Fluidra Sa

Good morning, and welcome to our third quarter 2024 results call. I'm Clara Valera, Strategy, Investor Relations, and M&A Senior Director. Joining me today on this call is our Executive Chairman Eloy Planas, our CEO Jaime Ramirez, and Xavier Tintoret, our CFO. They will walk you through a few slides on our results, and then they will be able to take your questions. You can follow this presentation in its original version or in Spanish. Please select your preferred option in the drop-down menu at the bottom right-hand side of your screen. If you would like to ask a question, please find the information and instructions in the Ask a Question tab on the webcast. Please register to receive dial-in details. After the registration process, you will need to press a star five on the telephone keypad to ask your question. The presentation is accessible via our website, fluidra.com and has also been uploaded to the Stock Exchange Commission this morning. A replay of today's presentation will be made available on our website later today. With that, I hand over to our Executive Chairman, Eloy Planas.

Thanks, Clara. Good morning and thank you for joining our call today and for your interest in Fluidra. Before to start, I just want to extend my thoughts to the victims and families to the extreme floods in Valencia yesterday. Today, we are presenting our third quarter and year today, September 2024 results. Jaime and Xavier will provide more details shortly, but first, let me summarize a few key points. our third quarter performance was strong. Sales were up across all regions, with North America leading the way and delivering an outstanding performance. On the other hand, we are pleased to see Europe coming back to growth for the first time since early 2022. This is an excellent performance in an environment that remains mixed with lower demand for new build, but a resilient aftermarket. Gross margin continued with its solid development, mainly driven by a timely execution of our simplification program, which is well on track to deliver the savings expected for the remainder of the plan. Cash generation was strong. We have consolidated our progress in working capital management and continued to deliverage in the quarter. With our performance here today, we are updating our full year guidance, raising the midpoint to sales between 2 billion and 60 million euros and 2 billion and 100 million euros, and the beta between 460 to 480 million. We are reinforcing our leadership in a structurally attractive industry. We agreed in the quarter the acquisition of a couple of bolt-ons. This will expand our customer base in Portugal and complement our commercial product portfolio in Australia with a more sustainable regenerative media filtration system. As a testament to our customer-centric approach, we have been awarded Vendor of the Year for the fourth year in a row by key distributors in the US. Let me share with you that I'm delighted to have Jaime on board. We are excited not just because he is a first-class operator, but also because he joined us at the right time. Think about our evolution. Operating in a dynamic environment over the last years, we have focused sharply on optimizing and strengthening the group. Results you can see in our performance year to date. And now, Fluidra is in a strong position to deliver on its strategic priorities and drive value for all stakeholders. I'm confident Jaime is a tremendous asset to our team, bringing a breadth of experience that will move us ahead. With a deep understanding of global consumer and industrial products and a track record of driving growth and transformation, he's well-placed to lead us into the next chapter. And then let me pass the floor to him, to Jaime, to present our Q3 results in more detail.

Thank you, Eloy. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you today. You can imagine that the first months of Florida have been very busy. And today, I'm even more excited about our opportunity than before I started. Why? I have the privilege of traveling across our diverse regions, visiting many of our operations, and most importantly, meeting our incredible employees, key customers, and suppliers. On slide five, you can see more of my thoughts in detail, but let me take a moment to share with you what has really impressed me since I joined. First, the attractiveness of the pool industry. Every year, new pools are built around the world driven by that desire to own a pool, which add to the global pool base. And that global pool base needs to be repaired and maintained. Most of the demand for our products come from this less discretionary piece, the aftermarket, which I think is a fundamental strength. As you know, despite the corrections seen in the last couple of years, Fluidas' aftermarket is very resilient. Believe me when I said that not many industries have these characteristics. Second, our global leading platform. With a diversified geographic footprint and wide innovative product range, Fluidra has built a strong foundation to serve customers around the world. And I see opportunity to continue to consolidate a fragmented market. And last but not least, our people. It didn't take me long to notice the engaged and highly skilled team that works here, committed to tackling opportunities and challenges head on. Their passion and expertise are instrumental in driving our business. I have very much enjoyed meeting the Global Freedom Team across all regions. I want to personally thank each of you for your warm welcome and your ongoing dedication to our shared success. I'm thrilled to be here today. This is an exceptional opportunity to build upon our solid foundation as a global leader and keep driving value for all our stakeholders. On slide number six, let me take a moment to outline the core strategic pillars I will focus on to drive transformation and market leadership and deliver further shareholder value. Much of this will sound familiar to you, as I mentioned earlier. We're building on a strong foundation. We will maximize the opportunity we have. Our first priority is to accelerate growth by delivering commercial excellence and improving both customer and end user experience. Expanding high potential markets organically and be a selective M&A will continue to be our focus. Next, we'll concentrate on enhancing operational excellence by maximizing productivity, boosting efficiency, reducing cost, and further improving our competitiveness leveraging our global footprint. This focus will enable us to strengthen margins and optimize our operations to stay agile in a dynamic market. Our third area of focus is continuing to create competitive differentiation. I believe for that innovation, digital, technology, and product development are key to achieving this, along with a relentless commitment to high quality and consistent excellent service to our customers. By focusing on these pillars, we're positioning ourselves for long-term success and ensuring that we remain at the forefront of our industry. Moving to our quarterly and year-to-date performance on slide seven. I will provide some highlights and then turn it over to Javier to provide more detail on the financial results. Sales were up 1% in the first nine months of the year to 1,637,000,000 euros. Performance in the third quarter was strong, as Eloy mentioned, with growth across all regions driven by 8% higher volumes. EBITDA was up 6% year-on-year to 386 million euros, which represents a 24% margin. This reflects the strength of our business model and the action we have implemented, with consistent improvement in gross margin driven by the simplification program, partially offset by higher OPEX. Xavier will provide more correlated. Going down the P&L, cash EPS was up 8% year on year. We have managed working capital very well. Operating networking capital to sales in the last 12 months was around 18% compared to 24% at the same time last year, down 570 basis points. Cash generation in the period was strong. The ratio of net debt to last 12 months EBITDA at the end of September was around 2.3 times. On slide 8, looking at Q3 standalone performance, sales grew by 7%, with all regions recording a positive performance on the back of 8% volume growth, which explains the recovery in the year-to-date bridge from a negative 3% in first half of 2024 to flat as of the end of September. North America was up 9% organically, a consistent sequential improvement with good sell-through across our customer base. This performance is a testament to our easy-to-do business with customer-centric approach, our exposure to the Sun Belt, and our mid- to high-end market positioning. In Europe, with 5% organic growth in Q3, We saw recovery from the weather affected sales in the second quarter and a good aftermarket demand. As Eloy mentioned earlier, this was the first positive quarter for Europe since early 2022. Overall, new construction demand was still weaker year on year, but this was more than offset by resilient aftermarket demand, share gains, and the tailwind of not having the correction of inventory in the channel we faced last year. With this performance year today, we're updating our full year guidance from 2.06 billion to 2.1 billion euros of sales, 460 to 480 million of EBITDA, and 1.14 to 1.20 euros per share of cash EPS. Moving to slide number nine, let me talk about some of the highlights of the quarter. First, an example of our continued product innovation. This new salt water chlorinator delivers complete and hassle-free water treatment. It is connected for easy management and monitoring to our recently launched FreeDRAW app and features a smart digital interface for enhanced user experience. This top selling product has been very well received by our customers and pool owners. And it's also an excellent example of our continuing innovation in connectivity for enhanced customer experience. As Eloy mentioned earlier, we are proud to have awarded vendor of the year for the first consecutive year by top distributors in the US. This recognition underscores our commitment to putting customer at the heart of everything we do. On sustainability, we recently published a deep dive report on the importance of waters as a scarce global resource and the implications for swimming pools. I strongly encourage you to take a look. It sheds some light on general misconceptions. It is estimated the total water used for pools represents less than 0.5% of total water consumption. Nevertheless, we believe every drop counts. At FluidRamp, we're committed to deliver a more sustainable pre-experience and have technologies to save energy and water. These efforts illustrate our ongoing efforts on innovation, customer experience, and sustainable solutions, which are key to our long-term success. With that, I will turn it over to Xavier to explain the financial results in more detail.