Planes, cement and LEDs
Figeac Aéro, Hoffmann Green, bioMérieux, Care Property Invest, Swiss Life, Voltalia, Zumtobel, CVC Capital Partners, Dormakaba
Figeac Aéro (FGA France): clean start to the year, wide-body tailwinds, and a fuller order book to work through
Figeac Aéro’s quarterly revenue landed a touch ahead of market expectations, and the growth was cleanly organic, with the A350 and the Leap-1B engines doing most of the heavy lifting. That mix matters. The A350 is the company’s most important program by economic weight, and stronger shipments there tell you both demand and the internal manufacturing rhythm are moving in the right direction. The brief weather-related disruption at Mécabrive was unhelpful but contained, with management expecting to catch up the delayed deliveries quickly.
With supply chains slowly normalizing across the industry and trade tariffs no longer the headwind they were, the operating backdrop is strongly improving.
The order book supports that stance. At the end of June it stood at roughly €4.6 billion, essentially stable after currency effects, and it includes a fresh contract above €25 million linked to Leap-1B. That addition is indicative of steady demand for high-volume single-aisle content alongside the wide-body momentum.
Looking slightly further out, the Airbus plan to integrate portions of Spirit AeroSystems’ activities should, if executed well, translate into smoother industrial coordination and could create opportunities for suppliers like Figeac to deepen work packages, especially on programs where they are already embedded.
Current-year revenue, EBITDA and free cash flow goals are reiterated, and the medium-term markers—crossing €600 million of sales, a nine-figure EBITDA line, and leverage below two turns—remain the north star.
None of this erases the usual aerospace caveats. Ramps can slip, customer schedules can change, and the industry’s supply base still has points of fragility. But the moving parts this quarter were the ones you want to see moving: wide-body contribution rising, single-aisle content supported by new wins, and operational noise limited to a short-term weather hiccup.
The path from here is about execution cadence—holding delivery performance as volumes step up, protecting margins as the mix evolves, and continuing to convert growth into cash.
Hoffmann Green (ALHGR France): volumes surge, licensing the swing factor for the profit bridge
Hoffmann Green’s half-year print tells two truths at once. On the one hand, commercial momentum in France is unmistakable: cement volumes more than doubled, the order book swelled by roughly 170,000 tons to about 440,000 tons, and partnerships stacked up across residential, industrial, logistics and public works. On the other hand, the company had to deal with tough comps as last year’s first half had an unusually rich mix from license entry fees, while this year had none. That shift, plus higher selling and operating costs to support growth, widened EBITDA losses even as revenue crept higher.
It’s not the neatest optics, but it is the normal asymmetry of a model that blends product sales with episodic licensing: when the license line is quiet, the P&L leans on volumes and operating discipline; when licenses land, they swing profitability quickly in the other direction.
The strategic groundwork looks increasingly robust. Renewed and expanded partnerships anchor demand for low-carbon binders in end-markets that run well beyond housing. Diversification into industrial slabs, exterior works, trenching and telecom infrastructure widens the use-cases, while fresh technical validation like ASTM C1157 certification in the U.S. opens doors for international scaling.
The balance sheet is still compact but under control; debt includes a convertible tranche, but receivables tied to the U.S. license entry fee are due in the second half, which should help the cash bridge as the year progresses.
That’s why management can still talk credibly about reaching breakeven EBITDA in 2025: the lever isn’t only French volumes, it’s also the resumption of license deals in Europe (and potentially the U.S.) in the back half.
The 2030 markers—roughly a million tons of capacity across three sites and about €150 million in sales—remain the target, and the route there remains rooted in a dual engine of plant-level throughput and capital-light licensing.
Near term, the gating item is simple: close additional licenses to complement rising domestic volumes and manage the cost line as the commercial footprint expands. Do that, and the earnings cadence should look very different by year-end; miss on licensing, and the model will have to lean harder on price, mix, and operating leverage to narrow losses.
bioMérieux (BIM France): cash and margins do the talking as guidance tilts to higher profit
bioMérieux’s half-year message is crisp: revenue growth slowed a notch in the second quarter, but cash generation and profitability moved decisively the right way.
Top line landed below the street’s mark, with momentum normalizing after a stronger start to the year and China continuing to drag within Asia. Yet cEBIT expanded smartly, lifting the first-half margin north of 18%, as mix improved and operating costs stayed tight despite FX headwinds. Free cash flow was the standout—roughly €170 million for the half versus €50 million a year earlier—signaling a business that’s converting more of its income statement into actual cash.
That improvement, plus a balance sheet still lightly geared, allows management to tweak guidance: a slightly lower revenue range, but a higher EBIT outcome for the year, even after absorbing currency effects.
Under the hood, the moving pieces line up with the long-term plan. Microbiology grew modestly, Molecular Biology decelerated as respiratory testing lapped tough comps while non-respiratory panels kept expanding, Industrial Applications remained a reliable double-digit grower, and Immunoassays stayed soft. BioFire delivered growth in line with expectations, and SpotFire, though lumpy quarter to quarter, continued to scale its installed base, supporting the full-year revenue target for that platform.
Regionally, North America did the heavy lifting, EMEA trudged forward, and Asia ex-China was healthy. The China piece remains the sticking point given volume-based procurement, but the group’s total exposure there is contained, and performance elsewhere is compensating.
The bigger takeaway is credibility on medium-term profitability. For years, the refrain around bioMérieux was: “good growth, but show me the cash and margins.” This first half does exactly that, and it makes the 2028 ambition of a near-20% EBIT margin feel more tangible.
The immediate watch-outs are familiar—keep opex disciplined, maintain momentum in Industrial Applications and non-respiratory molecular, and execute on BioFire and SpotFire placements without sacrificing pricing.
If those boxes get ticked, the slight haircut to revenue guidance will be a footnote to a more important shift: a diagnostics leader demonstrating that it can grow, expand margins, and throw off cash at the same time.
Care Property Invest (CPINV Belgium): earnings nudge up, but growth levers still feel tight
Care Property Invest’s first half landed a little better than the market expected, and management used the moment to lift full-year EPS guidance. The beats came from the quiet places: lower interest expenses and a touch of discipline on taxes and overheads.
Operationally, the machine kept humming, with like-for-like rents edging higher and headline occupancy at a tidy 100%. Leverage ticked up after the dividend, but the debt profile is still sensibly hedged, with an average cost around 3% and a long swap book that keeps financing risk in a manageable lane.
Look a layer deeper and the picture is more nuanced. Revaluations were modest and softer than a few peers, and the underlying occupancy that tenants report in mature assets slipped a bit, with the Netherlands the main pressure point.
None of this screams problem, but it does signal limited tailwinds from asset values and a reminder that demand in certain sub-markets still ebbs and flows. The like-for-like rental growth is helpful, yet with high payout ratios and leverage in the high-40s LTV, self-funded expansion remains constrained.
Management is doing the right things—keeping cash flows tidy, protecting the balance sheet, and letting rate tailwinds work through the P&L—but big, organic acceleration will be hard to conjure without fresh capital or highly accretive recycling.
So the takeaway is a pragmatic one: CP Invest is running a steady platform through a period where financing and valuations are more gentle than generous. The guidance lift is deserved, and the earnings quality—driven by financing discipline rather than once-offs—should resonate. At the same time, the ingredients for outsized growth aren’t all there. Revaluation support is limited, tenant-reported occupancy in one geography needs watching, and a high payout slows deleveraging.
Swiss Life (SLHN Switzerland): solid core, tidy capital flows, and steady progress on 2027 goals
Swiss Life’s first half reads like a playbook execution update: the insurance engine did the heavy lifting, fee income was close enough to plan, and capital remittance to the holding stayed strong. Profit from operations moved up, buoyed by additional contributions within the insurance business—particularly in France—and returns on assets not backing liabilities helped.
The bottom line bore some pre-flagged headwinds from higher funding costs and a higher tax rate, but return on equity sat neatly inside the long-term range, a reminder that this is a franchise built for through-cycle resilience rather than quarter-to-quarter theatrics. The balance sheet did its part, too; the SST ratio stepped up to the low-200s, giving ample room to keep the dividend growing in line with the company’s cash generation rhythm.
If there was a softer patch, it was in the fee business, which landed a touch below consensus. That matters because the strategy through 2027 is all about tilting the mix toward capital-light earnings: more advisory, asset management and third-party mandates doing a bigger share of the profit lifting.
Even so, the directional signals remain supportive. Net new assets in TPAM were sizeable overall, if slower in the second quarter than the first, and the aggregate cash flow to holding north of a billion Swiss francs in the half keeps the runway clear for shareholder returns. The insurance operations themselves looked healthy, with non-life in France a bright spot and the portfolio’s real-asset exposure providing valuation support at the margin.
Against that backdrop, the “Swiss Life 2027” guideposts feel well calibrated. The ambition to have fee businesses approach half of operating profit by 2027, ROE in the high-teens or better, and cumulative cash remittance comfortably above the last strategy cycle all look achievable from here.
Voltalia (VLTSA France): a messy first half, a clearer plan, and a promise to self-fund the climb
Voltalia’s half-year update landed with a thud on the income statement and a blueprint for how to climb out of it. On the numbers, EBITDA was broadly in line with what the market was expecting, but everything below that line told a tougher story: higher depreciation as new plants came online late last year, a heavier tax charge, and losses tied to discontinued operations after shutting the equipment supply business. Add in charges tied to the Spring transformation—pipeline clean-up, project rationalisation, and a write-back tied to the troublesome Spring project—and reported net income sank deeper into the red.
The net effect was that EBIT and bottom-line results underwhelmed despite steady revenue and a decent contribution from energy sales. In short: the operating engine held together; the accounting tailwinds hurt.
Management’s response is to simplify and tighten. The Spring plan pares Voltalia back to its core: solar, onshore wind, and batteries in a smaller set of priority countries, with partnerships to stretch the model where capital or local know-how would otherwise slow things down. That refocus comes with an explicit push to make the operating model easier to read—separating activities, upgrading disclosure—and with a cost plan that targets around €10 million a year in efficiencies from 2026.
More importantly, the company set out a self-funded growth trajectory to 2030: adding roughly 300–400 megawatts a year, aiming for energy-sales margins in the low 70s and services margins around 9–11%, all while managing leverage to the high-single-digit EBITDA range by the end of the decade.
Those are sober goals that trade speed for durability, and they recognize that 2025 will be a reset year, with guidance for EBITDA trimmed below what the street had penciled in and H2 expected to carry more one-offs as the clean-up accelerates.
What matters now is execution cadence. Operational targets for 2025 were reaffirmed, which helps anchor the forward view. But the investment case hinges on the Spring plan doing what it says on the tin: concentrating capital where it earns the best returns, exiting distractions quickly, and letting recurring energy sales set the tone for cash generation.
Zumtobel (ZAG Austria): a weak start, a two-phase fix, and a long road to better margins
Zumtobel’s first quarter came in soft, but the mix of pressures helps explain why management is reaching for a bigger cost lever. Revenue fell high-single digits, with the Components business down more than lighting, and reported EBIT slipped into the red on restructuring charges tied to closing the U.S. plant.
Strip out those one-offs and adjusted EBIT stayed positive, but at a skinny margin that underscores how little cushion there is when volumes fade and pricing power is limited. Lighting profitability dropped materially year on year, which is where the investment case needs relief: without some demand tailwind, the fixed-cost base starts to work against the P&L quickly.
The answer is an efficiency program in two acts. Phase one targets SG&A, with €30–40 million in annual savings once fully ramped by 2028/29, and with some early benefits already expected in the current year. Phase two will take aim at operations, procurement, and R&D, with details to follow.
The framing is sensible: clear the underbrush in overheads first, then go after the heartbeat of product cost and complexity. Guidance for the year stays where it was—revenue modestly below last year and an adjusted EBIT margin somewhere between 1% and 4%—which lines up with a view that end-markets aren’t ready to bail the company out yet.
For investors, the near-term scorecard is straightforward. Watch whether Lighting margins stabilize as the SG&A program bites; follow order intake and price realization to gauge whether mix can help offset volume softness; and look for clearer markers on the second-phase levers in operations and procurement.
The backdrop in core markets doesn’t yet scream recovery, so the base case remains one of containment and gradual self-help rather than a quick inflection.
CVC Capital Partners (CVC Netherlands): steady first half, with the heavier lifting set for the back end of the year
The headline items—management fees, fee-related earnings, adjusted profit—tracked market expectations well. The fee engine is doing the hard, predictable work: management fees rose on the back of a bigger fee-paying asset base, while fee margins held in a healthy band. Performance fees came in a hair light, but they improved meaningfully versus the prior half as realizations picked up, and that sequential step is the real tell about where the year is going.
The net result was revenue and earnings broadly in line with consensus, a reminder that the company’s earnings mix is increasingly anchored in recurring fees rather than the more capricious realization cycle.
The more interesting conversation is about cadence. CVC exited roughly €10 billion of assets in the first half and flagged that momentum should continue, supported by a recent flurry of divestment headlines. If that plays out, performance fees naturally skew to the second half, which is also when fundraising is expected to do more of the lifting in credit, infrastructure, and secondaries.
Management fee earnings already tell you the platform is scaling; what investors will watch now is whether gross inflows, commitments and first closes translate into an acceleration in fee-paying AUM as the year closes.
In a business like this, the debate rarely hinges on a single half; it’s about the durability of the fee franchise and the timing of performance. On both, the signposts are constructive. The management fee base is compounding at a double-digit clip year on year, performance is improving alongside a slowly thawing exit market, and operating discipline is protecting margins even as the platform invests to grow.
The risks are always the same—deal markets can turn, fundraising windows can narrow, and realizations can slip—but the first-half print reads like a steady hand on the tiller.
Dormakaba (DOKA Switzerland): transformation progress is clear, and now the playbook shifts to scale and discipline
Dormakaba’s full-year numbers were exactly what a long-running transformation should look like: solid organic growth, another notch higher on margins, and clear evidence that cost programs are sticking.
The company delivered on yet another half year with margin improvement, with price and productivity doing what they were supposed to do, and cash generation remained healthy even after a year of heavier transformation activity.
The one point of friction was the dividend, where the payout has been reset to reduce volatility and preserve dry powder for acquisitions. The company wants to accelerate in North America, targeting well over a billion Swiss francs of sales in the U.S. within a few years through a mix of organic growth and bolt-ons. To do that, leverage will likely drift up from a very low base, with a ceiling around three turns signaled as acceptable.
The Shape4Growth program, meanwhile, keeps unlocking efficiencies: back offices are consolidating into shared service centers, supply chains are being simplified, and product complexity is being pared back. In practice, that means the company can lean into growth without letting costs swell uncontrollably, and it leaves room for margin to step beyond the current mid-teens guide as scale and mix improve.
For investors, the story now hinges on two execution arcs running in parallel. The first is operational: keep the margin march going, hold pricing discipline, and show that the savings program can coexist with selective reinvestment. The second is strategic: deploy capital into the right U.S. assets at the right multiples, integrate cleanly, and use the enlarged footprint to unlock channel and product synergies.
With the shares already reflecting a good chunk of the turnaround, the burden of proof shifts to maintaining this rhythm while layering in sensible M&A. The pieces are in place; the next twelve months are about tempo and discipline.
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