AGRANA Stock

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AGRANA Conference Call on the Q1 Results 2026-27. I am Valentina, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Hannes Haider. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AGRANA's conference call presenting our results for the first quarter, '26-'27. You already got some insights last week when we published preliminary results. Today, we will provide you with more details also on the segment. As announced in our conference call invitation, the presentation is available in reference to this call, and you can find this presentation in the IR section of our website.

Our CEO, Stephan Buttner, will hold today's presentation, which is divided into 3 parts. We will start with an introduction and we'll focus on the highlights of the first quarter first. And we will go on with a segment overview. And finally, we'll conclude with an outlook for the ongoing '26-'27 financial year. The presentation will last about 20 minutes. After the presentation, the lines will be opened, and we will be glad to answer your questions.

And now let me pass over to our CEO, Stephan, who will start with Slide #4.

Thank you, Hannes. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, AGRANA had a very solid start into the financial year '26-'27. EBIT was significantly higher than in Q1 previous year, but this is logical because we had extraordinary expenses also in the previous year due to the closure of Leopoldsdorf and Hrušovany. Of course, the markets are still very challenging, especially sugar price pressure is still there. And also in starch, the economy still has not recovered yet substantially. Nevertheless, we could significantly improve our performance in the Sugar business. This is really due to the restructuring measures taken in the last 2.5 years.

Geopolitical uncertainties and volatility in energy and commodity prices, of course, remain key factors for the rest of the business here, but we are currently very optimistic that we will be able to keep our performance also in the next quarters. When we look at the key numbers, so we had EUR 855.3 million revenue in the first quarter compared to EUR 880 million in the previous year. This is mainly due to the decrease in revenue in our Sugar business. The operating profit with EUR 33.2 million, significantly above the previous year's performance. Exceptional items, EUR 0.4 million and EBIT EUR 35.4 million. Here, we see the very significant improvement versus prior year where we had EUR 5.7 million.

AUSTRIA JUICE and Mercator-Emba were 2 projects, acquisition projects. So both there we are working on the integration. It's also already in progress. Both investments are performing as expected. And this, of course, will help to further strengthen our diversified business model in the Food & Beverage Solutions. The closing of the Mercator-Emba deal took place at the end of March 2026. The initial purchase price was EUR 35 million. This is an EBITDA multiple of 7.6x. And there are 2 potential performance-related adjustments to come in '27 and '28. The maximum of these earn-outs is in total EUR 5 million. And then always the EBITDA multiple and the purchase price will remain below 8.

Of course, we are also continuously working on the implementation of our corporate level strategy. We worked very hard in the last month on our business level strategies. So we are implementing here our vision now with one company, One AGRANA, one culture and one brand. When we look at the different business areas in our ACS, Agricultural Commodities and Specialties. Here, we have our juice commodities business. This is not reported yet in the -- this is still reported in the Solutions segment.

We are working on dividing the businesses into the commodities part. This is the fruit juice concentrate production and the added value business, which is flavors and beverage compounds. This added value business earliest from the business year 2027 onwards shall be reported in our Food & Beverage Solutions segment isolated, whereas our commodities business in the Austria juice company, the fruit juice concentrate shall be reported in our ACS strategic business area.

As you can see in JUICE, we are -- in the commodity part, we are also focusing on efficiency improvements. Cost is key here, also the physical footprint. We need to be very close to the raw materials. This is something that we are constantly working on to increase our competitiveness, but also to increase our share in the specialties product portfolio Same in starch. So we are really focusing on our strategy, which should increase the share of our specialties. We are now analyzing opportunities in the different products where we will be able also to win in the future. This will be very important to stabilize the profitability in our starch business in the future. And we are also currently working on the target operating model, how the business shall be then also managed in the future.

And in sugar, we are executing our strategy local for local, which means we are producing sugar in our production plants for the local markets. So we as we already mentioned several times, we closed 2 factories and are still optimizing here our footprint. The target is, of course, to increase our competitiveness in cost, especially. And on the other side, we are also working on our product portfolio. Here, we want to increase our share, our market share with our brand, Wiatuger in Austria, where we have a very good market position.

When we look at the FBS, Food & Beverage Solutions, here, we have, of course, our core business. We have Foodservice and also, as I already mentioned, our added value product portfolio consisting of flavors and beverage compounds. Very clearly, we want to bring all these businesses closer together. We want to create a platform, a recipe, a formulation business for food and beverage.

Here, we are on a very good way. You know that this business is very much product development and innovation driven, also co-creation with the customers. Here, we want to increase our portfolio, especially also the flavors competence. We want to increase our in-sourcing volumes, especially also in the Flavors business, and we want to roll out via the physical footprint of our fruit preparations business, our competence in beverage compounds. As I already mentioned, we will also leverage the acquisitions here of Amber getting much better access, especially in Europe to the food service sector, quick service restaurants, coffee and tea shops.

This also gives us access to global customers, and we will not only benefit here in Europe from Emba, but also on a global scale. Yes, the product portfolio, we already mentioned that is sauces, topping, syrups and baking fillings, especially for the out-of-home channels.

Let's have a look at the financials, revenue by segment. You see a slight increase in our Solutions business, plus 1%, EUR 448.7 million in starch, a slight decline from EUR 257.8 million to EUR 252 million. And you see a further sharp decrease in revenue in sugar from EUR 170.1 million in the first quarter to EUR 146.1 million. This is mainly due to a further price reduction. It's not due to a volume decrease in sales. This is really here influenced by the still ongoing price pressure in sugar. And yes, this is something when we look at the next page, we see the enormous decline in sugar prices over the last, let's say, 5 to 2 years.

So this is a massive impact, has a massive impact and still there is no release triggers for this is, of course, the duty-free imports over 2 to 3 years coming from Ukraine. We have excess stocks in Europe still. Also, there is an expectation that we will enter the new sugar campaign in September with stocks of 2.6 million to 3 million tonnes in the European Union. A normal stock level is around 1.5 million to 1.6 million tonnes. Here you see an excess of 1 million tonnes also due to a very good crop in the last sugar campaign in 2025. So we saw a further reduction in acreage planted sugar beets for the campaign or the harvest in 2026, but now everything will depend on the weather conditions.

So far, we had a very dry June. But this is still not yet decided how the crop will look like. At the end of the day, it really depends on the weather conditions in July and August. One thing is very clear, we need a further reduction in supply. The demand is getting lower due to the consumer habits. And as long as we have a surplus in production, prices will not be able to recover.

EBIT by segment. So here, I must say we see a good performance. As already mentioned, fruit juice concentrates are still reported in our Solutions segment. We had a deep frost last year, especially in Hungary. So we lost around 80% to 90% of our production volumes in Hungary. This has a negative impact on our P&L, also on our top line, but also on our bottom line in the Food & Beverage Solutions business. But this could be partly compensated by our formulations business, but not by 100%. So therefore, we had a decline of 7.7% down to EUR 33.6 million, but still a very solid performance. for the first quarter starch, we have a significant improvement here in EBIT. This is, of course, mainly due to the increase in ethanol prices. This has also to do something with the crisis or the war in Iran.

On the other hand, we are facing increasing raw material prices and energy prices. So -- but the price increase in ethanol was able to overcompensate these increases in raw materials and energy. And we are very happy about the improved performance in sugar. You see last year, we had nearly EUR 30 million minus. Now really very from our point of view, a very good result with only minus EUR 2.7 million in the first quarter when we look at our competitors, they are also producing heavy losses in sugar.

So here, we can also clearly see the improvement due to the restructuring measures taken during the last 2.5 years and also the closure of Leopoldsdorf and Hrušovany. So these things are paying off already, and we were able to like-for-like significantly improve our performance here.

Outlook for '26-'27. So, of course, we expect a very significant increase in EBIT. But as already mentioned, here, we had extraordinary items of more than EUR 70 million in the last business year. We are not expecting this in the actual business year. So therefore, it's quite easy to say that we will be very significantly better off in '26, '27. Revenue here, we expect a slight growth, but mainly also due to the still decreasing revenues in sugar. Our savings program is also on a very good way.

Our target under the corporate level strategy at [indiscernible] next level is that we are implementing measures with a sustained annual savings impact of up to EUR 110 million in '26-'27.

Outlook by segments for '26, '27 in our Food & Beverage Solutions segment, we expect a moderate increase in revenue and a moderate reduction in EBIT. I already mentioned the reasons for that. In ACS Starch, a stable revenue and a significant increase in EBIT and ACS Sugar, a slight reduction in revenue due to lower -- still lowering prices and a very significant improvement in EBIT. And finally, our outlook for the second quarter of '26-'27. In '25-'26, EBIT was EUR 22.3 million in the second quarter of the financial year. And actually, in '26-'27, our forecast is that our EBIT shall be significantly higher than the figure for the previous year in the second quarter.

Thank you very much for your attention, and I hand back to Hannes Haider for the financial calendar.

Thanks. Before we go on with the Q&A session, I just wanted to remind you that after last week's AGM approval on dividend, the dividend payment date is on the 13th of July. And I would also like to inform you that our financial calendar for the next financial year '27, '28 will be prepared during summer months and will be published in autumn. We will now go on with the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Elias New from ODDO.

I have 3 questions. I'll take them one at a time. Perhaps first, starting with the Sugar business. So in Q1, you saw a decline in revenues here of around 14%. But for the full year, you're guiding only for a slight decline in revenues. So just wondering if you could comment on this and whether you expect prices to improve in coming quarters to sort of meet that full year top line guidance. And then on the profitability within Sugar, congratulations, first of all, on the excellent progress here on the margin. Just wondering if we can expect perhaps a similar margin going forward as we've seen in Q1 or perhaps even better in coming quarters as those restructuring measures continue to gain traction.

So thank you very much for the question. I understood that you are referring, first of all, to our sugar revenue. Yes, we saw -- let me look at the numbers here. Yes. Of course, in the first quarter, we have a more significant reduction in the revenues. This is due to the higher prices in Q1 in '25-'26, whereas we see more stabilization in prices during the rest of the year also compared with the remaining months in the last year. So in total, then we expect only a slight decrease for sugar.

Margins, also, I think this was in combination in our sugar business. I already mentioned that the prices are still under pressure. I mean this is a fact. We are currently in the marketing period of our sugar volumes produced in the campaign '26 we cannot really say what will be the outcome at the end of the day. Still, we have to wait for the weather conditions, especially what will be the production volume in the European Union, what will happen on the world market. So this will also influence our pricing power for sugar for the new production campaign.

Yes, if the prices will come under pressure again, and this can theoretically only happen if we will see a bumper crop, which is not expected now and also the acreage was reduced. Therefore, we do not expect increased price pressure here. But of course, I mean, yes, the situation can also deteriorate a little bit further. It all depends on how we will be able to market the production volumes out of the campaign '26. It's difficult to say, but we see currently stable market conditions.

Okay. Great. That's really helpful. Very clear. And congratulations again on the great progress there in terms of profitability. Perhaps just 2 quick follow-up questions. The other one would be on the Leopoldsdorf plant sale. I was just wondering what sort of cash flow and P&L impact we should expect to see in the second quarter here and if there's a book value gain or whether it was sold at book value?

Yes. We signed the deal 2 weeks ago. Now we are in the closing period. There are certain conditions that need to be fulfilled before we can close the deal. This will take, I think, around 2 to 3 months -- so we do not expect the closing in the second quarter, but maybe more in the third quarter of the business year. Of course, there will be an impact on the P&L and also on the cash flow. But unfortunately, we are not able to give you more details about this now because we have an agreement with the buyer that we should not talk about the terms and conditions before the closing took place. But it will be a positive impact. This is what I can tell you now.

Okay. Great. That's good to hear. And final one from my side would be just on restructuring expenses, which were significantly lower in Q1. So it just sort of wondering what the reasonable run rate would be going forward? I mean, do you expect restructuring expenses to increase again in coming quarters as you perhaps rightsize some more sugar plants, et cetera? Or is it sort of sensible?

Yes. So currently, we do not expect a significant extraordinary expenses. In sugar, I mean, we already had an asset impairment also last business year. I cannot completely rule out now that further structure measures will be taken. But in that case, the extraordinary effect shall be very limited in comparison with the effect last year. .

The next question comes from Vladimira Urbankova from Erste Group Bank.

Congratulations to the very solid start of the year. And I would have a couple of questions. First 1 would be related to your cost because the report is relatively restricted in this respect. So I would be interested the major operating cost development in the first quarter this highlight may be energy costs. What do you expect for the rest of the year? Regarding your cost savings, you are highlighting EUR 110 million. How this will impact the individual segments and maybe in operating cost categories.

And then I have some technical question like what was the reason behind this steep increase in trade receivables -- and also, you mentioned in connection with the transaction in Slovenia, the Mercator-Emba that you already paid to the sale of EUR 40.9 million, but at the same time, you say that the initial price was EUR 35 million. So what I'm missing here in this calculation?

This is [indiscernible]. First of all, energy cost, you saw that the prices for gas, especially where we are a heavy consumer, especially in starch and in sugar increased significantly due to the war in Iran. Therefore, we do not expect lower energy prices for the actual business year compared with the previous year, but we also do not expect a significant increase. So we are very optimistic that we can keep our prices here for energy on yes, on a stable level, plus/minus. Also, of course, depends on the further development of the situation in here in Middle East. And then you asked for Emba. Yes, the purchase price also always includes the final, how shall I say, balance sheet. So what did we agree on when we signed the deal and what was the balance sheet looking like when we took it over at the closing date. And also when we get, for example, more cash because the company generated more cash during the closing period, then of course, we have to compensate the seller for that. This does not affect the net price -- so if we pay more, we also get more.

And then your question was the savings program. Of course, the savings measures mainly concern our sugar business, our starch business and the holding. So especially in sugar and in starch, we are continuously adding potentials to the savings pipeline because we still have the feeling that we are not ambitious enough to bring our results in the direction where we want them to be. And your last question, I think, was the development of the trade receivables. Yes, sorry for that. I do not have the exact numbers now. We will come on that back later.

Yes. The trade receivables according to Page 7 in the report increased by 42% roughly versus February at the end of May. So this is quite sizable increase. So just...

Yes. Yes, it's the course of the business, we will analyze it. I cannot give you a detailed explanation on that.

And maybe a little bit more, if you can elaborate on the cost categories, major operating cost categories in the first quarter. What was the development? I assume personnel costs are down energy costs up than year-on-year in the first quarter, but -- looking forward, on the group level, because I assume that looking forward, it's tricky still because we have the conflict in the Middle East going unpredictable way. But what was the first quarter development? .

No, we do not see a big challenge actually in personnel costs. This is on track. Where we see the biggest challenge, of course, are transport costs, and, for example, calls for packaging materials and chemicals. This is -- but this is more than related to our production costs as well. So you cannot see this directly in the P&L. We are working on putting this on our customers, but it's not always that easy. .

Yes, as I already mentioned, with personnel costs, we are exactly on track with what we planned at the beginning of the business year.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions on the phone. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Hannes Haider for any closing remarks.

Thanks a lot for your questions. And thank you for your interest in our call. We wish you a nice remaining day and a nice summertime. Goodbye. .

[Operator Instructions]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for using Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AGRANA Results for Full Year 2025-2026 Conference Call. My name is Joseph, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Hannes Haider. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AGRANA's conference call, presenting our results for the full year '25-'26. You already got some insights in our figures when we published the talk release mid of April. Today, we will provide you with further details on all segments and also on the audited financial statements. As announced in our invitation, a presentation is available in reference to this call. You can find this presentation in the IR section of our website.

As you can see on Slide #2, the presentation will be divided into three parts. Our CEO, Stephan Buttner, will start with a general introduction, focusing on the highlights of the '25-'26 financial year. He will then hand over to our COO, Franz Ennser. He will report on the topics of raw materials, investments and ESG.

And afterwards, our CEO will take over again and provide you with details on the financial performance, and he will conclude with an outlook for the ongoing financial year '26-'27. The presentation will take about 25 minutes, and afterwards, the lines will be opened and we will be glad to answer your questions.

And now I may us over to CEO, Stephan, who will start with the presentation.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, let's have a look at the financial year, '25-'26. So it was still a very challenging year in a also challenging environment, uncertainty. Intense competition, still volatile commodity markets, also inflation are the most important topics here. Now again, we are facing a heavy, let's say, crisis triggered by the world in the Middle East.

Despite all these factors, our operating results, our operating performance was quite solid with an operating profit of EUR 81.2 million. This is a moderate increase versus prior year where we had EUR 76.5 million. Of course, a very negative impact, the one-timers, especially the write-off of assets in our Sugar business. amounting to EUR 46 million.

Also, we had to book personnel expenses in combination with the closure of our 2 Sugar production sites, Leopoldsdorf and Hrusovany with about EUR [ 13 ] million. And also, we had to book a provision for potential lawsuit also with nearly EUR 10 million.

When we look at the key numbers, revenue of EUR 3.2 billion, this is a decrease versus the EUR 3.5 billion in '24, '25, mainly the reduction comes from the sugar business, where we had a decrease of EUR 250 million in revenues. Our operating profit, EUR 81.2 million, as already mentioned; exceptional items EUR 74.1 million minus. This is more than twice as we had in '24-'25, mostly coming out of our Sugar business. and this leading to an EBIT of only EUR 3.2 million for the business year '25, '26.

When we look at the free cash flow, EUR 127 million, let's say, considering the negative operating result in Sugar, a solid performance with around 4% in terms of our revenue. a further reduction in our net debt position despite the fact that we had a payout of more than EUR 50 million for the acquisition of the remaining shares of AUSTRIA JUICE.

Our gearing with 39.2%, also solid and also a strong equity ratio with 44.1%. We also see ourselves on track in the execution of our corporate strategy next level. So we terminated our sugar production in Leopoldsdorf, Austria and Hrušovany, Czech Republic, a very important step towards the restructuring of our Sugar business.

As already mentioned also, we were able to acquire the remaining shares in AUSTRIA JUICE from Raiffeisen Ware Austria AG, also important for our potential growth strategy in our Food & Beverage Solutions segment.

Also, we were able to close the transaction concerning the acquisition of the Slovenian food company, Mercator-Emba, a very important supplier for the food service business, quick service restaurants in Europe; bringing us access to additional sales channels.

Also, we were able to reach an agreement with the Austrian sugar beet growth, also a very important step to secure our production site in Austria, [ Tulln ]. This is a 3-year contract where we think that we found a very good agreement on one hand, securing the raw material base for our factory. On the other hand, let's say -- yes, bringing us also in a position where we shall be competitive with our production cost in sugar midterm, also in connection with the savings program that we are executing currently.

Yes. And also our savings program, where we had a target of over EUR 80 million, this is a number that we overachieved already. So we set a new target until the end of the business year '28, '29 where we want to reach a total year-end yearly savings amount of EUR 130 million.

Let me say something about the Management Board. So Franz Ennser, new colleague in the AGRANA Board. He joined us in November '25. He is already in a AGRANA for quite a long time. He was the CEO of the AUSTRIA JUICE business for the last 10 years, and we are very happy that he joined us in November and took over the COO position in the group.

And now please let me hand over to Franz. He will guide you through raw materials and so on.

Thank you, Stephan. So some insights about our raw materials and our investments. In the last business year, AGRANA has processed around 7.7 million tonnes of raw material. The biggest share, 4.3 million is sugar beet, for sure, a smaller volume within on raw sugar. The grain amounted for 2.4 million tonnes; potato, around 200,000 tonnes. And overall, the fruit has been processing around 700,000 tonnes of various fruits.

Of course, we were decreasing our volumes on sugar beet, especially coming from the previous year of 6.5 million. While in the other areas, we have been pretty stable. So the grains, the potatoes and also the fruits are on a pretty same level as in the previous year.

In terms of our investments, AGRANA Group has invested in the last business year, around EUR 103 million. The biggest share we invested into the Food & Beverage Solutions segment, especially enlarging our processing and packing capacities in the various countries. On Starch and Sugar, we invested around EUR 18.5 million, EUR 12.4 million, respectively, of course, also driven by the lower performance in these segments. We also have been, let's say, very cautious in terms of our investments.

The plan now for the current business year is that we will invest around EUR 130 million, which is slightly below the threshold for our depreciation, which amounts for EUR 117 million. 2/3 of our investments will be directed into the Food & Beverage Solutions segment, while around 18% will go into the Starch and roughly 11% will be dedicated for investments into the Sugar business.

In terms of ESG sustainability, of course, ESG sustainability is an integral part of all our business activities. We are committed to our targets on Scope 1, Scope 2, which means that we are aiming at reducing it down to 50% in 2030 and achieving the net zero emissions by 2040. While for the Scope 3, the target is that we achieved a 30% reduction by 2030 and the net zero emission 2050.

We have put some special, let's say, efforts and highlights in the sustainability business for '26, '27 related to the sustainable sourcing of raw materials, which means basically certifications according to the FSA numbers.

We are dealing with the responsible water use in all our activities, be it the processing, but also be the agricultural raw materials advice to our growers and suppliers. And of course, also, we have to deal with the waste recycling. We want to optimize this across all our sites.

Furthermore, we will put a focus on, let's say, the nonfinancial targets, especially on gender equality, which means that we are targeting achieving 30% of management position being held by women by 2030. We have a further focus on health and safety for all our employees by targeting in reducing the injury rates. And finally, also, we will enroll our code of conduct information campaign also for the blue collar, not just for the white. And this will be the key priorities.

One final comment on our energy costs. So we have been able to benefit from the lower energy pricing in the last business year, reducing down our [ old ] energy costs in the various segments down to around EUR 204 million, but it's still substantially higher than compared to the time period before the COVID crisis or especially the Ukrainian war impacted our expenditures on energy.

The split, you can see here on the chart, the biggest share for sure with EUR 110 million has been spent in the Starch business, followed by Sugar and also finally by the [ FBS ] segment was around EUR 37 million.

That's it in a nutshell. And now I hand back to Stephan.

Thank you, Franz. So yes, please let me put the attention to the new segment reporting. Again, we already reported about that since March '25, we have the new reporting structure. So we have two, let's say, strategic business areas and therefore, then three segments, Food & Beverage Solutions is one segment that we report. We have Agricultural Commodities & Specialties Starch segment, and we have Agricultural Commodities & Specialties Sugar segment, and we have the Holding Co. & Other.

This is a new reporting scheme. So let's jump to the next slide, revenue by segment. I already mentioned, we had a decrease of nearly 8% mainly coming out of the Sugar segment, you see a decrease by 32% in revenue from EUR [ 840 ] million down to EUR 570 million. Starch, a slight decrease of 3% and a slight increase in our Solutions segment by 1.1%.

Main driver for the reduction in sugar, of course, the prices, we had quite stable volumes on the sales side but the sharp drop in sugar sales prices, especially in the industrial markets.

The EBIT by segment here, a very good development in our Solutions segment. An EBIT of EUR 103.3 million with an EBIT margin of 6.3%, this is totally acceptable. I would say, starch quite weak, still also here a further decrease of 26.3%, still a very challenging and difficult environment, a weak economy, low ethanol prices and margins is all negatively impacting our EBIT in Starch. And then you can see really the very, very poor performance.

In Sugar, again, we had one-timers here. I already mentioned the write-offs of assets, EUR 46 million. I already mentioned social plans. So extraordinary personnel cost of nearly EUR 13 million and the provision of nearly EUR 10 million.

So all this negatively impacting our results in Sugar and therefore, a negative EBIT of EUR 106.6 million. And when you take this into consideration also with a number of '24, '25, you see the tremendous losses in this business segment. So this is why we have constantly to work on the turnaround. This is a heavy burden for our group.

Of course, everything very negatively impacted by the low sugar prices. You see the sharp decline in prices where we were in '23, '24. So now we see kind of a stabilization also caused by the conflict in Iran. Let's see what the final impact will be on the energy prices. This will potentially also then, in the coming campaign, leads to higher production costs.

On the other hand, we have high stocks in Europe. We will enter the new production campaign in September '26 with a record level of 2.6 million tonnes of sugar on stocks in the European Union. This is a very, very big number. So on the other hand, we see a decrease in planted acreage further decrease versus '24, '25, where we also saw a reduction. Now it will also depend on the weather conditions on the yields of sugar beets in the European Union. And this will guide us the way through the sugar marketing year '26-'27.

Let's come to the financials, Consolidated income statement, I already referred to the revenue, EUR 3.237 billion. yes. EBITDA, EUR 195 million, this is not a very good number. But when we take into consideration the poor situation in our commodities businesses, especially in Sugar, I would say it's a solid performance also with EUR 81.2 million operating profit.

And then we have the extraordinary exceptional items with minus EUR 74.1 million, leading to the EBIT of EUR 3.2 million and the loss for the period amounting to minus EUR 35.6 million.

Yes, exceptional items I already explained it. So let me come to the dividend proposal. So the proposal is EUR 0.35 dividend payout per share for the '25-'26 financial year. This is let's say, half of the dividend that we paid out in '24, '25 of EUR 0.70 per share. This would be -- the EUR 0.35 would be a dividend yield of 3% based on the share price of EUR 11.75 at the end of the fiscal year '25, '26. Dividend payment will be made on 13th of July '26.

[indiscernible] Already to the outlook for '26-'27. Of course, we expect a very significant improvement on EBIT level, but this is not very difficult as we have these -- all these exceptional items in '25-'26. So the expected range of EBIT is between EUR 70 million and EUR 90 million. spend on group level, we expect a slight growth in revenue. Also, we will further work on our savings program and expect to have implemented measures with the future impact of nearly EUR 110 million at the end of '26, '27.

For the segments, in Food & Beverage Solutions, we expect a moderate increase in revenue and a moderate reduction in EBIT. This is mainly due to the massive, let's say, frost that we saw in Hungary last autumn, impacting our harvest of apples, yes, leading to a very low utilization of our capacities in our AUSTRIA JUICE concentrate production in Hungary. Therefore, this has also, of course, an impact on our results expected in '26, '27 in our [ FBS ] segment. The rest should be on track and comparable, at least with the business year '25, '26 performance-wise.

In Starch, we expect a stable revenue and a significant increase in EBIT and in sugar, a slight reduction -- a further slight reduction in revenues and, of course, a very significant improvement on EBIT level.

So finally, please let me draw your attention to the war in Middle East. This is something that, of course, brings more uncertainty for all our business segments. We can already say that in the first quarter, we did not really see an impact of this war. Of course, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is impacting the energy prices already. The question is how long will this go on?

And then, of course, we will see the impact in the value chain coming in the next months. But really, it depends on how long the whole situation will last that we see. Actually, this will also potentially have an impact on inflation. So prices will rise again. This is clear, I think we are doing a proper risk assessment on AGRANA Group level.

And currently, we have the expectation that this is absolutely manageable and will not have an immediate impact on our guidance. But as I already said, there is a lot of uncertainty and nobody knows how this whole things in Iran will evolve.

Finally, outlook for the first quarter, '26-'27. Of course, the EBIT in the first quarter '25 '26 mln was extremely low, There, we had to book the restructuring costs for the closure of Leopoldsdorf and Hrusovany, especially the personnel expenses. This is what we'll not see in the actual first quarter. Therefore, the EBIT is expected to be very significantly better.

So this was my part. So thank you very much for your attention. Let me hand over to Hannes Haider, who will inform you about the financial calendar.

Thanks so far. Before we go on with the Q&A session, I just wanted to remind you that today in the morning, we also published our annual report for '25-'26. And we would like to invite you to also visit our digital report on reports.agrana.com.

And having a look at the financial calendar, I just wanted to remind you that our Annual General Meeting will take place on the 3rd of July, and it would be a presence event. We will now go on with the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Elias New from ODDO BHF.

I'll start with a quick clarification question on the Next-level savings program. So if I understand correct, that you've achieved EUR 52 million of savings for the current financial year, but you are targeting EUR 80 million for the following year and then EUR 100 million for the year after. And then the EUR 110 million, that is just measures that you will implement in the next fiscal year, but they will flow through to the P&L in the years after that.

Is that sort of the way to think about that? So we're going to get EUR 80 million of savings that will hit the P&L next year and EUR 110 million in terms of the measures you're taking and that they will sort of flow through later?

Yes. It's clear, but it's not correct. Our target for '25, '26 were EUR 52 million. What we already achieved is an amount of EUR 89 million. Now maybe you will raise the question, where is the result? The problem is that all the savings are eaten up by the lower gross profit, gross margins especially coming out of Sugar and Starch. And this is due to the actual pricing situation in Sugar, but on the other hand, also due to the overall economic situation in Starch.

Our target for the next year, '26-'27 is that we will implement -- already have implemented measures that bring up savings -- annual savings of around EUR 100 million. This is our ambition for the year '26-'27. This also will have a very positive effect once the market will recover, then we will profit on one hand from the recovery of these markets and volume-wise and on the other hand, from the much better cost structure that we will have then.

Yes, that's helpful. And so just to clarify, so that EUR 100 million for next year, that will be fully kind of reflected in the P&L., it's not sort of measures you're taking and they will flow through later?

It's not fully reflected in the P&L, but I would say it's up to 80% to 90% reflected in the P&L because this was already achieved in last year.

Right. Okay. Understood. So we can imagine essentially some incremental savings hitting the P&L in the next fiscal year. And so if I were to come to a follow-up question on that. If you were to look at your guidance for the next fiscal year.

I mean it is essentially -- if you strip out the one-offs, it would assume kind of taking the midpoint flat year-on-year development. So I'm just wondering the incremental savings that you will essentially see coming through in the P&L this year will be offset by adverse developments?

Yes, you're completely right. The problem is mainly in the Sugar business, so still, we are facing a massive pressure from the market side. So prices are further -- will further decrease in the actual business here on one hand. On the other hand, yes, let's see what happens also with the volumes. I mean, we are in the restructuring mode. But yes, I mean we need a recovery also in the market side.

That's very clear. And I guess final question from my side is just coming to the sugar business. I mean you're guiding for a slight revenue decline, but improving profitability.

Now that's kind of obvious, given the EBIT level on the one-off. But what are the assumptions embedded in the guidance here also on the revenue side? So what level of sugar prices are you assuming? And what are you seeing in the market currently? And perhaps on that, also, what is your current breakeven price? I mean it's sort of somewhere below EUR 600 million, right?

Yes, it is difficult to talk about breakeven prices in sugar, it really depends on the energy prices. that we will face during the sugar marketing campaign starting in September. This is one very important factor. On the other hand, it also depends on the raw material prices at the end of the day. Yes, it's somewhere for sure, I would say -- in the industry, it must be somewhere around 600 plus/minus. This is what we think also with the current energy price levels.

Yes, as I said, I mean, difficult to say also, revenue-wise, it really depends what's going to happen with the sugar prices onwards from September '26. As I already mentioned, we have still very high volumes on stock. So the estimation is around 2.6 million tonnes in Europe entering into the new sugar marketing year September '26, and normal level is around 1.6 million tonnes. So this means over stocks of around 1 million tonnes.

By statistics. Of course, this can be, let's say, compensated by the lower planted acreage in the European Union. But nobody knows what the weather will do, yes. So will this be a very good crop, then it will be more difficult, let's say, for prices to recover. If it will be a bad crop, it could also theoretically see an increase in prices. Currently, very difficult to say, yes.

Yes, that's helpful, but I'm just guessing sort of for your guidance, are you assuming that sugar prices deteriorate further or sort of hold this level? I'm just trying to think, what are the assumptions you've you can get it in a given...

No, for the fiscal year, so we expect, of course, a stable development now till the new sugar marketing campaign. And then we will see new prices. Our expectation in the budget -- reflected in the budget is a moderate decrease in prices, a further decrease. Yes. So -- and in total, a further decrease also in revenue. But this is what I already mentioned, yes.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Hannes Haider for closing remarks.

As there are no further questions, thanks a lot for your participation. We wish you a nice remaining day, and goodbye. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AGRANA Results for the First 3 Quarters of 2025-2026 Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Investor Relations Officer, Hannes Haider. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to AGRANA's conference call presenting our results for this first 3 quarters of '25-'26 financial year. First of all, Happy New Year and all the best for 2026. As announced in our conference call invitation, a presentation is available in reference to this call, and you can find this presentation as always, in the IR section of our website.

Our CEO, Stephan Buttner, will hold today's presentation. And as you can see on Page 2, the presentation is divided into 3 parts. We will start with a general introduction, focusing on the main topics of the first 9 months. We will go on then with comments on the financial performance, especially on segment level. And finally, we will conclude with an outlook for the remaining financial year '25-'26.

The presentation will take about 15 minutes. And afterwards, the lines will be opened and we will be glad to answer your questions.

And now I may pass over to our CEO, Stephan, who will start the presentation with Slide #3.

Thank you, Hannes. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, first of all, Happy New Year also from my side. So yes, after 3 quarters in the actual business year, we are on track towards the implementation of our corporate strategy next level. Also, regarding our financial targets for the business year '25-'26, so we saw a significant increase as forecasted. Also for the first 9 months, we have a stable result despite the EUR 20.4 million extraordinary expenses in the sugar business for restructuring in Austria and Czech Republic, so the sites Leopoldsdorf and Hrušovany.

The operative performance in sugar is still negative, but we see a slight improvement during the business year, mainly due to our restructuring or, let's say, cost savings. Yes, starch, a market-driven decline in earnings, still the economy is under pressure. We see this also especially in the paper industry, but also in the food industry and the construction industry. Here we are working on our operative business level strategy to focus also in the future, even more on specialties. And Food & Beverage Solutions, again, delivered strong earnings, and this is very important for a stabilization of our group EBIT as also already in the previous year.

Key figures. So revenue EUR 2.494 billion in the first 3 quarters. Operating profit amounted to EUR 73.3 million. Exceptional items I already mentioned, minus EUR 22.8 million, this comes mainly from the restructuring or the social plan in combination with the closure of the site Hrušovany and Leopoldsdorf. And therefore, then this resulting in an EBIT of EUR 48.4 million.

Free cash flow positive with EUR 76 million, close to the EUR 87.8 million last year. Net debt increased up to EUR 470 million, but there is already included the cash out of around EUR 50 million of the acquisition of AUSTRIA JUICE. Gearing 42.4%, up a little bit versus prior year and equity ratio, still very solid with around 44%.

When we look at the implementation of the AGRANA NEXT LEVEL strategy. So of course, I already mentioned the termination of sugar production, the sites Leopoldsdorf and Hrušovany. We acquired the remaining 49.99% of AUSTRIA JUICE shares from RWA. The deal was closed mid-October 2025. Now we are working on the integration, especially of the specialties added value business. So beverage compounds and flavors, natural flavors and bringing this closer together with our solutions business from the fruit preparations. Also in summer '25, we announced the acquisition of the Slovenian food company, Mercator-Emba are also very important for growing our foodservice business in our Food & Beverage Solutions segment. So we expect the antitrust approval in the course of January.

And last but not least, we are also successful in negotiating a new contract with the Austrian beet farmers. It's a 3 years contract with a new pricing formula for the raw material, reflecting the actual pressure on the sugar market, but also the higher input factor costs like energy, but also personnel costs. So I think this was a very good compromise, and we are very happy that we -- and we are sure that this will secure our sugar production in Austria in the remaining site tool for the next years.

Let's move on to the financials. So I again want to inform that we will see a new segment report that we have this new segment reporting since March 1, 2025, but we for sure already know this. So now we have the new structure with Food & Beverage Solutions. This was the former Fruit segment. We have our Agricultural Commodities & Specialties segment, Starch and ACS – Sugar, and we are separately reporting the holding.

So now let's move on to the revenue by segment. Total revenue was EUR 2.5 billion. I already mentioned that is a decrease of around 8% versus prior year. So we saw a growth of 2.3% in the FBS segment, minus 1.4% in Starch and the significant define in Sugar by 34%, which is, of course, volume-driven, but also price driven. It clearly shows the reduction of our footprint in the sugar business. So the market in sugar is still and continuously under pressure also due to the, let's say, good crop in 2025. So the production volumes are, let's say, the reduced beet growing areas are compensated by this good harvest. Therefore, yes, there is enough supply of Sugar in the market, and therefore, the Sugar prices are still under pressure.

In Starch, of course, lower sales volumes of saccharification products. Saccharification products are somehow always linked to the Sugar market. The Sugar market is under pressure also the market for saccharification products from our Starch production is also somehow under pressure. Ethanol still very volatile. We saw an increase in the recent month, but then it went down again. And now it somehow stabilized during the last weeks at around EUR 630, EUR 640 per cubic meter. And the Food & Beverage Solutions, we are happy that we again saw a growth this year in the first 9 months.

When we look at the Sugar world market prices, but also in the European Union, so you see in the graph a massive decrease of sugar prices in the last month. So now we see somehow stabilization. Yes, will be very, very interesting to see what happens now in March, April when beets are seed for the production processing campaign in 2026 autumn. So one thing is very clear, we need a further reduction of areas planted, beets planted in the European Union. Otherwise, the market will not be able to stabilize also facing this hard pressure on the world market side for Sugar.

The outlook for '25-'26. So we confirmed our outlook with a significant increase in EBIT and a moderate decrease in revenue on group level and outlook for the segments. Food & Beverage Solutions, a slight increase in revenue and a slight increase in EBIT. ACS – Starch, a slight reduction in revenue and a significant reduction in EBIT and in Sugar, a significant reduction in revenue and a significant improvement versus prior year in EBIT.

So thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and let me hand back to Hannes Haider for the financial calendar.

Thanks so far. Before we go on with the Q&A session, just one remark. I wanted to remind you that our annual results for the full year will be published on the 12th of May and the Annual General Meeting will be held on the 3rd of July. We will now go on with the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Vladimira Urbankova from Erste Group.

I would have a couple of questions. First of all, looking at performance of the individual business areas, if you could a little bit elaborate on the 3Q slowdown in the FBS segment, while quite significant improvement in the Starch. I know there was in the Starch low comparative base, but still because these divisions developed a little bit not as indicated for the full year, I would like to know what were the major reasons for the 3Q developments and if these reasons continue to affect the fourth quarter as well?

And then my next question would be related to the Sugar. I hear you pointed to a new pricing model. Maybe if you can, in a nutshell share with us what is the major difference between the old pricing model, new pricing model, where do you see the key factors which will affect performance of Sugar segment? And last but not least, what are, in your opinion, preconditions for Sugar segment returned to profitability in particular, which price levels at your currently streamlined structure will allow you to get out of the red zone? This would be it for now.

Yes. Thank you very much for your question. So first question, Q3 performance, Food & Beverage Solutions segment. So we see no significant decline versus prior year. So in the year '24, '25 in Q3, we had an EBIT of EUR 22.5 million in Q3. And this year, we have EUR 21.8 million. So this is a normal, let's say, normal development. It's a seasonal effect. So third quarter is always weaker than the quarters before in the FBS segment. So there is no significant change. And in Starch, I think it's always very important to know that the wet corn season is taking place in Q3, which gives us significantly lower costs on the raw material side. And therefore, the performance is higher, but also ethanol prices were significantly higher than in the Q2 and Q1.

Your next question, Sugar business, yes, it's not a new model, but it's -- the model is more or less same that we negotiated with the beet farmers in Austria, but it's a different curve. It's a different price curve for the raw materials. This means the raw material price -- so the beet price is directly linked to the sales price of Sugar. And then I think it's very simple to explain it in that way that you say, okay, now we have a different increase in the beet price, if the sugar price goes up by EUR 50 per tonne than before, so we significantly flattened the curve. And this is very important. The old agreement was made in 2017, 2018. And this was a time when we never expected an inflation that we saw in recent years. And therefore, we were not expecting Sugar prices of, let's say, around EUR 500, EUR 600, EUR 700 per tonne. And therefore, yes, the curve was not appropriate, let's say, for these price levels from our perspective.

So we were successful at renegotiating this. And now we have a much flatter curve than before when we're talking about the price range between EUR 500 and EUR 750 per tonne of sugar. And when you ask me for the preconditions, so that -- and please let me also mention, we do not see any sugar producer currently in Europe, having no losses, clearly saying that. So we don't think that with the actual price levels of EUR 500, EUR 550, the industry is able to survive. So we think that at least EUR 600 per tonne are necessary for growing beets on one hand for the farmers and on the other hand, for the processors to enter or to leave the so-called red zone. But this is our perspective.

The next question comes from Baptiste de Leudeville from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Most of my questions have been answered previously, but maybe one question about the M&A. Can you just remind us the cash flow impact of the acquisition of the remaining shares of AUSTRIA JUICE and also of the acquisitions of Mercator-Emba. And also can you give us some explanation on the rationale of the acquisition of Mercator-Emba, maybe going a bit deeper on this and the profile of the company and what do they do? And what is the size of it? That's the first question, and then I will have a second one.

First of all, cash flow impact from the acquisition of AUSTRIA JUICE, we said that the payout for acquiring the shares is around EUR 50 million. So this is a direct cash flow impact. For Mercator-Emba, yes, the size is around EUR 35 million cash out, if the transaction will be approved by the antitrust authorities. The rationale behind this, clearly, we want to grow our Food & Beverage Solutions segment. AUSTRIA JUICE, we already mentioned several times that we want to bring together our competencies of AUSTRIA JUICE in the added value business with natural flavors but also beverage compounds with our food preparations business and the global footprint.

So we roll out our competencies there globally. So let's say, primarily, these are market-driven synergies that we are looking for. And Mercator-Emba is a very important supplier of large quick service restaurants in the Food Service segment. Food Service segment is one of our growth pillars in our Food & Beverage Solutions segment. And this is a very strong company with huge skills in the production of dessert toppings and sources, and it matches perfectly well with our competencies in our fruit preparations business.

Very clear. And the second question is regarding Sugar. You seem very clear about the fact that there would be no rebound if the surface of beets does not reduce. When will you have more visibility on this in? In March, April, you will have good visibility on this?

I mean, we already see some signs. So we expect the reduction. Of course, we have more visibility in March, April, and then it depends on the weather conditions. I mean we saw already a significant reduction in the feed planting areas in the last year, unfortunately, yes, we must say, unfortunately, the weather conditions were so good that the campaigns are now -- are really big in Europe, and the production volumes are much higher than in the previous year. Therefore, the reduction of the surface was compensated by that. And therefore, there is no outlet because the world market prices are so heavily under pressure. So everything is coming together right now. We have excellent harvesting conditions or expectations in the major countries of sugar production like Brazil, India, Thailand and so on. And we have a very good crop in Europe.

So we -- there is no space for, let's say, exporting sugar to the world market for good prices. So the sugar stays in Europe and leading to heavy price pressure in the European market because there is an oversupply. And therefore, we need a significant reduction of sugar production in 2026. Otherwise, the markets will not stabilize and the prices will not go up. So yes, I think we need to wait for March, April and see what happens in the summer. But when you look at the curve of the development of the sugar prices in the last years, I mean it's up and down. Now we are -- we had a massive downward trend. I think it was also triggered by the high import volumes coming from Ukraine during 2 years, more than -- significantly more than 1 million tonnes duty-free and sugar can easily be stored. So this is weighing, let's say, on the sugar balance in Europe. And therefore, we have all these problems now.

The next question comes from Elias New from ODDO BHF.

I just have a question on your guidance, your EBIT guidance for this year, where you're still guiding for EUR 45 million to EUR 60 million, I believe. And given you reported around EUR 48 million year-to-date for the 9 months, that would leave quite a big range for Q4, so I calculate around minus EUR 3 million to plus EUR 12 million. So just wondering if you could comment which assumptions are baked into this guidance and whether you expect to end up closer to the top end of that EBIT guidance or closer to the bottom end?

Yes. It's not so easy. I mean, to predict right now. We still have volatilities, especially in ethanol. So it depends what happens in the last 3 months or the last quarter in the ethanol prices. And then, of course, it also depends on the evaluation of our stocks in sugar. This also depends on the sales volumes in Q4 which means how big will be the demand, what will be the final stock situation in sugar, how do we need to evaluate that. So these are, let's say, plus/minus the variables here. And our expectation is an EBIT for Q4 of between EUR 5 or EUR 6 million and EUR 12 million, I would say.

So we will come closer to the upper range than to the lower range. And therefore, this means our EBITDA should amount between EUR 190 million and EUR 200 million for the business year '25, '26. But this is our actual estimation. It really depends on all these things happening in Q4. So it's not so easy to predict, especially in sugar and ethanol.

And just a second question on the tariff impact. I mean I believe your FBS business is quite exposed to the U.S. Could you just give us an update here in terms of the impact you're seeing from tariffs in the current financial year? And whether we should expect a similar impact in the next financial year as well?

No, it is not impacted. Our FBS segment is not impacted by the duties from the U.S. because we have a local business there. The impact -- the major impact comes from duties on goods that we import to produce, especially our fruit preparations in the United States for the customers, the local customers, but all the price increases are passed on to the customers. So there, we see no negative impact, but we also do currently not expect a negative impact in the next year, provided that things remain as they are. So if there are new ideas coming, potential new tariffs on products from Mexico, Canada and so on, so then we need to reassess the situation. But currently, we see no impact, no major impact.

Perfect. And just final question from my side on the savings as part of your NEXT LEVEL strategy. I was just wondering, are we still on track to achieve around EUR 50 million savings this year or where do we currently stand?

Yes, of course, we are still on track, so we can increase the number up to EUR 60 million already.

Gentlemen, so far there are no further questions, back over to you for any closing remarks.

Thanks. As there are no further questions, thank you for your interest in AGRANA and your participation in the call. We wish you a nice remaining day. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AGRANA Results for the First Half of 2025/'26 Conference Call. I am Valentina, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Hannes Haider. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AGRANA's conference call presenting our results for the first half of '25/'26 financial year. You already got some insights in our figures when we published an ad hoc announcement on the 10th of September. Today, we will provide you with more financial details and also on the different segments.

As announced in our invitation, a presentation is available in reference to this call, and you can find this presentation as always, in the IR section of our website.

Our CEO, Stephan Buttner, will hold today's presentation. As you can see on Slide #2, the presentation is divided into three parts. We will start with an introduction and we will focus on the highlights of the first half. We will go on then with a segment overview and comment also on the financial performance. And finally, we will conclude with an outlook for the remaining business year.

The presentation will take about 20 to 25 minutes. And afterwards, we will be glad to answer your questions.

And now, I may pass over to our CEO, Stephan, who will start with the presentation on Slide #4.

Yes. Thank you, Hannes. So, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, first half of the business year was quite challenging still. In the second quarter, our decline in EBIT was less than expected, fortunately. And so, in September, therefore, we raised our forecast for the full year '25/'26, and we now expect our EBIT to be significantly higher than in the previous year, but we have to mention that this is still on a low level. So, AGRANA is still in a challenging transformation phase.

On one hand, our Food & Beverage Solutions business is developing in a very positive way. On the other hand, our activities in the Agricultural Commodities business, so Sugar and Starch are still in a very challenging situation.

When we look at the key figures, so revenue went down to EUR 1.691 billion in the first half of the business year. Operating profit with EUR 52.2 million, close to the result in the previous year. We also had exceptional items, but this was already expected and is due to the closure of the sites in Leopoldsdorf, Austria; and Hrušovany, Czech Republic in Sugar. And therefore, the EBIT amounted to EUR 28 million, significantly down versus prior year, but this is mainly due to the exceptional items.

Our Sugar restructuring is on track. You know the background. So, we have significant challenges throughout Europe with also in combination with the Ukrainian import volumes duty-free in the last 2 to 3 business years. So, now there is, again, yes, at least normal crop for sugar beets in the European Union expected. This is still, therefore, pressure on the market prices. So, the pressure came back recently, due to the very good outlook of the Sugar produced in the European Union and also in combination with the very low world market prices, they declined further in the last 2 to 3 weeks significantly.

Therefore, looking back, our decision to close the site in Austria, Leopoldsdorf, and Hrušovany, Czech Republic was absolutely the right thing to do. So, we here on a good track concerning our restructuring activities. We are further pushing on cost reduction, and we are also in negotiations with the beet farmers for the, let's say, models for getting the beets in the coming season.

Key figures, part 2, so EUR 83.5 million of free cash flow. This is a positive number, I would say, also in combination with the difficulties on the profitability side. Our net debt declined to EUR 407.8 million, also down versus 28th of February, 2025 by around EUR 20 million. Gearing ratio, 35.5%, stable and the equity ratio increased to 47% versus 45.4% prior year.

We also want to mention here that, again, the 100% acquisition of the Slovenian food company, Mercator-Emba. This is a company with around EUR 30 million revenues actually, but we have concrete plans to bring this significantly up in the next 3 to 5 years. EMBA employs around 100 people. So, they are producing syrups and dessert toppings. They are a big supplier of the food service industry in Central, Eastern, and South Europe. So, this goes hand-in-hand with our strategy to get more access to the sales channel food service. We think this is an excellent add-on to our capabilities in the fruit preparations business. And so therefore, we are very happy that we could realize this acquisition.

We also had an enlargement or will have quite soon from the 1st of November onwards 2025, the enlargement of the AGRANA Management Board. So Franz Ennser was appointed as new member of the Management Board. He has a long history already in AGRANA. So, his last function was the CEO of the AUSTRIA JUICE Company since 2014. I personally already did with him the integration and restructuring of the AUSTRIA JUICE company after the merger of Ybbstaler and AGRANA Juice in 2012. So, we already have a joint very good track record, and I'm very happy that we can welcome Mr. Franz Ennser from 1st November, 2025 onwards in the Board of AGRANA.

His responsibilities will be Agricultural Raw Materials, Operational Excellence, including Occupational Health & Safety and CapEx and also Purchasing, Logistics and Supply Chain.

A quick update on our strategic priorities for the external business year or financial year. So in Food & Beverage Solutions, of course, we will now work after the approval of the competition authorities and the closure of the transaction, the closing of the transaction, which we expect in the external calendar year.

We will work on the integration of AUSTRIA JUICE into AGRANA. Of course, also have an eye how to grow our core segments. We will make a good strategy to leverage our Flavors capabilities. This is also then the rollout via our footprint in the Food Preparations business. And of course, also together in the Food & Beverage Solutions segment, we are looking for overhead reduction. So, which means additional synergies.

In the Agricultural Commodities & Specialties business, of course, we are still working on the cost reduction program. Site optimization is very important in Sugar, but also in Starch, also sustainability, so which means decarbonization here plays a very important role. Cost is always a factor. Also in Sugar, we need to bring down the cost further to be competitive for the future.

And overall, securing our financial flexibility and creating more headroom also for the future growth is also a very important factor for the next month. We will further work on the reduction of our working capital, yes, and also overall cost optimization.

We also have a new segment reporting since the 1st March 2025. As we already reported, now the new structure is that we changed Fruit segment into Food & Beverage Solutions. This -- the reason is quite clear. So Fruit is not the right, let's say, has not the right meaning anymore. So, we're doing much more here than fruit. We are in fruit preparations, we are doing brown flavors. We are doing natural flavors. We are doing beverage compounds. We want to enlarge this business in the future. And also, this is our growth engine for the future. Therefore, it's Food & Beverage Solutions from now on.

And then, we have our Agricultural Commodities & Specialties segment. It's not a segment, it's a business area with two segments. One segment is Starch and the other segment is Sugar. And then separately, we will report the holding. So, we think that this is the right way to present the financial performance of the business areas in the future, and it's even more transparent and meaningful. This is our understanding. It also shows clearly our path in executing our AGRANA NEXT LEVEL strategy.

Yes, on the next page, this is an even more comprehensive, let's say, picture how this looks now for the future. So, then we move on to the revenue by segment. I already mentioned that our revenues went down by 9.1% for the Group to EUR 1.691 billion. We had a growth of 4.2% in the FBS. So, Food & Beverage Solutions: In Starch, a decline by 5%, down to EUR 506.5 million. This is, of course, mainly driven by lower prices. So, we saw ethanol prices heavily under pressure in the first half year of the business year.

Also, other main products like the sugarification products or saccharification products, also native starches, especially wheat starch going into the paper industry, also heavy under pressure due to lower utilization rates in the paper industry. So, all these factors together resulted in this decline in revenue. And in Sugar, you see the massive decline of 36.7% in revenue. This, of course, has to do with significantly lower prices and also lower volumes that we sold into the retail business, especially in Eastern Europe.

The development of the Sugar world market prices, you can see on the next slide. So a constant decrease, we must say now since the last year. Still going on in the last 2 to 3 weeks, the world market prices further declined. Yes, so we -- there is an expectation of good harvest in the main regions for raw sugar. So, especially Brazil, India, but also Thailand everywhere, a good harvest is expected. This, of course, leads to further pressure on the world market prices.

In Europe, I already also mentioned that we are expecting at least a normal crop. So therefore, the reduction in the planted areas, they do not have the effect that we were expecting, which means a stabilization of prices or increase in prices. So, now the pressure is a little bit coming back, we must say, and now we need to see what -- how this will go on in the next -- in the next Sugar marketing year. So, especially when we see what will be the acreage planted in the coming spring season in Europe.

Ethanol prices also really a challenge during the first half of the year. You see it here also in the curve. Recently, prices increased significantly up to EUR 800 per cubic meter. Everything obviously has somehow to do with the import volumes, but potentially also with volumes coming from the U.K. to the European Union due to the duty-free imports in the U.K. from the U.S. for ethanol right now.

Recently, the closure of the Associated British foods capacity in the U.K. was announced. So this could cause some relief, I would say, on the price pressure in Rotterdam,, due to the lower supply. But at the end of the day, the biggest impact or it comes from the United States and the importing volumes into the European Union. And as long as we see the low prices for corn in the U.S. it will be difficult to increase the prices further in the ethanol business in the European Union.

When we look to the EBIT development, yes, very, very good performance in our Solutions segment, EUR 68 million, so up 34.9% versus prior year. This is really a very good development. Unfortunately, in our other businesses, so in Starch and also especially in Sugar, we again saw a massive reduction of our profitability, whereas we have to mention that in Sugar, it's mainly coming from the exceptional items due to the closure of the sites in Leopoldsdorf, Austria and Hrušovany, Czech Republic, and also additional restructuring measures related to a reduction of headcount.

Outlook for '25/'26, yes. So we raised our guidance. I already mentioned this at the beginning of the presentation, significantly higher than previous year. So revenue, yes, should be moderately down. This goes hand-in-hand with what we reported already for the first half of the business year. And when we look at the different segments. And here, the guidance for our Food & Beverage Solutions is a slight increase in revenue and a slight increase in EBIT for the whole business year '25/'26.

In Starch, we expect a slight reduction in revenue and a significant reduction on EBIT. And in the Sugar segment, we expect a significant reduction in revenue and a significant improvement in EBIT, but we have to mention in the second half of the business year 2024/'25, we had the exceptional items due to the closure of the sites in Leopoldsdorf and Hrušovany.

So, let me come to the outlook for the third quarter '25/'26. So there, we expect a very significant improvement in EBIT versus the third quarter prior year. Last year, we reported a loss of EUR 5.5 million. So a significant improvement is not very difficult to reach.

Investment plan for '25/'26, finally. So we expect an investment of around EUR 100 million. As you can see, the focus is actually very much on our Food & Beverage Solutions segment. There, we have the best performance actually. Therefore, we also investing in growth projects as well. And in Starch 18% of the EUR 100 million and in Sugar, 10% of the EUR 100 million. So therefore, due to the very poor profitability right now, we also need to save. And therefore, also, we are going for a reduction in our investment plan in these both segments.

So this was my presentation. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation and attention, and I hand back to Hannes Haider.

Thanks. Before we go on with the Q&A session, I just wanted to inform you that our financial calendar for the next financial year '26/'27 was published recently, and you can find all details on Slide 23, but also on our website. Additionally, you can find there the current roadshow table.