Belysse Group N.V.

So good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of Belize Group and we regarding the full year 2024 results. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session for analysts covering the Belize share. Today we have with us James Newling, Chief Executive Officer. Andy Rogis, Chief Financial Officer, and Ruben Pateus, Group Director of Sustainability and Strategic Projects. Gentlemen, the floor is yours.

Hi, good morning. Thank you, Lynn. It's James Newling speaking. I'd like to give a warm welcome to all of you for the Belize Group's full year 2024 results call. If you have not already done so, you can download the press release and this presentation from the investor relations section at Belize.com. I need to start first to bring your attention to the disclaimer on slide two. I will not read it out, but please do make sure that you have read it. So now I will talk about the financial summary of the full year of 2024. And then Andy Rochiste, CFO of Belize, will take us through the financial review. And then finally, Ruben, who is our group sustainability director, will give a quick update on our Beyond program. And then I will make a conclusion. We will end this call with a Q&A session and with the analysts who follow our stock. So let's turn to slide four for the full year 2024 financial summary. So from a financial standpoint, we saw the full year 2024 consolidated revenue at a total of 280.4 million euro, which is an organic decrease of 6.8% year over year. The revenue of our U.S. business declined by 3.9% year-on-year, while the Europe business faced a decline of 10.2% year-on-year. In terms of profitability, the full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA was $42.4 million, which is a 26.0% year-on-year increase. Our U.S. business realized an EBITDA of $32.0 million, while the business in Europe realized EBITDA of $10.4 million. The net debt at the end of the period was $135.0 million, including $26.6 million of impact from the IFRS 16 lease liabilities, which results in a significantly lower leverage of $3.1 for the end of 2024. I will now pass over to Andy, who will go more in depth to the financials.

Good morning, everybody. Thank you, James. First, let's have a closer look at our 2024 financial performance. So we turn to slide six for the group revenue bridge portfolio 2024. So in 2024, we saw consolidated revenue decreasing by 6.8% to 280.4 million euros. In the US, our revenues slightly decreased to 154.5 million euros, which is about 4% lower than last year. This decrease in revenue can be explained by the lower volumes in the first half of 2024, while our average selling prices were stable. In the second half of the year, volumes and revenues stabilized with the Q4 2024 revenue being on par with the prior year. And this was 37.6 million euros. In Europe, revenue decreased approximately by 10% versus last year, 225.9 million euros. The market demand remained weak throughout the year, in particular in the residential business line. But despite the lower volumes, the average selling prices remained stable versus prior years. We can turn to slide 7 for the Group Adjusted EBITDA Bridge of 2024. So Belize Group Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of 2024 increased to 42.4 million euros. This represents a significant increase of 26% versus last year, with adjusted EBITDA margin strengthening to 15.1%. The EBITDA margin in 2023 was 11.2%. Our US business realized an adjusted EBITDA of 32 million euros in 2024. This is 4.6% higher than the result in 2023. and the adjusted ABDA margin arrived above 20%. Further improved efficiencies have more than offset the impact from the slight decline in volumes. On Europe, the ABDA improved materially from 3 million in 2023 to more than 10 million in 2024. And the adjusted ABDA margin increased to 8.3% from 2.2% in 2023. This improvement was the result of a recovery of the unitary margins, a higher margin product portfolio and fixed cost savings, which overcompensated the lower volumes and wage inflation during the year. So we can move to the cash flow slide. Thank you. We ended the year with a cash balance of 38.6 million euros compared to the balance of 35.8 million euros at the end of 2023. The positive cash flow was mainly driven by the adjusted EBITDA of 42.4 million euros while working capital meaning other and the trade working capital was contributing 4.2 million euros in a positive way. But during the year we paid 4.8 million euros of taxes as well was 10.2 million euros invested through capital expenditures. While we also had 28.8 million euros related to debt repayments and interest payments. which were including also effects from the refinancing. Let's now turn to the slide nine for the leverage chart in queue. So the net debt at the end of the period was 135 million euros. This is including 26.6 million euros related to IFRS 16 lease liabilities. This is 4.2 million euros lower than what we reported at the end of the first half of 2024, so at 30th of June. Our net leverage reduced significantly to 3.1 times versus 4.5 times at the end of 2023. This leverage is the lowest level since the inception of BILIS early 2022. Our total available liquidity, this is including headroom under the RCF, remains strong and amounted to almost 53 million euros at the end of 2024. I will now hand over the floor to Ruben, Ruben Pateus, our Group Director of Sustainability and Strategic Projects, for an update on BEYOND.