Sika Ag Adr

Excellent. Good morning and a warm welcome for all here in the room, visible, and also a warm welcome to the invisible that are virtually joining our media investor conference. I think the short video has brought everything to the point, and I will go and bring more, let's say, details into it, but it has been very well, let's say, aggregated here. But before I start, I would also like to share my sincere gratitude with our 33,000 employees. Many of them are also following this call here, and it is really amazing to see how committed and engaged our employees have supported the company. with the many initiatives globally in 2025. And it is also, let's say, the source of the strength of the company in delivering in tough times, also outstanding results, shaping for the future with the support of our employees. That's what makes me feel proud to be at the top of the company, but representing 33,000 employees. Now let's look at the agenda, which will follow the sequence of sharing some of the highlights of 25 from my side, but also then give some flavor to the strategy execution. And then, very interesting, how are we doing on the business implementation, key elements which are driving growth into this year as well as into the coming years. also supported then by the regional manager, Christoph, Mike, and Philip, which then will also give us a bit of flavor on what's going on in the regions. Before then, Adrian is going to make a deep dive into the financials of 25, then followed by the outlook for 26, as well as then the Q&A session at the end of the session. But I think before I go on, Into the highlights, I would like to emphasize here the strong foundation that SICA is built on and is able to also then outperform the markets, increase profitability in the future. And I think most prominent, Sika is the undisputed leader in the chemical construction market by far. This gives us a leading edge access to big project access across the channels as the brand stands for top performance, top value and is recognized as a clear benchmark and wherever in a challenging environment where complexity is increasing, SICA is the first source to go to, to help the specifiers, to help the architects, the contractors to overcome those challenges, because they can count on us providing value-add innovation to overcome the pain points of the industry. This, of course, is what we bring to the market Inside, it is this innovation drive constantly challenging status quo. Always look what is out in the market challenging our customers, our contractors, applicators, and see how we can remedy those pains with intelligent, innovative solutions, helping them to overcome those complexities. This is a key element here. which we also see represented in the appreciation of our customers when we look at the net promoter score that Zika has clearly ahead of anybody else in the market. At the same time, talking about the market, construction market is a market that has a lot of influential elements in there. The higher the confidence in the future, the more investments flow naturally into construction. We are facing a period of a lot of uncertainty. Therefore, let's say markets are hesitant to invest, not all of the markets, but some of the markets definitely. And it is dampening, let's say, the construction market. activity short-term. It's the cycle that we see that is influencing, let's say, the markets overall, but this is also an opportunity. A down cycle is an opportunity. We took this last year and we installed an efficiency program, a productivity program, providing our organization a leaner and a more agile structure and also investing into digitalization as a key driver for future differentiation potential in the market with a clear aspiration to be in our market the digital leader just like we are the innovation leader market leader we drive for digital leadership and this we took in in 25 and we will see also how nicely it will generate the potential for us to outperform the market and also to generate the margins increase. The organic growth traditionally and also ongoing is paired with our hold on M&A strategy. We have a fantastic track record over the past 15, 10, 15 years with many, many bolt-ons. And we will show later on a bit the flavor of how accretive and how strong the integration power of SICA is. This can be anywhere on the planet. This can be a mature market. This can be an emerging market. We have here clearly also established a skill set to spot the most attractive prospects and then engage clearly based on KPIs that are oriented towards return generation and synergy generation and accelerating growth, then the best one for transactions. And then when we close, we instantly step in and drive then the integration and the synergy and the expansion of the business via cross-selling, via channel integration, activation and leveraging our global portfolio. So this is the foundation. This is why we are very optimistic and very confident about our ability to outperform the markets, as we have also stipulated in our midterm strategy by three to 6% in local currency. Now talking shortly and briefly about the markets and the fear starting probably with where we're Exactly probably a year ago, we were guiding before the tariff, let's say uncertainty was revealed and which had massive impact on the North American, but also ripple effects across the globe with uncertainty related to tariffs going up and down. This has been a sentiment that has stayed for decades. for 25, which then also triggers into lack of consumer confidence, further increasing in China. As you can see, almost 50% of the residential market reduction within two years, very much also here linked to the uncertainty of the global markets, which has also then triggered our reaction to the Chinese business. And towards the end of the year, As if not needed, another element that came with the longest U.S. government shutdown that, again, was hindering projects to start, waiting for permits, waiting for approvals, which was, again, an element that was unforeseeable. But it is what it is. Overall, we conclude last year's, for us, relevant market had a roughly decline of 2.5%. given all these elements. Nevertheless, that's where we come into our performance and here our outperformance of the market with a 0.6% growth in local currency is a demonstration that even under severe, let's say, weather conditions, the company can deliver. Also on the operating If we take in consideration also the steps we took with the fast forward program, only a slight decline in the operating margins, while we of course see negative leverage with a low organic or negative organic growth rate. Very obvious here also visible, the strength of the Swiss francs has been once again, let's say the translation effect. But of course, when we look at the report and numbers, it is quite heavy with 5.4% FX implication in 2025. I talked already a little bit about the actions we took. The market is soft, it's muted, but at the same time, this is the time. This is the time for strong companies to act, to prepare, because every cycle comes to an end. And we took the decision in the second half last year to shape the company, not only in China, where we have been rebasing the business, but globally to say, this is the opportunity, this is the time. where we can and must take proactive steps, making a leaner, more agile organization, also investing into our operational footprint in automation and efficiency to be able then also to kickstart when, the cycle turns up and take advantage of ready to roll organization. We paired it also with investments on the digital front as the digital journey can be accelerated and we took the decision here to fast forward our digital journey with clear elements that we will show later on also in transforming our business more digital and aspiring for the digital leadership in the industry. And all these investments come with a fantastic return, you know, less than two year payback and up to 100% return on the individual investments. Now, when we look into the regions and here, If we look at the outperformance of the markets, 2.2% in local currency was the growth in EMEA. In EMEA, very clearly, we have pockets of growth like the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia. We have parts of Europe that showed improvements towards the end of the year, Eastern Europe, the parts of Southern Europe as well. So here, momentum that has built up and is then also demonstrating our outperformance in EMEA's. The Americas, our second largest region as well, had a strong start into the year. So, January was fantastic. February, until about the time of the month as now, was still going in the same traction. We had good momentum coming from 24, building up momentum. Unfortunately, that was then softened over the course of the year. And there is also still a prevailing sentiment in the Americas. But in the Americas, we also have great pockets of growth, like the tech investments. The investments into data center is booming with, let's say, increasing the commercial construction spent quite tremendously while other commercial constructions are lagging so the data center boom and our strong position as a forerunner and as a peace of mind provider to the owners and the hyperscaler give us here a leading edge and just to give that a bit in perspective, you know, we have been participating in over 4,000 data centers globally so far, and let alone 400 last year, thereof 230 in the Americas. So this is a pocket of growth of substantial contribution. Besides that, Latin America, the markets are more resilient, just like other emerging markets have demonstrated here, more resilience to the global uncertainties. Which brings me over to Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific reported a minus 5.2 in local currency. If we take the China construction market out of the perspective, it would have been a growth of 2.9% in local currency. And here, as I mentioned before, very much driven by strong momentum in Southeast Asia, in India, that is partially offsetting the weaknesses in China. Now, when we talk about outperformance, outperformance of the market, a market that has been roughly 2.5% down, we compare us to the peers. We have established this peer comparison for quite a while. And as you can see here on the left-hand side, if we take in all the relevant peers and their activities in the construction chemical market, we are outperforming our peers by roughly 2%. In 25, we don't have yet the full set of numbers, so this is still work in progress and we'll probably also then shift a little bit as Q4 was not only for SICA a challenging quarter, it was also for our peers a challenging quarter, but more relevant. None of our peers that are in this list here is really active in China. So when we take, let's say, the comparable geographical spread of the peers and us, then on the right-hand side, you can see the outperformance consistently being almost close to 3% to the peers, which are in our expectation also slightly above the market trends. Now, some of the highlights which we are particularly proud of is the increase of our gross margin, our material margin increased to 54.9%. This is a testimonial to the strength in value selling. This is the value that we bring through our innovation into the market. We are recognized as a value provider and the return of our customers by utilizing our products, our innovation is speaking for themselves and is driving this material margin progression in 25. But as you can see, also coming from 23 to 25, steadily increasing our material margin. I think a particular strength of the company is the strong cash generation. Also, in light of, let's say, lower EBIT in absolute numbers, driven by the one-time effect of fast-forward, as well as the strong currency. But when we looked at what the company constantly delivers in the last three years, solid double-digit returns in cash, which is almost $1.4 billion that we can then redeploy into investing into our business, giving it back to our shareholders, as well as investing into bolt-on acquisitions. So that's underlying, I think, an element of strength that we are also capturing going forward. Another highlight we have not talked so much about, but our aspiration to be leaders in the industry is not only on financial targets oriented. It is also our employee safety. In 21, we launched a program. We set the high mark and say we want to be leader on safety for our employees. And as you can see, this is a journey. This is a journey which gradually improves. And in the meantime, we have reached clearly above industry average standard. But we are not stopping. We want to make SICA successful. the safest workplace in the industry and we are investing heavily together with our employees to create this safety culture which is progressing very nicely. It makes me very proud that our employees are supporting this journey as this is not dictated by top down, this is ground up supported and this is also when we look into What it means behind, let's say, the numbers, it means a safer and more, let's say, streamlined and more process-oriented and more, let's say, transparent organization, which leaves less up to chances. And that's, of course, also a value driver for other stakeholders, as this is part of – getting transparency and getting efficiency throughout the organization talking about the non-financial metrics i think we can be proud we are constantly delivering on our non-financial commitments on the greenhouse gas emission reduction scope one and two the ones that we heavily influence the water discharge reduced by three percent Waste disposal by 5.7% and as mentioned 14% on the safety side. These are all value accretive elements which are transferring into efficiency, into tangible also financial benefits for the company and its shareholders. Talking about the other element, the organic element, very important, reinvesting into the organization, investing into safety and so on. It's the bolt-on acquisition strategy. We have been able to sign seven and close six of the transactions in 2025. I think here most remarkable also, as you can see, two of them in the Middle East. This is a booming area. This is a double digit growth area where these two acquisitions are spot on not only bolt on their spot on to to market demands that are also expected to continue to grow in the near future we also made a bold move in scandinavia with two transaction giving us here on the mortar side a very strong footprint And as you may recall, we have a very strong adhesives and sealant footprint in distribution in Scandinavia. We are combining these two strengths and also aspire to be the undisputed leader in distribution with our strong brands in Scandinavia. Here also very clear value and growth-driven acquisition, which the others then also supporting mature markets like in Singapore, or HBS in North America. We invest in our own capabilities, our factories. Here, some of them are expansions into demand-driven geographies, like in South America too, like North Africa, Morocco, the booming economy, also here covering more space in that country. Kazakhstan, as I mentioned, Central Asia, the booming area, but then also in China. And here maybe I would like to elaborate. Sucho is our main site. It's our headquarter close to Shanghai. We have opened the factory for adhesives and sealants for the automotive and industrial manufacturing business. We have great success. The plant opened in the second half last year. And we are gaining share with the Chinese OEMs so that we are already now considering a further expansion of the capacity. As we see, with this fully automated, with this state-of-the-art, we are having good traction with the Chinese OEMs, bringing them top level. global innovation into their manufacturing processes. And it's just an example of our constant investment also in upgrading our operations, our footprint and gain more efficiency and productivity. Now, let me quickly look in the last six weeks. I mean, here, the year just has started, but I think it's remarkable how the year started, because in the first six weeks, we have opened already five new additional plants, and that's just mentioned before, very much demand-driven. We have a very strong concrete market in the south. East of the US, so Florida as a booming area, we put the most modern plant down for ad mixture with fully automated capabilities in the plant near Orlando. We then also expand in Latin America, in Colombia, and in Argentina, which is a constant growth platform for us. Bangladesh in Southeast Asia, as well as in Africa with a new plant near the Victoria Lake, 800 kilometers away from our headquarter, also covering this strong growing market there in the East African market. Again, very exciting. I think we reported that just lately, the acquisition of Akim in Turkey. Turkey is a powerhouse. It's an engineering powerhouse. It's a powerhouse that is very influential in the Middle East, in Central Asia. This company has a fantastic footprint. has also a foot into Romania, so in the Eastern European market. And we are very happy that we are now able then soon to build on that platform, bringing our expertise, our technologies from the construction chemical side together with the sealant and the adhesives into the core markets of the Akkim and in reversal also bringing the Akkim products into the Zika world, into Europe, into other parts of the world as they perfectly fit our portfolio. for distribution and as mentioned before the the seventh transaction of last year closed the end of january so finia was a fast track acquisition signing early december closing end of end of January and it's a sizable excellent platform which we are utilizing now also to drive above market growth in Scandinavia and utilizing this to leverage our synergies into the market. Maybe a short segue into the adhesives business. We haven't talked that much about the adhesives business, but it is underlying representing about 30% of our business. It is relevant or mission critical in all our markets. It's in all channels, has a very predominant position. It's an enabler. It's a typical enabler to move from traditional bonding techniques to techniques that enable multi-material structures that enable also smart decarbonized buildings. So it is a key element on the journey of all this technology. and it comes with very attractive innovation driven features where we have here a clear leading edge providing here state-of-the-art innovation like the curing by design that is enabling our customers to advance their design and their construction manufacturing processes. In the adhesives field, it's all about the brand. If you go from DIY over to the Big box, if you go into the professional, it is all driven by a few core brands and SICA is a core brand on the adhesive side. SICAflex is standing as a synonym for bonding in many market segments. And so that's the leverage potential which then also enables us to take full advantage in all segments and channels. Now quickly on the strategy execution. I don't need to go deeply into. You have seen this. It is a reconfirmation from our side to our midterm targets, gaining and outgrow market share in a profitable way. That's, in short, the message as a takeaway. Also on the financial as well as on the non-financial, very clear and transparent journey towards 28 that we have always communicated. Now, in the background, you know, we have a strong position. As I said, we are undisputed market leader with 12% market share in 100 billion market potential industry. And it is highly fragmented, which means the winner can take it all if you act like. And that's what we do. We take market share out of the position of strength. And when you look into the different target markets, the eight target markets, you see a lot of differentiation, but there's the one common theme across all of them, and this value-add product focus. In all these target markets, when you talk to contractors, when you talk to owners, when you talk to specifiers, architects, you will hear this common theme. SICA is clearly leading through value, providing exceptional value to the construction, to the manufacturing industry. That's what we stand for. That's what we are leveraging. That's our innovation drive. We are also very well balanced when we look across the different markets, coming from the infrastructure side, the commercial construction, residential construction, and then also the manufacturing industry, the automotive and the industry segment, where we have a good share in the global business. Also, when we look at the new construction and refurbish, Mature markets are more leaning on the refurb side, emerging markets more on the new, but also emerging markets like China, for instance, are moving very clearly into becoming more and more also refurbishment or renovation market. These are all elements that we balance very well and where we have the competencies to also bring this to the local market situation and bring those competencies to the 102 countries that we have worldwide. The market penetration, the outgrow of the market, this picture you have seen before. I talked a lot about the leverage potential that the company has, that we are utilizing to cross-selling, cross-selling in simple terms, these projects. have multiple needs of solution from waterproofing, from bonding, from sealing. It is here the clear aspiration to make us the one-stop shop for our contractor, for the applicator, and leverage our great recognition in the market. The multi-channel approach, I mentioned it before, it goes from the direct business all the way to the e-commerce business where the brand is super relevant, where, let's say, the specific solution for specific customer is super relevant. We cover it all, and we benefit here also to leverage that across all these channels. Go where the money is in very simple terms. It is the call for action for the local organization. Don't come back and tell us what is not going so well. Look for the pockets of growth. Look for the activities that are still going strong and invest there. And here data centers as an absolutely clear outstanding element, which is happening everywhere as a go-to, but it is also infrastructure spend is much less influenced by market downturns, infrastructure spend is a way also to take advantage of the resilience of the infrastructure, spend time there. This is the call for action for our local organization. Don't explain, drive business where you have pockets of growth and utilize resources. the group-wide expertise to drive this. Key geographies, well, it's Europe, North America, China, always in focus, always, of course, key decisive markets for us to be very close to and demonstrate our leadership in these leading geographies. And innovation above everything. I repeat myself, innovation at the core for the reason being driving value, driving... market share gains and ultimately outperforming market situations, whatever they are. I like this slide very much. We put this together in a simple term to demonstrate, you know, innovation is not coming just by saying so. It requires strong commitment and investment. And we are constantly investing into our R&D, in our innovation. 16 global technology centers which then also are influencing the 100 plus local, very local R&D facilities, 1,800 chemists, more than 5% of our employees are working on the innovation path and spending substantial money on innovation, 280 million our annual R&D spend. This is the investment What then comes out is innovation, is patents, is unique approaches, which then are converted into solutions which generate value for our customers, are protected by IP, but are then recognized ultimately when we look at what our innovation power is delivering. It delivers three to five percentage point higher gross margin. It represents almost a quarter of the products with less than five years in the market. This is then also showing the power of innovation in our markets. An excellent example of this is an innovation that we brought just before COVID to the market. It's novel. It's a patent-protected waterproofing membrane, which can be used pre- and post-applied. to do basement waterproofing in a way that you have absolute peace of mind and no need to fear any water leakages. This is picking up pace with a 27% kegger. It is a highly specified solution. So it takes some time until it spreads, but it spreads very quickly, especially in the Middle East. And I have here the picture of the, Al Maktoum International Airport that is under construction in Dubai. This is a huge project. Almost 3 million square meters of waterproofing membranes are utilized. We are the sole supplier. We are here also adding another landmark construction building to the success story of the SeekerProof A plus membrane system. Also data centers. I can't talk enough about data centers. We love the owners because the owners love us. They love that Zika gives them peace of mind, that they get the highest reliable performing solutions so that they can execute inside the shell by not having to care about the shell itself or disruption from the roof, from the walls, from the floors. That's why we have been very early the preferred choice as we stand for this reputation and the roofing as a particularly important part has further advanced we will bring a self-healing membrane to the roof which means that the roof membrane can also absorb and correct impacts from nature. Hail, for instance, is here a painful, disruptive element, but also just UV sunlight in Arizona is quite different than here in in Switzerland. So these are elements that are super vital. On the other hand, the fibers on the concrete floor, these are taking out carbon emission quite heavily as we can replace steel. We also have lower maintenance costs. We have higher robustness of concrete floors with fibers, and it is very appealing to data center owners to advance here and also contribute to decarbonize their buildings. Coming back to M&A, bolt-on M&A, I think we have indicated at the last time also how accretive bolt-on M&As are, and as you can see here, we look at the presynergies, EBITDA multiple at the time when we kick off the integration, and then within the third year, of the integration, we achieve a four times lower EBITDA multiple. So an improvement that builds on our possibility to accelerate growth, top-line growth, cost synergies, cross-selling synergies, and ultimately then also drive the EBITDA growth of the acquired company. This is, in our view, a superior way to provide capital returns and we are lining up more to come in the near future. AKIM just one perfect example of one that soon is going into the implementation mode. The big one, NBCC, we like to talk about the big one as it has generated tremendous synergy across the organization. Last year, our second, let's say, full year after the closing, we generated $182 million. And when you look back, when we signed the deal, we had 160 to 180 for the full third year as synergy commitment. And we have raised it twice now. And as you can see, at the moment, we are already above the original third year synergy level. And we have increased the synergies by 25%. over the last two years, which is a testimonial for faster integration and also higher synergy gains on the cost side as well as on the revenue side. Now, business implementation, looking into some key elements, and I come back to the data center because it's not only, let's say, the roof and the floor. There are many more elements mission critical to data centers. As you can see, the flooring solution, the precast, many of them are precast solution where we are with the precast, where we are then also with the joint sealants that are very important to make sure that there is no interference. The concrete itself, the admixtures, the fibers, fire protection, super relevant in data centers. That's why also the roofing systems are preferring our PVC roofs over other technologies as best-in-class fire protection solutions. And as mentioned, we have a reference list of more than 4,000 completed data centers worldwide, and here a fast pace with 400 last year in execution, 230 alone in the Americas, and more to come. And you will hear more than also from my colleagues from the regions. This is a clear focal point for us to also outperform the markets in general. Not to forget infrastructure, infrastructure, mega cities are suffering of lack of infrastructures in emerging markets. As we can see here, we have here Brazil as a good example, but you find it in Santiago, you find it in Southeast Asia, everywhere there are infrastructure construction ongoing. The same happens also in mature markets here, the example from Munich. from the S-Bahn station in Munich, the deepest S-Bahn station in Germany, also in Auckland. This is ongoing, and these are high-profile jobs where, again, the reputation and the possibility of SICA to be, let's say, one source for many solutions, make us a premier supplier to those companies. big projects and is also, as I mentioned before, an area where there is constantly flowing money as the need for infrastructure upgrade or new infrastructure is endless and growing. Another important part are let's say the the infrastructure in regards to ports we see that the globalization as we have experienced is questioned and more and more ports are built for more regionalized or let's say for a new supply chain setup here a good example from vietnam vietnam is one of the Let's say countries that is benefiting from moving out of China into, let's say, a more neutral territory. So here a lot of construction ongoing. And when you look also what's going to happen in the near future in regards to the port infrastructure. Again, ports are very, very, let's say, high-end construction. Here we talk about exposure to seawater, exposure to heavy-duty traffic. This is, again, a field where SICA has a leading edge and is very involved in taking benefit of those momentums. One that we have talked a lot when we talked about the China expansion of the retail journey. It is still ongoing in China. We will hear that later on, but it has made its way into Southeast Asia. When you look at the chart here, where we were in 2003, we had roughly 80,000 points of sales in Southeast Asia. We had 90,000 points of sales in China when we took over Parex in 2019. China is now at 280,000 points of sales. But I want to talk about our journey in Southeast Asia, which is already now at somewhere around 170,000 points of sales, and we are rapidly expanding our points of sales across Southeast Asia. And as you can see, it comes with results. It comes with double-digit results. growth in that segment, and we expect here a good mid-teen growth also for the years ahead of us. And it is not only an Asian topic. You will hear it is also spilling over into other emerging markets in EMEA or in the Americas. But let's not have the regions give us a bit the flavor of their growth initiatives. And, Christoph, if you would like to kick it off with the largest region, EMEA.

So, thank you, Thomas, and good morning, everyone. So, I think giving a reliable outlook for EMEA for this year is a bit like crystal ball. all reading in these volatile times. Nevertheless, our main first and foremost target remains. We want to outperform our markets. We want to do better than our competitors. This is what we measure basically every quarter. And here I would say we don't have to hide ourselves, although of course we're used to different growth rates than the 2% that you have seen. So looking into this year, i would say for europe we will see but i don't think we will see a big big improvement markets most markets will remain challenging although there are some pretty good positive recovery signs mainly in eastern europe i must say so we had a very strong second half last year in eastern europe it's a lot of money from the european union flowing east, going into infrastructure mainly. And here I must say I believe that we will see a continuation of this also for the Nordics. We expect recovery. We see this already and here we are very well positioned with this recent acquisitions that we've done, this mortar companies in Sweden and in Denmark. I think here we have, we built here a pretty strong position also in comparison to our competitors and also France. I think France comes out of two to three years of really soft markets, kind of recession also. And we have been suffering there as well. And we see signs of recovering. We also believe that 26 will be a better market because there's quite a backlog of residential housing. People have to live. And there is not enough housing. houses and apartments there, so we will see this, the French market already improving here. Germany, I must say, we've been pretty positive actually. We heard about this 500 billion euros that the Germans want to invest into infrastructure. We haven't seen so much of this yet, so quite some delays, a lot of discussions, bureaucracy, etc. We will see when this comes. We're ready. We're there. This is our second largest market of the France in Europe. We will definitely see continued growth in Middle East and Africa. You've seen it from Thomas. These are double-digit growth markets, and it's, of course, it's a big pleasure to see how we're doing there. And I think Zika has a very strong position in these markets, in all of these countries. Wherever there is investment, we're there. We're having factories. We're having strong organizations. You've seen the McDoom Airport on Thomas' slide. I mean, this is probably our largest purchase order we have received so far from that region, and it's just the beginning. So overall, we remain humble. I think it's probably the best strategy these days, although we want to do better than all the EMEA markets for sure. But we believe in a gradual improvement over the year with definitely a stronger second half than the first half. Talking about growth initiatives, how we want to do that. And this is just a selection, but I would say it's some of the key focuses that we have. Sure, infrastructure, this continues. Also in Europe, I must say, there is money. Sometimes I'm wondering, I think European Union flows faster into Eastern Europe than it flows into Germany and France. Bureaucracy here is not really helping, but there are incredible projects going on. I was just in touch with our Romanian friends yesterday, a lot of road repairs, bridge repairs, and these are big businesses for us in SICA. There's investment into energy everywhere, not just in the Middle East, also in Europe, nuclear plants that are being built, and these are all mega projects for us. Airports you've seen, water projects, and I would like to mention here also defense. Cannot speak too loud about this, but there is the billions of euros going into defense, mainly in the east, also in the Nordics, their infrastructure project, roads, hangars for planes being built. And here SICA is very, very well positioned. So we're selling, for example, our epoxy flooring systems into these hangars that are being built for all these fighter jets that a lot of companies are... buying and then a bit a new topic for us residential linked to commercial there several really large real estate developments happening in the EMEA region one we have listed here on the picture it's called Elinikon this is a Greek investment actually it's a Greek investment company on the old premises of the Athens airport. This is an 8 billion euro investment and Sika has already started to deliver several million of euros and this will take a few years. It's like a bit like an espresso machine. Once you're in, they continue buying from you and we have a very strong position. We're clear number one in Greece and full range and we just Luckily enough, we're just investing in a new... in an expansion of our plant in Athens. So we will have a lot of capacity now to go after this one project. There are other residential developments like in Ras El Kema in Egypt at the Mediterranean. Actually, this is a $35 billion investment from a UAE company. And it's a city, same like this Elinikon, you know, with houses, with offices, marinas, roads. I mean, this is just paradise, of course, for us in SICK. And we have dedicated people that work only on these projects and try to penetrate these projects to the maximum. Data centers, you heard it already several times. So right now in Region EMEA alone, we are actively working on 106 projects. data center projects. Each of them gives us sales 2 to 3 million, some even a bit more. SICK is very well positioned here. These days everybody talks about data centers. I would say we were the first company in the US when this data center boom really started. Now it's coming over to Europe, even Africa. Interesting enough, they're building data centers in Morocco, for example, and here we have All these references, and of course this helps us to make sure we participate in these projects wherever they're being built. Pharma, also independent of the economies. There are 33 big pharma projects happening in EMEA right now, also in the Middle East, and these are always mega projects for us. And then, of course, food and beverage, also independent of economies and how they're doing, beer companies investing, my famous fish farms. Everybody's always making fun of me, but this is a lot of money here for us. A lot of fish farms being built all over Europe actually, and each project had several million of sales potential for us. And last but not least, retail distribution. Retail actually is doing has been doing well whether there is a crisis or no crisis people are investing into their homes to cheer them up themselves and here our strategy is to transform our professional products into let's say more consumer products and I added here one really fun picture from a pilot which we were doing actually a pop-up truck store we put the truck during one week in front of, I think, three or four do-it-yourself stores in France. Only one product. It's actually a cleaning product for your algs and moose on your terraces. You know, they get green always during winter. You buy this product and, you know, fantastic. By the way, we sell it also in Switzerland. So you can clean your terrace. One million euro sales in eight days. We couldn't believe it. And of course, now this has encouraged us to further scale this up and do this kind of pop-up truck stores also in other countries. So all in all, our job is to grow and not to be depressed or pessimistic or so. Markets are what they are. It's our job to be optimistic and to beat markets, to beat our competitors. We have it all. We have the range. We have very good people. And that's why I remain positive also for 2026. Handing over to Americas, I think.

Okay. Thank you, Christoph. Well, it's always great to follow Christoph. We get the excitement going and moving early in the room. So, good morning. It's now my pleasure to discuss the forecast for 2026 in region Americas. So, as you know, we saw a very challenging market environment. where markets were really constrained. And this was by economic, by regulatory, and trade policy uncertainty. And we say uncertainty. I believe I heard the word uncertainty more from our customers and partners in the last 12 months than I heard in the rest of my life combined. From right down the line, we had these difficulties. This uncertainty will certainly continue in the U.S., and I'd say to a lesser degree in Mexico in the first half of 2026, while Canada and the rest of Latin America will be slightly more positive to start the year. You know, we've seen excellent growth really throughout Latin America, with the exception of Mexico, and Canada was very strong in 2025 and really starting the year incredibly strong in 2020. in 2026 also led by some really nice infrastructure projects and continue to expand their market position in trade. We expect the U.S. market in Mexico to also improve in the second half of the year as our backlog of projects start to get released. Now, our markets in 25 and now again in 2026 are largely driven by our continued success in megaprojects. Now, when you say megaprojects, we classify these projects as those projects with a value exceeding $1 billion. So, while we saw quite a soft demand overall in our baseline business really throughout the region, These projects continue strongly and allow us to continue growth. So we've really, you know, Thomas mentioned go where the money is. So we saw very quickly our baseline business was not delivering as it should. Now we continue to gain market share. We didn't lose any customers. And we actually sold effectively there. But to really continue that growth platform, we needed new outlets. And these mega projects offered that opportunity. so in fact in the u.s mega projects increased by more than 45 from 2024 to 2025 and this project's velocity is actually increasing now and it's showing in our in our project backlogs for 2026. this is everything from on showing commercial industrial production and we see this a lot in in the u.s and in mexico it's a massive infrastructure project going on throughout the region And we saw this also in Latin America where previously, you know, there was not a lot of infrastructure development. When we see some geopolitical changes happening in many countries in Latin America, we start to see this shift where more and more money flows now into private construction but also into infrastructure development within these countries. And this really allows us to get into these big projects and continue a nice growth story. So you see here some really excellent projects we were able to deliver in 2025. And these projects will continue to deliver growth and use these segments in 2026. So here we see the data centers. And like the others, I can tell you I also really love data centers. I love everything about them. And they were really one of the things that the key drivers to sustain the business and I would say the overall construction industry. in the americas in 2025 i expect that to continue strongly in 2026. so we all know these data center investments uh and it was it will continue to be a key construction sector driver so across the americas we delivered the as you heard already 230 new data centers in 2025 so this uh this fantastic order velocity is actually increasing uh into 2026 uh so we started the year uh going full out in in our data center investment with uh new innovations and allow you know thomas showing a bit of the innovation that we do here uh it allows us to bring more value to each any project so while these are these are already mega projects Our dollar take per project continues to increase each year. And as we bring new innovative solutions, you know, it's all about speed. It's all about technology. And if there's a good solution, they're very open to these innovative solutions that then allow us to increase the sales and bring value to the project. So in the middle here, you see the Jacksonville Jaguar Stadium, which is currently undergoing this massive refurbishment. This will take this to really a world-class venue. There's a bit of a competition in many of these countries. We see it in the U.S., we see it in Mexico, that every stadium has to be a bit better than the last one, and always pushing for that customer experience. And now we see with our innovative solutions for every application from – from concrete, flooring, and roofing, to entry of joints and ceilings. In the past, we would have really celebrated winning a $1 million, $1 million US dollar type of stadium project. And we get very excited about that. Nowadays, with this full line of innovative solutions across the buying sector within these segments, and again, we have special teams dedicated to the specification of these projects, even some custom solutions for engineer joints. With these new innovations, we're allowed to take the same projects that we used to get a million dollars, and now we exceed $10 million plus. So the dollar take per stadium really takes off. And our vertical market approach unlocks these opportunities for growth. You know, we get in early, we specify, and then we work on the job site with the contractors. And there's always, you know, custom adaptions while you're on the site that allows us to, again, draw more revenue there. And this goes, you know, we always talk about the big ones, Jacksonville Jaguars, Buffalo Bills. the Raiders, the stadium Azteca in Mexico. So there's always been many in Brazil. But there's many big stadiums. But it's not just the pro stadiums we're looking at. It's the professional stadiums right down to the local sports arenas. And all of these need solutions. And when you really get into the same sector, you'd be surprised how many stadiums are around the world. Then we can talk about here at the bottom you see the infrastructure. You know, our infrastructure business really continues to bring growth everywhere across the Americas. Again, we see more and more shift as infrastructure development becomes a key priority, certainly in Latin America, but also now in the U.S. and in Canada. As money projects continue throughout 2026, you know, we see this nice development of the funding in many of these countries, so we expect a very robust infrastructure business in 2026 as well. Here in this picture, you see the TDM tunnel project in Santiago, Chile. This is three separate metro lines running under the city, where we have a full array of projects, products on these projects. We also have additional metro lines running. in Lima, Peru. We have one in Bogota, Colombia, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a huge project now in Toronto. So, you know, these big metros deliver huge sales, and they go on for years. So once you're in these big projects, you know, you have a long-term supply of... your portfolio into these projects, but also it continues to generate more and more business. Because when you're onsite with the contractors, there's always new opportunities for innovation. And then finally, our automotive team, we secured a record volume of new business awards. This ensures really a continued increase of our market penetration. and uh and innovation launches so to counter to to really capture the additional content for vehicle so you know what well the market is really sluggish the bill rates are sluggish in the market as long as we continue to capture more content per vehicle uh and and find the ways to enter these platforms we continue a nice um The soft vehicle production environment really overshadows a bit the robust opportunity pipeline as OEMs reset their proportion system strategies leading to a long-term growth effect. So while we'll continue to win new business and increase our market share across the region, even as the baseline business will be constrained by continuing uncertainty in the first half, We're really looking forward to a new vehicle in the market in the second half, and I am confident that our outstanding Americas team is ready for the challenge and already running full speed into year 2026. Okay, so that's it for the Americas. I'll turn it over to my friend Philip.