PFISTERER First-Half Revenue Jumps 20% as Net Income Rises 76%

PFISTERER Holding SE reported a 20.2% increase in first-half revenue to €256.7 million, while net income rose 75.9% to €38.3 million as the German power-grid equipment maker converted higher sales into faster earnings growth. Adjusted EBITDA climbed 32.7% to €52.4 million, lifting the adjusted EBITDA margin to 20.4% from 18.5% a year earlier.

The results covered the six months through June 30 and extended the strong start PFISTERER reported in the first quarter. Second-quarter revenue reached a company record of €129.8 million, up 14.4% from a year earlier, while quarterly net income nearly doubled to €19.8 million from €10.1 million. The company’s first-half order backlog also increased to €340.3 million, although new orders were below the unusually high level recorded a year earlier.

Profit grew faster than sales as operating leverage improved

PFISTERER’s first-half results show that the earnings increase was not driven by gross-margin expansion. Gross profit rose 19.7% to €107.8 million, broadly matching the pace of revenue growth, while the gross margin edged down to 42.0% from 42.1%.

The larger change came further down the income statement. Marketing and distribution costs increased 9.8% to €32.2 million, slower than revenue, reducing those costs to 12.6% of sales from 13.7%. Administrative costs rose to €21.6 million from €20.2 million but fell to 8.4% of revenue from 9.5%. Those improvements helped reported EBITDA rise 40.1% to €51.5 million and operating profit increase 43.2% to €43.8 million.

Research and development spending moved the other way, rising 24.4% to €14.6 million as PFISTERER added personnel and material costs. R&D represented 5.7% of revenue, compared with 5.5% a year earlier, reflecting the company’s investment in technologies including high-voltage direct current connection systems.

The 75.9% increase in net income also benefited from items below operating profit. PFISTERER’s effective tax rate fell to 10.1% from 24.4%, which the company attributed mainly to the IFRS accounting treatment of its virtual stock option program. Other income included a €1.9 million insurance payment related to fire damage at Pfisterer Insulators Wunsiedel in 2024, and the group recorded a €0.3 million net foreign-exchange gain compared with a €2.1 million loss in the prior-year period.

Because PFISTERER had more shares outstanding following its 2025 capital increase, earnings per share grew more slowly than net income. Basic and diluted EPS increased to €2.09 from €1.38, a rise of about 51%. The weighted average share count used for the first-half calculation increased to 18.1 million from 15.5 million.

High-voltage and overhead-line businesses led the expansion

All of PFISTERER’s product segments generated more revenue than a year earlier, but the largest contributions came from high-voltage cable accessories and overhead-line equipment. Revenue in the High Voltage Cable Accessories, or HVA, segment increased 26.3% to €108.5 million. Overhead Lines, or OHL, grew 32.3% to €64.5 million, the fastest percentage increase among the company’s major product groups.

Components revenue rose to €54.4 million from €50.1 million, while Medium Voltage Cable Accessories increased modestly to €29.3 million from €28.8 million. PFISTERER said EBITDA improved in every product segment, both in absolute terms and as a share of revenue. HVA’s EBITDA margin increased to 19.0%, Components reached 19.6%, and OHL rose to 25.1%. HVA and OHL produced the largest absolute contributions to group EBITDA.

Growth was also broad across regions, with one exception. Europe and Africa remained PFISTERER’s largest market and generated €140.3 million in revenue, up from €115.8 million. Middle East and India revenue increased 38.2% to €64.6 million, while North and South America grew 14.4%. Asia-Pacific revenue declined to €15.4 million from €19.2 million, mainly because of weaker sales in Southeast Asia.

The geographic mix also helped profitability. Europe and Africa’s EBITDA margin rose 4.1 percentage points to 20.3%, while Middle East and India improved 2.0 points to 25.8%. PFISTERER said Europe and Africa made the largest contribution to group revenue and earnings growth during the half.

Order intake normalized as backlog extended into 2027

New orders were the main counterweight to the strong income statement. First-half order intake fell 9.4% to €263.0 million from €290.2 million after an exceptionally strong comparable period. PFISTERER attributed the decline in part to unusually high previous orders from the Middle East and India region and its overhead-line business. Even after the decline, order intake remained slightly above first-half revenue, leaving the book-to-bill ratio above 1.

The backlog rose 8.9% year over year to €340.3 million from €312.5 million and already includes work scheduled into 2027. Europe and Africa accounted for €192.6 million of the backlog, up from €176.2 million a year earlier. The company described the lower order intake as an expected normalization rather than a change in its longer-term demand view.

PFISTERER is spending to expand the capacity needed to serve that backlog and future grid projects. Cash investment in property, plant and equipment increased to €17.2 million from €9.2 million in the first half. Projects include the new HVDC qualification and testing center at its Winterbach headquarters, where commissioning is planned for the first half of 2027, as well as additional production capacity in Germany, the United States and the Czech Republic.

Those investments contributed to a shift in PFISTERER’s balance sheet. The company ended June with €4.2 million of net debt after reporting €19.2 million of net liquidity at the end of 2025. Net working capital increased to €121.7 million from €99.9 million as inventories and trade receivables rose with the business, pushing net working capital to 24.7% of revenue from 22.2%.

Operating cash flow nevertheless improved sharply to €18.8 million from €0.5 million. Adjusted for €3.2 million of payments under the virtual stock option program, adjusted operating cash flow was €21.9 million. PFISTERER also paid €15.5 million in dividends during the half after shareholders approved a dividend of €0.85 per eligible share at the company’s first annual general meeting following its May 2025 stock-market listing.

Management left its medium-term targets unchanged. PFISTERER continues to target revenue of €800 million to €900 million by 2030 and an adjusted EBITDA margin in the high-teens to low-twenties percentage range. The half-year report said management expects the positive development of order intake and revenue to continue in 2026, while noting that its forecast assumes the conflict in the Middle East eases in the short to medium term. PFISTERER is scheduled to report third-quarter business performance on November 18.