SMA Solar Technology AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the analyst and investor presentation quarterly statement January to September 2025. I am Sandra, the course co-operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listened 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 one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Ravi Raul, CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone. I very much appreciate that you are taking the time for this investor and analyst call on our nine-month 2025 results. This conference call is scheduled for up to 60 minutes and will be recorded. After my management presentation, I will be happy to answer your questions. Today's presentation is available on our investor relations website. The replay will also be available on this website shortly. Our agenda for today. First, I will give a review of our nine months and our presence in the home segment in the U.S. is currently being evaluated. Excellent service will be our USP in the future, enabled by cost-efficient operations via our multi-shared services and both. In general, it means that we will use our global footprint even stronger going forward while strategically focusing more on our core market, on our core home market in Europe. In total, the program will mean a reduction of about 300 FTEs in Germany and another 50 in non-core markets, while building up about 200 FTEs, mainly in Poland and India. Now let's talk about large scale. Our large scale and project solutions continues to operate in a highly dynamic global market that is driven by a growing demand for grid stability solutions. SMA is a recognized expert and leader in this field, which puts us in an excellent position to seize this momentum. One example for the successful inauguration of the first utility-scale battery energy storage system with grid-forming technology in continental Europe, in Föhren, near Trier, Germany. We are proud to have delivered seven medium-voltage power stations with our sunny central storage up-battery inverters and the SMA power plant manager. Altenso also continues to grow and realize challenging projects, as you can see in our second example here. In September, Altenso commissioned a hydrogen plant conversion unit, HydrogenDU, a pioneering green hydrogen plant located on the coast of Namibia. The special feature here, this plant is the first ever to operate 100% off the grid and an intelligent energy management system coordinates the optimal time for hydrogen production. large scale has delivered the first sunny central flex and the power plant manager in the us at the end of july manifesting our position as a global player in this field the sunny central flex is an innovative modular power plant solution that was just last year recognized by tv magazine with top innovation award the award recognizes the ability of the sunny central flex to facilitate the integration of PV, battery and hydrogen applications into large-scale projects, making it possible to design, build and adapt for new and exciting power plant use cases. Now let's turn to the last page, our guidance for 2025. As said several times, the market environment for HBS is still very difficult due to macroeconomic deterioration and the declining expansion rates in the residential and commercial sectors in most key markets. Thus, 2025 sales are expected to be well below the previous year's level for this division. The large-scale and project solutions division is planning sales slightly above the high level of the previous year. Group EBITDA and EBIT will be negatively impacted by lower sales and the resulting lower fixed cost regression in HBS, as well as one of described earlier. Due to the significant further deterioration in Q3 of the anticipated sales performance for 2025 and the following years in HBS, we had to lower our guidance range on September 1st to 1.45 to 1.5 billion euros for sales and minus 80 to minus 30 million euros of EBITDA. Of the expected total one-offs of about 250 to 265 million euros, 45 million euros were recognized in Q2 and 159 million euros in Q3. Please note that further provisions for restructuring measures will be added in Q4. Last but not least, a note on our upcoming events. Full year 2025 financial results will be published on March 26th Next year, combined with an analyst and investor call. With this, I conclude the presentation, and of course, I'm happy to take your questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questionnaires on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. Our first question comes from Lasse Stuben from Burenburg. Please go ahead.