Wienerberger AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's conference call of Wiener Berger's full year 2025 results. I am Judith, your operator for today, and I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may click on the raise your hand button. And if you're connected via phone, please press star key 9 to enter the queue on your telephone keypad. With star key 6, you can unmute yourself. We are looking forward to the presentation. And with this, I hand over to Therese Janler.

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to the Wiener Berger 4DL25 results presentation. My name is Therese Jambier, and I'm pleased to host this call today from London. And I'm joined by our CEO, Heinrich Schorsch, and our CFO, Bernhard Steiner. We will begin with a presentation of our key developments of 2025 and the financials of the year, and an update of today's news as well, and an outlook for 2026. And afterwards, we will open up for your questions. So with that, I hand over to Mr. Heinrich Schorsch.

Thank you very much and a lovely good morning from our side, from Wienerberger's team. I'm glad to have you on the call. Let's walk quickly through the results of 2025. You have received them actually a week ago, so I just focus on the most essential points. If we look at 2025, I think it was again a year that has to be characterized by a lot of volatility, politically speaking, financially speaking, and also business-wise. The guidance that we actually delivered to you mid-year with the ABTR number has been fully reached. We have, considering the circumstances that we operate in, I think shown a high degree of profitability with an ABTR margin, which is more or less flat compared to last year, 16.5%. Keep in mind that all of this comes at the market level when we talk combined market level. new build, new residential housing, infrastructure and renovation that even dropped compared to the year before. So we had a drop in the relevant markets from about 70%. You remember that we give indication at 21 as our reference year was 100%, so we dropped to 70%. in 24 and to 65% when we talk about 25. And again here, Wiener Berger has shown basically through the very strong cost discipline and the efficiency improvement, this strong margin in the year 2005. Keep also in mind, and Dagmar will elaborate on that a little bit more, that we had quite a substantial cost inflation also last year, which we could counter with these measures in order to keep the level of profitability. Profit after tax, very good and strong performance. We more or less doubled it to 168. And the free cash flow is, I think, a very important step forward to reach nearly 500 million last year. So again, we showed here the discipline in managing cash. managing the capital allocation throughout the business especially, and therefore being able also to reduce debt further. So let's move on a little bit when we look at the debt structure as such. We came in in NetDevil about 1.6, so that's 2.2 times. Considering what we have achieved with the acquisition of Terrial the year before and digesting it, it shows actually again the strength of Wiener Berger to self-finance such transactions, to digest them, to integrate them, and especially also financially also to be able to handle those. Again, one of the important steps next to the cost discipline, next to the efficiency improvements throughout the business which contributed largely to these strong numbers, was the reduction of working capital to 20%. Also, again, a very important step in these volatile times to focus clearly on working capital. So all of this I consider that there has been a very strong approach, a very firm approach of Wiener Berger on the discipline side when it comes to the financials. I already explained a little bit the market decline and here we have obviously the market decline when we talk about new residential housing. Here again you see that we have seen further declines in 2005 that have occurred especially in the second half of the year. And we come obviously already when we look at the current status with a lower level into 26 compared to the year before, 24 to 25. And again, at this stage, I just want to draw your attention because I probably are the first ones in the sector, but I don't shy away to make frank comments because it's no use to sort of wait and see. We had very harsh winter this year. It's a extremely strong winter not only in North America but also all around Europe with not only cold weather, freezing, snow, ice, but also flooding. So all of this has to be digested in the first quarter and will certainly have its effect in the second quarter as well. All in all, I think when we talk then a little later during the call about the outlook, which is, again, a strong outlook that Wiener Becker will provide, but it comes in at the basis of, I call it, a weaker start in the year due to the weather conditions, the harsh one that we have to face this year. Let's move on then a little bit to the different regions where we have seen in West, I think I call it a stabilization throughout the different businesses. And you see also that again, Wiener Burger from a housing perspective and the new build segment outperform the market with 2% volume increase. So very disciplined approach on renovation, on new build when it comes to this part of the ceramic business. and also the pricing was very much in line with our expectations. Again, also on the piping front, we were able to improve our performance, grabbing some market shares left and right. But again, you see here that Western Europe has performed, considering the market as such, very well. And you see also the share of the business, which is, I think, very important to show that Wienerberger has emerged as a player, not only in new resi, but also one in a stronger and even increasing share in infrastructure and in renovations. If we move now a little bit to the east, a little different picture, obviously depressed markets when we come to the new resi markets with about 2% down. But again, here we have sort of increased our activity and being a little bit more active in the market when it comes to volumes, so a plus 1% here, and also from a pricing and okay situation throughout the year 2025. I would say on the piping front, the minus three in volume effect, yes, that's due to some of the projects get delayed when the European funds don't finance in certain countries where there's political turmoil. So these projects, the bigger ones, tend to get delayed. So this has an impact on the volume. and therefore the minus three when it comes to the volume in piping. And here you see also that we have already, from a revenue split, improved our revenues in renovation and infrastructure, but not to the extent that we've done it in other areas. So this is some work in progress, I would say, as far as the share of different activities is concerned in Eastern Europe. Now let's move across the Atlantic to North America. I would say a very, from our perspective, was a very tough environment that we faced throughout the year 25 in North America, both in the U.S. and especially in Canada. In Canada, we had a drop of new receipt of more than 30% digest in the market. So it was rather dramatic, I would say. And also in the U.S., around 9%, 10%, depending on the states that we operated in. So this affected obviously our new residential housing business essentially facing BRICS and you see it also on the revenue split that we are very much exposed to this sector yet or still in North America. The piping operations are doing well. We consider in this context that we only have one pipe factory in North America, but performing very well on the volume side. We extended our presence there due to investments in the production. So we grabbed a little bit of market share again in the piping segment. And above all, I think we performed even in this market where the margins are coming down from this very high level during the last couple of years now to a normal one in a very satisfactory terrain still in the piping business in North America. So all in all, I think, driven by weak markets, North America suffered the most in our portfolio. And this is obviously then to be seen also in the profitability. But still, they have done a good job, North American management, in managing efficiencies and cost structure. I think when you look, to summarize the introduction before I hand over to Dagmar, you see the strong development, how we have improved, again, our share in the different segments, and Wiener Berger is now emerging as a strong player when it comes to the piping business in infrastructure, especially in the water management and energy management, and in the renovation due to our strong growth in the roofing business. So this is, I think, from my side, this introduction, and I'll hand over to you, Dagmar.