Aurubis Ag Unsp/Adr

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Arubis analyst call. At this time all participants have been placed on the listen only mode. The floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Elke Brinkmann.

Good afternoon also from my side and a warm welcome to the conference call on the full year results of the fiscal year 2024-25 of Arubis AG. We from Investor Relations are here with our CEO, Toral Park, and our CFO, Steffen Hoffmann, who will present the figures for the 12 months of 2024-25 and current developments at Aruba. After the presentation, the floor will be open for questions. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A session, please use the nine-star key segment. Before we begin, A brief reminder of the disclaimer on forward-looking statements. Today's capital market presentation contains forward-looking statements about Arubis plans and expectations. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ naturally from those anticipated. Let me now turn the floor over to Tora Kark.

Thank you, Eike, and welcome everybody to our conference call for the full year results for the fiscal year 2024-25. Arubis looks back on a successful year in which our competitive strengths have once again been the foundation of our resilience. The past fiscal year was characterized by a highly dynamic market environment with unprecedented shifts in the markets. The concentrate market swung into a deficit, motivating Asian smelters in particular to substitute copper scrap for concentrate. Developments that send TCRCs and scrap RCs on a downward trajectory. Thanks to our multimodal excellence of sustainability leadership, but also our closing the loop activities with our customers, we were able to fully supply our primary and secondary recycling smelters. At the same time, demands for metal searched while trade measures redirected material flows and created local deficits. As an integrated copper producer, we were able to reliably supply our customers and ensure the flow of critical metals to strategic relevant industry sectors. Overall, we managed market challenges well, while also achieving key milestones in our strategic growth agenda. One, was first announced phase one of Arubus Richmond. We are well on track, and our robust business model was a cornerstone of our resilient performance in the past fiscal year. On the next page, I would like to give you an overview of the key financial highlights for fiscal year 2024-25. In line with our chart and guidance range, operating EBT came in at 355 million euros. As highlighted before, this result was achieved in a challenging economic environment and includes the successfully completed major shutdown in PeerDop. EBITDA was at 589 million euros versus 622 million euros in the prior year, reflecting a solid operational performance. Operating RSE decreased to 8.8% compared to 11.5% a year ago. This is primarily due to our ongoing strategic investment program, which is increasing capital employed until the full earnings contributions come through. Net cash flow was a strong 677 million euros, significantly above the prior year's 537 million euros level, driven by the robust earnings situation and a clear improvement in working capital. Q4 was outstanding with 319 million net cash generation alone. On the back of a healthy cash generation in Q4, pre-cash flow, pre-dividend improved by more than 100 million euros from minus 219 million euros in the previous year to a minus 95 million euros. On this basis, we are proposing increasing the dividend to 160 euros per share up from 150 euro which underlines our confidence in the business and its cash generation. Looking ahead to the next financial fiscal year, we are confirming our forecast of an operating EBT between 300 and 400 million euros, which is expected roughly on par with the 2024 and 2025 level, as well as free cash flow in a positive territory. Turning on the next page to our production figures. I would like to highlight once again that Arubis is much more than just copper. We are a wide array of strategically relevant metals. On the input side, we processed around 2.2 million tons of concentrates, a slight decline of 4% year-over-year, reflecting the plant maintenance shutdown in Perldorf and operational issues in Hamburg at the beginning of the year. At the same time, we increased copper scrap and blister input by about 3%. totaling 510,000 tons, demonstrating our ability to source and process secondary raw materials. Other recycling material throughput was down by 6% to 510,000 tons. On the output side, copper cathode production was stable at 1.1 million tons. In line with concentrate throughput development, we reduced roughly 2 million tons of the folic acid. The picture for other industrial metals, along with precious and minor metals, is mixed. While some quantities exhibited fairly stable development, or even increased, other metal quantities, such as gold, dropped versus the previous year, which is to a large extent a reflection of the heat mix in connection with lower throughput levels. Our output of wire rod and copper shapes was on par with the prior year level. Flat load products and speciality wire volumes, however, were down 31%, mainly because of the previous year figures included volumes from the Buffalo Planche, which we sold. Overall, our smelter network showed a solid operational performance. Our unique smelter network allows us to supply high-quality products from both primary and secondary sources with a high share of recycled content. As you can see, the share of recycled content in Aruba's copper cathodes has increased by one percentage point to 45%. And all of our copper products contain a sizable share of recycled content as well. We recover 20 different metals and elements that are contained in our raw materials, such as tin. And here, we achieve even 100% recycled content, which highlights our strong position in circular economy solutions. This is a key strength of our network of plants in Europe and North America, and is also a clear competitive advantage in securing supply and delivering sustainable products. Let me now run through the market environment of our main products and raw materials, starting with the downstream side. European copper premiums increased significantly after the U.S. tariffs decision, and although they came down from the elevated levels in Q4, they stayed clearly above last year's level. The free asset prices declined from prior year peaks, but stayed stable at a relatively high level, supporting our earnings in the CSP segment. On the raw material side, according to industry reports, treatment and refining charges for copper concentrates on the stock market had fallen into negative territory in recent quarters. They have now stabilized, but remain at very low levels. reflecting the tightness in the concentrate market. This has been strained further by major main disruptions, mine disruptions, towards the end of Q4. Furthermore, tightening scrap markets led to declining refining charges for recycling materials, particularly in Q4. Overall, we saw favored development on the product side, but faced headwinds from raw material markets, especially for concentrates and scrap. However, please bear in mind that there are no direct one-to-one correlation with our P&L. We are actively managing to remain independent for short-term fluctuations. Let me now turn to the price development for key metals in the US dollar. As you are all aware, gold and silver prices increased sharply in Q4 of 2425, up 44% year over year. and at new all-time highs, driven by macro and geopolitical factors. In comparison, copper prices remained relatively stable, with a moderate increase towards the end of the quarter. This favorable development of key metal prices positively contributed to our metal result, as we will see later. The US dollar-euro exchange rate moved into a tight range over the period. with the U.S. dollar depreciating from the levels at the beginning of the year. Aruba's long U.S. dollar position remains unchanged at approximately 530 million U.S. dollars for the fiscal year, with 54% of the U.S. exposure hedged at a rate of 1.125. For the fiscal year 26-27, around 40% of the exposure is hedged at a rate of 1.188. And now I hand over to Steffen Hauptmann for more details on the financials.