Pyrum Innovations Stock

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to the first Deutsche Boerse Scale Summit. My name is Ingmar Grapenbrade, and I'm very pleased to welcome you on behalf of Deutsche Boerse. This new format brings together investors and high-growth scale issuers, enable a direct exchange on strategies, positioning and investment stories. Each presentation will last 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A session. We warmly encourage everyone to actively participate in this discussion.

With that, I'm pleased to welcome the Pyrum Innovations AG represented by CEO, Pascal Klein; and CFO, Kai Winkelmann, who will guide us through the presentation of the company. And with no further ado, I'd like to hand over to Pascal Klein.

Good day, everybody, and thank you all for joining this presentation today. My name is Pascal Klein, CEO and Founder of Pyrum. So I did start this adventure already in 2008 as a student project at that time, and now we are a listed company in the Scale segment in Frankfurt, as you may all know. So I will start to walk you through a general presentation of Pyrum together with our CFO, Mr. Kai Winkelmann. So that's the 2 people which will present the presentation. Kai has joined us in 2021. And as already said myself, I'm in the company since 2008 since the beginning.

So what we do and why we do it, I would like to start with the market itself. We recycle tires, but not only tires. We started with tires because it's such a huge market. And with 30.9 million tonnes worldwide, and 3.6 million tonnes in Europe, it was for us a very good first starting point to create new critical resources from waste.

So that is what we mainly do. We are -- we see ourselves not only as a recycler and a company that saves CO2, but more and more, also with all the political discussions we have had in the last months, we see ourselves as manufacturer of raw materials that are, I would say, even among the most critical ones in the world. And so let's look first at the market.

So what were tires used for in the past. So most of them were burned. That was 35% for a long time. Now we still burn 17% of all used tires in Europe, but that is decreasing. Most cement plants, which burn tires have announced to stop fully the burning of tires until 2030. Granulates, that's what you sometimes see on children's playground, soccer fields and other sport fields. That has been forbidden by the European Union in 2023 with a grace period of 8 years. So we will see that area of granulates made from tires disappear in the next -- yes, it's only 5 years left. What has increased in the last years is the export because as tires are not burned anymore and nobody knows where to put them, more and more exported. So in the last year, that went up from just 10% to 23%.

And what also increased dramatically is the unknown part that was 5% to 10%, now it's 23% and that are now mostly tires that are illegally exported, and which I'm very proud of, you now see Pyrum for the first time in the 2025 data with approximately 2% of the German market and hopefully steadily increasing.

As granulates are dying out, burning is dying out and export will now be forbidden with new export bans that have just started this year since the 21st of May 2026, there's an export ban for used tires in non-OECD countries, and there are new bans coming in the next years. Why is that the case? It is the European Union has understood that waste is not a waste, waste is a resource -- raw material that can be used for our best, and that's why there are more and more exports ban coming.

So I would say all the market is facing towards us, which is, I would say, from the market side and from the political side, we couldn't be in a better situation than the one we are right now. So what are we doing and quickly explain the process. So we are taking in tires from different sources. Our main suppliers are, for example, Schwalbe, Michelin, Conti, et cetera. If you take 1 tonne of tires, you shred them, you get about 150 to 250 kilogram of steel, depending on the input. Truck tires have more steel than car or bike tires, for example. Textile fibers are also sucked out during the shredding process that gives between 0% and 10%, so between 0 and 100 kilogram out of 1 tonne of used tires, that's textile fibers.

And on average, you can say that we have 700 kilogram of rubber out of 1 tonne of used tires. That goes then, and that is the whole -- the white part here of the graph. It's what we have invented mainly. That goes to our reactor. And at the end, we get 250 kilograms per hour of ThermoTireOil. That's how we call it. That's our oil and about 310 kilograms of carbon. That carbon is then milled, pelletized and that gives at the end ThermoTireBlack, which is also the name, the public name is recovered carbon black. That is then used to make new tires. So that goes to our offtakers, Continental and Schwalbe, who use our ThermoTireBlack or recovered carbon black, so to say, for new tires.

The oil is slightly cleaned and goes today mainly to BASF and BASF makes everything that surrounds us in our daily life from medicines to new plastic to parts for Mercedes-Benz to clothing from VAUDE and even ibuprofen is made, thanks to our oil. So I could name hundreds or thousands of products that are made, thanks to our oil because the oil we [ replace ] is crude oil in the chemical industry. And at the end, we have a gas that is left and that gas is used either in micro turbines or in our combined heat and power plant, and that feeds the electricity needed by our reactors, and it also gives the warmth for the dryer in the pelletizer that makes the recovered carbon black pellets. So what you can remember from that graph is that tires is a critical raw material.

And from 1 tonne of tires, we generate 250 kilograms of oil, 310 kilograms of recovered carbon black, average 200 kilograms of steel and 150 kilograms of gas, which is enormous. 4 tonnes of tires give you 1 tonne of oil. So that's the shredder. So the plant is 4 units, in fact. Shredder is more or less state-of-the-art unit. The Pyrum thermolysis units what we have invented. Here, the power plant is something that we have co-developed with a gas power plant manufacturer and the mill and pelletizer in blue here is the last piece of the puzzle that we have just accomplished in April this year, and we're just now running on industrial scale. So that is what the plant looks like in real life.

So what I just explained here, you see it in real size. So that's the shredder in orange that can process today approximately 600 car tires per hour. So it's not a prototype anymore and not anymore a lab scale unit with 600 tires per hour. In green here, you have our 2 new reactors, our serial reactors that are now copied in each new plant.

Then you have in yellow our power plant, which is a huge part of the plant, but it's also there to create the energy to keep our reactors self-sustaining. Then you have the mill and pelletizer in light blue, the oil storage tanks are underground, the control room in red, our new tire storage, which is full today and our maintenance spare parts. So that is what the basic standard Pyrum industrial plant looks like on the picture.

We have -- from a patent-wise to protect our technology, we have now 2 patents that exist already, one global patent on our reactor and one patent on our process. And we have just developed 2 new patents that have been declared just in 2024, one together with Continental, the so-called golden recovered carbon black and that we have done hundreds of test runs together with Continental to find the right way to produce recovered carbon black, and that's now our brand name TTB, ThermoTireBlack, and that can be used in forklift tires and soon also in other tires. And we have just declared a patent for carbon fiber reinforced plastics, which will be the next big thing that we will attack after the tires for -- to open a fully new market.

If you want to sum up the highlights of our technology and what we were able to achieve since our foundation is we have now the first industrial plant that has reached technical readiness level 9 out of 9. So the higher -- you cannot go any higher. That is a proved industrial technology running on industrial scale for more than 2 years. We have created 2 completely new products, the TTO, so the ThermoTireOil, which can replace crude oil in the chemical industry, for all applications in the chemical industry that you can imagine. And just recently, we received the ISCC EU certification proving that our oil contains 50% biogen content and so our oil can also be used for green jet fuel and green fuels.

And the ThermoTireBlack replaces carbon black in the tire and plastic industry. And most people don't know that in the past, 60% to 70% of all carbon blacks came from Russia and that we are really depending on carbon black in many products, not just tires, but also pigments, coating, et cetera.

So our plant is now fully self-sustaining energy-wise, the thermolysis part, so our technology, not the shredder that needs external energy. We have -- we were able to get all required certificates in the last 3 years. So REACH, ISO, VDA 6.3, which was the hardest one that's the certification that you are allowed to produce raw materials for the automotive industry that are security relevant. We have ISCC+, ISCC EU for the biogen oil, RSC (sic) [ RCS ] for the textile industry.

We got an ESG rating of very good and Fraunhofer Institute has confirmed that we saved the equivalent of 965 kilogram of CO2 per tonne of used tires. And I would say one of our biggest successes in the last 2 years is that we have signed an offtake agreement with BASF for 10 years for the oil for 300,000 tonnes per year. That equals 150 Pyrum Reactors.

And today, we have 3 in operations. So we can build, build, build. The oil is sold already for the next plant. Continental the same, a 10-year offtake guarantee for the carbon black. First of its kind in the automotive industry. Usually, you only get 2 or 3-year contracts, volumes 13,000 tonnes per year. That's enough for the next 6 reactors. And with Schwalbe also 10-year offtake guarantee for carbon black.

And we just received end of last year the first grant from the European Investment Fund of EUR 29.4 million for our project in Greece. So as you can see, the biggest German tire brands, 2 of the biggest recycling companies in Europe, the 2 biggest tank operators in Europe and the biggest chemical company on this globe work with us or is investor in us. So they cannot all be wrong if you ask me. Partners and customers. So right now, we are building -- we have more than 20 plants in pipeline. 10 projects have already started because everybody is pushing us now to get raw materials, to get oil, to get carbon black and to get energy.

We have created 2 new joint ventures with, for example, UNITANK, the biggest tank operator in Germany. In 6 countries now, 4 permitting processes for plants are running right now as we speak. And 3 permits have been granted just recently, all end of last year and beginning of this year.

The 3 permits we have received is for the next Pyrum plant in Perl-Besch for the reTire project together with SUAS, the biggest energy -- privately owned energy supplier in Czech Republic in Sokolov next to the German border. And with Thermolysis in Greece, that's 140 kilometers north of Athens. There, we also have the permit already, and we are starting there with the call for tenders and all that stuff.

So just the projects that are already running, the 10, is 220,000 tonnes of tires. It's only 6.4% of the European tire market, but really not a lot. We are investing together with our partners over EUR 600 million. And the oil is completely sold already for these 10 plants and the carbon black is already sold at 25%, even though these plants are not built yet.

So as we don't have so much time, just a quick summary on where we are standing with the project. SUAS is FID, final investment decision is taking. We are in the final bank contracting phase for the loan part for that, groundwork has already started there. Thermolysis has also secured the financing, and we are now in the call for tenders for the local works like groundworks, streets and all that, that should be accomplished in September so that we can start the actual building of the plant in September.

With UNITANK, we have created a joint venture just this year to build 10 plants in Europe. The first one will be in Emleben in Thuringen in Germany, and we are just doing the engineering for that plant right now in which we will have 49% or we have 49% in the joint venture. And VTTI, the biggest LNG terminal operator on that globe, we have finished the first engineering phase, the pre-FEED phase, and we are about to start the Phase #2, which is the FEED phase. With REMONDIS, we will make a plant in Bremen.

That was a bit slowed down in the last 6 months, but now it's at same speed again as it has been -- there was a restructuration at REMONDIS. And we are also doing a plant together with the guys from GreenTech in Sweden, and they plan to secure the financing this year and to take FID this year.

We will hopefully soon announce a new tire partner -- tire manufacturer partner, and we have signed an MOU with a new big recycling company in April, but who it is and what it will be and where we're not allowed to speak about that right now but hopefully soon.

So now I will hand over to Kai for some finances.

Yes. Hello, everybody. We are coming here to plant economics of a single plant. We expect around EUR 17.5 million in revenues per plant. The major part is the rCB, so the coal that's coming out of the tires. It represents around EUR 10.6 million. The gatefee is important for us. We receive money for disposal of tires, and that's around EUR 2.3 million. That should cover the cost of the shredding part. Steel is around EUR 1.7 million and the oil is around EUR 3 million. The oil is directly going to BASF and can be used in all products you can imagine from medicine to clothing, tires, whatever you can think about that is needed by chemical products.

Direct costs are actually estimated by around EUR 2.6 million, mainly included here is the energy consumption for shredding, the milling and pelletizing. As Pascal already said, the reactor itself is self-sustaining. The gas is used for that. So we are transforming the gas into energy. That's fed back into the pyrolysis units and then the pyrolysis plant is self-sufficient. Heat and energy is also used at the plant site. OpEx cost is around EUR 5.2 million. Half of that is staffing costs. So we expect an EBITDA of EUR 9.7 million for our plant.

As we publish financial figures on Friday for Q1, I'm here just allowed to talk about the figures for 2025. We doubled our revenues in the last year from EUR 2 million to EUR 4.1 million. We expect that this year we will again have a big move upwards to EUR 6.5 million to EUR 9.5 million. That depends how quick the new pelletizing part for the rCB will be functional in full. Operating output was EUR 4.3 million, total output comparable to the last year as other own work capitalized has dropped. This will increase when we start the next projects after signing plant purchase agreements. So total output is estimated between EUR 12 million and EUR 18 million for 2026.

The other operating income was influenced last year by governmental grant by EUR 2.9 million. Expenses of materials slightly went down. Personnel expenses, we have more staff than in the year before. So it increased by around 12%. And we have in total an EBITDA slightly better than the previous year at EUR 5.2 million. EBIT, EUR 8.7 million after EUR 8.9 million and net results, minus EUR 10 million comparable to the previous year. EBIT is estimated between minus EUR 8 million and minus EUR 10.5 million for this year. And we expect to be EBITDA positive in 2027. So we're coming to highlights and outlook comparison and put together, let's say, what are the next steps?

The next steps is getting access to funds to finance the second half of the rollout plan on Pyrum. It always depends if we build more own operated plants or more partnerships. Actually, we have a lot of projects in the air. So it's mainly driven by partners.

Completion of the Bank Due Diligence, that's crucial. So we are waiting for finalizing the mill and pelletizing part, especially transportation that we can finalize the due diligence now. The infrastructure funds are always in our view. So we are always discussing with infrastructure funds if there are some possibilities, if it makes sense for us also and with strategic investors. As you might have seen during the last capital increases, Schwalbe as the biggest tire manufacturer for bicycle tires increased its stake in Pyrum.

So I hand over to Pascal.

Thank you, Kai. Thank you. Kai is always speaking about a little summary at the end. So our goal now is to increase our output of recovered carbon black of our TTB. That has started now with the final audits that we have passed with Continental in May. So the volumes are rising now month after month. So for the moment, the capacity of rCB that we can produce is enough for the ramp-up plan.

There will be a slight modification in the mill and pelletizer in August, and that fits with the ramp-up plan. So hopefully, in September, then we will be at 100%.

But you all have to know, it's not just the plant that needs to work, also the offtakers like Schwalbe and Continental, they don't buy 100% from one day to the next. After the audit, then they have to bring it into the plants, and that also takes some weeks and months for some plants.

Yes. FID with SUAS is an important step now as we started there already. In Greece, the same. It's also planned that the plant starts there this year. And yes, we are working a lot on the European side for the new end-of-life vehicle regulation, which obliges new cars to be made out of old cars.

These are a certain percentage. We hope that, that will come out this year, and that will give a big push to our business. EU Waste Shipment Regulation has come out in May, which helps us with the export ban for tires. And a very good thing for us also is the new Circular Economy Act, Ecodesign regulations, they will take in tires this year. So tires will be regulated and we will have also a green footprint that is also completely working towards us. So that's a summary of the main results in the last year, I would say. That's for those who didn't listen. So that's a summary page. And I would say that's it. So we can go to the Q&A session.

Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation. And ladies and gentlemen, now it's your turn. We are opening the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And we already received some. I'll read them out.

The first question is what is the balance of energy of your recycling process? For example, how much energy do you need for this process and where it is coming from? And how many energy is contained in our output products in comparison?

So if I see the full question, it is also what is better about burning tires, if I may add that because I prepared already the answer. There are so many things that are bad about it. Just the fact that for 1 tonne of used tires, you create 2.6 tonnes of CO2. And with everything that you burn is gone forever, you do that once and it is done forever by taking out the resources of the tires. And we use them in the circle, you can use that endless. We are on a planet that has no endless resources, so we should save them as good as we can.

From energy side, from the whole plant, the whole plant needs about 20 gigawatt-hour per year, and we can produce 12 of them ourselves, so more than half. So as I already said during the presentation, the shredder is roughly 8 gigawatt-hour, and those we cannot cover.

Thank you very much. And the next question from the same person, [indiscernible], do you need to raise further equity to pursue your business plan? Or are you fully funded? When are you planning to reach cash flow breakeven?

Okay. So as you might have seen in the presentation, the 10 projects that are already live need about EUR 600 million in investment -- in cash for investments. We expect that around 65% to 70% can be financed by project finance, the rest needs to be covered by equity. So it depends if we build own plants, then we have the bigger capital needs directly at the accounts of Pyrum or if we work together with partners where the finance and big chunks of the equity is coming from the partners.

So actually, it is not planned to have, let's say, a next capital increase. We have done a capital increase in December last year that we can reach the position of, yes, cash flow positive. But if we want to further grow, and you see in the presentation that we want to further grow, there are several models that could result in capital increases and capital needs into the AG or injections into daughter companies, as example, with infrastructure funds. So it is not easy to answer with a yes or no.

Maybe if I may add here, we have the joint venture with UNITANK to build 10 plants in Europe. And Pyrum can have up to 49% of each of these plants. It always depends once the plant is finally permitted and planned and FID is taken, then Pyrum has the choice whether we have 10%, 15%, 20% or up to 49% share in that new plant. It depends on how much equity Pyrum can bring at that moment.

Thank you very much. And one other question is, what is the main bottleneck of growth? Is it input material? Permitting capital? Can you elaborate?

I would say we have no bottleneck in the input. We have no bottleneck in the output. The only bottleneck we have is in structuring the financing. That is really the biggest brake as we have a permitted plant in Germany, which is among the highest demands for the permitting procedure. Czech, we have received the permit. In Greece, we have received the permit. Permit-wise, it was a huge issue, but it isn't anymore. Offtake agreement is also not an issue anymore. It's really just to build the financing.

Thank you. And in that direction, how can you scale bigger plants or more plants?

That is more a financial question. If you had endless financial resources, we would build it differently. We would build much bigger plants and decentralized tire centers where you just collect the tires, shred them and bring them to one giant Pyrum facility, but that costs enormous amounts of money, and that is really concentrating the risk on one plant, which nobody shares. So no investor wants to have such a big, concentrated risk on one side. So it's more or less the investment structure and investors we have today that pushes us more in the direction to make smaller -- more and smaller plants.

And to add to this, bigger plants in Pyrum's case means more reactors, not bigger reactors because we have reached the final setup for the reactors. So it's a scale up on one plant side if we talk about bigger plants.

Okay. So we switch to one last question. How do you plan to finance the rollout of major projects without creating excessive dilution for shareholders?

Yes. As example, we have access to debt, especially through BASF that we, as example, could use as equity in projects like in Czech. And so it will always be a mix. But yes, another opportunity is that we have, let's say, 2 candidates where we purely sell plants to them and that would also generate cash for further Pyrum-owned plant.

Okay. Thank you very much. And due to the lack of time, we come to the end of this event. But there are more questions in the chat, and we hand them over to Investor Relations at Pyrum. Thank you very much to all the participants for your interest in the company. Thank you to Mr. Klein and Mr. Winkelmann for your presentation and the time to answer the questions, the answers I will forward to you. I, from my side, wish you a successful day and hand over to Mr. Klein for some closing remarks.

Thank you very much for the chance to present here. And I'm also sorry that we cannot answer all the questions, but we are really limited in time here. So if we get the answer -- the questions afterwards, we will try to answer them afterwards in written. Thank you very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Pyrum Innovations AG due to the publication of the results of the financial year 2025. I'm delighted to welcome CEO, Pascal Klein; and CFO, Kai Winkelmann, who will start their presentation shortly. [Operator Instructions]

So with this, I hand over to you, Mr. Klein.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and also from my side, a very warm welcome. So I will start with the presentation with more of the data from the plant and the new information we have for you. And later on, Kai, in the second part, will present to you the numbers. So everybody should now see my screen. I hope that is the case. So let's start.

So as already said, Kai will be presenting after me and then myself. I would like really to start with the market itself. Those who have already seen those presentations with Pyrum know that slide a little bit, mainly the last part, showing how much tires we have worldwide. It's still about 31 million tonnes per year. In Europe, still 3.4 million to 3.6 million tonnes per year. So not really big changes there, even though we see a slight uptrend here. But what I really would like to emphasize here on that slide, and that is something what makes me extremely proud is that in the last years, we were not visible in the market. But if you see now the numbers for 2025 in Germany, we have a burning rate of 17% of tires, which has been going down. It was 35%. So we see here a clear trend that CO2 emission laws, CO2 cost, et cetera, start to have a real impact in the simple burn of tires.

Granulates, which is used for children playground, soccer fields, et cetera, is quite stable. It is with 35%, not moving this much till now. But from a regulatory side, there will be a huge change in 2031. The export has been going drastically up. Why? Because if we burn less, waste has to go somewhere. And one of the biggest and easiest solution like always is simply we export the waste and get rid of it, and it's not our problem anymore. So we went up from 10% to 23%. And what makes me the most concerned is that the unknown part went up to 23% and most of that are illegal exports. And therefore, we have also increasing regulations that will become about that, but I will tell you more about that later on.

But in 2025, you see here with 2% of the German market share [indiscernible]. We have done approximately 10,000 tonnes last year, even though the plant was not running at full capacity the full year on. It just started last year with new lines 2 and 3. And even though we were able now to recycle already 2% of the German market. And hopefully, that small green bar on the diagram will go much bigger in the next years. That's what we mainly work on. And it has to because export will be mainly banned already this year, part of it. Granulate will die out due to microplastic regulations. But as said, I will tell you more about that on a separate slide.

So here, we still have our flow diagram on what the plant looks like. I'm sorry to repeat that for some people, but there are also mainly new investors in this call. So for those who are brand new, for the first time at the Pyrum presentation, I would really like to sum up again where we are and what the plan does. So we still make 1 tonne of tires per hour as an input stream, which is paid for. So we see the gate fee for that. It is shredded. We extract steel, which is 15% to 25% approximately. And then we extract the textile fiber, which is 0% to 10%, all depending on the input. Bike tires have, of course, more textile in it percentage-wise than the truck tire, for example.

At the end, we have an average of 700 kilogram of rubber granulate coming out of 1 tonne of tires. And from here, let's say, the magic begins, our patent and process starts. So we take these 700 kilogram of rubber granulate per hour and transform that into our so-called and newly called TTO, which is with trademark, so thermal tire oil, which gives you 250 kilograms per hour. So if you start from a full tire, you can say it's about 25% of the tires becomes oil. The TTB, our thermal tire black is about 310 kilogram per hour, so about 31%.

That is then milled, pelletized, and goes then to the end customers like Continental or Schwalbe and newly also now in the pigment industry and in some applications in OEMs for car door ceilings, window rubbers, et cetera, that is brand new. But sadly, I'm not allowed yet to give you the brands that are behind it. But hopefully, soon, we can publish that. From the reactor comes also out the oil, which is slightly clean, goes to BASF and is used in a multiple type of applications from Vaude from Mercedes-Benz, and I have already told that in many other presentations. You will also find particles of our oil in Ibuprofen capsule when you have your next headache, so you can think about us. And then the gas goes either in turbines, which is our new system in line 2 and 3 to create heat and [Technical Difficulty] the process, which is known since some years now to most shareholders.

Now let's go where we're standing -- where we are standing now. So the shredding line is running at 100% stable and reliable. That was not the case a year ago. We had a lot of maintenance stops and a lot of bottleneck situations here, but more about that on the next slide.

That is the Pyrum patented process, which is also running stable at 100%, which is what makes me most proud because, in fact, the newest and most modern part of the plant is the most reliable as of today. Then comes the power plant, that is also running stable, but has some minor software issues, but more on that later on. It's nothing critical. But as always, when you build something completely new, there is a learning curve, but it's not something that is blocking the process on a daily basis. Let's say, we have monthly shutdowns of a half day or something like that per month due to that. So it's nothing that is really sensible, but it's something to be solved.

And then you have the milling and pelletizing, which was the biggest bottleneck in the plant. It is still a bottleneck, but that has changed now a little bit. So we are now in the continuous and stable operation of the mill and pelletizer, even for those who know it, the dosing system is now running stable, not at full power yet, but it's running stable. We don't need to do the stop on-off system like we did before. And there is another increase of capacity planned in Q3 2026. But as of now, we can produce enough, but more on that on the next slide.

So this is again the plant. Just what I explained to you here in real life image. So here, you see the shredder, same color than in the slide before, in orange, the Pyrum unit in green, same as on the slide before. In yellow, the power plant, also same color. And here, you see the mill and pelletizer. What was not on the slide before is here the tank in violet, the control room in red, the storage area, and the maintenance building. So that picture was roughly 1 year ago. So you see it's quite like clean, quite proper. And many people said, okay, that plant is not really running. It's too clean to be running. So that's why this morning, I took a quick decision. I took the drone, went out and made a picture of this morning. So that's what the plant looks like just right now. So on that slide here, you see a comparison sky view April '25 against sky view of today, 8th of May, that picture is just 1 hour old. You see on the left last year and today, you see it changed a lot.

First, you see the white smoke coming up, very intense. That shows that the reactor are running at a very good stack. You see here that our tire storage is now completely full, which is good. We have now a certain tire stock for several weeks. And beside of that, due to the more stable operation of the shredder, we also have a very good storage of rubber granulate, but later on. And here in the back, you see a lot of big bag standing around that is recovered carbon black that is finished or rubber granulate that is stored for in case there's anything with the shredder. So you see there's really a lot going on, on the side and really it's now busy outside. But let's go now on the facts about the different parts of the plant.

So let's start with the shredding unit. So as already said, it's running at full performance only since second half of last year before we had some struggle mainly with crushers. So we did a lot of modification on the shredding line, and we added a night shift for maintenance because key in the shredding plant is to have always good knives and sharp knives. And the best to do that is to do it overnight. We are not allowed to shred overnight due to noise limitations, but you can do the maintenance overnight.

And that has really drastically improved the throughput. So the performance of the shredder was about a year ago, 40 to 50 tonnes per day. And today, it is 60 to 70 tonnes per day. And now we are really in the area what we need. So the new weekly average is 300 to 350 tonnes per week. And before it was around 200 tonnes per week. That was quite often an issue why we had to reduce the throughput on the reactors. So the reactors -- the pure reactors were not really the bottleneck of the plant. The bottleneck was the shredder who was sometimes not producing enough granulate. And with this well-running shredder now, we were able to build up rubber granulate storage of 16 days. So that we call it now crasher proof. Sometimes, and that is sadly the reality in the recycling plant, you have things in the waste that don't belong there, like for tires, for example, a brake disc or a big piece of metal. And if that falls into the shredder, that causes a crash and meaning that the shredder needs to stop. And depending on what broke inside the shredder, the crash can take up to 14 days, so 2 weeks.

So even if we now have a crash and last year, we had 3 crashes, even if now we have a crash, we can continue to operate the Pyrum plant nonstop. And that is only something that we are ready to do right now. We build up that storage only in the last month, so in 2026. So all that's to prove stability of the process and, of course, increasing revenues afterwards.

So about the Pyrum plant itself, so our reactors and the power plant. So TAD2 and TAD3 are running stable at serial production daily basis. As most of you know, TAD1 is in refit to catch up with the volumes of TAD2 and 3. And we were able -- and that is a very proud new evolution. TAD2 and 3 have no longer maintenance intervals, meaning when the plant was designed and planned, we were planning to stop each reactor after 3-1/2, 4 weeks for 3, 4 days maintenance stop. And then again, we run 24/7 for 3-1/2, 4 weeks. Now the result is that we are more in the area of 8 weeks nonstop production before we need to do a maintenance stop, which has approximately the length that we have planned before. So we are more than happy with that.

The power plant is composed of 5 micro turbines. We have to admit that the turbines cause almost no problems. They are running stable 24/7, and it really has a satisfactory performance. The only issue we sometimes have is that the power plant is so complex. There are -- every month, there is something happening that did never happen before. That has also been the case in the Pyrum reactors with a huge difference that in the Pyrum software, we, as Pyrum with our own programming team, we can react immediately. So if something is not doing as it should in the Pyrum plant, our programmers are entering the source code 24/7 and can quickly do modification. Sadly, the power plant software was not done by ourselves. So we depend always on the external company to do modifications, and they are not working 24/7. So if something happens overnight, we need to stop the production for several hours overnight until the next morning, they can access the software.

And in order to do so, we have solved a lot of the software issues. Before we had weekly issues. Now it's more monthly issues. But we are now planning to do our own software for the power plant so that we are also quicker in acting in that and also have our own capacities available 24/7 for that, making it more stable.

And now that what people are interested most in, I think, is the mill and pelletizer status quo. The good news is that we finally passed the internal approval for regular operation accomplished end of April '26. You have to know that in the VDA 6.3 permitting or auditing, it's the automotive auditing, there has to be first internal auditing with all Pyrum members. So the Plant Director, Director of Production, the Board members, our quality and maintenance head, and we need all to vote for the proven of stability and continuous quality. And that is a hard document, which is controlled then by the auditors, by the external ones. And that was, in fact, the last missing document so that we were allowed to produce in serial and send out RCB from the new and biggest mill and pelletizer for recovered carbon black on earth.

So we are now on a stable daily production with in-spec material output of 750 kilograms per hour. And today's capacity is, for the moment, enough to fulfill the orders now from Continental and Schwalbe and one new customer. So since last week now, we are packaging finished product in big packs. And another good news is we had the audit by Continental this week, on May 6. We expect the result end of May. And if we pass, then we can finally start serial deliveries from MAD2.

And what has been done in the last month was a lot. I can tell you, we have spent day and night in the mill and pelletizer to solve all the issues we had. So on the mill and pelletizer, we were able to, as said, stabilize the process and the quality so that everything that comes out is in spec and stable. And we were able to, together with the supplier, of course, to increase the capacity to the guaranteed capacity. So in fact, the mill for itself and the pelletizer for itself are producing enough as it was guaranteed by the supplier.

The only bottleneck that is still in the plant is the transportation and dosing system between the mill and the pelletizer, where we found out that the dosing system itself is not really the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the transportation between the mill and pelletizer. That has now been tested in industrial scale. Engineering is done and the pieces are ordered. So we will get now a triple transportation system between the mill and pelletizer. So not just 1, but 3 transportation system in between, which are quite easy to install because they are not so big, and that will then increase again the throughput drastically in Q3, hopefully.

And I added here a picture so that everybody can see it because most people don't believe it, to me. The picture you see here on the right corner is the recovered carbon black in the bunker between the mill and the pelletizer. And that is like a boiling soup. I really like -- it's not a moving picture, but you see all these quakers, all these small volcanos, it is really boiling inside. And that is not because it's hot, because the material -- it's not hot and it's cold, it's the air, the air that is trapped inside the freshly milled material that is boiling out. It really looks like if you're cooking a soup and it's starting to boil, that is how it looks in the bunker in between. And by changing the dosing system, we are not adding oxygen in the bunker, but we are taking out the oxygen between the mill and pelletizer, which is extremely increasing the density and afterwards also the throughput. That has, as said, been tested now in industrial scale and works. So it's not -- yes, there are no questions left, in fact. And so we are very confident that everything is done shortly. But as I said, we start now serial production and deliveries.

So allow me to sum up our major USPs that we were able to accomplish last year. Most of them, some of them have already been started the year before. But what have we really on paper now and hard submitted in the last 2 years, that is mainly that we have now TRL9 certificated. So we have technical readiness number 9 out of 9. So that makes a company like us, for the first time, bankable. So that is an achievement that we achieved only last year. Last year, we also created the new -- 2 new product names or beginning this year, TTO for the oil and TTB for the black. Now we know that our oil has a biogene content of up to 50%, which allows us theoretically to make green fuels or green jet fuels. That was theory last year. But now since beginning of '26, we have the ISCC EU certification for the oil, which was very hard to get. And honestly speaking, we were not thinking to get it, but it was a hard journey to get to it. But now with the ISCC EU certificate, we are allowed to sell the fuel in the fuel market and even for green jet fuels and things like that.

And the TTB can now really replace carbon black that's also now proven with the audits on the mill and pelletizer. And yes, we all have to remember that 60% to 70% of the European market for carbon black still depends on supplier like Russia. Full energy sustaining is proven with the big power plant that is running since last year. And we all have to keep in mind, even though that the BASF contract is a little bit older, what makes us really unique compared to some of our competitors in the market is that we have a long-term 10-year offtake agreement with BASF. We have a 10-year offtake guarantee for the carbon black with Continental. And since last year, 2025, we also have a 10-year offtake agreement for the carbon black with Schwalbe and delivery of bike tires, which is, by the way, ramping up quite quickly recently. So we are getting more and more bike tires in. And thanks to some modifications on our old trading line, we are really now recycling a lot of bike tires for Schwalbe and Schwalbe recycling system.

And another big achievement last year is that for the first time, we were able to get an IEF (sic) [ EIF ] European Investment Fund, funding for the project in Greece of EUR 29.4 million in November '25. And that is now the proof that all the other projects, and I can tell you, there are already 2 other Pyrum projects in Europe that have now applied for the same grant because we have been encouraged by the European Union to apply with all of our plants now for that grant, which will change the financial stability of each plant drastically if now each plant is getting such a support. So what else can I say? The biggest German tire brands, the biggest recyclers in Europe, the biggest tanking operators in Europe and worldwide, and the biggest chemical company on earth, they cannot all be warmed by working with us.

So -- and that is, I would say, really a good summary on what we have really achieved in the last 2 years. But now let's look at the future because there's a lot of coming in the future, mainly on the regulatory part. And I have to tell you that mainly over the last half year or a little bit more than the last half year, we as Pyrum and mainly also myself spending a lot of time with politicians and lobbyists in Bristol to find out what we can do and what is about to come. And there's a lot that concerns us, like, for example, the Circular Economy Act, the EU Waste Shipment Regulation, Ecodesign, and End-of-Life -- ELVR, End-of-of-Life Vehicle Regulation, REACH for micro plastics, et cetera. And the good thing about all that is it's all playing towards us.

So it's really a fact if we could have a wish list on what should the regulatory side do for us, that would be the wish list. And to give you more insights about that on the next slide, we have the details about some of these things. I'm not really speaking about all of them, but just about the major ones. So we have the EU Waste Shipment Regulations from 2024 that is coming into place now, that is limiting the export of tires. And as we have seen on the very first slide, a lot of tires are exported. And now we have already a ban starting this year for non-OECD countries.

And experts are concluding that about 800 that will come that export ban, which starts in May 21 this year already, so already in 2 weeks, less than 2 weeks, that will keep 800,000 more tonnes of tires here in Europe, and that ban will be extended. So politicians have understood that tires or rubber waste or any kind of waste is not a waste, is a resource. You just need to transform it properly. So as we are resource depending, it needs to stay here. And another mind shift that I have seen in the last months in the political area is Pyrum is not seen anymore as a simple waste collector and waste treatment or recycling company. Now we are seen more and more as supplier of critical raw materials. And that is the core goal in the European Union for the next 5 years is make Europe independent from critical material imports, and we are seen now as a supplier of critical raw materials, which we are, by the way. End-of-Life Vehicle Regulation that comes in force now in '26 according to what we know.

So the goal behind that is that cars are recycled and new cars need to contain more circular content. And the last text that we have is that, it's not published yet, but it is market news, 15% after 6 years and 25% after 10 years need to be recycling content in a new car. And that's what we do. We take old tires, old rubber waste. We also do test ones here in our lab with dashboards and other things, change that into recovered carbon black and oil that goes into BASF or tire manufacturers, and they make parts for the new cars. So with the ELVR, fuel is becoming more -- less an obligation for the car industry to use our raw materials to make new cars. So what is better than that, making it more or less an obligation to use raw materials made from waste in Europe and waste from cars. That is -- that should come into place now this year in 2026.

So Circular Economy Act, that is more in the area of more secondary raw materials, so increased demand for recycling materials. And the EU microplastic directives pushes down the microplastic content. So particles will be banned under 5 millimeters, and that is really being a big issue for the whole rubber granulate market, which has still 35% of the used tire market. And that will again be a hard hit for the children playground, soccer fields, and all that stuff. That market is really under pressure from the regulation side. So that is again a big opportunity for us and our market.

So many people are also asking where we are with our second plant with the Perl-Besch Project, GreenFactory II. So the news there is that the site is prepared that we had our -- as you see it on the picture here, our groundbreaking ceremony end of '25. You can all imagine that in the deepest winter, you cannot build so much. But we have used the time now to go into the architectural detailed planning of the roads and foundation and also of the road that will be bringing trucks towards the plant because there's still a part of road missing there. We are in the call for tenders. And sadly, you all know the geopolitical situation worldwide. Prices are going drastically up that we have also seen now in the call for tenders and the offers we have received from every area.

The point is here simply and shortly that things are getting more expensive. We have worked now some years to get the financing. And it's not so good if the reserves you have, so the contingency are eaten already at the beginning. So that has pushed us to a decision beginning of this year to review the steel and tubing engineering to counter cost explosion. We expect, we have hired external companies to review our steel structure, our tubing. And the good thing is they quickly told us that it's possible to reduce costs up to 20%. That's not meaning that the plant is now getting 20% cheaper, but that means that we stay in the area where we plan to build the plant. So -- but this reduction of costs keeps the budgets in place, which for most people know that many public building projects never stay in the budget, but our goal is really to stay in the budget. And we said we have to do that beforehand because once everything is launched, you cannot reduce price anymore. So we reduced costs.

But on the other hand, maybe we lose now 3 to 4 months, but that was something that was planned since years already to redesign the building. What we have done in the past is we did build in front of our own door, that took a long time, a lot of cranes, a lot of people on site, and the building took a long time. And we've hired now external specialist steel building company to redesign the steel structure to make it more modular, meaning that the idea behind that is to reduce the building time of the plant by half. And even though we are losing now 3 to 4 months for redesigning that and reducing costs, we will catch up that time in the building time, which will be strongly reduced afterwards.

So the investment volume is still EUR 62 million, thanks to the cost reduction we are working on. The building side has not changed and the revenues needed. So that's where we are with GreenFactory II. And from my perspective, I hope that now in May, we have the final planning and that we can finalize the bank contracts and start the final orders, which are missing.

So about the projects that are running. So we have the map. Most of you know already. We have more than 20 plants in pipeline, 10 have started, 2 joint ventures now in 6 countries, 4 plants are in the permitting process, 3 permits have been granted. And we have to say that all these 3 permits have been granted in 2025. And as we are here in the call about our numbers of '25, that is really very important number to remember that the Perl-Besch Project, the [ Vresova ] in Czech Republic and Thermo Lysi in Greece, all these 3 have received their building permits, all of them end of the year, so all of them end of '25. And now they are all in the call of tenders, preparation, site preparation, et cetera, et cetera. So sadly, when you build so huge structure, so huge plant, things are not done in a week. This is even the call for tenders is a process that takes some months.

Here I have made a summary or we have made a summary of where all the projects or the major projects are standing. We are not speaking about all the 10 projects. We have taken out here the most advanced ones and the most promising early-stage projects and even some new projects, never heard -- which you never heard about and which we still cannot give you the names. So the SUAS reTIRE project, engineering is accomplished, FID is taken. We are in the final phase with the bank closing. So here's really missing things like Board decisions or Supervisory Board decisions that have to be taken. We have to sign them and send them to the bank. That has been done right now. We are in the call for tenders. Most of them have already been done and negotiated. And the contracting phase is right there now and the first groundworks have started. We even have a camera on which we see the building side in life if you want to see -- if we -- anyone want to see where we're standing at.

The Thermo Lysi project in Greece, they have secured the financing with the -- also with the grant they have received from the EIF. They have now hired a local coordinator for the project, which was a very good idea of Thermo Lysi to have somebody on site who is coordinating on a daily basis all the different suppliers and engineering offices that are working in the plant because we are not doing everything, of course. We are doing the pyrolysis part, and we are helping with the shredder and the mill and pelletizer, but there are still local work to do like groundwork, roads, buildings, et cetera, and there are a lot of, yes, entities to handle there.

So we have then very big news from this year, finally created a joint venture called UniPyrum together with UNITANK, founded to build up to 10 plants. And imagine that with a big partner like UNITANK, who has the financial strength and, us, we have the technical knowledge. Together we can -- we will build now 10 plants in Europe and Pyrum has a 49% share in that. So the company is created, the engineering contract for our first plant in Emleben has been signed and started. So the teams are working on the engineering there already with very high speed. And we even had already our first steering committee in April in which some of the major decisions have already been made on how will the plant look like and where we place what and so on so that we can now enter soon in the definition phase.

VTTI, the biggest LNG operator on earth is one of our customers. There we have finished, beginning of this year, Phase 1, which is the pre-feeds accomplished, which gives you all the documents to make the permitting. And the permitting request phase has now started there and the next phase will be the feed phase, and that should start soon. That is now subject to VTTI approval. We have given our offer for that. And we are expecting, in fact, the order from VTTI as soon as they have the internal approval for the budget.

On the early-stage projects with REMONDIS, that was a bit slowed down, not due to us or it was -- they had some restructurations internally and which branch of REMONDIS will do the thing or build the plan together with us. I think they found a very good solution that was presented to us not so long time ago. And now the engineering we start here with new ideas, and I think it's a very good path forward. They have presented now. So some good things take a little bit longer, but once the decision are made with partners like REMONDIS have the budget and the sites and the team behind, then things go much quicker.

The GreenTech project in Sweden has applied for a major grant also. If that grant decision is positive in Q2 '26, they plan to get already FID in 2026, which we were not expecting. But if it happens, it's very good. And we have 2 new things. We have a new tire manufacturer, a big one with whom we are negotiating. And hopefully, we can soon announce the signing of a tire recycling contract and a new big recovered carbon black offtake agreement. More about that in the next weeks. And we have an MoU now with one of the -- one major European recycler with a project planned to start in 2027 with the engineering. So the pipeline is filling up already for the next steps.

So let's hand over to Kai for the finances.

Yes. Hello, everybody. A warm welcome also from my side. We today published our annual and consolidated financial statements for 2025. And for the first time, we also included our first sustainability report into the annual report. Coming to the figures, we had revenues at EUR 4.1 million. That is more doubling than compared with the previous period. This was mainly driven by consulting and engineering service, but also by revenues from expanded plant operations.

However, the original communicated revenue forecast was EUR 4.5 million to EUR 6 million. That was not fully achieved, and this was primarily due to the lack of revenues from ThermoTireBlack, as explained by Pascal, especially in the fourth quarter of 2025, we had expected that it will already be at a good level. These delays, yes, came to the lack in the revenues.

The group generated a total output of EUR 11.1 million after projected range of EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million despite a decline in own work capitalized due to the largely completed commissioning and construction work for the expansion of the plant in Dillingen in the previous year. It was -- that was at EUR [ 11.7 ] million was maintained, thanks to the increase in revenue.

In total, own work capitalized was at EUR 6.8 million, after EUR 9 million in the previous year. The consolidated EBIT, earnings before interest and tax, were at EUR 8.7 million, slightly better than in 2024 and on the upper level, within the forecast range of minus EUR 8.5 million to minus EUR 10.5 million. The consolidated net results for the year amounted to EUR 10 million after -- to minus EUR 10 million after minus EUR 10.1 million in the previous year. This continues to reflect the start-up and ramp-up phase of the expanded plant operations as well as ongoing expenses for capacity expansion and our project development.

For the outlook, we expect consolidated revenues in the range of EUR 6.5 million to EUR 9.5 million for 2026. Total consolidated output in the range of EUR 12 million to EUR 18 million and the EBIT is expected to be between minus EUR 8 million and minus EUR 10.5 million. We anticipate that the successful ramp-up of the TTB processing, the further increase in capacity utilization of existing facilities and progress, especially in the project pipeline, will create the continuous for sustainable improvement in earnings in the coming years.

Due to the delay that we mentioned already in the TTB production and in some of our planned construction projects, unfortunately, the expected return to a balanced EBITDA is shifting from 2026 to 2027. But nevertheless, we are very positive, backed by the given solution for the pelletizer. So now we are focusing on increasing our production by extending production times of our TTB. Then the modification of the transfer system of the milling and pelletizing in Q3, and we expect successful signing of planned purchase agreement, as example, with SUAS reTIRE.

Regarding capital in 2025, we performed 2 capital increases and have strengthened our financial position. So the available liquidity at end of 2025 was EUR 17 million after around EUR 12 million for the end of the previous year. And the equity ratio went up to 41.6% after 34%. We had 2 capital increases, one in July, of 200,000 new shares. We proceeded 5.6 million to institutional at a price of EUR 28. Afterwards, to the end of the year, we decided to do a capital increase with subscription rights. And in our point of view, it was very successful.

The proceeds were EUR 13 million and the issuing price at EUR 27.5 million. Current shareholder structure, Pascal Klein and Amel Holding or the family of Pascal Klein are still the biggest shareholders at 7.2%, respectively, 7.4%. Benifin, one of our business angels from the beginning, still at 6.2% -- is at 6.2%, and Jurgen Opitz at 6.4%. So they participated in both of the capital increases and showed their support.

BASF Antwerpen is actually at 6%. Schwalbe Holding also supported us quite good and hold now 5.6%. Continental around 0.8%. And we have a free float of 60.4%, backed by more than 6,000 shareholders actually.

So we come to the highlights and outlook, and I hand back to Pascal.

Yes. So I will close the presentation. So what are the next steps? So now finished the financing for mainly the Czech project and the Greek project and the project in Perl-Besch. In fact Perl-Besch is just waiting for the final tenders, which we expect to get hopefully now in May, June. Once we have the final tenders, we can give them to the authorities for the grant from [indiscernible]. And then we have everything to give to the bank and then the financing in Perl-Besch should be done.

Czech project is a big further advance on the bank side. And yes, we are still speaking with investors. It is never bad to speak with investors and to have new solutions in mind and backup plans in case we need them. Increased TTB production. That is one of the core points now to increase our revenues. As said, we have now the green light from the internal auditing. And if everything goes well, we have now also the green light end of this month here from Conti, from the automotive auditing. Then we will finally be able to sell huge volumes. Yes. And we will do, as said, a smaller modification work on the mill and pelletizer to increase some volumes during our -- mainly our annual stop.

Yes, Perl-Besch plant and as I said, the SUAS plant is very important for us to start there quickly and with full speed, but everything is prepared there. And we will also have to pass a lot of time in the next months in Brussel or in Berlin to get all these new laws and regulation really in place so that we are on track. And we were also pushing them a little bit forward so that they come earlier. For example, the ELVR should be in place already since 2025. So sometimes you need to push things a little bit also on the political side.

This slide is more or less just a summary of the biggest highlights of '25. For those who didn't listen, I don't like to say that. So that's a summary page. I said we got the funding in Greece, groundbreaking ceremony in Perl-Besch. We're really transiting right now from a start-up that was just testing things to a rollout that is worldwide. We have secured all offtake agreements. And really -- and that is something that you really shouldn't underestimate. The ISCC EU certification, which opens the oil to the fuel market and even to the green fuel market, and everybody knows the Strait of Hormuz, everybody is speaking about it everywhere. Imagine we can produce green -- even green oil out of waste. And of course, we cannot deliver all the oil needed in Europe, but it can be a substitution, which can have some percentage.

So thank you for the attention. And I think now we will start with answering questions.

Yes. Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Mr. [ Renaut Meckel ] is asking, the funding in Greece was after all subject to certain time limits. Will those deadlines be met?

As of now, yes. So we are on track here in the planning. Yes. The Greek customers together with their engineering office have been here just 2 weeks ago, a big meeting with all of our engineers, in which we worked again on the timeline and the deadlines for the documents. And, yes, from -- I was in that meeting and from what I can tell, it looks all good.

And we move on with a follow-up from Mr. Meckel. Can you give us some idea about how the proceeds from the capital increase will be used?

Yes. We -- it's the same as we announced during the capital increases. So we used already some of this money for the project in Czech. So for bringing in EUR 8.6 million equity, we needed some money and not all of that was refinanced. We used some of this money for a new reactor on TAD1. So there is already a project that has been started, but there are huge modifications that needs to be done. So it's not that quick that we can just, let's say, plug and play. For all who have been here, I think they understand, if they remember how this tower looks like. It's not that shorter than the new ones. And of course, we need to use some of the money for the cash burn rate, which should slow down shortly when the mill and palletizing is in full production. And yes, for the rest of, let's say, also for preparation works for the next projects and the ongoing projects.

And before we get to other participants, Renaut Meckel just had a follow-up. Do you plan another capital increase in the next 2 months -- 12 months, excuse me?

Actually, there are no plans for another capital increase. It depends, let's say, on the speed of the projects. As we have shown, let's say, we want to build up to 10 plants, as example, with UNITANK. And of course, these plants would need to be financed, but we don't expect that it's that quick. So we don't expect another capital increase for now.

And we get to another participant, Mr. Holger Steffen asked, what is the current status of the replacement of Reactor 1?

Yes. Our engineering team is working on that. In fact, there are 2 solutions. Solution one is we take the reactors as we have them now. So the same reactor as in Line 2 and 3. These have also been ordered for Perl-Besch. That would be the easiest way if we were able to fit that one in the tower #1. But for that, our team is working right now on how to modify the tower internally to fit the new reactor, which is bigger, in the old tower. The result is, hopefully, we have that soon. And if that works to fit the new reactor in the -- in this -- in a much smaller tower, then it can be very quick to change it. Otherwise, we need to redesign the reactor a little bit. And yes, in the middle of the process with our engineering team, which they have weekly brainstormings about it. But the main issue now is to find how can we change the interior of the tower quickly to fit, to not change the reactor.

And a follow-up from Mr. Steffen. Why was an unscheduled write-down of EUR 250,000 recorded on the grinding and pelletizing plant of the first production line?

Yes. We already did write-downs, let's say, in the past on that one, but we had a recalculation together with our auditor during the preparation works for the annual report. And we made a new calculation based on the experience that we had on especially repair and maintenance. And the finding was that it was higher than -- the need is higher than expected also in the future. So the consumables within that machine are higher. So the unit economics are worse. So we decided that we write down another EUR 250,000 on that part.

If I may add here, the new mill is different. So one of the main reasons why we changed from an impact mill to a jet mill is the fact that it is consuming a lot of -- it is producing a lot of OpEx costs. The [indiscernible] and the mill internally needs to be changed every 6 months, and that is almost EUR 100,000. You don't have that in the jet mill. So it's also a learning curve on -- our carbon is extremely hard, and nobody was expecting that. And that's also why we changed the type of mill.

And there was one question, considering the cost of the replacement of a reactor.

It's about EUR 2 million.

So that was pretty clear, and we move on to the next participant. What is the current status of the development of the industrial facility for recycling CFRP? It's a question from [ Matias Harling ].

We are -- CFRP, we have the prototype, which is still used constantly to get new knowledge about it. We have applied for a grant to develop a bigger line. But honestly speaking, the CFRP, we are lacking a little bit of stuff on that side. We have so many, many projects running, and I've seen another question asking if we have enough stuff. What was the question, is Pyrum's engineering consulting covering for all the projects currently in implementing phase?

Yes. Why? Because we have switched also some guys from R&D to our project development department because the projects are taking so much time and so much energy from the engineering that we have. Also for cost reasons, we cannot hire endlessly people to fulfill the project, for the moment, a bit more important than the development of new input streams. But that will switch again in the future, but that is needed right now.

And the planning in our internal business plan is always linked to the number of projects in parallel because the idea, of course, is that from face-to-face documents can be handed over and can be modified to the explicit needs of a dedicated plant site. And so in the future, there should be some possibilities to strengthen that part.

And we move on to another participant. Mr. [ Linton Hart ] asks, is it your view that grant funding is likely required or incentives of some kind for the system to financially feasible?

I hope I understand the question properly, but Kai, if you want?

Yes. I also don't completely understand. For me, it sounds as if the question is if the business plan would fit the needs without grant funding. If it's that, yes, but it would make, let's say, financing much easier and the commercials better. And what we see is, let's say, that the playground in the European countries around us is much better supported than in Germany. We cannot apply for the EIF fund as example, in Germany because you can just apply once in a country when you come to a country with a new technology. And that's why our Greek partners have decided that they want to double the initial throughput that was intended. And in Czech, we see that there is some tax benefits. In Germany today, we -- yes, only can apply for creating workspaces. And it's a very -- if you are in the ramp-up, coming from a start-up and still make losses, it's quite positive. If you see that on the European level, there are some measures, and of course, we ask for them.

So maybe to sum up, the project is -- the finances work also without grants. But of course, you have much higher IRRs if you have a grant on the plant.

Yes. And considering the financing, have you been considering crowd funding at last as a marketing instrument? It's a question from [ Johan Javas ].

Yes. We have considered that in the past, but we have decided that it makes no sense. What we figured out was that it is not possible, let's say, above EUR 5 million. And so let's say, the stage in that Pyrum is already, in our opinion, it is not the right instrument to ask for crowd funding.

But I have never asked myself, honestly, the question if it is a marketing instrument crowd funding because, yes, I don't know. Let's think about it, but I've never seen it as a potential marketing instrument.

So some ideas coming up on that space, and we move on to the next participant. Can now the second tranche of the BASF be drawn? Have respective conditions be met is a follow-up question from Mr. [ Steiger ]?

So for now, we have taken EUR 19.3 million from the first tranche and EUR 5.7 million is agreed in for the projects that we actually have. We will discuss with -- there is not an automatism because it's always that you are talking also about securitization of the funding. In theory, we see it that it is possible. Some of that, let's say, second tranche was reserved also for the REMONDIS project. And as this one should move on now, again, we are in discussions with BASF. But let's say, there has also been some internal, yes, things within BASF that are public, but they are in discussions.

And a question from Mr. [ Aleksandr Obukhanich ]. Is there significant progress on Pyrum's research and developments regarding the recycling of carbon fiber and/or other plastics?

I would say the carbon fiber question, answered it already. The other plastics, we are getting on a weekly basis, new requests for other plastics. And we have a lab. Our lab is also working on that. But you have to know that we have just one lab. In that lab, we have 5 people working and the lab is also doing the quality control. And with now increasing RCB deliveries now with the green light, our internal green light for the serial production and the daily oil analyses for the BASF deliveries, we are juggling a little bit on how much time can we invest in new input streams.

The most important procurement and that should be in the mind of everybody here is now to make profits. And profits, we can only make them by selling what we have. We are quite advanced with new projects, and I think we can pull them quite quickly out of the box, but it's not the right moment for that, I would say, no. That would -- my grandpa always told me, better make 5 things right than 10 things wrong. And that is the risk that we are entering here. We do too many things at the same time.

And a question from Mr. [ Simon Agas ]. Is the mill and pelletizer unit MAD capable to process the additional output of the new TAD1 reactor?

I would say it's a bit too early to say. Let's wait for the final modification by the supplier of the mill and pelletizer for the transportation system. And yes, the design, let's say, for TAD1 is not completed yet. So I think it's too early to say. As a backup, there is still MAD1 or TAD1.

And another question as a follow-up from Mr. Meckel. Personnel turnover looks rather high at 20% in 2025. Is that a one-off thing? And are you able to get the personnel you need?

So first of all, we get and got all the personnel we need. You need to understand that we do shift work 24/7 and the biggest fluctuation is, let's say, in the plant itself on the -- the workers. So it looks high, and we decided that we publish it even though we would have had the right not to show, but we want to have a good basis for comparison in the running year. It is as it is, but yes, in the shift, I think, is the most.

From our core staff, let's say, so the engineers, the programmers, the project leaders, there's almost no fluctuation, that is nearing 0, I would say. It's really working in a plant where you recycle tires and it is sometimes a bit dirty also sorting tires. There are people who start that because they have no solution or because they just lost their job. There are many people who are losing their jobs in our region. So yes, sometimes you need to take somebody for a job and you have to place that 3 or 4 times and then you have somebody who stays. So those who are aware what the job means here outside the plant, they stay.

And a question from Mr. [ Macca -- Philip Macca ]. How long will the final conversion of the milling and pelletizing plant take now? And will production be halted during this period?

Our goal is to do that in the annual maintenance. So really to avoid any -- as many product losses as possible. The range goes from 3 to 6 weeks. Of course, we will do our best. We have proposed now to go on 24/7, only -- also night shift for the modification and that we will help [indiscernible] with the modifications. So yes, I can tell you, we reduced the time to do that already almost by half in the last 2 weeks just by reducing ordering times drastically.

So believe us, we are doing everything we can. But as said, today, it's not even needed. What we can produce now is good for the orders we have. And if it's Schwalbe or if it's Continental or if it's the 2 new ones we have, they ramp up quickly. They don't go from 0 to 100% in 1 week. They go up from 0 to 100% of what they need in 2, 3, 4 months. So that will now slowly go up. So we also have the time to take average that. We cannot go from 0 to 100 in 2 weeks. That will never work. And therefore, we have coordinated that with our annual maintenance stop.

And we now move on, considering the time to the last question of today's earnings call, Mr. [ Alexander Lindner ] asked in German, but I will translate it. When will you think of getting the breakeven?

We expect breakeven now in 2028.

That was pretty precise and shorthanded. So we now come to the end because there are no questions left in the Q&A chat box. And we come to the end of today's earnings call.

Thank you very much to all the participants for their shown interest in Pyrum Innovations, and thank you very much to you both answering all the questions and taking the time for the presentation. If there are any further questions in the near future, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. And for some final remarks, I hand over to Mr. Klein and wish you all a lovely weekend. Thank you, and bye-bye.

There's not a lot to add. I wish you also a lovely weekend, hopefully, nice weather, which is expected at least for here in Saarland. So thank you all for your attention, and I wish you all the best.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's virtual roundtable of the Pyrum Innovations AG. I am delighted to welcome CEO, Pascal Klein; and CFO, Kai Winkelmann, who will guide us through the presentation shortly. [Operator Instructions] So with this, I hand over to you, Mr. Klein.

Thank you very much for the introduction. So my name is Pascal Klein, CEO and Founder of Pyrum Innovations AG. So thank you all for joining us this afternoon. So as we have a lot of people joining this call, we did split the topics in, I would say, 2 parts. First part will be a general presentation on what is Pyrum, where we are standing today because there are also potential new investors in this roundtable on this webcast. And the second part of the presentation will then concentrate more on the topic of the actual happening capital increase. So let's start immediately with the presentation.

So I will present the presentation today, but Kai Winkelmann is also present with us here today to help me with answering the questions afterwards. So about the company, as you all may know, we recycle tires, but we start to do also other things than just recycling tires. But let's focus first on our core market today, which is used tires.

So the market is increasing. We're having more and more used tires worldwide. We have more than 30.9 million tons worldwide. And what we are announcing already now since, I would say, 5 years is that the market is turning, mainly in Europe. It has been for almost 20 years, the same, meaning that approximately half of the tires have been burned, 1/3 or 30% were transformed into rubber granulates to use on children playground soccer fields and sport fields, 10% were exported and 10% were available. So there was no actual defined use for them. And that has drastically changed last year for the first time.

So granulates went down from 30% to 25%. Burning went down from 50% to 35%. And the only part that it increased was the export that went up from 10% to 30%, which is -- not a good evolution for European Union because, as we know, used tires and waste is a resource. And we are learning more and more also in our discussions with politicians that it is getting a more and more important resource as we can produce out of these waste streams, critical raw materials for the industry. So that's why we are in close discussion with members of the European Union and of the Parliament and Brussels to get an export ban as soon as possible.

The first indications are for 2027, so that the tires and rubber waste and everything stays here so that we can really use it to transform it into raw materials that we all need. And if that goes through and if that works, there's a giant market available, not just for us, but also for other players in the market to get tires and other rubber ways to recycle them to produce raw materials. And another thing that has -- or 2 other regulations that are really helping us today is the ban of rubber granulates on children playground and soccer fields that will reduce the use of granulates extremely until 2031 because now there's a grace period of 8 years.

And the new end-of-life vehicle regulation that should come end of this year, latest Q1 next year that gives clear obligations on how to recycle plastic or polymer components from used cars, and there are ratios of recycling content in new cars that needs to be fulfilled. And if that goes true and if our wishes are respected in that new end-of-life vehicle regulation, there will be a lot of products in new cars that will be made with our oil or our recovered carbon black. And then it's not something that is free or -- not free, free is the wrong word, it's not the choice of the car manufacturer to use it, it becomes an obligation. And that is really helping the business model to grow even quicker than we expected.

So that is about the market, about the process. So most people know the process already, but I will still go through ones. So we have one TAD 1, which is our first industrial prototype line. And then we have -- since last year, we have TAD 2 and TAD 3, the 2 new industrial serial lines that are our blueprint for the rollout now. So what you see here is the example of 1 of the 2 new lines, so TAD 2 or 3. So they process 1 ton of tires per hour as an input, which we get from Schwalbe, Michelin, Continental local recyclers, over 80 garages here in the area.

So for many sources, out of the tires of the 1 ton of tires, we get 15% to 25% of steel, which is immediately sold to the steel industry to make new tires and new steel wires for tires. And textile, you have about 0% and 10%, also depending on the input. So bike tires have a lot of textile, truck tires have almost no textile. So -- and that brings us to an average of about 700 kilogram of rubber that we get out from 1 ton of used tires. And that part of the process is running properly and in full capacity.

So -- but only since August this year. So since August 2025, we are running at 65 to 75 tonnes per week, which was the target value. We still had some problems with foreign pieces that entered the shredder, for example, brakes or disks from brakes. These are always things that harm the shredder a lot and that can provoke a blockage of the shredder for a day 2 or worst case, if a teeth of the shredder is completely gone, the shredder is stopping for a week. So therefore, we are planning also one reason for the capital increase, a small one to purchase a tumbler, which is like a washing machine for tires, which costs about EUR 150,000 that avoids that every foreign pieces, heavy metal pieces enter the shredder and block it.

But on the other hand, the shredder is running perfectly fine now, and we get enough material to feed our reactors. So then after that, with 700 kilogram throughput per hour per reactor comes our patented reactors. So they transform the rubber granulate first into oil, gas and carbon. The oil is washed. It's not washed, it is condensed, slightly clean and then it goes already in the tankers to BASF and BASF makes everything you can imagine out from our oil like it was crude oil. So you can already buy from VAUDE clothing, where the synthetic fibers are made with our oil or Mercedes, the door handles are, for example, made from our oil and a lot of other applications.

And that part of the plant is also running full, so 24/7 and very, very stable, I have to say, and that is something we are extremely proud of in the plant, our reactors are the thing that works best. So like a Swiss watch. So there's not really a lot to maintain, a lot to do in the reactors. I have to say a shredder and the milling and pelletizing is much more maintenance than our reactors. And yes, so we are very proud about that and very confident that the rollout will not cause any technical issues in the future.

And that's also why we have received from Royal Haskoning from the Netherlands, independent engineering office now since May this year, the STEM TRL 9, so technical readiness level 9, which is the highest level you can get. So serial approved technology ready for rollout. And you're not getting that if the plant is not doing what it should, and that makes the plant also bankable. So you get bank credits, you get access to loans.

So then the gas after the reactors is cleaned and goes in our power plant, and produces enough electricity and heat to feed the whole Pyrum process. I have to say here, the shredder is taking out of that. The shredder needs external electricity, but what comes after the shredder, so the Pyrum unit, the power plant and that is self-sustaining with electricity, so we don't need to buy external electricity. And the heat is used in the dry of the mill and pelletizer, but that I explain later. And that part also the power plant is in stable operation 24/7 now since June 2025. We had some electrical issues and some software issues that could all have been solved that were all solved in June '25.

And since that moment, everything is running smoothly 24/7. And yes, it's not causing any issues anymore. So on the last part, the milling and pelletizing, so to transform the carbon, which represents about 31% of the tire input next to the oil, which represents 25% of the input. So the carbon is milled and then pelletized. We have a mill and a pelletizer here in Dillingen, a small one that works together with TAD 1, so our prototype line #1. The old mill and pelletizer is able to process about 200 kilograms of carbon per hour. The new one is designed to process 1,600 kilogram per hour. So you see that there's a giant gap in between.

So -- and that one was -- the design of that was finished end of 2023. It was ordered beginning of '24. The plant was delivered end of '24, beginning of '25. And now we did build it up here on site and a giant unit with over 1,000 square meters on 4 floors. And that unit is now finished since July. And since August, we are in the ramp-up. And what I can tell you is that the mill and the pelletizer are both running properly. The only -- the last missing bottleneck in the plant is the -- that you see here in wet, that is the dosing unit, that is the unit between the mill and the pelletizer. That is where the freshly milled material, the so-called recovered carbon black is stored. And from there, it is fed into the pelletizer.

And we need to do these pellets because it's industrial standard. So Conti or Schwalbe or whoever buys the recovered carbon black cannot buy only the powder material because that will block their systems. They need these small pellets in their plants. So we need to pelletize it. And for the moment, we have an issue with the dosing unit. It cannot dose freshly milled material because freshly milled material is too fluffy. It is impossible to dose that properly. So what we are doing right now is we operate the pelletizer for 15 minutes. Then we have to wait 15 minutes until the material rests in the dosing unit, then we operate for 15 minutes, then we stop for 15 minutes. So that is, in fact, our bottleneck. We always have these breaks of 15 minutes -- every 15 minutes.

But there is a solution. There are many solutions for that. That's also the reason why we still have TRL 9 also from the external engineers because that is not a problem. It is -- in fact, there are many solutions for that. The easiest one is you build a second dosing unit just next to it, and you operate 50 minutes with one, then 50 minutes with the other. And again, you switch between the 2 dosing units every 15 minutes, that would be the easiest solution, but not really easy to realize here in our plant due to space -- to lack of space. But the first modifications are done right now as we speak. And hopefully, we get end of this week, the first results from that test, which the supplier is doing.

I have to say also the milling and pelletizing is not built by Pyrum. That is a piece that we have purchased turnkey. So all the costs that are here to modify that are with the supplier. The only thing -- the only problem for Pyrum here is that we cannot sell recovered carbon black in high volumes yet until that modification is done. So that is where we are with the plant. So that is what the plant looks like from the sky. So here, you see the shredding unit in orange, which is able to process 6 tonnes of tires per hour. So that's about 600 tires in 1 hour. Here you have the new 2 reactors, reactor 2 and 3. So TRD 2 and 3, then you have the power plant, which is really a real power plant. When you walk through it, it's like a small power plant, but it has everything that also a big giant gas power plant has.

And then you have here in blue, the new mill and pelletizer that is, as said, since August in ramp up. And since September, we are operating it on a daily basis. So since end of September, we are operating every day, but the throughput is in the area of 30% to maximum 50%, but that will quickly change once the dosing unit is modified. And I said that is done right now. Then you have the oil tanks here underground, the control room in red and in [indiscernible] in dark gray, you have the tire storage, which is actually completely full. That picture was made in April.

And in the back here, you have the maintenance and spare part workshop where also you need that, you have to change the knives in the shredder every 3 days, and you have to resharpen them, so we have all the tools there to resharpen the knives. So that is the footprint of a standardized Pyrum unit. The only thing that will change in the future like in Perl-Besch or the plant in Czech Republic or in Greece, what will change is that you will have a third reactor. So here, the green tower with the 2 reactors, that one will be 9 meters larger and will house a third shredder. But I would say the west stays almost the same with small modifications. So that's why this is our blueprint for the next plant.

So from patent-wise, we have already 2 patents, one for the reactor and one for the process. And just end of last year, beginning of this year, we declared 2 new patents, one for carbon fiber reinforced plastics, which is a topic that we are working on already since some years. And now finally, we have a solution that was good enough to declare a pattern on that. And now we would really like to go here into the next steps so that we can maybe in some years, recycle the blades of wind turbines or lightweight cars or so many things in the lightweight sector that are made with carbon fiber reinforced plastics.

And the recycling of that is today the biggest issue of that whole industry. And we have here a solution, and that's also something we would quickly push forward if in the capital increase, we get some money. And the other thing in the JDA with Continental, Joint Development Agreement, we developed the so-called golden rCB. That is the rCB that is best to use it in new tires. And for that, we needed a tire manufacturer to help us because we cannot define the in rubber performance. So to see how good recovered carbon black behaves in a rubber, you need, yes, a manufacturer to test it. And we have made far over 100 test tires or test rubber pieces to find the right mixture and that is, at the end, resulted in a new patent declaration between Conti and Pyrum, so our first product patent.

So now I would like really to sum up to keep a short our USP, so what is so unique and what we do better than others and the highlights. So first things first, we have now -- it has taken a long time. But if you ask specialists for the chemical industry like BASF, they still say we have been extremely quick, we have now a fully running TRL 9 plant, so Technical Readiness Level 9, which is bankable, which has an insurance, which is really extremely complicated to get full insurance against everything against fire, machine break and even lack of production and lack of turnover. So we have all that now, and we can just copy that now.

One thing which is very important that mostly politicians told us in the last months that we have to be more aware about that topic. We are not just a recycler, okay? Recycling is something very important and being green and saves CO2. But in fact, we are also an inventor of new and critical raw materials for the industry. And that is actually right now the biggest argument to get grants, to get investors is that, in fact, we are a producer of critical raw materials because our oil replaces crude oil in the chemical industry. And so we don't depend so much anymore on crude oil, and you can make everything out of our oil, not just the fuel, you can make new plastics, no fibers, medicines, cosmetics. So everything you can do from oil, you can also do it with our oil. And so it is really a critical raw material.

And our oil contains, and that is a new thing that we learned over this summer, thanks to our new partnership with VTTI, biggest LNG terminal operator on earth that our oil has up to 50% biogene content. That comes from the fact that tires are made from natural rubber that is green and that is bio and that ends up in new oil. So you can, in fact, make green fuels or even green jet fuels out of our oil. And the prices for these products are much, much higher than in the chemical industry, and the market is really demanding that product in volumes that we cannot produce in the next 10, 20 years, even if we build a new plant every month.

So -- and the recovered carbon black replaces carbon black in the industry. And we have to really keep in mind that 60% to 70% of the EU market depends on Russia, on carbon black. It's -- the biggest carbon black manufacturer on earth is Russia. And today, we still get our carbon black, the tire industry, the rubber industry, the plastic industry, the pigment industry, they all get carbon black still from Russia, but not directly, but they get it via China or via India. So in fact, we still get it from Russia, but just for a higher price because it makes a loop via China. And that has opened a lot of doors with our partners. And that is also one of the reasons why we are getting also now 10-year offtake guarantees because this raw material is so critical for most industries.

So we are fully energy self-sustaining system. And as of what we know and what our partners say, we are the only one in the industry able to say that with a fully running power plant that runs 24/7. We have all the certificates and that took much longer than we expected, honestly speaking, but there were a lot of certificates. We had to best suit for our products, we had to get ISO. VDA 6.3, I can tell you is hell on earth. That is the automotive certificate to become a critical raw material supplier for security relevant goods. And that was almost 2 years to get that. We have ISCC for the textile industry, et cetera. We have now ESG weighting are very good and Fraunhofer confirmed that we saved 965 kilogram of CO2 per tonne, which is 72% better than the recycling mix that we have actually in Europe.

And another very important key USP of us is that we have actually for all of our end products, long-term offtake agreements for 10 years and more. BASF 10-year offtake for -- even up to 15 years is, in fact, our choice when a new plant starts, if it's 10 or 15 years for up to 300,000 tons per year. That's 150 Pyrum reactors. Today, there are 3 in operation. So there's a lot to build just to fulfill that contract.

With Continental, we have a 10-year rCB offtake guarantee, first of its kind in the automotive industry because the -- usually raw material supply contracts are made for 1, 2 years, big maximum 5 years. But 10-year offtake guarantee for the volume of 6 reactors is, as said, first of its kind. And Schwalbe did follow this year with also 10-year rCB offtake agreement and even a 10-year tire delivery agreement. And last but not least, that is only 2 weeks old or 2.5 weeks old, we just received a grant or our greek partner received that grant for the Pyrum plant in Greece from the European Innovation Fund, EUR 29.4 million. And that is about the technology and about the project, and that shows that Pyrum and what we do and the whole business is the core -- is one of the core focuses of the European Innovation Fund.

And that is really the core focuses of the European Union. And the main reason for that is not that we recycle. The main reason is, as I said before, that we produce critical raw materials. And we would really like as Pyrum to be part of that plant in Greece. And that's also one of the reasons why we do this capital increase now because we need equity to buy shares of that plant so that we are not just the supplier and the licensee and the maintenance company, but also part of that plant.

So to sum up with the partners, we have some of the biggest tire manufacturers. We have the biggest recyclers in Europe. We have the biggest oil tanking and terminal operators on Earth and in Germany and the biggest chemical company on earth that are all our partners or even shareholders. And I would say if one argument counts about what we speak here today is they cannot all be one. And believe me, they did all very hard due diligences before they have chosen our technology and before they have chosen to mix their names with our name.

So about the rollout now, which is also a core topic for the capital increase. So we have over 20 projects in the pipeline, 10 have already started. And when I mean started, they have actually paid money for our engineering work and to support them with the permits and to do basic or detailed engineering, so-called PRE-FEED or FEED Phase. new projects, 6 just in the last 1.5 years. In 6 countries, 4 are actually right now in the permitting process and 3 have already received full permits, so everything. So they are allowed to build the plant and to operate it once it is built. And that is in Perl-Besch here next to our existing plant, reTire in Czech Republic and thermolysis in Greece.

And that's the full volume of these 10 started projects is 220,000 tonnes per year, 6.4% of the ELT market end-of-life tire market. In Europe, the investment volume is over EUR 600 million, and that's just the projects in Europe. We are not speaking about the projects outside of Europe. Oil volume is completely sold, thanks to the offtake agreement with BASF and the recovered carbon black, 35% is sold and about 35% is under negotiation right now as we speak. And we have to be clear that these plants are not even built yet. So these plants need first to be built and everything -- or almost everything is already sold.

So here about the status of the plants. So here, you see that where they are. So you see that there are different types of projects. We have 100% projects. That means these are projects that Pyrum wants to do and that we are going to be the owner of these plants. Then we have joint venture plants like Czech Republic, for example, in which we already have a share of 49% that has been signed 2 weeks ago by our CFO, Kai Winkelmann, in Prague. And for that, we have invested EUR 8.6 million, which came partly from our last capital increase. So you see the money we get from capital increases are invested in plants we are getting shares in. And part of that -- of this 49% participation is coming from the loan agreement we have with BASF.

And now we have also the project in Greece, which made a giant step forward now with the grant that they have received. And here, we can participate with up to 10%. And we would really like to participate in this project with up to 10% because it's -- yes, it's one of our goals to be part of each plant and not only to deliver it and to do maintenance afterwards to really profit from the revenues from these plants. We have other projects like EXT. These are external projects like a good example is VTTI in Belgium. So in Antwerp, there we will have 0% participation, but we will have a profit participation. So we will not be active shareholder.

So we'll deliver the plant. We will get the license for delivery of the plant. We will get annual maintenance fees, and we will get an annual profit participation in order to keep us motivated so that the one plant runs properly and that you could also tell us kind of a little bit like a franchise model. And that could even be expanded with a management contract, but that is not really the case here with VTTI, but that is also something that we are discussing with other investors that we do everything. We deliver the plant, we build it. And at the end, we operate it also, and we get for that management fee. So that will bring us quicker more plants.

And here, you see, for example, in the partnership with UNITANK, we can get up to 49% in each of the 10 plants we are planning together with them. And we negotiated that in the contract that we are free to bring up to 49. That depends on how much equity we as Pyrum are able to raise. The more we can raise, the higher will be our share. It's as easy as that. And here, you see the black ticks are a little bit older than a year. The green ticks came all in the last 12 months. And the blue ticks like here, the FEED phase, which is the last phase before FID, funding -- the funding, permitting procedure, permits obtained, FID. So the blue ticks are those we expect very soon.

So Continental, I already spoke a lot about it. It's a very important partnership for us because it's one of the biggest tire manufacturers on earth. So they are here to buy our recovered carbon black, but also to supply us with tires. And here, you can also see our reactors. So they even use a comic drawing of our reactors to explain to their shareholders and their customers how they make already today forklift tires with our recovered carbon black. They would like to do more, but the bottleneck is us.

To make forklift tires, we can deliver enough. But to make car tires, we need more quantities in recovered carbon black in order to switch full production lines. We have the offtake agreement with them. And one thing I always like to say here that we have now a 10-year offtake agreement with them with a base price, which is more than double the price that we have set at the IPO. So we are in a much better situation from the raw material side that we sell than at our IPO, even at double the prices that we expected 4 years ago.

Schwalbe also a very important partner. Schwalbe has even put in place a recycling system called Schwalbe Recycling System, in which boxes are put in bike stores, tires are collected, they bring the tires to us. We do our thing, and we deliver then recovered carbon black to Schwalbe and they make new tires of that. And what is new since 2025, even the oil goes to BASF. BASF produces synthetic [indiscernible] out of our oil, and they also go to Schwalbe. So since this year, even the oil goes in new tires.

So Schwalbe has switched 70% of its production to our recovered carbon black already. We have a framework agreement with them for rCB end-use tires since April this year. Since end of last year, they are active shareholder of Pyrum with 5.2% participation. So very good partnership, very friendly and very -- yes, very good. Nothing else that I can say.

So some other partnerships like with VAUDE in which our oil is made, taken by BASF, makes textile fibers out of that, and you can already purchase a lot of products from them based on our oil and with Mercedes-Benz. And that is, in fact, an important thing for the end-of-life eco regulation. As I said before, eco regulation makes an obligation to use old plastic from old cars and to transform them in new plastics for new cars. And here, we are speaking about ratios of minimum 30%. And here with Mercedes, that was the first test one to show -- to prove that it works. So we took used tires and biomethane. We made -- BASF made high-performance plastics out of that, and they are used already today in the outdoor door handles of the Mercedes S-Class. And for that, we received even the MATERIALICA Award.

So that was a prestige project to show that it works. But it's like always when the industry changes into something different, you first see it in the high-quality luxury cars. And then when it becomes an obligation or state-of-the-art, then it is splitted very widely to the cheaper cars or other brands, and that is where we are just about to start with that.

So financing, I will just quickly walk you through the business plan of 1 site. So 1 site with 3 reactors actually recycled 22,700 tonnes of tires per year. And here, you see that it's -- we make EUR 17.5 million turnover with full running plant with 3 reactors. EUR 2.3 million of that is the gate fee, so the recycling fee that we take in the tires. EUR 1.7 million is the steel, EUR 3 million is the oil. And you see the recovered carbon black, it's EUR 10.6 million, which is the biggest chunk, by far the biggest chunk. And that's also the reason why it is so important to now quickly ramp up the rCB sales because the offtake agreements are there.

So direct cost, OpEx cost brings us to an EBITDA of EUR 10 million with EUR 50 million investment in machineries, you are the EBITDA payback of 5 years. Here is not included the purchase of the site and the financing cost. But there's also no subvention, no grants, no governmental support in here because that always depends on where you build it, like the project in Greece has, for example, received now the EUR 29.4 million, and that can now also be applied on other new Pyrum plants in other countries.

And in Czech Republic, we received a tax holiday for 10 years. So there are actual nice grants to receive, which even improved the balance sheet for plan a lot. So we have -- for the rollout, what we have already in our hands for the rollout is a loan agreement with BASF for EUR 50 million, from which we have taken now EUR 25 million part of that for the new plant in Perl-Besch, our next own operated plant and EUR 7.6 million for the plant in Czech Republic for our share there and the guaranteed offtake agreement for the oil and from Continental and Schwalbe, a guaranteed offtake for the recovered carbon black.

That, together with now a term sheet from a big European bank and the operation of the plant in Dillingen and the TRL 9 certificate, we are now in the position that these plants are bankable. And -- but you always need about 25% to 35% equity, even though you are bankable and you can apply for bank credits, you still need equity for each plant. So now coming to the capital increase, which is, I suppose, one of the most important topics for most people listening to this webcast. So we made it up to EUR 21 million.

So of course, we would be happy to get the full EUR 21 million. But if we only get EUR 10 million, it's not -- we are not losing. It is just -- the more we get, the more we can participate in new projects. The more we can get shares in new projects, the more we can invest in the rollout of carbon fiber reinforced plastics, but more on that later. So up to EUR 21 million, the subscription ratio is 5.1. So if you have 10 shares, you get 2 new shares. So that is, in fact, what you can order your subscription right for 2 new shares if you have 10 shares. Of course, you can order less or even more. You can also oversubscribe, but it's not guaranteed that you get all the shares that you oversubscribe.

So the share price is EUR 27.5 and the maximum number of new shares is 763,764. And we got already indications by major shareholders, some we spoke with already for a minimum of EUR 5 million, and that's also the minimum we were looking for. But I said up to EUR 25 million is the goal. Here, you see a list of our actual shareholders. So it's Continental, Schwalbe, BASF, Jürgen Opitz and Benifin are 2 business angels from the very beginning and both in our Supervisory Board, the 2 green shares, my family office and myself. And here in others, you have people like, for example, Felix Magath, the famous soccer player or [indiscernible] a famous German investor. So -- but we are not putting here all their names, but these 2 names, I'm allowed to tell them.

So what are we going to do with that money? Part of that was already said before. So one thing is our cash burn rate until breakeven. So EBITDA positive in 2026 and net positive in 2027. It is not a secret that we are still using more money per month than we make, but that will drastically change now once the big mill and pelletizer is fully running, and that can be the case every week. And we also expect that the project in Czech Republic and Greece soon order the plants, and that will make a lot of new turnover for the sale of plants.

But whatever happens, it is good to have some money aside to be sure to reach breakeven without issues. And of course, what I said before, we want to participate in joint venture plans, as, for example, in Greece or with UNITANK here in Germany. And the more we are able to raise, the bigger will be our participation in these new plants. That is simple mathematics. So the more we are able to raise the more we can participate. We want to invest also in carbon fiber reinforce plastic recycling. It's a giant market opportunity, and we are quite ahead of other technologies. So the next steps we would like to do here is planning the first industrial plant, making the business plans for that and try to get all the permits.

Once we have that, we actually have a solid business case, and we can do financing on that and sell that technology. And for that, we estimate that we need about EUR 2 million to get that ready. And we learned a lot in the last years on the operation of our site here in Dillingen. We would like to improve some things to quickly increase the turnover in Dillingen. For example, as I told you before, we have 3 reactors in Dillingen, 2 new ones and 1 old one, our first industrial prototype. And the first industrial prototype TAD 1 is now over 10 years out -- 10 years old. It has worked a lot. We have done a lot of tests with that machine and really maximum tests that bring the reactor to its limits and over its limits.

And today, I can tell you that TAD 1 is able to process a maximum of 250 kilograms per hour rubber and the new ones go up to 700 kilograms per hour. So we are speaking here far more than double the throughput. So by changing TAD 1 to the new reactor, model would increase our monthly turnover by EUR 150,000 for an investment of about EUR 2 million. And I would say that is a no-brainer because the payback here is 14 months. And that is really something we should do to quickly increase our monthly turnover.

There's one thing that is not so nice. We worked for years to get the insurance package I told you already before. So fire insurance, business interruption insurance, blah, blah, blah. We have all that with Allianz. But now new regulations in the insurance industry are asking us to install a sprinkler system in the whole plant. So in every hall, even though there is a fire extinguishing system in the shredder, in the mill and in the reactors with nitrogen mainly, we need to install now water sprinklers on the roofs of the halls with 200,000 liter water tank and diesel-operated emergency water pumps to feed the sprinkling system. Otherwise, there is a high risk that we lose our insurance mid of next year.

So -- and that is about EUR 1 million in investment, which we really should do, and I want all shareholders to know that. And we want to build a big tire storage because we found out that tire is very cyclic business. So we get a lot of money and a lot of tires in April, May, June and in September, October, November. So you get so many tires that you have to refuse most of the tires with very good conditions. And then in summer, so July, August and December, January, February, you get almost no tires. And you get very bad conditions, you sometimes even have to pay yourself for the transport to get enough tires.

So in order to lift extremely our average gate fee, we need a tire storage for 3 months. And for that, we would like to buy a site here between our 2 plants, between Dillingen and Perl-Besch so that we can store their tires for a period of 3 months so that we can take in the tires in the changing season for very high conditions and lift from that storage over summer and over winter that will also quickly increase our turnover. And one thing we want to communicate a little bit more, so to get more liquidity in our shares. So we have already [indiscernible] the German investor who offered us to do more with us. And our brand ambassador, Felix Magath, is also a first step to make more communication to get more liquidity in the share.

And I have been asked that in the equity forum at Frankfurt last week, why are we spending so much money on stars to get Pyrum well known? That is not true. Felix Magath is a believer in Pyrum. He's investor. He invested in us because he believes in what we do and he believes in our technology. So of course, we pay him a little something for his traveling costs and hotels and all that stuff. But I have to tell that most Pyrum employees cost more per month than Felix Magath, and he is an active investor, and he did invest already a lot of money in Pyrum. So he's really not somebody who's making us lose money. He's bringing us a lot of money.

So if there are rumors in the market that we pay millions for stars now to get better known, that's just not true. So here, you see him even Felix in his Pyrum dress. So to sum up quickly, so the next step is now the actual capital increase. And once we know what comes out from the capital increase, we know better the next steps. We are speaking with a lot of infrastructure funds to make more of a franchise model. You can always -- that is, for example, infrastructure fund can buy several plants at once, and we build them, we operate them. So we manage the plants. We do, in fact, more or less everything for them. That is a way to get quicker, more plants without huge equity needed in Pyrum. And we are speaking with a lot of strategic investors recently also to roll out quicker.

Another important thing is to quickly increase the recovered carbon black production volumes because that is the contracts are there. The more we produce every month, the more our -- the quicker our turnover goes up. So we believe that we can get plus/minus 10% more of line #1. So the prototype mill and pelletizer, line 2 that is actually in the ramp up will make 8x more than what the old one was able to do. And of course, quickly start -- we want to start in Perl-Besch first with the mill and pelletizer so that unmilled and unpalletized material we have in stock can quickly be processed there to quickly sell recovered carbon black.

So in Perl-Besch, we have started -- the groundbreaking event was on the 14th of November. So 2 weeks ago, long lead items are ordered there and the ground preparation is done. And another focus is now the legal framework, the introduction of the end-of-life vehicle regulation in Q1 '26, still asking us a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of discussion with people from the parliament in Brussels, in Berlin. So that is a giant work we do in the background that takes a lot of manpower, but it starts to show first results, and that is a very solid foundation for our future.

And of course, political awareness, Felix Magath, is presenting us in front of a lot of politicians and to open doors. That is something that is important to get in here to -- so that people listen. So here's the last highlight slide with a summary of the biggest highlights of the last 12 months. I always say that is the slide for those who didn't listen. So they have here a summary. And this presentation can also be downloaded on our website, and it will also be -- the video will also be published. So that's it from the presentation. Thank you very much for your attention. And now we will pass, I think, to the questions.

We will. Thank you very much for your transparent presentation, Mr. Klein. At this point, I will stop the recording. And ladies and gentlemen, we will move on to our Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

This morning in English, in the German, we had many. So there needs to be a first one.

Yes, there is one. If the EU regulates plastic granulate and the use of recycled materials in vehicles in 2027, the demand and the market pressure for recycled materials and recycling plants will skyrocket. Wouldn't a significantly higher capital increase be necessary in order to be able to act quickly on that market? Is there an estimate for this?

Kai, do you want or...

Yes. So first of all, we have some regulation in Germany. We have an allowance to do up to 40% capital increase, but we don't want to dilute our shareholders by that. So actually, we decided to have EUR 21 million, and it should be sufficient until breakeven and then we should have much higher prices. On the other hand, you see in our business model that we work together with partners like VTTI, like Impactus in Greece or SUAS. So we have 10 projects actually on the way, and we just cannot do more than that what we actually do. And we don't want to have, let's say, as much cash as possible at the site, but this EUR 21 million, if possible. So this should be sufficient. And for us, actually, it would not make sense to do a higher capital increase.

And maybe what we said before, we are actively speaking with a lot of funds, infrastructure funds who might, in a model like a franchise model make quicker, more plants. So we are following a lot of strategies, and that's what we published many times already in the past months. We are having a lot of discussions, and we are really exploring every way forward that exists to make plans quickly available. And hopefully, in 2027, we will have at least 3 to 4 plants running and then that we would be by far the biggest one.

Thank you very much. Do you make the webcast available on your homepage?

Yes.

Yes. We are doing it without a Q&A.

Thank you. Can you give us a first idea about market volume and planned cost in the field of CFRP recycling?

Certainly not. That is why we want to invest money to do so. So we have a prototype that prototype is running quite well. We are producing with that prototype a good oil according to what we have been told by our oil offtakers. And the carbon fibers that we produce have up to 4 centimeters. And with these very clean and reusable carbon fibers, there is a lot of products now in development. So like reparation tapes with carbon fibers in it, and there's a lot of exploring that. And yes, as I said, we think that we will have to invest up to EUR 2 million in that area to answer that question properly.

And are the Czech or Greek projects now fully funded? And if not, what is still missing?

So it's all lined up, let's say. In the Czech project, we signed a shareholder agreement so that we participate in the plant. The equity is secured by Pyrum's for the 49%. The equity is secured by SUAS for the 51%. And we are in final, let's say, paperworks with the bank and can start building. Building permit is expected quite soon in the next days to be valid. And yes, then we can start. In Greek, it's Impactus who is responsible, let's say, as our partner. And what especially is missing is our part for EUR 3 million for up to 10%. They reserve that for us and created a fund. But as we heard from them, they are quite far that everything should lined up and that just Pyrum is missing.

Thank you. In the meantime, we have received no further questions. I will wait another moment in the case somebody might be typing, and...

That shows that everything was said in the presentation.

And very clear, yes. Thank you very much. With this, we come to the end of today's virtual roundtable. Thank you for joining and your questions. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. A big thank you also to you for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely week, a healthy Christmas time. And with this, I hand over again to Mr. Klein for some final remarks.

Thank you very much for being here today and for listening to this presentation. If you have further questions and you were not able to ask them here, you can always write us an e-mail. At the end of the presentation are the contact data. So I wish for the best. I hope that a lot of you participate in our capital increase, and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a nice Christmas time.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Pyrum Innovations AG due to the publication of the half-year figures 2025. I am delighted to welcome CEO, Pascal Klein; and CFO, Kai Winkelmann, who will start their presentation shortly. [Operator Instructions] So with this, I hand over to Mr. Klein.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you all for joining this call. As we have done already several times now, maybe today, there will be a little change on that, we will spend less time on Pyrum history and what is Pyrum. We will still have a small excursion on that sector because there are always new participants in this call who are not really familiar with Pyrum, so they want to learn what is Pyrum doing and maybe become new investors. So we will do a little part now on what is Pyrum doing, but then we will also have a second part in it on really what has been brand new in the last months.

So these are the 2 presenters. So myself and Kai Winkelmann, our CFO. Kai Winkelmann will share with you the numbers afterwards. And I will start now with the presentation itself, so company and market. So about the market, I can tell that it is slowly happening what we are predicting since some years. So in fact, since already 2020, we are saying that the export will increase, that the granulate will go down and that the burning will go down in volumes. And that's what we see now happening in 2020 (sic) [ 2025 ] for the first time very drastically.

Why? Because most cement plants, tire burners, et cetera, have CO2 certificate issued. So they spend a lot of money on CO2 certificate. So they decided to burn less tires, because burning tires creates a lot of CO2. And that's exactly what the law wants. So we saw in 2024, a decrease from 50% to 35% in burning of tires, and a decrease from 30% to 25% in tires being transformed and rubber granulate used for children playground, soccer fields flooring and all that stuff. And that will still go down in volumes due to new laws, but that comes on the next slide.

The only thing that has really risen drastically in the last months or weeks or even in the last year, I would say, is the export, which went up from 10% to 30%. And available tires are still about 10%. So what we see here is really an explosion of export. Why? Because there's not enough recycling volume in Europe. So the tires have to go somewhere instead of laying in our backyards. They have to go -- that's always a solution of the European Union. If we don't know what to do with it in Europe, we send it above. So it's not our problem anymore, but that will also change in some years if the information we have are right. So the volume of the tires are still there. They are even increasing every year due to electric mobility, which is consuming more tires than before.

So from the regulations, they are tightening also more and more, and that is clearly in our advantage. Landfill, for example, has been banned since long time. So that is an information we gave already many times. Ban of incineration in some quantities has come, but it's not really necessary anymore, because most cement plants have announced that they'll stop burning tires in the next years until 2030. So the ban of incineration is not really legally pushed, it is financially pushed and also technology pushed, because the new cement kilns are much smaller and they don't treat tires anymore. They are much more efficient, and they don't have the size anymore to burn tires. So even technically-wise, there is evolution in our favor.

And rubber granulate, that was in summer 2023, has been banned for most applications by the European Union because it causes cancer, skin cancer mainly; it can go into the lungs. And it is not -- how can I say that, it is not good to let your children play on old tires. You can imagine tires have been designed to last for 10,000 kilometers on the road and not to support the children's butt playing on it. But here is a grace period of 8 years before the ban will be definitive or final.

News is that more and more OEM audits, so more and more tire industry off-takers, due to new regulations, are requiring, in their audits, circular contents. So I have seen letters from car manufacturers saying, if your production is not containing at least 10%, 20%, 30% of circular materials until 2030, you will be delisted, so you cannot be my supplier anymore. So there's really a pressure from the car manufacturers towards their suppliers to have circular content.

And that comes a lot with also the newly discussed end-of-life vehicle regulation, so the ELVR, that has been negotiated already now in September and will continue in October. So that will oblige the automotive industry to have circular content in new cars. So instead of just burn old cars, we have to take materials from old cars and have a certain percentage of old cars in new cars. That is already happening today for the steel and metal parts. but they are excluded from the ELVR. The ELVR is really just for plastic components, so polymers that are in cars, because steel is already partly -- or mainly recycled.

So here are many discussions even if tires are included or not. So I can tell you that we are, at Pyrum, very actively discussing with members of the European Parliament and politicians here in Germany to get that right, so that rubber is included, that tires are included in ELVR, and also that the products we are producing, which will then be used in the future in, for example, door handles of Mercedes-Benz or dashboards, et cetera, that, that will count into the ELVR obligations that are coming more and more now.

And the increased tire export in 2024 has pushed some EU leaders even to visit us in Dillingen and to speak about our possibilities to take in tires and to increase our recycling volumes, because there is really EU discussion to ban the export of tires. So that really this resource, which is more and more recognized by European Union as being a valuable resource. It contains oil to create new polymers, medicine, cosmetics, it creates carbon to make new tires. So that is a valuable resource, which is a shame or a waste to send that outside of the European Union. And therefore, it's actively discussed at EU level to ban the export of tires. But I can't tell more about that yet because these are discussions and there is no final results yet. And look, hopefully, for all of us that will be discussed and decided in the next 2 to 3 years.

So for those who are for the first time here, I quickly explain again what Pyrum is doing and maybe some smaller new things on the process. So again, we are taking in tires. So one line of Pyrum is treating about 1 tonne of tires per hour. 1 tonne of tires per hour is then shredded, steel is extracted, textile fiber is extracted. The source of the tires is multiple from Schwalbe, Michelin, Conti, Remondis, local garages, let's say this. Yes, even from workshops here or recycling centers here in our region, everybody is bringing us tires. So that is more and more well working system.

The steel represents about 15% to 25% of the tire. That really depends on the input. So you have 15% approximately in a car tire and 25% in a truck tire, and bike tires have very little steel, almost none. And then you have between 0% and 10% of textile fibers, and the textile fibers also depend from the input. So bike tires are up to 10%, truck tires almost none. So on average, we have around 700 kilogram of rubber granulate out of 1 tonne of used tires, and that goes then -- everything after that, bucket elevator here is what we have developed mainly, so our reactor.

So the rubber falls into the reactor, is processed in the reactor through an airtight and continuous process, which separates it mainly in 2 first steps. So the one part is carbon, crude carbon. And the other thing is vaporized oil, which is mixed with gas. And that is then condensed, so cooled down, like in a refinery, and that creates oil. That oil is then slightly cleaned. So we take out of the oil, floating particles and water residues, and then the oil goes to the tankers already into BASF. That is about 250 kilogram per hour. So about 25% of the tires that came in at the beginning becomes oil, and that goes today mainly to BASF and BASF makes products for VAUDE, for Mercedes-Benz, for many, many customers. You will find it in ibuprofen for pills when you have a headache.

So in fact, more or less, BASF can produce a lot of things that are made of crude oil. And there are also new test runs on making chemicals also for the tire and rubber industry. So the oil is really a resource that is not burned and used for the production of new products. At the end of the condensation system, we have a gas, and that gas can be treated by 2 ways. So we have both systems up and running here at Pyrum at industrial scale on a daily basis. So one is a combined heat and power plant, which is nothing more than an engine, a big MAN engine that is burning the gas and creates energy and heat out of it. That is quite maintenance intensive, because the gas has some fluctuations and the hydrogen content in the oil, which is not so good for the long life of an engine, but we managed to make it run quite well. The advantage of the combined heat and power plant is that you get more electricity out, but less heat. And you need to prefilter the gas beforehand because you need to take out the sulfur before.

Then we have another system with microturbines, which creates much more heat, a little bit less electricity, but both systems create enough electricity to power the Pyrum reactors. So that part is completely self-sustaining. We just need external energy for the shredding unit and a little for the mill. The heat is also used in the mill and pelletizer. And that is the last thing I explained now, what comes out of the bottom of the reactor is about 310 kilograms. That is about 31% of the tires that came in at the beginning. That is milled to thin powder, smaller than 10 microns. That goes then into a pin mixer, to a dryer. For that, we need the heat from the combined heat and power plant in the turbines, and that creates small 1- to 2-millimeter pallets, the so-called recovered carbon black. And that is used in new tires from Continental and Schwalbe today that is sold and we have offtake agreements with them.

And a new thing since the last presentation we have made, we have now also green light from several coating manufacturers that will get now the first deliveries also to make coating out of it. So another big application that is even very, yes, turnover positive, because carbon black for coatings have a very high value.

So history, I will make it quick. There has happened so many things in the last 17 years. So we concentrate on the most important things. So created in 2018 (sic) [ 2008 ], building permission for the first industrial line was 2013, which started for the first time in 2015, but it took until 2019 until it was running properly. So 4 years of ramping up and solving issues. Then we had the first oil offtake agreement with BASF in 2019, and an investment of BASF in 2020. First cooperation with Continental and Pirelli also in 2020. '21 was our IPO in Oslo; '22, the second listing in Frankfurt. End of 2023, we had a new cooperation agreement with BASF in which we increased the oil purchasing volumes by 3x, so to 300,000 tonnes of oil per year. So there are a lot of plans to build and the oil offtake is there. And we received a loan agreement from BASF of EUR 50 million in order to bring us in our plant building projects a big step forward.

Since 2023, we are VDA 6.3 certified. I also like to say that there has been a Pyrum before and after VDA 6.3, because that has really changed the structure of our company completely, because that is the automotive auditing, which was necessary to be allowed to deliver recovered carbon black into the automotive industry, because the recovered carbon black is a security relevant component of a car. And for that, we had to put in place quality control, quality labs, [ for hire ] systems, backup systems, et cetera. Then we had Schwalbe with the first 100% rCB made bike tire called The Green Marathon in the same year. In '24, we successfully started the 2 new lines in Dillingen, so the 2 new reactors 2 and 3, 3 at the end of the year.

That also gave us the possibility at the end of '24 to get, for the first time, a technical due diligence report confirming that we have reached TRL 9. So for those who don't know what that means, TRL 9 means that the technology is industrially proven. So it is a proven technology that has won for more than 1 year in an industrial scale. So very, very important, mainly to get project financings and other finances. In '25, we had done the first FID from our project in Czech Republic. We got a new big customer with VTTI with the first project in Antwerp and many others to come. And now the actual thing we are working on since April, May, really hard. And I would say, since July, even harder is the commissioning now of the biggest rCB plant on the globe, which is our -- we call it MAD 2.

So just for the ecological side, just a quick summary that we have done as a first in the industry, a life cycle assessment already in 2023, proving that the Pyrum technology saves 965 kilogram of CO2 per tonne of used tires, which is 72% better than the recycling mix in Europe today. And that was really an important milestone to show to the industry that we are not just circular, but also saving a lot of CO2.

So that is for the history. Now we look at the actual new stuff. So we have declared 2 new patents. So they have already been a patent, a global patent and our reactor that we have now since some years. That is not limited to tires, but for multiple applications. So that is our reactor transforming plastics or polymers into new raw materials. And we have a European patent on the pyrolysis process itself. And now we have a new patent declared in 2024, end of 2024 for carbon fiber reinforced plastics. So there our first prototype is running and has proven that it is able to take out again the carbon fibers from windmills, old planes, cars, et cetera, and to use them to make new carbon fiber products.

And another thing we are very proud of, because we have done over 100 test runs since 2022, together with Continental in a common call JDA, joint development agreement, to create a Golden recovered carbon black. So meaning a recovered carbon black that can be used in high quantities in tires. And we have developed 2 new grades with them. And for that, we have also declared a European patent end of 2024 for that so-called yes, Golden rCB.

So that is now -- the next picture shows now the actual status of the plant in Dillingen, which is not 100% new. It's from April 2025. The only thing that has changed on that sky view here is that here the new asphalted area here next to the power plant is now full with tires. So that is our newest additional tire stock, and that is really full completely. So we are getting tires and not little of them.

So about the next steps. So here, that is the shredder. So what has been colored here in orange. In green, these are the 2 new reactors. In yellow is the power plant and the exhaust gas cleaning as well as the gas buffering tank. This is the new mill and pelletizer, and the 4 big green silos you see, the 2 first silos are for the crude carbon coming out from the reactors and the second 2 are for the finished mill and pelletized recovered carbon black.

Underground in here, you have the oil tanks. In red, you have the control rooms, the new tire storage. And here in the back here, that giant hole here is now for spare parts, maintenance, et cetera. So you need quite a lot of space for that, which we have a little bit underestimated at the beginning. Sharping the knives of the shredding unit takes a lot of space. You need a lot of spare parts. So yes, you need a warehouse to store spare parts, and that is something that we have learned now. So that we have also -- and that has also drastically reduced downtimes on plants, because when you have spare parts there, then you want again in an hour or 2, you first have to find the spare parts. It sometimes takes days or weeks. So yes, also throughput has a lot of influence on how well is the maintenance prepared. And if something is brand new, like our technology, you don't know what happens or you don't know what breaks off, then you don't know what spare parts you need. But here, we are getting really a good knowledge on that part now.

So now news and facts on the plant in Dillingen. So where are we? We have here the system with the red lights or green lights or yellow lights, meaning how good is something working. So the 2 new lines called TAD 2 and 3, so thermolysis unit Dillingen 2 and 3. So both are running stable at about 600 kilogram per hour serial production on daily basis. So every time you are here in Dillingen, you see white smoke coming up here from our power plant. You see that both plants are nicely running. So there is, I would say, no big issues here anymore.

We have been able, in the last months, to increase the maintenance intervals, which is extremely good. Before we had always a maintenance stop every 4 weeks. Now we were able to increase that maintenance interval to almost 8 weeks, which just cuts one maintenance of 3 to 4 days per month. So that gives more production days. And we are working to increase that even further.

Just one thing that you all know it, we also passed the annual maintenance successfully in August, and it worked quite well. It was planned for 3 weeks. And we even had some spare days at the end because it was so well prepared and all parts were there that we could even do some maintenance work that were not 100% necessary, but nice that we had some time to do them. There was also one thing in the last month that was not so nice. We had some emergency stops on line #2, in which the plant shut down automatically through safety systems from minute to the other. The good thing is it was immediately solved by the plant itself.

So I have to say I'm really proud here with our team that our security systems work so well. So nothing happened, no machinery parts, no person was in harm at any moment, and we could very quickly find the mistake. It was just a firmware error. So there has been an update on the control system of the plant, and that was not compatible with the firmware on one controller. So some stupid thing that can happen on every computer at home can also happen in the plant and that has been fixed. So if you have heard that there has been a shutdown here at Pyrum, it was nothing drastically. It has been solved, and it was just a firmware issue.

Shredding unit. So we have added here additional night shift. So we had in the past little issues with throughput. So we didn't have enough rubber granulate sometimes to feed the well-working Pyrum units. So we had to help ourselves sometimes with reducing the throughput on the Pyrum lines a little bit because there was not enough rubber granulate, or by acquiring rubber granulate from somewhere else. So in order to solve that, we have now an additional night shift.

So for those who don't know it, we are only allowed to shredder over day. And now we change the knives overnight, so that we have more shifts working. And that has pushed us now to average of 300 tonnes per week of tires that we can process. And we need 350 to work all lines with 600 kilogram per hour on 24/7 basis. But that is, for the moment, 300 tonnes with 5 days. By adding now the 6th day, Saturday, with 2 new shifts gives us about 70 tonnes more per week. So then we are now at full throughput in the shredding unit also.

So next is the power plant. The power plant has also caused some issues until March, April this year, but they have all been solved. At the beginning, we had some software issues and some overheating in the burning chambers. But that is solved, I would say, since around mid of April and the power plants are running stable 24/7, which we're also proud of. So at this moment, I have to say we are really a nicely running plant here in Dillingen. We are so proud, from the shredding to the reactors to the power plant, everything is working smoothly. And we have found the sweet spot of operations for all of these units. So the clear footprint or the blueprint -- sorry, blueprint is the right word, to multiply that is now finalized.

So the last step we have now to accomplish is the new mill and pelletizer, which is the world's largest one. As you all know, we have already one mill and pelletizer, which is very, very small compared to the new one. So the news on that is constructions are completely accomplished since June approximately. Mill and pelletizer is producing and each for themselves. So the mill and the pelletizer are producing in spec material at higher throughput, and that was even quicker than we thought.

So just to give you an idea on the old mill and pelletizer, it took us almost a year to get the mill to produce milled material that was in spec and could be sold. It was just producing out of spec material. The new mill was producing almost from day 1 on in spec material and at high throughput. So what has cost an immense amount of time on the first mill and pelletizer is not happening here. The same thing is for the pelletizer. It took, I think it was 3 days, until the pelletizer was producing in spec material at high throughputs that can be sold. So honestly speaking, that worked better than expected, and that is something that made us very happy and confident that in the future, milling and pelletizer is not really an issue anymore.

What is right now sadly a little issue is that the bottleneck actually in the mill and pelletizer is the transport between the mill and pelletizer. We have already said in December to our supplier that we see a problem there, but we have been told that they are aware of issues with transporting mill powder and that they know exactly what they do. Sadly, I have to say today that we were right. The good thing is that we know how to solve that. Already in December, we gave our supplier a hint on how to solve that in case it would really create a problem. Now it is the case that this bottleneck, the transportation of the mill material to the pelletizer is now exactly the problem that we have announced in December, it is exactly happening in the same way as we announced it. So the good thing here is that we know the solution.

So our initial ramp-up plan was from September to December 2025, slowly from 0 to 80% throughput in the new mill and pelletizer to have the full year '26 at 80% and from 2027, 100%. The new plan to the newest results is that we will now be operating from September to December approximately at around 50% capacity of the new mill and pelletizer. Why? Because the transportation system between the mill and the pelletizer is just not doing more and the new system has to be put in place. So the planning has now been -- we keep the planning with 80% for the first half of '26. But as of now, and I can't say too much about that, but if the new conveying system is put in place, usually, we should be immediately at full capacity. So it is more or less sure that in the second half of '26, we will already be at 100%, maybe even a little bit earlier. So that is the actual situation for the milling and pelletizer.

As we speak now, it is running. We are producing now since some days in shift operation, and we are trying to increase that a little bit. But yes, if you have a conveying system that's just not transporting more, then it's just not transporting more. So I just gave a nice example just before, it's like having a race car and you have forklift tires on it, you cannot drive faster with forklift tires. So you need to wait until the new tires are mounted. So that is here, for the conveying system, the case.

So here, we have some new pictures. So on the left, you see when it was brand new and newly installed, the new mill pelletizer had a round tour on the plant with Felix Magath, and that's how it looked brand new, shine and bright. That is the pin mixer, that's the machine, in fact, that is creating the pellets. And here on the right, you see a picture from the pelletizer, in fact, that is the right side of the hall. On the left side of the hall, you have the mill which has almost the same size again. So it's really a huge plant over 3 floors in 1,000 square meter hall. So it's really giant. I also didn't think that would become so big, but it's really impressive to see it.

And here, you see a picture from this morning, where it runs. And here you see directly that it runs because there's a little smoke in the hall, and that is from the hot vaporized water and so on. This machine is warm. What you see here on the top, the silver parts here on the top, that is the dryer that is drying the pellets at the end of the process.

So let's continue. So now the new plant in Perl-Besch. So here are the details about the plan. So there's not much that has changed since the last presentation, the size, the throughput. We have now a full investment volume of EUR 62 million, which comes for several reasons. We have included 12.5% contingency, because that's what the project financing bank was asking for. It includes the financing cost during building phase, because now we have the interest rates from the term sheets, and we have now the OpEx cost for the ramp-up period. So this includes really everything, not just the building.

And the new [ CRR ] site is prepared, completely accomplished, site is cleaned. The zoning plan, in German Bebauungsplan, has been adapted and also exclusively to the building of a project of Pyrum. So nothing else can be built there than a Pyrum plant. We have received, in summer, the building permit according to Paragraph 8a. So usually, I could say now that we are allowed to build, but there was one thing, the Land Servicing in Germany, you call it Geländeerschliessung, that was must have in the zoning plan and in the building permit that the site in Perl-Besch has been land serviced. That means it has to be linked to the street system of Germany. If the site is not linked to the street system, you are not allowed to start working.

And finally, we had a notarial act on 11th of September with a lot of participants. I think there were 7 participants in that notarial act among mainly the catholic church and the municipality of Perl. And this procedure took almost a year and was strongly supported by the Stahl-Holding-Saar and the city -- or the village of Perl. There had been many interests to be joined together. So with this new land serving solved now, we can really start now. Now we can build the road to the site, and we have immediately ordered the architect now the planning of the road and the foundation and the servicing of it.

Here you see it, I have added a plan of the site as it is. So here you see the green part of the site, that is our new plant in Perl-Besch, in fact, the building site. And here, you see the street. Here's a round point and the street that stopped here before. And what you see here, the blue part, the blue building side or the blue side, that was owned by the catholic church. And in order to access our site, we needed that small orange square, which is 10x 7 meters. So it's really not big. It's 70 square meters, but that was necessary.

That part is not owned by Pyrum. It has to be owned by the city, because the city is the one who needs to prolong that street to the building site and then the site is serviced and only then all the permits are valid. And that has finally been signed on a notary on the 11th of September. And I'm really thankful to everybody that was involved here, because it was long discussions.

And here, you see now the first 3D picture of the new plant in Perl-Besch, and that is what the site looks like today. You see it is prepared. So it's flattened and the trees and all the other stuff that was there is taken away. So nobody needs to drive there to have a look. But if you want, you can.

So partner projects and customers. So we have far more than 20 projects in pipeline. Just with VTTI, we have added a lot of new projects potentially. But we are not speaking about that yet. As said, we have 5 -- 10 running projects right now in 6 countries. Four are actually in the permitting progress and 3 have reserved the permits now. So it's our plant in Perl-Besch that has the permit, the Vresová tire plant with SUAS in Czech Republic and the project in Greece, Thermo Lysi, they have now all the permits. And as said, SUAS is the first now to have FID. And if everything works according to plan, we will hopefully have FID in Greece before end of the year. So recycling volume of this project is 220,000 tonnes, 6.4% of the European market, over EUR 600 million invested. Oil is completely sold and the rCB for a big chunk of it already.

This graph here shows where each project is standing. You see there are some very new ticks in the last 2 months where, for example, the full VTTI project, Swedish project became forward. We have FID now in Czech Republic. We have new granted permits. So you see all these projects are really taking speed now. And soon, I hope we can also announce that Unitank has also signed the contract. So here we are very close to an agreement.

So here are the highlights from the customer projects. So VTTI, which is the largest LNG terminal operator in the world, has signed the engineering contract with us for a minimum 45,000 tonne plant in Antwerp, and which is just the opening door for a lot of other projects worldwide. I said, Czech project has received FID, building permit and investment agreement. It will be signed soon. So I cannot tell you a lot about that, but we are very close to that.

Impactus, our Greek customer, has just signed a EUR 2.50 million engineering contract with us, with this planned to be finished before end of this year. So yes, if everything works well, we have their FID before end of the year, we can also start there. So then we have Perl, Czech Republic and Greece in the building phase next year. And here with Siemens, we have implemented our first plant on earth, the SIEMENS PCS NEO software, which is groundbreaking, and there are now commercials coming out between Siemens and Pyrum showing the partnership. And that is already, even though it has just started some weeks ago, bringing customers from all around the globe that suddenly realized that Pyrum exists and wants to work with us.

So partnerships with VAUDE and Mercedes, they are known. So as a matter of time, I will skip that. Continental, also nothing extremely new. We are still working together. Offtake agreements are running. We are delivered with tires with Continental. So that is still running quite well. Schwalbe, there are some changes because Schwalbe has now started by investing also in Pyrum. So Schwalbe has participated in our last 2 capital increases and becomes now a much bigger shareholder, which makes me happy because working together with Schwalbe is super, very friendly, yes, together.

And now I skip to Kai.

Hello, everybody. We are coming to the financial figures that we announced this morning for the first half of 2025. The revenues in the first 6 months amounted to EUR 1.3 million, almost up around 79% compared to the previous period in 2024. The total output increased by 48% to EUR 6.7 million after EUR 4.5 million due to increase in higher capitalizable own work and in higher revenues from TAD 2 and 3, especially the oil.

The other operating income almost tripled compared to the previous year. This was due to an investment subsidy amounting to EUR 2 million for the creation of jobs in Dillingen. The personnel expenses were up by 12% to EUR 3.5 million due to new staff and inflation. And the other operating expenses went up to EUR 2.2 million after EUR 1.6 million. This is due to the new costs that occur from the operation of TAD 2 and 3, so spare parts, maintenance and running the plant.

EBITDA amounted to EUR 2.3 million -- minus EUR 2.3 million after minus EUR 3.1 million, while the EBIT was at minus EUR 3.9 million after minus EUR 4.2 million. Depreciation went up to EUR 1.5 million. This is based on the completion of plant parts that now has been taken into readiness and starting of depreciation and amortization. And interest and similar expenses went up by drawing additional loans from BASF during the last 12 months. The cash was at EUR 2.8 million on the 30th of June. After that, we made a capital increase by EUR 5.6 million, so summing up more than EUR 8 million available.

The forecast for 2025. We stick to the revenue forecast between EUR 4.5 million to EUR 6 million. Even we expect now a bit lower revenues from the selling of rCB than expected before. On the other hand, we expect more revenues from consulting agreements with partners. The total output we have to take down from EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million to EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million. Total output includes always parts that we order for new plants, as example, for Perl-Besch or for other plants. And as we had some delays, let's say, with the SUAS project and in Perl-Besch with the financing, it is not possible anymore to have EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million of total output, but this doesn't influence the revenues and doesn't influence the EBIT for 2025. The EBIT forecast still is at minus EUR 8.5 million to minus EUR 10.5 million. So no changes on that one.

Coming to the next page, we did 2 capital increases during the last 12 months. We expected to get EUR 15 million roughly in October. It was possible to create EUR 10 million. And we intended in July this year to get EUR 8.5 million and made EUR 5.6 million. The math is, let's say, that the capital markets for small caps is, yes, not very easy. To give you an example, from the EUR 15.6 million that was acquired, more than EUR 15 million came from, let's say, acquisition from the management and not from the banks. So it is our work, particularly mine, to attract investors also for the future.

The current shareholder structure shows that Pascal Klein still owns 8.3%; Amel Holding, the company of the Klein still holds 8.3%. Benifin also participated in one of the business angles from the beginning, participated in the last 2 capital increases as well as Jürgen Opitz. BASF was diluted to 6.7%. Schwalbe is the new strategic shareholder, took part in both capital transactions and now holds 5.2%. And Continental from the IPO in 2021 keeps around 0.9%.

Then we come to the outlook, and I hand back to Pascal.

I will make very quick now with the outlook, because this way we can answer some questions. So from the outlook, the main points are complete the bank due diligence. We are very well working with a big European bank on that. We are speaking with some investors, but I can't say very lot of that. Increase the rCB volumes, which is one of the key points.

So ongoing modifications on line #1, but the priority 1 was the whole last month to bring line #2, so the new mill and pelletizer to start in August, because it has 8x the capacity of the old one. Now we have it running with a delay of approximately 3 to 4 weeks. How can I say it? We are now at about 50%. The plan was to ramp up from 0 to 80% from September to December. I would say we are not so far away from that. The only thing is that we don't think that before December, we will crack the 50% because of that bottleneck. But I've seen already there's a question in the Q&A. So...

Yes. Yes. Let me just intervene, Mr. Klein, for a short second, because we have some questions that the attendees cannot hear you. So you might check your microphone as well for another time. I can hear you clearly.

I turned it on and off.

I can hear you.

I hope everybody else can hear me.

Okay. So we got some participants and they can clearly understand and hear you.

Okay. So I said, but I will come to the questions in a minute. Yes. So we always spend a lot of time in Perl-Besch. So even though we haven't done the inauguration ceremony in Perl-Besch, that doesn't mean that we didn't start there. So construction has more or less started already in the background with all the planning works and all that stuff. So when we really start to build on site, it will be extremely quick on site, but we will do that before end of the year now, this official starting ceremony in Perl-Besch.

And what did cost a lot of time in the last month was also, yes, some lobby work in the European Union for the end-of-life vehicle regulations, for the banning of export of used tires, and increased political awareness, and therefore, our brand ambassador, Felix Magath, was also quite helpful, because it did open some political doors that we couldn't open on our own.

So I never thought that we would need to work so much in Brussels to get to here. But when you see in a new end-of-life vehicle regulation that rubber or tires are excluded because there's no technology to recycle it, then you have to lift your hand and say, sorry, guys, we are here. Sorry if you didn't hear about us in Brussels. But the technology is there, the market is there. Then you need to educate politicians, and that's what we have done with more than 60 people from the parliament now, and it's starting to take fruits.

So here's the summary. So I said this presentation will also be accessible afterwards. So that is a quick summary of the main points. Now at last, picture of Felix, who has a very important sentence that we share with everybody now. He's now one of our shareholders, too. And he loves our technology, the pioneer spirit and entrepreneurial consistency and social relevance of what we do. He cannot understand why we are not more supported by politics, and that's why he wants to push now because, yes, it's answering so many problems we have right now. So thanks for your attention. And how do we go forward now with the questions?

Yes, indeed, we can do so. But anyhow, there are some attendees still have problems hearing you. I can hear you very clearly and some others just put in the Q&A that they also can hear you well. So anyhow, we can now check if -- there are some notifications that people can hear you as well. So we just move on with that and come to the Q&A session. And to all the others, there will be a recording of that later on. So we move on to the Q&A and you are able as a participant to put these questions into our chat box. And we start with Thomas [indiscernible].

Thomas did put some questions and very good ones, as always. So I hope he can hear me. Otherwise, he knows how to contact me. So color on the rCB prices for paints versus tires. I just took the occasion, while Kai was speaking, to call our rCB salesperson, which is newly working for us since now 2 months. He is one of the biggest specialists in the rCB market, and he has also opened the doors in the paint industry. So you get in the painting industry approximately 40% more per tonne for the same rCB.

So the prices in the coating industry are much higher than in the rubber industry, but the volumes in the coating industry are much smaller than in the tire industry. So there are smaller volumes of paint you can sell to the painting industry for approximately 40% more per tonne, because that's the prices they pay. And I hope that gives you an idea on that. So should I read the next one, or...

Yes, you can read the next one. That would be lovely.

Okay. Can you explain what the issue is with the transport? Is it not enough capacity at the conveyor belt? If you know the issue, why is it left for the IPC to hold back the issue?

Okay. So I will try to be quite transparent here. In the old mill and pelletizer, at the beginning, the mill was not working. And at the old mill and pelletizer, at the beginning, the pelletizer was not working. They were not producing the right output material. And on the first mill and pelletizer, we had exactly the same problem in the transport between these 2 points, which was the fact that when carbon is freshly milled, it is fluffy. It is so mixed with fresh air that you cannot transport it like a solid, like sand or any other solid. It behaves like water.

So the traditional conveying system that transports sand, for example, or set down carbon is not working with freshly milled material. So in the ramp-up phase also here for Line 2 and 3, we did the milling. The milling worked perfectly. We put that in tanks or in bags. And some days later, we started with the pelletizer and we put the carbon from the tanks, the milled material from the tanks from the big packs and the pelletizer and that worked perfectly. The problem is that you need 20 to 30 minutes after the milling to let the milled material set down, settle, and that the air goes out. And once that the air has gone out, it can be transported via a dosing screw. And what we have here is a dosing screw.

So that dosing screw can only dose the freshly milled recovered carbon black after 20 to 30 minutes it has set. So the solution in the old mill and pelletizers, that's why we know the solution, is that we put a double screw inside, and that is a screw that is air tightening and water tightening itself. So meaning that you can transport with this screw even water or any liquid. And as the freshly milled carbon black is behaving like a liquid, you need to transport it like a liquid.

And that's what we told already in December to the supplier, but the supplier said to us clearly, he knows the issue, that he has been in front of that issue many times in the past, that they have a solution for that, and that we have ordered an EPC, so turnkey system. So if we want to mess up now with their planning, that would mean that we can take responsibility for the well-functioning of the new mill and pelletizer, and that is something that we disagreed to sign. In fact, we buy a full system. It's their problem to make that one. So we are not taking any responsibility on that.

And sadly, we were right at exactly the problem that we announced them. The freshly milled material is behaving like a liquid. So you will not be able to dose that with the screw. It will work with a double screw, or if you have 2 containers between the mill and pelletizer, meaning one is filled and one is used for the pelletizing. And after half an hour, you switch. So the one that has half hour settled material is then pelletized and then you send the new material, the new milled material in the other tanks. So you switch between the 2 tanks every half an hour.

What we are doing right now is easily explained. We produce half an hour, then the material has to wait for half an hour to set down, and then it can be processed with the existing transporting system with the existing screw. So we produce half an hour, we stop half an hour. We produce half an hour, we stop half an hour. And that's why we know quite exactly what the maximum throughput will be, because with the second buffering tank, we can switch between the 2 buffering tanks, and then we will double the quantity, and we will be at 100% quite quickly. So that is one of the solutions that they are checking for. So at just 2 buffer tanks, and we switch between the 2 of them every 30 minutes or like we have done it in the old mill and pelletizer with that famous double screw that can also transport the liquid and 1 buffering tank in between the mill and pelletizer is enough.

Yes. So we know the 2 solutions to solve it. Sadly, these things are not -- you cannot buy them in the next workshop. It's not things that you can buy from the shelf, so they need to be built. And yes, our supplier will do it, of course. And I hope that answers the question.

The next question, I haven't understood it 100%. Are you seeing any challenges -- gas engines? Not really because we are using today mainly the turbines, and our turbine supplier has not yet said anything that we couldn't do that.

And I see a skip once question. Can you confirm that specifications are to spec for tire manufacture -- and as a result, revenues expected for first half '26. I think you mean that.

Yes. So we meet the expectations of almost the first samples that came from the mill and the first samples that came from the pelletizer were immediately in spec. And that was the big difference from the old mill and pelletizer. It took 2 years to get the first in spec output from the old mill and pelletizer, and that was not stable. The new one is really producing extremely stable output and everything is in spec. It's really just that, that issue was the transport of the milled material into the pelletizer, but that is -- I'm very confident because I know how to solve that, and I know also approximately how long it takes to switch that unit.

Okay. There was just one add regarding the revenues. While we expect that in the second half we are going up to 100% instead of 80%, we can confirm that we expect the revenues for 2026 are unchanged, that there is not a drop in what we have said in the last call, let's say. So yes, we can confirm.

So do you have enough staff to oversee the construction of the 3 upcoming plants and plan for -- yes, that was one of the main thing that BASF was already asking us in 2020 when they invested in us. You have to increase your team in size and in experienced people. Otherwise, once the rollout starts, you will be drawn quickly. And that's why we went from 25 employees 3 years ago to now over 100. So that's also one of the main reasons for our losses because we have these teams in place, and they are working on the existing projects. So if we wouldn't have that team ready, we would have better numbers, honestly speaking. But we need to invest in our staff in order to make the projects come to life now. Can you give us some -- that question, I don't understand exactly. Kai, do you get that?

Yes, impressions. Yes, we participated on the hitch with Montega. It was a very well-organized conference. We met a lot of new potential investors, but there were also many that haven't seen Pyrum before. And we got good feedback, but it's not that you just go there and you are meeting someone who says, okay, I give you EUR 100 million for the next plant. So that's the impression. So we had around 13 investor meetings doubly booked. So more than 18 investors, then a group meeting, and another interview with the [indiscernible]. So in our opinion, quite successful.

So test facility for grinding and pellet manufacturing had produced required quantities. So why couldn't this be transferred directly? Have these problems delayed the conclusion with the bank financing deal?

So that is somebody who knows what we are doing. In fact, it is correct that we have sent already, a year ago, truckloads of material to the Netherlands to the same facility that the one that has been built here to test the throughput, and that is working. The mill is producing here on site the throughput that it should produce. And the pelletizer is also producing the quality and the throughput it should produce. But you have to know that in the test once last year, the mill was in the Netherlands, the pelletizer was in Germany. So they milled the material, put it in big bags, drove it with the truck to Germany and then pelletized it in Germany, and that worked perfectly fine.

And the point is we have no truck driving here between the mill and the pelletizer. And we have not a delay of a day or 2 in between the milling and pelletizing. The only problem where the throughput is not there is that the freshly milled recovered carbon black needs 20 minutes to 30 minutes to set down. It's like a good red wine that needs to settle, the recovered carbon black needs to settle for 20 to 30 minutes. If that is not done, you cannot transport it. Or if you try to transport it with a screw, it's just not working because it's floating through the screw like water. And that is exactly the point.

So the 2 possibilities are, we have 2 buffer tanks, one that is resting and waiting for [indiscernible], the other one is producing; or the other possibility, you have just one buffer tank and the system under it that can also transport liquids. So that are the 2 solutions. And as we are not the builder of the plant, we are just a buyer of a turnkey process, we have declared that to the supplier and the supplier is now to build 1 of these 2 solutions. And we are waiting. Normally, next week we will be told what of the 2 things will be done or if they even have a third solution that might be quicker. And I don't see that, that has delayed anything, because the technical due diligence specialists that have visited the plant, they also see that, and I see that it is nothing crucial here.

Crucial would be if the mill would not produce in spec material or the pelletizer would not produce in spec material or not enough, but this is just a simple resting issue. And so nothing that an engineer who's watching on it has any fear about it, but it just takes now some weeks to change it.

In respect to ramp up to 100%, what impact will it have on revenues? So yes, I said the rest of the plant is running fully. It's the shredder, the reactors, the power plant. We are, just now I said, at around 50% for the milling and pelletizing. And we expect really to be at 100% the quickest possible. And impact on revenues, that is more something for Kai.

Yes. So as we said before, we expect, in the second half -- beginning of the second half of 2026 to be at 100% at TAD 2 and 3. For listeners from the past, they should know that TAD 1 is now running for 10 years already. So it's time to replace the reactor within the next 2 years. That's what we expect. So there needs to be something done. On TAD 2, 100% would mean around EUR 8 million to EUR 9 million revenues just coming from TAD 2 and 3. And so we expect up to EUR 13 million in revenues for the next year. The concrete planning has not been performed yet because we are still waiting for the results from the milling and pelletizing, and then we can get more concrete on that part.

What are your plans for the share price development? The price has not changed almost for 2 years. Pyrum is extremely underrepresented in the media. That's right. Honestly speaking, that's right. That's exactly also the reason why we spoke with Felix Magath to help us. We also have a new investor since only now some months. It's Frank Thelen. He also starts now to represent us more in the media. And yes, I have an offer on my desk for a bigger media campaign, but I need the green light from my CFO to buy that.

On your income then, please clarify what is operating output?

Operating output is revenues from selling of products and, let's say, additionally, increase of finished and unfinished goods. As many of you might know, in the time where we could produce on TAD 2 and 3, there is coming out some carbon black that has not been milled and pelletized and that's shipped mainly to Perl, where we need it in 2 years. So the increase of finished and unfinished goods includes, let's say, what we produce and have not yet sold, but it also includes work ongoing, let's say, consulting services that had partially been finished but not yet taken into the revenues. That's the main difference.

Own work capitalized is always what your stuff is doing, let's say, plus material costs. So if you buy a Pyrum plant, you have the work from your workforce that you put in, that could be added to the CapEx, to the plant costs, that the depreciation later on is higher because the value of the plant includes the own work. In our balance sheet, you have the mechanism that you can activate costs from CapEx as soon as they are ordered, delivered and totally paid. And then you see it in the own work capitalized. On the other side, you see the material costs below in the material costs. I hope that answers the question.

Can we answer the next one, Kai?

No, we don't name the bank. What we can say is that 30% of equity is needed. And...

Yes, 30% equity, and we are, I would say, in final negotiations with the region of Saarland to grant us part of the equity, which would reduce loan part.

Can you reach your revenue targets of pelletizer running at 50%? What about stops? Just that you get it, I want to explain something here. The idea what Kai had in his planning is that we went up from 0% to 80% from September to December this year. The idea was to make the plant running and to reduce the off-spec, because that was the experience from the old line that we produced a lot of off-spec material that could not be sold, so that only a little part of what came out from the mill and pelletizer could be sold, and to reduce over the months more and more the off-spec and increase the in spec.

So now what we are facing here now is that we have 50% throughput, which is fully in spec, so which is very good. So we see that we have no off-spec production. So that is extremely good and that the only thing that is blocking us here is that bottleneck, of course, and that will happen once the decision is made. Whether we get a second buffer tank or the double screw to dose it, we will have a stop of, I would say, 2 to 3 weeks to do that modification. So we will have half a month to a month where we are not producing at all in the mill and pelletizer once the solution is delivered. But then I'm very confident that we jump from 50% to 100% almost instantly.

What is needed to finalize the bank loan? Is that still realistic?

It is totally realistic. And yes, we are in talks with them since more than a year now.

Weekly calls with them.

Yes, we have weekly calls, and we don't see any part that doesn't fit. It's a very complex part that we have there because, let's say, this involved the capital that we get as a loan from BASF, as you might know. There's the Saarland where we want to have them participate to exchange part of the equity. And during the discussions on the business plan, there used to be, let's say, other assumptions than we had initially.

We always said we need EUR 50 million. And the bank said, no, you have to add 12.5% on contingency. You have to add all the OpEx costs upfront. You have to add some reserves or bank fees and so on. That's why we summed up at EUR 62 million instead of EUR 50 million, and then you have a gap on the equity. And we introduced to the bank another one from Saarland if they might manage to do it together, but that doesn't help, because we need to close the gap from the equity part. And that's why we are in discussion with Saarland, but this is really going too deep in detail. Let's say, it's all about securitization, discussions between BASF, the bank, Saarland. So this took and takes longer than we expect to, but we are still more than positive that it is realistic to finalize it.

Maybe to add that sentence, I was not so into bank discussions in the past of my life, but I have to say, I'm really impressed about this bank because they are really sitting with us on one table and they're really searching together with Pyrum for the solution. So it's not really we want Pyrum to deliver A, B and C. No, okay, we help you to find a solution, and they are really extremely helpful. They even help in discussions with our region. I can just say, I'm really happy with their help. And I have not a single feeling that they have anything against us. They have against others that are delaying things, not against us.

Okay. For the next question, with, let's say, 10 concrete projects, we are coming to around 6% of the European market. Of course, we're working on more for the future. And we don't plan to have 100% of the market. But yes, we want to be a very, very good solution for that problem.

Excess energy, next question. I don't see it. And if there is excess energy, we use that in our shredding unit, which is the most valuable way to use it, because you don't get the same price for electricity on the market than we pay to buy it from the market.

Coating market, do you take fines from the pelletizer? I don't understand the question.

I think the question is if it's powder or if it needs to be pelletized maybe and then you just...

Yes, coating...

Packaging in between.

No, the coating industry also want pelletized material and small amount fines. But for that, you need a special packaging machine, yes.

Are there any plans to apply AI, artificial intelligence, into monitoring and managing the E2E production process? So we decided to use SIEMENS NEO, and we are the first one in the world that has decided that. So we were very close to Siemens and Siemens is really working on industrial, yes, how you call it, 4.0, including artificial intelligence. But there will always be human additionally monitoring the process. I don't know if you want to add something, Pascal?

No. Well, an important rCB factory had a major fire accident recently. There has been a major damage on the plant and disrupted supply chain. Seriously, how does Pyrum prevent accidents like that?

I think I know what you are speaking about. We know that company. My knowledge is that it was not the recovered carbon black part, so the milling and pelletizing that burned, but it was the pyrolysis technology that took fire. And Pyrum is doing completely something else here. Our reactors are unique in the world. That's why we have them patented. We don't have moving parts in our reactors. We don't have air leakage issues, and has been the same problem also with Black Bear in the past.

And I can tell you our inventor, Mr. Schulz, who had his first trial runs in recycling polymers and rubbers in the '80s, he did also burn 2 plants to the ground. And before you realize that, with rotary kilns, with batch ovens, with all these systems, you have such a big risk of fire that he thought about a completely new reactor design with no moving parts that's constantly air tied over years and securitized, under-pressurized, and that was what our reactor is made for. So in fact, our reactor is the answer to why there is no fire.

What is the expected [indiscernible]? So we have no, let's say, forecasts further than that we announced in the past that we used to be to be positive on EBITDA basis in 2026 and net positive in 2027. We don't have additional forecasts actually that we publish.

Are there any risks that produced goods from plants in Greece and Czech Republic will lower price and therefore, cannibalize the German plants?

I don't think so because we participate in these plants. So we are not just selling those plants, we are active co-shareholder, and we are even in the Board of these companies. And the intention of being in both companies is to get the best price for both of them. So I don't see any cannibalization here, and we are even consulting our partners in what are the best price that can be achieved.

Okay. Thank you very much, gentlemen. We have no further questions in the chat box, and we are slightly over time, but we took the time to answer all the questions. Thank you very much to all the attendees for staying with us. And thank you, Mr. Klein and Mr. Winkelmann for taking your time to answer the questions. If there are any further questions to our attendees, please get in contact with the Investor Relations of Pyrum Innovations. And for now, we close this earnings call. And for a last word, I hand back to Mr. Klein, and say goodbye and have a lovely weekend.

Thank you, everybody, for joining the call. Also for the very good questions. I didn't see one question that was not good. And I hope we answered them quite to the best we could. And like always, we try to be as transparent as we can. And yes, so I wish you all a nice day and a beautiful weekend and hopefully, weather gets a little bit better.

Thank you for participating, and thanks for organizing this call.