CENIT Aktie

A warm welcome to the Q1 Earnings Call 2026 of CENIT AG. I would like to welcome the company's CEO, Martin Thiel; and CFO, Johannes Fues, who will guide us through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat. And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Fues.

Yes. Good morning. Good morning from Stuttgart. Today, Martin and I are going to present you the Q1 figures. And yes, this means that it's not going to be only me, it's Martin and myself. And why don't you say a word, Martin?

Yes. Good morning. Also a warm welcome from my side. Actually, I'm the new kid on the block here in the group now, just the beginning. I joined CENIT 33 years ago. To introduce myself shortly, I have a background as a mechanical engineer focused on production systems. So spent most of my business life around PLM, but also during the last couple of years in the enterprise information business unit.

Actually the first 14 years in my CENIT career were linked to sales management tasks, and then I spent 14 years heading our Dassault Systemes business line, growing that business to a unit of over EUR 100 million revenue and actually more than 350 people at that time.

And then the last 5 years, I spent most of my time in our M&A team. So I guess, I have a pretty good understanding of what CENIT is doing. And actually, it's a pleasure today to be here.

Johannes, back to you.

Yes. The pleasure I can only return and say, you've been a very important part of my personal onboarding last year. And yes, we're going to comment on the rest later. Let me give you the management summary before we dive deeper into each of the topics.

Yes, let me start with the financials. This is a quarter that we have seen a stable top line. Important to us is that's a 100% organic business development. So everything you see is just the business as we have it. There is no M&A effect.

The thing that is even more important to me is, and then I think looking at the numbers, you've seen that yourself, is our improvement in the profitability. We are EUR 7.5 million up. We have a very strong quarter as far as the first -- the best first quarter in the year that I found in the books. EUR 5 million, 9.6% EBITDA margin in Q1. This is really -- it's been a very good start into the year.

All indicators point in the right direction, and we're going to come into that in more detail. Obviously, this is just one quarter, and we have to keep on working on that, but it's a good start.

On the operating business, the nice part is that we see a very fresh momentum in the customer demand. Our order backlog is up 11.5%. This is good. We are on track with our internal organizational transformation. What do we mean by the value orientation? It's focusing on the unified segment identity, is the operational excellence, is the customer orientation in innovation and new solutions. That's on track, and we like that.

And last but not least, we have the U.S. acquisition stabilized, is back on track. You're aware that we don't do any country reporting at that point. But since we have commented a lot on this acquisition, it's worth noting that it is, as I said, stable.

So this, all in all, brings us to the point to say we look very confident into the next quarters. There is no news to the guidance. I've heard people saying that it's ambition guidance. I call it not shy if we say we tend to increase our EBITDA by 46%. This quarter shows how we're going to do this. And yes, that's why there is nothing to add here.

Let me go a little deeper in the finance part and the financials. On the top line, you see a quite stable development. As I said, it's 100% organic. We are close to 2% up in the revenues. We have an improvement in the gross profit, close to 60% now. And if you see not only this year-by-year comparison, but if you follow CENIT for longer time, then you see that we are very much improving over the years towards 60% and better.

And how we do this? The answer is really in the business mix. And so we put up this in more detail. The business mix for one thing is the sales by the segment. You know that we report in 2 segments, and we've seen a very strong start at the EIM segment with the colleagues being 6% -- 6.6% up versus prior year. That's been a very good start.

And we've seen that in the PLM segment, our big segment, we see a stable development with a very good pipeline and good customer leads, and Martin is going to comment on that later. So there is more to come.

And really the secret, so to say, about the gross margin improvement is what we see in the business mix on the left. You see that particularly our consulting and services and the CENIT software are up, which is a very nice thing. And these are the parts that really drive the value of our business model.

Johannes, maybe I can add some information here. So just to repeat this, Q1 was a solid start. How come? If you look to the consulting and service business, we see that we were able to increase that business by roughly 4%. And deep inside you also recognize, if you look to our reporting of last year, that we are doing actually more services with less people.

So the reduction, what we call it performance program that we initiated last year first quarter, led to a decrease in our staff of roughly 80 people. So we were able to push to increase the services and actually do more with less people, and that is a main contributor to our services.

And you see this in both segments, Enterprise Information Management as well as PLM. So there's only a small increase in the PLM numbers. However, we are doing nearly the same or a little bit more than last year with significantly less people.

Also remarkable for me is what we see in CENIT software. So if we look deeper inside CENIT software, we see now that nearly 18%, 1-8 percent, of our software is now driven by our own AI-powered solutions. So that is, let's say, gaining a momentum that is significant now. We can measure it, which is close to 20%. That is something we are proud. And we saw a strong growth year-over-year by nearly 50% in that AI-driven own solutions.

And you know that we are talking about agentic AI on the one hand side, meaning to improve business processes, that is something where we tackle mainly in the enterprise information business area with own solution, and that is paying off now.

Our investments that we took that is coming along also with our engagement in our daughter company, ISR, where in the PLM segment, that is not so much what we call agentic AI, but rather physics AI or industrial AI. That is a kind of, let's call it, AI augmented solution.

It's not AI-driven, but AI augmented and that requires the deep integration into these platforms that we are actually trying to push with our strong partnerships here in that business. Third-party software, it's somehow, let's say, stable, small churn that we see here. Actually, nothing to worry about.

What we see is a move from the traditional PLC, ALC business towards SaaS business. Actually, so far, in a total mix, we were able to compensate the churn in the ALC basis, and we will follow this very closely in the future, but we are confident here towards the outlook.

Johannes, back to you.

Yes. Let me give you one more content on the improvement itself. Obviously, you know that the '25 numbers were still impeded by the restructuring effects. And although we've seen a very strong quarter, Q3, Q4, last year, I think Q1 is the one that you really see that visible without any one-offs, without any special effect, so to say.

So it's a pleasure to just really guide you through that bridge and tell you how we actually came about to increase our EBITDA by EUR 7.5 million.

Obviously, you know that the last year's quarter included a one-off, the EUR 3.3 million you see here, which is, for those who are following us for a longer time, part of the EUR 4 million one-off we also communicated in the past. So the majority of that was happening actually in the first quarter. That is something you can offset.

And that starts the actual beauty of the concept where you have a performance improvement in the U.S. business, as I said, last time that I'm actually reporting on that, but the news to you is it's back on track. We are better than last year.

And the major column that I want to have you look at it is actually the performance improvement in the core business. That's a net position, but it's mainly fueled by the reduction and optimization in the cost base. Martin just said that we are 8% down on the HR side. We are still doing more business in the same time frame. So that is a very, very good news. We like to see that.

And yes, that brings us actually to the EUR 5 million, or if you put it in margin, 9.6% EBITDA margin, which I deem very, very good. That's why we're satisfied and confident as we go forward. Yes, going through tables is not a very sexy thing.

So let me just highlight the ones that I do think are really good. I've been talking about the EBITDA. I've done that. The EBIT also is a number that is really, really strong. It's EUR 8 million up versus prior year.

The net bank debt you see on the right, we're down to less than EUR 5 million. So this is -- obviously, we have a very strong operating cash flow that is up 18% versus prior year. So that gives us a very, very stable balance sheet structure. That's something that I want to put the emphasis on that is really good to see.

The total equity and the equity ratio are in a good thing. I mean, obviously, the equity ratio is hit by a longer balance sheet but only 1%. The total equity is positive as we go ahead and as we are positive with our business, we're starting from there and increase the equity still in the next quarters and years. So that is what we like.

The cash flow, as I said, operating cash flow very strong in Q1 traditionally and even stronger than last year in the same time frame. We really like to see that. And yes, brings me to the more operating part. The order backlog is up 11% to close to EUR 99 million. And that kind of leads me to hand it over to you, Martin, to go to our operational update.

Yes, for sure. Let's just wait one slide. I think, okay, here we are. Perfect. So as Johannes mentioned, the order backlog improved from EUR 88 million to EUR 98 million. That's good. That's significant. Again, that's solid. It's nothing to be enthusiastic about. We need to stabilize this in the upcoming quarters.

How come? Again here, this is a result of our focus of refocusing to our strengths. On the one hand side, to tackle bigger tickets at customer side. So we are bidding in bigger opportunities, which actually comes with a longer sales cycle. That is also part of the reality. However, we see that this now pays off and that we are able to close significant orders that are multiyear.

So one example is a 2-years contract that we were able to close in Q1 with a total order volume of EUR 3.2 million for services that we deliver over 2 years. That's the famous German truck and bus OEM in Bavarian that you might know without being able to name this customer or to disclose this customer.

Then also a different industry where we position that's actually a leader in modular buildings. You know that with the infrastructure program of the German government, a lot of companies position in that area. So that's a total different industry.

However, this industry likes process or experience in processes to copy experience from automotive and also aerospace industry that is actually where we can bring our expertise. And this company closed a 3 years contract with us.

That's a SaaS model where the company is investing in total an amount of more than EUR 800,000 over 3 years with a ramp-up period to actually deploy more than 100 users of the Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE platform. And that is also for us a good sign to diversify into different industries with our knowledge.

And third example with a total different industry again. However, also based on the SaaS model and here again, with our own AI platform, Buildsimple in a segment that we call intelligent data processing. Here, we are able -- or we were able to close an order volume of EUR 600,000 roughly or a little bit more than EUR 600,000 actually in the financial services segment.

What we do here is building a new agent, an AI agent for public or for private health insurance solutions. And that is something where we clearly count on to be able to replicate this to other insurance companies as well. So that is, again, a significant step for us to establish our own solutions. So that is the mix.

You see that with those 3 examples, how we try to position clearly more towards annual recurring revenues, and this requests also a different way of working. I will spend a word to that in a couple of minutes again.

Johannes, please next slide. Okay. Here is some other examples visualizing of what we do across different industries. So here on the left-hand side, we see a company that we were able to close also early Q1 in the sanitary and water segment.

So that is something where we were able also to show our holistic approach because actually what we did there, if you look to this cycle, plan, build, run, on the left-hand side, we really were able to convince the customer with our consulting and with the execution of these solutions.

So it's a plan, it's a build mode, where we actually deployed some pretty nice solutions for process integration between 3DEXPERIENCE and SAP platform as this customer really pushing or tackling 2 axis that's on the one hand side, the product innovation that we push, but at the same time, the process efficiency. So that is part of our agenda.

And on the right-hand side, you see automotive supply customer, it's a mechatronics customer where we actually position in the run mode. So that is an application management services contract that we close with that customer, also a long-term contract that we're able to close.

And here, what we guarantee for those customers is the high availability of business-critical processes. So that holistic approach that CENIT is a partner where you actually can rely on in the early phase, in the consulting phase, in the plan phase, up to the full cycle that we stay tuned with the customer also to support him during his operations, that is the beauty of our business model really to be holistic at the customer side.

Okay. So in a nutshell, again, a summary. for the quarter and also look forward customer, we see a fresh momentum in the customer demand. So a stable, good solid order backlog increasing by roughly 11-ish percent. That is cool.

Regarding software and services portfolio, it's clearly a focus on innovation, consistency and profitability. What does this mean? With that move, with that push towards SaaS platform, we also need to change ourselves.

That is what we started last year with our transformation, with our internal transformation because actually, the big difference between the traditional business model of a solution provider maybe 20 years ago was that you go to a customer and ask him, dear Mr. customer, what can I do for you? How can I shape or customize your solutions? That time is over.

So what we need today is in a customer, I call it customer scientific agility to have a solution portfolio that is really out of the box and that you have a good understanding and finally also the skills to transform a customer and to onboard the customer into a SaaS platform with standardized processes.

But that means that you need to understand the industry processes of the customer and transform the customer towards the platform. And that is this platformization is actually something, if you do it right, if you have the right solutions where you can finally also increase your profitability, and that is what we are heading for.

Johannes, why don't you spend a word on the financials?

Yes. Let me bring that part of the presentation to a close. I think we told you a lot about the financials. We are in a year that we really finally see a lot of improvement getting visible, becoming visible in the numbers.

And also circle back maybe to one of my opening remarks, Martin and I, as a team and the Board are driven to really execute that strategy that we defined in the last year, execute that value-driven approach and really improved the business.

And so that brings me to the last line. The news is there is no news to our guidance. This is the year we want to show you how we can get to that guidance in revenue and EBITDA. And I think that first quarter has been a very good start to do just that.

So this has been the parts that we have been presenting that we prepared. So I'd say we come to the Q&A, and I'm -- we're happy to talk your -- to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have already received 2 risen hands, one by Kai Kindermann.

Congrats on the quarter, great figures. My first question, maybe for you, Mr. Thiel. I want to ask, as you have also been a part of the M&A team, what your view is on future acquisitions, maybe also in the next year or the following?

Yes. Thanks for that question. We defined in our strategy, and that was maybe -- or not maybe, that was also communicated by Peter and Johannes in the previous call that we will slow down a little bit on the M&A side. So M&A will be a portion of our strategy in the midterm and long term.

So over the next 5 years, we will, for sure, look where to support our portfolio currently. But in the foreseeable time for the next 12 to 18 months, we clearly would like to put more focus on the build side rather than the buy side.

So we need to digest what we acquired. We need to focus in total and going along with that is also that we will clearly bench also our current solution portfolio towards where is our clear focus, are we clear, do we have clarity.

Third element is, is our portfolio consistent, and actually, can everybody in that portfolio, portfolio meaning at that time solution portfolio, really contribute to the speed that we wish.

So in a nutshell, I would like to focus together with Johannes more on our core business and core activities and bench and question everything that we currently have, and finally, put a focus on profitability first. That sets our agenda currently.

Johannes, you like to add something here?

No. Actually, nothing to add here. We, at CENIT, is a buy-build case, but in this phase, just as we said before, we're in the process of really bringing the group to where it can show its strengths.

Understood. Could you share on that topic, maybe the result of the Analysis Prime in the first quarter on revenue, EBITDA?

I really -- let me answer that by that. It's a neutral result. I don't want to -- there's going to be a point that I have to stop doing the country reporting per se because going forward, and as we said, to strengthen that ties between the companies doesn't make sense to stick to that. But let me answer that. We are at a neutral result. We have stabilized the company and we grow it from there.

We have another question by Mr. Cosmin Filker.

I hope you can hear me.

Perfectly, yes.

Yes.

As said, I'm Cosmin Filker from GBC AG from Augsburg. So I just had previously 3 questions. One question was answered. It was regarding the M&A strategy. Another question would be that you already shown in the EBITDA bridge on the slide that the performance improvement by EUR 3.7 million in the first quarter, it's quite high.

Previously, you said that for the whole year, you expect savings around EUR 5 million to EUR 5.5 million. That means that this improvement in the coming quarters won't be that high than in the first quarter because last year, there were in the second half already improvements visible.

Yes. Let me clear that up. The answer is the scope really. The number that you referred to was that one measure, that one restructuring program that was successfully executed last year. Obviously, this is not the only thing we've done.

We are in a process to bring the whole company in a more performance-oriented approach. We manage the business cases that way, we manage also the utilization that way. And so the answer to your question is that it's been a different scope. That's been a different scope. And let me answer also the follow-up question. That's something that you can extrapolate. No, please don't.

Obviously, if you look into the numbers, you see that the main effect is truly in the cost base. But obviously, I said at the beginning, this is a net position. There's also some gross margin effect in it. There is some other expense effect in it and not everything is just to be extrapolated.

So I've explicitly warned against that. But we are going to be better in the end than just that one portion and the one number that was addressed with the restructuring.

Okay. I understand. And you already said do not extrapolate for the following quarters. I have to ask, I mean, the Q1 EBITDA is not the typically strongest EBITDA of the year. And you already reached EUR 5 million in the first quarter. What is the argument against multiplying it by 4? And also adding a little bit more because the second half is normally stronger? Or do you see some risks regarding the EBITDA?

No. Let me answer that by that. There is no risk that we see here. But still, given the history of this company, given also the uncertainty that we have, and I'm not telling you anything in specific, more overall management experience as a newspaper reader that I have and I -- in the papers, and I see all that, there is good reasons not to have that discussion after the first quarter, I think.

So far, we have not received any risen hands nor any questions in our chat-box. So I would say if there are no further questions, we will come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in CENIT AG.

A big thank you also to you, Mr. Thiel and Mr. Fues and for your presentation and your time. Should any further questions appear at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations at CENIT AG. I wish you all a successful day, and I'm handing over to you, Mr. Fues, once again, for your closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for guiding us through that session. In Germany, there's a saying one bird doesn't make a summer. That seems particularly relevant today in Stuttgart as it was in the morning at 2 degrees Celsius. But I tend to say at least it's a bird. So that has been a very good start.

And yes, Martin and I very much look forward to you to really continue that conversation in the coming months and quarters. So there is more to come and stay with us. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Good morning, and a warm welcome, dear ladies and gentlemen, to the earnings call of the CENIT AG following the publication of the financial year figures of 2025. The CEO, Peter Schneck, and CFO, Dr. Johannes Fues will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results, followed by a Q&A session, where we would be happy to take your questions if you may have.

And having said that, Mr. Schneck, I hand over to you.

Yes. Thank you very much, and a very warm welcome also from our side, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in our today's earnings call of the CENIT AG. And thank you, of course, also for your interest in our share.

As usual, my colleague, Dr. Johannes Fues and myself, we will run you through our slides regarding the financial year 2025. And of course, we will also give you an outlook on the operational and financial expectations for 2026. And by the end of this session, we would, of course, be pleased to answer all your questions. So please hold your questions for the end to make it easier for us.

So let's start with a brief management summary before we will drill down into the different topics in much more details. But just to give you a very brief view. First comment that we both have to make is that we're satisfied with the year 2025 results, ending with a very strong Q4, as you might have seen.

On the financial side, we met the top-line growth to close to EUR 210 million to EUR 209.5 million, as we had announced already 2 weeks ago in our preliminary statement. And of course, we are very satisfied because we had an overall challenging environment, as you all know, and most of our customers in the aviation as well as in the automotive business are struggling. And still, we were able to achieve this figure.

And the second thing, we had, as you all know, restructuring effects in year 2025. And still, due to these effects and the reduction of about 52 employees in 2025, we still managed to have a top-line growth of 1.1%. But still, again, bear in mind that this is with less than 52 people at the same time. So there was no impact on this one as some expected, and we managed to run it through the year.

The EBITDA and the EBIT, as we will come to, were fully in line with our guidance. As you know, we had made a view on a minimum level, we were above those levels. We were also positive on EBIT. So we had forecasted a minus EUR 1.5 million EBIT result. And as you have seen, we are in the positive line. So we haven't faced a dip. We still kept up and are still positive, which is, I think, very good given the restructuring costs that we were facing and of course, also the challenges that we have with our U.S. entity Analysis Prime that I will come to later on.

And then, of course, also the operating performance was pretty good given, again, the environment and also given the fact that we had 52 employees less. And as you have seen in our strong Q4 figures, we were at least on the same, slightly better level than we were in Q4 the year before.

And also, of course, facing the challenges that we have with the SaaS business, where we have less PLC activities and more shifts into the SaaS business, we still had this very strong Q4 effect or hockey stick as some of you might say. Then on the operating business, and we will come to this one. We had a transformation ongoing. This was what we had announced for year 2025, and it went pretty well.

We had, on one side, a very clear focus on the PLM and the EIM business. So what you will see on our website and also our report, the PLM business, which is green and then a very clear focus on the blue business, which is the documentation business around EIM. And of course, this focused also our team in these 2 segments as we have reported in the past. And what we're doing here is also overcoming the different silos in our organization so that we have much more activities also now in the cross-sells and also the mindset of our team is heading into this direction.

And of course, this results in a very customer-centric reorganization, and we see the first results also on the key account management that we had introduced, where we have more and more larger customers being focused by us and addressed by us and basically reacting with increased orders. So there's a certain payoff of this activity.

And you will see this also, when I will report later on about some important customer deals that we won in 2025 because also of the key account management activities, we see an increase of larger deals, and we have still also driven by the challenges in the different market momentum and the customer demand that we see, where we definitely can say there is an increase due to the pressure that especially automotive in Europe, but also other industry segments are facing.

And the answer is a transition into the PLM world of the future. And then as I already mentioned, we're also very happy to announce that we have stabilized our U.S. acquisition in the United States, which we did in 2024, so Analysis Prime. As you know, we had a certain dip. There were over enthusiastic maybe in their forecast. We already had reduced this one, but they even ended up below this. The business is still there. We see the business. We see an increase in the pipeline.

And in year 2025, we managed to reduce the losses in this organization, where, unfortunately, we're not breakeven, but coming to a point where we also had a very positive end in December 2025. And of course, we see for year 2026 that we're back on track. We had kept the level in our planning for year 2026 as it was for 2025. So we have a very slight positive EBIT effect that we have planned, though that the team is, of course, targeting for a higher level, and we're very confident that we will end up at least on the planning level and anything that comes beyond will help us.

What we see at the same time is an increase also in the pipeline business. We have already in Q1 of this year, we can already announce that we're EUR 1 million better in order intake for Analysis Prime than we were the year before at the same time.

Then we would like to run you also through a little bit, of course, a slight outlook into 2026, where we are now collecting the fruits of our transition work and restructuring work that we have done in year 2025. We will, of course, focus on continuous performance of the management. We will increase the efficiency.

Our focus is on EBITDA, improving the EBITDA level for this year. So also from the M&A side, you will not see a lot of activities or basically no acquisition that we see at the moment, and we will slow down also as we did in 2025 on acquisitions.

Our focus is really making sure that we increase the efficiency of our organization and that we collect the fruits of what we have seen out in year 2025. And then, of course, we will also address the change in -- from the Prime standard into the scale segment.

We will explain this also on an additional slide that you're going to see. But of course, why have we done this is basically reducing bureaucracy given the current capitalization that we see in the market, we are facing quite some administrative work and also costs attached to this one, and that's why we have taken this decision to do this move to reduce the cost, the bureaucracy and the administration work that we have for our team.

And then if we look into year 2026, as you can see here, the focus is on increasing efficiency, and this will result, as you can see here in our guidance that we have already announced 2 weeks ago, we will definitely be above EUR 210 million in revenues. But what is key, and I think much more important for all of you and of course, for us is we are targeting for an EBITDA that is at least EUR 18 million or better than EUR 18 million EBITDA for year 2026, which would be then an increase of 46.3% given to the results of 2025.

And I think that this is a major increase and would be then also, at least in total figures, be the highest EBITDA level that was ever achieved at CENIT, unfortunately, not percentage-wise, but at least figure-wise, and we will come to this as well. So this in a nutshell, and then maybe we will jump now into the figures first for year 2025, and I would like to hand over to you, Johannes.

Yes. Good morning. I'm happy to guide you through the figures. And as Peter already said, we announced the figures some 2 weeks ago. That kind of lifts the pressure a little bit from today. So there is no surprises. But there is context and my presentation or our presentation is more about giving some context sharing some insight, sharing the way we view and then look upon our company.

I'd like to start with a little bit longer overview to give you -- also give you context on that part. We finished with a top line of EUR 209.5 million. So given the challenging environment, I'd say that the momentum is intact. And then Peter is going to come to that. We have very good feedback from the customers also right now as we're starting into the year. But remember, we are in a time where economic factors are not great, and we have hot wars happening. So that's also one reason that we tend to look as we go forward a little bit more cautious than that item.

Further on, we put down the EBITDA -- EBIT. And let me also start with a more general comment on that one. EBITDA is the much more operating figure, and that's also the reason that we -- as we go forward, we tend to focus more on EBITDA than on EBIT because -- and then we're going to be very transparent on that. The EBIT discussions tends to have not only the regular depreciation and amortization, which is not much, but also M&A in fact can be part of the play here. And my personal perception was that it kind of watered some of the discussions that we have.

So as we go forward and as we put our focus on the actual performance improvement, we will be looking more on EBITDA and we're going to be discussing more of the EBITDA improvements. Okay. How do we end up in '25? The EBITDA, EUR 12.3 million, EBIT positive, EUR 0.3 million. They contain material onetime effects.

And then I'm going to have a table much more for that. I'm going to be very transparent because basically, what you see is we have a company that has the major effects in H1, first half year of '25 and a company, and we've seen that in the figures of Q3 already, a company that really shows the signs of the effect of the improved profitability structure in Q4 and basically Q3, Q4.

Yes, -- we updated our guidance in the summer, late summer '25. We achieved that guidance. We quite nicely grew into these spots, ended up revenues above the guidance and EBIT well above the guidance. So that's very, very positive. Let's start a deeper look. And as I said, we're going to be very transparent here what's inside those '25 numbers. If you look at the EBITDA, EUR 12.3 million, there is onetime effects of EUR 7 million -- EUR 6 million in there, which contain again, the restructuring that we've been communicating all along. That's the restructuring that happened in the first half year, mainly Q1 of '25.

And that's the very reason that we actually see the improved structures since that grew into place. And the second one is that we had some challenges connected to M&A activities connected to the U.S. asset and the start of the growing phase of that asset in '25. And that resulted in an EBITDA and an operating loss of EUR 2 million. That is also included in these numbers.

As you see in the reporting and as you see in the business report on the year '25, everything that we say is as is. There is no adjustments made in the CENIT reporting growth. And so this is always included. If we look deeper, you are aware that we have 2 segments. We have the Enterprise Information Management segment, and we have the PLM segment being the bigger one, the 75% of our business.

And this is where we made for this call an exception to really figure and then illustrate the profitability and performance structure as we see it today in the status that we actually see the restructuring effects in place and so that we allowed ourselves to have a as if illustration on the bottom right of this page.

And then you see that as we move and as we go along, that we have a quite nice structure in the PLM sector also, again, it's a stable top line. EUR 165 million. We have a close to 6% EBITDA that we intend to grow as we move along. And we have still some 3% EBIT if we deduct all the special effects that all affect only the PLM segment because this is where the activity happens.

Yes, you're also aware that this U.S. asset right now is in the PLM segment. This has not changed. This is just the same structure. In the future, there -- and we are in management discussions to actually regroup that to the EIM segment as the business is much closer to the EIM segment in its nature and in its addressing of the customers and the offer to the customers.

Yes. Let's move on with some more group figures. Start on the right side with really the sales by the segment. This is what I just said. The EIM sales have developed quite nicely, very purely organic 5% growth, which is nice and put us in a position, where we have made EUR 44 million with that segment. And you have, at the same time, the sales, the top line and the PLM segment, stable, as I said, no operating -- no organic growth at that time. But again, as we are aware of the situation that we're in, I think this is not too bad.

A little bit more interesting, if we go to the left side of this page, you can see what we call the playbook in place. We have very nice growth, where it matters, and this is the service side and this is the software side. And we're happy to say that we grew by more than 10% on the CENIT software, which is our own IP that makes our services sticky and our offering to the customer much more precise and sticky also as we continue to accompany our customers in the next years.

Yes. Let me continue again with some more accounting figures, if you will. We go down the P&L. The first effect, the gross profit effect is the very same playbook that I've been telling you just a second ago. We see if you follow CENIT over the years that we improve and improve the gross margin that is connected to the third-party software.

And this is something that works in favor of CENIT. Again, we're able to improve that gross margin by 1.3 percentage points related to the slow churn in third-party software. The bridge that I put on the right side of this page kind of details everything that we've said in the past and all the communications in '25 on the personnel side.

You are aware that we did a restructuring early '25 that was connected to restructuring expenses as a one-off. And obviously, the M&A that we did also had an effect in terms of growing the staff and consequently growing the numbers. But if you deduct those, then you see that we have already EUR 2.6 million, and I don't know what that figure doesn't show in the print, it shows EUR 2.6 million of optimization effect that is in place already.

And this is the very effect that I said was begin to come to effect in second half of the year, and this has continued to grow to the full effect of the restructuring being a full year effect of EUR 5 million, EUR 5.5 million savings per year. Given the same service and given the same revenue, this is the point that Peter was making just before.

More accounting figures that I think are worth mentioning, and we put that point prominent also in the first publishing. I want to point your attention to the fact that CENIT has been -- always has been and it continued to be in '25, a cash generating cash strong company. We were able to grow the operating cash flow by close to 40%. And this is including the one-offs that I was just saying. So this is -- it would have been higher, if we wouldn't have had that.

This is a very nice figure, and it has consequences. With that operating cash flow, we were able to really reduce the net bank debt by 28% or by EUR 6 million, EUR 7 million, mainly repaying bank debt -- so that also helps us in a very nice relation in terms of net bank debt. If you look at the leverage, if you look at the leverage and the [ S ] is EBITDA, then we're talking a figure smaller than 1.4x EBITDA. So that's very robust financing and it perfectly makes sense.

Obviously, all in, the year was not positive. So also that last figure on the right, the equity ratio, I think, is a very good figure. We were able to -- by steering the balance sheet and actually shortening the balance sheet, keep the equity ratio just the way it is at 30%, which is good.

Actually, coming to end with the financial side of the business, let me just also give you a quick run through maybe on the -- a few items that I didn't comment so far. I want to be clear on that since it is a year with a red -- hopefully, if we can help it, the last red result of the group. But we will be proposing not to share a dividend regarding the business year '25. And yes, happy to restart distributing dividends as we're making profit.

Talking through the balance sheet, the goodwill position is not a surprise. This has been unchanged since we actually finished the last -- the PPA with the last acquisition of Analysis Prime. The intangible assets, that is something that you will find interesting maybe because the intangible assets is 80% of that is a customer base. And this is also a figure, and I'm pretty sure that some of the questions will reflect that in the end.

You are aware, and we've always been discussing that, that our depreciation amortization contain M&A parts. And that is here, we're reviewing the business year '25 of our American asset and decided to make a deduction from the customer base there and actually, yes, wrote down that. So there we have intangible assets of EUR 11 million on the balance sheet or customer base of around EUR 8 million in the balance sheet across the group.

The cash flow, I have been commenting on. Yes, as I said, really, we use the operating cash to repay bank loans. We have a strong free cash flow. That's a very good figure. And I really like that part of the business. Last thing I'm going to comment on this side from my side is the market cap. You are aware, I'm not going to comment on the market, but it's no secret that we cannot be satisfied at that level. We're going to come to that in the end.

So we have finished the year with a market cap of EUR 61 million. Right now, we're a little bit under that. It's EUR 50 million, EUR 55 million of market cap. And that is something that we take very seriously and put everything else in order actually to walk the talk to do everything that we can to improve the operating business and to make that number move to where it belongs.

Peter, do you want to comment on the order backlog?

Yes, absolutely. This is what I would like to jump in. And before I come to the order backlog, one thing that I would highlight maybe especially for the Anglo American investors, the free cash flow, the very high and positive development that we have on the free cash flow side, at least in the Anglo American market is seen as an indication for the upcoming EBIT.

So you see it's heading into the right direction, and we're very happy on this one and of course, also working to increase in the future. If we then jump on the order backlog that I would like to outline is that we have a change of 15.3%. So about EUR 12 million increase from last year to this year.

And this is, of course, relate -- I mean, there are 3 effects that we have. One effect is that, of course, we have now full year in -- of Analysis Prime. This is one thing. The second thing is we see the shift, of course, more and more into the SaaS business. So of course, now we have long-term contracts that are following into this one, and that's why you see this increase.

And then the last and third one, which is also a positive one is we have larger deals. So the size of the deals are increasing. We are entering into, I would say, customer segment that we didn't touch before. We were considered to be too small, but now with maybe passing on the EUR 200 million line. We are considered by more and more large entities and corporations in this world. And this is where we are lately also getting quite some pretty good businesses, which on one hand is volatile, as you all know.

On the other hand, of course, we will continue focusing also on the mid-market in future and also have some initiatives to make sure that we stay in this market. But of course, we are focusing now also on the larger corporations. And I think this is heading into the right direction, and we're targeting for year 2026 that this will pass the 3-figure level so that by the end of the year, we would be then hopefully have an order backlog that goes beyond the EUR 100 million. So this is what we're targeting for.

And this is now heading into the operational business where I would like to give you an idea on what happened in 2025 and maybe also what's going to happen in year 2026. I don't want to comment on all of those, but just going to pick some of them so that you see also what I just mentioned, the larger customers.

And #1 that we are very happy of is [indiscernible]. I mentioned this already in some of our calls in 2025. But this is an ongoing customer situation that we have with the customer. So this is not a onetime hit. [indiscernible] is investing more and more, and we're entering more and more into this very interesting organization in doing PLM work and migration work.

Though the customer changed from Dassault to Siemens. We're doing a lot of migration work into the other system and the transition. But of course, also the migration into the SAP PLM solution that we are as our proprietary software selling and helping this customer. So this is a big several million -- multimillion deal that is growing and will also continue to make us happy in year 2026.

The same applies to Bobst. Bobst is a Swiss packaging company that decided to start slowly with us in year 2025 and has now recently decided to do the next larger step. And there's, again, also a multimillion deal behind this one for year 2026, where we do migration, where we do support work PLM and ERP means our own software solution of the SAP section, but of course, also supporting on the 3DX side. So very interesting customer for us and really pushing into the right direction.

Then what we also managed to do is we won another extension with Porsche and on top of some implementation work. So you see even automotive companies under pressure are now taking the right decisions into the right direction, digitalizing more and CENIT is their first choice. So we're very happy that we have -- that we will continue our long-term relationship with Porsche for at least the next 3-plus years and receiving additional business.

And then in the aviation business, we were able to sell our proprietary solution from the DFS business called Fastsuite through Bombardier to the whole manufacturing processes. So we're becoming more and more key into the whole production process on the robotics side. So this was for us a very important deal. And again, this means that there will be more to come in year 2026 also on this level because they go through all their manufacturing plants.

And the final one that I would like to mention that we worked hard on in year 2025 and got some first licenses and see now in Q1 and Q2. There are larger orders now entering is, of course, COMAC. COMAC, as you might know, is the largest Chinese plane manufacturer. So it's a competitor of our customers, Boeing and Airbus. And this is a fast-growing Asian manufacturer, and we're already right in the middle with our own proprietary software. And of course, we're supporting them also with our full portfolio.

So you see in 2025, we were targeting on larger customers. We managed to get those large customers, and this helps us now also to head into year 2026 with quite some nice backlog, as you've seen, but also some potential for additional customers. And we have a very nice outlook for year 2026, at least what we can see now for Q2. This will be very positive.

If we then look into the operating structure of our organization, you see what we have mentioned before, we have pushed through what we call the [ CENIT-ification ]. So we have made sure that all our subsidiaries that we acquired in the past years are getting except of Analysis Prime and [ CENIT ], which will be anyhow not [ CENIT ] will be something that will not continue in the future.

So this was a consortium for the Airbus business and will not be continued. But except of Analysis Prime, we changed all names on the green side into CENIT. So we will have a very unified marketing thing. And what is also behind this one is, of course, we have some synergies that we were able to focus on.

So we are reducing costs. We are increasing efficiency and we are also increasing transparency and figures from the headquarter that we can push the button and have immediate access to all the figures of those entities, which we did not have in the past. So in certain levels, we were kind of blind or we had delayed information.

Now we have real-time information, and this helps us. To the customer side, of course, this means very clear focus. It's either PLM or it's either EIM that we're selling. And within those entities, it's one entity, one service, one sales team that is now focusing on the customers and supporting the customers, which, of course, increases our cross sales. And the customers that I just mentioned before are cross-sales results. So we were not only with one or the other business unit in this entity, we were really with our full PLM portfolio presence in these customers and now increasing our sales in this entity.

And the same applies on the EIM side. You see here MIP and ISR. The plan is that also MIP will be changed in naming during this year into ISR as well. So that for the customer, it's very clear, blue and green. This is what we get. This is the portfolio, and we have one team that is tackling the customers. So if we then switch on a question that you might have all raised and that I'm receiving several times in some of our calls, but also some of your -- of the shareholders that are contacting me directly.

And of course, also that is reflected in our share price, the concern on how does AI change our business. And you might have seen that lately, Dassault Systèmes took a major hit and also SAP, both partners because there is the fear that their software might be replaced by AI or at least their importance might be reduced, which might have an impact on us.

This is at least what some of the shareholders obviously see. And there's also a very interesting article that just today came out in the French newspaper from Pascal Daloz, the CEO of Dassault Systèmes that is exactly arguing and talking about this issue. I don't want to comment on this, and I don't want to comment how AI will affect those software providers.

What I can tell you is, from our point of view, our view is that we have 2 different use cases of AI, which we consider as very positive. There's one, as you can see here, that we call the customer view, and there is another one that we call the internal view. And I would like to start with the customer view. #1 level that we call here is what we see is because of AI, our customers realize that they have to prepare their whole data set, and they have to create one data lake or one data warehouse, because if you don't have this consolidation of your data, if you don't have your data in the cloud, there's no way that you're going to use AI, whatever AI solution you're going to use.

So this is something that we see at the moment that we are approached from a lot of our customers that have this concern and ask us to help them to get into this next level. And this is where we have, as of today, some modules, consulting modules as well as migration modules as, of course, well also our own solutions already available that we can sell for those customers, and we're doing this. And we see a major increase in this level.

So again, it's helping us and it's increasing our sales because customers are totally overwhelmed with this situation. And even CIOs from large entities on the SDAX or DAX level are [indiscernible] for help and support from Senate. So this is something that helps. Level 2 is, and then we're talking about the solutions from our partners.

Again, like I said, I don't want to go into who's better or not, and I will not comment this year today. The only thing that I would like to mention is, again, from the point of view of CENIT.

Dassault Systèmes had a solution called V5, so Version 5 that we have sold to most of our customers. So most of the 3,000, 3,500 customers that are using V5 as of today are on this level. And the challenge is that this solution is ways too good. When Dassault launched version 6, there was no compelling event for most of our customers to move in the 3DEXPERIENCE world.

Now with V7, the customers realize, although that there are only first modules available that they have to prepare and that the shift from V5 to V7 will take at least a year to 2 years so that in 2 years, they can fully use those solutions. And just to give you an idea is what this means is that if you want to build a plane, instead of having 80 engineers working on a plane, you're going to sit today in front of this machine and going to say with 1 or 2 engineers, I want to build a plane and then you get a proposal.

And then on this, you start on the scratch, you start basically changing whatever you want to change. But you also have knowledge from other segments, industry segments from yachting, from automotive or whatever that goes into the solution, which most of the automotive or aviation engineers we're not having. So it's really a powerful tool, and that's why we see this now as a compelling event, and we see the increase now of our customers saying, now there is a reason to move from V5 to V7.

Let's have a chat. Let's talk about this. So for us, again, from a CENIT point of view, this is increasing our business, and this is helping us now to sell the next level and to make sure that we move this 3,000 to 3,500 customers into the V7 world, which would be a major challenge for the next at least 5 years.

What then in 5 years is going to happen? I don't have the crystal ball on the table. But as of today, this is pushing our business. I don't see any threat for us in this environment.

Level 3, this is our own solutions. There, you've seen already now on the EIM side, what Johannes just mentioned, you've seen that there was an increase. And one of this increase in the EIM sales is based also on BuildSimple because this is our own proprietary AI solution that we started 4 years ago. And we have now tripled our sales in this segment, and it's a start growing business that we definitely have here. It's fully done and it's available for sale. So we're selling this again, like I mentioned, tripled our activities in this area, and this will be something that we're going to push.

Then we are in the middle, that's why I call it in progress. The solution of Fastsuite, which is the robotic solution as of today is a solution, where you have to sit in front of the PC and you have basically to manage all the different figures and also some of the use cases by yourself and you have to be really a specialist in using the software.

So you need a kind of background on melting or anything else. What we are developing at the moment is Fast Cube. We have first solutions already available and we are testing with customers where you can use an AI assistant just by speech to bot. So instead of doing all this manual work on the figures, you can just say, please make sure you do this and that.

And then the system based on the knowledge, of course, that is available in the background is creating this solution and then you can immediately start with this one, which will help us also in markets like, for example, the U.S. where you don't have highly qualified specialists at least on the manufacturing side because they don't have the apprentices system as we have this year in Germany. So this will help us quite a lot, and we will increase our sales as well.

And then, of course, what we also are using already with our customers is when we are implementing our solution, we now do with our customers and provide those customers already solutions, where they can do the software testing and then also some of the coding that is required by themselves with AI solutions. So this is additional business for us.

This is now a customer view. If we switch to the internal view, and this is something that you also should have in mind that is quite important for us. Johannes, if you can just switch one slide. The internal view is, of course, given us the opportunity. And I don't want to go through all these cases that you see here, but we have started an internal project where we try to increase the use of AI solutions that are available.

This is, of course, just starting the MS Copilot for the sales team, where we have created certain bots that give you outstanding reports on a customer situation so that you can go to this customer and immediately say, look, this is your problem. I identified that you have done these changes, and this is what we can offer you. Then, of course, we are using AI solutions already for the coding in our organization. We're not hiring software coders or pure software coders anymore as we did in the past.

And of course, also on the logging, on the monitoring, we are using already AI solutions to reduce the use of team members, which, of course, helps us on one hand, to reduce costs. On the second one is it allows us to scale our sales and activities in this area with the same or maybe even reduced team. And this is where we see a huge potential for us also to reduce our, what we call administrative or [indiscernible] costs in the future.

So we have these 2 areas that we're focusing on where we have our internal projects. And of course, we will give you always updates over the coming sessions. But there you see this will have a very positive impact. That's why we are big fans of AI. We don't see AI as a threat. We see this really as a big chance for CENIT. And as you've seen here, we just have to use it the right way. It's like in the past, when PCs and notebooks were coming up, everybody was afraid of this.

And at the end, it created a lot of additional jobs. But for us, it creates a lot of additional sales opportunities, and this is what we're focusing on. So we were positive about this, and that's why we think that the hit that we are taking because of the Dassault Systèmes or any other shares in the IT infrastructure business is definitely not something that should be on CENIT. We should be, I think, more likely on the positive side and use this window of opportunity for the future.

If we then look into the year 2026, just to give you an outlook on this side and of course, also the change of segment, I think I can just...

Yes. Let me wrap it up.

Yes, absolutely. One thing, just Johannes, from the operational side, as you've seen before, we are very confident that we will have additional larger customer situations that we're working on, and you will hear now in Q2 already some of these effects.

And the key account management efforts that we have started in last year are already paying off. We are facing even a situation, where we have to slow down a little to make sure that our team can handle those opportunities that have come...

That's true. That's true. Yes, let me wrap it up before we come to the Q&A section. Happy -- Peter and I are happy to answer your questions. We intend a change of segment. Why? There's no secret that we're not going to comment the market, but there is no secret that we cannot be satisfied with the valuation, where we are right now.

So we put everything on a testing setup what contributes to the development of operating figures and what doesn't. And unfortunately, over the years and the perception of the cost and the benefits has not improved. And so that's why we reduced -- decided to reduce bureaucracy. Important thing is what's not going to change is transparency to the shareholders, quarterly reporting, IFRS, everything that shows our commitment to the capital market and to you and also to the development of the recreation of the recovery of that value, that does not change.

We are -- I'm personally in the talks with Deutsche Börse, we intend to actually realize that change of segment end of April, beginning of May. Yes, let me finish with the very positive view that we have to the year '26. This is something that Peter and I have been pointing out right from the beginning of today's session. Given the situation we are in, we are not focusing -- spend too much time on the -- to demonstrate top-line growth.

Obviously, we are aiming higher, but I don't think that there is -- given the certain circumstances, we are not -- would not be properly advised to have a focus on that. So that's why we're guiding on more than EUR 210 million. The main thing that you see, and this is anything, but shy, I'd say, the main thing that you're going to see in '26 is a significant improvement in profitability. That is something that we have already in place that we have really reached in the last 8, 9 months.

So that is something that we see very positive, and that brings us to an EBITDA of more than EUR 80 million absolute or the respective figure and EBITDA margin. But then you have also in mind that this is just the very next step to improve to the long-term strategy to improve our value by means of the Strategy 2030. So for today, I think we're at the end of the session. We're very happy to take any questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we already received the first hand from Mr. [ Kai ]. So we are happy for your questions.

Maybe a start in contrast to your recent order intake to your order backlog, the 2026 revenue guidance seems a bit conservative. Any effects we need to think about the expectations you have? And what could be a trigger that you maybe get more positive on that side?

Yes, Mr. Kai, thank you very much for this remark. You are right that we have launched a kind of conservative view. Though on the other hand, given the situation that we are facing due to geopolitical situations, we just had a situation 2 days ago, there was -- the Strait of Hormuz this was closed. Now it's open, now it's closed again. What you always have to bear in mind is our customers are affected by this. And we are seeing customers that are struggling, of course, and this is why we -- like I said, we are in a volatile situation, where we have volatile customer situations.

And these are large customer situations where we had other than in the past, now 5 million or 6 million deals that come or don't come and that are affected by this kind of situations, like geopolitical things that we cannot affect. If this will come down, we will definitely be above the figures that we have mentioned in here. But given the situation that we all don't know and like I said before, we don't have a crystal ball on the table, we are more likely conservative.

There is no trigger on our side that we can pull to say, if we do this or that. I think we are very well prepared. We are focused. We have focused our team. And definitely, we also have prepared for the positive situation. This would mean also an increase on staffing on one or the other side that we will need. And then, of course, the scaling effect that we have already prepared and we're ready to go this path if the environment allows us to go.

So what we do at the moment is on site. What we would like to avoid is, as you all know in the past, this was a struggle, especially for myself, Johannes was not there at that time. But given you kind of forecast that is reliable, and I don't want to change during the year our guidance. That's why we kept the guidance on a, as you can call it, conservative level and anything that comes beyond.

I'm more than happy or we are more than happy to change this and to announce that unfortunately, we will be EUR 10 million or more or whatever above. But at the moment, we are reluctant given the political situation.

Perfect. And maybe in this context, how did Q1 start? Any feedback from you or from the customer side?

From our side, Q1, I mean, we will not definitely say in full, as you know, there will be another session. And we are still, of course, closing some of the entities. But we can say we're absolutely in line with our plan, even slightly above, I would say.

And on the customer side, we see some very positive developments. As I mentioned already before, we had some order intakes in Q1 already that are very promising, and we are working on deals that will allow us also to have a very nice, safe and maybe even outstanding Q2. So we're very positive about this one. There's nothing to worry what we can see at the moment.

And maybe one short last question on Analysis Prime. Could you give us some final numbers for '25? And I think you already mentioned some input for 2026, how we should think about the acquisition?

Yes. What we have done is also here a conservative view. For year 2026, we have included almost the same revenue figure that we achieved in 2025, which is in the area of about USD 14 million. And we have included for year 2026, a very slight positive EBIT figure, which is above 0. So it's positive, but it's nothing outstanding.

The plan of our team in the U.S. is more than 1 million above this one, though we know in EBIT in U.S. dollars. But we know that sometimes they are enthusiastic. There are certain struggles and things. So that's why we said anything that comes beyond what we have in our plan will help us and is happy and is welcomed. But again, we're here on the conservative side. So we're very confident that we will achieve at least our planned figures.

And if we just look at Q1, again, I can also say that we are in line, and I would even say maybe on the positive side of our expectations for Q1. And as I said also before, we're back on track. So we see on the order intake, a very positive development. We have USD 1 million more order intake than we had in the first quarter of year 2025.

So this is a very positive development. And we see also in the U.S. quite some movement in this area. So that's why we're very confident to achieve our figures this year at least. Again, it's on a lower level, we expect to exceed...

Thank you so much for your questions, Mr. Kai. And before we move on to Mr. Filker, please remind that it's still possible to ask question because by now, Mr. Filker is the last one in the queue. So Mr. Filker, we're happy for your questions.

Just 2 follow-up questions on Analysis Prime. You have shown that the personnel costs rose in 2025 on one hand because of the restructuring expenses, but on the other hand, because of the full year inclusion of Analysis Prime. You have shown on one slide, EUR 6 million increase. Is the EUR 6 million increase completely to Analysis Prime?

I think this goes to the one to the personnel figures that I showed. Yes, that has been the only contribution to the group in '25. But let me answer also more on the overall figures with Analysis Prime, Mr. Filker.

As you've seen in the overall chart, which is reflected in the group results is a negative EBITDA of minus EUR 2 million. That is, if you will, and the operating loss, including some restructuring and then a negative EBIT of another EUR 4 million, totaling EUR 6 million negative EBIT effect in our numbers by that thing, which includes just the regular write-down of PPA positions of customer base.

And then as I said, there was one additional figure, when we review that success -- reviewed that year, we decided to make an additional write-down on the customer base. So that's the figures that is included in the group figures that we presented.

And one slide add-on, Mr. Filker, the EUR 6 million included, as Johannes just mentioned, of course, also some restructuring costs that we had on the U.S. side. So we have reduced our staff about 20 team members. And as you recall, we had about 72 team members that joined us when we acquired the organization.

By the end of the year, we were at about 52. So 20 team members that we reduced. And of course, we had some of those team members that we put under furlough, which is in German kind of Kurzarbeit. And by the end of this time, of course, you have to make a decision whether you take those team members or not.

Fortunately, in U.S., the costs are less than in U.S. -- than in Europe if then you take a decision not to continue with the employees. But of course, there's cost attached to this one. So the EUR 6 million, there is a restructuring cost attached to get rid of the 20 team members and to have a final payoff to basically get rid of that.

But allow us to finish on a positive note. I think, obviously, the numbers in '25 are not great, and they are fully reflected and very extensively reflected in our reported numbers. Peter, the question was kind of between the lines, would you do the deal again? And how do you see the future? Yes, I think this is a very good business.

Absolutely, definitely. I would do the deal again, given the pricing that we also had and also the value that we would achieve if we sell the organization, this is definitely a great deal. As you all recall, we also had a kind of earn-out session attached to this one already kind of sensing that we should be a little reluctant.

So this paid off. And we basically acquired a top organization with a very good access to the market. And again, this market is growing. These are the, I would say, normal challenges that a German company has in acquiring U.S. company. So there's a start-up and that faces already in other entities as well. And then lately, this became the stars in the portfolio, and this is also what I'm seeing here with Analysis Prime in the future.

Okay. Just a follow-up question on that. Can you just explain what led to the increase in goodwill at Analysis Prime? Is it just because of revaluation of the elements of goodwill and intangible assets?

Yes, that was a slight shift that was, I think, reflected in the Q3 numbers, just connected to the finalization of the PPA in the period 12 months after the deal, so mid-'25, and there was a slight uplift on the goodwill connected, as you said, to the revaluation at intangible asset at that time.

Okay. And just the last question from my side. Could you just explain what led to the significant increase in own software revenue at the end of the year. Are there also front-loading effects included in this?

Peter?

No, there's no front-loading or anything included in this one, absolutely not.

Okay. So it's operative positive development at the end of the year, like it's always, but this time, it was yes, bigger than in the previous years.

Basically, it's something that we want to grow from much more.

And in the meantime, we received further virtual hands, and then we move on with Mr. [ Schwan ].

The first question is on order intake. Mr. Schneck, you mentioned that due to the shift to more SaaS revenues or more SaaS contracts, this is also a reason why we see a higher order intake. So my question would be if you can share what amount in the order book or in the order intake is related to a longer time frame than 2026?

And the second question is about the robotics topic. You mentioned in the presentation, I think that's a very dynamic area currently, especially if we look to China. So can you share some light to this? For example, how big is this area for you right now? Are you also working with Chinese customers? And what is your general view on the perspective of this segment?

Yes, absolutely. Coming to both of your questions, Mr. [ Schwan ], #1, I don't have a figure that I can off the hip now give you where I say this is 3.2 million or whatever million that goes beyond 2026. Honestly, I haven't viewed this way so far. So we will provide you this figure or in this context here and make sure that you get those figures. Sorry I can't do this off the hip now, and I don't want to make an estimation.

Coming to the second question, robotics. Yes, we see -- I mean, there are 2 markets that are for us at the moment, growing and very interesting. It is the U.S. market where we see a major increase on the robotics side and is the Chinese market. The existing German and French market, where we have been already very strong with our DFS business is a kind of moving sidewards, I would say.

So there's not a lot of this enthusiasm that I can share that I see, for example, in the U.S. business or especially in the Chinese business. And when you refer to the Chinese business, yes, we have now a lot of large customers in the Chinese market. This is why we also have expanded our entity in China by additional team members. And I mean, I just mentioned one customer, which is COMAC. And as you can imagine, they are starting to produce planes. They have currently 43 planes out there in the air and not only in China, in the Asian market. So it's very likely that over the next I would even say 3 to 5 years. You will see them already also here in Europe.

And of course, Airbus and Boeing will do their best to keep them out of the market. But honestly, they have the full licenses and everything. So they will be down the road, definitely also be a potential competitor here in the market. And given their cost structure, we will face there a lot more business. So at the moment, we are starting with their production.

And also for your information, these are productions that are mainly dark factories. So when we have been there at the site, they switched on the lights to show us how they produce the planes. So they're ahead of the production processes that we see at other plane manufacturers. But we also have a customer called XCMG, which is 5x larger than the German company, Liebherr. And basically, what they do is cranes and special vehicles.

So there's a lot of customers now in the Chinese market that are upcoming. They have a large size that are not known beyond the Chinese market yet, but that we are talking to and that we're entering into. And we are playing also a certain advantage, since we have our Chinese entity, and we have decoupled our proprietary software in a way that the Chinese customers feel well as or confident as well if there would be any kind of geopolitical situation, where they have no access to the sourcing that they could continue with our Chinese entity.

And this gives us a competitive advantage compared to solutions that we see from some of our partners. I don't want to mention any name, but of course, they are considered as European large entities that would cut off their relationships, and that's why they are not considered in some of these processes. So definitely, this is a growing market.

China for us for the DFS business at the moment with the other entities, we cannot enter because we are limited by the software availability and also the direct businesses that SAP and Dassault are doing or not doing because they might not be ready for the market or maybe not welcomed in the market. If you have the name Dassault, it's sometimes difficult because you're considered as military. So this is a situation that we're facing, but DFS robotics is growing in China, definitely.

And just for understanding it clearly, are we talking about classical industrial robotics in terms of getting more -- getting it more automatically and more automation or also in terms of humanoid robotics?

No. It's honestly only the classic one. We are not involved in the humanoid solutions yet. We are partnering and working together with the metaverse, if you want to call or they call it Neuraverse of Neura, which is the human robotics company close by here in Metzingen. So we're working with them, but we're not working in China with any entity of this.

So there, we are talking about classical robotic solutions where either by speech. So this is something that we're introducing now AI solutions in China because also some of the language things. We are pushing this and then it's easier for the customers to do the constructing and manual planning of the robotic situations, and it's mainly melting in doing kind of classical robotic work that allows to automize the production of the organization.

Thank you for your questions, Mr. [Schawn ]. And then we move on with Mr. Kindermann. So his hand is the last virtual one. So Mr. Kindermann, you can ask your questions.

Two questions from my side. First, you achieved cost savings of EUR 2.6 million from the personnel. What's the full year effect from this in 2026? And secondly, can you quantify the savings due to the change to the scale segment? Or is this more like a question of management capacity?

Yes. Let me answer both of them. The EUR 2.6 million you saw already it was in '25. The full year effect that we grow in is unchanged, 5%, 5.5% that we're aiming at with that specific measure, first answer.

Second answer, I'm not ready to share a specific figure, but it's a lot about internal cost, external cost and management attention. So -- and the figures alone are a 5- or 6-figure number. And then I don't think you can really value the management attention and the management focus on things that, let me be blunt, do not really contribute to anything that the shareholders would value.

Thank you so much -- and then we switch over to our chat that we have 3 questions we want to cover. And the first one is from Mr. [indiscernible]. As Dassault Systèmes is undergoing a strategic transformation, are there any areas where this could create headwinds for CENIT, for example, in terms of pricing, customer access or revenue visibility?

Yes. Great question, Mr. [indiscernible]. So yes, I would definitely underline this. What we see at the moment is you've seen also that, of course, the share price of the Dassault Systèmes, it was quite under pressure. And as a result, of course, they are pushing the partners and helping the partners also in a certain way to increase the activities in the market.

So what we see is on the pricing side, certain initiatives what help us or encourage us by better pricing, better bonus systems to have fast access to certain customer situations and segments. The second one is, yes, they push us also into new situations, new segments, you call it customer access. But just to give you an idea, when we had -- last year, we signed a deal with [ ALHO ], which is a standard manufacturing, I would say, of housing. And of course, also in the construction business, the construction business has been something that we haven't been as Senate in the past. And Dassault Systèmes is helping and supporting us here with quite some resources and investments that they do on their side.

So this is really investment. So there's no -- at least in 2025, there has been no positive return of this investment for Dassault. But for us, definitely, we entered with [ ALHO ] in the new segment, and we're pushing this one and they're helping this.

And the other area is as well, there is a so-called [ R list ] existing where Dassault Systèmes in the past focused on certain customers and basically did direct sales and direct support for those customers, and they opened this list because they realize that they have to be much faster and have to work with their partners closer together. So we see definitely changes which are creating this headwind as you're describing this one. And yes, we also see this as a revenue impact for us in year 2026 and beyond.

Thank you so much. So then the next question, are there any restructuring costs and M&A in 2026?

Not that we see.

I think the question was from Mr. [indiscernible]. We haven't planned any M&A in 2026, unless there is an outstanding opportunity like we did or like we said for year 2025. You've seen that in 2025, we haven't done anything in 2026.

At the moment, we have some companies that we are monitoring, but nothing in the pipeline. So at the moment, I would also say that we're very reluctant on M&A activities for 2026. And I don't expect that this outstanding deal would come up for 2026 at the moment. And like Johannes said, restructuring costs, we also don't see it at the moment.

All right. And the last question is from Mr. [indiscernible] and he wants to know, can you give an update on the business opportunities from Volkswagen Group changing its production software system and defense and aerospace industry in general?

Yes. Coming to Section A, Volkswagen, as you all know, has decided to switch their systems of their 13 brands completely to Dassault Systèmes, which is a very positive news, but was a news that we already announced last year, beginning of the year. Up until today, we had slight contacts with Volkswagen. And I also know that there are activities of Dassault Systèmes with Volkswagen. But honestly, on a very low level. We haven't included any of our -- in our revenue, any revenue forecast from Volkswagen Group. So this would be an add-on.

We're ready. We have certain teams that we had to train and we also had to gain and prepare certain information for Volkswagen. So there are some minor costs already in 2025 and 2026 included. But on the revenue side and positive income, we were very reluctant because what we see is with these big OEMs like Volkswagen, but also BMW that took this decision almost a year before Volkswagen.

So 2 years ago, up until today, there hasn't been any activity that paid off for us and also not for any of our competitors, to be honest, because what happens is those large entities, they have to prepare their internal teams. And at the moment, the main focus at Volkswagen as well as BMW is to get their arms around the different systems that they have with SAP. So this is really SAP core because both entities have more than 30, some of them more than 50 different SAP systems.

So they have to align them before they can start with the PLM connection and also the PLM business. So this is the main focus. And that's why, again, we haven't included anything for 2026 for neither of both OEMs. We are in discussions. We're ready to go, ready and steady and Dassault Systèmes is also pushing us and promoting us. So this is not the issue. It's an internal issue that we see with these large entities.

The second part of your question, defense and aerospace industry in general. As I mentioned already in some of our calls before, we have, as of today, closed a little bit more than 10% of our revenues are defense related. And then, of course, aerospace on top. So we have some aerospace customers like Airbus commercial, of course, that are not considered as defense because there's Airbus defense as well and Airbus helicopters that we consider as defense.

So you see that there's something happening. The customers and of course, also some of the start-ups that you might hear in the drone area are our customers and started with Dassault Solutions to create and design those solutions. So we are involved in this business. I don't see this as a large and growing business at the moment. And the situation is, if we talk about Rheinmetall or other entities in this area and large entities like this, they are focusing on production and speed of production, and they don't have the IT infrastructure at the moment to focus on the introduction of a better performing PLM system or maybe some of those areas.

So they are really focusing on production and not so much on the IT system because they have limited resources. This is just the reason. We talk to all of them. All of them are interested and all of them have, on one hand, the idea and wish to standardize and to automize like the automotive industry did some years ago. But on the other hand, they have full order books and their focus is on getting stuff done and to get it out. So we will stay on the same level. But of course, interesting business for us. We're looking into this as well.

Thank you. And in the meantime, we have received no further questions. So it seems like everything is answered so far, but should further questions arise, ladies and gentlemen, at a later time, please feel invited to contact Tanja Marinovic from Investor Relations. So therefore, we come to an end of today's call. Thank you, everyone. It was a pleasure to be your host today. And for some final remarks, I hand back to you, Mr. Schneck.

Yes. Thank you very much, and thank you for your interest in our share and the time and the good questions that you had today. I hope that we have shown you that we're very confident for year 2026. As I mentioned, 2026 was a transformation year. This work is done, and we're collecting our fruits.

And as it was mentioned before, we have a conservative view given the environment that we're facing, but we're very confident that we will be at least in the range and definitely above what we have guided. And I think this is heading into the right direction and making sure that we will also achieve our 2030 target of being at a 10% EBIT level or better. So this is definitely still our target, and we're heading into the right direction.

So thank you very much. And if you have any further questions, we will be present on different shows, of course, where you can always get ahead of us. And other than that, please feel free also to contact Dr. Fues and myself directly, we're always open to e-mails, calls, whatever you have or just come by in Stuttgart, we're more than happy to welcome you. Thank you very much, and have a very nice week.

Bye.

Good morning, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the CENIT AG following the publication of the Q3 figures of 2025. The CEO, Peter Schneck; and the CFO, Dr. Johannes Fues, will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. [Operator Instructions] We're looking forward to the presentation.

And with this, I hand over to you, Mr. Schneck.

Yes. Thank you very much, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome also from our side, and thank you for your interest in the figures of CENIT AG. As usual, Dr. Johannes Fues, our CFO; and myself, will run you through the Q3 figures and also some highlights from the operational side before answering your questions at the second part of this session, and we're looking forward to your questions.

So let's start. As you all know, we had this year quite some challenges by the beginning of the year, especially in Q1 and then with some effects also in Q2, which were related more likely to our staff, where we had in France and in Germany, several team members that we had, yes, to offer some deals in German called [indiscernible] to make sure that we are from the operational side, prepared for the challenges that we have in the market. And of course, we have also the challenge with Analysis Prime.

But when we look now at the operating business, I can tell you, and you will see it by the figures that we have a very stable -- the top line momentum at the moment in our major segments, PLM and EIM as we report that we have a stable organic business with a slight decline. But I think given the challenging economical environment, this is a very good and outstanding message if I compare this to our peer group. And of course, what we have is an operating profitability that has improved quite a lot compared to last year. As you will see, it's 14.7% in EBIT above last year's Q3, if we compare this like-for-like.

Then the second thing that we will show you is that our acquisition that we have done in 2024 in the United States called Analysis Prime had, as I presented to you already in our last sessions, quite some challenges, I would call it, starting problems and maybe getting also used to our reporting and maybe also our challenges that we have within CENIT. We had to change our CEO, which we successfully did. And now the new management team is full in effect and running in a very good way.

We have updated our revenue outlook from originally about EUR 25 million now downgraded to EUR 15 million, which is already reflected in our figures and also in our guidance that we have given you. But of course, this had a major impact also on the team there. So we had also to reduce some staff numbers in the United States. And of course, this was a challenge.

Then the projects, when we talk about this one, what we mean by this is the project performance, mainly as we call it internally. This was an improvement of our cost structure. As I mentioned before, we had 52 team members that left our organization where we had to provide some compensation fees, if you want to say so, since in Germany and France, as you all know, the legal requirements are quite strict. And unfortunately, not always in favor of an employer. But I think you've seen this was an amount of about EUR 4.1 million that we have included in our figures. And that, of course, are also hitting our figures for this year. But I can say the performance is working very well. It's even working better than we had forecasted. So we're already collecting quite some effects also now in the Q3 and also in the Q4 figures.

And we're very confident that also in year 2026, we will gain at least the around EUR 5 million EBIT effect that we had planned for and that we had in mind when we set this. Overall, if you compare the figures in the team, you will see that we have about 70 employees less than we had at the last year's time in comparison. So you can see that we have done also some work beyond this one and just did this without any major compensation on our daily operational business. So this is also reflected in our pretty good Q3 figures, as you can see.

And what I can say is at the end, we are in line with our updated guidance that we have given you by mid of the year. Although that the Q3 figures have, I think, a very positive momentum and show that we're heading into the right direction, we will stick to our guidance. Since you all know that Q4 is a very important quarter for us. And at the moment, I can say it looks also very good. But we have burned our hands also in the past, and that's why we will not adjust any of our guidance.

So heading into the figures, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Dr. Johannes Fues, and he will run you through the Q3 and, of course, also year-to-date figures.

Yes. Good morning. Good morning. Happy to do so. It's after the first 3 months, second time for me presenting the CENIT figures. And as Peter pointed out, I think we can be quite pleased with the Q3 numbers. I'm going to run you through.

Let me start with a general remark. The transition is underway. We see the initial impacts. It is the beginning, but we're not through yet. But I want to highlight the main points in the figures. We're not hiding the maybe questionable ones. Let me just run you through what we have here, starting with the revenues. What you see all in is a rise close to 2%. We have -- in the '25 figures, we have inorganic effects in there. If you deduct those, you are at the decrease organically of the 2%, which then, in effect, and if you look at the peer group, leads me to say, I think we have a quite stable momentum. Overall, we do see a very nice and stable development there in both segments. We're going to come to that later. So that gives us a pretty good business to work with.

The main things we have done now, they are in the operating expenses. We have put out the gross profit here. This is up to EUR 92 million, EUR 93 million. The more important figure for me is the gross margin, which is moving sustainably close to 60% of revenue, which is good. After the gross margin, the next thing that is worth mentioning, and we're going to come to that later in a second on the next slide is the other OpEx. And what Peter has been telling you, the Q3, you begin to see the operating cost base being optimized. You see the operating cost base reduced, particularly in the personnel structure, we're inching towards some 40% of revenue of the personnel margin.

Yes, let me have a deeper look. As you're aware, per Q3, so in the 9 months, we have done EUR 154 million, and we are at an EBIT accumulator of minus EUR 1.5 million, so very close on point with the guidance. But I think it's worth having a closer look at the Q3, actually just that quarter. We realized an EBIT of EUR 2.2 million. That is an EBIT margin of 4.3%. And if we go deeper, if we have a look what is inside here, then we are at that illustration that we have in front of us. It is worth noting that Analysis Prime, that initial -- that startup problems that Peter was referring to adds to these numbers with a volume of EUR 1.1 million. That is operating loss. And obviously, we have a PPA amortization in there. So that is in the numbers.

If you deduct that kind of subtracting for analytical purposes, then you see that the rest of the group is operating at a 6.5% EBIT margin already, which is a pretty good number. And again, we're not through. There are things to do. But I think if these all comes into effect, we're going to look at the full profitability effectiveness in '26.

If we move on, again, this is the 9-month view that I was pointing to, EUR 154 million of gross -- of sales in gross profit that has improved. The EBIT I was pointing to, if you really look at the Q3 numbers only, that is EUR 2.2 million, which is a good number. We are -- and as Peter has been pointing out in the overall rhythm of the business, we have realized the major one-offs basically the first half year.

So if you look at the EUR 1.5 million minus EBIT, you have to take into account there is close to EUR 4 million of restructuring one-offs included here. And if you look at the accumulated effect of Analysis Prime, that is something like EUR 2.6 million of negative EBIT contribution here. So that is just 2 things to take into account and have in mind when looking at that number.

Those are the effects that we see as one-off or interim effects so that we actually look in a pretty okay way going forward. What else do I think is worth noting? We have a strong cash position over EUR 20 million. We've seen an operating cash flow in Q3 already that has been sustainably -- materially better than in the prior year. That is based on working capital measures that we take. So I'm quite pleased with that. Yes, basically, as I said, it is the beginning. We're not through. But in that Q3, we're able to show some things that definitely going in the right direction.

Peter?

Yes. What I would outline also on this slide is, on one hand, of course, as Johannes already mentioned, the operating cash flow, but I think for our Anglo-American investors, even more important, the free cash flow that you see is far above of what we had last year. But of course, given the fact that we had no investments also this year. But as you see, this is a kind of indication for the EBIT for the coming year.

So this is, I think, very positive. And the other thing that I would like to outline is you see that there's a decrease in the order backlog of about 10%, which, of course, reflects now also a little bit of the situation of Analysis Prime. You've just heard that they are now below by almost EUR 10 million instead of the EUR 25 million that we had already forecasted for this year. They are now at EUR 15 million that we're forecasting, which is already included in our figures and in our guidance. But of course, this also has an impact on the order backlog.

So they're struggling. The U.S. market is a good one. But of course, whenever you have internal issues, then, of course, you focus on this one, but I'm still very optimistic that also we will get our arms around this and that you will see an increasing order backlog also in the coming months already and especially now in Q4, which is, of course, our major [ cue ], as you all know, from the past.

So let's give you an idea of the sales by revenue type and by segment for the last 9 months. As you can see, we have an increase close to 6% in the area of the consulting services area, which is, of course, also related to the fact that Analysis Prime is fully included. So last year, we did not have the first 6 months in those figures. So bear this in mind. And that's why I would say we're kind of -- if you deduct this one in a kind of a flat situation with a little growth. Then what is very nice to mention, and this is also our main focus, as you all know, and we will increase, especially also next year with some new software offerings that we will present to the market. The proprietary software CENIT has increased in the past first 9 months by 3.8%. And if you just look at the Q3 figures, you will see that we had an increase of 5.7% just in 1 quarter. So we're expecting, of course, this will continue this way also in Q4.

It is mainly driven by the SAP PLM business as well as the recovering DFS business. So the Digital Factory Solutions, as you will see later on, has quite a momentum in the aviation business. So this is pretty nice to mention. Then what you see is, I would say, kind of a flat view on the third-party software. This is related a little bit to the difficulties that you see also with the Dassault, the software. You might have seen and this also had an impact on our share price that last week on the 23rd of October, the share price of Dassault dropped mainly because they are struggling also in selling the software or the partners as we are in a kind of flat area. And, of course, this had an impact on us. Though I must say that we are very optimistic in Q4, we will have some impressive deals that will help us to increase this and then to turn this overall in a very positive figure.

If we go by the segments, I would call it flat. So that's why I don't want to go into more details than what you see here on this chart. And if I give you some background on the customer highlights that we had in Q3 and maybe also an outlook for Q4, you will see that one of the nice deals that we could sign is an extension of the 3DX implementation platform with Porsche AG. As you all know, Porsche has quite some challenges. But on the other hand, of course, they are focusing now on increasing the efficiency, reducing their costs and of course, also improving their innovation, which results in the fact that they're going more for digitalization of their production lines of the manufacturing and the whole projecting business.

And the other thing that also plays into this deal is, of course, Porsche has kind of slowed down on their battery-only strategy and focusing on conventional engines as well, which, of course, results then in additional seats for the Dassault software. Then the second nice deal to mention also in the area of the Dassault environment is a company called Delpharm, which is a French pharmaceutical company, and they decided to run their whole development now with DELMIA Ortems for 6 industrial sites.

So this is not only the packaging. So this goes beyond this one. And we hope that there's more to come because they just started with this. So this is a complete new customer, a new account, if you want to say so. The total volume in the first step just for this year is about EUR 350,000. And again, our French subsidiary, KEONYS, so CENIT KEONYS has done there an outstanding job and has entered also now into the pharmaceutical business. So we hope that this will become a kind of a blueprint for further businesses in this segment.

And the final one to mention is the aviation company, Bombardier. Bombardier has decided to go for a FASTSUITE Edition 2, which is our Digital Factory Solutions, so DFS in abbreviation. And this deal is, I think, showing that most of the aviation companies, I must say, or at the moment, I can even say all the aviation companies, they decided to go for our solution in the automation/robotics of the manufacturing processes.

And what I can also already give you as a kind of preview because I recently just came back from China, the large aviation company called Comac, which is similar to Airbus and Boeing, has decided to run their whole production with FASTSUITE Edition 2 as well. You will see this only in Q4, but the new airplane C919 is fully running on our solution. And it's really impressive also to see when we talk here in Europe of the first dark factories. You're going to find them there. They're running the whole production with 1 or 2 employees. So this is very impressive.

So whenever there is the idea that the Chinese have an advantage because they have lower staffing costs, then I must say that's not what I see. I visited also XCMG and other major companies that are much bigger than what we see in Europe. And they all go for automization, they all go for digitalization. And this is, I think, where the future is heading to and what I'm saying already since months, the European companies have to catch up. Otherwise, we will be completely outpaced in the sector. But final statement I can make is the aviation business is growing and is doing very well. You will also see in Q4 a nice deal for the SAP team with services for Airbus aviation or defense aviation.

So this is all heading in the right direction. I can just tell you, I'm positive about Q4, the indications that we see. The traffic that I see in the sales department is exactly what I'm looking for. And despite the environment that we have, I must say that we are in the right way. And as Johannes has mentioned before, from the operational cost side, we're still having this in focus. There will be additional measures that we are -- that we have implemented and we'll collect now the fruits. But there are also some additional measures that we are still introducing to streamline and, of course, increase the efficiency of our organization.

So that's it from my side or from our side. So now we're ready for your questions. And yes, we're looking forward to your questions.

Yes. Thank you very much for the deep dive into the figures and highlights. We will now move on to the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And we already have 2 raised hands. Mr. Filker, you may unmute yourself now.

And it seems like the light at the end of the tunnel is a little bit brighter now at the end of Q3. And I just wanted to ask, you said that you kept the forecast because you made the experience that you burned your hands in the last years. But still, it seems a little bit conservative, just taking into account that in the last quarter, you don't expect any extra expenses according to the restructuring program and also the first positive effects are to be seen or are already seen in the Q3. So my question is, would it be fair to expect that the EBIT would be at least in a positive -- would be at least positive because EUR 2 million were already reached in Q3. So in Q4, why it shouldn't be -- again, this level of EBIT shouldn't be reached?

So in the past, Mr. Filker, what -- let's call it, the guidance that we have given is minus EUR 1.5 million or better. And we're working on the order better. That's my first statement. And that's why I say we would like to stay a little bit more conservative. The second thing is we still have, of course, challenges in the United States with Analysis Prime. So we just want to be on the safe side. And the third thing is, as you also know, in the past, we have been always naked. We never had the chance to cope or also maybe to build one or the other accrual. So maybe we will do our best to be well prepared for the year 2026. But again, our guidance is EUR 1.5 million losses or better, and that's what we stick to at the moment.

Maybe be technical there, Mr. Filker. We've guided on 2 positions. We are close to reaching 1, which is also, for me, the more important one. But blame it on a conservative CFO, if you will, I or we don't want to change the guidance right now.

And you mentioned -- you already mentioned the problems at Analysis Prime. Are the restructuring measures already showing some positive signs? And do you expect to reach breakeven in the next year?

Yes. In next year, definitely, this year, this will not be possible, also not from the operational side. So even if we deduct the PPA stuff, we will not be positive. But next year, we are planning for a slight profit. Of course, the Analysis Prime is optimistic, but we've seen that in the past, this was not always reflecting then the reality, and that's why we keep it positive, but slight positive.

That means that in the last quarter, you still expect a negative EBIT from Analysis Prime?

Correct.

And just one last question. The restructuring measures are finalized now. There are no more personnel measures to be taken in the last quarter. So no special costs that will come up?

No.

Never say never.

That's it. As of today, I must say, Mr. Filker, there is no case that we have any additional restructuring costs or anything that we have planned for. And of course, what we do is normal operational effectiveness to increase this one. So wherever possible and wherever we see the option or the necessity to do certain cuts, then we will do this, but this is not linked to any program and of course, also not to any additional costs.

Let me also put that into a little context. As you might know, I do have a restructuring background some station of my CV spend there. So the answer in terms of big projects as the one we have presented that has affected the -- especially first half year of CENIT. I don't see that happening. But on the other hand, and this is something that I'm transporting to the leadership team very strongly is performance is not a project. It is an everyday duty. And as we are doing performance management measures as we're doing the alignment and realignment of internal structures, you might see or we're going to -- might be coming back also reporting on just every day, day-to-day performance management measures that we do as we move forward.

We do have another raised hand by a participant who dialed in by phone with the last digits of 813.

There is no response. But we have another raised hand. We may go there now. Maybe you can figure it out during. Mr. [ Kowetzky ], you may unmute yourself now.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you very much for the presentation and the kind words. Great to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel finally. I mean, personally, I am a bit troubled by the market right now that everybody who is spending money on AI is going through the roof and the market is ignoring company that earn money by implementing [ AI. ] Do I understand it correctly that the latter is the case with you? Are you undertaking any kind of measures to communicate that a bit more proactively maybe?

Absolutely, Mr. [ Kowetzky ]. So there are 2 effects. Number one is, as you rightly mentioned, there's a lot of companies out there that have PowerPoint presentations, but they have no revenues or in many cases, even just losses on the AI figures. We had -- CENIT have the advantage that we acquired with ISR in year 2022. A company called -- was a kind of present, I must say, because we really didn't pay for it, but it was a hidden present, I would call it, and the company is called Buildsimple. Buildsimple is used now for insurance and banking organization. So in Germany, the German Sparkassen -- out of the 312 Sparkassen organizations that we have in Germany, we have, at the moment, 65 that are already equipped with our AI solution. And this AI solution is without any human intervention, deciding on normal debt or credit requests from customers. So this is done by our solution.

And we are, of course, working and equipping the other remaining 200-ish Sparkassen in Germany as well. And then what we're handling with our solution is about 80% of all customer accidents, incidents, if you want to say so, in the insurance business of the car insurance companies in Germany, they are already equipped with our solutions. So what we can say as of today, we have 48 solutions for our customers or I must say, use cases because they're all based, of course, on the same solution of Buildsimple. And we have now close to 100 customers that are already using the solution. And this is a fast-growing business for us. It is profitable. It's even highly profitable, though we are investing in this area.

And coming to the second remark, yes, we have so far not very well communicated in this area. We are changing at the moment our website, and we will also show our, I think, portfolio in the future a little different. You will also see some internal AI solutions from CENIT that we will add, as I mentioned before, to our proprietary software solutions, but there's also Gen 7 coming into the market from Dassault. And we honestly expect this to be a big boost for our existing customer base to move from V5, which is now about 15-plus years in the market to move from V5 to V7 because now the customers with the AI solutions that are implemented in this one have a real reason and a very good argument to move into this one. So if you do not do this change, then of course, you are on an old version that is not supported by AI at all.

So any new AI solutions will be only available in the cloud, and this means that you have to move then to 3DEXPERIENCE. So this will be another boost for us, and we will outline this in the coming weeks on our website and then, of course, also on our presentation on the [ AKF ] and others, you will see that we will now have a totally different communication to what we have done so far.

We appreciate that feedback, Mr. [ Kowetzky ].

Yes. Well, to put it in a nutshell, I mean, maybe you've seen recently and stocks [indiscernible]. They said the German small caps got to the [indiscernible] here again, which means the segment is not popular. And we are a small cap here. It's not a large company. And so I think it really matters that you put things into a nutshell. Like what I understood from right now, it was new for me, that company, it's kind of simply built to reap the low-hanging fruits in personal finance and insurance companies and it's highly profitable. It's a great way for us to go and earn money with AI, not spend it, something like that. I think the complicated things are not right in the markets right now, you have to make it clear.

Second question, you mentioned automization in China. It was also interesting to me that even there, the personnel costs are not a big topic, but automization. Do you also have some share in this market? Or do you plan to acquire that?

We have -- as of today, Mr. [ Kowetzky ], we have CENIT China. So we are already present there. And at the moment, we are selling only the DFS products, which is the robotic and automatic solution FASTSUITE Edition 2 that we are selling into this market. And the colleagues, I think, have established themselves. They are very well known in the market, and we're now ready to grow this plant, I would like to say, to a big tree and also to do our business in China. And just to give you an impression, I've been last week in China, and I met the #2 of Comac. So Comac is comparable to Airbus and Boeing, as I mentioned, a huge entity with huge production sites.

At the moment, they have below 100 planes per year. But as it is in China, they will outpace Boeing and Airbus very soon. And when I spoke to some engineering guys from MTU, they all told me that it will take years until this plane is flying. So the C919, which is the latest generation that they have is already flying in China, in Vietnam and in Thailand, about 43. The planes are in full use, and there are more to come because they cost far less than what you see with the current suppliers. As you can imagine, the government in China is pushing this. And they are at least on the level of an A320 from Airbus because, of course, they looked into the plane and maybe did some things better.

So what we see here is maybe the first generation will be on the same level, but the next one will be even on a better level, a little bit like what we've seen in the car industry. In the beginning, everybody was laughing about them, and now we are all afraid of them. And if we just look at the EV models, I would even say they are outpacing us. And then I went also to another company, which is XCMG, which is a kind of comparable to Itaya in Europe, while they are producing 50 vehicles. So these are special vehicles for mines, for cranes and this kind of businesses, but huge entities or huge cars or vehicles, if you want to say so. They produce it really from bottom up. So even the engines, even the whole thing.

And as I mentioned, the European competitors, they have about close to 60 a month. They produce 50 a day. And when we were there, there were about 400 just for acceptance, unbelievable production line itself, nobody there. It's fully automated. Also thanks to FASTSUITE, I must say, that's one thing because we're handling all the robots. We're working very closely with KUKA, and KUKA has decided to use our software solution also on all their robots. I think we have no idea of KUKA China now because in Germany, KUKA is more likely not existing anymore, if you want to say so, so the German entity. But in China, it's huge. And wherever you go, it's KUKA, and we're happy that our software is running on this one.

And it's not a question about the -- I think the staff costs, they have, as we have here, a lack of highly educated team members in engineering. But they decided -- and of course, the Chinese companies, they have the advantage. When they started on a white paper, they decided to go already to the latest and greatest like they do in China, and this is fully automated dark factories. So like I said, XCMG or also Comac are a very good examples. And there are more to mention, you don't see anybody in production anymore. And this gives them also the advantage that they can scale. So you will see that Comac down the road will produce at the moment below 100. I'm sure that they will build 3, 4 additional plants and then you have 500, 600 planes a month that can be produced.

So I think we have no idea here in Europe, and we're totally underestimating what is happening in China. And again, for us, a good opportunity with FASTSUITE, also to mention that the European competitors since they are, in some cases, you know that FASTSUITE, there's also a kind of solution from Dassault, but from others as well as Siemens and those companies that have solutions. But because of the geopolitical situation, they don't feel very well to buy from companies that are somehow also involved in defense business, like Dassault, especially. So they're reducing their licenses in these areas and are looking for opportunities and options like ours, like FASTSUITE, where then, of course, we have special agreements where we have to link our source codes in notary environments and all those kind of things to make sure that ever there's any cut that they can continue their production.

So this is the latest and greatest and I think shows you there's for us a huge potential. But I think overall for our economy, we have to digitalize if the European economy is not investing into digitalization and catching up with the innovation of the Chinese market, we will be completely outpaced.

Yes. But from the point of view of CENIT or CENIT shareholder as well, it says that the Chinese bought KUKA, they closed it down in Germany, but it's huge in China, and they're using us, they're using FASTSUITE, bad for Germany, great for CENIT.

Correct.

Yes. If you're looking for the 2 nutshells, then you're right. First, we are working with AI, offering AI, using AI, bringing money with AI. Second nutshell, also that trend is a friend for CENIT. So that's good, they're using our software.

Great. Final topic, if I may. I mean, Peter, you personally bought quite a few shares recently before that drawdown caused by Dassault, which is, I mean, not in your hands, of course. However, given the high free cash flow recently, do you have the legal possibility to take advantage of that buying shares with part of that free cash flow at even lower levels now? Or is that not possible as of now?

So yes, you're right. I bought some shares because I strongly believe in CENIT, and I'm sure that the -- that we will get back to the old strengths and even down the road, that there's quite some potential for me. Of course, I'm married and I have 2 girls. That's why I'm limited in buying shares. I would love to buy more, but I also have some household requests that limit me in this context. From the CENIT company view, we are, at the moment, not considering if your question is to buy back any shares or anything like this. So this is an option. This is, of course, on the table, but we're not considering this at the moment.

[indiscernible] is walk the talk and show the good results of what we're aiming at, what we are moving in the right direction and then persuade shareholders and buyers with our numbers that being something.

Okay. And my question was rather, is it even legally possible? I mean, if you were to consider it, it first has to be possible at all. Is there [indiscernible] capital basically?

Yes, there is some [indiscernible] capital, if you will, so. But again, at the moment, this is not something that we have in mind.

We still have the participants who dialed in by phone raising their hands with the last digit of 813.

I hope you can understand me now?

Yes, we can hear you.

Perfect. [ Oliver Fry from Bank of Nexside ] here. Just a quick question on the slight decline in Q3 revenue. You already gave us some color on the sentiment in aviation. Could you maybe give us 1 or 2 sentences on maybe other manufacturing sectors, the automotive, maybe how is the sentiment over there?

Yes, of course, I can do so. So if I give you the automotive industry, there is movement, I must say. So there, on one hand, is the suppliers that are now following the major OEMs. And as you've heard, Volkswagen as well as BMW have decided to go on the Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE. And we expect another major car manufacturer OEM to follow this line. And this, of course, means that there's also quite some business for us in the supplier business because this is for us even more interesting. You know that Dassault is typically signing the big licenses with the OEMs directly, and then we do some migration work. But what is for us much more interesting is the suppliers where we can directly do the deal, so the license sales as well as the implementation of all the other things.

So I would say there's movement. It could be better, no doubt about this one. Everybody is still reluctant in Germany. You hear about the different difficulties that they have. But I think you see also here on this slide, Porsche has taken a decision to head this direction. And I'm sure that the Volkswagen company or the group will also do further steps in different directions so that we can walk into this one. We're also looking at the moment into a big truck company manufacturer that we're working on. So there's more to come. So I'm very confident in this area.

The aviation area I just mentioned, so aviation defense, I must say. There is, as you can imagine, quite some movement. And we see on all sides, even including Boeing, that there is -- that there are changes upcoming and that there's also quite some funding to do those things. And if we then look in general, in other areas, you know that companies that want to be highly competitive in a global environment, they have to go for digitalization to go this path with some of the midsized family-owned companies at the moment, I would say they're still reluctant, but we're also confident that they will do this change.

So overall, at least movement, a lot of talks that we have and much more than, I must say, in Q1. Q1 of this year was maybe also due to the election in Germany and some changes in the United States and everywhere, but this was a dead quarter for us. And compared to this, I must say it's very busy at the moment.

In the meantime, we have not received any further questions nor in the chat or our audio line. [Operator Instructions] And with this said, we have another raised hand. Mr. Elman, you may unmute yourself now.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Wonderful. So I'm Elman [indiscernible]. I have a question with regards to the industry in Germany. So do you have any plans if it gets worse or continues to be weak in the industry itself? I think there are 2 dimensions of your actions. One is you're doing on your company side and one is how you react on the industry itself. So what you do when it goes back to somewhat growing, we've been hearing, but what are you going to do if it gets even worse in the industry?

Yes. So thanks for your question, Mr. Elman. We have different options that we have prepared and that we are, of course, working on. Number one is expansion to other areas. As you've heard, we're pushing the activities in the Chinese, or I would say, Asian market. I was not only in China, I was also in Japan, where we're looking to work together with SAP Japan on several large customers to sell our solution for the first time with a local partner [indiscernible] that we sold our entity CENIT Japan 2 years ago. So we're working with them on the Japanese market. We're working on the Chinese market, means expansion to Asia.

The second step that we have is expansion to the United States. This was the reason why we acquired Analysis Prime. And unfortunately, but maybe also expected, we had some starting problems with United States over the U.S. entity, although that we have CENIT North America, I think German companies always struggle and always have difficulties in getting aligned with U.S. management, and this is where we're in. But once we're over this, we see a potential to sell more SAP solutions in the U.S. market, but then, of course, also to expand with other entities, we are already present with the DFS solution. And the next step would be then also to sell our own solutions together with Inceptra and [ Go3 ], which are large Dassault partners for the North American market, which we haven't done today.

And the third one is still focusing on the existing markets that we're in. And it goes a little bit into the direction of Mr. [ Kowetzky's ] question. I think that we, as CENIT, have so far been poor in showing what our portfolio is and what the advantages are for the German or French companies or German-speaking countries -- companies, I must say, in the French market. I mean, like I said in one of our calls already before, I think we can provide solutions for every segment or any manufacturing company to improve the efficiency of your company, which means cutting costs, at the same time, increasing automation, which is another cost factor and, of course, also increase the innovation.

And I think overall, if you do so and there are proven figures that we can show to any company and also all the different segments, then I think you're back on track to be competitive in the global environment. If companies do not do so, they will shut down the activities. And then the final option is, of course, Mr. Elman, if all our activities do not work as we expect and if none of it is fruitful, which would be now the very, very negative case. But of course, also this is something that we have to consider, then, of course, we would start with a performance program as we did to adjust our cost structure to the market requirements.

At the moment, to sum this up, I don't see this. If I see the planning -- the budget planning for year 2026, all entities are positive and planning above of what they have achieved or are planned to achieve this year. So I would say there's a positive momentum. And I think that the European companies, they understood quite well that they have to digitalize, that they have to cut costs and that they have to go back to innovation to be competitive on a global level.

So option 4 that I mentioned to you is nothing that we're really looking at, at the moment because all the indicators that we see are positive and in a totally different direction, which would even require. And on one on the other hand, we will increase our staff. And this is also what we are planning for. So if you go on our website, you would see that we are seeking for additional resources with special capabilities to attack certain segments.

In the meantime, we have not received any further questions. We, therefore, come to an end of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining and for all your questions. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Tanja Marinovic from Investor Relations. A big thank you also for you, Mr. Schneck and Dr. Fues for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining day and hand over again to you, Mr. Schneck, for some final remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you for your interest and your trust in CENIT. As you see, we have done the right operational measures to get back on track. I think this, as I mentioned, 2025 is a kind of a year of change, and we're well prepared for year 2026. The indicators that we see are heading in the right directions.

We're working hard now on Q4 because this will be now the final one to prove. And then we're ready and steady for year 2026. And I'm hopeful to see you also in person on the [indiscernible] in Frankfurt, where Johannes and myself will answer further questions that you have. And up until then, of course, please feel free to contact us either directly or to go through our website and to contact our Investor Relations department. Whatever you prefer, we are always willing to answer. So thank you very much. Have a nice week and let's tackle Q4. Thank you very much.