Merck Kgaa

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Merck Investor and Analyst Conference call on first quarter 2026. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I'm now handing over to Florian Schroeder, Head of Investor Relations, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sarah. Highly appreciate everyone joining us for our Q1 26 earnings call. My name is Florian Schroeder, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Merck. I am delighted to be joined by Kai Beckmann, our Group CEO, and Helene von Roeder, Group CFO. Kai and Helene will walk us through the key slides and financial highlights of the past quarter. And Kai will also take the opportunity to provide an update on the company's strategic direction. For the Q&A part of the call, we will be further joined by Jean-Charles Dirth, CEO of LifeScience, Danny Basohar, CEO of Healthcare, and Benjamin Hein, CEO of Electronics. And with that long intro, I will turn it over to Kai to get us started.

Thanks, Florian, for the introduction and welcome everybody to our Q1 earnings call. Let us move to slide five. So what to characterize this quarter, I would call it a solid start to 2026 despite global challenges. Organically, group sales increased by plus fell 2.9%, and EBITDA pre went up by plus 5.3%. Lifestyles and electronics showed robust organic sales growth at plus 8% and plus 4% respectively, overcompensating a moderate decline in healthcare. Now let me draw your attention to the remarkable performance in process solutions, delivering double-digit growth at plus 16% in the quarter. For the first time since Q1 2023, Oyster Solutions reported more than €1 billion of sales in a single quarter. Healthcare's organic decline of minus 3% was mainly driven by generic competition for Maven's Lert in the US. Aside from that, we saw a solid contribution of our Rare Disease franchise with a plus 4% portfolio impact. Moving to electronics, which showed a positive organic sales development in Q1. This was driven by a double-digit growth in semiconductor materials. The overall solid start to the year and the particularly strong finish of the quarter that has raised our guidance for full year 2026. You may also remember that we guided just one week after the crisis in Middle East broke loose. Since then, we have gained more visibility on the macro trends, and therefore, we are reflecting these developments in our updated 2026 guidance today. Lastly, at the AGM on April 24, our dividend proposal of 2.2 euro per share was approved by our shareholders. So let's turn to slide six for an overview of our performance by business sector. LifeScience was the largest contributor with organic sales growth of 8.3%. All three business units within LifeScience achieved organic growth. led by process solutions which experienced a visible growth acceleration towards the end of the quarter, resulting in a growth rate well north of the average midterm aspiration of around 10%. Discovery solutions and advanced solutions developed according to plan. Healthcare zone organic sales decline of minus 3.4%, driven by the anticipated decline of Mavenclass amid generic competition in the U.S., However, let me highlight CM&E, which demonstrated continued resilience as well as continued double-digit growth of Tago Veras. Electronics grew by plus 4.2% organically as our semiconductor business was updriven by double-digit growth of semiconductor materials franchise. Moving now to the right side of the slide. Evita Pre increased by plus 5.3% organically versus the same quarter last year. FX headwinds had a negative impact of minus 5.7%. Please bear in mind that we saw a disproportionate currency headwind in Q1 relative to what we expected for the full year. As lagged in our Q4 earnings call, EBITDA Pre in Q1 was supported by two one-off effects. First, the investment of our OLED IP portfolio to Universal Display Corporation resulting in a gain of 42 million euro in electronics, and secondly, we indicated that a potential recovery of cost could be incurred in connection with a supplier mislabeling dispute not related to product quality. I am pleased to confirm that we have successfully closed this matter, resulting in an additional gain of €25 million in electronics. And with that, let me hand over to Helena for a more detailed review of our financials.