Mayr-Melnhof Karton Ag

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to the Meier-Mehlhofen-Karton AG conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Please note also that this conference will be recorded. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Stefan Sweetspark.

Good morning and welcome on the part of MM. It's a great pleasure to have you joining this Q&A conference call on our 24 annual results, which we released just this morning. Besides the press release, a video statement of our management board, CEO, CFO, has been published on our website, mm.group. In this call, we want to provide you now with the possibility to direct questions on today's communication to our CEO Peter Oswald and our CFO Franz Hisinger. Since this call addresses an international audience, we would very much appreciate your questions to be asked in English in the following Q&A session. Before we go for that, Peter, may I ask you to start with a short summary of our key messages?

Yeah, thank you, Stefan, and welcome, everyone. I assume you've all read our announcement, and therefore, I just want to summarize the key points before we then go to the formal Q&A session. 2024 was a challenging year for the whole industry. and I'm very pleased to say that we've made significant progress by focusing on self-help. In our food and premium packaging division, we've again achieved market-leading returns, and we could show at least some volume growth. In farm and healthcare packaging, we are now halfway through the successful turnaround of the former essential packaging business. We have picked the low-hanging fruits, and now we have to advance the division towards M&Ms, market-leading operational standards. And here we are well underway, but equally we have significant further potential. At MM Board and Paper, we have made good progress in terms of volumes, which were up by about 17%. However, the results were flat compared to last year, however, with a positive tendency if you look at the quarterly development. Importantly, looking to the whole group, we've reduced our net debt and have now a strong cash cushion. We have made great progress in sustainability, reducing our CO2 emissions significantly. We have also, in tough times, and this, I think, sets us apart from some Some other participants in the industry increased our training and development intensity and we've strengthened our management teams with a particular focus on technological knowledge. And I would want to use this opportunity to thank our employees for their great contribution. We will propose a dividend increase of 20% to €1.80 per share in line with the net profit increase. We have launched a share buyback program at the beginning of this year. And as per yesterday, we have successfully repurchased more than 350,000 shares, which represents 1.7% of all outstanding shares. And as we have announced in December, we signed an agreement to sell our TAN business. The tipping paper had limited or no synergies with our packaging operations. and this will be closed in the second quarter. So what is the outlook for 2025? Of course, always with the caveat that it's impossible to predict the future in any way. So what we see at the beginning of the year is a flat order intake in both packaging divisions and a slightly increased order intake in board and paper. Prices show a very heterogeneous picture with some prices increasing, some decreasing, but overall marginally increasing. In recycled carton port, we have the positive news that a small mill will be closed down during this year, which will somehow improve the supply-demand balance. Unfortunately, in virgin carton port, we see the startup of a new mill. also a closure of the mill, but a much smaller mill, and so here we will see even more overcapacity going forward. Now, looking ahead, we will again concentrate on self-help, and we will do whatever it takes to improve our long-term profitability. CapEx in 24 was at a surprisingly low level. We had indicated a higher number. Some of that was obviously a rollover to this year, and so we expect for this year a capex of around €300 million. So we will continue to invest in our business in order to increase our competitiveness. Yeah, and with this brief summary, it's now your turn, and Franz Hiesinger and myself, we are looking forward to your questions. Thank you.