Salzgitter Ag Akt Shs

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the analyst conference of the half-year result 2026 of Salzgitter AG. The conference will be recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Gunnar Groebler, CEO, Birgit Potrafki, CFO, and Markus Heidler, Head of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Ms. Schenke. And good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Gitter AG conference call for the first half of 2026. Joining me today, you just heard our CEO, Gunnar Groebler, and our CFO, Birgit Potrafki. Following a short presentation of our results and current business development, we will open the floor for your questions. Before we begin, please note this call is intended for the capital market. We kindly ask members from the media to contact our communications team directly. And with this, I hand over to you, Gunnar.

Markus, thank you very much. Good morning from our side. Very happy to be with you today and guide you through our first half of 2026, which has been, bottom line, a positive first half of this year. We will show this in the upcoming minutes in the presentation. Let me quickly go through some of the facts and then follow by you Birgit on the financials. As you are well aware of, we are always starting with health and safety. As you know, we have a clear health and safety strategy and we have a clear health and safety target. Unfortunately, primarily due to harsh weather conditions in the start of 2026, our numbers for the first half are not looking as we want them to be and as we expect them to be. You see we have this set of targets, just shy of 6.6 on the ITF, we're way above that. So we have intensified the work on group-wide trainings on preventive health measures to improve second half and still reach our target for the full year 2026. So some way to go. We're happy with the development over the last years. However, this year needs further improvement and we're working on that. It has been a very It has been a very intense year and a challenging half year. This clicker is doing what the clicker wants to do but not what I want to do. Challenging market conditions in the first half year. Geopolitical you know better than we do how the environment looks right now and it will remain, and this is our view at least, Highly volatile intents also for the remainder of this year. ETS reform, there has been a lot of discussion and outreach on the ETS reform. We have seen the first proposal from the commission, a first proposal. I think that is very important to understand of that commission. This balancing of between CO2 prices and investment certainty is certainly something that needs further discussion and also lobbying. and the remainder of this year. First results or the results will only be available first half of 2027. Big step for us. We have acquired 100% of the HKM. We'll go through that in a second. And also, as said, encouraging first half year also in the numbers. So that's certainly something we will talk you through. Volatility and geopolitical tension. Somehow. I'm the problem today. Yeah, we are. Geopolitical tension will remain. You see, the map of Europe, unfortunately, the color coding for the state of Hormuz is not perfect. It's certainly something where quite some uncertainty comes from these days, and this will also remain. And as a result of that, at least partially, the GDP remains weak and also the steel demand in Europe remains weak. Regulatory tailwinds is something that we have seen and I just mentioned and we'll go through that now in more detail. What has happened on the EU trade policy is that it has been very active in terms of decision making and also implementing of new tools. The carbon board adjustment mechanism has started in 1st of 1st. We have seen already positive impact of the CBAM on the price side and also on the reduction of imports. The new steel safeguard measure has taken effect 1st of July this year. Also here, significant reduction in imports. Yes, there will be an impact of prices or we have seen an impact of prices already. Plus 30 Euro if you look at X-Works Italy for Hot Rod Coil. So the effect that we intended to see there... This is a bit annoying now with the clicker. Apologies for that, technically we can improve. The intended effect are already visible. I think what we need to state, and we have said that before, the new steel safeguards, we have seen market participants acting proactively on the implementation of the new safeguard measures by importing prior to the 1st of July. So this material needs to be worked through the value chain prior to seeing the full effect of that. What happens now for 426 on top of those is trade defense measures, anti-dubbing measures on the Cold War steel and further anti-dubbing measures especially when it comes to hot rod coil coming out of Turkey. So there EU is still active and I think what we have seen with the steel and metals action plan last year I mentioned ETS before. As said, we have seen the first proposal of the EU Commission. My read of that is given that it has been a very sort of cautious proposal. We will be testing the water, testing how the reactions are and then now we will see a refinement, a readjustment of the proposal as well as positioning from both the Member States as well as Parliament. What is good from our perspective is that the EU ETS as a system remains essentially unchanged. We see that EU believes in ETS the way it is designed. However, we also see that the current draft proposal is not, as I promised actually, is not putting first movers at an advantage or at least at par with those that have not moved so far. So here certainly we need further alignment with the Commission and further explanation to the Commission. We have started that process already. So we shouldn't sort of overvalue this first proposal. It's the starting point of a trilogue between Commission, the Member States and the Parliament as well as accompanied by industry and other stakeholders in here. ETS is only one thing. We should always keep in mind that it has to be sort of accompanied by compensatory measures outside ETS. Let me point out two things here. The LEED markets for CO2-reduced products made in EU. LEED markets is the concept that has been widely discussed also in the member states, and we see it more and more. More and more positive connotations to the concept of LEAP markets, also from industry, also from our customers, like, for example, the automotive industry. And the second measure we still have to work on, especially in Germany, is energy prices. We need to get energy prices on internationally competitive levels. That is a low brainer. And why that is, I'll show you in a sec. and also here we have had good and intense discussions also with German policy makers. Katharina Reiche visited our site in Salzgitter just a week ago and rest assured energy and energy prices has been one of the key topics that we have to Looking at raw material and energy prices, we just talked about energy prices. Let me start with the right-hand side. You see the electricity and natural gas has jumped upwards as a result of the Middle East conflict. The current peak in electricity on top of that is weather-related. You will have followed that we have seen shutdowns of nuclear power plants in France, in the eastern part of Europe. Thank you very much. Freight is one issue for the iron ore, again, something that is connected to the Middle East conflict. Coal has been higher on a temporary level, which was primarily due to weather impacts in the mining regions, but coming back now, as you can see, as those weather impacts have been removed. Looking at seed prices, basically a good development. Since July last year, hot oil coil X Ruhrgebiet has improved. We are now seeing 715 per ton. So that's a good development. You also see the recent increase based on the regulatory development that I just mentioned. Also compared to China and the US respectively, I think also here again in the middle and with a stable and good development. And we see no signs, despite the low consumer market, we see no signs for this to change in the second half. Now looking at Das Gitter and looking at our key figures for the first half, I said it's a positive development. Yes, we see improvements in all segments. In all segments we have seen a stronger first half 26 than we have seen first half 25. And this is a mixture of basically two things. One is the... The development of market prices versus raw material prices, so mining of the margins, but even more so, we have seen that also our own work that we have done in terms of restructuring, in terms of cost reduction, pays off, and this is what you see in the results. If you look at trading, with a positive result of almost 40 million euros First half of this year is clearly a result of the heavy restructuring we have undertaken last year. We have already reported to you guys, but just as a reminder, roughly 30% of the jobs have been cut on the trading side. Steel production, predominantly P28, our performance program, roughly 50 million alone from Basketer Flachstahl's contribution here. It is really improving through the entire company, including also Rupes, also here we have seen a stronger first half compared to last year. So good development here and certainly something we will continue to work on that we also can see that next year. Now looking at two major projects we have been through or that we are carrying through. One is Dialkos, of course. We had a rush start into the year. I mentioned weather that has of course also impacted the construction site. But we've been able to catch up given that weather is not really an issue these days. The Hypen Tower is now fully assembled, 120 meters, second largest tower that we have now on site next to the DRI. Large components have been installed. and especially on the power supply system utility power supply system we are well on schedule here with the development so commissioning in the late summer 2027 is our plan and there is no sign that there will be a delay on that just also to remind you this is only the first phase of Salkos we have at least two more phases to go and here we are using the modularity of Salkos to really find the sweet spot in the decision-making for the next phase, which would be an electric arc furnace. The investment decision has been paused. We have reported on that. But rest assured, the preparation for this second step is well underway. So we're doing the engineering. We're doing sort of the business case modeling for that so that we are able to execute as soon as we deem this are being the right time. Second big step of the first half of this year is of course the acquisition of HKM. We have been able to strike a deal with the two co-owners ThyssenKrupp Steel and Ballerek. We are now since 1st of July 100% owner of HKM. We have bought into HKM with a clear And yes, this comes with heavy restructuring in HKM and we have been very We are looking at roughly 3,000 people employed in HGAM today and we will reduce that by 2029 to roughly 1,000. This has been discussed and negotiated with the Works Council and with the unions and is signed so we have certainty on the numbers and certainty also on the cost impact of that and this has been part of our business case all the way through. together with the investment and Birgit you will show us some more numbers on the HKM later in this presentation. Let me finish with an outlook for 2026. The regulatory measures that are mentioned will certainly also help us through the second half of this year. We have seen improved demand in terms of production from European steelmakers, European producers. The German association Wirtschaftsvereinigung Stahl showed a 9% increase first half 26 compared to first half 2025. So that is certainly positive. However, fundamental demand needs to further pick up. and we also expect the special funds on infrastructure and defense to be more visible late this year and predominantly in 2027 so that will also then certainly help especially us in our product mix going forward. I think we should also mention that especially for the steel processing side given that this is predominantly project business we also need Those impulses from special funds and other sort of projects to remain on the good level that we've seen in the first half. As said, market is stabilizing at lower level. We have been sort of through the worst in 25. We're now picking up. We said in March, back in black, I think we underpin that we are clearly in black and we remain in black in 26 with a good recovery and a good result we're going to foresee for 2026. With that, I hand over to you Birgit to guide us through the financials.