Takkt AG

XETRA:TTK

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen and on behalf of [ Montega ] a warm welcome to today's earnings call of TAKKT following the publication of the first quarter figures of 2024. I'm delighted to welcome the TAKKT Management Board represented by CEO, Maria Zesch; and CFO, Lars Bolscho, who will give us a presentation shortly. [Operator Instructions] And having said this, we are looking forward to the results, and I hand over to you, Mrs. Zesch.

[Maria Zesch, executive]

Thank you, and welcome to our earnings call for the Q1 results. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO, Lars Bolscho. In today's call, we will focus on our operational development and the financials. After we had a strong focus on strategy and midterm targets in our analyst conference call at the end of March. I will start with a summary of Q1 before Lars will then get into details of our financials. I will then close with a view on our outlook. And at the end, we are open for your questions. So when we presented our guidance to you at the end of March, we already talked about Q1 being a challenging quarter. So let me give you a short overview of what we saw in Q1. The economic environment in our markets in Europe and the U.S. remain challenging. For Europe, we saw very low GDP growth and a recession environment in our home market, Germany. And the manufacturing PMI clearly below the 50 points mark and with a negative trend over the course of the quarter. For U.S., we saw a better GDP. But looking at industry indicators, the restaurant performance index points towards contraction in the market with a value below 100. In regards to the furniture and display industry, we are facing a continued weak environment in our market due to both pandemic effects. So in this environment, we experienced negative organic growth of 16.5%. Our European business in IMP and the office furniture and displaced activities of O&D developed similarly to Q4, while full service saw a significant drop in sales. And we will provide you with more details on food service later. So with this negative top line development, we focused on strengthening our resilience. And we saw good results of cash on gross profit margin, and we also established leaner cost structures. We saw a significant increase both in free cash flow as well as in our gross profit margin. And we made structural adjustments in our cost base, especially on personnel costs. This included adjusting the number of FTEs to lower demand, and we also decreased the number of leadership positions after finalizing our more integrated organizational setup. So we are evaluating and implementing additional measures in the coming months. We achieved important milestones also with our strategy implementation. We completed an important step with the harmonization of ERP systems at Hubert on Central in our Foodservice division. And we finalized the migration of ratio from customers to our CASA craft brand and the discontinued ratioform brand in early May. These are both important steps for our integration and will contribute to future success. But more short term, this also leads to some challenges and impact to our top line development. And with that, I will ask Lars to give you more input on the financials.

[Lars Bolscho, executive]

Thank you, Maria. Welcome, everyone, from my side as well, and let us have a closer look at our financials in the first quarter. And as used to, let's start with the group's development with our sales development in the first quarter. Sales for quarter 1 came in with EUR 269 million after a EUR 322 million last year, so a reported decline of minus 16.4%. There was hardly any currency impact in Q1 as the U.S. dollar and also the Swiss franc translation impact to euro are balancing almost out on that level. So organic growth was at a very similar level at minus 16.5%. I want to mention 2 important impacts. First of all, the phaseout of Certeo in the second quarter 2023. You might remember, we have closed down those activities a year ago. And the second important impact, we have a negative working day impact of around together Certeo and working day 3 percentage points. So the 2 impacts together, around 3 percentage points. If we adjust for the working day effect, our divisions, Industrial and Packaging and office furniture and displays developed in growth rates versus prior year, very similar to what we have seen in the fourth quarter of the year 2023. Good services decreased in growth rate. I will comment on this later when we come to the divisional views. Overall, growth in the first quarter was disappointing and below the run rate, which we have seen in the fourth quarter last year, which was at a minus 11%. And to summarize the main reasons for this are, first of all, the slower development at foodservices; and secondly, the lower number of working days, which impacted growth. Let's continue now with the profit development. EBITDA was significantly below prior year at EUR 16.8 million. This implies a reported margin of 6.2% and an adjusted profitability of 7.4%. Let me break out the profit development down in a bit more detail. Our main challenge is definitely the missing sales and with that missing absolute gross profit. As Maria has mentioned in her overview, we have showed our resilience in challenging times with a strong increase in our gross profit margin by 1.2 percentage points to 41.2%. We are happy with this development as it is coming from all of our 3 divisions. And we continue with cost management, on marketing, on personnel and also on other costs. On marketing, we reduced our activities in line with the lower demand. Anyhow, we are operating in a challenging environment right now with an increase in costs for online marketing. This led to an overall more stable development of marketing spend year-over-year and as a consequence, a lower marketing efficiency in the first quarter. We are working on countermeasures to improve our marketing efficiency, and we expect the lower marketing cost ratio again in the upcoming months. In personnel, we adjusted our resources to the lower demand and continue to reduce the number of FTEs in all our divisions and also in our holding company. Besides making use of fluctuation, we also realized structural reduction measures. The measures we've taken in the first quarter will show their savings impact from the second quarter onwards more clearly as many of them were realized end of February. In the first quarter, we talked about realized savings of a bit below EUR 2 million and around EUR 3 million onetime expenses. The savings for the year 2024 out of the already realized measures will be more around the level of EUR 9 million before one-off costs. And in addition, we continue to evaluate and to implement additional structural measures. Including savings on other costs, we had published in our guidance, a savings target of at least EUR 50 million, which we will go for as a minimum for this year. Overall, looking at our adjusted margin of 7.4%, this margin level is low, and we expect the profitability to increase in the upcoming quarters, especially towards the second half of this year for 3 main reasons. One reason is our sales growth expectation. Maria will talk about it later regarding our outlook. And with this, the higher overall scale of our infrastructure. In addition, second aspect, I talked about cost measures getting into more impact and being enhanced in the upcoming quarters. And thirdly, as mentioned before, we expect improvement in marketing cost ratio that will also support our profitability. With this, let's have a look at the division Industrial and Packaging. Now on sales, sales were at EUR 154.7 million and down 14.1%. Currency impact was positive. So organic growth was minus 15% in a still very weak European manufacturing environment. The purchasing manager indices for manufacturing are still clearly below the line of 50 points in Eurozone and even lower in our main market, Germany, indicating very low demand for our division, industrial packaging. Similar to the fourth quarter, all regions within the division Industrial Packaging performed more or less in line with the overall trend. Only our activities in U.K. were slightly better, but still negative compared to prior year. The development versus prior year was impacted by 2.4 percentage points by the closure of our Certeo activities in 2023. I have mentioned that when I talked about the group. In addition, we had the also already mentioned impact of less working days with around 2 percentage points impact on the growth for division industrial packaging. Looking at the profit development. EBITDA was at EUR 16.8 million, a reported margin of 10.9% due to lower top line and also onetime expenses. Adjusted for our onetime expenses, EBITDA margin came in at 12.2%. On gross profit margin, we saw good improvement to 43.7%, coming mainly from better product margins. We significantly managed down also other costs, while marketing and personnel were similar to prior year. This was due to the high online marketing costs and impacts from salary increases. With the measures, especially on the personnel side, we implemented here, we will operate with a lower cost base going forward. In the first quarter, we incurred EUR 2.1 million in onetime costs at INP mainly for the mentioned reduction of personnel. Now let's go to the U.S. and our division office furniture and displays, and let's again start with the top line. Top line performance was overall similar to the fourth quarter with sales of EUR 60.3 million and an organic growth rate of minus 16.7%. Both our brands, NBF and DTG showed a similar weak performance. While GDP is better in the U.S. compared to Europe, we see on our more specific market indicators, weakness is signaling also a challenging market environment for office furniture and displays. Overall, this is also in line what we are seeing in markets around us and at competitors. Looking at profit, the development remains challenging due to the difficult top line development. EBITDA was EUR 3.1 million, and with that, an EBITDA margin of 5.1%. We had some smaller onetime costs here in the last quarter. So the adjusted margin was 5.5% in the first quarter 2024 compared to a 7.4% in the previous year. We continue to have a high gross profit margin at Office Venture and displays with a very good 44.8%. This is, as we have already seen in the second half of last year and comparatively high level for this market, resulting from improvements in freight costs not being transferred to price levels of our customers and therewith kept in our pockets. In addition to gross margin, we managed down our marketing spend, personnel and other costs at [ Olf&D ] as well. Despite our cost measures due to the weak top line development, we still saw a clear decline in profitability in the first quarter. Let's continue with our third division, foodservice and with sales again. Here, top line was the most challenging one in our first quarter and with this also significantly below the run rate of the fourth quarter, where we had seen a minus 7% versus prior year. And in this quarter, we are at minus 20% organic growth versus prior year. Market environment continued to be weak within restaurant performance index below the 100 point threshold and worsening expectations from customer side. But as Maria shortly mentioned below, there's also internal reasons for the weak top line development. First of all, we harmonized and integrated ERP systems as a final step in our foodservice integration with Hubert and Central. And with such a large IT project, there's both a shift of focus away from sales and marketing and also still some process challenges that we have to solve. This distraction from growth does not come completely unexpected, but it had impact in the first quarter and needs to be reduced together. The second specific challenge we have at Foodservice is the performance in our project business. Those are big project orders with longer lead times and high volatility in sales realization. You might remember in the first quarter last year, we achieved comparatively high number of sales from this project business. In the first quarter this year, we are significantly below this level. Reasons for that are the more volatile order intake and sales development of this business, but also that we had some fluctuations in the sales team and we needed to refill open positions, both for these challenges will still also have impact in the second quarter. On EBITDA, EBITDA was at EUR 1.8 million with a 3.3% reported margin. We had some onetime costs in both periods. So adjusted margin would have been higher with 3.7% after a 4.7% last year. Also at foodservice, we see a good development on gross profit margin with an increase to 29.9% after the margin has been under pressure in 2023. It's good to see this improvement, and we will continue on this path at foodservice. On cost management, we reduced marketing, personnel costs and other costs, and we will continue doing so. Still with a further reduction of sales, we are currently operating at an unsatisfying scale and profitability level at our division foodservice. Now over to cash. As in 2023, a very good development also this year, that shows our ability to generate cash in challenging types. Cash flow optimization is one important part of our resilience. And even after releasing substantial net working capital over the course of last year, we were once again able to reduce inventories by also increasing trade payables. With that, we will more -- we more than compensated the lower cash flow before changes in net working capital. We are working on the whole cash conversion cycles on inventories, payables and receivables, and we will continue with this push also in the remaining quarters. Capital expenditure was a bit higher compared to last year, but completely at expected levels. Overall, free cash flow improved substantially to EUR 21.3 million and nice success in such a challenging quarter. We will continue to generate good cash flow and improvement in cash conversion cycle going forward. But please be aware that our comparison base will start getting more challenging as we have last year released more net working capital in the second half of the year. Finally, let's look at our balance sheet, which no surprise remains strong. We have decreased net financial liabilities by EUR 60 million in the first 3 months. About 2/3 of our financial liabilities currently are lease liabilities. So we are looking at a comparatively low level of bank debt remaining at the moment. The equity ratio has slightly increased to 64%. And with that is clearly above our target corridor of 30% to 60%. This leads us to capital allocation. We continue to run our share buyback program. And so far, we have spent about half of the allocated total amount of the program of EUR 25 million. So more than enough volume available for us to continue until the end of 2024 with this program. And we propose to pay out a dividend of EUR 1 per share after our shareholders' meeting in May. We stick with that to our attractive dividend policy. And as you can see on this chart, we will also, for 2023, pay out a special dividend besides the base dividend, bringing us then in total to the EUR 1 per share and an attractive dividend yield of 8% based on our current share price. Before I hand over to Maria, a short summary from my side. As we had expected, starting into this year, we are looking at a very challenging first quarter. Our main challenge remains to be weaknesses in our markets and our clear sales decrease. And despite our progress in building up our resilience in gross profit margin and cost management, we have unsatisfying profitability levels in the first quarter, which we expect to increase, especially in the second half of this year. On cash flow, we continue to compensate and above prior year, enabling us to have a very solid balance sheet and also attractive dividend payouts. And with this, over to Maria for our update on the outlook in 2024.

[Maria Zesch, executive]

Many thanks, Lars. And so I think we have already mentioned that we expect 2024 to be another challenging year in our target markets. And after the first quarter, we confirmed this expectation. In Europe, GDP growth rates and especially GDP growth of our main market, Germany, will likely remain very low, if not negative. Europe mean manufacturing PMIs remain firmly in contraction territory, clearly below the level of 50 million. So for the U.S., uncertainties and the slowdown in GDP growth are expected. So overall, a more resilient market than in Europe, but still with a risk of a slowdown in the second half of the year. Overall, we see U.S. more resilient also in the rest of the year. In this environment, we saw that Q1 overall followed the top line development from Q4 '23. In April, we don't see a significant improvement yet. We expect to see a gradual improvement over the course of the year and mainly in the second half. This assumption is supported by better GDP growth outlook in the Eurozone, but also by a lower comparison base to previous year and also that we manage, especially the internal challenge in food service. So looking at our priorities, we continue in the same mode that we started with in 4 we focus on gross profit margin, we focus on cost and we focus on cash generation. We continue to work on strengthening our resilience to quality before quantity. Part of this are structural improvements in other and personnel costs, where we have made the first steps and where we continue with additional measures in the coming months. On an annualized basis, we expect cost savings of at least EUR 15 million, and these structural adjustments would lead to onetime costs in 24 between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million. And we continue to work on strengthening our cash generation. This includes managing net working capital and release of additional inventories as well as improvements in the cash conversion cycle. So for the full year, we confirm our expectation of organic sales to show a high single to low double-digit decline, depending on how much of an improvement we see in the coming months. On profitability, we expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to come in between 8% and 9.5%. Onetime expenses could impact profitability by 1 to 1.5 percentage points. Lars has shown you the adjusted margin for Q1 being below this range. As he explained, we see clearly 3 points how to further improve. First, with a lower marketing cost ratio; second, structural cost impact; and third, with the better scale for better growth. We will continue to work on cash generation, and we will release additional working capital and this that contributed to free cash flow development that's more stable than EBITDA. To summarize, Q1 has been difficult as it was expected. But we are adjusting our cost base. We are tackling these challenges. We operate from a position of strength, we generate strong cash flow also in this environment. Before we go now to the Q&A, let me give you a reminder about our investment thesis. We have a huge growth potential in a very large and also fragmented market. We have an excellent position with our diversified activities in Europe and the U.S. This has helped us in the past. It will also be important in the future. 24 will be challenging on the top line, but we remain confident that we will return to positive growth in '25. Midterm, we will achieve an average organic growth that's notably higher than our historic growth rate of around 3% by clearly targeting market share gains, both in Europe and the U.S. We have a clear vision to bring new worlds of work to live together with our customers. We have executed thoroughly on our strategy along the 3 pillars rose on tacked and caring and will continue to do so. We have a good financial track record and execution. We know how to adapt and to adjust to a challenging environment will take the necessary measures to safeguard our financial performance. You see this with cost management. You see this with the strong cash generation also in '23 and in Q1. And last, given the current uncertainty, we have the advantage to operate from a position of financial strength and stability. With a strong balance sheet, we generate substantial free cash flow, and we are committed to pay dividends to shareholders as you have seen us with our dividend proposal. In addition, we will continue with our ongoing share buyback program. And now with that said, we are happy to take your questions. Over to the operator for the Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we already received the first question from Christian Bruns.

[Christian Bruns, analyst]

Maria, Lars, [indiscernible] I mean, the first question is on the savings. You said that EUR 9 million -- there will be EUR 9 million in savings in 2024. If I remember correctly, and EUR 15 million will be then the structural effect this is for 2025 onwards. Is that correct?

[Lars Bolscho, executive]

Christian. So I would start answering this question. I'd say almost. So in Q1, we have actively reduced numbers of FTEs, right, as you said. Now for the impact, what's the impact on the first quarter savings that, of course, depends then heavily on the timing, right, when we have reduced. And for the first quarter, our cost savings before onetime effects were slightly below EUR 2 million. Now out of those measures, we have already realized, we will have an impact then for the year 2024 EUR 9 million. So that's the EUR 9 million. The impact of the measures we have already realized. If we then look 1 year further, the impact will even be a bit higher, right? Because most of those measures were done in February. So this is more than around a number of EUR 10 million, probably on a 12-month base. Now the EUR 50 million, this is what we had also published like in our guidance, our overall structural cost saving target for this year, including personnel and others, that's the EUR 50 million, and we say at least EUR 50 million, so minimum of EUR 15 million in 2024 out of other costs and structural personnel measures, probably a bit above.

[Christian Bruns, analyst]

But I have a follow-up update what are the EUR 5 million, not personnel say...

[Lars Bolscho, executive]

No, it's -- good that you are. So it's additional measures. We continue to realize measures, both on other costs and personnel during this year. So the EUR 9 million I've mentioned, that's what we have already done and realized. And we continue over the course of the year, both categories, other costs and personnel. Of course, we also adjust that on what our order intake trend shows us, right? This will always lead us into going a bit more into that or less, yes. But that's what we do. So it's additional measures also on personal time.

[Christian Bruns, analyst]

And if I may, a second question on the -- you mentioned high online marketing costs. So I think it's -- yes, so is there -- could you give an idea about that increase of online marketing.

[Maria Zesch, executive]

So Christian, let... Yes, do you have a further question or can I answer. So hank you, Christian. So Price increases in online marketing or high online marketing cost, that was your question. So what I can say is that in the past few months, the price for keywords in online marketing roles, amongst others due to the higher demand by companies for keywords and also for the willingness to pay higher prices. So -- and we do not expect that these prices to drop in the near future. We believe they will likely to stay. But what we can do is to adjust to improve our cost ratio. So what we can do is give you some examples. In the first quarter, we got some learnings out of Q1, how we can steer more efficiently. So shift into higher efficiency online marketing channels for us. So where we see more return. We also see some channels where we convert better. So we will clearly shift into these channels.

[Christian Bruns, analyst]

And what -- could you give me a better idea of which channels this could be?

[Maria Zesch, executive]

Yes. On the marketing side, so for each and every of our divisions, these are different online marketing channels. So in some, it's product landing pages, in some Google versus Bing. So it really depends on where we are in our divisions, and we steer it on a daily basis, and we see what the return is and go to the higher return channels.

[Lars Bolscho, executive]

And Christian, may I just add one thing that we are not is -- or we don't have a misunderstanding. So in your question, I was not sure how you meant that our absolute online marketing costs are not above prior year. the cost are increasing, right? So our cost ratio is up, but our absolute marketing costs are not above prior year, but they should be a bit more below prior year than they are.

[Operator]

So we will now move on with the questions from Thilo Kleibauer. Then we will move on with the questions from Dr. [ Suzak ] and come back to you later, Thilo.

[Unknown Analyst]

Maria and Lars. Just one question from my side. You seem to be a little bit less upbeat for the current year 2024. You're more optimistic for next year. I think you mentioned both the internal problems in the Food Service division, but also the macro picture outside. And there, I would like to ask what do you see in terms of trends or in terms of behavioral patterns with your customers? I think like also before the backdrop basically of the, let's say, the investments which were completely halted during Corona then probably after Corona, there were kind of like a super order cycle in some areas, at least, which might be cooling off a bit right now, but that might be a temporary issue. And I would like to basically hear your view about the overall picture now without focusing on a given quarter or last year?

[Maria Zesch, executive]

I think your question is [indiscernible] so I will start. Last, please also bring your view into it. So let me start with like the focus on what we see for us for 24 and also like how we deal with it. So we say the 24, it's really about resilience. So making sure that we get out of this crisis even stronger. So therefore, we clearly say it's quality above quantity. So what we do is -- and so what we saw is in the figures, you see it's a double-digit percentage decline in what we see in regards to our market expectations, but also to the indices we see. And as we referred to already earlier, it's manufacturing index here for industrial and packaging or it's a so-called [ Befane ] or PI for the other divisions. So when we see that they are really in the decreasing area, not in the increasing area. And what I also see, and if I talk to other CEOs, there seems a lot of caution for this year. So I think it's not only us. We expect a challenging year. It's, I think, especially around Europe. And as you know, we are strong here in Germany and in Europe. And as you know, we sell cyclical equipment products to specifically industrial customers, mostly in the manufacturing world, this combination, I think, is challenging because Germany is one of the weaker economies in an already weak European environment. And with the industrial environment being weaker, customers, we see very hesitant to invest now into expanding their operations, and that affects our top line directly. But what I also see is that with our divisional setup and especially also being in the U.S., we will show resilience. And maybe Lars, you can also give an update then on what you see and also how we deal with that.

[Lars Bolscho, executive]

Yes. So thank you, Maria. So not too much to add. Honestly, it's like important to look like at our specific market indicators -- and like in this example of European manufacturing, you asked a bit like for the trend or anything. We don't see a trend change yet in the macro numbers we see, right? If you look at the PMI for manufacturing Eurozone in Germany, unfortunately, remains at a very low level now for several months. And all the positive news, we hear around like the European also German economy is more related to service industry where we are not benefiting from at that same space. So nothing to add there. Resilience also our focus clear so far, no real trend change.

[Operator]

So now let's come back to Thilo Kleibauer

[Thilo Kleibauer, analyst]

I have only one question regarding your problems in Q1 in the future segment. I mean, it seems that the implementation of the ERP [indiscernible] was not as monthly as planned and that we have lost some orders due to. So maybe can you describe what has happened there? And also what is the current status? So do you still have some disability -- should we also expect a negative effect in the current quarter? Or is this no time.

[Maria Zesch, executive]

Thilo I will give you answers on 2 aspects. So what we -- as Lars mentioned. So first of all, we did the ERP integration of Hubert and Central. And I think it's a major, major step forward. And -- but as you also know, in such big projects, it's not always running 100% as planned. So I would say we have gone ahead is it, we did the switch. And what we saw is it was a complex process. And I think I've been in that also quite some time already. So I would say it's not unusual for some errors, issues to occur. So what -- how would I describe the situation? The impact on sales due to this ERP integration is due to 2 effects. So first is, there was really a focus of the whole organization on the ERP project during the hot migration phase. So -- and with such a project, a lot of the internal attention is then focused on making sure it's getting right. But this takes time off also to serve customers. So that's one point. And on the other point, I would say, adaption to new systems and also to new processes take some time. So our sales and service teams, they need to get used to the new system and even further improve some processes. So both effects are temporary, our clear expectation that we see ongoing improvements. And what I can tell you is that we are working, I think we are done with almost 90% of the issues, and we expect now a gradual improvement in the coming weeks. So I would say we will see an impact a bit in this quarter, but this will fade out. So that was the ERP. And there was a second topic also last mentioned that was the project business. As you might remember, a lot of the positive growth from last year in food service came exactly from the increase in the project business. So the project business was around 10% of, I think, last year's sales. And in Q1, we saw a significant lower contribution. So -- and there, I can also give you 2 factors why which played a role in there. Project business is volatile in terms of order intake, but also in terms of when you realize sales because it's more like a 6 to 18 months topic than an immediate topic. So it's about volatility. And the second reason is it's also about a lot in food service project business about personal relationships between sales reps and customers. And we had some changes. We had some fluctuations also in our sales team at the beginning of the year. So that led to less sales reps being active in Q1 than before. We are currently rebuilding the team. We expect that this will improve later in the year. In Q2, we will see a lower level of contract business than in '23. So these 2 topics, and I hope I could give you like good insight into that these both topics will be having an impact a bit on Q2, but we are certain that it's only a temporary impact.

[Thilo Kleibauer, analyst]

Maybe one follow-up on the ERP system, does affect both brands for Central and Hubert [indiscernible] that you take the system from [indiscernible].

[Maria Zesch, executive]

Yes, Thilo good question. So we migrated the Central ERP to the Hubert ERP. So Central is more influenced. So there were the changes. So Central more influenced than Hubert

[Operator]

So by now, we just move on and come back with the questions of Christian.

[Christian Bruns, analyst]

Yes. I would like to have also a follow-up question on office furniture and displays. There you reported lower freight costs, which are helpful for your gross margin. And I just would shed some more light on this. And if this is also something you could -- which could help also the foodservice business.

[Lars Bolscho, executive]

Yes. So I will take this question. So first of all, that's something that we have already seen in 2023. So this is not new. And what we are seeing there is especially related to the ingoing freight. So that's -- most of that is the container costs, for example, from Asia to the U.S. in our business there. And this -- those costs were coming down last year, as you can also see, like on container rates. And also outward freight was impacted. And what we are doing in this business, that's a difference to Europe. We are, let's say, invoicing freight costs to customers like separately. So it's outside of the cost of the product. And we were able to keep those costs that we get from the customers to shipping products quite high. So that's also a bit of the answer on how sustainable is that -- we expect that and we also see that there is a bit of market pressure on the pricing then coming up. And this will then also leads us to the expectation that those very high gross margins will most likely not remain. So that's a, let's say, a period of time where we were able to get a benefit out of that, which is great, well done by the team also on the pricing, but it's not a new level of gross margin we see for this business.

[Operator]

So in the meantime, we have received no further questions. So everything appears to be answered by now. But should further questions arise at a later time, ladies and gentlemen, please do not hesitate to contact Investor Relations or us. Having said this, we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you, everyone, for joining initial interest in TAKKT and a big thank you also to you, Mrs. Zesch, Mr. Bolscho for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining day, and we conclude today's call with some final remarks from Mrs. Zesch.

[Maria Zesch, executive]

Thank you for your interest in TAKKT and also for your questions. So I all invite you to our next call, which will be in July on the 25th of July. Keep for you, for all of us finger-cross that the economy goes in the right direction. And I'm looking forward to present you then our figures of Q2. Thank you.