Regarding the order book and its turnover, I could add that it is, of course, also affected by the customer industry-specific distribution. As far as I understand, in the wind power industry, for example, it is not uncommon for customers to place orders that clearly extend beyond the quarterly rule of thumb. In addition, the situations of customers’ own supply chains (e.g., this year’s exceptional circumstances) also affect how far-sighted orders are given to component suppliers like Exel.
The record-high order book at the end of Q2 certainly provides an excellent starting point for H2 and thus for reaching forecasts. In practice, falling short of forecasts would mean a weakening of one’s own delivery capability, an exceptionally long order book structure, and/or a rapid weakening of customers’ end demands and a flood of order cancellations. To my understanding, the order book structure should not be significantly longer than normal. Orders received during the year also do not indicate that end demands would face a significant risk of melting. Thus, the first point is, in my opinion, the biggest threat, although even in this case, losing sleep is not justified based on the beginning of the year.
The beginning of your second question is quite technical, and providing a truly value-adding answer would, in my opinion, require me to know the processes of both pultrusion and alternative manufacturing methods inside out. I think that @Elastomer, who has shown his technical expertise a couple of times in this thread, can answer this point better than I can.
Instead, I can offer my contribution to the second part of your question. The products manufactured by Exel are usually applications tailored directly to customer-specific needs. Their design is long-term work, and the time from the first customer contact to the finished product and its larger-scale production can take several years. From the customer’s perspective, this, in turn, simply means that the material choice has essentially already been made when going to the drawing board (i.e., it’s more about supplier choice than material choice). Together, these aforementioned factors also mean that the costs incurred by the customer changing suppliers can be very high. This, in turn, improves the supplier’s own value chain position and at the same time lengthens customer relationships. Thus, growth in a single customer industry is a result of the well-developed businesses of key customers and Exel’s at least stable relative positions (customers are rarely dependent on a single supplier).
