So these are developments we see on a national scale. On a regional scale, yes, there are competitors leaving the market. And here, you will find a lot of small players, so hard to check in detail who that might be. But also throughout the clients, sometimes we know whom they on a regional base work with. And if there is some movement, we are able to gain from that. So there is a certain consolidation in the market ongoing.

Okay. Thank you, Robert, very much. So if there are no further questions, thank you very much for your participation, for your interesting questions. And as Robert announced already, we will disclose the consolidated financial statements on 25th of March after the closing of trading hours at the German Stock Exchange. And there will be another conference call offered to you on the 26th of March at 8:30 Central European Time, and you are invited and you will get a separate invitation to this as well. So thank you very much for your interest today and for your lively discussion and looking forward to hear and to see you again end of March. Thank you, Robert.

So also from my side, thank you very much. Thanks for listening to my poor voice today. And thanks for being interested in Amadeus FiRe. I already said it a couple of times ago, but well, it was a tough year 2025. We all know that. And we are not happy in the end with the results we were able to deliver, but working on improving that situation every day.

I do think that we have some nice new elements in our portfolio to bring together the story of training and staffing. So to deliver corporate clients around skills, solutions that you can either recruit or you can train your staff. And I do think that the upcoming years in this changing environment and changing skill profiles corporations need, this is a good path to follow. Nevertheless, still today, we have to steer our Amadeus FiRe ship through this stormy weather, but somewhere that storm will end. So thank you very much, and bye.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's conference call of the Amadeus FiRe AG following the publication of the Q3 figures of 2025. I'm delighted to welcome the CEO, Robert Von Wulfing, who will speak in a moment and who will guide us through the presentation and the results. [Operator Instructions]

So let's dive into the numbers. Robert Von Wulfing, the stage is yours.

Thank you very much. And also from my side, a warm welcome to everybody to have a look at our development in Q3. I would like to start with some general remarks regarding the German economy to give a brief overview describing the situation where we are in. Compared to, well, also the last calls and meetings we had, the situation in Germany, I would say, is basically unchanged. It's still a challenging situation in 2025 if you're running a business in Germany. So the macroeconomic indicators remain well at a low level.

The long-lasting stagnation or recession we have in Germany is ongoing. The 2024 figures were restated. It is now minus 0.5% decline in Germany last year and '23 also was restated to minus 0.9%. So in the end, what is expected for this year is a 0.2% statistic positive development. But basically, what we see now for many, many quarters is a flatline development in Germany without momentum.

This pessimistic situation you have in Germany, well, is still leading to a reluctance to invest, decisions are delayed and the day-to-day business basically is slowed down. And the companies describe the current situation as quite negative. The outlook is improving a little. This is what is indicated in the Business Climate Index by the ifo Institute, which in September declined in October increased a little, but basically is on a continuous low level below 90 points, which is indicating a poor business environment overall.

The unemployment rate in Germany is increasing. And in Q3, we saw the first time since 2015. So 10 years ago, unemployment above 3 million people in Germany. So this is not a historic high, but since 10 years, the highest level of unemployment we currently have in Germany.

For Amadeus FiRe, some highlights before I dive deeper for Q3 or the first 9 months. So in both business segments, we continuously saw a decline in the current development in revenues and also year-on-year in earnings. In staffing, we found ourselves on a, I would say, comparable business level as what we saw in second quarter. So no positive momentum kicked in, in the third quarter. We see some signs of stabilization in the B2G Training market and a continuous positive environment for B2C trainings in Germany. Overall, the revenues are down 18% after 9 months. So we continuously work on efficiency and also on cost discipline, putting in a lot of cost measures.

We had one additional program we initiated with Comcave. We announced in August a restructuring program, and this is impacting Q3 with EUR 5.3 million restructuring accrual impacting the operating profit for this year. So following that additional effect and one-off effect we had in third quarter, the operating EBITA currently is at a level of around EUR 10 million after 9 months, clearly below prior year's figure of EUR 46.4 million after 9 months.

Overall, we are confirming our outlook, which we gave after half year in the revenue range of EUR 355 million to EUR 385 million and the operating EBITA level of EUR 15 million to EUR 25 million. And here, we specificated that we will see because of the restructuring accruals we had to build to be at the lower end of the range of EUR 15 million to EUR 25 million.

Also some good news in third quarter regarding our inorganic development. We acquired a company called Masterplan e-learning, corporate e-learning platform, a SaaS business, and I will dive deeper in that acquisition later.

Just a brief look on how the dimension is of the different segments. So around 40% currently is Training, 60% of revenues is staffing. And within staffing, you should focus more on the net revenue -- on the gross profit, sorry, and the gross profit level here indicates that permanent placement continues to be our largest service in the staffing segment.

Some remarks on the third quarter. Well, as I said, the recession is having a noticeable impact on our business and on the performance also in the third quarter. Companies are quite cautious regarding their human resources and their recruiting activities. We fear that a relevant number of positions in the meantime is left vacant, although some of them are quite necessary also for our clients to operate their business. But here, a certain backlog is developing.

In the B2G market, which is a large part of our Training business, the number of participants for the year '25 is still below prior year's level. The -- well, the activities and the interest here are improving. B2C is independent from cycles. And here, we see quite stable business. Overall, third quarter delivers a 19% decrease in revenues on prior year's level. The operating gross profit is 24% down and a clear decline in operating EBITA to EUR 3.3 million in third quarter. If you bear in mind the EUR 5.3 million of restructuring effect and adjust for that, it would have been EUR 8.3 million, which equals to an operating EBITA margin of 9.5%, so quite an acceptable level, including the restructuring, it was EUR 3.6 million.

For the full year, the picture basically in terms of the overall environment, as I said, is the same. The bottleneck of -- following the demographic change is still existing, but the current economic cycle is overlying that scarcity in human resources currently. Well, cost measures are in place and implemented to increase efficiency and to be disciplined in terms of expenditure. Nevertheless, the decrease in revenues overall of 18% this year could not be covered by these cost measures in place.

The adjusted [ EBIT ] for the periods, excluding the restructuring would have been EUR 15 million. The operating EBITA is EUR 9.7 million for the year. Just one remark on Masterplan in terms of P&L impact. The company will be included as of fourth quarter as the acquisition was end of September. So these figures are not including any Masterplan revenues or profits.

Having a look at the staffing segment and here the different services. On the left-hand side, you see the graph how the different services developed quarter-wise year-over-year. And still all 3 services, permanent placement, temporary staffing and interim project management are declining. Temp 17%, perm 33%, and interim management 15% quarter-on-quarter. So pressure remains high. The level of business is comparable to what we saw in second quarter. In temporary staffing, I would say we are bottoming out, meaning the number of assignments is not decreasing anymore, but on a low level. And in permanent placement, as in second quarter, also in third quarter, we saw a poor market environment. Overall, as expected.

The behavior of the corporate clients here in the B2B market is, as I described already in the quarters before, the number of assignments we have to work on to convert in the same number of placements is much higher, meaning a lot of processes are canceled, time to hire is much longer and also candidates turned down a higher number of offers. So the overall performance of the sales organization, although our sales consultant in average are getting more and more mature and are experienced in the staffing market in Germany, there is a performance pressure driven by the -- by clients and candidates behavior.

The underlying shortage in skilled professionals is nevertheless in place. So even in that market environment, it is not an easy part of the business to find the right candidate, especially as the corporate clients now become more and more elective and they are looking for the ideal candidate and not the basically fitting candidate.

For Q3, we resulted in a 25% decline in revenues, some percentage points more in net fees, delivering EUR 5.5 million of operating profit, still a margin above 10%, but declining from a margin of 18% in prior year. So no recovery, but stable situation in the market environment we already saw in second quarter.

For the 9 months, that delivers in the end in this segment, EUR 11.2 million operating result, 7% margin. Well, a margin -- which is not a margin we have seen in the past for Amadeus FiRe business. If you do some cross reads in the industry, a lot of companies, no matter whether it's blue collar or white collar, currently do have issues to operate their business profitable at all in Germany. A significant part of the market is loss-making from the information we receive. So we are still in the situation that we have profitable -- and clearly profitable business with 7% margin. So our strategy remains to very carefully assess replacing personnel. So our organization is declining month by month. But structurally, we keep the organization, the staffing organization in place that in a point in time in the future when the market condition is improving and business is picking up to be ready to participate in that.

Nevertheless, the whole organization, if you compare end of Q3 this year and end of Q3 last year, declined in terms of fee earners or also the whole staffing organization by around 15%. From the peak level, which we saw in Q1 last year in terms of size of organization, it's a little above 20% in the meantime that we reduced the headcount.

So let's have a look at the Training segment. Also here, in Q3, we saw a revenue development, which was somewhat more steady than what we saw in the first half year, minus 8%, but still declining also in terms of gross profit. The operating result, operating EBITA was impacted by the restructuring, I already mentioned. So instead of a profitable EUR 3.1 million result in third quarter, we have minus EUR 2 million in the books following the restructuring at Comcave. What is this restructuring? It's a significant reduction of personnel and also downsizing of the Training facilities we have.

Given lower number of participants in Training, the transition was necessary first and by doing that restructuring and also reorganizing the entity and having a new management, which we brought in some times ago, we do feel that this forms the base to regain the economic strength, but also to regain the profitability in 2026.

In September, we were able to acquire 100% of the shares of the Masterplan.com GmbH, an investment in the B2B Training market. The 9 months overall picture, let me just give you an overview of the revenue development in the individual entities we have. The Tax College is increasing in revenues by almost 10%, whereas the 2 companies in the B2G market are both declining in revenues given the difficult market environment we found here and discussed a couple of times over the last quarters of 4 points around 5% of GFN and around 20% of Comcave.

Here, the market environment is improving. We have a budget -- federal budget 2025 now. So uncertainty is out of the market and also the change in processes, how the Training vouchers are issued well, the processes are more and more established after the change and the outflow improves. So indicators here in the market are more positive than it has been in the last 3 quarters.

Some remarks on where we wanted to go in Training and also to give a picture where we put the Masterplan acquisition in. In Training, overall, there is a clear trend to use technology. The targeted clients on top of our B2C and B2G business, we wanted to establish much more business in the B2B environment. Beyond the professional trainings in IT and the commercial fields, we are also looking here for corresponding trainings like leadership, compliance, business soft skills, et cetera.

Inorganic growth is one key element of our strategy and from there forming partnerships, developing a platform or a digital training ecosystem. In this regard, for us, in the different markets we operate in and the different qualifications, we felt that we had to -- well, too big white spot in the B2B market. And here, we were quite happy to be able to achieve that acquisition in September.

So what is about Masterplan and what do we want to do with that company? It's younger than 10 years old business based in Berlin, and it's a corporate e-learning platform run as a SaaS business model. So you can license in your organization and having well a nice lock-in effect, this leads to renewable revenues in the end. The current level of business is around EUR 8 million revenues. And Masterplan is on the platform they provide is running -- as training. So you can do your trainings whenever you want. As a user of the platform, it's well, let's say, Netflix high-level, high-end content, own content of Masterplan. So it should be fun to learn.

There's a lot of third-party content integrated on top to round up the portfolio and the clients can add their individual content on the platform on top to use it as a common learning platform for the whole organization. A lot of technical elements put in like individual learning paths that you can use. So the platform is well used already in large enterprises and a lot of medium-sized businesses. Nevertheless, the addressable market overall, I would say, for corporate e-learning platforms is significant in Germany. A lot of companies surprisingly don't use a learning platform at all also of mid- and large-sized clients, potential clients.

Well, -- and loyalty in the end is generated through deep integration. So you have a nice lock-in effect here. And what's the rationale behind for us as Amadeus FiRe to acquire that company. Clearly, it's a buy-and-build case. So we have a high level of reputation and access to a lot of corporate clients throughout our sales and marketing organization already. This is something Masterplan needs, something we can provide. And over the next quarters, add clients and revenues step by step to develop already nice market position they have within the corporate e-learning platforms to even more profound market position and be one of the leading platforms here in the market. This is where we want to go together. So a platform for skills and qualifications for corporate clients in training is what we are aiming for.

Some remarks on, well, the main market drivers and the outlook '25. Value drivers for our business, despite the weak situation we are currently in, in '25 from our point of view, are intact and for both segments, well, very interesting. The limited human resources became a critical success for also in Germany over the last 10, 20 years. And we are clear here that this will continue in the next years. The shortage of qualified employees is even increasing because of the baby boomer effect we have that decade on 55 to 65 retiring currently and a lot of qualification is leaving the market. So companies are at a high level of willingness to invest in recruitment and also in qualification and retention of personnel.

The -- what is stated above, the requirements for professional qualifications will be exposed to a high level of change over the next years. So as well individuals as corporations will have the need to -- well, to requalify and upqualify their personnel or themselves as individuals. So a very interesting training environment also we find over the next years. Competitive pressure is high on the one hand side. On the other hand side, there are high regulations in. So market barriers are relevant in our segments. And finally, in the funded market, qualification will remain. This is the statement of all stakeholders, the most important labor policy instrument to answer or counteract the shortage of skilled workers. So this -- let this be the remarks on the value drivers.

The outlook, as I said, we are well confirming or renewing our outlook we already gave. So third quarter was in line with what we expected in both quarters, but also no upside was seen in third quarter. So no improvement of the overall economic climate we found in Germany in 2025. In -- at midyear, we saw quite a broad range of earnings. So far, there wasn't a market recovery. We had to do a structural adjustment by initiating a restructuring program at Comcave. So we are renewing the forecast, but we do see ourselves more in the lower part of the range than in the upper part of the range for the full year.

In staffing, well, I described what our current activity and behavior is. This will continue. And our expectations are fully unchanged compared to midyear. And in Training, the business performance also was in line with what we expected. B2G, we see a normalization, which will more impact '26 than '25 actually. So also here, focus on productivity, cost reductions and now on top of restructuring is in place. The restructuring of Comcave and the uptick in B2G, we leave the segment with a much more positive earnings outlook for '26 and a comparable year-on-year upside potential. And in B2C Training, we see the well, excellent performance this year to continue till year-end.

In numbers, this is the outlook you already know, stated in half year report and also in the 9 months report, which you can already download on our homepage to also find additional information and more details in figures, numbers and all the tables we published. Some information where you can meet Amadeus FiRe in the upcoming months. Quite busy.

And at that point, thank you very much. That was my presentation. And I'm happy to answer your questions on Amadeus FiRe business now.

[Operator Instructions] We move on to Mr. Van Oppen. You should be able to speak now. No, this is Mr. Tonn, Mr. Tonn, you are able to speak now.

Yes. And I hope you can understand me well. Basically, two questions. First would be on the Personnel Services. First, when would you, let's say, expect the dynamic to shift going into 2026? What would be, let's say, the first indication to look at? Do you expect any major tailwind perhaps from the government spending program, which has now been initiated? Or should we expect, let's say, at least the first half year to remain very challenging? And perhaps secondly, and related to that, do you see any negative impact from the weak environment on the turnover you have with the temporary staff? Or do people also tend to stay for longer with you in this segment?

Second question would be around the Training segment. Firstly, I think you already mentioned it at least to a large degree, but the payback from the Comcave restructuring, how much in savings or earnings improvement do you expect from the EUR 5.3 million you pay in 2026 already? Or do you already expect the full run rate to be achieved in 2026? And secondly, in the Training segment, do you have -- can you give us any indication on the purchase price allocation or special effects you are expecting going forward perhaps from the acquisition of Masterplan?

Okay. All right. The first part of the first question was, well, the question for the crystal ball, let's put it that way. Well, I clearly have to state here that from today's perspective, to state anything on timing, therefore, visibility actually is too low. I do think that when there will be a change, it will be not long time before foreseeable. This, I mean, more as a positive note. And I do think that the first indicator in our business will permanent placement. Also because we do feel that there are a certain number of positions pulled back because of cost measures, et cetera, and well, the situation that currently the corporations do not want to take the final decision, but that we have throughout the landscape positions, which actually are vacant, but need to be filled. And these should, in the first moment, influence more the perm placement requests.

In general, temporary staffing and permanent placement development from our point of view is more in line in terms of development than it has been historically. So I do not think that a pickup in temporary staffing would last much longer than before indicating permanent placement. Interim management is more stable in general in up and downturns.

Tailwinds because of federal spending, I think that the program quarter-by-quarter will develop a tailwind. How much that will be and when exactly we will realize the impact, we will see. But I do expect here some -- from that individual topic, some tailwind in '26, definitely. I think we need some more news to have a general change in climate than this, but very likely, this will be part then of a positive story.

Then if I understood that right, you asked about temporary staffing, whether the structure here changed. So the average duration of the assignments and also the average duration, how long temps stay with us are almost unchanged. Also the number of temps staying with the customers. So what we call the retention rate is quite stable. So no significant changes here. We have a little increase in prices, but a relevant part of that is, I would say, now also a shift in qualifications. So the higher qualified profiles are more requested than lower qualified profiles. So it's not wage inflation only. Wage inflation came down from our point of view.

So this is on the staffing part, on the Training part, -- what was it the restructuring? Well, it will not fully materialize the whole accrual in '26, but a large part of it, but some is one-off and some is longer-lasting impacts, but a relevant part of it, plus the market environment and also what we initiated in terms of, well, improved organization, improved management structure should deliver additional performance. So we see a clear step-up compared to this year's level.

And last was PPA on Masterplan. This is already -- you will find that in the report, it's EUR 13 million. So we have -- we don't have the profit in, but in the balance sheet, you already find the Masterplan impacts in the interim statement.

And we move on to the next participant, Mr. Van Oppen.

Maybe you have to unmute or something.

[Operator Instructions] Well, then we try and move on to questions in our chat box. And there is one, how are you testing your underlying core thesis, there's a skill shortage, what if there never was a skill shortage. But there was underinvestment in digitalization in the past. German employers just use more people rather than digitalizing their processes. Now with AI and cost pressure on HQ jobs, they no longer can do that. And the real skill demand is much lower. For example, no shortage. If you came to this conclusion, what would you do?

I don't come to that conclusion. So it's a different topic. So what if there is no shortage, I don't think so. We have clear and severe shortage seen for 10 or 15 years. And it was not that 10 or 15 years, there was no digitalization at all. If you, for example, take the field of accounting where we have quite market insights, the automatization, digitalization and the improvement of processes over the last 10, 20 years was significant and the number of accountants increased every year by a CAGR of 2%, quite stable, unchanged till -- well, the latest figures we hear was '23 or '24.

So yes, before the AI discussion, will AI or technology take out some pressure here and replace tasks? Yes, I absolutely agree. We need desperately some counter initiatives in terms of performance to overcome the situation of scarcity that will help, but that will not change the situation short term.

So at least midterm, my picture here is unchanged. But AI and technology will help the overall economy maybe to gain momentum. For me, this is another element on top of what we already discussed, for example, of the public spending next year. We need some additional performance and improvement of climate, and there are skills needed still from humans.

We try again to connect with Mr. Van Oppen, you should be able to speak now and place your question. Otherwise, I will read it out because Mr. Van Oppen places his question again in our chat box, but Mr. Van Oppen, you should be able to speak to us.

Well, then I will read the question out in our chat box. Why is the situation at Comcave so much more negative. Then at GFN, they are both B2G Training businesses previously. You mentioned the limited visibility of Comcave on the government websites to play a role, but you no longer seem to refer to that. Is this still the case? Or how should we look at this difference?

So Simon, yes, you're right. This is still the case. This is impacting -- or impacted the business. Clearly, the effect started in May, June 2024 and the full year impact is seen in the first 3 quarters this year. The effect will fade out the next quarters. Therefore, we did not restate it again, but this is the main reason for the difference.

And the second part, can you also please talk about the exit rate of B2G Training businesses? What developments are you seeing in the first few weeks of Q4?

I'm not sure whether I understand the question what you mean with exit rates. We have more participants entering the Training following a higher level of interest over the last weeks already, which will transfer in an increasing number of participants over the next weeks -- sorry, months and quarters. Exit rate general is low, at least before a measure ends. So no specific KPI we have here.

Mr. [ Friedmann ] is asking, can you elaborate on synergies the Masterplan acquisition brings for your existing business?

What I tried to point out is, yes, top line synergies. Well, there are some other minor topics like we can use it as our learning platform, the same as our clients. So some elements here. And we also can use some skills in terms of content creation and others in the Training segment overall. But the main idea is to have here first an additional channel also for our other businesses, Training businesses to promote their content.

But the most relevant topic is that here, the buy-and-build idea is that we can use our access to a large number of corporate clients, small, mid- and large caps in Germany. We do have the direct contact with the relevant HR or general management roles to accelerate their sales activities. And this is just now starting. First indications are very positive. It's a good part of the sales story we have within our staffing teams to deliver additional value around the qualifications we are dealing with in commercial and IT. And the synergy here is the acceleration of the Masterplan business by using the sales power of the Amadeus FiRe Group overall.

And another question in our chat box. Please let us know the criteria for the earn-out of Masterplan and why does it have such a higher debt?

The earn-out is related to challenging revenue targets the next 3 years, first. And second, well, so far, the company quite typically developed technology and developed high-end and high-volume content over the last years. And therefore, they needed funding and accelerated debt. So that was the balance sheet situation we found. They were loss-making in the past. They are well at a neutral result currently. And from next year on, we see a nice path in profitability as the SaaS model and the licenses you can sell, should well accelerate and deliver revenues and then also the corresponding results. But the debt is from building up the business in the past.

And we move on to one question we already have in our chat box. Do you see any segments or categories of employees where AI is impacting demand on staffing?

Yes. It's more that there are some which are maybe not that much impacted, but this is not in our fields of qualifications. I think every single -- if you -- typically our -- the roles we serve, you find in corporate headquarters in the different functions. And every job role will be impacted by AI in the upcoming years. There will be new skills required. There will be new profiles, full job profiles, which will be implemented over the next years on one hand side and certain tasks will be replaced by technology. So what we will have securely will be an environment of change and adjustments in terms of the qualification mix and requirements you have throughout the roles we are serving, and that will influence our business.

And we have one upcoming question. Can you please go back to midterm strategic orientation in more...

This is just the Training slide. Overall, the picture midterm, I tried to elaborate on the value drivers we have, the -- Training you will find here. So in Training, it is about, well, building up a Training ecosystem throughout different markets and the different qualifications and additional Training content we serve and accompanying our staffing portfolio. In staffing, the midterm goal remains organic growth, regain the profitability level we were used to or at least a major part of it. If you have a look at the level of conversion of net fees or gross profit in operational result, we are in this environment currently on a significant lower level than what you saw in the past.

A good part of that decrease in a normalized -- not in a perfect, but in a normalized market environment, we are sure to regain. And then from that higher level, we can continue our organic and very profitable growth path in staffing, accompanied with what I already stated here in Training. So this is the midterm orientation.

And in the meantime, we have received no further questions. I'll wait a few seconds. But if everything seems to be clear by now, we, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining and the lively conversation. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Mr. Jorg Peters from Investor Relations. A big thank you to you, Mr. Robert Von Wulfing, for your presentation and for the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining week.

And with this, I hand over again to Mr. Von Wulfing for some final remarks.

Thank you very much. From my side, well, thanks for taking part in that conference call. As I said, we will continue until the end of the year to push back the difficult environment we are in and gain ground to end the year successful and to start in a more positive 2026 with a lot of opportunities, but still a very low visibility in terms of what change can we, in fact, expect in Germany. But some momentum we will see. I do think market-wise, first and second, we have an improved environment in the Training already. So well, 2026 then should be a year of gaining background and taking some steps forward.

With this, I want to close the call. Thank you very much, and hope to see you soon in person. Bye.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and I warmly welcome you to today's conference call of the Amadeus FiRe AG following the publication of the Q2 and first half year figures of 2025.

I'm delighted to welcome CEO, Robert Von Wulfing, who will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. And after his presentation, we will move on with the Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly to him.

So having said this, Mr. Von Wulfing, I hand over to you.

Well, thanks, Sara. Good morning, everybody. Yes, I would like to give you some information about half an hour, I would say. And afterwards, I'm happy to answer your Q&A. I want to do a presentation, but starting with some upfront remarks regarding, well, the overall situation and our situation throughout the first 6 months of the year.

So 2025 is really a year of tough challenges for the German economy, for the Staffing segment, for our training markets and for us as Amadeus FiRe Group. The economic environment is characterized by uncertainty, caution and by structural changes.

The impact on our business is noticeable. Revenues and earnings are significantly below the previous year level, which means we will not be able to meet our initial expectations, something I have to say, we absolutely wanted to avoid. The whole Amadeus FiRe Group is addressing this situation in a very focused and determined manner with a clear focus on further strengthening our market position in the upcoming periods and years.

We specifically invest in the future in digital learning formats in AI-supported CRM systems, the ongoing development of our IT infrastructure and the establishment of our own educational ecosystem, or better said, an ecosystem around certain qualifications, commercial and IT, what we are focusing on now for years. These steps reflect our commitment to actively shape the future and exploiting opportunities even in this challenging environment.

The second half of the year, we expect an improvement in our operations and results compared with the first half year, but driven by seasonal factors, cost measures and some slight signs of stabilization in the public funded training business. I will come to that later.

Nevertheless, 2025 remains a crisis year. For us, also, as published last week already, we did adjust our forecast and now expect an operating EBITA of around EUR 20 million, significantly lower than our guidance beginning of the year.

Our strategy remains unchanged, organic growth in both segments, complementary inorganic or acquisitional growth in Training. With our broad customer base, strong brands and with the committed team we have, we are confident and well positioned to emerge stronger from this weak situation and from the current earnings crisis, we are definitely in. So this is kind of the situation I would describe we are in.

And now let's dive deeper in the results half year. Just wait a second. I have to reinsert the other side. Well, the overall picture of the German economy, you all know very well. Yesterday, we received the information that we had a decline in second quarter compared to first quarter again and a 0.0 growth year-on-year. So the weak situation simply is ongoing. There might be some indicators for future improvement. Business Climate Index is slightly improving, but on a very low level. And for me, also the situation that we received new information on the tariff situation is independently from the level of future tariffs is at least an opportunity that we have kind of a more stabilized and more visible situation for corporations. But as it is just a few days, too early to state. But what we know from clients the last month is that every client operating internationally was on full brakes regarding decision-making processes and investments in the future as long as this situation remained unsolved.

The highlights in first half year in a nutshell, and I will dive deeper later is that in the Personnel Services segment, we found ourselves in Q2 even on a lower level compared to Q1, something we actually did not expect, and this also has an impact on the upcoming quarters, the lower level. We saw, as we stated, an improvement in March in some of our services. But this momentum did not continue in the second quarter, and we found ourselves even on a lower level.

Also some market turbulences in the B2G Training segment, I will dive into later, resulting in a decreasing number of participants and this impacting revenues and earnings. So our EBITA margin deteriorated for the first half year to 3.4%, a level, actually, we are not used to.

Earnings per share at the level of EUR 0.12 for the first half year. So as I already stated, we saw the need to inform the market already last week that based on that results for the first half year, we had to adjust our forecast, as stated. Also in second quarter, the dividend payout following the AGM took place EUR 4.03 per share.

The business development in the second quarter 2025. Overall, we saw a roughly 20% revenue decrease, a 25% net fee or gross profit decrease, resulting in a significant decline in our operating EBITA of around 85%. So this was based on the overall economic situation, which led in both segments to a lower-than-expected Q2.

In the Staffing segment, the ongoing decline of companies in decision-making process in their willingness to hire in the time-to-hire period of time and also the increasing reluctance of potential candidates to change jobs is slowing down the business and is, well, negatively influencing the performance level of the branch office organization.

In the B2G Training segment, we had an insecure situation around federal budgets. We had some changes in the regulatory environment, how to proceed training vouchers and the already known effects regarding visibility of our product portfolio.

For the full half year, the revenue declined 17.5%, gross profit more than 20% down and the operating EBITA close to 80% below prior year's level.

Also for the full half year, it's the same like for the first -- for the second quarter where these effects increased, but the pressure on Staffing and B2G Training were the reason in regards of top line pressure. We did some investments still in our, well, forward-looking activities, digital transformation, future learning platforms. So there were some expenditures we had to take. Nevertheless, significant cost savings measurements are in place and will have -- they already have an impact, but they will have an increasing impact over the turn of the year, so in the second half year.

Depending on the near-term development, and here, I'm talking about week-by-week monitoring of the situation, we do have additional measures planned and as backup, ready to execute depending on the situation development. So in the second half year, not from a change in the overall climate of the economy, but from the seasonal factors from cost measures. And in terms of B2G Training from stabilization in the market, we expect higher results in second half year than in first half year.

Before diving deeper in both segments, this is an overview of the current set and split in revenues and gross profit. So here, quite transparently, permanent placement is still the most important service we have in our Staffing portfolio. And the most stable service, interim project management, unfortunately is a lower part of our business. So the more solid performance here is not really covering the weakness we see in temporary placements or temporary staffing and permanent placement. I should say temporary staffing here.

So in the Personnel Services segment, this is the overall development over the quarters, last 2 years. I want to show you this broad view to see that in the recession year of 2023, following significant growth in 2022, not in Germany, but with the Amadeus FiRe business, we saw still growth especially in permanent placement. And we also entered 2024 still on a quite solid level with slight decreases in another year of a recession. But then the development accelerated and the behavior of the clients became more and more cautious, as you can see quarter-by-quarter.

All 3 services lost momentum. And in Q2 in temporary staffing and permanent placement, we see a clear decline on a year-on-year comparison.

In top line, you see also the billable days. Just as a remark, in Q2, we saw 59 days. We were able to charge time to customers in Training and in Staffing in the temporary services. And in Q3, you normally have like 65, 66 days. This year, 66. So this 7 days alone will deliver additional profitability in comparison to second quarter in an unchanged market environment.

So temporary staffing at a net fee level of EUR 18.4 million. In the meantime, what we do not see is any change in behavior of customers. The demand level is decreasing or decreased now for a couple of quarters. And we do not see a counterreaction of clients in times of uncertainty and recession to cover perm vacancies with temp requests.

In permanent placement, parallel development under pressure. But for both services also counts that we still find quite a level of demand decreasing, but the level of demand that we have a well-utilized organization, but the performance or the conversion of requests and placements is at a low level currently. So even the shortage of skilled workers in Germany remains a factor for both the services. But that factor is pushed back compared to the last year's by the client behavior and the lower level of demand and conversion.

Interim management saw a slight decline in second quarter, but still stable compared to the rest of the market.

In figures, revenue in second quarter, down 24%. And net fee, the even more significant KPI in Staffing by 28%, resulting in an earnings decline of 65%. This net fee level we saw and the service -- the performance of the services were on a lower level than we saw in the first quarter. The weakness we anticipated, but the additional decline was, for us, not expected in our forecast. So what I stated in the last line and touched before, although we have the shortfall in skills in the labor market, this is increasingly or was increasingly in second quarter back again, overweighted by the economic risks the clients saw and I would call it, a parallelization of the market and the behavior of the participants in the market.

And this is the picture for the overall half year, net decline of 25%. Compared with the previous year, the number of our fee earners, how we call it, the sales consultant in the Staffing organization is down by 14%. So we are very carefully replacing vacancies following fluctuation, and there's also a certain pressure on performance at low performing end, as you can imagine. But structurally, the Staffing organization, the branch office organization of 22 branch offices throughout Germany is in place. And in that regard, unchanged. We need that organization in an improving environment to ramp up the business back again. And currently, we are not planning to touch that.

So strict cost management is currently, well, the day-to-day business. There are still IT investments made. Here also cost measures are in place, but that means that the increase of the IT expenses will not take place as planned initially. But the investments in the future setup for us, organizations, is ongoing despite the crisis.

Now I would like to touch on the Training segment. Also here, in second quarter, we saw a very disappointing situation, a loss making quarter. So 15% in revenues, 20% in gross profit and a negative result of EUR 0.9 million. Main reason is the major part of our Training business, the B2G market. And here, we had 3 phenomenons touching our operating -- of our operations and 2 of these developed, well, more negative than anticipated. So the pressure we saw in second quarter was increasingly higher than we saw at the beginning of the year.

What are the 3 phenomenons? First, as of 1st of January, we saw a change in responsibility regarding the issuing of training vouchers from the job centers in Germany to the employment agencies to different organizations. And that was a regulatory change. So the governmental institutions had to change their processes.

We knew that, and we anticipated some ramp-up, well, period of time to initiate these processes, but it takes longer than expected. Now we have this signals at midyear in the market that it is now starting to work, but it took a longer time, and it was differently handled in specific regions. So we saw some regional, well, stuck situations in the issuing of employment vouchers because of that change.

Second is that -- also at the beginning of the year following the initiation of the new coalition in Germany, we expected that before the summer break we would have an agreed federal budget for 2025. Not next year, but this year. Here, it also came to additional discussions, and we do not have federal budget so far for the current year. It is planned now for September, October combined with 2026 budget. So that means that basically, throughout the whole year, the public vendors do not have a secure situation. And all activities, well, are burdened by that situation.

Another factor which, well, gave struggle in the market and led to a declining number of people receiving training vouchers, although we have an increasing number of unemployed people in Germany.

And the last, but very expected and anticipated factor, but still in place is that and you know that from meetings we had before, that the visibility of the large players is -- was limited last year by some regulatory changes in the terms and conditions. So despite an underlying positive momentum in a countercyclical market with an increasing number of unemployed people, for that 3 reasons, the market is not performing alongside. And this leads to an increasing gap in the number of our participants and this throughout the whole year.

Well, long story, but as this is a very important factor for the current situation, I wanted to try to explain it that excessively.

So Comcave and GFN saw a more-than-expected decline in the top line or impact on the top line. And although we implemented additional cost measurements that did not offset these effects.

At the bottom of the table, you see the development in the 3 subsidiaries. So in the B2C market, where the Tax College is doing most of the business, we see a positive development and increasing revenues. The pressure comes from GFN and Comcave due to the reasons mentioned above with declining revenues.

For the first half year, basically the same picture. As the development accelerated, you see here a 10% or 11% revenue decline, 17% in gross profit and a small positive result for the first half year of EUR 0.7 million.

Same in the relation of the revenue development. So a positive growth in B2C and the Tax College environment. GFN for the full half year still on a small growth figure, and a decline of Comcave College business.

So the declining result basically follows the top line pressure we have. Some investments we still do in our technology and learning platforms. We adjusted the size of the training organization, but this is not covering the decline of participants. It is not that fast reacting if you have a training organization in place to handle higher number of participants than you actually do have.

As we still have the goal to unorganically grow also our Training segment and to additional business development, we continued that in that challenging situation and also allocated some resources here in the preparation of potential acquisitions.

One other information in the Training segment is that in Q2, there was an option executable to own 100% of GFN in the end before we had a 25% minority shareholder in. So that option was executed and now we have the ownership of 100% of GFN that was done in second quarter in -- actually in April or beginning of May.

One statement on the dividend payment as it was in second quarter. I mentioned it already in the beginning that in May, following the AGM, we paid out EUR 4.03 per share and executed for the third year, the current dividend policy of a payout ratio of 67% or 2/3 of our earnings per share.

I want to briefly touch also our business drivers we have in Staffing and Training and want to point out that the underlying drivers for our business are, from our point of view, intact, if you take out the sentiment and regulatory factors that we see in the current market situation depressing our earnings capability. So high competitive pressure, but also strictly regulated in Germany and the shortage of qualifications and skills as a very critical success factor for corporations in Germany, which will -- well, even the labor market will even more tighten by the demographic development with the baby boomers. And also in terms of qualifications needed, I think, also for technical reasons or development in technology, AI, et cetera, the skill sets will change. There will be a lot of qualification needs, and this is also in terms of the view of the government and all other stakeholders in the market, the most important labor market policy instrument for unemployed people, to up- or reskill them.

So in midterm, the willingness to invest in recruitment and qualification and retention of personnel will be a key driver in Germany. And we have increasing market entry barriers by the need of processes, infrastructure and technology, I would also say, increasing. And Amadeus FiRe Group from our point of view with a unique portfolio of the comprehensive 2 segments of Staffing and Training is very well positioned to gain from that development.

But for the moment now, as stated and here some explanations, we had to adjust the outlook based on the lower-than-expected second quarter and the projection from that business level for the end of the year. We saw the need to do so. What we also did on a group level is that we even broadened the range of the earnings expected. The reason here for is in trans fee, but that means also potential -- upside potentials or market recovery and fiscal stability, unlocking some potential on the one hand side. And on the other hand side, also the -- well, the counterpart of their developments to have an ongoing uncertainty. And also what I said on a, well, basically week and monthly view, potential structural adjustments could do if the business is not picking up.

So in Staffing, as I said, the projection is that the year-end targets will not be met. And that we will -- the assumption is that we will see no recovery in 2025. So no turnaround this year, and focus, focus, focus on improving efficiency and implementing also all the cost-saving measures we started and will have in place over the year, having in the end a smaller, but efficient and, well, intact organization to gain from a turning market, which somewhere we will see.

And Training segment, well, also below expectations. Therefore, in the outlook, an adjustment. Here, we do see a normalization of the market environment. The current situation is that we will have a federal budget in September, October. The processes start to be in place after the shift from the job centers to the agencies. And the ramp-up of participants is starting, but it will take some time that these revenues will come through and they are on a lower level than we anticipated before.

Cost measures, as I said, in place. And depending on the further development, additional measures might be initiated in terms of adjusting the training organization to the current level of participants.

B2C, positive. We will achieve our goals. B2B, smaller part of the business will remain under pressure. Here, the B2B business, the same drivers account like for the Staffing segment. Here, we have some potential from products around technology, AI, et cetera, where the demand currently is picking up in the market despite of the overall environment, and we have also some products in our portfolio to gain from that.

This all ends. This is describing the change of our forecast compared to the one we made before. Here in comparison to prior year level, a 15% decrease in revenue is what we expect. A significant decrease in earnings by around 65% to around EUR 20 million for the group. And well, in both segments also significant declines. We will see more earnings in the second half year than in first year for the reasons I described, but not a fundamental change in the situation for 2025.

Just to let you know, we are -- I'm of the opinion being, well, also in charge for sales organization, if the market is not good, you have to be out at the customer. This is why we not only have this discussion currently, and I'm happy to answer your questions in a minute, but also try to be out presenting ourselves at several conferences in the second half of the year.

You will find here maybe some conferences you participate in and can ask for slots. Investor Relations is happy to address your needs if you want to see us in person or one-on-one any time.

This would be my presentation. Now Sara, back to you as a moderator, initiating the Q&A session.

Thank you so much for handing over, Robert, and thank you for the presentation and the dive into your first half year. [Operator Instructions] And having said this, we received the first hand, and yes, Andreas Wolf, you should be able to speak now.

I have the following ones. So Robert, you said that basically the employee structure will remain intact to be ready for a market recovery. What is the corresponding employee number and cost level that we should calculate with just to be able to better assess a possible earnings trough?

And the second question is also related to Personnel. Have there been any severance payment in the quarter during the half year that might not reoccur going forward? Or will there be such payments in H2?

The third question is related to Training. Could you comment on the effectiveness of the measures that Amadeus has taken to improve visibility after the new portal launch of Mindnow?

And the fourth is obviously related to the dividend. You've mentioned that -- or repeated that the dividend policy is paying out 2/3 of EPS. If I look at cash flow, especially after rental payments, I would assume that Amadeus might have to pay this dividend from the substance. Is this a correct view? And what would be the implications for the dividend payment?

Thanks, Andreas. So first, I'm not 100% sure. I think I asked about -- you asked for the Staffing organization. And here, the decline in the head count of the fee earners is 14%. The overall head count, this is including some additional roles in the branch office organization is 15%. What I said is that we structurally keep the organization in place, but we have a lower head count. Well, as long as the situation remains as we see the current situation, this step-by-step decline in the overall number of employees in the Training organization will continue. But we will not adjust the organization in terms of closing down branch offices or closing, well, certain service segments or qualification segments, meaning accounting, office, IT, we are in. So structurally, we will keep our position here in place.

This partly answers also your question on additional payments made in the first half year. There was no restructuring in -- neither in Staffing nor in Training. So nothing, let's say, significant. Sure, you always have some of these payments. They are also on a slightly higher level than in normal times, but not significantly.

What I said regarding second half year, regarding the measures we take and have, well, prepared, depending on the overall development, there might also -- there might be activities like that, like you mentioned, and that we will have then additional payments to be made.

Measures regarding visibility. Well, I would say, dozens of measures. So that would, in the end, mean dive deep improvement of alternative channels, optimizing the offering to the Mindnow or Cosnet channel, initiatives on conversion rates, initiatives on how to address the interested person and get access to unemployed directly.

So well, it's a broad range. We also did some market talks actually, realizing that what we are talking about is something the large players, in general, face. And we try to address that continuously also with the employment agencies representatives. But we do not concretely expect a rollback or another change in the terms and conditions. At least this is nothing we would plan on.

And latest dividend policy, well, it is -- what is it, 2 months ago that we did the payment. Regarding the cash flow, it is as we are, well, good converting free cash from operational results. The situation, as you mentioned, that cash generation is at a lower level than we saw that in normal times. But no decisions made so far and that early in the year regarding a potential policy for the next moment in time that we have to discuss that at the AGM. We are always looking carefully at capital allocation. So nothing to state currently on future dividend payments actually, Andreas.

So then we have a further virtual hand from Simon Van Oppen.

This is Simon Van Oppen from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question on the Personnel Service segment. Can you please help me understand how the client sentiment has evolved from the second quarter into the third quarter? Has it improved slightly or has it deteriorated further? I'm also curious what your clients are saying about their hiring appetite, especially with upcoming stimulus package in mind.

I think the upcoming stimulus package you mentioned is still too abstract. So yesterday, I heard an interview of the, well, head of the lobbying organization for construction industry. And they are facing currently not functional outflow of public funds from the existing budgets and the not yet taking place initiation of the extra budget everybody is expecting to see outflows from in the near future. So here also, in client behavior, we do not see a change. And that accounts for, well, the beginning of the third quarter in general. We haven't seen any worsening of the situation so far. So first months, well, should be -- it's not done, but should be in line with April to June.

What we saw, and this is also what we based our expectations on, so no change in behavior, but neither in a positive way. Clients are -- remain cautious. They start to talk about backlogs. They also have in vacancies, but they are addressing not the market so far with this potential vacancies they do have. So our assumption is here that we will not see in our Staffing market an extra stimulus in the second half year. Well, from my point of view, in the end, latest in '26, but for second half year, we haven't.

Okay. And then maybe a question on the Training segment. In your H1 results, you mentioned you expect a moderate increase in enrollment figures for the second half. Shouldn't we not expect more an acceleration given that the allocated budgets are still significantly higher for this year?

That might take place, Simon, but that will just partly affect 2025 and would -- but would deliver nice momentum in 2026. So basically, we are a little bit running out of time that these vouchers are granted. The training is starting and delivering additional revenues. We will -- as I said, we do foresee a pickup and a improving situation. But as we are on a lower level at this point in time of the year, this is, in the end, not changing the struggling picture of 2025.

Thank you so much for your questions. So in the meantime, we did not receive any further questions. So ladies and gentlemen, just let us know if there are still open topics you would like to discuss with Robert. So let's wait a couple of seconds. But to me, it seems there are no further questions. So I assume everything appears to be answered. And with this, we will come to the end of today's conference call. So thank you, everyone for joining and you showing interest. And a big thank you also to you, Robert, for your presentation and your time for answering the questions. All the best for the second half of the year. It was a pleasure to be your host today. And I hand back to you for some final remarks.

Well, first, thanks, Sara. And second, thanks, everyone, for being part of that presentation.

As I said in the beginning, what happened in the first half year and in the outlook we had to give is something we wanted to avoid, that we have to adjust for 2025. But this is what we did and needed to do. I think we are well prepared, and we are working heavily on, well, changing the situation. The moment in time the markets will support us a little better, the earnings capability will, in fact, increase of Amadeus FiRe. And this is actually what we are on a day-to-day basis and heavily work on.

So thanks for being with us. And looking forward, the next quarters to present somewhere a turning situation. Thank you very much.