Lenzing Ag Ord

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lansing AG Financial Results 2025 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Moira, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Matthias Breuer, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mara, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. For those of you I have not yet met, this is my first results call as Lensing CFO, and I'm happy to guide you through our results for 2025. As you might know, I have joined Lensing in 2023 to develop and implement the more than 200 million Euro performance program. My focus as CFO will stay on disciplined financial management, operational performance improvements, supporting profitable growth, and further strengthening the cash generation and the balance sheet of our group. With that, let me walk you through the agenda for today. I will start with a summary of the key developments, followed by the market update, as well as our refined strategy. I will then guide you through the financials, and I will talk about the outlook, as well as our investment talent. We will then end the call with the Q&A session as always. You might have seen that we have put some emphasizes on further transparency and further data in order to give you a better understanding on our business. And I hope that you appreciate that in the presentation going forward, and I'm happy to discuss on that. Stepping to the key highlights, Let me focus on the first slide. Despite continued challenging market conditions, our performance reflects disciplined execution and the impact of our performance initiatives. We saw a modest revenue decline driven by volume adjustments during the year, but our EBITDA margin benefited from our ongoing performance program, supported by the extraordinary one-off sale of CO2 certificates. Looking ahead, our ambitions go well beyond current levels. We have updated our strategy last September with a clear focus on value-generating growth by continuing to reduce overhead costs. And importantly, our stronger focus on cash flow generation is clearly paying off with an unlevered free cash flow improving to almost 280 million driven by disciplined CapEx control and rigorous working capital management. Liquidity is clearly one of our key priorities. and we made great progress here as well. After last year's refinancing, our liquidity cushion reached a very solid level of over €900 million by year-end. What remains unchanged are our core strengths, innovation and sustainability, where we just recently confirmed our worldwide leadership. Looking ahead, our priorities remain clear. Profitability, strict cost discipline, and continuous focus on cash generation. Before we move into the details of 2025, let me briefly touch on our leadership team, which brings deep industry expertise and full focus on operational excellence. As you know, I recently joined the CFO, and I am very pleased to be part of this team. Together with Georg and Christian, we act as a team. The CEO tasks have been assigned to us. We fully remain aligned behind our strategy and focused on discipline execution, maximization of profitability, and strong cash generation. Before moving into the details of our performance, let me briefly comment on the market environment. Overall, markets have not been providing any meaningful tailwinds in 2025. Especially conditions in the textile fiber markets remain challenging, particularly in the last three quarters of 2025 after the announcement of the tariffs by US President Trump. Consumer sentiment remained low, driven by those tariff uncertainties, which led to a shift in less advanced fiber application and a less willingness to pay for sustainability in the textile sector. At the same time, non-woven markets continued to develop much more stable, particularly in Europe and North America. This stability is largely driven by the ongoing conversion towards more eco-friendly fibers, which continues to support the demand. The demand for dissolving wood pulp remains solid, supported by high downstream operating rates for generic fibers. Looking at the market prices for both fiber and dissolving wood pulp, they were down compared to 2024. Generic viscose and lyocell prices by approximately 2% and dissolving wood pulp prices by around 10%, both in U.S. dollars. Alongside continued weak consumer sentiment in textile markets, pricing pressure for fibers was further driven by increasing supply in the market. In response, we continued to actively manage our product mix. We reduced the production in defined lower margin products and market segments, which led to a reduction of total fiber sales volumes by 6% compared to 2024. At the same time, we further increased our focus on premium products with higher margins, which led to higher average selling prices in U.S. dollars. This clearly reflects and confirms the direction we have set with our new strategy. Despite the trend of declining generic fiber prices by approximately 2%, we were able to increase our average selling price in our fiber division in U.S. dollars by 2.8%. In Euro terms, however, our selling prices were slightly lower, reflecting foreign exchange movements. Let me now turn into our pulp division. The production increased by 4% in 2025, especially driven by an outstanding performance of our dissolving wood pulp plant in Brazil. We produce approximately 20% of our nameplate capacity in this asset, which is very satisfying to us. At the same time, lower internal demand for our own fiber production allowed us to sell a larger share externally, resulting in a 27% increase in dissolving wood pulp sales volumes. Average dissolving wood pulp prices declined in 2025, reflecting lower market prices and negative foreign exchange movements, with a decline of 7.2% in U.S. dollar compared to 11.6 decline in Euro. Let me now turn to the development of key costs in our cost structure. Energy and chemical costs remain significantly above historical levels, particularly energy prices in Europe, although we saw some easing in prices during the fourth quarter. On the other hand, coal prices in Indonesia increased by 8% in the fourth quarter. Prices for caustic soda, our main chemical, also remained elevated across regions and were broadly stable in the fourth quarter. Despite this partially slight improvement towards the end of the year, both energy and chemical prices remain a challenging cost factor to us. Looking ahead, ongoing geopolitical developments, particularly the war in Iran, are likely to increase volatility in energy markets with regards to prices and potentially even supply. Let me now briefly reflect and recap on the revised strategy that we announced last year in September. It is built around four strategic priorities that together unlock value and prepare Lansing for the future. This means, when looking at the first two pillars, we focus on premiumization and excellence. Premiumization means that we will concentrate more strongly on our branded and innovative fibers, like Tencel, VSL, and Ecovero, and gradually step back from less profitable commodity segments. By doing so, we improve margins and position lengthings in areas where we can truly differentiate. Looking back into 2025, this is also an impact that we have seen in terms of increasing the margin to the generic fiber segments in terms of prices, as we have seen on the last page. The second pillar is excellence. We, as a board and as a company, are embedding a culture of efficiency and discipline across the group, not just through one-off savings, but by institutionalizing cost control, by optimizing our footprint, and by streamlining structure. This makes us leaner, more agile, and more resilient. On top of our performance program that started in 2023, we are implementing a comprehensive cost optimization program, which includes a reduction of around 600 positions in Austria. Annual savings of approximately 45 million Euro are expected to take full effect by the end of 2027. The third pillar is innovation. Here we will focus resources on fewer but higher impact projects, accelerating time to market and ensuring that our pipeline continues to provide the next generation of premium fibers, whether in textiles or non-wogans. And finally, sustainability. This always has been part of Lansing's DNA, but going forward, it will be leveraged even more as a value driver. With growing regulation and customer demand for sustainable products, our leadership in this area shall become a true competitive advantage. Overall, our strategy is designed to deliver profitable growth, improve margins further, and strengthen our cash flow generation over the coming years. Premiumization is at the core of our refined strategy. Today, around a quarter of our volumes are still in generic commodity fibers. About 60% are in our branded classic products, and 15% are in innovative premium fibers. Our goal is clear. Over time, we will exit the generic segments and shift resources into branded and premium products. This means that competitors can continue to play in commoditized risk costs by lancing focuses on areas with higher margins and stronger differentiations. In that sense, we also have taken the decision to assess options for our plant in Indonesia. As you know, last September, I will later on elaborate on that. Premiumization for us is more than just a portfolio shift. It makes the business structurally more resilient, less exposed to cyclical swings, and better positioned for sustainable growth. To illustrate how we are implementing our refined strategy, let me highlight three concrete examples. First, we are further improving our profitability and resilience. As part of this, We are evaluating the potential sale of our viscous production site in Indonesia. The site did not develop as planned and has been clearly margin dilutive in recent years. The M&A process has been initiated and is ongoing according to plan. Second, we further drive the improvement of our margins. A good example is the expansion of the premium nonwoven capacity in Lansing, an investment of Euro 15 million will increase the focus on sustainable and high-quality nonwoven solutions. Third, we increase differentiation with new fiber technologies. A major step in this direction is the acquisition of the controlling majority in tree-to-textile. Tree-to-textile represents the next technological leap in cellulosic fiber. H&M, IKEA, and Stora Enso will continue to support our joint scale-up commercialization as minority shareholders. Together, these three initiatives demonstrate how we are already implementing our strategy towards value growth. The second pillar of our refined strategy is excellence. In line with this, we have implemented our comprehensive performance program. The focus was and continues to be on improving efficiency across all our production sites. optimizing procurement processes and costs, and reducing personal costs. The program has now been successfully completed and delivered full recurring savings of more than €200 million, which is €100 million above the original target, which was set in 2023. Building on this success, we have defined additional measures to further improve operational efficiencies. should be leading to additional annual savings of €45 million, latest by 2027. They will continue to support our strategic focus on operational efficiency and cash flow generation. So a clear commitment of Lansing to deliver. Let me briefly highlight where some of the savings are seen in our P&L. A significant part can be seen in HG&A costs, which reduced by €40 million €20 million each in selling and administrative costs. And we were able to reduce personal costs by €55 million compared to 2024, or 10% of our total personal costs. Some of these cost savings are already reflected in the H&A savings on the left chart. So the right chart also includes savings in the production area. Innovation and sustainability remind the foundation of Lansing's long-term strategy. They are what sets us apart from the competition. Even as we streamline, we will not compromise in these areas. On the innovation side, our pipeline continues to create real opportunities. One example, our new Tencel HV100 fibers. The fiber features variable cut length designed to mirror the irregularities of natural fibers. and brings undefined rawness of nature into the Tencel Lyocell portfolio for woven products such as denim. The clear commitment and clear milestone into our premiumization approach. On the sustainability side, our leadership is recognized worldwide. We have been rated triple A by CDP as one of only 23 companies worldwide with an A score for climate now six years in a row. With Ecovadis Platinum, Lansing is in the top 1% of companies worldwide in sustainability performance. These achievements are not just certificates. They are an asset that strengthens our brand, enhances customer partnership, and increasingly drives premium pricing, especially in the nonwoven segment. In summary, we continue to operate in a tough market environment, driven by weak customer sentiment, in textiles and additional capacities in the Asian fiber market. We control the control level. We have successfully responded with our performance program, and we delivered tangible benefits in terms of improved margins and strong cash generation. At the same time, our revised strategy sets clear priorities, including the strong focus on value-generating growth, the shift towards higher-margin products, as well as the strategic review of some of our plans. This positions us well to further strengthen our financial performance and create sustainable value going forward. In short, we are managing the challenges of today while we build the foundation for stronger performance tomorrow with our revised strategy. With that, let me now turn to the financials. And let me start with a brief overview of the key financial indicators for 2025. Revenue was slightly down year over year, while adjusted EBITDA increased by 8%, reflecting the impact of our cost initiatives, as well as positive one-off effects from the sale of surplus EU emission certificates. Cash flow also improved, supported by very disciplined CapEx control and rigorous working capital management. On the balance sheet, net financial debt and leverage significantly decreased, and we increased the liquidity cushion to €910 million. Let me now take you through the developments in revenue and EBITDA in more detail. Both revenue and EBITDA were affected particularly in the second half of the year by external factors such as international tariff measures, subdued demand, and declining market prices. Despite the tough market, revenues decreased by only 2% compared to 2024, with a clearly weaker second half of the year. Revenues, however, went down by 11% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2024. Thanks to our comprehensive performance program, we were able to improve the operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 8% to $426 million. Here as well, we saw a much better first half of the year, and EBITDA in the fourth quarter decreased to €73 million. Let me now take you through the development of EBITDA in more detail. Looking at this EBITDA approach and starting from last year's EBITDA of €395 million, we see a positive impact from cost savings as well as the sale of CO2 certificates, so of topics that we internally can control. It contributed with 130 million of recurring and one-off effects to the profitability of 2025, with another 45 million with the surplus sale of CO2 certificates. In total, 175 million. Those were, however, could not fully compensate market headwinds that we clearly had to face. Foreign exchange developments, as well as inflation, had a negative impact of combined around €100 million. The impact of US tariffs of €10 million and the valuation of our biological assets in Brazil increased by €8 million less than in 2024. If we look at our divisions, we can see a positive margin contribution through additional volume in our pulp division of €27 million. with negative price development accounting for 43 million euro. Episodium wood pulp prices decreased during 2025. In the fiber division, we see an adverse picture. While volume was short compared to 2024 with an impact of 31 million euro, we were in the position to increase our prices in US dollar with an impact of 25 million euro in 2025. With all that, you can see We continue to control what we can control and to manage what can be managed internally. However, the market had some headwinds for us. Looking at the development since 2022, revenues have remained largely stable at 2.6 billion euro due to the challenging market environment. At the same time, EBITDA increased by €184 million to an adjusted EBITDA of €226 million, proven primarily by our cost-saving initiatives and operational improvements. Our refined strategy also addresses reviewing selected sites, including the Indonesian plants, where the M&A process for a potential sale is ongoing. In this context, Non-cash impairment losses on non-current assets, in particular property, plant, and equipment of €82 million were carried out last year. The impairment losses had a negative impact on EBIT, but no effect on EBITDA. EBIT excluding the impact of the impairment would have been at €100 million approximately, which compares to €18 million reported. Let me now turn to cash flow. Trade working capital decreased as a result of rigorous and actively managed working capital management by 125 million or 22% in 2025. At the same time, we maintained very disciplined CapEx control with CapEx spend of 141 million euro. This led to a significant increase in unlevered free cash flow and an improvement in the cash conversion to 66%. If you take a step closer to the development of networking capital, we can see that the optimization of inventory management and improved supply chain management in both Fibers and Pulp led to a decrease of inventories by €115 million since the end of 2024. We also consistently reduced trade receivables. Trade receivables were down €73 million compared to the end of 2024, reflecting disciplined receivables management. While trade payables have decreased in the first three quarters, they increased again in the fourth quarter, ending at €324 million. Overall, this development reflects our disciplined approach to working capital management and our continued focus on cash generation. Turning to the balance sheet and to highlight the key developments in 2025, we do see that net financial debt decreased by 12%, mainly driven by strong free cash flow generation. This resulted in an improvement in our leverage ratio to 3.3 times EBITDA. At the same time, we significantly increased our liquidity caution. This is cash on hand, including not strong financing lines to 910 million euros. Let's have a short recap on the refinancing measures we have successfully taken in the last years. We started with the capital increase in 2023 to bolster our liquidity buffer. At the same time, we did a maturity extension of €250 million. In October 2024, we have converted the project financing of our Brazilian venture of US$1 billion into a standalone corporate finance structure with a further shift of debt maturities. The successful placement of the new hybrid bond in the amount of Euro 500 million in July 2025, followed the Euro 554 million syndicated loan secured in May 2025. Those measures marked further milestones in the professional and forward-looking management of our capital structure and brings an adequate amortization profile to the company. With that, let me now turn to our outlook. Let me start with some of the key challenges that we currently see in the market environment. First, geopolitical uncertainty remains elevated, particularly due to the escalation in Middle East. Even though we have no direct business in Iran, we expect indirect impact through continued volatility in energy markets, global supply chain disruptions, as well as a negative impact on consumer confidence. Already, after two to three years, Three weeks now since the Iran war started, we have to experience a steep increase in domestic road transportations, in sea freight surcharges, and first requests for increased prices in terms of key chemicals. If the situation continues as such, we expect potential supply shortages in specific markets, be it in Southeast Asia or in Europe. Second, what we see here on this slide, we continue to see a high degree of uncertainty around global trade policies and tariffs with limited direct impact, but indirectly also affecting fiber demand and prices, particularly in the textile business. And finally, we have new capacity coming on stream, particularly in generic lyocell, and those are expected to continue to weigh on pricing and margins. Based on these assumptions, our outlook for the year reflects the following expectations. Looking back, 2025 was a solid year despite the continuously tough market environment. For the reasons just mentioned, we expect generic fiber market prices to remain under pressure in 2026. However, we have seen improved pricing developments in pulp and fiber in the first quarter compared to the weak end of 2025, with further positive indications for the remaining month of the first half year. Fiber demand is expected to continue to be impacted by substitute consumer sentiment. However, also here, we expect some market improvements in half year one with a constructive start in Q1 2026 compared to the last month of 2025. At the same time, we expect demand in pulp to remain relatively stable. Energy and raw material costs are expected to remain volatile and on elevated levels impacted by the geopolitical developments. Despite these challenges, we remain focused on what we can control, particularly disciplined pricing, cost efficiency, and strong cash generation. And we expect operational results to continue to be positively impacted by further cost reductions. The start into Q1 was above expectations and very constructive. However, going forward, Visibility is very limited due to the ongoing high uncertainties in global tariffs and geopolitical developments. We therefore, at the moment, give no guidance for 2026. We will review the outlook in the next month and may provide guidance alongside the results of the first quarter. However, this is subject to improved market visibility. Before going into Q&As, Let me summarize now why Lansing represents a compelling investment case today. We control what we have under control, and we deliver. First, we are recalibrating our asset base. That means moving away from a volume-driven model toward one that prioritizes economic value creation. We are reviewing underperforming assets, including the Indonesian side, and focusing investment where returns are highest. Second, we are refocusing the organization with leaner structures institutionalized cost discipline, we are aligning resources with future growth opportunities. Third, we are resharpening our market focus. We are withdrawing from commoditized fibers and concentrating on premium branded products and resilient non-woven applications. This makes our business less cyclical and more predictable. Finally, we are positioned to regain valuation. We combine a proven ability to execute, savings, refinancing EBITDA growth with unique differentiation through innovation and sustainability. This is how we will restore confidence and create long-term value. With this, I will hand back over to the operator for the Q&A.

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