Tessenderlo Group N.V.

Hello and welcome everyone to our 2025 Annual Results Webinar. We will start today with a presentation from our CEO, Luc Tuck, and our CFO, Miguel de Poder. After that, we will give some opportunity to some of our analysts to ask live questions. And after that, we have some time for questions that are in our Q&A. So if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the Q&A chat box. Thank you. And with this, I hand over to Luc.

Good morning, good afternoon and welcome everybody to our annual results reporting on the year 2025. Thank you for tuning in. Boy, I must say, you know, it's been a rocky ride lately. You know, sometimes I started working when I was 18, so that's a little while ago. And so the way we have today within Europe, you know, sometimes I feel even that we're in South America, where I had the crises in the 80s and the 90s, one after the other. Now we're into our third crisis in Europe. In 2020 we had COVID, then we had 2022 Ukraine, and now we have Iran. Each time quite disruptive to businesses, causing a lot of uncomfort. Having said that, we are always with our feet on the ground, you know, so we don't panic lightly. And in light of that, I feel that as the CEO of our company, that we will be able also to navigate this now Middle East storm. Of course, it is affecting us and our company on different fields and in different ways. Sometimes it has a positive effect, sometimes it has a negative effect. Every effect that we have, we have no idea how long it will last and what it will be. And therefore, I'm sure some of you people ask questions, and we understand you ask questions, but you will also understand that we don't have the crystal ball on how long the Suez Canal is going to be blocked, how long energies are going to be limited. You know, all of that we know as much as you know, which means nothing. But having said that, you know, as a company, What do we focus on then? We focus on what we can control. But at no point in us focusing on stuff we do not control, we must focus on what we can control. Yesterday we had a lengthy board meeting and we debated a lot of all of this and at the end of the day, you know, and that will also be the guidance that you will be getting from Miguel, etc., We find that last year, okay, we improved our EVDA with 22 million, which is nice. Would we like to do that again this year? Of course. But today, we cannot guide you towards that. We are guiding you more results for this year in line with last year, and then we will guide you further through the year as we see more clarity and as you will see more clarity and as everybody will see more clarity. But again, you know, in this turbulent world, our company is fit to sail these storms and to come out of it. Anyway, that's the feeling I have. So let me kick off by telling you a little bit what we have been doing and which have been key events. So the Sandalew Group is signing a JV to combine our collagen and gelatin business with Darling. The picture that you see here was the signature in Houston of the binding agreement. And so, of course, now we are going through the regulatory stuff, and so we We are working with authorities, we are answering questions, and we hope that the transaction will close in 2026. But again, that is not in our power. We need to satisfy every authority and give them the time to answer. Of course, I'm sure you can appreciate that since this is a global business, there are many, many countries involved, and some of them have different time... The Seminole Valley opens in Newfoundland and Ohio. I was in the U.S. up to seven days ago. I have also been traveling. I was in Phoenix, I was in Houston, I was at different places. And I'm pleased to say that today we get market confirmation that the Defiance plant is a good investment. Customers are complimenting us on making that investment and are also happy that the product is now locally available. I think you should never underestimate the logistics that come into our business. And by having a plant within the market where people can come and get the product is definitely further supporting our development. And then this is a minor company, a smaller company that we acquired, which is Oosterwalder AG. So what is Oosterwalder doing? Oosterwalder is making powder presses. It's a because in our company we do 3D printing and there you build up a piece layer by layer out of powder. Here the process is completely the opposite. You take powder and you put a high press on it and because of very complicated molds you can get a gear out of it for a car or whatever. It has been a company in difficulties. It has not been an easy journey so far. And again, I'm not going to bore you too much about it, but we bought a Swiss company. And six weeks later, we were told that we had, I forget now how much, 40 or 50 percent, 39 percent of duties shipping to the U.S., our biggest market. so this was again the perfect storm because of this like i said you know sometimes this makes me feel like when i was in the 80s and the 90s when i was a lot younger and looking nicer than today, but it still gives me the same sentiment. But anyhow, that's behind us now, and so we are learning to know more about the company, where the strengths and weaknesses are, and that will be the Feltini story. Then I'm very happy to announce you the acquisition of the METAM labels in the United States and Canada from Eastman. I must tell you the METAM has been the origin of our crop protection business by first acquisition, which must be 20 years now. And so we are further strengthening our position there in the United States, and so we are very pleased that we were able to do this acquisition. So, indeed, we did a share repurchase program. Also, a lot of you guys suggested us to do that, and we believe that these share repurchase programs The program is contributing to the share price for our investors in the long term. As if you buy shares, at the end of the day, future profits will be divided by less shares. So at the end, it should support earnings per share going forward. So events after the balance date. So indeed, here we have the acquisition of the Sinis plant. So to give you a little bit of background on Cines, Cines is a company that was launched on the stock exchange in Stockholm and that was planned to have a very bright future by taking off sodium sulfate from the multi-billion dollar or Euro investment of Nordvolt in Sweden. Now, some of you probably followed that event there, and you know how that company got into problems, and then consequently also things got into problems. So this is enhancing our potassium, which is a core business. I would like to remind everybody that potassium is the second nutrient. So the first nutrient is nitrogen. The second is potassium. And the third one is phosphate. So in potassium, we specialize ourselves. We do not play with the big players. dogs play, we are more always in specialty, and so that is what we produce that is SOP. Most of the potassium in the world used is MOP, and MOP is put straight on the field and that's mainly used in areas where there is a lot of rain and as the rain drops out the chlorides evaporate and then the potassium goes to the clouds. What is SOP? In SOP we pull the chlorides out of the potassium and so the SOP is meant for dry areas because in dry areas, people would be using MOP. At the end of the day, the soil would become like concrete because of the chlorides that would remain on top of the soil. So our SOP is a perfect solution for Mediterranean areas, for drip irrigations, etc. Having said that, of course, in the potassium world, SOP is probably maximum 10% of the volumes used worldwide, and 90% of the application is MOP. We have been producing SOP for a very long time, and we are producing SOP on our Mannheim furnaces. Our Mannheim furnaces are working on the basis of sulfur, high temperature and then we get the chloride salt which then we further valorize partially in our group to produce ferrochloride, partially shipping to our neighbor plant Vinova. So this is one way of doing it. This is a different process. as a process, which is the glyceride process, which is a minority technique in the SOP world, but where we believe we can create opportunity. in producing more green because the SOP from the SINIS project will be produced on lower temperature with green energy, which is available abundant in Sweden. And as a byproduct, we will have then also salts available for the market, for mainly the icing market, et cetera. This is a new venture for our company. We have been following for years, and we also had been looking. We had been requested to participate in capital increases and what have you last year, et cetera. We thought that was not a good idea, that it was better to wait. Because now we are 100% owner of the plant at a good price and can now develop this company. and in strengthening our boards you know as as you know there we are also we have changed of course the last two years where we have decided that we must bring more industry knowledge in to our boards before of course we have always had a very strong board with very good strong board members But nowadays we are choosing more with people in our board with in-depth industry knowledge. So the first gentleman that came to our board was Sebastian Pons who is a true agro-specialist. So now we bring in Madame Beatrice Bruet, who has a very long career with GEA Group, a DAX 40 company in Germany. And so she's joining us as a non-executive director, and she's been co-opted in the vacancy of Mr. Kaldenke, who decided to retire last year. so therefore there also we are further strengthening our board and the respect of industry knowledge so this is then taking us to 2025 but i will hand it over to miguel now to explain you the results 2025.

Thank you very much, Luc, and good afternoon, good morning, everyone on the call. I'm happy to be here and to present you our results for 2025. So let's go first to our key figures. Our revenues climbed by 4.4%, 6.7 billion going forward in 2025. And our EBITDA grew as well by 8.5% to 288 million compared to last year. You will see that we have a heavy loss for the period of 80 million. Most of it is related to what we call non-re-cash items and impairments that we have taken through the course of the year and especially in the second. half of the year but i will come back into that in a moment well capex amounted to 135 million about half of which was maintenance capex and half of which was through capex we are basically finishing a big wave of growth capex with new plans you have heard link saying that defiance was fully operational since august and we continue on that trend The capex guidance for 2026 is in the same range as 2025, albeit it could be a little lower than 2025. The cash flows generated from operating activities was still strong at 225 million for the year. So if we exclude EVX differences, the growth in EBITDA, and this is for us the prime measurement of our financial strength, is about 10%, 11%. going forward the group revenue per segment in terms of the distribution is relatively stable when you compare 2025 to 2024 or agro division is definitely still the strongest division of the group and also the most profitable for 2025 All the other entities remain relatively similar. When we go into the group EBITDA per segment, we see that agro has grown its EBITDA for the year to 117, 118 million. That in biovaluabilization, we had a growth as well, but it's maybe a tale of two stories between PV Liner and Akiolis. I'll come back to that. Unfortunately, industrial solutions was not able to materialize any growth. We've had very challenging times in the construction market, especially in Europe and in France in particular, which is definitely difficult for the growth. And machine and technologies in the first half of the years, you remember that Peak Canal had a very strong first half of the year. That is completed into these figures. For T-Power, we have a full year of revenues of RWE under the tooling agreement. So when we go into our agro segments, More in detail. And I repeat, our agro-segments, these are our Curly brands, Sandalo Curly, for the international business, and Inc. for the American business. And we have as well Violo, which is our organic fertilizers. Agro-segment has a very strong second half of the year, as you can see. Even without, if you take off the one-offs, like the impact of TigerSoul, which has been contributing to the figures for the first time this year, second-half revenues rose of 13% or nearly 14% on the top line. And just to give that, as I mentioned, of just short of 118 million, which is a double-digit figure. as we like to see in the agro segment. We had to take also some impairments in the agro segment. One impairment was related to some inventory of crop protection products that we have in the U.S. Our second segment, bio-valorization segment, is we have two companies there, PB Liner, the gelatin and collagen business, as well as Akiolis, which is more of a rendering business in Europe. You see here actually a tale of two stories. First of all, the rendering has been more positive, contributing to the biorealization segment this year than the gelatin and the collagen. The gelatin and the collagen within PV Liner has gone through restructuring. We closed our plant in the UK earlier in the year, which was doing bone gelatin. So there you see definitely a drop in revenues with less products being sold. We also had an incident in our plant in Argentina, our collagen plant in Argentina, whereby we had to stop production. for quite some weeks, and the plant is still not 100% operational, but only, I would say, 75% operational right now, so not fully contributing to the results as we would expect. Just as a reminder, our PB Liner business is definitely, as Luc mentioned, now up for the merger with the Rousselot business from Darling Ingredients. Industrial solution segments, we have three brands there. Daica, Kuhlmann, and Moleco. Daica is our pipes and fittings manufacturing. We had, while you will remember, we had a very stable first half of the year. There has been a significant decrease in the second half of the year, especially on the EBITDA. You see the EBITDA overall is minus 50% compared to the year before. Several reasons for that. The slowdown in the construction sector, mainly in France, but also in other parts of Europe, have increased. weighted negatively on the results. Secondly, for Kuhlman and Moleco, the first half was not great, and it continues like that in the second half with even further deterioration of the volumes, mainly. But we were able to maintain our margin in both sectors. Machines and technology segments. Picanol, Psycontrol, Profero and Osterwalder as well as Melot are part of this segment. You will remember that we had a very strong first half of the year. The second half is in line with the previous year, so less strong, unfortunately. But it's also a tale of several stories here. While the wheeling machines are currently suffering from the geopolitical environment and the crisis in textile in general, sea control in Profero They've been able to grow outside of the pick and hold group, meaning that they are now having much more outside revenues than intercompany revenues while they were just suppliers of the pick and hold group, which is not the case anymore. That brings us to our last segment. T-Power has done relatively well in 2025, relatively well because of much more start-stops and much more availability, which gets some bonus payments under the total contract with RWE. A lot of you will have the question, what will happen with T-Power after RWE? Well, unfortunately, we cannot disclose anything so far. What we can disclose is that we have several options on the table. None of these options is a binding option so far. And in the current volatile environment, we will only communicate when a binding option has been done. or has been signed, but we do believe that on the 1st of July there will be a new contract in place for the future of T-Power. Let me walk you through the adjusted contract. EBIT to profit details as I already mentioned we took some large impairments and non-cash items in the second half of the year. First of all, our Sennelo Curly International SOP plant in Ham. It's a very vintage plant, as we call it, with still a big legacy on the phosphate when the Sennelo Group was still doing phosphate fertilizers. This plant needs a lot of maintenance. And... Our maintenance and the CAPEX has been building up in the value of the plant, but doesn't really match the value in use of the plant. So we were forced to take a 26 million impairment on that particular plant. You will remember as well that when announcing the merger with PV Liner and Rousselot, The plant of Vilvoorde was typically excluded from the perimeter of the transaction, We therefore have also impaired a big portion of the machinery and assets on the plant in Villevorde which has been up for sale since the announcement of the transaction. And then we did some other adjustments in our environmental provisions and here and there some smaller impairment losses. this amounts to 78 million in total 59 million of nearly 60 million are finance costs finance costs that are related to mainly interco loans intercompany loans between europe and the us that we have to take on the mark to market basis each time we publish our balance sheet We started with a euro-dollar rate of 1.03 and we ended up the year at 1.175. So mainly the largest portion of this finance cost, 54.4 million, is related to that. and the rest are cash expenses. If we want to do the bridge of the net financial debt, 288 million of EBITDA, what did we mainly do with that? Well, 135 million of CAPEX, half of which growth CAPEX, half of which still in business CAPEX. So that's a big portion. We spent also 21 million in two acquisitions, one Osterwalder AG and the second one of the Mietam Eastman contracts. And we distributed about 82 million euros in shareholders' value through dividends or through share buyback. Our outlook, and Luc already anticipated our outlook, it is in the current market environment for us very, very difficult to come with a very precise outlook. Do we prefer to play it safe by saying we will be in line? Remember that as from the 1st of July, the very strong tolling agreement we have with RWE will not be in place anymore. So being in line with six months of... And we never know what will happen with the Strait of Hormuz, with the front in Ukraine. We believe that saying that our full year outlook will be in line with the current figures is already good for us. PB Liner is fully incorporated in the 2026 outlook, where we don't know when we can be able to close the transaction exactly with Darling ingredients. Please note that the transaction might also give a capital gain on the merger at some point with Darling on the basis of PB Liner. And then we would like to bring you to another topic. We have, and you have seen that we have 158 million of cash on our balance sheet sitting as of the 31st of December. So it has been the intention of the group, together with the board, to bring a new division or business unit to life. The details are still being worked out as we speak, but more an investment vehicle whereby instead of depositing cash at the bank at a relatively stable rate, we believe it is better to utilize it to do some smaller investments, not only acquisitive M&As for 100%, as you know, to say the law, but we would be inclined and open to smaller tickets investments, maybe some to the extent small that can be very lucrative, and others where we would take a minority position in some larger companies, whereby we would limit ourselves not to the full management of the company, but to both positions maybe within those strategic companies. Then we have our financial calendar. The annual report is going to be published on April 1st, that's next week. The general meeting of shareholders is May 12th. And our half-year figures will be published at the end of August on the 26th. And I think, Bjorn, we're going to take some questions now from the audience. That's correct.