AAK AB (publ.)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today. And thanks to all of you who joined us a few months ago, also at our Capital Markets Day in Karlsson. We really appreciate interacting with our investors and analysts. Joining me today, as you heard, we are in Malmö at our headquarters. We're going to review our fourth quarter financial results. And I have Thomas Bergendahl with me here today, our CFO. With that, let's turn to page number two. Here is what we will cover today. The quarterly highlights, selected events, a business and financial update, and then some concluding remarks from our side. And after that, we will have a Q&A session. With that, let's move to page number three. Just a few comments. This presentation includes forward-looking statements that come with risks and uncertainties. These are our views on future events and financial performance, but actual results could be different. So just please keep that in mind when we are going over the material that we have in front of us. Please turn to page number four. Let's start with the quarterly highlights for Q4 2024. We had a solid finish to what has been another strong year for AAK. In the quarter, volumes decreased by 1%, mainly driven by food ingredients. Our operating profit per kilo, our margin continued to increase up by 16% year on year at fixed currencies. This was largely driven by our global optimization programs, which have improved our operations as well as continued favorable market conditions in chocolate and confectionery fats. As a result, our absolute operating profit increased by 11% or 14% at fixed FX. This builds on the 47% growth we delivered in quarter four last year in 2023. So while we are seeing slightly softer volumes here in the fourth quarter, we have managed to maintain momentum and we delivered a very solid result driven by improved profitability. Moving on to cash flow, operating cash flow amounted to 118 SEC, 118 million SEC. Our financial position remains strong. Our net debt to EBITDA stands at 0.29 which highlights our ability to maintain a healthy, strong balance sheet. This also gives us flexibility going forward. Our return on capital employed, our ROSI, came in at 22.4. This is a reflection of the strong operating profit we have achieved and our ongoing focus on driving returns. We have proposed a dividend from the board of directors, which is at five sec per share. This corresponds to an increase of 35% compared to last year. So a nice increase also driven by our increased earnings. Overall, it's been a solid finish to what has been a very strong year for us at AAK. With that, let's turn to the next slide. Before diving into the performance of each respective business areas, let us take a brief pause to reflect on a few events that shaped the fourth quarter. We have opened up a biotechnology innovation center in Lund to support industries such as food, feed and cosmetics. By bringing enzyme and fermentation research in-house, we can improve efficiency, drive idea development, and strengthen our expertise within the company Lund the city of Lund and the location was chosen for its active innovation environment with a mix of startups established biotech firms and its proximity to academic institutions and research facilities offering opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing I would also like to take a moment to highlight an important achievement AEK's win at the Food Ingredients Europe FIE 2024 with the Sustainability Innovation Award for our company. This recognition celebrates our efforts in empowering women in West Africa through our own program called Kolonafaso and reducing emissions across the SHI supply chain. It's a reminder of our ongoing commitment to sustainability and responsible sourcing across the industry a big thank you to everyone who contributed this achievement continues to inspire our work at aek and as briefly mentioned already back in november we hosted a well-attended capital markets day at our carlson facility in sweden where we raised our 2030 profitability aspiration to sec three per kilo or above sec three per kilo reinforcing our belief in the future growth for those who could not attend i encourage you to watch the recordings available on our website to catch up on the insights shared during this event thomas could you please give us an update on the food service divestment that we also announced

Yes, thank you, Johan. And good morning, everyone. As I'm sure most of you recall, we announced in October of 2024 that we had entered into an agreement to divest our food service facility located in Hillside, New Jersey in the US. The transaction was finalized as scheduled on December 31, resulting in a one time positive cash flow impact of 646 million Swedish kronors. uh which came in then the fourth quarter of 24. the impact on the p l from the divestment was as previously communicated not material we are confident that the new owners together with all employees from the hillside plant will continue to develop the business and we wish them all the best going forward meanwhile our investments has also announced into our food service plant in sweden as well as the upgrade to one of our food service plants in the UK, are both progressing according to plan. With that, I'll hand it back to you, Johan, to go through the different business areas.

Thank you. So let's move on to the next slide. Business area highlights, starting with food ingredients. Starting with volumes, we saw a year-over-year decrease of 4% in the quarter for food ingredients. this decline was primarily driven by lower sales of non-speciality oils with lower margins as well as a decline in dairy operating profit per kilo increased to 2.28 sec up from 1.96 sec representing a 16 growth in operating profit per kilo currency effects had a negative impact of 0.11 per kilo The growth in operating profit per kilo was broad based with improvements across the major segments that we deliver to. Baker in particular led the way with strong performance. When we exclude currency effect, operating profit per kilo increased by 21%. Operating profit increased to 767 million compared to 685 million last year. This represents a solid growth despite the headwind on negative currency translation effect amounting to a SEC 36 million. At fixed foreign exchange rates operating profit increased by 17% in the quarter. So with that let's move into chocolate and confectioner fats on the next slide. We saw a modest increase of 1% year on year in chocolate and confectionary fats. This growth was primarily driven by Europe, Asia and the Middle East and Africa. However, this was somewhat offset by weaker results in the Americas and a softer consumer demand for chocolate. On the profitability side, operating profit per kilo increased to 4.19% up from sec 3.91 last year marking a seven percent improvement the currency translation effects were minimal with only a sec 0.01 per kilo impact the primary drivers here were strong contributions from europe and the americas supported by favorable market conditions Our operating profit rose to 520 million SEK compared to 481 million last year, an increase of 8% year on year. This reflects our ongoing ability to generate consistent and meaningful profit growth, even in a mixed consumer demand environment. And with that, let's move into the next page. Now some business area highlights for technical products and feed. Let's look at the results for technical products and feed. Volumes increased by 7% year on year, with growth coming from both technical products and feed. Operating profit per kilo saw a healthy increase, reaching 0.86 sec per kilo, which represent a 9% improvement year on year. Operating profit for this segment totaled a sec 69 million, which is a 17% increase compared to the same period last year. With that, we have now covered the business area and I will hand it over to you, Thomas, to provide some further details to our financial results.