Mayr-Melnhof Karton Ag

Welcome to this video conference call of the Meier-Melnhof Group on our first half-year results in 2026. I'm heading investor relations and communications here at MM and I will be the moderator in this call. Earlier this morning we already published a press release, a half-year report and the CEO video statement which is available from our corporate website mymm.group. Following our brief statement In this half year, we want to provide a more comprehensive update on our performance through this live presentation with our CEO Peter Oswald, who is sitting next to me, and our CFO Franz Hiesinger. Subsequent to the presentation, we will enter into a Q&A session. For this, I want to give you some technical information. Thank you for questions during the presentation by pressing the blue live Q&A button on your screen in the webcast and follow the instructions. Alternatively, if you cannot join through the browser, you have also a dial-in telephone number, you dial your country-specific number and enter the individual PIN followed by the hash key. You can then register for asking a question by pressing 0 followed by 1 on your telephone. I also want to inform you that this webcast will be recorded. I would now like to hand over to Peter to start the presentation.

Thank you Stephan. Welcome everyone and thanks for your interest in our half year results. We have basically four messages. Number one is that our results were mainly broadly in line with last year, slightly down, but broadly in line with last year, but significantly up compared to the second half year. And we will come to the individual items later, but the real positive surprise for us was the strong performance of pharma, significantly up. Food could again make Very strong result like we are always used to it and in board and paper the strong headwinds in terms of pricing led despite a very successful FFF project to a decline in our profitability. The second message is that fit for future is delivering far above our expectations and it will deliver above expectations. The third message is that our expansionary capex, we'll come to that in more detail, are on track within budget and will contribute to our earnings growth in 2027. And last but not least, we said Monday morning, we announced that we have signed an agreement to acquire the Ansberg Mill from Renault Deletici and we see substantial synergies here. Now, if we go to our Fit for Future project in greater detail, it strongly delivered in the first quarter with 105 million Euro above our expectations. We expect for the second half of this year a year-on-year contribution of more than 100 million and in the next year above 60 million. So all in all, we believe that by 27 compared to the baseline in 24, excluding TAN. There will be a burning enhancement of more than 330 million Euro, which is well above the 250 million Euro which were announced at the beginning of the year with the full year 25 results announcement. And as already explained, it's a comprehensive program. The core of the program is operations, But procurement, top line growth, SG&A and supply chain also play a very important role. And with this information, I hand over now to Franz Hiesinger, our CFO, who will explain you our numbers.

Thank you, Peter. I will briefly explain you our financial key figures for MM Group on a like-for-like basis, that means basically excluding TAN, which we have sold beginning June 2025. So our sales came in with 1.85 billion euros, which is slightly down to the comparable prior year figure, but basically stable to the second half year of last year, mainly due to lower pricing. Our adjusted EPI TPA came in with around 200 million euros which is quite up compared to the second half of 2025 and shows as Peter mentioned The market operating profit came in with close to 90 million euros, also quite up compared to the second half year 2025. And our EBIT margin came in with 10.8%, which is quite an increase compared to both prior year and second half year 2025. If we look at the operating cash flow, due to good working capital management we achieved 145 million euros and obviously significantly better than prior last year and our capital expenditure with close to 112 million basically fairly stable to the prior periods despite this includes already a lot of capital expenditure into our large Quitsyn ROE projects which are well on track as Peter will explain later. So if you look on our balance sheet, we're pretty happy to present a very stable position, very solid picture. Our equity ratio is 47%, basically unchanged to year end. The net debt amounts to 945 million euros, also way below 1 billion euros, which brings us to a net debt adjusted EBITDA ratio of 2.4, which Thank you Franz.