Hochtief Ag (HOCFF) Q3 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon to everyone, and thanks for joining us for this Hawke-Teef results call for the first nine months of 24. I'm Mike Pinckney, head of capital market strategy, and I'm here with our CEO, Juan Santamaria, and our CFO, Peter Sassenfeld, as well as our head of IR, Tobias Loskamp, and other colleagues from the senior management team at Hawke-Teef. We look forward to taking your questions later, but to kick off, our CEO is going to run us through the details of this strong set of numbers and provide you with an update on the group strategy. Juan, all yours. Thank you, Mike and team. Good afternoon to everyone and thanks for joining us. ECOCTIV has delivered a solid performance during the first nine months of 2024, marked by a firm increase in profits sales, and net operating cash flow. This growth is supported by the continued strong expansion of our order book, driven by a further significant rise in the orders, particularly in our strategic growth markets. Furthermore, the group has made important progress in its strategic development with several important transactions. Let's run through the key financial highlights of the first nine months. Group sales of 23.6 billion euros, so a 7% increase year-on-year. Octaves operational net profit rose by 12% to 450 million euros, or 18% on a comparable basis. The nominal net profit of 579 million, up 61% year-on-year, was driven mainly by the strong operational profit growth and a 147 million one-off non-cash gain net of provisions in the second quarter. In terms of cash generation, and looking at the last 12 months, operating cash flow stands at a high level of around 1.8 billion euros. HoCTIF ended September with a net debt position driven by strategic capital allocation decisions taken during the period, as well a...