Bilfinger SE

XETRA:GBF

Earnings Call Transcript 2018-Q3

[Bettina Schneider, Head of Investor Relations]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our analyst and investor conference call on the results for the third quarter of 2018. On the call with me today are Tom Blades, our CEO; and Michael Bernhardt, Member of the Executive Board. We will start now with the presentation, which will be followed by a Q&A session. With this, I would like to hand over to Tom Blades.

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Thank you, Bettina. And also from myself, good afternoon, and welcome to our Q3 call. I think if you look at the headlines, you will see that we're definitely on track. What does help, of course, is the favorable business environment. We've been able to report yet another quarter, book-to-bill greater than 1. I think that makes it 4 out of 5 quarters. So underlying growth is in place. Conversion of those orders into revenue also on track. You can see that our revenue again has grown vis-à-vis the same quarter last year. EBITA adjusted is slightly higher. EBITA reported is a definite improvement on the prior year, and then we'll go into those numbers very shortly. Net profit has improved, that we have purchasing as a red 0. Maybe it's not quite 0, but just a little bit below. So also there, tracking in the right direction. And I think you'll see that cash flow is good. Operating cash is actually positive, which also gives us strength and reaffirms our commitment to the plan 2020. Finally, of course, based on what I've just told you, no surprise that we're on track on our outlook for 2018. So I think boring performance. We like that. We're proud of that. We're making progress with these many small steps we mentioned before and I think delivering on our commitments. I'd like to say a few things before Bettina gets into the numbers on the market and the trends, beginning with E&T, essentially, our project business. I think also there, no surprise, a favorable environment in Oil and Gas. Our customers are making money. That is good for the business. It's good for us. They're spending some of that money, in Europe, typically on brownfield development, productivity enhancements, expansions and buildouts; whereas in the U.S., it's definitely around greenfield investments and new plants. There is another interesting development in the U.S., and that is, let's say, a gap growing between downstream and upstream, specifically around shale gas. A lot of new projects around shale gas are coming to fruition, coming onstream. They require Y-grade, which essentially is the liquid part of the gas. Upstream is producing enough gas, but there's not enough conversion activity or midstream, if you like. That's being converted in the form of cryogenic units or strippers, as we call them. And that is favorable for us because we have a good track record in building these strippers. We've built 30 in total. We're currently working on 5; that's up from 3 same time last year. And we have about 20 of those on the radar screen. So I think, at least for the Bilfinger business, we have a good pipeline that we're currently working on and a good pipeline ahead of us in construction [indiscernible] around the U.S. shale gas. Moving on to Chemicals and Petrochemicals, similar story. Brownfield investments continue in Europe, new projects in the U.S. These are actual projects where the customers are soliciting bids around EPC. And finally, I think what is really very affirming is the fact that in the Middle East, a lot of early signs on significant investments. I think you've seen them in Saudi, around [indiscernible], and then Abu Dhabi wanting to do the similar around Borouge talking of a EUR 40 billion plus investment. And then I think you will have read a couple of weeks ago, Abu Dhabi is saying that they wish to increase their oil production up to 5 million barrels a day. All of that, of course, is significant investments. Good news for us because we're well positioned in Abu Dhabi. We're well positioned with ADNOC. Energy and Utilities for us is a flat arrow there. So no uptake but no downtake either. We're still doing well in nuclear around refurbishments in France. We're still on track for Hinkley Point. That will materialize, I think, next year. But we're already embedded in the customer's organization in Bristol and already working on early parts of the project. What's also been good for us, we've mentioned a few times, is the emissions environment around ships. So the IMO, International Marine (sic) [ Maritime ] Organization, is enforcing its low sulfur requirements; that, in turn, is yielding in orders for us to our scrubbers. And we have reported significant order intake in the third quarter. And we still continue to see a lot of signs from the customers. It is a tight market, high demand, low supply and that's really good news for us. Rounding up on the project business is Pharma and Biopharma. We see continued strong demand. We've actually made our first sale into Russia, which I think we'll be announcing soon. And also the Far East continues to draw on our availability, on our modules, on our know-how. So I think Pharma has been for us about 20% compound annual growth and continues to be so throughout '18 and most expectedly further in '19. So that's the fourth arrow definitely pointing up. In MMO, our modification, maintenance, operations market, Oil and Gas around the North Sea. The customers' cash flow is driving our revenue. Their cash flow is good. Shell and BP both reporting more than EUR 11 billion in Q3. Equinor, or Statoil, reporting more than EUR 4 billion in Q3. And of course, that cash strengthens the balance sheet, allows them to catch up on delayed maintenance work. And as I mentioned, we're seeing that in our revenues. So the North Sea in both sides, the U.K. side and the Norway side, very favorable for us. Chemicals and Petrochemicals, a lot of turnarounds being planned in Europe, roughly 90 a year. It's 2018, but already our books are full for '19 and we're doing planning work on '20 and even '21. There is again, I would say, stability at a high level for Chem and Petrochem in Europe. Energy and Utility, I think fairly flat, as the arrow shows. We're still well positioned. We're doing very well in Saudi, in Kuwait and quite happy to be there. And then, finally, rounding up on Metallurgy. Aluminum is good and also steel, especially European steel is now coming back and asking for quotes on long-term service agreements. So we got an arrow up for Metallurgy, especially around Europe. I think that's the very fast roundup, I'm sure we'll get into more detail on questions. And with that, I'll hand it back to Bettina and ask her to walk us through the details on the numbers. Over to you, Bettina.

[Bettina Schneider, Head of Investor Relations]

Thank you, Mr. Blades. Now some details on the financials, starting on Page 6. The positive momentum in orders received continued. The 6% organic year-on-year increase in Q3 was especially driven by a strong E&T segment against the comparably weak prior year quarter. A number of new contracts awarded for scrubber systems for the shipping industry contributed to this growth. Order backlog grew by 13% organically, building the base for future sales growth. Book-to-bill in Q3 was again at 1.1, despite a significant growth in sales. Now to Page 7. Revenue was up 8% organically as a result of positive development in both segments. EBITA adjusted of EUR 22 million improved slightly, whereas margin was on prior year level. As you might remember, the prior year quarter was impacted by a positive one-off effect in E&T. Burdens from special items decreased from EUR 26 million to EUR 11 million, resulting in an EBITA reported of EUR 11 million. This includes EUR 7 million restructuring costs and EUR 5 million IT investments for our process and system harmonization project. There was also a small positive effect in compliance due to timing issues. Costs in Q2 were expensed which were in Q3 offset by the release of the corresponding provisions. For 2018, we expect special items in EBITA to amount to approximately EUR 50 million, as already communicated last year. Now to Page 8. Regarding both the adjusted gross margin and adjusted SG&A ratio, we have seen a positive trend in the third quarter of 2018. Adjusted gross margin in Q3 was at 9.5% and thereby, below the third quarter of 2017, which was supported by project closeouts in E&T as mentioned. The SG&A expenses improved sequentially but were higher than the especially good prior year quarter. However, the recent figure of EUR 91 million now includes some expenses related to business development and digitalization, which are expected to sum up to EUR 20 million for the full year 2018. The adjusted SG&A ratio stands now at 8.6%. Our target is to reach approximately 7.5% by 2020.Turning to E&T on Page 9. Orders received were up by 64% on a reported basis and 63% organically. This is impressive, and we have seen this strong growth, however, against a low comparable. A number of new contracts awarded for ship scrubbers contributed to this growth. This was, in total, more than EUR 50 million. Revenue has increased 10% organically and the book-to-bill ratio was 1.5. We still have underutilization especially in some ex-poly entities, but this should be filled up step-by-step going forward with orders also from the nuclear sector. Overall, we have realized an adjusted EBITA of EUR 4 million against EUR 10 million in the prior year, as I said, which included some positive project closeouts. For 2018, we expect an organic stabilization of revenues combined with the significant increase in earnings, turning EBITA adjusted back into positive territory. Now we look at MMO on Page 10. For MMO, we have seen an organic decrease in orders received of 15% due to high comparables. The prior year quarter as well as the first half of this year were positively impacted by catch-up effects and the entry of new framework contracts, i.e. we have now seen a more normalized level, also expected for Q4 on a similar level. Revenue in MMO grew by 8% organically. Regarding earnings, EBITA adjusted increased to EUR 37 million in Q3, resulting in an improved EBITA adjusted margin of 5.2%. In the prior year, we had seen a depressed margin due to new contracts, which has in the meantime increased their efficiency strongly. For 2018, we continue to expect a slight improvement in EBITA adjusted. Looking now at OOP on Page 11. In Other Operations, we have made good progress on our M&A track. All 13 dilutive units have been either sold or terminated by the first half of 2018. Regarding our accretive units, we are in the sales process for 2 of the 4 units right now. Looking at the business development of OOP, we have seen a positive development in orders received in Q3, which amounted to EUR 58 million and was originally 29 -- was organically 29% above prior year. Revenue has been declining to EUR 45 million in Q3, being organically 2% below the prior year quarter. This was mainly driven by our South African entity, which is facing delays in customer requests due to their currently difficult situation. Looking at earnings, EBITA adjusted slightly improved from minus EUR 2 million to breakeven. For the full year 2018, we expect a decrease in revenue and a significant improvement in EBITA adjusted in the segment, last but not least, due to the completed sale of the dilutive entities.Turning to Page 12. Reported net profit improved significantly to minus EUR 1 million as a consequence of a lower amount of special items. In this quarter, there was no change to the valuation of the Apleona preferred participation note. The next review of the book value of the PPN will be done in the year-end closing on the base of Apleona's financial performance, planning and financial parameters, potentially leading to another valuation upside as long as the asset continues to develop so positively. Adjusted net profit was stable at EUR 13 million. The figure is excluding special items in EBITA and is reflecting a normalized tax rate of currently 31%. Adjusted operating cash flow decreased a bit in Q3 against prior year but was positive. Recorded operating cash flow as well as free cash flow increased against prior year. Our target for 2018 remains to reach a positive free cash flow on an adjusted base. That means we expect a significant swing back in working capital in Q4. Having a closer look on that, net trade assets in absolute terms as well as in days increased in Q3, both year-on-ear and sequentially. This is not satisfactory. However, there were some negative effects resulting from the migration of ERP systems. For example, we paid some suppliers early before the going live of the system in some important entities. For the fourth quarter, we expect a significant release of working capital, also leading to better NTA numbers. The debt has increased to EUR 37 million at the end of Q3 and the development of liquidity was again significantly impacted by the meanwhile completed share buyback program. For the end -- for the year-end, we do expect to be back in a net cash position due to cash earnings and a swing back in working capital. With this, I hand it back to Tom Blades.

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Thank you, Bettina. I think, ladies and gentlemen, you see that all of our numbers are up, except for one which is down, and that's the headcount. So we're doing more with less. We're driving efficiency, we're driving productivity and again that gives us high confidence to achieve our outlook. Just to recall what that outlook is on the final page here. Organic growth in the mid-single-digit percentage range, mid is obviously 5%. I think we'll do a little better than that and we'll gain momentum. And I think we can -- compared to a tough or a very good quarter last year, I think we're going to do well in the fourth quarter this year. And so quite frankly, the 5% is going to be at the low end of our own expectations. Revenue, organically stable to slightly growing, I think underlying the slightly growing. We have been growing in the last quarters. We'll do I think similar, driven by a strong backlog in the fourth quarter. So for me, anything below slightly growing would be a little bit short of the mark. But we're confident there also, as you can see. Finally, on the EBITA adjusted, EUR 3 million last year on account of the very poor Q2. I think we talked a lot about that last year. This year, we said that we would increase significantly, mid to high double-digit million amount. We thought we'd try to put a bandwidth on that. So for the year, we're looking at EUR 50 million to EUR 75 million, which gives you I think a little bit more upper and lower bandwidth in terms of our expectations. We'll also show you our strategy horizons as we close out. So you would've seen the big green tick mark the last quarter. We're well into the buildup phase. The tick mark we designed ourselves in this quarter is around the share buyback plan. You will recall that their plan was sanctioned by the board to buy back 10% of the shares or spend EUR 150 million, whichever came sooner. It was the latter, the EUR 150 million, which we reached in September, and therefore we concluded the buyback program. We announced that and we gave ourselves a tick here. So in essence, we're on track. Our strategy, 3 phases, a lot of small sets. It is hard work, I don't deny that, but we are making progress. We are confident, and I think the results show why we're confident and why we're confident not only for 2018 but also going forward to '19 and [ also ] in '20. So with that, I will pause and hand -- open-- or hand over back to Bettina, and happy to take your questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

We would now be happy to take any questions you may have. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS.

[Gregor Kuglitsch]

I've got a few questions. So from the guidance, obviously, EUR 25 million range with kind of 1 quarter left. This is, obviously, pretty, pretty wide. Can you maybe elaborate why that is? Has it got to do with closeouts of various projects that there's some uncertainty around? Because then -- look, I'm kind of calculating kind of EUR 20 million to EUR 50 million, this is rounded for the fourth quarter, which is, obviously, pretty, pretty wide range. And then secondly, on the cash flow. So I think you said in your statement that you expect to see the net cash balance to EUR 37 million, which is currently net debt, to become net cash. So obviously, we can all see that there's still another, I don't know, EUR 25 million of buyback in the fourth quarter. So I want to understand what gives you the confidence that flows back. And if you can perhaps kind of update us on how the sort of special item unwind is happening because maybe that's part of the answer that it's a little bit less. And then one maybe broader question. So we're now at the end of 2018. 2020 is, obviously, not very far away anymore. I'm guessing the orders you're taking in now kind of already -- well, will probably extend into 2020 in terms of delivery. So can you give us some confidence or perhaps some detail as to, are you actually seeing the gross margin uplift in the new orders that you are kind of targeting to get there? Or how much more is there? Or how much sequential improvement in the market do you need, in other words, to get to that 5% that you've laid out previously?

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Okay. Let me begin and maybe hand to Bettina for some of the granularity. First and foremost, on the range. When you're dealing with large numbers, it's easy to deal with a small range. When you have small numbers, then of course, the range becomes very germane. We've been very careful for reasons that I think I don't need to go into. Our past performance was not always as predictable as we think we are today. And one of the reasons we are predictable is that we take care to make sure that we stay within expectations. We do a lot of work on trying to forecast to avoid surprises. And when we do that, we -- typically, these are internal processes, we have something called the MOR, the monthly operating review. And in that, we look at the upside and the downside. And when we run those numbers, we come to a EUR 60 million plus/minus number for the quarter, and that essentially gives us the range. So there are still things within our ability. I'll give you an example. When we do projects, essentially large capital projects, we don't report any profit until we're 20% complete. You'll recall that we announced a project in the -- towards the end of Q2. This was the project for Linde, our ultimate customer, Braskem, in Texas. That project is approaching the 20% completion mark. But it's not there yet. And only when it does so do we recognize the profit. So you see the kind of variance we're working with. Assuming it comes in, of course it goes up. If it doesn't materialize 20%, there's no negative effect, but it'll be 0. So when you add up all these effects, we're at the EUR 60 million, plus or minus sensitivity, and that gives us really the bandwidth. And we ourselves, of course, are pushing as hard as we can. We had a very good fourth quarter last year. And we need to do something similar to come in the range of our expectations. You mentioned cash flow. Let me pass that to Bettina. But also to say immediately, we've concluded the buyback. The buyback has no impact in cash flow in the latter range forecasting our cash flow towards the latter part of the year. So over to you, Bettina

[Bettina Schneider, Head of Investor Relations]

Thank you. Yes, and looking at the cash situation, we had -- after 9 months, we had EUR 95 million minus of adjusted free cash flow and we have the target to breakeven at least for the year end. That means only from that side, we expect roughly EUR 100 million positive effect coming then from cash earnings and a positive swing back in net working capital. This is partly a normal seasonality coming back towards the end of the year, but it also reflects the strong focus we have on that topic. We definitely have a lot of activities going on to make sure that we will, in time, and that we get in the working back -- the working capital in the right direction. So as I've said, the minus EUR 95 million adjusted free cash flow right now after 9 months should go back to at least 0. We will also have some net CapEx and some cash-out from special items and also some leftovers from the share buyback in October, which is in the meantime completed. But overall, this should cover then the net cash situation in a way that it can be back into positive territory. This is at least what we have in our planning.

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

So let me take the more complex one, and that is the question of margins going forward. If I look at our 2 segments, the service segment, or MMO; and then the project segment, E&T, I think the MMO one is, let's say, predictable, yes? So we work within a bandwidth of 4.5% to 5.5%. You see that our Q3 performance this year, as shown on Page 10, 5.5%, which is up from the 4.4% in the prior year. It shows you that we're moving in the right direction. And as we've been able to take in more orders, now I know that order intake in Q3 this year wasn't as high as last year, but through the revenue progression, we see that our backlog is increasing. We're able to be a little bit more selective on our customers, we're able to push back a little bit, and that gives us the confidence that going ahead, we're going to remain in the middle to upper part of that bandwidth and we're able to achieve the margins we've set ourselves as targets for 2020. On the E&T part, this is a more challenging issue. But also there, we're making good progress. The EUR 2.8 billion in total backlog we have, when you look at the quality of that backlog, the margin quality is up on the prior year, it's up on the prior quarter. So it's moving in the right direction. What is driving that is I think a little bit of a firmer business environment but also the ability for us to extend, go into the higher-margin areas. And we talked about the scrubbers. The scrubbers 3%, 4%, 5% higher gross margins in our run rate; therefore, there is an uplift. Now it's only a small amount. Our order intake on scrubbers was EUR 65 million in Q3. So that's having a marked effect. But as we go forward, we expect that order intake to continue to increase. We expect the margins to continue to go up because it is a seller's market, much more demand than supply. And therefore, that is the second component. The third component will be around portfolio rotation. So as we go through our budgeting process, we see that some of the companies that's been coming out, the dilutive companies that we referred to, that was priority 1, to eliminate them from our performance. Priority 2, we can take a little bit more time with, what we equally focus on, and that is taking low-margin business, margin that's below our ultimate target and if we find a buyer -- and we've been approached in 1 or 2 cases -- then we are interested to enter a dialogue. We will then sell such company and then convert the returns of those sales into bolt-on on acquisitions, which is concurrent with our Phase 2 of the strategy. And essentially look at picking up higher-margin businesses that we can then add on and continue to be accretive to our overall margin target. So the 3 focus: customers, we're being selective on customers; scope development; and, ultimately, portfolio rotation. We'll continue to add our already current albeit slow momentum on picking up the gross margins.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Norbert Kretlow, Commerzbank.

[Norbert Kretlow, Analyst]

Two questions, if I may. First on the E&T business, you mentioned again the overcapacities. Maybe can you shed some light on where these overcapacities are allocated at this time? Maybe you can give us an idea about clustering, what dimension of sales are affected? And also maybe indicate how the order intake, in particular also the project pipeline, is with respect to these capacities. And second, on the order intake in the MMO business, book-to-bill was 0.9x in Q3. I mean, you mentioned that the driver was also that there have been some framework orders being booked in H1. Can you maybe give us more -- can you maybe shed some more light on the drivers of the 0.9x with regards to the current project pipeline? Or to put it in other words, is this sort of a short-term temporary exhaustion? Or is this rather a trend that we would have to look at with regards to say, Q4, Q1 going forward also to see book-to-bill below 1x?

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Okay. Thank you for the questions, Mr. Kretlow. I'll begin with the overcapacity that we referred to on and off. This really is around one of our business lines focused on nuclear. And we've been referring to Hinkley Point and the expectation of a large order for some time. But until that order is in-house, it means that we are holding capacity for the order. And that's an unfortunate statement because, normally, if you have excess capacity, you'd like to unload that and take down the cost in line with the business level. In this case, that excess capacity is also part of our qualification for the business. So the customer that ultimately will then give us the work, that's EDF, they give us the work based on our ability to execute, and that is driven by the people, by their certification, by their know-how and expertise and as well being very close to the nuclear reactor. For that reason, yes, we have been holding capacity. We still do expect that contract to materialize. As I listened to the customer, it's in Q4 this year. I'm a little skeptical there; I think it's more late Q1, early Q2 but it will come because, as I said, we're already embedded, we're already in the customer's team working on the early phase of that project. And that, of course, gives us a very good position to negotiate the sort of right kind of margin quality prior to meeting our 2020 targets.So I think, on MMO, you asked about the backlog and the 0.9. When you look at the overall order backlog -- I'm sorry, you quoted the book-to-bill ratio. If you look at the overall backlog, and we have it again mentioned on Page 10, we're 3% higher than we were last year. Last year, we actually recorded a number of projects that came in -- multiyear projects. Now our accounting is such that even if there is a 5-year on the pace last year of a 14-year contract as we negotiated, agreed and signed with Equinor, then we only ever show 12 months of that at a time. So although our backlog is shown to be EUR 1.7 billion in MMO; if we were to unravel the whole thing and show all the forward-looking contracts, it will be even higher. So we're kind of content with that. We have a stable business. We have long-term contracts, and we're not too worried about the volatility of one quarter or the other.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at the moment. [Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Jasko Terzic, Metzler Equities.

[Jasko Terzic, Research Analyst]

My first question is on the nuclear business, because you mentioned that you hold some capacities free in order to be available to take this order in. But how sure are you that those orders will come in, in the first half of '19? And what is the risk that it might be even postponed a year further? And also related to this, is there any other client paying you, to some extent, for those capacities you hold free?

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Good questions, and thank you for that. I've been to the site personally. So I went to Hinkley Point in September. And while I was there, I signed a big poster. I didn't sign a contract, but I signed a big poster along with, I think, 10 other CEOs of various companies that are working on the project. Hinkley Point is budgeted to be roughly GBP 15 billion, the cost of the project. They are GBP 5 billion into the project, so 1/3. There are 3,800 people working onsite and it is quite spectacular when you are there and you see the extent. So this is a real project, it's materializing, it's moving forward. The other CEOs have signed their contracts as well as signed the big poster. They were signing for early works. So a lot of foundation work, a lot of painting and scaffolding. We could have been part of that consortium; we chose not to be. We chose to hold out a little bit longer. And for our own expertise, which as I mentioned is around very high-skilled welding, close to the nuclear reactor. Our track record is Olkiluoto in Finland. Our track record is also the request of the very same clients, not Olkiluoto, but EDF in this case, for us to come in, in Flamanville and do some of the remediation work on other people's welding. So all the signs are there that, yes, it will come to us. We are discussing and negotiating the contracts with the customer. The people that we have in the customer's office for the early upfront work, yes, it's being paid for. That early upfront contract, also we signed in September. And therefore, other than that, I can't give you any more confidence. I'm very confident. If you'd like to bet a bottle of wine, I would take you up on your bet. It will come our way. It will be good margins. And if it doesn't come in the first half of 2019, then the overall project, a GBP 15 billion project, will see significant delays. And I think that really isn't worth the holdup on a small part of the project. So I can't get more confident than that, and I hope some of that is at least convincing to you as well.

[Jasko Terzic, Research Analyst]

Okay. That's helpful. And the second one is regarding those turnaround project you are indicating for the chemicals industry in '19 and '20. Could you give us a rough feeling what about the volumes you could face in that period from '19 and '20?

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Yes, I think we're still looking at that. Obviously, we like to take as much as possible but without putting our customers at risk. What we've been able to do, and you recall that last -- no, I think early Q1, we mentioned that of our accretive companies in LLP, we recently had 5, one of them we pulled back, and that's a company called VAM in Austria. And the reason we pulled them back is that they are specialists in turnaround projects. So while they're based in Austria, they are quite used to doing projects outside of Austria. As far away as Chile, to be honest, and even in parts of Africa. Those are not turnaround projects, by the way. They were previous projects in hydro power generation. Turnaround projects they've been doing in Finland over the last year. They've done some in Germany. And overall, it's becoming a stronger focus of Bilfinger because what we recognize is that customers have kind of moved away from trying to put turnarounds in the hands of many companies, and they're saying "We want to reduce interfaces." It may cost a little bit more money, but we also then derisk the project; and derisking is important because if a turnaround drags on by 1 or 2 days later than planned, then of course there's a lot of money going into production. So we think we're well positioned to do that. We can ramp up 200 or 300 people at a time. And if I look back on 2016, I think we had about EUR 20 million in turnaround revenue in '16; that's the year I arrived. We had very little in '17. We had very little in '18. And '19, we expect that to begin to come in and it comes in also at higher margins. So again, a margin story. We think -- we're still fine tuning, but we think well upwards of EUR 20 million is possible. It's not hundreds of millions, but it is a good uptake. And more importantly, it's actually a margin uptake for us.

[Jasko Terzic, Research Analyst]

Okay. And the final one is on your digital spend. Could you give us a feeling what's the figure for digital spend after 9 months? And maybe also an indication of what you would now expect to see in spending in fiscal '19?

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

Yes. I think at the onset of the year, we said it could be as high as EUR 10 million for the year. I think we're going to be well below that from the end of the year. It will ramp up towards -- and next year on spending. On the other hand, we're also beginning to see revenue coming in. It's coming in drips. We have our first orders, commercial orders. We've been doing demos until now, but we have roughly -- our first 250,000 in commercial orders came in, in the quarter. Our target for next year is half of the costs that we have to be covered by revenue. So not quite breakeven. Breakeven, as you recall, is for year 3. But we are on track. We will make sure on the spending this year, we'll catch up on that; it's mainly around people. And the good news is that revenue is beginning to trickle in.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Christian Korth from HSBC.

[Christian Korth, Analyst]

I just have one, and that is related to the monitor from the U.S. Department of Justice. Unfortunately, I was a little bit late, so I'm not sure if you already mentioned anything about that. But is there any answer that you could give us right now?

[Thomas Blades, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO]

No, we didn't talk about that, and it's the first question in that direction. As you recall, DPA is programmed to end on December 9 as is the monitorship. And in the past quarter in past statements and some interviews as well, we've been quite confident that both the DPA and the monitorship will end on December 9, so that hasn't changed. And you should be looking for announcement on December 10. But until we're there, we're crossing our fingers that we are highly confident. December 9 is the official date when we can then finally say it's behind us. But we're not quite there yet. But very high confidence.

[Bettina Schneider, Head of Investor Relations]

There are no further questions right now. So we conclude this presentation and this Q&A session. If there is more, don't hesitate to come speak -- contact the IR team. So thank you very much for joining, and have a good day. Bye-bye.