Hochtief Ag (HOCFF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining this HawkTeeth 2024 results call. 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 of HawkTeeth. We're looking forward to taking your questions, but to kick off, our CEO will run us through the details of this strong set of numbers and provide you with an update on our group strategy. Juan, all yours. Thank you, Mike and Adim, and welcome to everyone joining us for this results call. Our growth strategy has delivered a very successful 2024 octave and will drive further growth in 2025 and beyond. we have consolidated leading positions in our strategic markets where growth is being driven by an unprecedented ramp-up in infrastructure investments by our public and private clients. We're deploying our geographic footprint to access this growth in all our regions, and we're expanding our presence in the value chains of these markets to enhance growth. This growth trajectory is supported by a solid balance sheet, a strong order book, and a strongly cash generative business. Turning to the numbers, a group delivers substantially higher sales and profits backed by another strong performance in cash flow generation. Group sales increased by 20% to 33.3 billion euros in nominal terms, accompanied by solid operating margins. Adjusting for the impact of acquisitions and divestments, sales growth was over 10% on a comparable basis. Octiv's operational net profit rose by 13% to €625 million in 2024, exceeding the top end of the guidance range of €560 to €610 million we provided to you at the beginning of the year. Nominal net profit of €776 million included...