K+S Aktiengesellschaft

Good day, and welcome to the K&S Q3 Analyst Call with Dr. Burkhard Lohr, CEO, and Dr. Christian Meyer, CFO. My name is Britt, and I will be your EverCall coordinator. The format of the call includes opening remarks from the company, followed by a question and answer session. Please refer to our disclaimer on page two of the presentation, slides posted this morning. Then a note on data privacy. Please note that a session will be recorded, webcasted, and available as a replay on the K&S homepage afterward. People asking a question have to be aware that by doing so, they give consent to saving and replaying audio sequences. Please note that all attendees will be on a listen-only mode until the Q&A portion of the call. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Dr. Burkhard Lohr for opening remarks. You may now begin.

Thank you, Britt. Good morning and welcome from Kassel, ladies and gentlemen. We would like to start the Q3 earnings discussion. We had a robust quarter, slightly above expectations, and we again benefited from a strong specialty business. Agriculture sales volumes were 1.8 million tons, which is quite good for a maintenance quarter. Industry plus also performed well. Overall, Q3 EBITDA reached 66 million euros compared to 72 million last year. Lower revenues, mainly due to lower prices, were largely offset by lower costs and positive currency effects. Our free cash flow for the first nine months amounted to 111 million euros. For the full year 24, we now expect EBTA to be around 540 million euros and therefore closer to the lower end of the previous range. We also reduced the upper end of the agriculture sales volumes guidance. This is due to production bottlenecks, mainly as a result of an above average illness rate. We continue to expect free cash flow to be at least break-even for the full year, despite the planned increase in capital expenditures. And now we are happy to answer all your questions, and I give back to Britt.

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. And again, that's star 1. on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. We will pause here briefly to allow your questions to generate. Our first question comes from Christian Faiz of Kepler Chevro. Your line is open. You may proceed.