Sgl Group Ord

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SGL Carbon 9 Month Results 2025 conference call. I am Moira, the Corus 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 Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Claudia Kellert. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Yes, a very warm welcome and thanks for your interest to our conference call today. Andrea Klein and Thomas DePaul will present our nine-month figures, inform you about the status of our carbon fiber restructuring, and give you some more insights about our expectations for the upcoming months. After the presentation, we look forward to answering your questions. But let's start with the financials. I hand over to Thomas DePolt.

Thank you, Claudia. Hello, also from my side. This is Thomas DePolt. I'm happy to guide you through the performance of our nine-month figures. And I jump directly to the overview of our group performance on slide number five. We have reached, after nine months, 2025, 653 million Euro in sales in our top line, which is 16.5% lower than last year at that nine-month timeframe. And in the end, we lose 130 million. This is quite remarkable, and there are two effects behind it. On the one hand side, there is a continuous weakness in our demand from semiconductors, and the second is that we restructure our carbon fiber business unit and therefore also lose some unprofitable sales, and both effects together with the cost savings and cost measures that we have undertaken level more or less out. As you can see that also in our EBITDA pre on the same slide, we have reached 108.6 million euro in the first nine months of 2025, which is roughly 50% less than last year. And as you can see, our profitability, despite the impact from our high margin silicon carbide business, which goes down so massively, and we see that on the next slide, we still can manage it on this level. that our EBDA goes down, not proportionally as the sales, but even lower. And therefore, our EBDA pre-margin even slightly increases to 16.6% compared to 16.3% after the first three quarters of last year. I think that's a quite remarkable achievement that we see here. On the one hand side, how we manage the restructuring of our carbon fiber side, we are I'm very happy with the progress that we did there. After such a few couple of months that we are conducting this, we closed down more or less two sites. Labadeo site is more or less closed. Moses Lake site in the U.S. is idled, and we stopped production there, and therefore adjusted the workforce quite massively. And with these effects, together with the overall cost savings that we put in place, we are able to to manage the downturn in the silk and carbide business, which is a business where the margin exceeds the cost quite significantly, and therefore it's hard to compensate on that, but we achieved that. And I also say here for the first time in this call, we confirm our guidance. I want to make this very clear that we have adjusted our top line sales previously this year, let me say 10 to 15% lower than last year. but the EBITDA pre will be in the range of 130 to 150. This is what we can say today. I think the split of the sales, I mean, is very much the same as in previous quarters. A graphite solution is still dominating our business by far, and this is also why the impact of this very profitable business hits us so hard. Coming to the individual business units, You see on slide number six the performance of Graphite Solution, and here exactly the impact that we're all talking about. We have a 21% drop in our sales after the first three quarters of the relevant years compared to last year, now reaching only 325.7 million euro sales in this business unit. The downturn, the impact of 87 million drop in the top line can be almost exclusively contributed to the downturn of our business line, semiconductor and LED. You see here in the comments, 77 million euro is the downturn in this business line, almost a drop by 40%. This gets compensated because the other businesses are rather stable. that the overall impact is then just roughly 20%. But thanks to the high profitability in this business, our EBITDA-3 gets hit by 44%, now reaching 58.2%, which is at a drop by 46 million euro. And this shows how profitable this business are and how dependent we can say we are profit-wise on that. We will come to that and the development. Andreas will elaborate a little bit. But our EVDA pre-margin dropped from 25% to now 18%.

Yes, good afternoon also from my side. Thomas has commented already on the 77 million Euro year-on-year drop in our core segment SEMI and LED. This is in line with the development we had seen in the first half already, and it's also in line with our expectations of an around two-year slowdown of that business. However, we remain confident that the market is set to recover after this dip. First of all, the underlying battery electric vehicle sales and demand is back strong. Second, we see the inventory management along the chain happening. And third, last but not least, the silicon carbide is set as the semiconductor material of choice in e-mobility. So semiconductor sales are set to recover from our perspective. Back to you, Thomas.

Thank you. I continue with the development of process tech on slide number eight. Process tech remains rather stable in the top line. Despite the market, chemical industries, especially in Europe, is still in a continuous travel. But process tech manages, thanks to the international or even global setup that we have, that it can balance our portfolio with the United States, with the Americas, but also with with the Asian sites that we've managed to keep our sales on the level that we've seen also last year. We have reached 102.4 million euro in the top line, and this is just a decline by 3% compared to last year. We still live very much from the strong order book, how we started into the year, and all this very attractive life-scale project really contributed also margin-wise to this development. We now see a little bit declining order book as we entered into Q3, and this will continue also a little bit in Q4. And we see also a continuous price pressure when new projects get awarded. So the continuation of this very strong performance that we see after nine months in this year will potentially get a little bit eroded by end of the year. But so far in this year, we have reached 28 million EBITDA pre, which is a 9.4% increase compared to last year. Despite the sales, they're rather on the same level. I think that's a remarkable performance that our process tech colleagues achieved here, and we're very grateful for that. And the margin reached now 27.3% in this business. I think that's a very strong performance, and we're very happy about that. Coming to carbon fiber, which is another, yeah, good result, and you might wonder why I say that, because sales dropped by 20% or 32 million euro, now reaching 125.7%. And why do we still say this is a success? Because for the first time since three years, our carbon fiber business unit shows positive results on an operative level. And I think that's quite remarkable that we achieved that with the closure of two sites in Labradio and in the shutdown of the production in Moses Lake in the United States. We managed to have a very quick turnaround in our performance there. And when you look at the EBITDA-3, compared last year, at the same point of time, we reached, after nine months, minus 8 million euro. And today, we can show 9.5 million euro. As you remember, there's always a split because we also show our proportional net result of our BCCB, JV, in the result of carbon fiber. Last year, the JV impacts was 11.7 billion euros, so the operative loss was even higher by almost 20 million then. This time, it's only, this is attributable to the, yeah, weak business of BCCB right at the moment. At the moment, the impact is 5.5 million euro, and I mean, you could do the math in the end. The operative performance of carbon fiber then is plus 4 million euro after nine months this year. I think beginning of the year, if somebody had told me that we achieved that after nine months, we all would have bet on that. I think it's a great, great achievement of the management there, and we are very grateful for that to achieve this turnaround and to continue with a profitable business as we have it. Last but not least, a composite solution. Yes, we also see an €11 million investment or 11% decline in sales there as well, coming from 95.8 million euro after nine months last year, now reaching 84.8 million euro this year. Why that? You probably remember in the first three, four months of last year's performance, we still had this very profitable business within U.S., American, SUV, OEM. and this project that canceled at that point of time with the breakup fees. But then of course, last year's figures still contain that, at least for the first three, four months of the year. On the one hand side, the sales, but also the bottom line, both are now out, and this is the reason for the decline, so to speak, in sales, but also EBDA pre. On the other hand, this also shows that it's very difficult to win new projects. And we did that only recently. I think we've won a couple of projects. But until they materialize into turnover and sales, this will be the second half of 2026 until they really materialize and impact also our profitability and bottom line. Our EBITDA pre-margin, thanks to the cost measures that we also do there, still reaches almost a double-digit figure. It's 9.8%, and I think for automotive Q1, there's nothing to hide with such a margin. But yes, you're right, the business declined and became smaller. Last but not least, on the next slide, I look at our bottom line in the P&L and also some cash and balance sheet figures. Our net result is massively negative, as it has been already at half year. We now reach after nine months of 2025, and that's a result of minus 50.3 million euro. This is mainly affected by the non-recurring restructuring cost. We have about 30, 34 million of impairment in carbon fiber, where we impaired some inventory, but also the remaining assets in our Moses Lake site. I can tell you now there's really almost hardly anything left which you can write off in our carbon fiber business. If you put the 81 million restructuring cost on the minus 51, then it would be on the level of last year with plus 30. That shows that if you leave out the one-time effect, we have positively contributing business despite the problems that we see in the market, contributing every quarter positive results. And you also can see it in the free cash flow. It's down 3 million compared to last year. I think this is also a very strong performance after nine months in this year to have a more or less stable cash flow despite all the restructuring efforts, which, of course, you can call pre, but in the end, They cost you some money, and they are affecting the free cash flow. We managed to keep three positive quarters of free cash flow in 2025, and we're proud of that. And despite all the restructuring efforts and all the costs involved, our equity ratio still is around 40%, with 39.7%. I think that clearly shows the resilience and the very strong balance sheet that SGL has. Our leverage ratio is at 0.8%. The growth that we still achieve is I think given the circumstances that we face, we are very happy with our performance and our development here. And with that, I hand over to Andrea, who will guide you through the next chapter.

Thank you, Thomas. And in this second part of our call today, I would like to reflect on our activities in the three quarters 2025 so far, and also on what is next in our journey. In order to counterbalance the structural challenges in our CF business, as well as the market slowdowns around us, we have taken various measures this year, as already explained in previous calls. The first thing is the restructuring of the carbon fibers business. Of course, Thomas has described the exit from unprofitable business activities, especially in the areas of acrylic fibers and precursors. and that generated in total cost savings of 25 million euro, and it enabled us to return to a positive EBITDA for that business. The second block is for SGL. In total, the optimization of our headcount setup and implementation of really extensive group-wide cost reduction measures, and we are overall working on simplification of our processes and our corporate setup in order to reflect the smaller footprint we are in as a company now. Group-wide one-time effects total minus 84.7 million Euro, but as already described, the equity ratio remained high at almost 40%. That's quite an achievement from our perspective. In parallel to these two activity blocks, we have kicked off our corporate strategy process. We are looking at who SGL Carbon will be five years down the road in 2030, which businesses will remain, which businesses will be expanded, and what are our new growth areas. So a lot of interesting things to look at. And the communication of this new corporate strategy is supposed to happen in the context of our 2025 results publication in March 2026. To give you a flavor for the direction we are thinking already today, I would like to give you some insights into three current development projects. The first block is new technologies for energy generation, where we have a great offer of various graphite grades for high temperature reactors. which supply energy in a decentralized way close to where the energy demand is. And also, we have developed materials for energy storage systems that will help to shift to renewable energy sources. The second big block for our graphite solutions business is the research and development on new coating technologies. And we are currently in the market introduction for new metal coated materials, especially building on tantalum carbide as a technology. And by that, we hope to build up further growth fields. Last but not least, a third area of current development projects that the security and defense industry, obviously quite a big topic at the moment. And our products, basically in all the business units, offer a wide range of great characteristics for these applications. For example, carbon composite components made with preprex from our CS and CS businesses, which help to enable lightweight solutions, like in the picture shown here to the right on that slide. Thermal insulation for high-performance needs is also a big topic. for SGL where we have great capabilities, and that includes, for example, target industries like the space industry. So you see there's a lot to be excited about, and of course we will keep you posted, especially in that strategy update end of the first quarter next year. Last but not least, for this call, also from my side, underlining that we confirm our guidance 2025, sales minus 10 to 15% lower than last year, and the EBITDA pre in the range of 130 to 150 million euro. Thank you very much for your attention today.

Now we ask thank you questions.

The first question comes from Thomas Deser from Union Investment, Frankfurt. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everybody. Thank you for the presentation so far and for taking my question. My question is about the investment plans of Infineon and others in the semiconductor industry in Germany. To what extent is that relevant for SGL?

Thanks for that question. Of course, not specifically commenting on particular companies, but the investment activities in our region in Germany and Europe. This is, of course, important. There's a lot of momentum, a lot of new applications developing in EV, but also in data centers and the like. So that's a real megatrend for us as a company. But as far as we are concerned with our global setup and network, it's actually really a global demand we are serving. So for us, there's no particular location in particular focus. We are involved in the global semiconductor supply chains, and in that sense, for our sales, for our business. It does not matter whether investments happen in a specific country or not. I hope that answers your question.

Yes. Thank you very much.

Okay. Then if we see no further questions, then thanks for your participation. And you'll find the presentation on our webpage. So if a question is upcoming, please call the investor relations team with June, Rick, and myself. Thanks a lot, and have a nice afternoon. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Carver School, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your line.