Sika Ag Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SICA 9-month 2022 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call Operator. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Dominik Schlapnick, Health Communication and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sandra, and good afternoon and welcome to our 9-month Results Conference Call. Present on the call with me today is Thomas Hasler, CEO, Adrian Widmer, CFO, and Christine Kukan, Head of IR. We published our nine-month figures this morning at 5 o'clock. The nine-month presentation is as well published on our website. With this, Thomas Hasler and Adrian Widmer will provide further details on the results and the outlook. Afterwards, we will be ready to take your questions. I hand now over to Thomas to start with the highlights of these nine months.

Thank you, Dominik, and good afternoon to our nine-month results call from my side. In summary, SICA performed very strong in a very challenging economic environment and geopolitical distress. It is a nine-month result that needs a few explanations as we have the reported numbers and underlying business evolution, which we will present in the coming 45 minutes. We reported an increase in net sales of 5.6% in Swiss francs, a heavy impact from the currency appreciation because our local currency growth is 12.4%. The vast majority of our growth comes from acquisition, 11.1% in local currency. So that leaves 1.3% on the organic side. The organic side has strongly come back from a weak start into the year and we have momentum going forward. This gives us confidence also going into the Q4 and into next year. On the material option, which has been and still remains a strong target for us to reestablish our corridor of 54% to 55%. We achieved 53.1% in the first nine months, a strong recovery considering last year's level of 49.3%. On the reported EBIT margin of 13.5%, which is lower than prior year, we have to consider in there also the one-time effects. So if you take the one-time effects out, our underlying EBIT margin is at 14.8%, which again is 100 base points higher than prior year. Here, Adrian will go into the details guiding you through this. For me, it's very important that the underlying organic business is going and moving in the right direction. As an indication for this, our Q3 performance is the strongest Q3 our strongest quarter ever on absolute numbers in profitability but it is also one of the strongest ever achieved in Zika's history. It's 24.3% higher than Q3 2022 and it is a quarter where we had little impact from one time so it is a much more transparent comparison of the going rate of Zika given all the great let's say, achievements in the first nine months with NBCC now being closed, but at the same time, of course, also having then one-time effects into our reported EBIT. This leads me also to the biggest highlight of 2023, which is the successful closing of the NBCC transaction in the beginning of May. And since then, the very positive momentum we have seen across the globe which also reconfirmed our strong positive synergy momentum, allowed us also to increase the capital market day, our expectation from the synergies now being at 180 to 200 million from the former 160 to 180. This clearly is the highlight and it's also probably the momentum where the company now is gaining traction every day as we advance in the integration. And we will come back to that also from Adrian's side in regards to how this momentum will contribute into the future performance. We did also other acquisitions, Thyssen team in July and Schema in August, important additions to the concrete business in North America or to the local business in Peru, a strong market where we now have more opportunities, almost doubling our presence in the distribution market. Again, one of the typical bolt-on transactions that we stand for and that we are aiming also to continue in the future. Organically, we further invest in India. India is one of the hotspots. We have double-digit growth in India. India, we also foresee in the coming period in the coming years that with all the infrastructure activity, India is the place to be and we added just in time another plant to our footprint in India, which now is up to 12 factories all across the continent. We also reinforced our business in the US, the Chattanooga plant, which is producing fibers for the concrete business. So all in all, a very eventful nine months. Challenges from the outside, which we tackle, which we turn into opportunities. And from the inside, the integration of MVCC and the expansion of our footprint, all in line with our strategy, which, by the way, we also then reported. Beginning of October, not exactly within the nine months, but certainly another highlight which is indicating our confidence into the future, into the next five years with the elevated growth expectation and again with the new EBITDA target range of 20 to 23%, which we aim starting to implement the beginning of next year into the new strategy period. With that, I would close the introduction and hand over to Adrian to go and give some more details on the business.