Wacker Chemie Ag Ord

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Walker Phinney AG Q1 2026 conference call. I am Sandra, the call school operator. 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 Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Jörg Hoffmann, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to the Wacker Chem EIG conference call on our first quarter 2026 results. Dr. Christian Hartl, our CEO, and Dr. Tobias Ola, our CFO, will walk you through the presentation, the press release, Our IR presentation and detailed financial tables are available on our webpage under the Investor Relations section. Please note that management comments during this call include forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties. We encourage you to review the safe harbor statement in today's presentation and look into our 2025 annual report for information on risk factors. All documents mentioned are available on our website.

Chris? Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call for the first quarter of 2026. Despite the ongoing weak demand in many of our customer industries, WACKER had a solid start to the year. Group sales came in at 1.41 billion euros, 5% below last year. This was primarily due to FX headwinds. On the other hand, EVDA climbed by 45% year over year, to 173 million euros. The primary driver to the higher EBITDA was our paid cost program, followed by pull-forward effects from customers. We have made good progress with our paid program so far and we have benefited from lower spending and costs already in the first quarter. The aim of the program is to achieve annual savings of more than 300 million euros in 2028. PACE is designed to sustainably enhance Vacker's competitiveness. Our efforts are focused on reducing our fixed manufacturing and administration costs. We are lowering technical spend and addressing overscoping. We are optimizing structures in operations by merging units, tightening budgets, and cutting discretionary spending. We implement, for example, in procurement new bidding systems, to foster greater competition among suppliers. Yet, our efforts go beyond pace and pure cost savings. We are simultaneously streamlining our structures and processes and sharpening our business model. All of this makes WACKER fit for purpose and enhances our long-term competitive position. While cost savings were the primary driver to the strong growth in EBITDA, Pull-forward effects from advanced customer orders supported the better-than-expected first quarter results. In mid-March, markets responded quickly to the conflict in the Middle East. Supply disruptions drove up raw material and energy prices. Our procurement teams filtered quickly to secure critical materials. We quickly announced price increases to counter rising costs. Applying lessons learned from the unprecedented raw material inflation during the COVID period, we have a playbook event. You can draw upon that and it helps us navigate through current challenges. Both silicones and polymers saw customers' advance orders pulling them forward into the first quarter. This was likely triggered by security of supply concerns and longer shipping times from Asia. On the other two segments, Our other two segments did not see any meaningful pull-forward effects. Polysilicon continued with its strong growth in semi, with the new edging line strengthening our leading position. Our solutions benefited in the first quarter from timing of contracts. Here, the overall market remains challenging and we remain focused on filling existing capacities. Now, before I move on to the guidance on the next page, let me highlight a new investment that enables sustainable solutions. In Japan, we have just commissioned a new production line for thermally conductive silicones. This will allow us to meet growing demand for specialty silicones in applications such as batteries for the e-mobility sector. The performance of batteries is affected by heat, and our thermal interface material, known as TIMS, are essential high performance materials in battery packs. EVs show strong growth and this new asset position ups wealth. Now moving on to the guidance on page 4. We confirm our full year 2026 EVDA guidance while adjusting our sales expectations upwards. We now anticipate sales to increase by a high single digit percentage as he raised prices in chemicals to effectively counter high raw materials. Our absolute EBITDA expectation is unchanged, and we expect EBITDA to be in the range of 550 to 700 million units. With a solid start to the year, we are on track to reach our full year expectations. That said, our outlook continues to be subject to a high degree of uncertainty. This is clearly due to the unprecedented developments in the Middle East and the still unresolved U.S. trade proceedings on imports of polysilicon and its derivatives. In summary, we remain confident and alert. We have confidence due to the steps we've taken. We are addressing raw material inflation with price increases and cutting costs under pace. However, we are cautious. about the development of end markets. We know that conditions can change unexpectedly. Our responsibility is to navigate whatever challenges arise with agility and discipline. With that, let me hand over to Tobias, who will discuss the group and segment performance in more detail. Thank you, Chris.