Sika Ag Adr

A wonderful good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the CECA half-year 2024 results conference call. My name is Francie, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and that the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for question at any time by pressing star and one. For operator assistant, please press star At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Dominic Slapnick, Head of Communications and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon and welcome to our half-year results conference call. Present on the call with me today is Thomas Hasler, CEO, Adrian Widmer, CFO, Christine Kukan, Head of IR, and Jomi Limmermann, IR Manager. We published our half-year figures this morning at 5 o'clock. The presentation to the half-year is as well published on our website. With this, Thomas Hafler and Adrian Wittmer 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 the first half-year.

Thank you, Dominic, and welcome to our half-year call. And I'm very proud to present here a very strong operating result for the first six months, which are a clear demonstration of our strong and excellent position to gain market share, even in demanding conditions or under demanding conditions. Starting on the top with a record net sales of 5.8 plus 9.2% in Swiss francs, or translated into 12.8% in local currency, we are well advancing and taking market shares in all the markets we are present. It is also a currency impact of 3.6% that we have to consider still on the high side, but with a lowering trend going forward. One of the most remarkable achievements clearly is the material margin expansion above 55% in the first half of this year. Adrian will go into the details, but of course it starts all there where it then trickles down with a good cost management into an EBITDA margin jump of 220 base points compared to the first half in 23. So this will be explained in all details by Adrian in the coming session. I would like now to steer over to the highlights that is overarching and is most significant. It's the integration efforts of MBCC, which also allowed us to raise our synergy guidance for the current year up to 100 to 120 million. It is just fantastic to see how the combined organization is advancing in the implementation of the well-defined actions to gain synergies on the commercial side with the cross-selling activities, the portfolios that have been put together, as well as also on the cost side in integrating very well on the back office side, on the operational side, and all this with a momentum and with an energy level that is making this that the outstanding results possible. At the same time, I would like here also to mention our global employee survey, which we have conducted for the first time under the 28 strategy. And the results have been very, very encouraging and led to extraordinary engagement rate of 86%. And this is the clear manifest of the organization that our employees are highly engaged. And you have to consider that many of the employees have been recent joiners of the SICA group. 6,000 came in through NBCC less than 12 months, 4,000 have come in as a normal cause of fluctuation, so many new joiners. But from the beginning, being highly engaged, contributing, making those fantastic results possible. I would also like to outline that our drive for the net zero implementation has been validated by the SPTI, and so our roadmap and our implementation for net zero targets are well in line, and we are working towards those according to our strategic targets that we have outlined in our 2018. strategy. Other highlights of the first half are the acquisition of Quick Bond, the bridge deck renovation company in the US. It is a fast implementation system that allows that we have only very limited downtime and can operate bridges during the day while overnight they are going to be renovated. It's a system that has been adapted to over 30 DOTs in the US. and it is expanding and we see also great opportunities to use it in other mature markets where we have plenty of, let's say, aging infrastructure and needs also for fast renovation and where we can then also build on this technology that QuickBond has introduced 30 years ago in the US and is now available for Zika worldwide. We also have worked on our our organic expansion of our footprint with the fiber factory in Peru. We are addressing an ever-growing mining opportunity in Lhasa. With these fibers, we are providing concrete solutions to secure mines in an advanced and in a more cost-efficient way. We also have continued our expansion in China. with an additional factory for the tile adhesive business that Seeker BFM is so well introducing and expanding into the Chinese distribution market. So ongoing investments on the organic as well as on the inorganic, as well as on the people side are the key for us to drive further momentum in the coming months and years ahead. But now I would like to hand over to Adrian to provide us more details on the set of key financials that we have disclosed today.