Bekaert Sa Unsp/Adr

Good morning and welcome to the Bekaert 2025 results call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode and we will open the floor for your questions after the presentation. If you require assistance, you may press star zero on your keypad at any 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, 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. Dries van Hamme, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you and welcome to our analysts and investors. I will first read out the safe harbor statement and then hand over to Yves Guestens and Sipo Parvi, CFO, who will comment on the results and the outlook before we go into Q&A. So this presentation may contain forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to be different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Baycard is providing the information in this presentation as of today and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in it in light of new information, future events or otherwise. Baycard disclaims any liability for statements made or published by third parties and will not undertake any obligation to correct inaccurate data, information, conclusions or opinions published by such third parties in relation to this or any other publication issued

Thank you Dries and welcome all. Many thanks for joining today's full year's result presentation. As per usual, I will cover some introductory comments, highlights, and then Seppo will take us more through the financials in details and also by business unit. And I will wrap up with some updates on operational strategy direction, including the outlook for 2026. So 2025, clearly a year with a lot of market volatility and pay tensions. In that context, we've been working on passing through and mitigating all the effects of the tariffs. We've seen stable volumes in our rubber enforcement business and some volume growth in our energy and utility business. On the other hand, we've seen some project delays in steel loops and construction business, mainly in the first half of 2025 in the US and in some other markets. During 25, we also adjusted our hydrogen footprint in line with the weaker outlook on the green hydrogen business. In 2025, we've been focusing on the things we can control, meaning making our company structure more linear, more agile. So we took a big step in reducing the overhead cost by 40 million euros. We created around 40 million, 39 million efficiency in operational excellence. That means in our, how we purchase wire, but also how we operate the factories and also by good utilization In 2025 we have 162 one-off charges which has a limited only 8 million cash impact by adjustment we did on the footprint to in line with the future demand expectations. So clearly we will work on a lower cost base creating us also low cost base moving forward and we are also further working on the portfolio evolution of the company. We took a further step in divesting the LATAM in Latin America in our SWS business. From a financial performance point of view, a lot of focus so we delivered an 8% EBIT in thanks to this well good cost control and on top a strong very free cash flow generation by working on all the levers of the working capital and so free cash flow above 300 million euros We are now seeing gradual recovery after a soft start.