Umicore Sa Ord New

Hello and welcome. My name is Kelvin and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Unicorps 2026 Q1 update and outlook call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the introduction by management, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that we allow one question per participant. Thank you. I would now like to hand the call over to Bart Schaaf, Unicor CEL, and Juanes Paterin, Unicor CFO. You may now go ahead, please.

Yes, thank you. So welcome, and welcome all, and thank you for being here on this Thursday evening. So first of all, before I go to the Q1 update and the outlook, of course, I would like to give some more context to the leadership changes that we have announced this morning. So first of all, we welcome our new CFO as of August 1st. She has a strong record at public companies. She has worked in the chemical industry, manufacturing, engineering industry. At this point, she's the CFO of Sintemer, before that at Sentra, XR. and speech detection, but she's also a non-exec director and member of the audit committee at PCC-PLC. So, I believe she's a strong asset for Unicor to also continue on the great path that I set forward together with on focus on operational excellence and capital discipline. Now, next to that, we are also establishing a role, which is this chief digital and transformation officer within the EOT. you know that we have started the transformation journey, that we will be more process-oriented, and that we also would like to establish a stronger performance culture. And now we want to drive that focus across the group even more. We want more alignment throughout the group. And, of course, next to that operational excellence for which Martin Ziris, which we welcome, will be focusing on, he will also be focusing on the digitalization information systems, and of course, also further working on the artificial and augmented intelligence throughout the group. So, Martin Zevis has a strong experience in transforming organizations. I've worked sometimes side by side with him. I know he's driven for excellence. He's widely recognized in the industry for transformational projects, so we are very happy and also looking forward to welcome Martin next to Lili. It also means, of course, that if a CFO joins the current CFO, he will be closing the chapter here at Umicore after more than 20 years. Juanos has been the CEO for the company for four years by now. I really would like to thank him for his dedicated service, his strong leadership, especially in quite, let's say, particular times in the recent history for Umicore. So his commitment to the core strategy, capital discipline, operation excellence, really has set the group now again on a strong footing, and I would say that he was definitely part of that success that we can share today. So Juanes will be handing over to Lili on August 1st, but he will stay on until February, end of February 2027 to do the further handover and continue to work on some projects that we have. But maybe, Juanes, you would also like to give some perspective.

Yes. Thank you, Bart. I mean, as you rightfully say, after 20 years with Umicore, I will be closing an important chapter in my career. I'm grateful for the great opportunities and the trust that has been put into me over the past two decades. In 22, I stepped into the role of CFO at the time when the company was entering probably one of its most demanding periods in its history. Over the past years, we navigated through an extraordinary combination of challenges, initially financing projects, an ambitious growth agenda, then quickly facing unprecedented inflation and market volatility, adapting to a sudden slowdown in electrification, leadership transitions, including yourself, Bart, and a strategic reset with our core strategy. Now, what I'm proud of is that with our focus on cost and capital, we have been able to rebuild the company's financial health and the credibility in the capital market. I was also very pleased that throughout these challenges, the leadership acted as one team with resilience, discipline, creativity, and a firm commitment to the long term. At this point in my career, I realize that I've built quite a bit of depth over the past 20 years within the same organization, and it is where I also realize I still have many years, but also curiosity ahead of me. So this feels like the right moment to pause, to reflect, and to explore new horizons. I also want to thank my colleagues and my teams for their unconditional support and commitment throughout these demanding and challenging times. I'm proud of the progress we achieved together, strengthening processes and systems, increasing the agility and consistently finding solutions under pressure. Now, in my final months, I remain fully committed to the execution of our strategy and to a smooth transition to my successor in August. And this will ensure the continuity and value creation for our investors. And finally, I want to thank the investors for the interest in me.