Sika Ag Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SICA 9-month 2025 results conference call and live webcast. I am Matilde, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being 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 Dominik Zlapnik, Head Communication and Investor Relations of SICA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Matilda. And good afternoon, everyone, and a warm welcome to our nine-month results conference call. Present on the call today is Thomas Hasler, our CEO, Adrian Wittmer, our CFO, Christine Kukan, head of IR, and Yomi Lemerman, IR manager. We are excited to share with you the highlights and key messages for the nine months. Earlier today, we published our results and made the investor presentation available 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 the nine months.

Thank you, Dominik, and also from my side, a warm welcome to this afternoon call. And let me... quickly summarize the publications of today and some highlights underlying that we would like to share with you this afternoon. Zika has delivered a resilient performance in the first nine months in a market that has remained to be dominated by uncertainty of various kinds. We have been able to increase our sales by 1.1% in local currency, despite a heavy impact from our China construction business with a double-digit decline. Also, this year, we are facing an unprecedented foreign currency impact. It's almost 5%, primarily due to the weaker US dollar. But let me summarize a little bit our regions. And here, starting with EMEA, EMEA has seen for the whole year so far a very nice double-digit growth in the area Africa and Middle East. This is in line with the trend we have seen from last year and it's strong also to continue. At the Eastern Europe business, we see green sprouts of growth. Eastern Europe is moving back to growth. It's mainly coming from the residential, so from the retail side, but it is clear this has picked up in pace and will also support the future evolution in EMEA. The region overall has reached 1.5% organic growth in the first nine months. America, on the other side, offers huge opportunities in the U.S., Here we are collecting every day data centers opportunities that are unprecedented and growing and are not impacted at all by the uncertainties that are influencing other segments. The data center business has become a cornerstone of our direct business in the US. Just similar to our infrastructure business, which is doing very well in the US. Also here, we see more and more the impact of the Infrastructure Act that is delivering us opportunities from the east to the west coast. We also see that the US currently has some uncertainty that holds back on the reshoring. But here, plenty of these projects are ready to start And we are also expecting that soon there will be more clarity and then production or construction stock can start soon. We also see in the mature market of North America, a huge backlog in refurbishment, which is an opportunity to come soon, as this backlog cannot push out very long. When I come to Asia Pacific, this is the region which has been most challenged, mainly influenced by the decline in our China construction business. If you would take the China construction business out of the equation, actually the region Asia Pacific would have been the region with the highest growth, organic growth of around 4% in local currency. This comes from Southeast Asia and India with high single digit growth. But as I mentioned, The China business is challenged and also we have taken here decisive measure to take here the margin and profit orientation of the volume orientation. But let me now move further into the P&L. And here I would see the material margin increase to 55%, a significant demonstration of the synergies that we have been able to further increase from the MBCC and other acquisitions, efficiencies in our operations, and also a good cost management on the input cost side. This has also then trickled down to the EBITDA margin, which has rise by 10 base points to 19.2% compared to prior year. Also here, The bottom line impact by the ethics is quite significant. It is almost 100 million when we look at the EBTA alone. As mentioned before, we are taking decisive actions. This is in line with our manage for result key principle. We introduce our fast forward investment and efficiency program today, which builds on our leadership position. It will enhance customer value. It will improve operational excellence through digital acceleration and therefore drive growth and profitability in the future. This program is built on a few blocks like investments of 100 to 150 million in the coming years. It is also coming with a shorter term oriented structural adjustments in markets where we see ongoing weak momentum here the China construction most pronounced, where we are making adjustments which come with one-off costs of roughly 80 to 100 million in 25 and the workforce reduction of up to 1,500 employees. The program overall will drive annual savings of 150 to 200 million per annum with the full impact become then implemented in the year of 2028. But now I hand over to Adrian to provide us more details and flavors to the financial nine-month performance.