Hochtief Ag (HOCFF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining this HawkTeeth full year results call for 2025. I'm Mike Pinckney, head of capital market strategy, and I'm here with our CEO, Juan Santamaria, and our CFO, Chris Jandreski, as well as the head of IR, Tobias Loskamp, and other colleagues from the senior management team of HawkTeeth. We're looking forward to your questions, but to start with, our CEO is going to run us through the details of another very strong set of numbers and provide you with an update on the group strategy. Juan, all yours. Thank you, Mike and team. Welcome to everyone joining us for this results call. I'm delighted to present to you HoCTIV's Resolve for 2025, a year in which we achieved an outstanding operational and financial performance, as well as major advances in our strategic delivery. Let's kick off with the numbers, and then I'll give you an update on the important progress we're making with our growth strategy. Octave's operational net profit increased by 26% to $789 million, which rises to 35% on an FX-adjusted basis. This result significantly exceeds the guidance we provided to the market 12 months ago of $680 to $730, and is even slightly above the updated 2025 target we indicated in November of $750 to $780. Nominal net profit is also higher at $902 million, up 16% year-on-year. The excellent profit trend was driven by strong sales growth of 15% to over $38 billion, 21% adjusting for FX, as well as higher margins. The quality of Hoctave's profit delivery is underlined by the strong cash conversion achieved. Operating cash flow in 2025 of €2.1 billion was €248 million higher year-on-year prefactory, supported by strong working capital performance. As a result, the group ended the year with a slight reduction in net debt despite signifi...