Beiersdorf Ag

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q1 2026 Results Conference Call. I'm Moritz, your Coruscall operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christopher Sheldon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Vanery, and our CFO, Astrid Herrmann. As always, we will start with a presentation of our sales performance of the quarter, followed by a Q&A session. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Vincent.

Thank you, Christopher, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. Astrid and I will walk you through our sales figures for the first three months of 2026 and a debut on the key strategic initiatives we are executing to strengthen our business. This includes an update on our ongoing and EVR rebalancing. Our Q1 sales were in line with expectations. As mentioned in our full-year 2025 call a few weeks ago, we anticipated a challenging start into 2026 with several factors impacting La Prairie's and Iberia Nelson's performance. Our derma business continued to demonstrate outstanding growth, fully delivering on its strategy. La Prairie faced headwinds through disruptions in the U.S. department channel and travel retail in China. Finally, Nivea's first quarter net sales development is challenged, but we are making progress on Nivea rebalancing. I will share more details on this a bit later. All that is translated into numbers. In Q1, we saw an organic net sales decline of 4.6% at group level. Our consumer business declined by 4.7% organically. Derma delivered an outstanding 8.2% organic sales growth. Healthcare was up plus 1.9% on top of a difficult prior year comparison base. Nivea and La Prairie faced headwinds, with net sales declining by 7% and 14.9% respectively. The underlying sell-out performance, however, showed an improving trend, making us more optimistic for the coming quarters. DESA ended the first quarter with an organic nest cell decline of 4.3%, mainly as a result of phasing-related double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2025. Our first difficult quarter performance was anticipated and reflected in our full-year guidance for 2026. We continue to believe in our ability to return to growth as the year progresses. Let's review the DERMA performance with our brands Eucerin and Aquaphor. With an outstanding 8.2% organic sales growth, we again significantly outperformed the derma market, which is growing at low single-digit rates. This underscores the strength of our portfolio and the successful execution of our growth strategy. Our success is driven by two pillars. First, our innovations. With our breakthrough ingredients, epicillin and tiamidol, endorsed by dermatologists, Eucerin continues to lead the way. consumers are increasingly seeking science-backed efficacious DERMA products. And second, a successful expansion into wide spaces. Three examples of these wide space expansions are North America, Brazil, and China. North America, DERMA's largest region, delivers strong 7% organic sales growth driven by a double-digit aquaphor performance and the continued momentum of use in space, including Tiamidol. Usurin in Brazil was able to more than double its net sales in Q1 and is close to taking the number three position on the market only five years after being number 15. A key driver of the recent success is Usurin Epicelin. Lastly, our thermal business in China is showing continued high double-digit growth, a clear testament to the successful rollout of Tiamidol on the domestic market. Let's continue with La Prairie. Q1 was impacted by disruptions in the U.S. department store Chanel as well as travel retail in China. Both had a significant negative effect on the Q1 selling performance with net sales declining by 14.9% organically. However, it was not an indication of the underlying sell-out demand. Retail sales, excluding disruptions, grew close to 10% in the first quarter. A key growth driver continued to be China, in the fourth consecutive quarter. We remain cautious on the outlook of La Prairie in a volatile of three skincare market environments, but continue to see green shoots from its reposition strategy. Now let's have a closer look at Nivea. In line with what we showed you at our full year call several weeks ago, the mass market environment remains challenging, which is negatively affecting Nivea performance. As we ended the year 2025, market volumes were flat and continued to be flat in the first months of 2026. In addition to the market environment, four main factors negatively impacted Nivea net sales in Q1. First, Nivea lapped two strong prior year first quarters, leading to a more difficult baseline. Second, certain trade negotiation conflicts in Europe have had a negative net sales effect. Per the sell-in of our major innovations, epicillin derma control lifted Nivea nest cells in the fourth quarter of 2025, while most of the corresponding sell-out was absorbed in Q1, and no new countries were launched in the new year. Lastly, Nivea's core portfolio has not returned to growth yet. However, the dynamics are improving as we are implementing a rebalancing strategy to restore Nivea growth. But before we deep dive into the rebalancing, I want to demonstrate that also global innovations remain a cornerstone of Nivea's strategy. Nivea epithelin continues to be on track. We have already been satisfied with the sell-in and sell-out performance and are pleased to confirm that also the repurchase rates look promising. In fact, the initial repurchase rates and intentions to repurchase figures of the Nivea epigenetic serum in Europe are comparable to the figures of Eucerin in 2025. Let me now take a few moments to remind you of our Nivea strategy recalibration, the rebalancing of the portfolio. What do we mean by rebalancing? It's a shift in how we allocate resources and drive growth at Nivea along three pillars. First, portfolio. We are broadening our focus across our key franchises, face care, body care, and deodorants. In practical terms, this means that we are shifting marketing and innovation efforts to strengthen all three categories. Second, accessible face care. We are rebalancing the focus also to popular face care products at a more accessible price range next to the premium face care lines like Luminous and Epicelin. And third, local relevance. Next to major global franchises, we will support important local product lines by giving key markets, for example, China, the US, India, Japan, and Brazil, greater flexibility in local execution. This is what we call localization within a frame. Empowering our regional teams to develop and activate products that resonate with local consumers while maintaining the integrity of the Nivea brand. Let me elaborate on three specific initiatives. First, body care in emerging markets. In our emerging market regions, we began to rebalance our marketing budget to body care in September last year. In addition, we focused our portfolio on the right franchises with the right assortment in the right countries and enriched our global advertising approach with local storytelling. We also stepped up our efforts with their influencers and further improved in store execution. As an initial research, we have seen Nivea Bodycare and also overall skincare market shares in emerging markets moving to positive territory this year in terms of both value and volume. Second example, deodorants in Europe. As part of the Dermacontrol launch in the fall of 2025, we shifted marketing budget towards deodorants. This did not only help to promote Dermacontrol, but had a positive halo effect on IVA-DO as a category. Together with assortment optimizations, it led to regain customer and consumer attention for IVA deodorants. As a result, The Nivea Deo market share situation in Europe improved and recorded market share gains in the first months of this year. And third example, Luminous Glow in emerging markets, a global innovation adapted to local needs. Nivea Luminous initially struggled to scale in emerging markets due to its premium positioning. To unlock the full growth potential, the product was locally adapted across assortment, packaging, pricing, and activation. This was implemented at the launch of the Luminous Glow line. Thailand was the most prominent proof point. The launch of a sachet format, stronger claim communication, and intensified influencer activation drove rapid consumer uptake. As a result, Luminous King Glow achieved a significant market share uplift and quickly became the number one serum in the market. As demonstrated by these examples, the rebalancing of DVA is underway. The measures will take some time to show their full impact but Nivea's current sellout dynamics already show substantially better performance than the net sales decline in Q1. In fact, Nivea's year-to-date sellout grew by 1.7%, following two quarters of negative growth. These early indications make us optimistic that we are on the right track and that our rebalancing strategy is working. Before I hand over to Astrid Forteza in a financial review, I would like to turn your attention to China, one of our key white space markets. At this time last year, I presented to you our ambitious plan in China to put our house in order. We implemented comprehensive restructuring measures, especially for Nivea, to lay the foundation for future success in this important white space market for buyers of. Our efforts are starting to pay off. and we saw impressive growth across all three major brands in the first quarter of 2026. Nivea increased net sales by one-third, and Usurin net sales grew in high double-digit territory. Also, La Prairie showed impressive 12% retail sales growth, which is not a reflection of the weaker net sales performance in the quarter. And with that, finally over to you, Astrid.