Basler AG
XETRA:BSL
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Basler AG
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Hardy Mehl
So I think we are complete. It looks like everyone is on board. Again, from my side, a warm welcome to our 9-month earnings report from Basler. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Hardy. I'm CFO, COO of the company and would like to run you through our today's earnings report.
Before we do this, I would like to remind you on our disclaimer that the statements we are making here are using information available to the management at the time. These are forward-looking statements we are making by nature, subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. So neither the group nor the Management Board, therefore, can assume any liability for the statements made. Please carefully look at the disclaimer, and let's start.
So looking at the agenda for today, we start, as usual, with an executive summary, putting the main messages on top. We then dig further into our financial situations into the different P&L, cash flow elements. We then have a quick glance at the share performance over the reporting period here and also the ownership structure. And this brings us then to point 4, the outlook we are making for this year and also for the midterm. And then I'm very sure we have enough time after the presentation for a hopefully lively Q&A session.
Yes. Let's start with the executive summary and the market situation, the market surrounding we are in. I mean it's not pleasant market surrounding. We are experienced in the last 9 months that the markets continue to be weak in all regions and that after Europe, who was relatively robust last year, also cooled off a bit. Fortunately, not to the same extent what we have experienced in Asia and in the U.S., cooling off last year and then also the level we see the business in those regions. However, Europe also cooled off quite a bit.
We have seen slight recovery in the first half year, and we come later to this step-by-step improvement of order entries and also billings. But unfortunately, we have experienced again a drop in market demand in the third quarter. This has 2 sides of -- or 2 root causes. The one is a normal seasonality effect. But on the other hand, we also saw a slowdown, and we will come to this later. We saw also a slowdown in PMIs. So over the summer season, the mood even changed again.
The inventory levels at our clients are reducing over time. This is good news. So the destocking effect that is muting our sales are fading out. We still have a certain muting effect. We foresee that latest by end of the year, this should be really cleared off. The last survey we did with our clients indicated that they come to a normal inventory levels.
The industry itself, when we look at one of the key indicators we look at on a regular basis, the German vision components industry exporting worldwide. Billings year-to-date down by 15% and bookings down by 6%. I'm also sitting in the Board of the VDMA for the vision components industry or vision industry, and we recently had to lower also the expectation amongst -- within the VDMA down to 10% billings drop for this year.
So how is our situation in this market? So if we compare 9 months -- first 9 months of this year compared to first 9 months last year, bookings are up by 4%. So we are better than the industry developing on the bookings side for the accumulated 9 months. On the billing side, we are more or less developing like the industry is developing with 13% drop in sales.
On the gross profit margin, we are generally improving it. This is good news. After having quite low gross profit margins in the second half of last year, we are step-by-step improving. I also come to this. We had also a recent little drop, but this needs certain explanation, and I come to this on one of the later slides.
On the pretax earnings side, accumulated for this year so far, minus EUR 4.9 million. So definitely not a situation we want to be in. Last year comparison, minus EUR 16 million. I mean, this was a big restructuring year, not a real good comparison, but what we are seeing is the aim that we had for this year to be back in the profitable zone due to the slow markets has been a challenge for us and especially with a weak Q3, we had to revise our guidance and our outlook, and I come to this also at the end of the presentation.
So due to the near-term market development, we also decided to further take action in lowering our breakeven point because the uncertainty for next year is still high, and we really want to bring the company back to profitability as soon as possible. And therefore, we have decided to go into another smaller round of reduction of staff in order to bring down the breakeven point at least below EUR 100 million.
So where we are at the moment with the structure of the company, so if we compare the number of FTEs last year after or at the end of the third quarter to this year at the end of the third quarter, we have -- we are down to 870 FTEs at the moment compared at that time a year ago, roughly 1,040 FTEs.
Also structural-wise, I mean, we have reduced quite some staff. In general, the structure we have kept. You see that we have over proportionately reduced on the R&D side. This is because before we started to reduce the organization, we have built up quite a lot of R&D force in the belief that the markets will stay strong and that our top line will grow further.
So we are still having relatively sizable R&D quota. So this year, so far in the first 9 months, we talk about having invested 15.5% from sales into R&D. So it's by no means that we are not investing, but obviously, due to the top line, we have to reduce the amount of investments that we are able to do in order to do product developments.
There's also and we announced this already, there will be some upcoming changes in the Management Board. So due to the situation that we are facing, the Supervisory Board has decided together with one of my colleagues, Alex Tamme, that he will leave the company by end of the year.
There's also the decision that I will take over the Chief Commercial Officer responsibility of Alex at that point in time, and in order to leave off my workload, we will get a new CFO on board January 1, so I can hand over my CFO role actually to her. We will come up with more information shortly also with the name of the new CFO and would like to ask you to be a bit patient, but there will be following news soon.
Yes. Also on the product side, we continuously investing, as I said, with roughly 25% of our staff working in R&D and quite a large marketing group also defining products, launching products. We had recently one of the biggest event worldwide, this is the VISION show in Stuttgart. So many of our product launches were timed to this event. One of the key highlights we showed was the Pylon AI functionality.
So Pylon is our software development kit for those of you who don't know our products so well, and we now offer our clients also not only the framework, not only classic algorithm vision algorithms, we also start to offer our clients an artificial intelligence functionality where they teach -- can teach in their images, teach a network and deploy the network and run the network.
Next to the software innovations, we have -- yes, we have also announced and launched many new products, a whole new Line Scan product family, also on the area scan side together with Frame Grabbers, high-end area scan and mainstream products and a variety of accessory products, lenses, cables that come with it.
We presented ourselves, and this brings me to the next slide on the VISION show in Stuttgart, again, more as a solution provider or full range provider. So no longer just a single camera company. So demonstrating that we can solve applications in various different markets. And therefore, it was a good demonstration on our journey from a single component company acting mainly in factory automation, step-by-step moving to a position where we are a full-line provider acting in various different application fields and also not only selling single components, but give our customers good guidance, reference designs to solve their applications.
Yes. This first part brings me then to the financials, and let's have a closer look how the financials developed. Looking first on the top line, bookings and billings and having here the last, let's say, 7 quarters of development. You can see we came from a more bullish market still in -- I mean, the real high time was in 2020, but then also first half year of 2023 was still strong with above EUR 50 million or around EUR 60 million sales per quarter.
Then the -- as most of you know, the order entries dropped sharply further. The lowest point was Q3 last year with EUR 34 million roughly in bookings, EUR 41.5 million in sales. And then from that on, step-by-step, we increased the sales. And this main -- this increase was mainly driven by destocking effects, not so much by end markets really picking up and our clients having a better, let's say, market demand.
So this continued till Q2, and then as I mentioned, the situation changed a bit, the orders, the bookings and the billings dropped. We were more of the expectation making more or less sideways on Q3 beforehand, but we -- especially the September was a very weak month -- and this then we had to realize here the order entry to be pretty low with EUR 41 million and EUR 43.7 million on the revenue side.
So all in all, over the first 9 months, we realized EUR 36.7 million in sales. We're looking at the different regions, Americas is still pretty weak with 16%, normally in the range of 20%. Also Asia, typically above 50% is still weak and EMEA with 36% in general, in comparison, still relatively strong. But as mentioned earlier, also the European region has cooled off over the period of the first 9 months.
So looking at the gross profit and gross profit margins, so maybe first take a look at the gross profit margin. We were at a very low point compared to history in the second half of last year due to various reasons. We already initiated mid of last year a program to improve the gross profit margin. We are pretty successful with it, so brought it from 38% back to 48%.
Recently, in the third quarter, we had a small drop down to 46.5%. This is mainly due to the low revenue because our indirect cost on the material and production, we had lower economies of scale, and this ended up a drop of the gross profit margin. In general, we are structurally looking forward to further improve the margin step by step to get back to our target is 50% roughly gross profit margin.
But the combination, a little lower gross profit margin and low sales ended up in the third quarter here with EUR 20 million in gross profit only after being at around EUR 24 million in the second quarter. And the result, you can see on the next slide here, if we look at the earnings, we were slightly profitable already in the second quarter, but we dropped back into the non-profit zone with minus EUR 2.6 million pretax loss in the third quarter.
So this is the situation at the moment. And if we sum it up for a 9-month view, order entries, as mentioned earlier, up 4%, EUR 133.5 million, sales down by 13%, so in line with the industry, as mentioned, EUR 136.7 million. Gross profit in absolute terms, EUR 63.5 million, so down by 7%. So under proportional down compared to sales due to the higher gross profit margin of 3 percent points that you can see in the next slide. EBITDA positive EUR 9 million in the first 9 months, but earnings before tax here at EUR 4.9 million pretax loss for the first 9 months.
Having a look at the cash flow situation. This looks different than on the earnings. We are -- the last quarter, step-by-step, we have made improvements with regard to our operational cash flow here in dark blue.
One might have to mention here that especially on the Q3, the high, let's say, or the relatively high operational cash flow comes from the situation that the revenue dropped over the course of Q3. So it was a very weak September at our end. So the accounts receivables went down, and therefore, we had an effect here. This needs to be mentioned.
Other than that, on the investing cash flow, we are having our normal run rate roughly of EUR 2.3 million investing cash flow per quarter. And on top of it, came 2 extraordinary M&A investments in the second quarter, the -- an M&A investment in Roboception, a German Munich-based 3D company acting in RobotVision.
And we also took over the remainder of Basler France shares from an M&A transaction that we have already strike 3 years ago or 2.5 years ago, and we took over the rest of the shares and have now 100% of the shares, and this also had an extraordinary impact on our investing cash flow. All in all, free cash flow positive the last 2 quarters and also in total for the first 9 months.
Yes. Looking at the cash flow statement for the first 9 months, we started the period with EUR 32.2 million cash account. Cash flow from operations, EUR 12.8 million, so much stronger compared to last year. Cash flow from investments, minus EUR 11 million or EUR 11 million investments. So the free cash flow in total as a net sum out of it, EUR 1.5 billion, slightly positive.
And cash flow from financing for this year, the first 9 months, almost EUR 10 million, minus EUR 10 million. Significant portion of these were paying back loans and also finance lease for the buildings. These are the main positions in the cash flow from financing. So we ended up the period with approximately EUR 24 million in cash account.
Yes, I have a quick glance to the share performance. Yes, by far, not pleasant. We know this. We are concentrating to fix the business and go back into profitability and growth zone in order to cure our problems here. The share price developments, we started the period with approximately EUR 12 per share and ended at EUR 9. We are currently at around EUR 6. So after the announcements and the preliminary numbers that we released 2 weeks ago, the share price further dropped.
From the shareholding structure, no big change. Family has majority shareholders, long-term interest in the company, also very committed even in these more difficult times. And on the other side, there was -- on the other investors that I mentioned here, no change compared to the recent past.
Yes, let's come to the outlook and also certain explanations to it. So what are our assumptions for the remainder of the year? So actually, after we were hoping for, and we were not the only company hoping for an improvement of the situation in the second half of the year, we now believe for the remainder of the year that there will be no substantial recovery kicking in.
However, we see a sequential improvement in bookings. This is what we definitely believe. So even though we have seen bookings coming down from Q2 to Q3, we don't believe this is going to continue this downward trend. We believe that bookings will pick up mainly due to seasonality effects, so not because of that market substantially will pick up in the remainder of the year.
We also believe that there will be still certain muted demand due to the excessive inventories at our clients. However, this is definitely fading out the situation, and we should see already in Q4 that this -- the level of muting will be less.
Geopolitical uncertainties to continue and rise. I mean, we just have seen also a lot of news in that direction. We also, I mean, see the risk of the China markets of the trade conflicts may be rising. And we also see that the competitive intensity in China, in the Asia Pacific market by the Chinese competitors will also continue.
Reflecting on these assumptions and also reflecting on the situation that there is still quite some uncertainty for the outlook of next year. We had or we were forced, first of all, to revise our guidance. Beforehand, we had EUR 190 million to EUR 200 million guidance in sales. We reduced it to EUR 178 million up to EUR 184 million. And due to additional measures to reduce our cost base, we also see an impact -- an additional impact on the earnings side so that the earnings before tax or the pretax loss that we expect will be in between EUR 8 million to EUR 12 million.
So quite substantial loss again. We know this however, we are very firm that we want to bring across or implement those measures, lowering the personnel costs short term again, also having ongoing tight OpEx and CapEx management ongoing in order to reach our target to bring the breakeven point even below EUR 180 million and be fully committed to bring back the company to the profitability zone as soon as possible.
In the long run, midterm, we are not scared about our markets. We are firm and firmly believing that computer vision market will start to grow again. We simply don't know when yet. There are a lot of megatrends in automation, in digitization, in the medical industry, so cost problems in medical, also AI possibilities. These megatrends fuel the usage of computer vision. And therefore, we believe that the markets will grow again in the high single-digit real sooner or later.
The strategy that we have taken from a single component to a full-line solutions provider, we are also very convinced that this is the right way in order to grow the pie that we address and also in order to differentiate better than you can with a single component. Therefore, we believe we can bring back the company to grow at a pace of 15% top line and also a sound earnings before tax margin of 12% and growing the company to a level at around EUR 300 million by the end of 2027.
However, what we need to get to these absolute numbers is a recovery of the market starting next year at the latest. And also what we need is a remaining access to the Chinese market because that's still quite a significant portion of our top line.
Having this said, I'm done with the presentation today, and I'm opening now the Q&A session. Looking forward to a lot of questions from you. Happy to answer them. And my colleague, Jan will help us to go through the Q&A session.
[Operator Instructions] I see the firsthand raised, so I'm trying to unmute you. This is Lasse, but I think you need to unmute yourself.
My question is just on the general market environment. I mean, clearly, it remains pretty weak. Can you just describe what's happening in the individual or the different end markets, consumer electronics, logistics, medical? Is there anything we can point to, particularly sort of looking into next year as to how the demand picture might look? I know it's early, but just to get some insights into what customers are thinking regarding investments also for next year.
Yes. So on consumer electronic side, the situation remains very foggy. There is not real signs of strong CapEx investments yet. I mean it's -- but it's also a bit early. So typically, we see this more at the end of Q4. So that is still a question mark even after 2 years, 2 very weak years. We need to see how now the bookings will develop in this sector in the fourth quarter.
In the semicon, the mood has changed a bit. I mean, people are more pushing out now. So here also, I would say, no short-term pickup. On the medical side, what we are seeing is slightly picking up. I mean, on the medical side, we also have quite some, especially at the laboratory automation, they still have quite some overstock in their inventories.
We are seeing good signs on the logistics side. Here, already this year, we see growth compared to last year, and we expect more growth to come for next year. So this is the only sector at the moment, the logistics sector, warehousing optimization where we see clear signs at the moment.
So the next question should come from Lucas.
I would like to follow on, on the last question concerning visibility and you already confirmed your 2027 targets, which from today's perspective seems to be very ambitious. You need to grow nearly 20% until 2027 to reach the EUR 300 million. So where do you take this optimism today to still confirm this EUR 300 million target for 2027?
Yes. So the 2027 midterm outlook that we typically give is -- yes, it's more kind of meant as a rough indication. It's not having an annual guidance where we have really the precise number. I mean this is impossible. The -- what we are -- at the moment, what we want to do is we want at least to see how the Q4 and the Q1 will go because that typically gives us good indication then if the markets are picking up or not.
And the clear answer is also here, if the markets are not picking up next year, if the markets are making again a side move for the third year in a row or even going down in certain sectors, then the EUR 300 million in 2027 is not reachable, then it becomes really not possible. But at this point in time, we want to keep it because we simply don't know how the markets will develop next year. And we have the ambition to get there on the one hand.
On the other hand, we also will prepare the company for a market situation where the market is making again sideways. And in this market environment, making sure that we can stay profitable after 2 years of losses. This is the management stretch we are in at the moment.
Yes. Okay. Then you mentioned the survey you made with your customers. But how resilient is this survey? So did you have any -- did you make any service in the past where you can compare this that you can say, okay, now there is really resilience in the survey that customers are now really at the end of their destocking and will maybe now pick up again. So yes, the visibility also on this point.
Yes. So this is a good question. And the resilience is not that high. I need to be very frank with you because when we ask a customer today, do we have an overstocking? Yes or no. Then this is depending on the demand situation that the customer is anticipating at this point in time. So he wants maybe to have, let's say, a normally stock level of, let's say, 2 or 3 months of business at hand. And then it's really depending on what is the current demand.
So and this as we have not only 5 customers, we have a couple of thousand customers. For us, we have no mechanism in place where this is really a scientific value. So it's only a sample point, but all indications we have, this sample point and also talks with customers are really hinting into the direction that after the fourth quarter, there should be no more substantial destocking effects. There are here and there customers in certain businesses, I mentioned for example, in the laboratory automation that were -- where the markets were pretty booming and then busting and these customers are still sitting on certain extra stock levels. But in general, it should be faded out by end of the year.
Okay. And last question on gross margin. Do you see any improvements in gross margin also already in Q4 again? Or will that still a topic with higher revenues?
I mean one lever of the higher gross margins is definitely higher revenues and therefore, better economies of scale. The other measures that we have taken, be it negotiation on the supply side or be it also redesign of products and exchanging certain components, this will continue, and this will also continuously give us an impact on the gross profit margin.
For the fourth quarter, typically, I mean, this is also in recent years by year-end, we are also having -- when closing the books look more accurate also on certain materials whether we need to do certain depreciations and such. So I would rather give the indication here that we are making kind of sideways on the gross margins for the fourth quarter and not seeing a significant improvement. But beginning of the year, I definitely think we will show and demonstrate further improvements on the gross margins.
Thanks a lot.
Other question, Lucas?
He's muted right now because there was some background. Sorry, Lukas, I muted you.
No, that’s all from my side. Thanks.
I'm checking. Robert has a question. He has raised his hand. I unmuted you, you need to unmute yourself again. Let’s try whether this works.
I also have some follow-up question on the restructuring and maybe your kind of gut feeling for the future. So first of all, the restructuring, the approximately EUR 5.5 million, this should be mainly in the P&L in Q4 or are you expecting it to be somewhat split between Q4 and Q1? And a follow-up on that, where are you actually cutting -- because you have kind of a scalable business. So the question always is if you now cut R&D and if you cut marketing, for example, will that somehow lower your ability to grow if the market returns? So how did you place those cuts?
Yes. So maybe first about the timing of the impact. So we foresee the biggest impact definitely in the fourth quarter as we have different measures in place at the moment to reduce staff. So we have some countries, for example, in China, where we can act pretty fast. In Germany this time, and this is different to last time, we have a social plan and a balance of social interest in place. So here, the negotiation with the works council, we have not 100% in our hand when we find an agreement.
Our goal is definitely to find the agreement and do the accruals already in the fourth quarter. So this would then mean that a significant portion will be in the fourth quarter. We also had -- and when we talk about this EUR 5.5 million extraordinary costs due to different, I mean, mainly severance packages. Some of those costs we already had also in the last month, the minority of it. But we also, in the last month, we already continued because of, the billings were not that weak, but we already continued to further lower our base of employees.
So then coming to the question of in what areas. So the main portion of further reductions are on the one hand, in China, in administrative and also some sales functions where we see we can improve efficiency and where we also see that the revenue levels are at a different level than what we have anticipated and where the size of the organization is simply too high at the moment.
The other countries are mainly Germany and within Germany and the functions -- we will have the largest portion in R&D and marketing. On the R&D side, we mainly talk about functions where we see at the moment, excessive capacity because we are in our journey towards a full-line provider and also to bring much more software value creation.
We have certain functions in the company where we still have, let's say, not a balanced situation between hardware mechanics and software development. And we try to reduce in those areas where we have excessive capacity. This is also why we have chosen not to go again with a voluntary offer, we go here with a social plan in order to reduce the staff in the area where we think we can do this without harming operations and without harming our mid- to long-term goals.
Okay. Perfect. Maybe a quick follow-up just to compare it to the measures we've seen last year. Could you give me an indication of the FTE impact just so that I have a comparison?
Yes. So the program now is much smaller, first of all, just to give it a bold statement first. To make it more precise, last year, we were reducing roughly 200 people within 6 months. This time, we hear talk more about 50 people or 50 FTEs. So 1/4 of the size compared to what we have done last year to give you a feeling.
So from the numbers, you see by end of Q3, we try to bring it, and this was roughly 870 FTEs to bring it down to a level at around 820 FTEs. This is not happening overnight like a switch. In some areas, we have already started and executed. In others, we are negotiating. So it will be now a process step by step.
Okay. And you already mentioned that the breakeven will be brought down by roughly EUR 20 million. So my question would be what level of revenue would you require to return to your 12% EBT midterm target?
To 12%, roughly in the range of EUR 230 million to EUR 240 million to get back to 12%. This would then depend a little bit on cost of living adjustments and also how we steer the OpEx, but giving you an indication, breakeven at around EUR 180 million or less and 12%, so targeted earnings margin at around EUR 235 million to EUR 240 million.
Okay. Perfect. Last question kind of follow-up question to a question asked before. I understand that you're, on the one hand, with the cost cutting kind of cautious starting into next year, but you remain optimistic midterm. I understand how the approach is somewhat different for the midterm target and the immediate very future with very limited visibility. But just from your gut feeling and what you hear from your team, do you expect the route from, let's say, 2020 from now to 2027 to be more like a linear upswing or more difficulty in the near term with kind of a jump more in 2026?
So my assumption is once the markets turn around, we will see more kind of a jump because the situation we are having at the moment is for 2.5 years now, the market cooled off and even the customers are now not -- they don't want to be back to normal inventory levels. They even want to be below because they get the products fast. So what I'm foreseeing is that the whole pipeline after this bullwhip of upswing and delivery crisis, now everyone had stocks in place, everything cools off, that now people optimize and optimize and optimize.
And at a certain point in time, when I expect that the markets can change quickly and then that there will be kind of an uplift, not a gradual growth, that will be an uplift. But the question is when and this, I and also, I think no one can answer at the moment. But not a gradual rebound. I would expect after such a long time of markets going down that there will be quite some backlash in a positive way.
We have 2 questions written down by Bruno. I'm reading out the first one. I would like you to speak about the different geography, so Asia, China, Europe and U.S.A. So the first one is why this drop in Europe? And how do you see China after Chinese New Year?
So looking at China, maybe first. In China, what we are seeing is that the revenue level is this year compared to last year, it's roughly down single digits. So it's relatively stable for what we see in the economic situation in China. So we are also changing our clients here more towards higher-margin business and more loyal clients. And therefore, we can, let's say, more or less keep the revenue level at the moment.
We all know that the risks -- that there are still risks in place. And our ambition strategically is also to reduce the proportion of sales in China. However, we have roughly EUR 40 million of sales in China. So that's a substantial amount of sales, and we want to defend and keep and even develop it as good as we can.
With regard to the specific question of Europe, the Europe cooling off has 2 elements in it. On the one hand, the destocking situation in Europe came later because our European clients compared especially to Asian clients were not so aggressively ordering and overstocking so that they were behaving more balanced. So this is why the size and also the timing of this destocking. The timing came later and the size of -- or the amount of destocking effect is much less in Europe because of this more balanced behavior of the clients.
There is another aspect to it also that the European clients typically have relatively long lead times. If you have special machinery type, I mean, in Germany, for example, you can have 12, 18 months, 2 years of delivery time sometimes. In Asia, the delivery times for a machine, even for complex machines are much shorter. So the impact of a market that is cooling off hit it much faster in the Asian markets compared to Europe.
And other than that, I mean, in Europe what you also can see, in Europe, Germany is our biggest country market. You can see the industrial PMI, it's significantly cooling off, especially it further dropped in the summertime. I mean, just recently now in October, it went a bit better, but we are still talking about PMIs at around 45%, so contracting market situation and this is what we also see. We have many, many customers in different industries and all the machine builders have, let's say, a declining market situation at the moment.
Is that answering the question, Bruno? Or you have more questions?
There's the second question. So maybe in the meantime, if it remains unclear, you can write it down. The second question is you're speaking about having your breakeven point down, and his question is, which action will help to have the breakeven down? The first question was, yes, can be close has been responded to.
Yes. So at the end, there are 2 main levers for the breakeven. One is the gross profit margin and the other one is personnel costs. Because on the OpEx side, to give you a rough feeling when you have a look at our P&L structure, I mean we talk about personnel costs of roughly EUR 80 million, a little bit over, and we talk about just 1/4 of it in OpEx.
So the OpEx lever is much shorter. And also, we're already running a tight OpEx management over the course of the last 2 years. So the room to optimize this further is relatively thin. So we need to reduce the breakeven point, we need to work further on the gross margins, and we need to intelligently reduce the amount of FTEs due to the weak market situation that we are facing and the uncertainties for next year as well.
This seems to be clear. I don't see additional questions right now and no one raising his or her hand. So we just can wait some additional seconds. I think there are no additional questions right now. Robert, I think let's try again. So you should unmute yourself. Let's see it works again.
One closing question maybe considering your new position in the company. As I understood it, this was kind of something you were looking forward to. So I would just be interested in what challenges do you see? What changes do you want to make? Why did you want this new position within the Management Board?
Yes. So maybe, Robert, as you may know, because we know each other also for quite some time, I'm very long with the company within the industry, worked also the first 10 years in sales and marketing. So what I'm looking forward actually is to get also back a little closer to the client side than I'm doing this at my daily job at the moment. I'm still a CFO and COO with very close relationship to clients and the markets. But I'm passionate about, let's say, creating customer value and turning this into economic value.
And looking at the current situation in the management Board changes, I mean, finding someone from outside replacing a Chief Commercial Officer role is pretty challenging for the company. And seeing at my profile, there is, let's say, on the one hand, there is certain passion I have. On the other hand, there is then also an opportunity to bring in a new CFO with also maybe different experience than I had into the company, and it's much easier to integrate a new CFO compared to a new Chief Commercial Officer.
So and here, the interest that I generally have and also the interest of the Supervisory Board matched together, and I'm looking forward to it. I mean I have very high commitment to the company. And I'm willing and doing everything I can in order to bring the company back to a profitable growth scenario here. And this is my ambition, this is also Dietmar's ambition. This is what we are striving for and where our full energy gets into it.
I see no additional questions so far.
Okay. Then I think we close the session. And I thank you for the lively debate. I'm looking forward also to the next call. And you can be assured that we do everything we can to turn the situation around and doing our homework in order to present better numbers in the future. Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot. Bye.