Gurit Holding AG

I'm pleased to have with me today our new CFO, Victor Bernard. In 2025, we did our homework. We executed a rigorous restructuring program, repositioned the company for future growth. Today, we will demonstrate that these efforts have already started to materialize in the second half of 2025 and are expected to continue going forward. We structured today's presentation into three parts. I will start with an overview about the financial performance, for example, net sales, operation results, then business market highlights and give you two or three facts about our sustainability efforts in 2025. Then Victor will continue with a deep dive on the financial results of 2025, including restructuring costs, free cash flow development and balance sheet positions. Then I will resume and give you an outlook about our strategy and the market, an overview of the wind market and how we operate in those growing markets and why we are well positioned to capture future growth. And I also present you some selective highlights from our marine and industrial businesses. Before we dive into the Q&A session, I will conclude with the guidance for 2026 and a midterm outlook. Let's start with our 2025 achievements. Burit successfully completed its restructuring program and streamlined its production footprint. It reduced overhead costs and exited significant unprofitable businesses. As a result of these measures, our net sales decreased from 431.7 million to 319.6 million, mainly due to the discontinued businesses. Our reported operating results were at 43.2 million, reflecting restructuring effects. However, on the adjusted basis, we reached an EBIT of 29.7 million. Our return of sales went from 6.9 in 2024 and improved to 8.1 in 2025. Despite this challenging year, we delivered a solid financial results. The net debt reduced by 7.7 million to 55 million. The free cash flow increased significantly to 12.3 million compared to 4.4 million in 2024. These figures provide a clear indication of the progress achieved over the past 12 months. ELINA, more focused on the organization with improved profitability and strong cash generation. In 2025, we focused on profitable, strategic, important businesses. At the same time, we worked on our resilience and diversification by advancing our multi-market strategy. I'll give you some examples of that. For example, the wind system. We secured a long-term supply agreement with Western OEM, supported by our GURID OptiCore technology. We entered new markets, like the subsea markets, and we've been awarded with a multi-year subsea contract. entering an attractive new market where we see strong positioning of our company and strong growth potential. Therefore, we are expanding our footprint in Australia and Dallas in order to serve this future growth in those segments. We ramped up our capacity in Europe, in our production facility, especially in Vices in Spain, in order to meet future demand. I will provide you more details on the underlying market growth and demand drivers later in the presentation. Let me provide you an overview of our three business units. Wind systems ended at 190 million, manufacturing solution at 41 million, and marine industry at 88 million in sales. In wind system, we delivered stronger than expected performance despite strategic exits. We improved competitiveness through footprint optimization and restructuring. As I told you, we secured the first long-term contract based on our OptiCore technology. And I will share you more details on how our new operational setup is looking like later in this presentation. In manufacturing solution, the net sales were in line with our expectation. We experienced a small, small slowdown in early 2025 and followed by a recovery later in the year. The outlook remains positive because we received some positive signs in early 2026. In marine industrial, we operated generally in a softer market environment, achieving the major breakthrough in the subsea segment, as I mentioned before. All across the three business units, we see a clear evidence of improved positioning with early wins validating our strategic direction. Let me now turn on the supply chain performance and the ongoing topic of the US tariffs, focusing first in the year 2025. Throughout the year, we experienced, actually, especially in the first half of the year, we experienced fluctuating flight rates and volatile transit times. Despite this environment, we ensured high service level by relocating select suppliers and optimizing our inventory management. These measures allowed us to maintain stable operations and reliable customer supply. In 2025, the impacts of the terrorists were minor. As a direct importer, we paid less than $1 million, where the majority of those terrorists could be passed through. We are currently working with duty specialists to reclaim those terrorists, but due to the high pass-through rate, we do not expect significant positive effects. More relevant were the indirect effects, early year order delays, particularly in marine and industrial. And over the course of 2025, it gradually normalized during the year. While we had expected that the tariff topics go away, it has recently resurfaced, as you know. However, due to our organizational setup in Canada and Mexico, both benefiting from the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, the direct impact of currently imposed tariffs remains limited. Let me briefly share two highlights of the GURT sustainability efforts in 2025. We were awarded the EcoVadis Gold Rating once again. This placed GURT in the top 5% of all assessed companies, and it's notably worth that we say that this is the third consecutive time we achieved this rating. As another highlight, I would like to mention that we reduced our Scope 1 emissions by 24% since 2020. That means that we are very well on track on our defined pathway toward a net zero company. This achievement underlines the continued commitment to sustainability, combining external validation with measurable progress on emission reduction. And now I would like to give you to Victor.

Thank you very much, Tobias. Good morning and a warm welcome from my side. Let me guide you through our financials 2025. But before we start, just some opening remarks from my side. The headline of today's presentation is Transformation Completed Well-Positioned for 2026. And this is pretty much what we see in our 2025 financials. On one hand, last year's financial performance was heavily impacted by the transformation Gould went through. On the other hand, financials which we do report for 2025 show as well how swift, how decisive, could it execute its transformation and why we believe that after the completion of it, we are well positioned for 2026. Key facts. In 2025, we generated net sales of 319.6 million. Operating result was driven by major one-time effects, minus 43.2 million. Our adjusted operating result was 26 million, and the margin of the net sales was of 8.1%, well above previous year. Corit generated, despite the restructuring efforts, a cash flow of 12.3 million and reduced its net debt down to 55 million by the end of 2025. We dive a bit deeper into it. The decision to stop the carbon fiber protrusion business, as well as to focus on profitable wind customers, had, as expected and as communicated, a major impact on our top line. In addition, business unit, marine and industrial, and manufacturing solutions were, especially in the first semester, impacted by tariff uncertainty and delayed customer decisions. All this in combination with unfavorable FX effect. Of this, we saw a decline in our net sales of 26%. The gross profit went down by 13%. However, in relative terms to net sales, it was already above previous year. Adjusted operating result, here we reached 26 million. And same as before, we are in terms of net sales margin, we are well above previous year. Our operating result was minus 43.1 million. And if we look deeper into it and the drivers for it, By building a bridge, we see that the main deviation comes from business divestment and here from good recycling of 64.2 million related to carbon business, pollution business exits. We're at restructuring expenses of 4.3 million, mainly in Denmark and Italy, as well as some minor impairment adjustments. I mentioned before that the financials 2025 show a clear picture of how we manage the transformation and why we believe to be well set for 2026. If we compare the second semester 25 with the first semester 25, where we still were heavily in the restructuring phase, we see that our gross profit went significantly up in the second semester. And our adjusted operating result went up to 16.7 million or 10.8% of net sales. Significant increase versus the first semester. Diving deeper into the Belsam balance sheet items. Our trade networking capital reduced in line and along with our business reduction. We reduced it by 25%. Our net capex we spent last year was 8.7 million, reflecting somewhat smaller , but reflecting as well our discipline project execution while continuing investing in operating efficiency. Our free cash flow was 12.3 million, well above previous year. Net debt, here we successfully managed to reduce net debt by nearly 8 million, down to 55 million by end of last year. The equity went down by 8 million, heavily impacted by CTA of 12.3 million. And last but not least, our net debt to ABDR ratio went significantly down from 2.5 to 1.6. And with this, I hand over to Tobias for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Victor. Before we go to the Outlook, let me just take a few minutes to give you two insights about our market environment in wind energy and our positioning as well as in the marine industrial sector. Let's start with the wind energy. This is our primary market at this point in time. There are some global megatrends we are riding on. The global electrification is accelerating. Megatrends such as digitalization, artificial intelligence, and the rapid expansion of data centers are driving a significant increase in electricity demand around the world. This growing demand must be addressed through evolving energy mix with renewables playing a central role. And if you take a closer look at Europe, wind is their extremely strong and very competitive energy source that will be tapped over the next few years. According to the global supplier forecast by Brinkman, Western OEMs are expected to deliver a component annual growth rate of about 10.5%. This growth is supported by strong regulatory frameworks in the Western markets, clear decommunisation targets in the countries and in the regions, and a continued policy to support renewable energy. This combination of structural demand growth and supportive regulation creates a highly favourable market environment for GORET, particularly given our positioning in advanced composite material for wind and energy application. Let's take an even closer look. It is important to note that according to the industry expert and our own analysis, Chinese OEMs are expected to play a relatively minor role outside of China. The market penetration is projected around 16% globally ex-China by 2035. Chinese OEMs are likely to enter price-sensitive markets such as India, Southeast Asia, Turkey and Australia. And it's also, I think, important to note the moment those OEMs, non-Western OEMs, enter a different market and they open local manufacturing sites. They're also seeking for global suppliers like gold. Let me go on two sub-markets, the onshore and the offshore market, and I start with the onshore market first. Here, the market dynamics looks like the following. We expected a growth at approximately 6%, primarily driven by the European demand. Around 70% on the future onshore installation are forecasted to be accounted by the five major OEMs. In the offshore market, we see a slightly different picture. We expect a stronger growth between 14% and 16%, but kicks in a little bit later. and the regional driver is by far the European market region. I think it's important to note that the US market outlook is expected to have minimal insulation due to the current US policy framework. And if it doesn't, if it change and we see it probably change after the next administration, we will see positive effects not earlier than the 2030s. I understand it can be sometimes challenging to grasp what GURT actually does and is producing, especially if you are just starting to look at our business. Let me clarify this a little bit by focusing on wind systems. GURT provides mission critical supplies and tools for the wind turbine blades, including highly engineered molds. They are essential for building the blades and they are 100 meter long steel structures, very complicated. We produce and deliver core materials, PET and balsa, which form the internal structure of the blades who are essential to deliver structural integrity of the blades. We make tailor-made kits. They're ready to assembly on the spot delivered to our customers for each blade. And we produce high performance profiles, assuring a reliable torque transition from blade into the turbine. And we produce special coatings, ensuring performance, durability, and efficiency, not only during the production process, but also in the aftermarket. We believe that no other suppliers in the market offer those breadth and integration of products and services that GORID provides for wind turbine blades. This combination of material, tools, engineering service positions us very well as a strategic partner for our customers. As you know, and it's very easy to spot trends, turbine becomes larger and larger, and so blades become larger and larger. And some of you have asked me whether this could reduce the market size for alcohol material. The answer is easy. Based on detailed analysis of our engineering data we get from our customers and we can grasp ourselves, we can see that the increase in material usage more than offsets any potential reduction from the larger plate designs. As a result, demand for core materials remain robust. Given the current design trends, GURT is very positioned to fully participate in the global market growth. As I promised you earlier, let me guide you through our new production footprint for wind systems. Currently, we operate in seven countries, strategically serving the wind industry. This network is deliberately designed to ensure customer proximity, cost-efficient production, and strategic risk mitigation. Our key location and capabilities are, for example, Ecuador, where we positioned ourselves in a country that are producing 80% of the global balsa supply, and we are the only major player with free access to balsa. That means we don't have our own plantation and thereby avoiding structural supply risk. We are located in Mexico, near the US border, specialized in core material and kitting. In Spain, we are focusing on kitting and core materials supporting the European demand. In India and China, we are producing and we are concentrated or production of structural profiles. And in China and India, we're also producing molds for manufacturing solution. And in both countries, we have kitting and core material capabilities. Talking about core materials, GURIT supplies to the market very important core materials and ready-to-use kits using both recycled PET and so-called virgin PET. Recycled PET enables us to meet the strictest sustainability requirements of our customers. And with the choice between recycled and virgin PET, we have access to multiple raw material sources that reduces the dependency on any single supplier or supply chain. We benefit from strong scale effects through centralized extruder facilities in our core markets. Many decades of continuous product optimization have delivered us industry-leading yields on our extruders. Our proprietary OptiCore technology allows customers to reduce blade weights by several hundred kilograms per blade. This weight reduction enhances turbine efficiency over its lifetime, creating value both for direct customers as well as for the end users. Now I would like to go to the marine and industrial business for a while. Looking ahead, the marine and industrial market are expected to show moderate growth, influenced by a slower marine demand due to the US tariffs and decline in certain US segments. Despite these headwinds, we have entered new market segments and driving increasing demand, particularly for the recycled PET form in the industrial space. Our core cell or proprietary core cell technology is seen as the only long-term reliable solution for specific application in the subsea and defense sector. We expect a strong growth in the subsea market and also we see multiple opportunities to replace traditional materials such as wood across various industries. New products on the pipeline are expected to start impacting top line later this year and the years to come. We believe GURT is now very well positioned to capture those growth in the marine and industrial sectors. We have the best in-class structural engineering plus scalable kitting capabilities to support efficient production. The proprietary core cell technology delivers exceptional and consistent material performance. We only begin to unlock new lightweight opportunities by replacing traditional materials with GURT solution, improving performance efficiency and total system cost. Let me now come to the guidance. We believe and we see that the net sales from continued operation at constant FX rates to increase at the mid single digit rate. Our adjusted operating results margin will improve versus 2025. obviously depends on geopolitical situation and market development, including FX fluctuations. Our mid-term outlook post-2026, we see a mid to high single-digit growth in wind, a high single-digit growth in non-wind, and we are reaffirming a 10% operational salt margin going forward. We completed our transformation. We have now a leaner and cleaner footprint. We reduced our overhead costs. We improved our operational resilience and focused on strategic partners and customers. We believe we position the company for sustainable profitable growth in the future. Before we go into the Q&A session, let me give you some or three next important dates. This will be April 16th with the annual general meeting and the Q1 26 results. On August 26th, we present you the half-year report and on October 23rd, we present you the Q3 numbers. At this point in time, I thank you very much and we are happy to take any answers.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Participants can now ask questions by pressing star and 1 on the touch-tone telephone. Questions are requested to use handsets only and turn down the volume. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Anyone with a question may press star and 1 at this time. Our first question comes from Laura Bucher from Octavian. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. First, I'm looking for some comments on China. I mean, you deliberately reduced your exposure to domestic products in China, so I'm wondering how you're positioned to capture the growth from, number one, the 120 gigawatt annual installation target under the new five-year plan, which I think is quite sizable, and number two, from the Chinese OEMs gaining share internationally. If I'm not mistaken, they've increased their non-China share threefold last year. And also, have you factored any of this into your 26 and post-26 growth targets? I'll take my second question after the answer, if I may.

Yeah, thank you, Laura, very much for the questions. Yes, we are working with Chinese customers, obviously. And yes, we are working with China's customers outside China as well. And as I told you in one of my slides, we are getting requests, especially for the growth outside of China for our core material and kitting services. And I believe we are strongly positioned over there. Yes, we see this 120 gigawatts installation as well. We expect a little bit less than that, but it's on an extremely high level. But I think it's most important that we really focus on on profitable customer relationships. So we are very selective and don't participate in any big price competition in the China market. We affect us a little bit of this growth into our numbers going forward.

Okay, thank you. And just wondering why are you not guiding, you're only guiding to, well, not only, but anyway, you're only guiding mid to high single digit and not the 10% growth you expect in your Western market. Just wondering why you expect less. Is it lower prices? Do you see risk to your market share?

We don't see any risk at the market shares. The prices are very, very stable. But nevertheless, we are still a little bit, let's say, conservative in terms of the global situation.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. The next question comes from Marty Cueral from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Question number one would be, please, could you give some color on what were the drivers of the gross margin expansion in H2 versus H1? I mean, is it all related to the discontinuation of the carbon fiber business? or did you have also some tailwinds from lower raw material prices?

Yeah, I take this question, Martin. Thank you very much for the question. No, we didn't have any special effects in H2 on the cross margin. It's really mostly coming from the discontinuation of the carbon fiber protrusion business. No major tailwinds.

Okay, thanks. And then for 2026, I mean, you expect core EBIT margin above 2025 levels, so above 8.1%. But I mean, most likely, I would say that this implies a contraction compared to the 10.8% margin that you had in H2. I mean, could you elaborate why you do not expect the H2 margin to be sustainable in 2026?

Yeah, fair question, and we're expecting this one. Indeed, we delivered above 10% margin for two consecutive quarters. On the other hand, we want to be prudent, similar to the answer Tobias gave before. We are cautious going forward with all the uncertainty still.

Okay, thanks. Then I would have a question on the wind business, also similar to a question that was asked before. But I mean, if I look at the outlook statements from wind OEMs, they are encouraging for 2026. But then if I look in 2025, for example, the megawatts that some of these OEMs delivered grew double-digit, while the core sales in wind materials were down 3%, roughly. So my question is, could you help me understand where is this difference coming from? I mean, is it due to lower ASPs? Is it changes in market share? Like some color would be appreciated here. Thanks.

Marty, just to wrap your question, correct. So you're asking why there was a difference between the market growth and us being down on wind?

Basically, yes. Yeah.

Yes, we have seen that the raw material prices went down and some of our raw material prices will reflect also into our sales prices.

Okay. Thanks.

Um, mostly I mean, we, um, as we said, we stepped out from non-profitable customers, um, in, in line. So it's, um, there, we gave basically sales away.

Okay. Okay. That's clear. But I mean, now you just said that raw materials went down. So, I mean, I guess that these helps also on the margin. That was my question before.

Well, it goes in line, but I mean, it was not a major tailwind on the gross profit.

Okay, okay. And then one last question, if I may. I mean, you had an equity free cash flow of around 11 million, I would say. I mean, is this the new base level that we should think about going forward? Is this something that you can achieve also in 2026?

But a free cash flow. Well, the free cash flow 25 was impacted by restructuring measures, which we don't expect in that magnitude going forward. So I think the level of 25 should be definitely set to rock bottom for us.

Okay, that's clear. Many thanks. That's all from my side.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Tobias Lurig for any closing remarks.

Yes, thank you very much, everybody, for participating today. And I hope I see you soon for the next media conference. I wish you a great day. Thank you very much and bye-bye. Thank you for my side as well.