Siemens AG

XETRA:SIE

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Florian Martens, executive]

Thank you very much, and a wonderful good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues. Welcome also from my side on our Q3 2023 Conference Call. We're delighted to have you here this morning for our conference call together with, of course, our CEO, Roland Busch; and our CFO, Ralf Thomas.

Before we get started, the usual housekeeping remarks. This morning at 7:00 a.m., we, of course, already published our Q3 results. The presentation as well as the Executive Board speech and any other document can found at siemens.com/press on our website. This is also where you will be able to find the recording of this conference call. As per usual, Mr. Busch is going to give you an overview of the finished quarter, including some details on the market and business development. Furthermore, Mr. Thomas will then talk further about the Q3 results and the forecast. After those features, of course, both gentlemen will be made available for questions, and our conference call will end at 9 a.m. at the latest. And as per usual, I would like to point out the safe harbor statement, which, of course, you can find at the beginning of our quarterly presentation. With that, over to our CEO, Roland Busch.

[Roland Busch, executive]

Thank you, Florian, and good morning. Thank you very much for your interest in our highlights of the third quarter. We continue to see profitable growth. We are creating value and are again very competitive at all our businesses. We're extremely pleased with this strong performance, reflecting these achievements. Revenue grew strongly, increasing 10% on a comparable basis to nearly EUR 19 billion. Growth is broad-based. Digital industries, smart infrastructure and mobility, all generated double-digit growth. Our smart infrastructure stood up with revenue growth of 15%. Revenue at [indiscernible] was up 10% excluding the effects of antigen tests in Q3 2022.

[indiscernible] Industries Automation business continued to grow by 15% from an already very high level, outperforming most of its peers. And smart infrastructure also continued to demonstrate great competitive strength. For example, this Electrification business grew 22% with strong momentum of customers in the areas of power distribution and data centers. Over the past few months, I've spoken to many customers from their industries worldwide, how they can accelerate their digital and sustainability-related transformation? I always say, Siemens combines real and digital worlds like no one else. This strategy helps customers last their challenges. And as a result, they trust Siemens. They trust our technologies, electronic execution and our extensive brand know-how. For us, this trust means that in the years to come, we'll benefit over proportionally from long-term investment trends.

As expected, industrial customers are normalizing their purchasing behavior in the short side of businesses. They are also adjusting their inventory levels in line with a more relaxed supply chain situation. In Q3, the normalization demand was clearly visible in orders at our short-cycle businesses, most notably in China, but also in Europe. Softer order development and the destocking of inventories have knock-on effects. Lower demand for certain short-cycle products that are shipped and invoiced directly and some delivery performance by customers prevented digital industries from achieving even higher revenue growth. Recovery in China's manufacturing sector has been slower than anticipated. As a result, we expect the trends to stay flat. This development depends not only the macroeconomic situation, but also on the timing of implementation of government investments in these programs as well as on when private consumption picks up.

Overall, orders grew 15% to EUR 24.2 billion. This increase was driven by Mobility's highest ever quarterly order intake. Several large contract wins pushed orders to more than 8 billion units. I'd also like to highlight the strong demand of smart infrastructure at Smart Infrastructure, which was on the par with a high level of Q3 2022. The book-to-bill ratio was an excellent 1.28, pushing our order backlog to the record level of 110 billion. We are rigorously converting the order backlog. As a result, Profit Industrial Business is very strong, totaling EUR 2.8 billion. Digital Industries and Smart Infrastructure were highly profitable. The profit margin at Digital Industries was 21.1% and at Smart Infrastructure, 15.6%. Our excellent free cash flow, in particular, clearly sets us apart from our competitors, EUR 3.1 billion at the Industrial Business was an outstanding achievement.

Digital Industries, the transition to Software as a Service, or in short SaaS, is fully on track. Annual recurring revenue at our [indiscernible] business, Cloud ARR is approaching the EUR 1 billion mark and accounts for around 27% of our total ARR. In Q3, ARR growth was again at 14%. We consistently deliver solid results, and we're executing our strategy successfully and rigorously. Our global EUR 2 billion investment strategy will enable us to boost our future growth, innovation and resilience. In addition, we further optimized our portfolio.

Innomotics, the global motors and large price champion is now a [indiscernible] separate company in Germany and has its own strong global brand. In the next step, we reduced our stake in Siemens Energy to 25.1%. We transferred 6.8% of Siemens Pension Trust, and we will continue to further wind down our stake. I don't need to emphasize that the repeated massive losses and quality deficiencies at Siemens Energy [indiscernible] business, having a major disappointment, put back to our operating business. After an excellent performance in the first 3 quarters, we are focusing on effectively leveraging our large order backlog. We maintained a positive economic equation between inflation on the cost side and productivity increases and price adjustments on the other side. For this reason, we confirm our guidance for fiscal 2023 revenue growth of 9% to 11% and basic earnings per share before purchase price allocation accounting or EPS pre PPA of EUR 9.60 to EUR 9.90 excluding our Siemens Energy investment, and Ralf is going to give more details.

I'd like to highlight two more topics connected with the figures. The Industrial Business profit margin was a healthy 15.3%. Our operating strength was reflected in EPS pre PPA of EUR 2.60. This figure does not include our stake in Siemens Energy. Including the Siemens Energy effect, EPS PPPA totaled EUR 1.78. Fueled again by strong demand for our systems, Solutions and Services, our order backlog reached EUR 110 billion, another record level. As I mentioned, the purchasing behavior of our customers in the short-sighted businesses like Digital Industries and Smart Infrastructure is normalizing and customers, we're intensifying destocking due to shorter lead times and improved component availability. This trend will continue over the next few quarters. As a result, our order backlog in the short cycle Products & Systems businesses will decline to a more sustainable level.

We expect backlog levels at both, Smart Infrastructure and Digital Industries, to remain elevated at the start of fiscal 2024. It is also quite clear the long-term growth trends in our markets are fully intact, even if we make a quarter with more volatile macroeconomic developments ahead of us, but the demand for more automation and digitalization for sustainable solutions will increase in many countries. In many countries, the workforce is shrinking, this is especially true in China, where the labor market will lack more than 80 million people by 2040. There's also a need for electrification, resource efficiency, the decarbonization of the industrial sector, mobility, better infrastructure and flexible production. We can only meet these needs with a significantly higher degree of automation and digitalization.

This, in turn, will require substantial investments worldwide driven also by government programs in the various countries. The countries and companies that implement these investments the fastest will be the most successful. To tap this potential, we are making substantial investments also globally. Our investment strategy, EUR 2 billion this year for new high-tech factories and the expansion of our manufacturing capacities as well as innovation labs and education centers. As a result, we are significantly boosting our high competitiveness, our global presence and our growth in key markets.

In Q3, we'll announce three major steps that will help Digital Industries expand its geographically balanced presence and generate further growth in the current decade. We are building a highly automated and digitalized factory for our Factory Automation business in Singapore to meet strong demand in Southeast Asia. The significantly reduced planning and operating costs will develop a factory entirely Industrial Metaverse, which creates 400 jobs. Production is scheduled to start in the fall of 2025. Our factory in [indiscernible], a twin of our factory in Nuremberg, Germany has continuously expanded [indiscernible] operation 2013. To implement our regional strategy and support our leading market position in China, we'll expand capacity in Chengdu by 40%.

The Chinese government wants to strengthen the country's manufacturing sector. This is a great opportunity for us to drive automation and digitalization in China since the country has more than 360,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing sector. And the third step, we announced was a EUR 500 million investment for a net 0 technology campus in Erlangen, Germany. We are revolutionizing our production processes in a strong ecosystem of partners, making these processes more efficient, more flexible and more sustainable. We intend to expand and modernize our world-class factory for power converters and machine tool control [indiscernible]. We are also bundling all our technology activities for the Industrial Metaverse on this campus. In Erlangen, we'll achieve an even level of productivity by using technologies such as AI generative language models and 3D printing. Further investment are being planned in the United States and then will follow soon. They support growth at Smart Infrastructure.

The Smart Infrastructure and Digital Industries teams have done an excellent job in recent years of bundling and expanding capacities at our global data center businesses. The key to success is predefined standards for the complete range of low and medium voltage electrification, building automation and services. We can tailor these standards to specific customer requirements. As a result, customers data centers are more reliable, more energy efficient and more cost effective on the entire life cycle.

Green energy data centers in Estonia is a great example. For this company, we implemented the most sustainable data center in the [ volatile ] countries with cooling that works with AI. An important component of our offering are services and financing from senior financial services. In this highly attractive markets, we've achieved 25% growth in each of the last 2 years, and we are gaining market share in [indiscernible]. The U.S. is the largest market by far. The majority of hyperscalings, who are our biggest customers are based in the U.S. We see huge potential there. A boom in generative AI models will continue to drive strong demand as Google, for example, has recently explained. We are making good progress in the strategic transition of digital industries, product life cycle business to SaaS. What are we basing this progress on? As I mentioned, we are fully on track.

Cloud ARR which has a share of around 27% we've closed to EUR 1 billion. More than 9,200 customers have opted for this business model, the share of small and medium-sized enterprises continues to rise. Of the total number, 76% are new customers, clear evidence on reexpanding our existing customer base. The customer transformation rate reached a new quarterly high of 94%. This figure shows that our offering is attractive. We are continuing to invest in this area and drive the transition. Our Digital Business remains on a strong growth trajectory. Over the first 9 months, we are at EUR 5.1 billion. We are fully on track to exceed 10% growth for the full year despite the ongoing SaaS transition at digital industries.

Growth will be further supported by the expansion of Siemens Xcelerator, our Digital Business platform. An example for our customers in the area of electronics manufacturing shows how well the modules in our portfolio complement one another. Our solution enables these customers to cut costs, produce more flexibility and make better decisions about component during the design phase. We're also combining our leading design and analysis technology, part of our electronic design automation, EDA offering with the intelligent supply chain platform, which provides data on availability and lead times for 600 million components.

Optimal power grid management is crucial for the energy transition, and more green electricity has to be transported, and its share fluctuates. Operators of low voltage grids are faced with a problem of how to increase group capacity. How can they get information without critical parts of the networks, how can they reduce outages? Our LV Insights X Software solves these problems, it's this industry and absolutely first product. Our Digital [indiscernible] network operators easy access to their data while enabling them to improve planning and increase capacity without enlarging their grids. We're constantly expanding our Digital Portfolio through acquisitions. [ Off Trade ] as an example, its unique algorithms complements our constrained planning system. Sustainability is another long-term trend that's crucial about our customers.

Pfizer's new facility in Freiburg, Germany shows clearly that and how we combine our core technologies. The main know-how and synergies seem as like to increase customer sustainability and create customer value. As far as the plant produces drugs into specific ultraclean divisions, we combine software and automation for clean room production with Smart Building Management and Services. And as a result, plant now uses 40% less energy, operates [indiscernible] and produces up to 12 billion tablets and capsules a year instead of the previous 5 billion. And at the same time, the facility also meets the highest safety sanatory products and as well as people who work there. We are seeing new facilities like this springing up again in Europe and the U.S., the development that holds great potential for us.

Maeve Aerospace is another example. This startup aims to decarbonize air transport. Like many other innovative companies in the aerospace industry, Maeve is using our broad range of design and simulation software to develop fully electric emission-free passenger aircraft. Now finally, I'd like to talk about our ability, our audit champion Siemens Xcelerator plays an increasingly important role there too. Mobility Solution is Railigent X, a platform for remote to analytics and maintenance. In England, we've been awarded an 8-year EUR 530 million service contract using Railigent X, the operator trends benign and offer its customers maximum comfort and availability.

We achieve this goal, [indiscernible] 20-year old fleet has been modernized with digital technology. Railigent X can also optimize life cycle cost of fully connected energy-efficient trends. This advantage is a key argument as far mentioned, Railigent X operator. As I mentioned, S-Bahn Munich for Siemens has investing EUR 2.1 billion in expanding our modernized inventories this new suburban trains will offer maximum comfort with the capacity from 1,800 people replacing more than 1,500 automobiles in the last year. [indiscernible] -- sorry.

Before I hand over to Ralf Thomas, I'd like to emphasize that Siemens is on a [indiscernible] long-term success trajectory. We are enabling our customers to achieve more business. We're making targeted investments in growth markets and as a result, driving profitable growth and generating cash at the highest level. And now Ralf, please out the details regarding our operating performance and the outlook for Q4.

[Ralf Thomas, executive]

Thank you very much, Roland. Ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning from my side as well, and let me turn directly to the details on Q3, in which we continued our profitable growth drive and an important area of cash generation achieved leading results across all our businesses. We'll begin with Digital Industries. In total, at EUR 4.1 billion, orders at DI were down 35% compared to the extremely strong prior year and resulted in a book-to-bill ratio of 0.77. The book-to-bill ratio for the first 3 quarters of fiscal 2023 stands at a very solid level of 0.98.

Now the main driver for order normalization was the Discrete Automation business. In the [indiscernible] automation businesses, we saw continued normalization of order patterns on accelerated levels in Q3. Working under the assumption that lead time would continue to sort in original equipment manufacturers or OEMs and distributors, especially in China, continue to reduce their inventory levels. Combined with the revenue momentum, which remain substantial, the situation led to a clear consumption of the order backlog in automation. DI software business saw growth in the mid-single-digit percentage range, benefiting from larger contract wins in the P&L -- PLM business. In the electronic design automation or EDA business, some projects shifted into Q4, which offered a dampening effect on our revenue. DI substantial order backlog decreased to a still elevated level of EUR 12.45 billion. Of this amount, automation accounted for EUR 8.1 billion, which was around EUR 1.5 billion lower than the second quarter as expected.

As [indiscernible] before, cancellation by our customers were made on a very low level in the third quarter as well. Let's now turn to DI's revenue, which was up significantly by 11.5%. In DI's Automation businesses, revenue rose even by 15%. And Discrete Automation was a 14% while Process Automation even topped this performance with revenue growth of 19%. DI software business was up slightly by 1%. Here, we expect considerable acceleration of growth in Q4. Overall, DI's growth in the third quarter was below our initial expectation, which was predominantly due to a softer development in China and to the project shifts in the EDA business that I mentioned earlier. Especially in China, factors that dampened revenue had a large impact. Order intake for fast-turning book and the build products came in lower. In addition, some end customers and above all, distributors postponed deliveries at short notice to optimize their own inventory levels.

Now such patterns are very hard to predict. We cannot rule out that during this phase of unwinding from still elevated backlog levels, we may continue to see erratic patterns at short notice as we saw in Q3 of fiscal 2023. The global component availability improved further, especially for our high-margin products, and our team did a great job of running the factories at high levels of capacity utilization. Now although the risk of component shortages has since become rather low, we are staying alert in order to continue to achieve an optimal balance of our supply chain. Of course, the resulting shortening of delivery time is also contributing to the normalization of the order patterns and thus, accelerated unwinding of the backlog.

Digital Industries profit margin was at 21.1%, again, at a very high level. Once again, the automation businesses drove performance, while the software business had a softer quarter due to the ongoing SaaS transition and shifts in orders within the EDA business. In Q3 as well, productivity gains and price increases from previous quarters, again enabled us to more than compensate for cost inflation. Although we see increasing effects from higher wages and salaries as well as other inflation-driven cost increases over the next quarters, we are very confident that our so-called economic equation will again remain net positive in Q4. Regarding free cash flow, the DI's once again clearly outperformed the competition and delivered an outstanding level of EUR 1.1 billion. The cash conversion rate in Q3 was 0.99, which was even well above the targeted levels. DI's level of operating working capital and of inventories, in particular, is intentionally still elevated to safeguard our high-quality revenue growth.

Now this overview shows you a longer-term perspective on the extreme momentum of orders being pulled forward to a large extent during the past few years. This situation led to exceptional elevation of DI's order backlog for short-cycle products. As we have already discussed, a normalization also due, in particular, to shortening lead time is in this respect, a necessary and healthy development. Due to this continuing normalization, we expect around EUR 4.5 billion of Digital Industries backlog to convert into revenue in Q4.

As we have already indicated multiple times, the conversion will also lead to a book-to-bill ratio below 1 for fiscal 2023, and it will continue to further reduce order backlog in Automation. In the fourth quarter, the software business will partially compensate for this. We expect normalization of order patterns and continued destocking on the part of our customers to also continue in Q4 and into fiscal 2024 even. Nevertheless, order backlog levels at the end of fiscal 2023 will still be at a very high level. And the worldwide corresponding visibility, if you will, for revenue development into fiscal 2024, although we can, of course, not rule out the possibility of erratic patterns in individual quarters.

Let's now look at the development of our key vertical end markets. For the next quarters, we expect a moderation of growth momentum on high levels. In part, this moderation will be driven by effects from destocking on the part of our customers and by fading effects from price inflation. Our sales team is very close to our customers and know our market extremely well. Now over the short term, our team sees a certain softening of investment sentiment. Now the long term, however, the growth trends in automation and digitalization with the focus of the stability will remain fully intact.

Now let me give you the regional perspective, what you can see in this presentation. As already mentioned, demand and DI automation business normalized compared to the extraordinary growth in the previous 2 fiscal years. As we already reported last year, orders had benefited especially in fiscal 2022 from massive pull forward effects in ordering. These effects have most notably been visible in China and Europe. The figures for fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022 that are set out in the presentation show this effect vividly. Now as expected to start into Q4 is also signaling further normalization. In the area of revenue, the strong growth in the automation businesses in Q3 was broad-based across all regions except China. Revenue in China was flat compared to the very strong prior year quarter.

Now on top of that, the previously mentioned significant reduction in fast-turning book and bill business slowed growth. Further details on the region are available in the presentation on the slide shown right now. Now looking ahead, our teams are fully committed to also continue leveraging improved global component availability to achieve stringent backlog conversion in order to meet customer expectations as best as possible. Since DI saw faster normalization of demand in Q3, which we expect to continue in Q4, we adjusted our guidance for revenue growth to 13% -- to 15%, excuse me, for the full fiscal year. So 13% to 15% for full fiscal 2023. In light of this development, the outlook for DI's profit margin is now in the range of 22% to 23%. And for today's perspective for Q4, we anticipate DI will achieve revenue growth below the new guidance range due to the strong prior year quarter. We expect the profit margin, however, to be within the updated range for the full fiscal year. As indicated, a key driver for growth and profitability in Q4 will be the software business. While the PLM business will continue to be affected by the ongoing fast transition, there will be material improvements in orders, revenue and profitability in the EDA business.

Now let me turn to Smart Infrastructure's truly impressive and outstanding performance in Q3, which was impressive across all metrics. In the robust end markets, the team of SI increased backlog to another record level of EUR 16.5 billion. Good growth in orders and revenue in Q3, SI demonstrated clear competitive strength. Profitability was at the upper limit of the target range and what combined with an excellent cash conversion rate. In total, orders were close to the very high prior year level, driven by an excellent 14% growth in the Electrification business. Now this business was fueled by a steady flow of larger orders based on a scalable solutions in data centers, battery manufacturing and power distribution. And then towards the electrification business clearly benefit from the secular trend of decarbonization and electrification. Orders in the electrical products business were 11% lower on normalizing demand trends compared to the strong prior year quarter. Buildings business was down 5%.

Overall, these developments led to a very healthy book-to-bill ratio of 1.09. Now revenue growth reached a remarkable 15% with the largest contribution coming from the Electrification business, up 22%, and the Electrical Products business up 16%. Now the SI team managed its supply and logistics chain very successfully in Q3 as well. And as a result, this was Smart Infrastructure's best Q3 ever with a high profit margin of 15.6%. The economies of scale and increased capacity utilization based on significant revenue growth as well as an ongoing structural cost improvement program from the competitiveness program contributed to this excellent result.

Productivity gains and pricing actions, again, more than compensated for headwinds from cost inflation, which were mainly due to increased wage and salary costs. We expect this to happen to continue in Q4. Smart Infrastructure maintained its path of outstanding cash generation with a cash conversion rate of 0.95 despite substantial revenue growth. Operating working capital increased on higher receivables due to the rising top line, while inventory levels were stable at the level of the prior year quarter. For Q4 of fiscal 2023 as well, we expect strong cash performance at Smart Infrastructure. We continue to see nominal and real term growth in all key vertical end markets still fueled by backlog execution and in part, by better pricing.

However, we expect the commercial buildings market to further decelerate to a low single-digit growth rate due to a global environment of rising interest rates. The area of power distribution continued to show strong growth rate on ongoing expansion of renewable energies, a greater adoption of electric vehicles and an increasing electrification all around. Now when it comes to the attractive market for data centers, well, Roland Busch already presented this to you.

Let's now turn to the regional development. SI saw robust and high levels with strong order momentum in some large projects in the United States. In Germany, orders were down 5% overall. In China, we posted a decline of 13% due to the slow economic recovery and softness in the commercial buildings market. SI saw a double-digit increase in revenue across the board. Here, the United States again stood out with impressive 22% growth. Smart Infrastructure continues its impressive track record. We confirm the full year guidance of a revenue growth of 14% to 16% and the profit margin in the range of 14.5% to 15.5%. In Q4, we see demand further normalizing in the product businesses. For the momentum in the electrification business is anticipated to remain strong. In Q4, we see revenue growth of around 10% with the levels of comparison from the strong prior year quarter is becoming increasingly tough. We expect the profit margin to be within the full year guidance range, strongly supported by order backlog conversion.

Mobility delivered a strong quarter, a quarter to remember, EUR 8.3 billion, well, Mobility -- for Mobility, this marked an all-time quarterly high in orders. This amount included, among other things, as previously mentioned, they may win for the S-Bahn, suburban trains in Munich, Germany and the Green Line in Egypt. As a result, the book-to-bill ratio was going to -- was at an exceptional level of 3.25. The Mobility team is also focusing very hard on achieving the next milestones for the Red Line and Blue Line in Egypt. In a while, we will update you on the progress there.

After 2 quarters with exceptionally strong order intake, we expect Q4 orders to be near the prior year level. Mobility for the backlog stood at EUR 44.5 billion as of June 30. This amount includes EUR 12.5 billion of service volume. Revenue was up 12% in Q3. Mobility's profit margin was supported by higher revenue and an 8.1% was in line with our expectations. The prior year profit had included several one-off effects such as the [ UNIX ] divestment team. Russia wind-down effects -- a wind-down effects and an asset impairment. In some, the positive impact from the special effects on the profit margin amounted to 24.7 percentage points. But then Mobility achieved a massive catch-up in free cash flow in Q3 with more than EUR 700 million after a softer first half of the year. As a result, the cash conversion rate in Q3 was at the impressive level of EUR 3.4 million.

In Q4, we expect another strong performance from Mobility's free cash flow, which is also a clear sign of competitive edge when considering the long-term perspective. We confirm our outlook for revenue growth in fiscal 2023 to be in the range of 10% to 12%. The profit margin guidance remains unchanged in the range of 8% to 10%. Our assumption for revenue growth in Q4 is in the mid-single-digit range on further stringent backlog execution. Mobility's fourth order -- fourth quarter profit margin is expected in the guided quarter between 8% to 9%. Now at this point, I would like to keep the perspective crisp on results below industrial businesses. Senior Financial Services is well positioned and continued its impressively resilient performance in a volatile credit market. The team delivered a strong quarter. It benefited from, among other things, the successful equity business. I'm particularly pleased with the continuing improvement of our portfolio companies, operational performance, in particular, large drives.

The announced carve-out of the combined Innomotics [indiscernible] business is making good progress and will be materially completed by October 1. As Roland already mentioned, the development for Siemens Energy investment with a loss of EUR 647 million was very disappointing. The main individual effect was the add equity participation in the after-tax loss of Siemens Energy. This loss was partially offset by a gain of EUR 380 million from the transfer of the stakes of 6.8% to the Siemen Pension Trust. As a result of the transaction, our remaining stake in Siemens Energy is 25.1% with a carrying amount of around EUR 2 billion at the end of the third quarter, which amounts to about EUR 10 per share on June 30.

Ladies and gentlemen, free cash flow, of course, is the ultimate financial yardstick for excellent performance. And our strong profitability converted into excellent free cash flow, well above the prior year level. With more than EUR 3 billion from our industrial business, we have once again improved clear evidence -- provided clear evidence that we also fully keep our promises on this crucial point. Operating working capital was up slightly on growing business volumes at DI and SI, advanced payment, and Mobility partially compensated for this development.

Excluding the noncash Siemens Energy effect, the cash conversion rate for Siemens on an all-in basis reached an outstanding level of 1.41. And we are very confident that in fiscal 2023, we will even be able to exceed our strong free cash flow performance of the previous 2 years which was above EUR 8 billion in both, fiscal '21 and fiscal '22. The rating agency, Moody's, recognized our outstanding cash performance and strong operating performance by raising our credit rating. With our Aa3 rating, we are well above our peer group, a pleasant privilege could have in times of rising interest rates.

So let me conclude with our group level outlook, which we are ready to raise twice in fiscal 2023. Our teams have continued to do an excellent job to convert our order backlog into revenue and drive profitability. Since the business performance and outlook of Siemens Energy are not in our control, we have decided to include all effects from Siemens Energy from our Siemens Group outlook for fiscal 2023. In the first 9 months, our Siemens Energy investment contributed EUR 902 million to net income. For the Siemens Group, we continue to expect comparable revenue growth in the range of 9% to 11% and a book-to-bill ratio above 1. We continue to expect the profitable growth of our industrial businesses to drive an increase in earnings per share before purchase price allocation accounting or EPS pre PPA to a range of EUR 9.60 and EUR 9.90 in fiscal 2023.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. And with that, we're back to Florian Martens, and we're looking forward to your questions.

[Florian Martens, executive]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thomas. Thank you very much, Mr. Busch. We are now actually moving on to your questions, ladies and gentlemen. Just one quick remark. For technical reasons, we are unable to mix German and English language questions. We will, therefore, start with the German language questions. If you have dialed into the English language conference, please do ask your questions in English, we will also answer them in English.

With that being said, back to the operator, who's going to explain to you briefly how to ask questions. Thank you very much, and over to the operator.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] [Interpreted] Here's the first question, Alexander [indiscernible] from [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] I hope everyone can hear me.

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] yes, we can hear you.

[Alexander Virgo, analyst]

[Interpreted] All right. I'm afraid it will not only be one question, but I'm going to limit myself to ask two questions. China was one of the key words. And I'm sure that this is high on the agenda, you talked about the economic development and the other aspects in China. But the trade war between the U.S. and China, does it play a role here or there? Maybe you could comment this briefly. And Mr. Busch, you announced that Siemens Energy, you are going to, say, withdraw step-by-step. Now could you give us an idea on when and how this will happen because there are always various models, how you can say, step out of such a business? Or are there other possibility, for instance, shifting transferring more shares to the Siemens Pension Fund?

[Roland Busch, executive]

[Interpreted] All right, let me start with China first. We consider or we see a general weakness in the Chinese market, not only us, but also others thought that the Chinese market will pick up after the lockdown in the second quarter. But it didn't happen for two reasons. And this reflects the decirculation strategy of China. So it's the private consumption, the market strength of China. All this didn't happen, which I believe savings rate is really very high. Clearly, above the high rated already has an expert has also gone down and the figures which we published yesterday minus 14%. This is the lowest value for last 14 years, so you see these are the main aspects or the main reasons.

It also means that the global market is a bit weaker, and this, of course, has an impact on exports. And there are other effects from Germany, for instance, because we export goods to China in order to support the industry over there. But if things are going down, then, of course, this will have an effect. But if you look at the trade, let's say, restrictions and the news which came from the United States yesterday evening, then it is very difficult to see what will happen. Of course, there will be, say, constraints restriction with the United States, say we are going to build a role of very low [ role ], but focusing on specific technology, particularly high-performance semiconductor technology developments or semiconductor themselves.

But in my opinion, it will have an effect, but maybe not the effect which we observed. So here, we are talking about effects which are mentioned, Siemens Energy, I can say, well, nothing really new, nothing to write home about, so to speak, the shares which were held where we were able to sell them at good value with a good sale profit for us, 6.8% were transferred. And of course, there's a certain limit, how many shares can be transferred to the Siemens Pension Trust. But we are going to continue along these lines in the near future. And of course, we are going to dividend such a way that we always have in our mind the Siemens Energy shares that we can make, say, profitable sales of shares.

And of course, we've got a profitable or positive result and this means the value being transferred is above our book value. Apart from that, nothing, we're going to continue along these lines in the near future as well.

[Operator]

[Interpreted] Well, the next question [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] I'd like to follow up on this question. Now what about Siemens Energy and [indiscernible] and all the things around the situation and what are the expectations and what are your plans in this respect?

[Roland Busch, executive]

[Interpreted] I can say that we are not happy, and we expect the things will become clear, very soon. Not only onshore also offshore, we want to be sure what can we expect looking ahead, looking forward. Surely, the impact does not say nice, but all the uncertainties caused by this. This is something where we expect clarity as soon as possible. So [indiscernible], and of course, we will see what the Supervisory Board of Siemens Energy is going to decide, and this will show us what will happen.

[Operator]

[Interpreted] Next question is [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Mr. Busch, Mr. Thomas. I've got two questions. First about the forecast. Siemens Energy, well, how do you interpret the forecast, is there an increase of the forecast, how do you categorize always? Also the follow-up question on China, you mentioned export high savings rates, and as of July, we also see some inflationary trends over there, is that a reason for concern?

[Roland Busch, executive]

[Interpreted] When I'm talking about the forecast, I can say it is unchanged. It is our target, our objective that all the areas which we control ourselves, for which we have a responsibility and place this center stage. There are some important [indiscernible] coming from this business and therefore it didn't really make sense to speculate on how high the share of the equity result should be or would have been, so to speak. Apart from the forecast in terms of substance, unchanged. And we also announced the value of the profit contribution coming from the Energy stake, EUR 902 million and the positive effect, of course, results from reversing the prior year impairments. And I think that's fully transparent.

In China. Well, the short answer is in the short term, it worries me, not in the long term. I think you have to take into account that China is the second largest economy by far, 1.6 billion people were very strong and large. Middle, let' say, [indiscernible] and we have to take into account that many people have also invested in real estate because looking after their old age and health issues. It is old age requirements. And all of this put together means that they are going to start saving. So in the short term, this is a bit [indiscernible] inflation, deflation, all these things. But the mechanism you see the entire economy is on complete different, say, feet or on a different foundation compared to Japan for instance.

In the short term, we see a weakness in the Chinese market. Yes, it may continue for several quarters. But in the long term, we can say that China is certainly one of the major markets, and there will be profit generated. And of course, we'll get the interference from the Chinese government at present, no massive ones, but it may happen. And then of course, it might also mean that there's [indiscernible] for the private consumption. On the other hand, it's also about [indiscernible] manufacturing. This is the largest industrialized nation of the world. And of course, when it comes to manufacturing, this country has to show a high performance. So we offer digitalization, automation, local portfolio, very strong level portfolio and for me always means that at the end of the day, everything is positive.

[Florian Martens, executive]

Thank you very much, and thank you very much for the questions in procurement. We've now got two English questions, and we're going to change to the inform as the operators came to introduce this change. And it may take some time, of course, but there will be a short break. Please be patient and bear with us, and I hand over back to the operator. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

A couple of ones, if I may. On China and the general trend there, have you seen much of your customers moving their business out of China and to other company -- to countries? I know ABB has mentioned they're seeing more demand India now as companies in China are moving stuff out of there because of concerns about the trade tensions. Is that a trend you guys are seeing? That's my first question.

And the second one is in terms of normalized -- you talk about normalization of demand, what -- can you give us a bit more color on that? I mean is it actual steady growth or with weak PMIs globally do you actually foresee a downturn in demand, because demand is not as strong as it was, but it's still positive. So what do you mean by normalization?

[Roland Busch, executive]

Yes. Let me take the first one. So we don't -- do not see our customers moving out of China. In contrast what I see that customers -- or our customers, local ones and international ones are still living in the Chinese market and they stay there. The point is simply they do incremental investments, new investments in China. And here, we're seeing a trend that they rather go to other places in order to see how to diversify, increase the resilience. This is what I see.

So this is kind of a misreading. And we have one example like [indiscernible], they don't move out of China, but the new investment goes into other places. So they are very important. And this is actually also good news for us because whenever customers are moving into other places, we talk about new greenfield investments and wherever they are, you would think about having -- if you do that, make it more sustainable, but also the highest productivity also in markets which has challenged by low labor availability. So this requires a level of sustainability, automation, digitalization. And we are there, wherever they go, they go to India, to [indiscernible], to Mexico, the United States.

So this is the beauty of having such a global business, such a global footprint. So -- and on top comps, if it's international companies who do that they most likely come with Siemens technology because we are -- if they are -- wherever they're coming from, they would bring us along. So therefore, this is for me quite of a normalization but it's not a change in getting away from the Chinese market.

[Ralf Thomas, executive]

With regard to what is normalization, let me remind ourselves of the fact that on the very graph that we also displayed during my presentation, we showed a tremendous extraordinary demand from that, what we call pre-ordering has been building up throughout the last 2 years, partially driven by COVID bottleneck -- COVID-induced bottlenecks in supply chain, shortage of material and also expectation of price increase that has been driving an extraordinary momentum in demand. This is now sitting on the shelves to a certain extent, in particular, when it comes to distributors, helping us to get our products into the markets, in particular in China. And that is going to unwind now. That's the one thing.

The other thing is that now with a less crunched supply chain, more stability and reliability, delivery times have been coming down again which is also then contributing to the fact that new demand, new orders are going down. This is normal in that period of unwinding a strong backlog that we hold, we talked about that. And this is going to last for a couple of quarters. We said that before, we do expect this is going to reach into fiscal year '24. In that period of time, there will be erratic patterns. We can predict from on a monthly basis, which of your distributors, for example, is going to place a new order or not at a certain point in time, because it's very much driven by the level of stock they want to accomplish. And that again is driven by their expectations, cash being available to put advanced payments in place and so on.

So the situation is normal course of business that you come back to a new normal. Now your question, what is the new normal? It's hard to predict. It will be definitely lower than the exit backlog that we will have at the end of the fiscal year. That's why we said it's going to reach into fiscal '24. But the fact that we are sitting on a secular growth trend being driven by digitalization and automation, all that paying into more sustainability -- to more sustainable business models of our customer industries. This goes beyond this if you will, unwinding of extremely high backlog situation at the moment. So the growth trends, mid and long term will not be affected by the current unwinding of the backlog and the higher stock levels on the shelves of our distributors.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

I wanted to ask for a little bit more detail on the new export rules, excellent [indiscernible] by the administration last night. And how will it impact you, and will it impact you in any way? And do you expect trade tensions to continue escalating between the U.S. and China? And in what ways are you preparing for that?

[Roland Busch, executive]

Yes. It's too early to say, because this was a very unspecific kind of new regulation, which was issued or put into the window. So it's unclear. We don't see a direct impact on Siemens, because this is the fields which are addressed are not really particularly affecting us. It's more on high-tech semiconductors and the like. We're watching that closely. There could be a counter effect because of if this impacts trade and has an impact on the local business, either export business from countries to China or the deliveries into China that could be, but it's again too early to say.

We hope that the statement of United States administration is still valid, and they talk about building a very small fence at a very high one. So they are very selective on what kind of technology they put in below in order to not really affect too dramatically the normal trades, if it's not about high technology. So we are watching that closely. It's too early to say. And of course, we hope that this would not impact trade because that would be the case, that would have an impact on the global economy and the growth rates of GDP. And that is what I don't think it's a good idea.

[Unknown Analyst]

And just quickly to follow up on that. And do you -- this is clearly a trend we're seeing in escalation. Are you expecting the situation global trade could get worse? And are you taking steps to, in any way, alleviate the impact this could have on you, for example, preparing your business in China?

[Roland Busch, executive]

No, I don't know, and I hope not. The reason is that I do believe that we have other problems. For example, fighting together against global warming, support of protecting our biodiversity, look how we can feed an ever-growing population. So there are so many challenges, which we can tackle only together. I think this is something that we have to have in mind always.

The second point is that trade is good, because we see that this was part of the growth drivers of the economies. And therefore, we hope that it will not escalate and go even further. At the same time, and you can read that from our investment pattern, we are preparing, of course, for any kind of further impact. So we are very much localized. We are a very, very global company. We are -- with our investment strategy, we would only invest in China, again, I believe, in that market, but also in the United States. We have strong investments there, ASEAN, Mexico gets a lot of investments as we see going forward. So we are looking for where the [ Siemens ] money goes and also into Germany. And therefore, we are prepared.

Our -- by the way, our local-for-local purchasing volume is extremely high. It's above 80% in China, but also in the United States, in Europe. So therefore, this year, I would say, quite good hedged, and we will take our opportunities as they come globally.

[Florian Martens, executive]

Thank you, Patricia. Thank you, everybody, for dialing in this morning. We are going to close the conference call now. And we thank you for your interest and time this morning. It will be next up for us the conference call with the analysts at 9:30 broadcast at siemens.com/analystcall. If you want to tune in. And from us, you hear again at the latest on November 16, 2023, when we'll release our fourth quarter and full year results. Until then, we wish you a nice summer, and thanks again for your interest. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]