Evonik Inds Ag Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q1 2026 earnings conference call. I am Matilde, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A 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 Christian Kohlmann, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thanks a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thanks, everybody, for joining our first Water Earnings Call. Today marks another special call for Ebonic Industries. I have not only one, but two CFOs sitting next to me. First of all, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot to you, Klaus. Over the last seven months, you have navigated our finance organization confidentially through rough waters, especially in crisis times like these. Your decades-long experience has proven, proven once and once again, to be incredibly valuable. This experience was also appreciated by capital markets. as we had two good earnings calls with you so far. And I'm confident we'll have another one here today. Luckily, you're not gone, but you will return to Singapore and continue to help our Asian operations. Second, welcome, Michael. Welcome, Michael. I'm looking forward to at least the next four years together. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, for sure. But with your vast experience across industries, companies and roles, you will for sure make a difference for us. I have no doubt that when my renewed contract ends in 2030, we will have jointly created a different Evonik, a much better positioned and much more profitable company. With that, ladies and gentlemen, Let's jump into today's agenda. Klaus will start with our Q1 results, and I will then take over for the outlook. Klaus, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Christian. Thank you for your kind words as well. And as much as I enjoy sitting here with you, I am now looking forward to be back full-time in Singapore and Asia again. Asia is the center of our future growth and this is in these days, I think, even more important than ever. Michael, welcome to Evonik. I am happy that you decided to join us and I am looking forward to good teamwork with you. Now, let's have a look at the first quarter of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA came in at 475 million euros and with this slightly above our expectations at the beginning of the year. This result was supported by continued self-help measures. For example, we counted 410 employees less end of March compared to end of last year. But of course, the main driver was a better operating performance in March. After January and February had continued on the weak side. However, with the stronger than expected march, or without the stronger than expected march, we would have still delivered our guidance for Q1. After the war in the Middle East broke out, we started to see volumes picking up only in late March. was likely not an improvement in underlying demand. We believe this was rather pre-buying with customers aiming to secure volumes and potentially avoid price increases in the future. This was visible mainly in advanced technologies, the segment that clearly beat our end-year expectations. Next to pre-buying we also see notably weaker competition right now. For example in crosslinkers. PA12 was strong in Q4 already and continued this trend in Q1. In Q1 we saw only minor pricing benefits as we have a certain delay in price adjustments. Q2 is looking more promising on the pricing side. Our cash generation was strong in Q1. Free cash flow was at 183 million euros. This is almost on prior year level. Despite clearly weaker earnings. Support came also from customer payments and from a take-or-pay contract that we terminated about one year ago. We had recorded the corresponding earnings last year in Q1 and Q2. We also received a couple of customer prepayments and co-finance for investment projects. Networking capital was about 100 million euros outflow, so very similar to Q1 2025 and in line with our usual seasonality. Chart 7, when you look to it, shows how we are positioned in the current Middle East war environment. There are a lot of disruptions in global supply chains and chemical production. First and foremost, this impacts companies that are heavily export-oriented and that predominantly rely on feedstocks from the Middle East. These are mostly local players directly in the region, and also in Asia. So with our global setup in which we source and produce local for local, we are relatively better positioned. With the one partial exception of methionine in Singapore. Our production and our customer deliveries are secured and to a high degree also out of Singapore, but there is always let's say, fluctuation and changes which we have to take into consideration. And we have also balanced product mix, portfolio mix of specialties and more upstream products. This is also a great help right now. This means we will likely see a good advanced technology and a better than expected C4 performance in the short term. Beyond quarter two, The disruptions bear the risk of other effects, or more specific, the risk of inflation-led demand weakness. More details on this now from Christian in the audience. Christian, and back to you.