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.

Thank you very much, Olaf, and ladies and gentlemen, our one-sin strategy has not changed. We are still concentrating on improving the quality of our portfolio, accelerating growth, strengthening profitability, and generating a sustainable, strong cash flow. To do this, we now come to Folie Health. Active portfolio management is an important value driver for Simrise. In the first half of the year, we further sharpened our portfolio, invested in attractive long-term opportunities and strengthened our balance. We have completed the expansion of the Asquafit business and continued the investment process for the Terpen business. We are waiting for the end of the structured bidding process in the third quarter of 2026. As I have already mentioned at the beginning, we would like to strengthen our portfolio with the planned adoption of Floral Concept, one of the well-known companies in the industry for high-quality natural raw materials for fine perfumery. Based on the success of Diana, a transformative acquisition that was completed more than a decade ago, which has established our skills in the field of natural ingredients in food and beverage, the planned adoption of the Flonfloran concept will enable us to expand our natural platform to the field of fine perfumery. This expansion will create new opportunities for profitable growth and enable us to develop even more differentiated solutions for our customers. As the usual preparatory step for the sale of a privately run company in France, we have recently expanded our joint offer for Floral Concept. According to French law, the employee must first be given the opportunity to submit an offer before a purchase contract can be signed. This is expected to happen in August. Let us now switch to folia 12 with our transformation program. We continue to aim for an organic sales growth of 5-7% KGR by 2028. In order to achieve this goal, we must implement the program consistently in several areas. This includes strengthening innovations, improving commercial excellence, simpler processes, as well as higher speed and efficiency OneSim makes this possible. The next phase in our value creation process requires both growth and efficiency. We focus on speeding up the functioning of the business and implementing it with greater speed and discipline. Let me now explain on slide 13 where we stand in sales. In the first half of the year, we have linked the basis for phase 2 of our transformation. We have laid down the operational framework, validated the most important opportunities and set priorities on which measures should be implemented to minimize the risks. Wir sind von der Festlegung von Zielen zur Priorisierung von Maßnahmen übergegangen und treiben nun deren Umsetzung voran. Mit der Umsetzung der Initiativen werden Produktivitätssteigerungen, eine Verringerung der Komplexität sowie die Generierung zusätzlicher Mittel für Investitionen in zukünftige Wachstum erwartet. Let us now turn to our outlook on business development on Folie 15. On the basis of our half-year results and the current business dynamics, we confirm our outlook for 2026. We expect further organic sales growth of 2 to 4%, a reasonable EBITDA margin of 21.5%, and a reasonable business recovery margin of more than 14%. Organic sales growth of 4.5% in the second quarter supports our forecast for the entire year. For the third quarter, we expect organic sales growth to be on a similar level. The view will be supported by OneSim, a strong customer project pipeline, a healthy innovation pipeline, robust core end markets and moderate genative currency effects. From a financial point of view, the view reflects our goal to unite accelerated growth, disciplined margin management and cash conversion. Auch unsere mittelfristigen Ziele bekräftigen wir. Wir beantworten jetzt sehr gerne Ihre Fragen und dafür komme ich auf Marc zurück.

Vielen Dank für die Ausführungen. Damit, wie gesagt, kommen wir zu der Fragerunde, bevor Jean-Yves nach den Fragen und Antworten noch mit final remarks diesen Call schließen wird. Für die Q&A übergebe ich damit an den Operator.

We now begin the Q&A round. If you want to ask a question, please press the star and 1 keys on your phone. You will hear a sound that confirms your recording in the waiting line. If you want to withdraw your question, please press the star and 2 keys. Participants are asked to use the telephone speaker during the question. If you have any questions, please press the star and 1 keys on your phone. The first question comes from Annette Becker from Börsenzeitung. Please.

Good morning. I have two questions, please. I would like to know if you have completed your portfolio cleaning with the sale of the terpene business. And maybe you could say, if you say you expect the bid process to be completed in the third quarter, where do you stand? Have you already picked one out with which you are negotiating exclusively or how many are still in the race?

Okay, thank you for this question. This is a process. I will also suggest Olaf to complete my answer. But this is a process. I am very optimistic for this Terpain sale, but this is just a process. We will re-select our portfolio. Thank you very much for your answer. Yes, thank you, Jean-Yves.

I will take over again. So, Ms. Becker, we are in conversation with several interested parties and are confident that we will now conclude this in Q3, Q4 and come to a signing. The process is running. We are Thank you.

Next question is from Patricia Weiss from Reuter.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I also have a few questions. First of all, about pet food. In the second quarter, there was again an organic return on sales due to the normalization of prices. As you have mentioned, is this just a temporary development or is the boom in home food, which you have seen for a long time, over with? Then I would be interested to know if you can tell us a little more about the Floral Concept. There was no purchase price and annual turnover. Can you give us an insight into that? Then the prognosis, if we now have 2% organic growth in the half year, the annual prognosis is about 2 to 4%. So do we assume that you will end up at the lower end of the span? Or do you see a second half of the dynamic that drives you even higher? And last but not least, it is also clear that there is a tension in the freight routes and logistics costs are not in sight. How do you deal with it? Can the more costs be given to the customers? Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for this question. There are a lot of questions and I suggest, Olaf, if it's okay for you, to answer these five or six questions. Thank you very much.

Yes, Ms. Weiss, I'll take over the topic of pet food. Indeed, we still have targeted price contributions in our pet nutrition or egg business for proteins. That's coming to an end now and we have positive expectations for the second half of the year as far as our pet food business is concerned. That's on the subject of pets. We can't say anything more about Floral Concept at the moment. We have agreed with a family business that we will not mention the purchase price at the moment. The turnover is clearly two-digit and will then significantly strengthen the fine fragments business in the Gras region. The nice thing is that we now have three activities in Gras that are directly, or really directly, cross paths across the street. This is a kind of campus that we have now created in the Gras region with the activities of Future Floral Concept, Lotier, and the already acquired company parts of SFA Neroli. As I said, immediately borderline and gives us a really strong appearance in this so important region for the fine frequency environment. In short, it fits very, very well into our strategy to develop fine frequency for Simrise. I think we had a very good, clear acceleration with the 4.5% organic growth in the second quarter, and that was also the expectation that we had already communicated in the first quarter. We assume that the third quarter will also reach this order of magnitude, and that is why we feel very comfortable with the forecast of 2 to 4%, and not in the direction of and so on. Unfortunately, as you say, the Middle East region has a lot of unrest and with that the topic of freight costs and logistics remains a topic. We have already started earlier this year to cover these costs for customers. It's partly about price increases, partly about freight subsidies that we then assign separately. That will have to go on. We will also secure ourselves through the appropriate measures to increase these costs and then also reach out to the customers. It has worked so far and it will have to go on as it is developing at the moment. So much for that, Ms. Weizkopf. I hope I have answered that.

Yes, thank you very much.

You're welcome. So, no more questions?

Yes, we see no more questions. To ask further questions, press star and 1 on your phone. There are no further questions. I hand over to Jean-Yves Parisot for the closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Thank you for these questions and thank you for your presence. Let me conclude with two, three messages. First, our business has gained momentum in the first half of the year, while organic growth has significantly improved in the second quarter. We can achieve strong profitability and cash generation despite a still difficult business case. And thirdly, we make good progress at OneSim and now go into implementation consistently. Based on our clear strategy, disciplined implementation and a strong investment grade balance, we are confident that Simrace will grow sustainably, achieve attractive returns Thank you for your interest in Zimri. We look forward to talking to you again in the future. Thank you.