Symrise Ag Ord

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome also from our side that you have signed up for our press call today due to our numbers. You can find the documents for these numbers on our website. Together with me, you will welcome our financial advisor today, Olaf Klinger, as well as our board chairman Jean-Yves Parisot. Thank you very much, thank you Mark, and thank you all for voting. I will start with the most important messages for the first half year and the second quarter.

After that, Olaf will explain the essential financial figures in detail. Finally, I will give you an update on our OneTheme Transformation Program. After a few words about our outlook for 2026, we are happy to answer your questions. Let's start with the highlights on slide 4. Before I go into detail on the results, I would first like to highlight the most important points from the first half of the year. First of all, our business has gained a lot of momentum in the second quarter. Organic sales growth reached 4.5%, due to stronger volumes, new business conclusions, as well as a good development in North America and Asia-Pacific. Second, we keep our profitability at a high level and have significantly improved cash generation. We have achieved this despite a difficult price environment and ongoing investments in future growth. Third, we are making good progress with our transformation. We are making very good and rapid progress and are now moving further into implementation. Looking at our results, the sequential improvement in the first quarter is decisive. The organic growth rose again as described in the second quarter. Here we achieved a turnover of €1,290,000,000. A volume growth of 5.1% was partially reduced by a negative price development of 0.6%. In total, the quarter saw a better dynamic, and many others, even though the business sectors continued to develop differently. Thus, we are in the first half of the year in the framework of our outlook for 2026 with an organic turnover of 2-4%. Our margin has developed steadily and was only slightly below the previous year's value. Thank you very much. 47 million euros. The corresponding margin reached 13.7% and was thus 450 basis points above the previous year's value. Another highlight, due to the planned adoption of Floral Concepts, which we announced last week, we will also continue to implement our OneTheme strategy and strengthen our portfolio. In summary, based on the first half of the year, we confirm our outlook for the entire year 2026. Let us briefly look at the results of the second quarter in relation to the regional distribution on Folie 5. Our growth was shaped by North America and the Asia-Pacific region. Organic sales of 9.6% or 12.3% Both regions benefited from healthy customer demand, successful innovations and new business conclusions. The development in the European, Near Eastern and African regions and in Latin America remained with minus 0.4% due to the slower demand or minus 2.1% in further behavior. In total, we benefit from a diversified geographical presence. At the same time, we are working specifically to improve development in regions with reduced demand. Regarding our strong financial results in Austria, We have further improved our customer relations and innovation capabilities, as you can see on slide 6. For example, Mars has taken us into the circle of a super core supplier. This confirms our role as a strategic innovation partner and reliable supplier. At the same time, we are continuously delivering innovations and creating added value for one of the world's most well-known consumer goods companies. In addition, Bath Body Works has awarded us as Supplier of the Year 2025. This recognition underlines the quality of our fragrance creations, our customer service and the strength of our business model. It is also time that we can convince and win key customers in attractive markets. In the second quarter of 2026, we also started the second phase of construction of our logistics center in Olsminden. This investment and support for future growth improves our service, increases the efficiency of our supply chain and creates additional Thank you, Olaf.

Yes, thank you very much, Jean-Yves, and welcome from my side as well. Let's first take a look at slide 8 together. Our results for the first half of the year show the resilience of Simrise despite a dynamic cost environment and targeted investment to accelerate our growth. The gross profit was €1.49 billion at a gross margin of 41.3%, What is essentially on the previous year's level. Disciplined cost management and operational efficiency helped to compensate slightly higher manufacturing costs. The purified EBITDA cheated 553 million euros. The EBITDA adjustments that we have made were 9.3 million euros and were in conjunction with M&A activities. The clean-up EBITDA margin was 21.8%. The decline of 30 basis points compared to the previous year was primarily due to three factors. First, to higher freight and logistics costs in connection with the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Second, to a temporary delay between these cost increases under the implementation of our And thirdly, on sustainable investment in our strategic priorities and our future growth. It is important that we do not consider these factors as a sign of a structural change in the yield profile of our company. Wir werden unsere Preisanpassungsmaßnahmen weiter fortsetzen, um Kosteneffekte aus Logistik, Lieferketten und spezifischen Rohstoffkostenentwicklungen zu kompensieren. Unsere Effizienzmaßnahmen setzen wir ebenfalls und beschleunigt fort. Sie helfen uns zusätzlich, um die Effekte aus Kostengegenwind abzumindern. Schauen wir uns nun die Entwicklung unseres Business Free Cashflows auf Folie 9 an. The cash generation was one of the strongest aspects of our business development in the first half year. As Jean-Yves has already shown, the purified business free cash flow increased by 47% in the year to 347 million euros. The business free cash flow margin reached 13.7% and was thus 450 basis points above the previous year on a record level. This improvement is on a disciplined working capital management and optimisation measures, as well as the ongoing control of our investment expenses. The stronger cash conversion increases our financial flexibility and at the same time supports investments in the company, portfolio development and attractive returns for our shareholders. And with that I would like to give the floor back to Jean-Yves.