AMG Critical Materials N.V.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's AMG Q4 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. Please note, this call is being recorded, and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Thomas Svoboda. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Paul. Good day, everyone. Welcome to AMG's first quarter 2025 earnings call. It is a very busy reporting day, we are aware of that, so we appreciate you taking your time for us. Joining me on this call is the entire AMG management board. namely Dr. Heinz Schimmelbus, the Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Exec. Officer, Mr. Jackson Dunkle, the Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Michael Connor, the Chief Corporate Development Officer. We published our fourth quarter 2025 earnings press release yesterday, along with a presentation for investors, both of which you can find on our website. They include our disclaimers about forward-looking statements. Today's call will begin with a review of the first quarter 2025 business highlights by Dr. Schimmerbusch. Mr. Conon will comment on strategy and Mr. Danko will comment on AMG's financial results. At the completion of Mr. Danko's remarks, Dr. Schimmerbusch will comment on outlook. We will open the line to take your questions thereafter. I will now pass the floor to Dr. Schimmelbusch, AMG's Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Exec Officer. Dr. Schimmelbusch.

Thank you, Thomas. In 2025, we achieved the third highest adjusted EBTA in the company's history, despite weakness in lithium and vanadium. This flexible response to a changing market environment highlights the quality and breadth of our Critical Materials and Technologies portfolio. Governments are pushing for onshoring of critical materials supply, creating significant opportunities to grow our business. AMG is focused on capital light, high return projects that expand its geographic and critical materials space. For example, we are expanding We are expanding the footprint in U.S. critical materials with a high-purity chrome metal facility, which is set to come online in the first half of 26. Moreover, the management board plans to strengthen AMG's critical materials recycling franchise in three ways. First, We plan to develop a circular high-purity molybdenum processing facility for fresh refining catalysts in 2009 at latest. Second, we are strengthening our lithium cluster in Germany by accepting recycled lithium carbonate and converting it to technical grade hydroxide for the use then in Bitterfeld's main upgrading facility. And third, Phase 1 of our Supercenter project in Saudi Arabia is currently under construction and commissioning is targeted for the second half of 2028. Looking ahead, our operational focus will be on compensating for the temporary inventory benefit of more than 70 million in anti-money in 2025. Thanks to the recent tailwinds from pricing as well as volume increases in our vanadium and lithium businesses, we are optimistic about maintaining our attractive earnings level. Based on our detailed scenario planning, we expect 2026 adjusted EBDA in the range of to $240 million. The first quarter of 2025 will represent the trough of earnings likely as higher pricing begins to impact in the second quarter and our volumes ramp up in the second half of 26. This is due to certain delays in the pricing reaching our EBTA. I will now hand over to Mike Connor. Mike?