Lanxess Ag Ord

Thank you for joining our Lancet Q2 Results 2026 conference call. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press star 9 and the pound key on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. I will hand over to Eva Husman, Head of Investor Relations, for opening remarks.

Thank you, Tim, and welcome everyone to today's call. Thank you for joining. Before we start, as always, please take note of our safe harbor statement. and with me today are, as always, Lancet CEO Matthias Zachert and CFO Oliver Stratmann. And with overview, we would be happy to take your questions. With that, I hand over to Matthias.

Thank you, Eva, and welcome to all of you and thanks for joining our Q2 call on the performance that we have delivered. I turn your attention to page number... We will give an overview here notably on the sequential improvement that we have indicated to you in our May conference call. So you see that we on EBITDA are spot on, strong increase sequentially. This is also reflected in the cash flow. Normally the second quarter is still a softer quarter on cash flow generation, but we've clearly stated to you that This is the KPI we will focus on in order to improve as much as possible and I think second quarter gives proof to this. Driver for that was definitely networking capital. Normally in Q1, Q2 we increase networking capital, which then again is being reduced in Q3 and Q4. For second quarter, you clearly see that networking capital was managed tightly, especially on the inventory side. As far as net financial debt is concerned, we here show you that over the last few years, we consistently reduced, and that will definitely be a topic in the forthcoming quarters where we strive for further improvement on the net financial debt size. The following page gives you an overview on sequential developments on price and volume. And you can clearly see that the second quarter 26 is a good and strong turning point. Operationally, we improved on pricing and on volume. Of course, some percentage points are here definitely coming from the Middle East situation. but overall the second quarter is operationally a strong one. Let me point your attention to page number six. Last year we have indicated that we will address our cost structure further wherever needed and we also gave reference that some further cost savings will be driven by Zaltigo and here we will adjust some of our capacities Thank you very much. As far as portfolio is concerned, we are a strong recognized player in the agro custom-made business. So we are in the area of 70-80% clearly exposed to the agrochemicals business. That will definitely be a core pillar of our sales in Zaltigo going forward. but we will strive in the years to come to increase the current percentage in pharma and other specialty business from the current 20% to 40 to 30 and potentially 40% in five years from now. Let me now come to page number seven. I think all of you have taken note of the fact that we issued a bonds classical liability management. I think Oliver and his teams and his team have found the rights weak for making liability management, so 500 million with a tenor of five has been issued to replace the bond that we have due in October. We found very strong investor demand. The order book was several times oversubscribed so that we could tighten the coupon to 4.375. Yeah, well done, Oliver. Well done, Ulrike and team. With this, I turn attention to page number eight. As far as macroeconomic environment is concerned, all of you know that the macroeconomic uncertainties persist. We do have some headwinds, mainly from the US dollar that has weakened year on year. And based on this, we confirm our outlook or our guidance for full year between 450 and 550. Thank you very much. on Q3 as well. We do expect that the normal seasonal development for Q3, where Q3 normally sales-wise is a bit softer than Q2, on the performance as such, third quarter should be above previous year, but not as strong as Q2 26. And I think with this you have Everything it takes to also get comfortable on the full year guidance. This is what we would like to present to you and now we open up the floor for your questions, please.