Lotus Bakeries Unsp/Adr

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the investor call following the announcement this morning of the 2025 annual results of Lotus Bakeries. I'm Jan Bolle and joining me today is our CFO Mike Puglir and we are both here in Landbeker. We will start with the presentation providing an overview of the performance and also the milestones of 2025 and later on deep dive into the financials. Of course, following the presentation, we are open for questions from your sites. And in total, we have foreseen 15 minutes for this call in total.

First slide.

I'm proud to report another year of strong and double-digit top-line growth. The reported sales in 25 amounted to 1.35 billion euro, and that represents an increase of 10%. This evolution is driven by continued strong volume growth in the second semester for both Lotus Blizzcoff and Lotus Natural Foods. At constant currencies, growth was even stronger. given the negative currency evolutions of the dollar and the pounds in the second half of the year. Profitability improved further, with underlying EBITDA on sales exceeding 20%, and this is an increase of 12% compared to prior year. Also, the net profit increased, and the net profit increased with 13%. A strong reduction of net financial debt led to a historic low multiple of 0.25 times underlying EBITDA. Besides a strong operational cash flow delivery, we also realized a successful exit in FF2032, with the sale of our participation in the Good Chris company. A dividend of €90 per shares proposed, and that's an increase of €14. euro per share compared to the 76 of last year and similar similar amount to prior year we invested 120 million in capital expenditures and that's mainly in the plant in thailand The successful startup of the first lines in Chamboury is, for us as a company, a huge milestone. And the operations teams deserve full credit for delivering this greenfield ahead of schedule and within budgets. Last but not least, the partnerships with MonaLys advance strongly and they contribute positively to the results. Lotus Vehicles is a growth company and has been for the last 20 years delivering a compounded annual growth rate of 11%. Looking at the pillars, the three strategic pillars, we see that Lotus Biscoff achieved a growth of 13% in 2025. To reflect the discontinuation of Lotus Vehicles' own Biscoff ice cream sales, Following the new license agreement with Forneri, 11.6 million euros of second semester revenue was excluded from the reported top line sales. This primary volume growth of Lotus Biscoff demonstrates continued strong demands for Biscoff cookies and spreads. The Biscoff cookie once again ranks as the fastest grower in the global cookie brands ranking, further reinforcing its position within the top five. Lotus natural fruits is the fastest growing strategic pillar and 25 with a growth of 17%. And after a strong performance in the first semester of 25, Lotus Natural Foods continued on the same positive path. Truck is the fastest growing brand and bear is the biggest contributor to growth. After sales remained flat in the first half of 25, the local heroes delivered again growth in the latter half of the year. Anas Pepperkakor even realized more than 10% growth and had its best holiday season ever in Sweden. The gingerbread sales in the Netherlands stabilized on a full year basis. Growth in continental Europe of 9% is outstanding, certainly given the full allocation of the local heroes portfolio to this region. Belgium and the Netherlands are good examples of home countries that carry a broad assortment of the three strategic pillars and generates good growth in 2025. The reported growth in the UK was 2%. Currency evolution of the pound has a negative impact on the reported sales in the second half of the year. The defocus on the own Biscoff chocolate business and the exclusion of Biscoff ice cream sales in the second half of the year further tempered the growth. On the contrary, the natural foods brands performed strong in the UK. As an example, Trek was the fastest growing brand in the bar category in the UK. And in the US, Biscoff was the fastest growing brand in both the cookies and spreads category. Household penetration for the Biscoff cookie has steadily expanded in recent years and now stands at 9%. Significant growth was also realized again in the US with Bayer. Our largest consumer markets continue to increase in imports. You can see this in the overview here on this slide. The overview that shows the revenue distribution by country. The UK remains our largest market, closely followed by the US. Other major consumer markets, including many European markets, China and Canada, are also gaining share. Within the remaining 90%, Several smaller but high potential markets are emerging. Let's now go into more details about Biscoff. Biscoff realizes a 10-year average growth of 15%. The most important growth engine of Lotus Bakeries in absolute value of the last decennia. We have reached with Biscoff again a lot of milestones, and we will go into more detail on some of those in the following slides. The lounge of spreads was almost 20 years ago, namely in 2008. You can see the interesting evolution of our pipe design over the years. In 23, the brand name Biscoff became prominent on the pack. And now we take the next step and we will move from a generic shape jar to our own design.