Fresenius Medical Care AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the report on first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I am Valentina, the Carlos call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Dr. Dominik Hege. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Valentina. I would like to welcome everyone to our earnings call for the first quarter 2026. As always, I start out the call by mentioning our cautionary language that is in our safe harbor statement as well as in our presentation and in all the materials that we have distributed earlier today. For further details concerning risks and uncertainties, please refer to these documents and to our SEC filings. We will have a little bit under an hour for the call. In order to give everyone the chance to ask questions, we would limit the number of questions to two. Thank you for making this work, as always. Let me now welcome Helen Gieser, CEO and Chair of the Management Board, and Martin Fischer, our Chief Financial Officer. Helen, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Dominic. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone on the call. Thank you for your continued interest in Fresenius Medical Care. I will begin my prepared remarks on slide four. I am pleased to report that we began 2026 with continued operational and financial progress. We realized the solid organic revenue growth of 4%, reflecting positive contributions from all segments. We achieved strong operating income growth of 10% in line with our planned phasing for the year and leading to further margin expansion. This was supported by continued execution of our FME25 Plus saving program, which delivered 50 million euro in sustainable savings in the quarter. On 30th of April, we successfully completed our initial share buyback program of 1 billion euro in a significantly accelerated way. It was done in less than one year instead of within two years as originally announced. We brought back 24.8 million shares or 8.5% of share capital. At the same time, our net leverage ratio of 2.6 times remains around the lower end of our target corridor. Let me now turn to key first quarter highlights across our operating segments on slide five. Beginning with care delivery in the U.S., same market treatment growth declined by 37 basis points as volumes were impacted by mistreatments. We had flagged during the quarter that we experienced severe U.S. weather events in January and February. As we focus on core operational improvements with clinics closures and insurance verification, this likely had a small impact on patient inflows at the start of the year. This was further complicated by the unclear situation for many patients with their insurance coverage due to the expiry of the extended tax subsidies for ACAs. Volumes also continue to face pressure for mortality remaining above pre-pandemic levels. We are maintaining our assumption of flat USA market treatment growth in 2026, which includes the expectation for improving volumes over the course of the year. our care delivery international markets delivered 1.3% same-market treatment growth. While Tdapa provided a benefit to our care delivery performance, Martin will address that in his remarks. What really stands out to me is the successful execution of our FME Reignite strategy and the actions we are taking to strengthen our care delivery business while driving profitable growth. We understand the sense of urgency as well as the pace and momentum needed to deliver growth in our underlying business. And there are several proof points demonstrating progress already. While mortality levels are still above pre-pandemic level, we have seen a reduction in catheter-related bloodstream infections with now around 90% of all eligible patients using an antimicrobial catheter lux solution. This is part of our FME Reignite strategic priority to increase patient quality and safety. We expect the progress we have made on increased usage of catheter lock solutions to begin to have a positive impact on mistreatments and mortality in the near future. The 5008X rollout and introduction of high-volume HDF therapy represents the biggest operational and clinical change in our company's history. With the start of the large-scale launch in January, we have achieved a clear step-up change in rollout speed and are well on track. We surpassed 100,000 treatments on the 5008X in the first week of April, and around 100 clinics have been converted to the new care system, with more conversions underway as we speak. In February, as part of FME25+, we announced the biggest U.S. clinic restructuring in recent history with plans to close up to 100 clinics. Here, we are also moving at speed with 64 clinics already exited in the first quarter and the remainder expected within Q2. And finally, we have realized improvements in revenue cycle management, providing further evidence of our strategic execution. Turning to value-based care, We delivered positive operating income driven by favorable savings rate, and we realized an increase in member months from future contracting growth. Leveraging data and analytics to improve quality and coordination of care is a central component of our FME Reignite strategy. We have expanded adoption of AI-driven interventions for imminent hospital admissions of ESRD patients. Where employed, these programs have shown a reduction in hospitalizations by as much as 15% and missed dialysis treatments per member per month by up to 26% for the highest risk patients. We will continue to scale this across our VBC population. I'm also proud to report that we continue to be recognized for quality leadership in the United States government CKCC program for multiple consecutive years. We delivered over $270 million in shared savings and achieved an 88% average quality score over the first three years of the program. In the most recent publicly available data, we earned over 40% of the program's high performer pool, driven by our industry-leading quality. Care enablement realized favorable business growth as sales of the 5008X in the U.S. ramp up. This is a tremendous opportunity to bring new innovation to the U.S. market, and we are on track with production to supply both machines and consumables according to our targets for the year. In the first quarter, we achieved positive pricing and volume development in our markets outside of China. We faced continued pressure in China, especially from volume-based procurement and stricter tender requirements. We continue to closely monitor developments in China and assess the implications on our product portfolio and strategy as part of FME Reignite. We also continue to strengthen our core care enablement business with further FME 25 plus progress in streamlining our manufacturing and supply chain. I will now hand over to Martin to walk you through the first quarter financials in more detail.