Beiersdorf Ag

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Biasoft H1 Results 2026 conference call. I'm Sergen, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a tuned A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Operate assistance, please press star and zero. 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.

Thank you, Zag, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first half-year 2026 conference call. I'm here with our CEO, Vincent Warnery, and our CFO, Astrid Hermann. As always, we will start with the presentation of the results. followed by a Q&A session. And with that, I would like to hand over to Vincent.

Thank you, Christopher, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. Astrid and I will now present an overview of our financial performance in the first half of 2026 and our full year and midterm outlook. We'll also update you on the Nivea rebalancing strategy and explain the next action steps to return the brand to sustainable growth. The performance of our business in the first half year was impacted by a continued volatile market environment. Consumer sentiment and consumption were affected by geopolitical disruptions, particularly the crisis in the Middle East, as well as ongoing economic uncertainty. Despite these challenges, our derma business continued its outperformance, delivering high single-digit growth in the first half of the year. The retail disruptions that affected La Prairie in the first months of the year have mostly faded, resulting in improved performance supported by solid underlying fundamentals. Nivea, on the other hand, is still affecting our performance negatively. Our rebalancing strategy has delivered some initial positive effects as we have shifted our marketing budget and focus from premium face care across other major categories. However, this green shoots remains too isolated to drive Nivea's growth on a global scale. We have therefore initiated the next phase of the rebalancing, a decisive 18-month turnaround plan to restore Nivea's growth trajectory. Supported by the continued strengths of our derma business, the improving trajectory of La Prairie, and our turnaround plan to restore Nivea's growth, we are laying the foundations for a return to profitable growth from 2028. The challenging dynamics around Nivea continued to wade on the second quarter performance, with Nivea sales declining by 6.7% organically. Our derma business, with Usurin and Aquaphor, continued its multi-year outperformance, with 7.4% health sales growth driven by innovation and white space expansion. The healthcare business, with our brands Anzaplast and Elastoplast, grew by 6.2% organically, again driven by a strong innovation pipeline. La Prairie returned to net sales growth of 2.2% in the second quarter as the temporary disruptions in the US and travel retail in China in the first quarter faded as expected. In total, our consumer business declined by 3.3% organically in the second quarter. returned to growth in the second quarter, up 2.5% after a phasing-driven organic net sales decline of 4.3% in the first quarter. This translates into a net sales decline of 2.3% at group level. Let's now review the performance of our brands in more detail, starting with Derma and our brands Usurin and Aquaphor. Over the last five years, Our DERMA business has doubled in size and grew by 7.8% in the first half of 2026. DERMA once again significantly outperformed the market in the second quarter, delivering net sales growth of 7.4% despite a demanding comparable base of 13.3% organic growth in the second quarter of 2025. Our success is driven by two pillars, breakthrough innovations and Whitespace Expansion. Looking ahead, we will continue to build on these strengths by advancing science-based innovation and capturing additional growth opportunities across categories and markets. The success of our strategy is clearly reflected in our performance across regions. In Brazil, our Derma business delivered an impressive growth rate of 71% in the second quarter. USERIN has assumed the number three position, and the epigenetic serum has become the number one anti-age product in the dermocosmetics market. In China, we continue to deliver outstanding double-gid growth of 62% in the second quarter. This performance was driven by a focused expansion strategy, strong medical endorsement and continued innovation momentum. Eucerin has become the number one anti-pigment brand and our hero product, the Tiamidol Spotless Brightening Serum, maintained its number one position in China's derma anti-pigment serum market. In North America, our biggest derma market, our face care business in the U.S. was a clear growth driver with net sales increasing by 40% organically. Eucerin has become the most recommended brand against hyperpigmentation by American dermatologists. North America and Europe also continue to perform strongly across categories despite a high prior year comparable base. Now let's turn to Aquaphor. Over the past years, Aquaphor has consistently delivered double-digit growth in North America, driven by the strong performance of its healing ointment, baby, and lip care franchises. We are now taking the brand to the next level and unlocking a significant white space opportunity. With the launch of Body lotions and creams, the brand is entering a category that represents more than 80% of the U.S. body care market, substantially expanding its growth potential beyond ointments. This is the largest U.S. launch to date and marks an important step in unlocking additional growth opportunities for the brand beyond its traditional categories. With a new daily hydrating range, we are bringing Aquaphor's trusted dermatologic credentials The new body care range was launched in July with three leading retail partners and will be rolled out nationwide in retail stores across the U.S. until the end of the year. Let's continue with La Prairie. The disruptions that negatively affected La Prairie in the U.S. and travel retail in China in the first quarter have mostly faded. As a result, La Prairie returned to growth in the second quarter. Nelson increased by 2.2% organically, following a decline of 14.9% in the first quarter. The domestic China business remained a key growth driver for La Prairie. For the fifth consecutive quarter, China delivered high single-digit to double-digit sell-out growth. Nelson grew by 12% organically in the second quarter, with selling broadly in line with sell-out, demonstrating a healthy inventory level in the trade. and we have exciting plans for La Prairie in the second half of the year. With the launch of Swiss Pristine in September, we are introducing a more accessible entry-level price point to the brand. This will help us recruit new consumers while creating a pathway into the broader La Prairie portfolio over time. In parallel, this will allow us to selectively expand our distribution, particularly in North America, into specialty beauty retail. At a price point of between 180 Thank you very much. Our healthcare brands have now delivered three consecutive years of market share growth, further strengthening their leadership position in wound care. Growth was primarily driven by innovation. Building on the success of our second skin protection range, we recently expanded the franchise with a pressed plaster and a liquid plaster concentrate. Both innovations performed ahead of expectations and contributed strongly to net sales growth. Now let's turn to Nivea. Nivea net sales dynamics continued to be challenging in the second quarter, with net sales declining by 6.7% organically. For the first half of the year, net sales declined by 6.8%. Let me put this performance into perspective. The decline reflects both sell-in headwinds and underlying challenges with the brand itself. The sell-in headwinds include ongoing customer conflicts in Europe. Sunseason phasing, some trade destocking as well as phasing effects related to our Q4 2025 innovation calendar. While these factors had a much greater impact on shipments into the trade and consumer demand, we view this as largely temporary, even if some may remain headwind into the next quarters. Nivea's sell-out performance year-to-date has been more resilient and remains positive, a bite below our expectations. This reflects The ongoing impact of the crisis in the Middle East, as well as the weaker than expected performance of our core portfolio. To address the challenges related to our core portfolio, we initiated our rebalancing strategy in the second half of the year, which has been delivered some positive results. But as these results to date are too isolated to improve Nivea's growth trajectory on a global scale, we have initiated the next phase of our turnaround plan. Before we dive deeper into actions for the next phase, let me give you an update on the first phase of rebalancing. In the summer half of 2025, we initiated the Renivea rebalancing to restore the brand competitiveness and create a broader foundation for growth. The strategy is built on three pillars. First, portfolio rebalancing. We expanded our focus beyond premium face care and strengthened investments in body care and deodorants. This included shifting marketing resources, optimizing assortments, and improving in-store execution. Second, accessible face care. We increased our focus on more accessible face care offerings such as Nivea Facial, helping us recruit new consumers and expand our reach. Building on its success, we are now rolling out the concept in Europe as Face Plus. Third, localization within a frame. We gave key markets greater flexibility to adapt products and activations to local consumer needs while maintaining the integrity of the Nivea brand. The adaptation of Nivea Luminous for emerging markets is one example, combining localized formats and activations to improve consumer relevance and market performance. This strategy has delivered some initial positive results. Our sell-out performance has been improving on a global level and across key regions. It demonstrates our ability to return to growth as a result of rebalancing marketing investment and optimizing our assortment focus. However, while encouraging, sell-out growth remains below the market level and is not yet broad enough to restore growth sustainably across the entire brand on a global scale. To restore growth globally, we are doubling down on our actions and initiated the next phase of rebalancing, a decisive turnaround plan for the next 18 months. Our objective is clear, broaden Nivea's growth drivers and strengthen the brand's competitiveness across markets, categories, and consumer segments. So far, we have distributed investments more evenly across face care, body care, and deodorants. The next phase is about unlocking the growth opportunities created by Nivea's full portfolio across all categories. We are putting more focus on Nivea accessibility and value for money propositions as the key drivers of penetration and volume. We will also fully leverage Nivea's local relevance. This is already reflected in our innovation pipeline that will respect local specifics and existing stronger franchises. Restoring sustainable growth requires not only the right portfolio, but also strong consumer activation. We will therefore increase and sharpen our focus on consumer-facing investments even further to achieve the greatest impact on our business. Let's now look at our actions for this next phase in more detail. Nivea's strength lies in being a multi-category, multi-generation and multi-country brand. This race has always been one of Nivea's greatest competitive advantages. As part of our turnaround efforts to date, we broaden our focus beyond premium face care and strengthen investment across face care, body care, and deodorants. We are now taking the next step by unlocking the growth opportunities of our full portfolio. We are identifying opportunities beyond category boundaries by applying the right marketing spend and Broadbase Innovation. We will not be dogmatic about which categories to endorse, but also leverage strong existing franchises across regions. In Germany, for example, we cannot ignore our strong footprint in showers, and in Southern Europe, LEAP is an essential part of the portfolio. At the same time, we are responding faster to changing consumer needs and market trends through an accelerated innovation pipeline Reinforcing Nivea's accessibility remains a strategic priority. Consumers have long trusted Nivea to deliver effective skincare that combines quality, affordability and broad availability. We will continue to support our existing scale platforms across multiple price tiers and step up our efforts in the mid to lower price ranges where we see significant opportunities to grow. This approach will help us recruit new consumers, drive volume, increase our sales penetration, and strengthen Nivea relevance across income groups, life stages, and markets. We are strengthening our ability to win locally while preserving the consistency and scale advantages of a global brand. First, we are investing behind Nivea's strongest local franchises through locally relevant innovation. A good example are the line extension of Nivea Facial in Brazil, or the launch of Nivea Softshell in India, developed specifically to address local consumer preferences and market needs. Second, we are leveraging successful local concepts across markets. Following the success of Nivea Facial in Brazil, we are expanding the platform into Europe at the accessible face care line Nivea Face Plus, allowing us to benefit from proven consumer propositions and many others across regions. Third, we are accelerating our ability to respond to local trends and specific consumer demand. This includes ingredient-led propositions such as cocoa-based innovations in Africa. Taken together, these initiatives allow us to combine the strengths of a global brand with the relevance of local execution, helping us sharpen consumer relevance, broaden our growth drivers and strengthen EVA competitiveness across markets. Restoring sustainable growth requires not only the right portfolio and innovation pipeline, but also highly effective consumer-facing investment. We are, therefore, stepping up our marketing activities that drive the greatest business impact, concentrating resources on the touchpoint that most directly influence consumers where they are. In this context, we'll boost our investment by €100 million in the second half of this year, compared to the same period in previous years. Before handing over to Astrid, let me highlight that bringing Nivea back to growth will require disciplined execution and time. Over the next 18 months, we'll rigorously monitor progress and continuously sharpen our focus to maximize impact. Astrid will now give you an overview on Teza and our financial performance. Over to you, Astrid.