Kone Oyj B (KNYJF) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, and welcome to KONE's first quarter results webcast. My name is Natalia Valdesari. I'm head of investor relations here at KONE, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Philippe Delorne, our CEO, and Ilka Hara, our CFO. So, as usual, Philippe will start by giving you an overview of the key developments in the quarter, focusing on business highlights, financials, and strategy execution. And then Ilka will take over, talk you through what we're seeing in the markets, a bit more detail on the financials and our outlook for this year. And then we'll move on to your questions. And I would like to ask you at this point already to please limit yourself to one question, one follow-up, and then rejoin the queue in case you have any follow-ups after that. But with that, please. Thank you, Natalia. And good morning, everyone. I'm glad to be here today presenting our results for the first quarter of 2025. Let me start by saying that we had a very good start of the year, both in terms of financial performance and strategy execution. And of course, the things come together. We delivered strong growth again in both service and modernization. Modernization in particular had an outstanding quarter, with both orders and sales growing by nearly 20%. From a geographical perspective, we saw good momentum in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. In China, orders declined by approximately 15%. New building market conditions remains very difficult there. But we did see some signs that activity could start to bottom out towards the end of the year. As you know, profitable growth is at the top of our agenda. So I'm pleased to share that Q1 marked the ninth consecutive quarter of margin expansion. And last but certainly not the least, we continue to steadil...