K+S Aktiengesellschaft

and gentlemen, welcome to the K plus S full year 2024 earnings call. We hope you had a chance to review our posted slides as well as our documents available on our website. After some opening remarks by Dr. Lohr, we will directly jump into Q&A. some technical notes. Please refer to our disclaimer on page two of the presentation. Then, a note on data privacy. Please note that the Teams session will be recorded, webcasted, and be available as a replay on our homepage afterwards. People asking a question in the Teams session have to be aware that by turning on their camera and microphone, they give consent to saving and replaying video and audio sequences. Now, I would like to turn over to Dr. Lohr for the opening remarks.

Thank you, Julia. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome from the three of us as well. Despite the challenging environment of low potash prices, we have successfully demonstrated that we are on track. At 62 million euros, free cash flow was better than expected. ABTA reached 558 million euros. Again, we benefited from our global positioning and our strong specialties business. For the full year 2025, we expect EBITDA to range between 500 and 620 million euros. This translates into a midpoint at about the level of 2024. For the upper end of the range, we would need a tangible price recovery for MOP in Brazil during the spring season and this has to spill over into other regions and product groups and hold up during the second half of 2025. The lower end would work with prices at the level of the end of 2024. We expect free cash flow to at least break even also for 2025, despite the planned elevated capex. We are very happy with the current spring season with strong potash demand worldwide. So we are in a very promising environment right now as we speak. Before we take your questions, I would like to ask my colleague Jens Keuten to introduce himself briefly.

Thank you very much, Burkhard, and a warm welcome from my side as well. My name is Jens Christian Keuten, newly appointed member of the Board of Executive Directors since February, currently responsible for legal tax, regulatory affairs, new business areas and procurement. And I will take over from Christian in June as CFO, accompanied with the responsibility for finance and controlling. Yeah, some personal background. I joined KplusS in 2014. My education is I'm a lawyer. Became general counsel, member of the management team. And yeah, my responsibilities were complemented in different ways. And yeah, now I'm happy to be in the board and happy to answer your questions afterwards. Thanks.