Bekaert Sa Unsp/Adr

Morning and welcome to the Bekaert first quarter 2025 trading update call. At this time all participants are on a listen only mode and the floor will be open for your questions after the presentation. If you require assistance you may press star zero on your keypad at this time and an operator will assist you. If you wish to join the queue to ask a question at any time you may press star one And should you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star two. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Guy Marks, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Guy Marks Excellent. Many thanks for the warm welcome and thank you all to those on the phone for joining today's Q1 2025 trading update. I'll hand over very shortly to CEO Yves Kerstens and CFO Sep Parvi. But just before I do that, I'll take you through the safety Thank you Guy. Also a warm welcome from my side on the trading update for Q1.

So in the first quarter of 2025, we delivered the top line just south of €1,991,000,000, 3% lower than Q1 of 2024. On our joint ventures, we delivered around 240 million euro of top line, 2% lower than in Q1 the year before, so same terms of dynamics in that region. In that context of a challenging market environment, we keep on working on protecting our margin, cost control, but also working capital. The way we look at 2025 is that we are lowering our capital expenditure from around 190 million that we've foreseen to 150, 160 million range. Our growth platforms are well positioned when the demand picks up in the upcoming two, three years. In terms of the balance sheet, we keep on having a low financial leverage. So today we have the AGM in Cortec here where we will meet our investors virtually and physically, some of them. And we are proposing a dividend of 1.9 euro per share, which is a continuous increase of our dividend in line with our policy. And we have executed 50 million of our buyback program of our own shares of the total program of 200 million, 25 million euros per quarter. If you have a look at the different businesses, it's a mixed picture. I think for all the industrial companies and for the whole economy, the strong focusing on understanding what impact will be of the import tariffs and to minimize that impact. So let me start with rubber reinforcement, the tire reinforcement business. Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Overall, we see an overall remaining overcapacity in the industry and an uncertainty on the tariffs. However, as Baycard, we are well positioned as we have a global footprint and we'll come back to that in our position in the US more specifically. In steel wire solution, we see a solid sales performance, both in volume and mix. As announced, we're on the trajectory to divest our business in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Venezuela, and that's fully trending on track. For our ropes business, both steel ropes and synthetic ropes, we reconnected with stable production reliability in the steel ropes business. And of course, we see some uncertainty on the demand and the order book for our steel ropes business and lower hosting demand in China. Specialty business, we see the impact in sustainable construction, mainly in the US. Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr And then, as expected, we announced last year that there was a technology evolution in the, not in the Semicon, but in the solar waving panels for ultra-Wi-Fi products. So we still had some solid sales in Q1 2024. So the comparables show a drop in that sales, but as expected. So let me turn to the situation on the import tariffs. So let's start with giving you a picture on how our supply chain is structured for the US. So we have 70% of our sales is local production and the remaining 30% is basically divided by less than 10% coming from China and the rest from Europe and Middle East. Also in terms of let's say the raw materials 65% is locally sourced with the main import coming from Brazil. Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Sa Unsp-Adr Again, I want to repeat we are well positioned also in previous disruptions of the supply chain. We can think about COVID or about the energy crisis. We are well positioned to protect our margins and our business. On the other hand, we all know that the uncertainty on the overall demand and the sentiment plays a role. So to be monitored further the upcoming weeks and months and I hand over now to Seppo to give a little bit more perspective on the different financial performance of the businesses.