Vallourec S.A.

Good day and welcome to Valorex 2026 first quarter results presentation hosted by Philippe Guillemot, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, and Nathalie Delbreuve, Chief Financial Officer. For the first part of the web conference, all participants will be in listen-only mode. During the question and answer session, you may ask questions by dialing hashtag 5 on your telephone keypad to answer the queue. And now, I would like to hand the call over to Daniel Thompson, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for Valeric's first quarter 2026 results presentation. I'm Daniel Thompson, Director of Investor Relations at Valeric. I'm joined today by Valeric's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Philippe Guillemot, and Valeric's Chief Financial Officer, Natalie Delbrook. Before we begin our presentation, I would like to note that this conference call will be recorded. A replay will be available following the call. You can find the audio webcast on our Investor Revations website. Presentation slides referred to during this call are also available for download here. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements. Future results may differ materially from statements or projections made on today's call. Forward-looking statements and risk factors that could affect those statements are referenced in slide two of today's presentation. These are also included in our universal registration documents filed with the French Financial Markets Regulator, the AMF. This presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Philippe Guillemot.

Thank you, Dan. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us to discuss ValuX first quarter 2026 results. You can see today's agenda on slide 3. Before we discuss today's results, I want to briefly address the situation in the Middle East and what it means for our employees. From the very beginning, ensuring the safety of our people has guided every decision we have made. Given our strong footprint in affected areas, I would like to express my deep appreciation to our teams for their dedication and professionalism over the past several months. Now, let's turn to slide five to discuss our results and outlook. As described in our press release this morning, we have changed the presentation currency from the Euro to the US dollar which better reflect the performance of our activities, which are mainly carried out in US dollars. In the first quarter, we delivered robust results, with group EBITDA of $220 million, or 187 million euros, above the midpoint of our guidance. EBITDA margin improved by 200 basis points, sequentially to 22.6%, thanks to our intense focus on execution and cost management. In the tube segment, EBITDA per turn of $724 returned to the high point we achieved in Q3 last year, above our guidance provided in February. This was achieved despite the challenging environment in the Middle East. We generated strong cash flow once again, converting over 60% of EBITDA to cash, which was 10 percentage points higher than in Q1 2025. This clearly demonstrates the continued improvement in our earnings quality, driven by our strong focus on operational efficiency and working capital management. After $107 million of share repurchases, we increase our net cash position to $67 million at the end of the quarter. Turning to the outlook, we expect cubes, volumes, and EBITDA per ton to decrease sequentially in the second quarter, temporarily impacted by the Middle East conflict, which I will provide further details on later in the presentation. In Mayan forests, production sold is expected to be around 1.4 million tons. As a result, we expect Q2 EBITDA to round between $175 and $205 million. We expect Q2 to represent the low point with improvements in EBITDA in H2. In the U.S., booking activity remains very strong and we are seeing certain customers preparing to increase drilling activity. This, combined with lower imports and recently announced trade investigations, is leading to improved market pricing to be reflected in our results from the third quarter. In international markets, our primary customers in the Middle East have remained resilient. Meanwhile, in select Middle East countries where we do not maintain local presence, order postponements and shipping delays have impacted our invoicing calendar. Outside the Middle East, tendering activity is high and we see customers moving to accelerate their development activity, notably in offshore markets. We expect to communicate on several important high-value contracts awards in this domain over the coming weeks. In New Energies, we see clear commercial momentum, demonstrated by the recent signing of our long-term agreement with Ferbo Energy, worth up to $800 million in potential revenue over the next five years. This follows the announcement in January of our partnership with FTS, proving the need for reliable, clean, baseload energy to facilitate data centers built out in the U.S. I am pleased to announce that ValuWake will host a deep dive on the geothermal market and our favorable positioning on June 15th to further illuminate this long-term opportunity for our investors and stakeholders. Turning to capital allocation, we repurchased 91 million euros of shares in Q1. Whilst the pace of the buyback has slowed, we reiterate that any unused funds from the program will be added to the interim external dividend in August. Let's move to slide 6. With the excellent QUBES performance in Q1, we delivered a higher quarterly EBITDA pattern than our primary peer for the first time since the launch of the new value plan. We also continued to outperform on return on invested capital. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our value-over-volume strategy excellent cost adaptation enabled by our fit-for-purpose industry and our ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency of our operations. Turning to slide 8 for an overview of the Middle East market in the context of the ongoing conflict. The region accounted for 22% of our tubes revenue in 2025. within the typical contribution of 20 to 25%. Importantly, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where we have local presence, account for around two-thirds of our Middle East sales. It is also worth highlighting that most of our sales are focused on onshore drilling applications, where reactivity has been more stable compared to offshore applications since the onset of the conflict. In Middle East, countries which we serve directly from our exporters in Brazil and China, OCPD demand has remained resilient. We have not seen any other cancellations to date. However, we have been experiencing select order postponement and shipping delays in certain countries. We continue to work closely with these customers to leverage alternative logistic routes to support their current programs and recovery plans. Notably, thanks to the commitment of our teams, revenue in the region increased year-over-year in Q1. Let's turn to slide 9 for a closer look at Valuate's operating model in the key Middle East markets. In Saudi Arabia, which accounts for more than 50% of the regional recount, Valourette has a strong local presence. In this market, domestic steelmakers typically source iron ore from India, deliver through Oman. We source the majority of our thin finished tubes locally from suppliers such as MPTG. We then heat treat and thread these tubes in our in-country facility in Oman. We also provide tubular management services including warehousing at our yard and therefore maintain several months of finished tubular inventories. This local presence ensures that we are well equipped to continue supporting our key customers in the current environment. In DOE, we also provide tubular management services and therefore maintain several months of inventory on behalf of our major local customers. However, This market is served from our international export hubs. We have tested and approved alternative routes bypassing the Strait of Hormuz to serve our customers, including ports in Oman and the Red Sea. Outside of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, we serve customers directly from our export hubs and do not maintain significant inventories on the ground. So far, we have seen a limited number of shipments being diverted or offloaded for future delivery. We continue to work with our customers to use alternative logistic routes, including tracking. Overall, for our largest customers in Saudi Arabia and the U.S., business has largely continued uninterrupted. while we are expediently select order postponement and temporary delays in shipping in the remaining countries. For this reason, and assuming no further deterioration, we maintain our outlook for higher volumes internationally in the second half. Let's turn to slide 10 to examine how Valorex is poised to respond to increased draining activity. With the increase in oil and gas prices and rapidly strengthening supply fundamentals, our customers around the world are beginning to respond by accelerating their development plans. We expect this increase in activity to translate first to higher short cycle activity in regions like the U.S. and in certain offshore tieback projects. while longer cycle projects should support higher activity from 2027 onwards. We expect higher levels of tubular demand as a result, and we are well positioned to deliver incremental volumes as we support our customers with their taxes. As we highlighted last quarter, we are making several investments into value-added downstream capacity that will de-button-neck our operations. This now also includes the upgrade of our recently acquired coating facilities. Turning to our new energies offering on slide 11. As energy security concerns play an increased role in national level decision making, we have developed proven technologies that support countries to develop and store more of their own energy sources. This includes traditional and next-generation geothermal tubular solutions, our DSC vertical underground storage solution for green hydrogen, and tubular solutions for the underground storage of natural gas and CO2. We have also entered into collaborations with key stakeholders to explore and support the development of wide or naturally occurring hydrogen and helium production. Now, let's turn to the international OCTG market on slide 12. You can see on the left chart, demand remains stable in international markets outside the Middle East in Q1. Within the Middle East, you can clearly see the divergence between onshore activity, which was relatively stable, and much weaker offshore activity. I remind again that Balouet is mostly exposed to onshore drilling activity in the region. Impacts by country vary widely, and in fact, Saudi Arabia's recount has increased in every month in 2026 so far, confirming the activity acceleration expected this year despite the conflict. Looking ahead, we are encouraged by the size and breadth of the tendering opportunities we see in both OCTG and our Line 5 business, many of which relate to offshore and deep water development in both established and emerging destinations with favorable economics. We also continue to see robust and growing demand in markets with higher levels of unconventional activities. On the right-hand chart, the latest outlook from HiSTAT shows an inflation in market pricing in Q1. As mentioned on previous calls, our premium portfolio allows us to outperform this indicator. Let's turn to slide 13, where we focus on the US market. On the demand front, the oil rebound remains stable over Q1 and has not yet responded to higher prices. That said, recent market commentary and the booking standards of our customers suggest higher levels of activity are planned from H2 2026. Gas-directed activity fell slightly over the quarter but remains up around 20% year-on-year. We expect gas-related drilling to be well supported by increasing demand for U.S. energy as projects come online and the U.S. substitute for gas blocks behind the Strait of Hormuz. Looking at the supply side, imports remain below the 12-month average in the year to date, especially for seamless products. We expect the recently launched investigation into unfair trade practices in Austria, the largest single source of seamless imports, to allow the Strait of Hormuz and the UAE to result in greater market share for local producers such as Railway. On the right, seamless spot pricing has increased every month since January, and distributor sentiment has rapidly improved. We will see the benefit of higher prices in our P&L from the third quarter. Overall, we see a positive oil and gas market ahead, complemented by the growing activity levels of our existing and prospective pure thermal customers. I will now hand the call over to Nathalie to comment our financial results.