Beiersdorf Ag

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 results conference. I'm pleased to present an overview of our performance together with Astrid, who will later provide a detailed financial review. But before we begin, I want to touch on the situation in the Middle East. In situations like these, the safety of our employees and their families is our highest priority. Teams are in place in the regions to offer assistance and support on the ground, and we are in close communication with them. Given the volatility of the situation, it is too early to assess any potential impact on our business. We hope for a peaceful solution soon. Let me now turn to our full-year 2025 results. 2025 was a year that demanded a lot from us. Economic and geopolitical uncertainties, shifting consumer behavior, and continued trade disruptions negatively affected market dynamics. Skincare market growth slowed to levels not seen in recent history, with particularly strong effects in the emerging markets region. These conditions shaped and challenged our performance more than anticipated at the start of the year. Even though we continued to make progress in several important areas, and where we fell short, we took immediate action. At the same time, 2025 showed that the core elements of our strategy remain effective, our focus on science-based innovation, our global footprint and expansion into new markets, our culture of care and responsibility. This provided important stability throughout the year. In the challenging market environment, we were able to maintain our position as the best performing skincare company globally for the third year in a row. Once again, our derma business was a disputed success, driven by innovation, wide space expansion, and strong scientific credibility. La Prairie showed initial signs of improvement toward the end of the year, but the recovery remains fragile in a volatile luxury market, and disruptions in the retail landscape negatively impact Q1 2026. And while our skincare focus strategy has delivered on many fronts, the most recent performance of Nivea requires a strategic rebalancing. We have taken decisive actions, laying the foundation for restoring momentum and returning our business to a more attractive and profitable growth trajectory. In 2025, the global skincare market slowed significantly, decelerating from mid-single-digit growth in 2024 to around 1.5 to 2%. This slowdown intensified as the year progressed and was particularly visible in regions that had driven strong growth in previous years, including Eastern Europe and emerging markets. Pricing normalized after inflation-driven increases, geopolitical tensions influenced consumer sentiment, and consumers became more cautious and increasingly selective in their routines. While Biosdorf was affected by this market slowdown in 2025 and continues to feel its impact in 2026, we are still able to deliver solid growth in a significantly more challenging environment. Nivea ended the year with an organic sales growth of 0.9%, reflecting the impact of weaker market dynamics, a repositioning of our business in China, as well as a back-end-loaded innovation pipeline. Our Derma business delivered double-digit growth for the fifth year in a row, supported by breakthrough innovations and successful expansion into wide spaces. Our healthcare business continued to perform strongly with close to double-digit growth, providing further evidence for our innovation-driven strategy. At La Prairie, organic sales declined by 4.5% in 2025. The performance improved quarter after quarter, but market conditions remained volatile. TESA delivered moderate growth of almost 2%, driven by a strong performance in the electronic business. Altogether, our skincare business grew by 3.7%, clearly ahead of the market. Once again, we outperformed our key competitors in this segment and remained the best performing skincare company globally. This performance underscores the strengths of our skincare expertise and its ability to deliver sustained outperformance. Let's dive a little deeper into our derma business. The undisputable success story of our dermabrands Eucerin and Aquaphor continued in 2025. Net sales reached a record €1.5 billion, approaching close to 20% of consumer net sales, supported by continuous market share gains in a market growing only at low single digit rates. In Q4, facing a tough comparison with the epistiline launch in the prior year, derma still grew by nearly 10%. DERMA growth in 2025 was broad-based across all regions. In Europe, our home market, DERMA delivered an impressive 8.3% organic sales growth as epicillin continued to drive the performance. In North America, our largest DERMA market, we grew by nearly 9% and outstanding results driven by face care and radiant tone, our Tiamidal product in the US. In emerging markets, at 16.3% organic sales growth, Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil were the key performance drivers. In addition, India, domestic China, and Japan were important wide spaces that we expanded into. We also continued to outperform competition. This is a testament to the success of our science-based growth strategy of launching breakthrough innovations and successfully expanding into wide space opportunities. Our innovation, our hero ingredients, tiamidol and epicillin, are continuing their success stories. Tiamidol in its eighth year continued to grow at double digit rates. In early 2025, we launched it in the US and later in the year, we brought this innovation to the domestic Chinese market. Episeline, our anti-aging breakthrough ingredient, continues the successful rollout across Europe and in emerging markets. Our derma innovation pipeline remains strong and sets industry standards. The entry into white spaces has unlocked new growth opportunities for Usurin. Let me share a few examples. In India, Usurin's launch generated strong momentum. It was one of the first global dermocosmetics brands to enter the market and quickly became a top dermatologist's recommendation. In China, following regulatory approval, Usurin Tiamidol Serum was launched on the domestic market and has become the number one derma anti-pigment serum. And in Japan, we introduced Eucerin, marking another important milestone. As the world's third-largest cosmetics market, expectations for quality and innovation are extremely high. For this debate, we developed a premium anti-aging line tailored to local consumer needs. Our healthcare brands, Onzerplast and Elastoplast, delivered one of their strongest years in history with organic sales growth of more than 9%. The launch of our second skin protection plaster illustrates how we continue to drive innovation even in mature categories. This advanced technology offers superior healing and protection. It is setting a new benchmark in wound care and resonates strongly with consumers. We continue to invest in research and development to reinforce our leadership in this segment with new innovations coming soon. Nivea faced a particularly challenging year, navigating difficult market conditions and delivering growth below our initial expectations. There were three key factors behind this development. First, the market slowdown was more severe than we expected. Second, we completed a comprehensive repositioning of our business in China, which temporarily affected our performance negatively. And third, most of our major innovations were scheduled for the second half of the year, which limited momentum early on. In 2025, the mass market for skin and personal care products slowed significantly. The decline was most notable in emerging markets where value growth rates more than half versus 2024 and further deteriorated throughout the year, with volume growth turning negative in Q4. Skin and personal care were most affected than other beauty categories. This had a direct impact on EVF's performance over the year. The speed and scale of the market downturn exceeded our initial assumptions, requiring adjustment to our guidance during the year. In China, we successfully completed a fundamental repositioning of Nivea to prepare the brand for long-term success in this key market. Our strategy in China is clear. We aim to win through innovation in skincare. Therefore, we shift our focus away from price-sensitive personal care categories and partners, prioritizing premium skincare and accelerating growth through digital-first channels. This involved streamlining our portfolio, optimizing distribution, and tailoring innovation to local consumer needs. These measures were completed by the end of the third quarter, and Nivea is now better positioned to compete in China's dynamic market and capture future opportunities. Subsequently, we launched YAMIDO London Nivea in a domestic Chinese market, leading to impressive double-digit growth rates of Nivea in the fourth quarter. Our innovation pipeline in 2025 was strong, as the major launches were concentrated late in the year. As a result, the contribution for innovation to our full-year performance was limited, particularly in the first half. The rollout of breakthrough innovations, such as EPICELINE, began to contribute in the latter part of the year, especially in Q4. In 2025, we launched Episenin on the mass market. Our Nivea Cellular Epigenetic Serum represented the strongest Nivea face care rollout in our history. The selling performance has been strong and in line with our expectations, reflecting robust retailer demand and effective distribution. We also saw very good sell-out momentum. The product quickly reached number one positions at leading retailers and continues to be the number one serum across Europe. Rehabilitable data on consumer repurchase rates is not yet available, given the recent launch. This will be a key metric to monitor in the coming months to assess long-term consumer loyalty and the sustained performance of Epicellin in the mass market. Our luxury brand La Prairie represents a smaller share of our business, but it remains a strategically important part of our portfolio. The full year remained below 2024 levels, but as we had expected, the business showed a sequential improvement quarter over quarter, growing plus 3.8% in Q4. This was mainly driven by more favorable improvements in China, particularly in e-commerce. At the same time, the luxury market remains highly volatile, with persistent weakness in the US and in travel retail markets. Ongoing disruptions in the US department store landscape, as well as travel retail in China, are expected to negatively impact our performance in the first year of 2026. With that, let me hand over to Astrid to walk you through Teza and our financials.

Thank you, Vincent, and good morning from my side as well. Let me start with the performance of our Teza business. In 2025, Teza delivered organic sales growth of 1.8% in a challenging global economic environment characterized by tariff disruptions and ongoing challenges in the automotive industry. Within our industry segment, electronics was again the main growth driver, with particularly strong results in Greater China and Asia Pacific. The product ranges from mounting front and back modules, solutions for battery bonding, and conductive tapes were further developed and converted into customer-specific solutions. The automotive business closed the year broadly in line with the prior year. Ongoing volatility in Europe and North America continued to weigh on the performance, while China and Latin America delivered growth supported by successful customer projects. Printing and packaging solutions also recorded year-on-year growth. The performance was driven by expanded activities in splicing tapes and flexographic printing, with notable contributions from North and Latin America and continued positive development in China. Finally, the consumer segment delivered growth despite a challenging market environment, especially in Europe. E-commerce showed strong year-on-year development and made a meaningful contribution to the overall result. Let me now walk you through our 2025 financial performance. Overall, we delivered a stable performance in a challenging market environment with organic sales growth of 2.4%. We also made further progress on our profitability. Our EBIT margin increased to 14.0%, up 10 basis points versus last year, reflected continued cost discipline and ongoing operational improvements. Earnings per share increased to €4.25, up 4.9% compared to 2024, driven by improvements in our profitability and our tax rate. This outcome underlines the financial stability of our business in a year marked by significant external pressures. These results provide a strong foundation as we recalibrate our Nivea strategy, continue to innovate and drive sustainable long-term growth. Let's now turn to the segment level performance. In 2025, Bayerstoff consumer business net sales grew to 8.176 billion euros at an organic growth rate of 2.5%. Adverse foreign exchange effects, including a softer US dollar, resulted in a lower nominal growth of 0.02%. Profitability improved with EBIT excluding special factors growing to 1.108 billion euros, a 20 basis points margin increase driven by disciplined cost management despite cost pressures on our gross margin. Our TESA business recorded organic growth of 1.8% during the same period, closing the year with net sales of 1.676 billion euros. Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales slightly declined by negative 0.7%. The EBIT margin excluding special factors was 16.1% in line with our guidance. Now let's take a closer look at our performance across the different regions. In Western Europe, we achieved robust organic sales growth of 1.8%, particularly in key markets like the UK, Italy, and Spain. As always, it is important to highlight that our luxury travel retail business is also included in this region and had a negative impact of nearly 100 basis points. Our business in Eastern Europe declined by 2.3%, driven by softer markets and overexposure to personal care, retailer disruptions, as well as intensified competition with local brands, particularly in our key market, Poland. The Americas regions closed the year with sales growth of 3.1%. This good performance was largely attributable to the outstanding results of our derma brands in the United States and in Canada at high single-digit growth rates, as well as the continued strong growth of Nivea in Canada. At the same time, Latin America experienced a notable slowdown, particularly in the personal care segment. As a result, our softer Nivea sales in key markets such as Brazil and Argentina weighed on our overall regional performance, while Derma sales grew at double-digit rates. The Africa-Asia-Australia region recorded 4.5% organic sales growth. India was the most important positive contributor to this growth next to Japan. Our Nivea repositioning activities in China negatively impacted this region in the first nine months of 2025. Following the successful completion of our repositioning activities, China contributed significantly to increasing the region's organic sales growth to 9.3% in the fourth quarter. Now let's take a look at the development of our consumer gross margin. Our consumer gross margin decreased by 70 basis points year on year, from 61.0% in 2024 to 60.3% in 2025. Pricing contributed positively, adding 30 basis points, underscoring the continued strength of our brands and our ability to partly offset cost inflation despite a more moderate pricing environment. Increased costs driven by higher raw material prices and limited volume growth weighed on our gross margin. Mixed effects positively contributed 40 basis points, primarily driven by the continued outperformance of our Derma business. Lastly, unfavorable foreign exchange effects contributed minus 50 basis points. Let me conclude our financial overview by highlighting the key elements of our Group Income Statement for the year. Our Group's net sales grew slightly to €9.852 billion in 2025. Our Group gross margin declined to 57.7%, with TESA experiencing similar costs and foreign exchange pressures as our consumer business. Our marketing and selling expenses remained roughly at the previous year's level, reflecting a slight increase in the consumer and a slight decrease in the TESA business. We continue to drive strong support for our brands with consumer-facing activities, which we were able to increase in 2025, while also driving effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing expense. As in previous years, we have taken the decision to continue to increase our R&D spending, reflecting a strong commitment to fostering breakthrough innovations that will shape our future. At the same time, we maintained a disciplined approach to our general and administrative costs, leading to a reduction of these expenses in 2025. Our EBIT-excluding special factors grew to 1.378 billion euros, a 10 basis points EBIT margin increase in line with our guidance. Lower special factors as well as an improved effective tax rate were additional drivers to increase our profit after tax to €955 million or €4.25 per share, a 20 cents increase compared to 2024. Back to you, Vincent.

Thank you Astrid. After five years in our role, this is the right moment to take a closer look at what has driven our performance and how effective our strategy has been. Over the past five years, we increased net sales by almost 30%, reaching a level of €9.9 billion in 2025. Despite the slowdown in 2025, we continue to be the best performing skincare company, outgrowing our key competitors in this important category. EBIT, excluding special factors, also improved significantly by almost 40%, a clear proof of our commitment to profitable growth. Our top-line art performance was fueled by three key pillars. First, breakthrough innovations. Science-based research and development are at the heart of what we do. Second, successful expansion into wide spaces, both in terms of categories and markets. And third, a strong and growing e-commerce business. We have been growing double digit in e-commerce for more than five years in a row and gaining market share. In 2025, we generated 17% of our net sales online. Let's start with innovation. One of the clearest examples is Tiamidol. This highly effective ingredient has been cascaded across our brands and markets. The latest additions being Chantecaille, as well as the US and China. Since I started at Biosurf, we have turned the Tiamidol franchise into a 500 million euro business. We are continuing to grow double digit and are gaining market share again, supported by high recognition of the ingredient in a scientific community. Tiamidol was validated by a scientific consensus of the 10 world leading dermatologists as the only dermocosmetic solution for the management of hyperpigmentation. Another breakthrough innovation is EpiCellin, a game changer in anti-age. And while everybody speaks about longevity, our epigenetics technology already provides a solution. After its success in the derma segment, we launched EpiCellin to the mass market through Nivea. This reflects the same principle as Ciamidol, developing highly effective ingredients based on strong science and systematically making them accessible across brands and markets. Microbiome research at S-Biomedic is the next frontier of our innovation pipeline. What started as a venture capital investment and R&D partnership several years ago has turned into the development of a breakthrough microbiome innovation for acne-prone skin. We developed Probium 8 to correct blemishes from acne-prone skin using the first-ever skin-native probiotics. With significant results proven in clinical studies, it is planned to be launched under USUIN Dermopure Clinical in the second half of this year. Evaluated by hundreds of dermatologists and tested on thousands of consumers, Probium 8 significantly improves acne-prone skin with no side effects. More to come later this year. Stay tuned. Turning to the second pillar of our strategy, expansion into white spaces. We have focused on the defined set of key markets and made strong progress in the U.S., Brazil, India, China, and Japan. Let me briefly zoom in on the U.S., Brazil, and India. In all three markets, our white space strategy has translated into measurable progress. In the U.S., we launched USUIN Sun followed by USUIN Face and introduced TIAMIDOL in 2025. This strengthened our foothold in one of the world's most competitive dermatological skincare markets. Our consumer business in North America has reached 1 billion euros. In Brazil, you saw an advance from a niche position into one of the leading players in the market. Within just five years, we managed to move from number 15 in the market to a number four position. And India remains a clear success story for us. While we have been present in India with Nivea and oil-care business for a long time, we managed to more than double our business within the last five years. This was driven by outstanding performance of Nivea, as well as the launch of our full skincare portfolio, including Usurin, La Prairie, and Chantecaille. Our DERMA business has fully delivered on our strategy. Since 2021, we almost doubled our business, reaching sales of 1.5 billion euros in 2025. Even in the slowing DERMA markets last year, our user-in-an-Aquaphor brands demonstrated double-digit growth. Also Nivea, the largest skincare brand in the world, grew by an impressive 34% over the last five years. We succeeded in regaining credibility in face care through tiamidol and epicillin. However, the required investment has not allowed us to maintain the right advertising focus on other categories. And through our exclusively global innovation program, we lost some momentum on core local ranges in some key countries. As a result, we were not able to outperform the market to the same extent as in prior years, and Nivea's growth slowed significantly in 2025. We have therefore taken decisive action to recalibrate our strategy for Nivea to restore the brand's growth trajectory, which is a key priority for 2026 and 2027. What exactly does this recalibration mean? We are rebalancing our Nivea strategy along three pillars. First, we are broadening our focus by strengthening categories next to face care, such as deodorant and body care. Second, next to major global franchises, we will support important local product lines by giving key markets such as China, the US, India, Japan, and Brazil greater flexibility in local execution. And third, we are putting more effort behind accessible face care products. Let me dive a little deeper into each of the pillars. Nivea already has a strong foundation in categories such as deodorant and body care. Building on this base, we are shifting parts of our investment in R&D marketing and new launches in these categories. By broadening our range, we are strengthening Nivea's position across a wider set of segments and creating additional growth opportunities. In recent years, Nivea focused strongly on global launches and centralized campaigns. Going forward, we will continue to rely on global innovation platforms and hero ingredients as a foundation, but give local teams greater freedom to tailor launches, products, and marketing to local needs and push key local franchises. One example is Luminous Glow, a successful innovation for emerging markets. Another one is Nivea Facial, a key face care line in Brazil that will launch in other markets as well. Lastly, we'll rebalance the focus also to popular face care products at a more accessible price range next to the premium face care lines like Luminous and Epicellin. Nivea remains an iconic yet accessible brand. Our portfolio deliberately spans from everyday essentials to premium innovations. And as you know, the vast majority of our portfolio is priced at very accessible levels. The rebalancing of Nivea is underway. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we initiated a shift in our advertising and promotional spending, reallocating resources to support a broader range of categories and local initiatives. This marked the first step in the rebalancing process. In 2026 and beyond, we are implementing a set of pipeline measures to strengthen our innovation roadmap. These include breakthrough ingredient line extension on one end and broader launches across categories on the other. We are fostering fast-track execution of innovation to meet current trends and allowing for certain regional innovations tailored to local consumer needs. These measures will take some time to show their full impact. We are confident in our ability to return Nivea to sustained growth and report on our progress in each of the coming quarters. So let me turn to the outlook for our business. We own and manage some of the most iconic skincare brands in the world and operate in the highly attractive skincare market, the largest category in the beauty space. Over decades, this market has demonstrated strong resilience and a consistent ability to recover within one or two years after periods of slowdown or decline. Our well-established and trusted brands together with our wind whisker strategy provide a strong foundation to navigate the current market environment and to deliver sustained long-term growth. Let us now look at our mid-term guidance. In an evolving market environment, our focus remains firmly on outperforming the market. We'll do so by continuing to expand into wide spaces, launching breakthrough innovations and responding dynamically to changing market conditions. A key priority will be to return EVA to an elevated growth trajectory through a clear action plan and targeted measures as part of our strategic rebalancing. On top of that, the use of our cash position to pursue inorganic growth opportunities remains an important element of our strategy and should provide additional upside. We also remain committed to profitable growth in the mid-term, which translates into growing EBIT at least as fast as net sales. We are convinced of the continued EBIT margin expansion potential for our business. in light of the global market dynamics, will not quote a specific number. We'll have to be flexible to respond to market conditions and will not sacrifice long-term value creation opportunities for short-term margin gains. While the use of cash for inorganic growth remains a core element of our capital allocation strategy, we have also strengthened our commitment to returning cash to shareholders. This is reflected in enhanced cash distribution through share buybacks and dividends. As a next step within this framework, we are continuing to strengthen shareholder returns. The executive and supervisory boards of Biosof propose that the dividend for the 2025 financial year is confirmed at one euro per share. The proposal will be submitted to the Annual General Meeting on April 23rd. Following the successful share buyback programmes in 2024 and 2025, Biosof will initiate a further share buyback programme valued at up to €750 million over a period of two years. While we remain very confident in our profitable growth prospects over the mid- and long-term, it is important to acknowledge that market dynamics has not improved at the start of this year. We saw a clear slowdown over the course of last year, and this softer environment has continued into early 2026 without clear signs of a near-term recovery. And while we have initiated an EVA rebalancing strategy, the measures will take some time to become fully visible. In parallel, the luxury skincare market remains volatile. And while improvements were visible in China in 2025, severe disruptions in the U.S. department store landscape and travel retail in China negatively impact the current performance. We view these disruptions, especially in China travel retail, as temporary and not the full reflection of the underlying consumer demand. Nevertheless, they will have a noticeable negative effect on our Q1 luxury performance. Let us turn to our guidance for 2026. Against a continued challenging and volatile market environment, we expect sales to be flat to slightly growing organically across our business segments. This applies to both the consumer and TESA segments as well as at group level. We still expect to be able to outperform the market as demonstrated in previous years. The first quarter of 2026 is expected to land below this range at a low single-digit negative organic growth rate. While Derma is expected to deliver another strong quarter, Nivea's innovation momentum that positively affected Q4 2025 is less impactful this quarter. In addition, the disruptions in U.S. retail and China travel retail landscape will put significant pressure on our luxury brands in Q1. On profitability, we expect the EBIT margin, excluding special factors in consumer, TESA, and for the group, to be coming slightly below the 2025 level. This is driven by raw material cost increases, unfavorable FX, and only limited fixed cost leverage on gross margin. At the same time, we will not decrease our marketing spend proportionally as we want to ensure sufficient investment behind our brands. This concludes our full presentation and we are looking forward to your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.