Alzchem Group Ag New

Yeah, good day, ladies and gentlemen, and warm welcome to today's Bionics Call of the Ice Young Group AG, following the publication of the Q1 figures of 2025. I'm delighted to welcome the CEO, Andreas Niedermeyer, CFO, Andreas Ljusler, as well as CSO, Dr. Georg Weichselbaumer, who will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. After the presentation, we will move forward with the Q&A session, and with this, let's start. Mr. Niedermayer, the stage is yours.

Yes, thank you for the warm introduction. Good morning together. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to our first quarterly call. For that year, as always, we will go through the presentation first, and then we'll be available for questions at the end. Let's skip the disclaimer and the first slides here. And directly start with the highlights. So the highlights presented here reflect the robust performance of the Alskim Group in quarter one. We are seeing strong development trends in the specialty chemical segment in particular, which made a significant contribution to our sales and EBITDA figures here. So in the area of the free cash flow, we grew disproportionately due to initial customer payments in connection with our capacity expansion for NitroGranitin. The details of this, especially the accounting impact, will be explained to us in more detail later by Mr. Loesler. The Global Scientific Creatine Conference held in Munich in mid-March underscores our commitment to innovation and leadership in the industry. The Creatine Conference became the meeting place for scientists, health and nutrition experts, the trade press, and interested parties who could learn more about the many benefits of creatine. During the four days of the event, there were exciting lectures on the following topics, aging, diseases, metabolism, cognitive function, pregnancy, female health, and sports performance. We know scientists presented the latest findings and research results here. If you are interested in, you can generally find out more about creatine on the webpage Creatine for Health. So since we are asked by many of our investors about the US tariff situation, here are a few information about that. So we are following the topic in great detail and are close to it. So far, many of our products are exempt from the additional tariffs and we do not see any impact either positive or negative for the products. Only a few products are already affected by the higher tariffs, which certainly leads to shifts in sales. As our customers expect the situation to ease again, In the short term, the customs duty could be eliminated. Overall, we expect few, if any, shifts in sales. Looking ahead to the future at all, for revenue and earnings, we are fundamentally optimistic. as we can continue to confirm our outlook and expect record levels of both revenue and EBITDA for that year. So now a few words about the large NQ investment project. Only a few words about that. We are on schedule and have started already with the execution after received of the building permits. We have received the first significant customer contributions on the form of upfront payments, which you will see later on the balance sheet. And last but not least, in USA, we have visited and I identified the first locations and the selection process is ongoing. underway in good faith and in time-wise already as well. So, so much for the highlights. Let's analyze the segments now. And for that, I hand over to George Reichselbermann.

Thank you, Andreas. As always, let's start with the basics and intermediate segment, which largely developed as expected for the first quarter of 2025. reporting period with sales amounting to approximately 43 million euros. This represents a decrease of 6.7 million euros or 14% compared to the previous year. As shown in the sales analysis, the decline in sales is due to a combination of price and volume effects and is essentially within the forecast. The main reason for the sales decline in this segment was the weak economic development of the European and German steel industry, which led to a significantly reduced demand in the metallurgy product area. All other product areas achieved more or less the same level of sales as last year. Most customer contracts within the commodity business act on price escalating clauses. However, the high electricity cost of Q1 2025 will only impact on pricing in this sector with a delay of up to three months. Accordingly, pricing in Q1 2025 was mainly based on lower raw material costs in Q4 2024. Electricity prices were approximately 40% higher than the previous year, and this can be seen in the decline of EBITDA in the first quarter 25. the decline was also impacted by the lower revenue. Both effects together also led to a decline in the EBITDA margin compared to the previous year. As explained multiple times, the products of our basics and intermediate segments are not only sold to the market, but are very important raw materials for our following production steps, and all raw materials required for the growth of our specialty chemical segment could be produced reliably. This brings me to the next page, where we analyze the situation in our specialty chemical segment. The steady growth trend continued in our specialty chemical segment. In the first three months of the fiscal year 2025, sales amounted to approximately 95 million euro, which represents a growth of 2% compared to the previous year. This is particularly remarkable given the fact that the first quarter of the previous year was the strongest quarter of the whole year in terms of sales. The increase in sales was mainly due to higher volumes, while prices dropped a bit over the whole segment with development in both directions. Highest volume and sales increases compared to last year could be achieved in our product areas, human nutrition, with our brands CreaPure and Crea Vitalis, and custom manufacturing with the usage of our multipurpose plants. This development clearly shows the ongoing growth trend of our CreaTeam products and that our quality promise and marketing activities pay off. As Andreas already said, the CreaTeam conference in Munich was a huge success. It is also very pleasing that our area of custom manufacturing is once again well utilized and was able to grow compared to the previous year. This development confirms our confidence that the volume declines of recent years were only a temporary phase and that the product area offers further growth opportunities with corresponding contributions to our APTA and margin. This contribution was also immediately reflected in the EBITDA of the first quarter of 2025. Driven by the sales developments in the areas of creatine, custom manufacturing and nitrogen guanidine, it contributed strongly to the segments EBITDA. EBITDA ended up at 26 million Euro, which represents an increase of 15% compared to the previous year. This resulted in an EBITDA margin of 27.6% after 24.4% of last year. Thus, the growth trend in the specialty chemical sectors continued in the EBITDA margin in the first three months of 2025. Again, we are mostly satisfied with the development within this growth segment and confirm our growth perspective. Let us now move on to our third segment, others and holding. The sales of the other sense holding segment was slightly below the previous year's level. This decline is mainly due to reduced electricity grid fees charged to the chemical park customers. All other services taken from chemical park customers are broadly stable. The segment's EBITDA was also below the previous year's figure. This small decrease is mainly in line with the revenue development. That was all for our detailed view on the segment development. Let's now hand over to Andreas Loesler and take a look at the overall group figures.