AMAG Aktie

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AMAG Austria Metall AG's conference call for the first quarter of 2026. I'm joined today by our designated CEO, Victor Breguncci, who will officially assume the role of Chief Executive Officer tomorrow as well as our CFO, Claudia Trampitsch. Together, they will guide you through the development and results for the first 3 months of this year.

As usual, the presentation and the press release have been published this morning on our website under Investor Relations. Following the presentation, we will open the call for questions. [Operator Instructions]

With that, I would now like to hand over to Victor. Thank you.

Thank you, Christoph. Good morning, everyone. So getting back to the beginning on page -- the first page of the highlights for the first quarter. We had a very positive first quarter of 2026 with significant increase in earnings. So when we look at the numbers, we are very much in line in top line compared to 2025, 0.6% above. But below this line, we can see there is a very strong improvement in our cash generation.

EBITDA increased to EUR 57.1 million, a very relevant 24% increase compared to Q1, which was EUR 46 million. I'll explain later, and Claudia will also go in a little bit more details where it comes from. But as we can imagine, we see a very positive tailwinds from the aluminum price, but also in our rolling business we see an improvement in our mix of products that we sold in Q1.

When we go to the bottom line, net income after taxes rose to EUR 26.5 million, a significant increase compared to Q1, 63.8% above, which was EUR 60 million in 2025. As expected, operating cash flow got to the level of minus EUR 8.4 million, which very much reflects the price increase that we see impacting the EBITDA, but increases in our working capital valuation and also a little bit more working capital over our supply chain because of the growth increase in our rolling business as well.

We will talk very towards the end on the outlook for 2026, but we already predict that this year is going to be a better year in terms of performance. But because of the very present uncertainties in our market globally and also what we see in our performance in terms of production and shipments, we are predicting a range between EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million, which will be the results of the year in our cash generation.

When you go into the market, as we normally present, the sentiment indicator, we're seeing since the end of last year in 2025, we see a worldwide positive sentiment despite all the uncertainties that I mentioned before, especially in the areas where we have a very important relevance of our shipments. The Eurozone improved slightly in the first quarter. We see this reflection in our industrial orders, but also specifically in Germany and Austria, where we see the opportunity to capture more business.

On the other side, we see uncertainties surrounding the Middle East conflict and also the geopolitical aspects from tariffs coming from North America. What we can say, when we look at the analysis of the Middle East conflict, how is this impacting us in our business. So putting very directly, there is no direct impact to date, although we see the uncertainty coming in our direction. And I'm going to elaborate a little bit more on what this uncertainty impacts on us indirectly.

So aluminum price. Aluminum price, we are capturing the tailwinds of this developing pricing, having a very positive effect on our Metal division, and Claudia will detail this a little further. But on the other side, it increases our valuation in our inventories in our Ranshofen site. Energy for the contracted businesses that we have and also our hedging strategy has significantly cushioned the impact of these higher market prices. But also, we do have agreements with our customers that everything that is connected to more short-term market quotations, we pass through this impact to our pricing and is consistent with our calculations as well. So we somehow have managed to circumvent this energy impact in our bottom line.

Primary metal premiums and oil metals, cost increases affect, of course, our rolled slab production in the Rolling division. And as viscose energy, it's taken into account in our quotations. But it's something we manage very closely since this can be a sensitive element to our performance as well as auxiliary and operating materials. So we managed to have our safety stocks completed to ensure that for the coming 12 months, 8 to 12 months, this is something we're looking depending on the material, we resulted in having more protection in our value chain. But it has, again, also some impact in our bottom line with higher prices.

Same for transport costs. Immediately, the oil prices have impacted the short-term price increases, not only in truck transportation, but also in sea freight. And this reflects in our pricing methodology, but also impacts a little on our external sales outside of Europe to Asia and also to North America. Important to mention is the supply strategy that AMAG has with regards to raw material has been -- is very much widened and recognized. So we see customers coming to us for the very certainty that this negative impact have, but also on the supply side, we are able to provide certainty that we're going to be having the ability to produce over the coming months with no risk of this Middle East conflict. That's a certainty that we have.

So when you go a little bit down to numbers. In total, we are 1% below what we shipped in 2025, 110,000 tonnes in '25. Now we are 800 tonnes, 900 tonnes below, which has to do more with the adjustments in our mix in our company. So all our businesses have performed well in Q1. But you see in the metal business, we have some fluctuations in our shipping capacity. So we're trying to optimize everything we can in our boats, in our ships. So 1,400 tonnes below what was produced -- what was shipped in '25.

In the casting business, slightly slower shipments as compared to the previous year of our recycled cast alloys, 1,100 tonnes. And in rolling, we have seen some sales growth in automotive and heat exchangers. And as I said before, in industrial applications, that gave us the chance to ship 1,400 tonnes better than we had in '25. Adjustments in shipments in packaging in Q1 will be compensated in the coming months in our P&L.

Good. When I look at our main business in terms of volume here in Austria, Rolling division order trends, we are -- we're seeing a significant increase in the automotive sector. So there might be a question coming from your side, where is this big jump in order intake is coming from. Extraordinary short-term demand from the North America market, not only in automotive, but also we see potential growth in industrial applications here in Europe as well and as well as heat exchangers in Europe and in North America.

Aerospace, a very important market that we have in our portfolio is stable, which is a positive sign. We are performing as expected. And there is no major significant change in the scores in the consumer goods, sports and architectural products. As I said before, we have a very strong stability in the packaging business.

Okay. This slide came -- I'm back to the slide that should be there. The Rolling division before I talked about the order intake. So we see what happened in shipments. Automotive and industrial applications were above 2%, each one of them, as I said, pushed by demand increase in Europe, but also in North America. All the other markets are somehow stable compared to Q1, but we see an improvement in the bottom line that these markets are giving us the condition to grow our profitability.

So I just skipped this slide and then presented this one after. So sentiment of the market is positive. Our margins are well positioned with the supply. We have the order intake capturing what we could in Q1. So all businesses are performing above the expectations and above the 2025.

So I'll give this now to Claudia Trampitsch to progress with the business performance of the first quarter. Thank you.

So good morning from my side. I will start with some information on the market prices. You heard before that our results in these 3 quarters are also influenced by high aluminum prices. And here, we show you the increase we were facing in the -- since beginning of the year, and we are now at the level of, let's say, 300, 500 to -- and a little bit above in these months. Where does that have influence on? You will see the impact on our group revenues, on our working capital and also on the earning in the Metal division. And I come to that further on.

When we look at the U.S. Midwest premium for the last 3 months, there was the reflective increase as well as in here as there are the tariffs reflected, you see higher implemented tariffs out of the higher aluminum price and also still the need for imports to the U.S. So that influences the Midwest premium and it still covers all the U.S. tariffs which are still at 50%.

On the other hand, we have -- the trend we saw during 2025 is ongoing. And therefore, we -- it's relevant for our earnings in the Metal division that we really have attractive aluminum price levels that continuously stay at a very -- for us, very attractive level and therefore, influence our earnings in the Metal division in a positive way.

So when it now comes to the group revenues, Victor before already told you what's behind the shipped tonnes. But in total, it was -- we had a positive influence, not just because of the shipped tonnes, which were more or less the same, but also, as I mentioned, the higher aluminum price, the higher volume, but on the negative side, some influences from lower prices and premiums that are still there and some influences mainly due to a stronger euro against the U.S. dollar.

When we're now adding up to the EBITDA, we can see that in all our 3 business segments in the Metal division, the Casting division and the Rolling division, we had a higher EBITDA than last year. And the reasons for having a higher EBITDA, we mentioned most of them before already. So there is a higher aluminum price. We have downside, as I said before, on the prices and premiums in the Rolling division. We have an influence of the high alumina price levels and a positive effect of our volumes.

And when I break it down to the divisions, you can really see here that how it is divided between all the 3 divisions. But what I wanted to point out again, all of them are better than last year in the first quarter. So we have a positive performance across all AMAG divisions and it is affected by market conditions for sure as well, as we mentioned, but also affected by our higher volume we could ship and all the efficiency and cost measurements we did throughout the last years are still ongoing, are affecting our EBITDA.

For net income after taxes, there's nothing in particular relevant, which is extraordinary. So we have a higher net income after taxes due to the higher operating profit. As we mentioned before twice that the flip side of high aluminum prices when aluminum prices are rising, is that we have an effect on our working capital and on our inventories. And therefore, we only show in the operating cash flow higher tight capital.

So this is -- we had as we wrote here some increase in inventories, but the main effect is not that we have a higher increase in inventory, which was necessary to build up the stock for producing higher volumes as we did and we will do in the future months. But the main effect here is the higher prices we have on the aluminum side, which is affecting the working capital and therefore, not something where we had a structural change, but higher prices that affected temporarily.

For the investing activities, they are as planned below last year and also below our depreciation. That's the path we are following. And therefore, you also see here a reduction and that all ends up to a negative free cash flow of EUR 19.7 billion. When I move on now to the net financial debt, we were showing at the end of this quarter, you see that it's EUR 20 million more or less higher than at the end of the year. And as I said you before, we had a negative free cash flow out of roughly EUR 20 million, and that is affecting more or less the net financial debt. There are no other effects in there at the end.

When we look at the ratio for the net debt to the EBITDA on a 12-month average, we -- related to the last 12 months, you see that we are stable in that respect. We could achieve due to our because I told you before that our equity is higher than at the year-end. The equity ratio went down because of having higher short-term assets due to the reasons I mentioned before. And as you can see on the cash and cash equivalent side, that's also the effect of the free cash flow where we have EUR 30 million less than last year.

So in total, what we can see, we had a strong Q1, which affected very positively our earnings. The effects in the cash flow are not seen now because of the first effects on working capital and so on, which are due to our business model and due to the higher aluminum prices. And when we move on to our ESG figures, we can also -- there are, for example, for the scrap utilization rate, some decreases that's due to the mix, but it's not -- we didn't change our structural focus on recycling and all the other figures are on a good path as well.

With that overview of our financials, I now will hand over to Victor, who will give us -- give you some information on the dividend and on the outlook for 2026.

Thank you, Claudia. If we move on to the dividend outlook, I mean, we -- as expected and very much approved in our Annual General Meeting on April 16, our dividend payment went through on the 23rd of April. So in this sense, everything went as planned. When we talk about now the final slide, when we talk about the outlook for 2026, we are foreseeing a positive outlook for us.

The situation today is subdued global economic outlook as we write here and the sharp rise in energy prices, the U.S. trade policy brings some sort of uncertainty to -- not only to us in the Western European part of Europe, the Central European market, but also to our customers, and this could be reflected in our ordering pattern. But what we see today is the value of the resilient market position that we have. We have a very strong diversity in our portfolio of products, our portfolio of customers.

And the way we position ourselves, as Claudia just mentioned, our share of scrap in our raw material strategy is relevant, 73.7%, very much dependent on mix. So it gives us a very good position in all of these uncertainties coming from the Middle East, coming from demand growth that we see in North America gives us the chance to really become a secure base to our customers. So we see this transiting not only in the automotive and heat exchangers that I just said before, but industrial improvements in Europe, we see customers rushing into AMAG for a safe haven for what could happen. It gives us a lot of responsibility to that. And it is something somehow reflected in our outlook.

So when we go into the divisions, we -- the full production attractive marketplaces create excellent conditions for earnings this year, can be easily impacted for the uncertainty that I just mentioned before, but we remain bullish with the Metal division. Casting has improved business performance despite the difficult market environment, especially in Europe. But we see that our team has been thriving in getting the right orders and using the maximum capacity we have, not only for shipments internally at AMAG, but also outside shipments.

And the Rolling division in Ranshofen, the positive order development that I just mentioned, especially from the unprecedented demand spurt that we had in the North America market and also our strong position in the heat exchanger sector with our investments that we did in the last decade gives us a chance to really seize short-term market share and we confirm that there will be an increase in sales for 2026 coming from this segment.

Somehow price sensitivity, we still have tariffs impacting our price position in North America, but we're seeing the ability to pass on these tariffs into the industrial market. So we see for the AMAG Group this year, a positive development when compared to 2025. Growth in volume, improvement in mix and also price execution. So it gives us an EBITDA range from EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million as our guidance for 2026 numbers.

So thank you very much. This was my first call. Looking forward to the next ones, and we open now to our Q&A. Christoph?

Exactly. And before wrapping up with the Q&A session, please refer to the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation that for sure is relevant for the whole call. So now Sarah, it's your turn. Please explain how the Q&A session works and then we're ready to answering your questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much for handing over, and thank you for the presentation. So we're now open for your questions. [Operator Instructions] And in the meantime, we received the first question [indiscernible] from Mr. Speck.

And first of all, congrats on the very impressive results in the first quarter. My first question is on your outlook because to me, even the upper end of your outlook range, the EBITDA range of EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million looks rather cautious. I mean, so my question is if the aluminum prices would stay on a level like this, what could stop you from reaching an EBITDA even above the EUR 200 million?

Yes. So I take this question. First of all, I think you know from our track record that we normally reach our outlook. So we are putting a lot of efforts in building them. And there are several input factors we have to consider. And for sure, the aluminum price is now at the high level. But if you look at the prices in the near future, if you look at the, let's say, some months ahead, we have a very strong backwardation. And that we took also into consideration on the one hand that we -- when we look at where do we see the aluminum price for the rest of year, but also when we have our valuation going on for our derivatives, our hedging strategy and so on, where we also are impacted for that.

So that's also on the aluminum price that we do not only calculate with the actual aluminum price, but also with outlooks and have to consider the backwardation, which is affecting our business as well. And for sure, we have still, as Victor said before, we have price sensitivity -- price elasticities. We have high energy cost we have to consider. We have uncertainty in the market, which we have to consider. And therefore, we came in total to that range where we see now at the moment where we will get on at the end of the year. And also what I forget to mention before, which was, for example, affecting now this quarter as well is the U.S. dollar development.

Okay. Understood. Secondly, my next question is on your order book in the Rolling division. I mean, you showed a quite impressive jump in the order backlog. Is this also maybe due to some pull-forward effects from customers?

Yes. Thank you for the questions. There are -- for sure, the first major effect is short-term demand coming from North America, given supply chain constraints that we have there with some of our competitors. So we are perceived in North America as a desired international mill, and this demand came to us and all the POs that came, came for the whole year. So this has this big impact right in Q1.

We do see somehow on a qualitative basis, a desire from some of our legacy customers anticipating their potential demand to ensure that they get the capacity that they need. So we do see some kind of pull-forward effect, as I mentioned. But this is not the major impact that we see in the order intake. This is more from this unanticipated demand coming from customers.

Then also on the cash flow development, I mean, the cash flow was rather weak, but perhaps you could explain why buildups in working capital, et cetera. From today's point of view, would you say that the buildup is done and so we could expect maybe a swing in cash flow development in the second quarter? Or what should we expect here?

What we can expect is that it will come back because you always have when you have a high rise in aluminum prices and then it stabilizes or it goes down, then it comes back. But when we have it compared also with higher shipping volumes and higher production and so on, it needs some time. So for the second quarter, I wouldn't see a reversal at the moment.

But sooner or later, there should be a swing in the free cash flow, right? So at the end of the year, you might end with a positive free cash flow.

It has to be reversed because it's not because we are -- it's based on our -- more or less the business model that we have to -- we first have the negative finance part of the higher aluminum price and then we get it back when we sell everything. To make it very simple. So that will, for sure, be temporarily. But at the moment, it's too early for me to say in which quarter it could come. But if you take it, let's say, if it's 2 years or something like that, normally, when you look in the back, we always had this up and down in the cash flow where you can see that then it comes back. But it's at the moment, yes.

Okay. Yes. Got it. And my last question is, again, on the outlook, especially on the remarks on the output. Did I get it correctly that you are gaining market shares in the current situation because of the Middle East conflict, et cetera?

Yes. It's -- the point is there are 2 segments here that I just mentioned, automotive and heat exchangers. So there is no major new development coming. So tonnage is increasing. So we assume market shares are being gained, right? And in this case of North America that I just mentioned to you, we see that the share that is coming to us is originated in this demand from customers in this region that is not being served by local domestic mills. So it is a market share gain in these 2 segments that I just mentioned.

And then we will move on with Mr. Steiner, who is in the phone line.

It's Patrick Steiner speaking from ODDO BHF. Congratulations to the good results and also to the first conference call, Mr. Breguncci. One question remaining from my side. Could you please give us more detail on the expected earnings development in the Metal segment? I mean I would be specifically interested in the valuation or the accounting effects resulting from the backwardation situation on the LME copper price.

Yes. So as I mentioned at the beginning for the Metal segment, we have the impact -- rough impact from the aluminum price, we have the impact out of the alumina price. So for the alumina price, we are stable. So this is not the one that we are now making that big effect on the outlook. But for the aluminum price, at the Metal segment, it's not only we have there our [indiscernible] business, but also our risk management of the metal price risk. So in there, we manage the risk for the whole metal price segment. And there, we have derivatives that are related to the whole business of AMAG Group.

And in this business, we have -- when we do that risk management, we do it also if needed, via derivatives. And this derivatives can have negative pricing effects. We realize them or we don't realize them. But if they are unrealized, we have to do our valuation on them and they can impact our earnings in the Metals segment as well. So it's not just the operational part of it as you perhaps have presumed that we say you sell it at the high price, why don't we see it only that? It's also adding up the risk management for the whole group where we can also have valuation effects that can be quite big.

And you know there's a backwardation in the market at the moment, which is was last month up to $40 negatively where we normally have $1 or $2 per tonne. So this affects a lot our valuations there. And what could be a part when I say risk management, just perhaps to add this as well, it's also securing the values of our stocks and securing the risk of our supply of material we buy our raw material we are supplying and so on. So it's not just the operational business of [indiscernible] that's affecting our numbers.

Okay. And should we expect a negative contribution from that effect going forward in Q2, Q3? And if yes, what kind of size?

I don't have the exact number, but we see the market -- the backwardation. And as I told before, we are -- all the market anticipations in the forward curve, we are putting into our numbers. And when the aluminum price is going down, then normally, that could swap again into a contango. So these sensitivities we build in our models, yes.

Thank you for your questions, Mr. Steiner. [Operator Instructions] So with this we're happy to take the questions from Mr. Matejka.

Can you hear me? Fine. I'm really surprised about the technology. So congratulations about your numbers and your outlook. And it looks like me that Chuck Norris is living again because you have all the cards in your hand and you have done everything right in the past. And therefore, I promise you a really good future in relation to the incomparable political environment developing you have some kind of natural hedge in that. My question is twofold. On the one side, I'm always asking about the cross-alloy feature around what's happening all there and there is, let's say, the latest steps in that relation. And thanks to Mr. Kaufmann always being a party in that case to give me a proper answer.

And the second part of the question will be about your recently announced share buyback program. Is it already in place? Is it already working? Are you already giving some features on that? And yes, maybe some words about the future potential on that.

Okay. Thank you very much for the motivating questions. I'll take on the cross-alloy and then Claudia will answer you about your second question. Cross-alloy, Cross-alloy is an attempt as we have been marketing to develop an alloy that would position ourselves in a very strong position on combining 2 different kind of alloys, 6,000 and 8,000, 5,000 and 7,000. We are doing some pilots in some applications in Europe and the pilots we are waiting for the results that they could give.

We are taking very cautionary measures that we don't overestimate or underestimate the potential that the alloy will have, but we are positively surprised in the execution of these trials in the applications we have in the market, which are treated very much under close scrutiny from our R&D department. So eventually, we will come back with a little bit more information on that front, but it's progressing as expected. If I can give you this answer, we are very cautious and progressing with our trials and our tests. So as soon as we have information that could be shared in this forum, we'll for sure bring it and share with you and our investors.

And I will answer the second question. So I think the question was a little bit not addressing what we were doing or what was the intent we had in our General Annual Meeting because it was not that we announced payback program. What we did and what we also had in the past that we have just in case we do some -- and it's named quite [ taxative ] if we do have an M&A or something going on and using own shares would be a very good way to finance or --.

Acquisition currency, yes.

As you say as an acquisition currency, that's the right term that then we are able to do that very -- in a very efficient and short way because we do it without the AGM, we can do it without having the preferred rights for the other investors. And this was the same we had before. So we knew what we had. And it was just giving us the authorization to do so without having any plans to concrete plans and we have no share buyback program.

Yes, this will be the only answer to be given. But it wasn't mentioned in the analysis around and so on because of the small free float that you already have, it would be some kind of not the best idea to buy back shares again. And therefore, the proper goal to use it as a currency for M&A is the right answer.

And in the meantime, we have received no further questions. Therefore, I hand back to you, Christoph.

Thanks a lot for all your interesting questions. Thanks again for joining today's call. It was a pleasure. Should you have any remaining questions, please, as always, feel free to give me a call or reach out to me directly via e-mail. Otherwise, have a very pleasant Thursday and looking forward to hearing you soon. Thank you. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Thank you.

Goodbye.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to our conference call for the financial year results 2025 of AMAG Austria Metall AG. I am Christoph Gabriel, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm delighted to welcome our management Board members, Dr. Helmut Kaufmann, CEO and COO; Claudia Trampitsch, CFO; and Victor Breguncci, CSO. All Board members are guiding you through the business development in 2025 based on our full year's presentation.

At this stage, I would like to remind you that our full year presentation as well as the financial report and the magazine for 2025 have already been published on our website under Investor Relations this morning. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session. Please also feel free to reach out directly to me, in case of any further questions, that might occur after the Q&A session. As always, please note the disclaimer, especially regarding forward-looking statements that can be found at the beginning of our presentation, on Slide 2.

I'm now handing over to Helmut Kaufmann, CEO, who will start with presenting the main highlights in 2025. Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, from my side. As Christoph mentioned, I will start with the slide on financial highlights for the year 2025. And I would like to point out that in a difficult year, operational strength, consistent cost management and some tailwinds from the Canadian investment in the primary metals smelter Alouette, supported our revenues and earnings trends and ensured again, financial stability. The revenues grew by 2.1% to EUR 1,478 million and compared to the 2024 number of EUR 1,448 million.

The EBITDA resulted in EUR 137 million, slightly above the announced upper limit, despite some challenging conditions throughout the year, especially for the site, Ranshofen, which was actually 23.5% down, the EUR 179.2 million EBITDA for AMAG in 2024. Net income after taxes resulted in exactly EUR 34 million, which was 21.3% down compared to the EUR 43.2 million in the year 2024, which resided in earnings per share of EUR 0.96 compared to EUR 1.23 in 2024. The operating cash flow grew by 41.3% to EUR 168.1 million and resulted in a very strong free cash flow, a growth of 262.5% to EUR 115.3 million, compared to the 2024 numbers, EUR 119 million for the operating and EUR 31.8 million for the free cash flow. The dividend proposal, which we will present to the general assembly in April is EUR 0.75 per share compared to EUR 1.20 per share in 2024.

Finally, a brief outlook for this year 2026. Of course, it's very early in the year. We see a lot of volatility and, therefore, a precise EBITDA forecast at that point in time is not possible but however, we can point out that we see some positive signals from the markets.

Let me shift to the operational highlights for last year. I mentioned already that we had a volatile surroundings but the operational strength was supporting AMAG. Metal Division, let me start with this one. Very important for the future development of AMAG is that an agreement was reached in the middle of last year. So the key terms and conditions for a long-term electricity contract for our Canadian smelter Alouette, which shall last to the end of 2045, so for the next 20 years.

In the Casting Division, productivity grew compared to 2024 delivery reliability. So delivery performance was high and customer satisfaction was also high. In the Rolling Division, continuous process optimization in the internal slab production significantly reduced the scrap rate and increased delivery performance. Productivity gains were made in the rolling slab production as well as in the rolling mill and productivity grew in both areas compared to 2024. And the utilization of the rolling mills was successfully stabilized, which was not so easy this volatile environment. We were even able to increase the capacity for plate production and able to sell this additional capacity so that we could achieve record sales for heat-treated aluminum plates last year.

So generally speaking, for AMAG Ranshofen, we had a successful continuation of ongoing working capital measures. Metal inventories were reduced to the lowest level since 2019. And investments in equipment were deliberately reduced to a minimum and are focused mostly on replacement activities because, as you know, we are very well invested, very modern plant in the center of Europe.

Let me continue with innovation, highlights there were, of course, in the area of sustainable alloys, especially sustainable alloys for the foundry industry at the beginning. It is important to develop materials, which can consume higher amounts of scrap and are therefore optimized for recycling. And we focus here on the utilization of mixed scrap and try to develop materials, which are fully capable for safety critical components. And we were also able to develop and introduce high-strength ductile structural components for the automotive industry.

Our alloy developments for our sustainable material brand, AL4 ever continued. AL4 ever stands for CO2 optimized materials where we actually guarantee levels of CO2 emissions connected to the production of this material. And this was now also introduced in the area of aircraft products, where maximum strength, corrosion resistance and safety are combined with minimum CO2 impact. And we also continued in the development of virtual rolling techniques. So computer optimized process development and product development at the site in Ranshofen. Of course, our customers can benefit from such solutions because we customize the products and we are quicker in the introduction of new products.

So let me have a short look at last years in a little bit more detail. I think for the first time, we show here a summary of the 4 quarters because it was so volatile that the 4 quarters actually were different. At the very beginning in Q1 last year, very volatile aluminum prices. You remember from '24 into '25, very high alumina cost, significant increases in the U.S. Midwest premium and an announcement of 25% of the U.S. tariffs, of course, had a strong impact. So the general market sentiment was subdued globally.

This was connected to a weakening industrial activity and, of course, increased the pressure on us to sell and to sell at good margins in Casting and Rolling division. In the second quarter of 2025, the aluminum price increased significantly. The alumina price, on the other hand, was reduced. And because of the increase now to 50% increased American U.S. tariffs, U.S. Midwest premium grew. Direct and indirect effects, we talked about indirect effects because of an impact on our customers in Europe because of the U.S. import tariffs gradually were reflected in our earnings performance and at AMAG's operating divisions. Challenges in the availability and the price development of aluminum scrap because of scrap export from Europe to international markets also led to rather unfavorable conditions. And basically, we had to be very careful and selective with products and markets for the Rolling Division.

In Q3 last year, the conditions for the Metal division remained rather attractive. So aluminum prices high, alumina prices low, rising premiums, this was good. Nevertheless, cautious optimism was evident, partly due also to some positive attitude of the purchasing managers reflected in the purchasing managers' index, including Germany. But on the other hand, competition increased, especially in the area of industrial applications. Effects of U.S. tariffs, again, were intensifying the margin pressure in the Rolling Division.

And finally, in Q4 last year, again, further increase in aluminum price and stable alumina prices were positive for us, sustained increase in the U.S. Midwest premium now was really fully offsetting the negative effect of the U.S. tariffs. But in the Rolling Division, the competition remained high, connected to continued high competitive pressure on pricing, especially in Europe, especially again for recycled foundry alloys and aluminum products for the foundry alloys also because again of scrap availability and pricing of scrap. And the increased price pressure particularly had influence on the margin in the area of industrial applications, and this was reflected in the earnings situation in the Rolling Divisions.

So of course, we did not just sit and watch the development. We responded with stabilizing measures that we quickly were able to implement. We also in the past, we oftentimes mentioned that AMAG is flexible and flexibility helps. We had to show flexibility in basically all our product areas. So in the Metal Division, of course, there was a strong impact on the American tariffs and our sales had to decide continuously basically on a daily basis into which global area we would sell our primary metal. And we were able to quickly change and try to find the best solution for AMAG. As you can see in 2024, we sold 100% of the primary metal to North America. In 2025, only 60% of the products went to North America, 40% already to Europe. So as I mentioned, this was daily activity to decide.

Let me continue with the Casting Division. We were here rather indirectly affected. As I mentioned before, the Casting Division to about 95% sales into the automotive industry. Automotive customers from Europe were affected by the American tariffs. It was more difficult or partly impossible for them to sell into the American market, and this had some negative influence on the Casting Division. Again, we had to adjust and we did so.

In the Rolling Division, tariff clauses in our contracts and difficult to produce products with some complexity enabled AMAG Rolling to stabilize the delivery even to the American customers in terms of volumes. It is shown on this slide that roughly 15% of our overall shipments in the past and also last year go to the American market. But of course, these changes and the adjustments in pricing had, of course, some influence on our competitive situation, and it increased the price pressure and the earnings quality in the Rolling Division.

In operational words, I can tell you that we, of course, looked into the subject of productivity, and we were able to achieve productivity gains in both cast houses and in both rolling mills. So the numbers here are certainly better than in the years before, where we also reported good numbers. The shipments of rolled products more or less remained unchanged in terms of tonnage to the year before -- to the year 2024. But let me say, the wide, as we always say, the wide product portfolio allowed us to adjust. So we, again, were able to sell 204,000 tonnes of flat-rolled products but the product mix was different, and Victor will explain in detail later.

The supply of raw materials, especially the supply of aluminum scrap could be secured. This was also possible because of our ability to utilize lower scrap qualities. But even for these lower scrap qualities, the prices increased. So this certainly had an influence. And I have to tell you also that we successfully continued our cost efficiency measures at the site in Ranshofen. So we were able to achieve savings in excess of the inflation. and a little bit more. And this helped us to cushion the effects of the increased price pressure that came from basically all global markets. And in addition, finally, I can tell you that we were also very strict in terms of investment discipline and working capital optimization. This contributed very nicely to AMAG Group's financial position.

And with this information, I would like to hand over to Victor, who will tell you about the market and shipment situation in 2025.

Thank you. Thank you, Helmut, very much. Good morning from my side. Turning to Page 12, where, as Helmut just described, the challenging year of 2025, we can see in the sentiment indicator of the PMI index that we're still not yet completely in a reversal of the trend but we saw that at the end of the year, we were coming from an economical situation with a little bit of more positive and more better expectations for the economic situation globally. We still don't see strength in all the markets but we see that reflected in our order intake that I will mention more towards the end of my slides.

When we come to the global demand for aluminum, it remains solid, very promising for the next 4, 5 years, not only in the primary side but also in the flat-rolled product in all the areas. China is a main driver of growth. Europe still subdued. We don't see necessarily a strong recovery from the demand in the Western market where we ship the magnitude of 70% to 75% of our sales. But it's important to mention that the flat-rolled product demand for aluminum, especially for our site in Ranshofen remains strong in the medium to long term.

When we try to translate that into segments, as we have been showing in the last 3, 5 years, transport, driven by aerospace, automotive, transportation remains a strong user of aluminum, where we are very well positioned in our capabilities and our assets. packaging and industry with mechanical engineering being also good drivers. And this gives us, as we saw in the execution of our strategy last year, how can we mitigate fluctuations in markets with a broad portfolio of capabilities in the flat rolled in Ranshofen. But this steady growth gives us a positive outlook that we have reached somehow the bottom of this demand cycle and that '26 might show better signs of recovery.

But I would like to explain a little bit and give a little bit of more details on what happened last year in our shipments. From 2024 -- when we go to Page 15, in 2024 to 2025, we saw a drop of almost 22% on our total shipments. How did it happen? In the Metal business in our smelter in Canada, there was a drop of a magnitude of 5,000 tonnes last year due mainly for pot relining and temporary availability of pots, but this is back into full capacity in our smelter in 2026. So this was an important impact in our sales from our Canadian Alouette smelter.

As Helmut already mentioned, casting business has been very much impacted not only in our upside in our shipments, but also in the margins but also as well in the mix. We try to mitigate the lower demand and the overcapacity we have in the foundry alloys, primary and secondary alloys with more liquid material, which gives us a little bit more flexibility in where we can position our capacity. But nevertheless, we saw a reduction in our shipments in the region of Western and Central Europe in the magnitude of 2,500 tonnes.

Rolling, our main business in Ranshofen, we saw a big impact from the mix changes that happened when compared to 2024, a reduction in aerospace business, which created and we saw this in the whole market, I mean, not only the U.S. tariffs impacted, also the very strong inventory quantity we had in North America but also in Europe, together with the fluctuations in the build rates on the main airframers, we saw that the availability of heat treat capacity impacted very much the aerospace demand during the year of 2025. But we use this capacity to shift this availability of rolling hours into the industrial application segment, not only in Europe but in the United States as well, but also in Asia, especially driven for semicon industry and also some industrial machinery where we saw at the end of the year, an improvement in the sentiment and in the demand.

Packaging was also a big driver. We saw this happening here in Europe, and we took advantage of the situation to support those customers in that area. But as we've been saying, Helmut mentioned this and mentioning again, the overcapacity, the scrap availability, the pressure on the pricing of scrap, and we saw also the impact on how can we position our products in most profitable markets impacted us, especially in Q3, Q4 that we saw, as I said before, sort of the bottom of our shipments capability.

When we shift into the distribution of how our shipments in the rolling business happened, it's just giving a little bit of numbers. We saw a reduction in demand in automotive, driven mostly from United States tariff implications from some customers but also some indirect impact from our OEMs here in Europe, where had issues in placing orders for their platform. So we saw the indirect impact in our shipments in the magnitude of 3%. Aerospace, as I mentioned before, we use the capacity into the industrial applications, which grew 8% compared to 2024.

In the heat exchanger business, we saw a little bit of adjustments in the market here in Europe and a little bit of growth more towards the United States, where having this ability to play with premium products and the rise of the Midwest gave us the chance to penetrate the United States and North America with better product mix in the heat exchangers as well.

In any sense, based on this scenario and on the situation that we saw during the year, we are believing, and we're going to mention this towards the end of the discussions today that we have a noticeable increase in the average order backlog. So we see a little bit of improvement coming back from aerospace in the beginning of this year, towards the middle of this year. So we -- this is a positive trend. And there are some supply chain shortages happening in North America, where we also see the reflection in our order intake. Industrials in Europe also show a positive trend in our order intake. So we're coming from a very difficult Q3, Q4 from a volume mix and margin point of view into a scenario where we see based on the economical trend but also we see in our order intake in our order book positive signs that '25 difficulties is in the direction of improvement.

I will transfer now my -- the part of the slides to Claudia, who will give a flavor on how the numbers are looking like. Thank you.

So hello from my side. I will start with some information on the market prices that are relevant for our group earnings. First of all, we heard it before from my colleagues. We had a very strong aluminum price development this -- the last year, where you see that at the end of the year, we were above 3,000 and that level still is -- so we still are keeping this level and that is relevant for our sales out of Canada and as well for -- has influence on our group revenues but also on our revenues, on our working capital.

When we now go through the Midwest premium development, here, you can see reflected all of the information you got before on the U.S. tariffs because all the high increase we can see here is due to higher U.S. tariffs that are offset by the premium. And therefore, now the Midwest premium is at the level above $2,200, which fully covers now the tariffs in there. On the positive side compared to last year, where we had a more or less record high for quite a long time on alumina price, which directly affects our revenue costs. Now the level really went down, and we are now seeing a level at about USD 300 per tonne and compared with the high aluminum price, I mentioned before, we now have a very attractive relation between these 2 market prices that affects especially our revenues and earnings out of the Metal segment.

When I go now to the revenues, you can see that compared to 2024 and even given the difficulties we heard about before, we had an increase in the revenues out of -- with 2%. And that's mainly -- as you can see in our reconciliation, it's mainly due to the aluminum price, as I mentioned before, which had a steep increase in the last year compared to the year before.

And when I now go to the EBITDA, we see -- we can tell that even though we had increase in the revenues, which you can see in nearly all segments. What we now will see when we go to the EBITDA that the EBITDA went -- we can't transfer that increase to -- fully to the EBITDA and that has several reasons. One of them was mentioned before by my colleagues that we had mix shifts due to market conditions. We had price effects due to the price pressures, Victor mentioned before in the relevant markets where we are in, and we had the effects by the U.S. tariffs, the direct and indirect effects we were talking about before. And -- in addition to all of that, we also see that we had to deal with negative impacts out of personnel costs, energy costs. And this all sums up to that our EBITDA 2025 is lower but at least at a very solid level given all the circumstances we are in at EUR 137 million.

I now want to give you a little bit more detail on the several segments so that I have -- can sum it up in that area. So for the Metal Division, we have the effect that the lower shipments we mentioned before. But out of the U.S. tariffs, even though the U.S. tariffs are compensated by the U.S. Midwest premium, what changes for us is that in the years before, we had an advantage out of Canada to the U.S. as we had a tariff exemption, which sums up to 10% for the rest of the companies who sell. And this exemption is now eliminated, and therefore, we have as well a decrease in our earnings in the Metal Division. The positive effect I showed you before is that our raw material costs for alumina, especially in the second half are going down.

For the Casting Division, we have a lower EBITDA due to the challenging market condition we mentioned before and the price pressure as well. And for the Rolling Division, I think Victor explained everything that leads to the changes in the product mix, the increased competition and the price pressure. But I want to mention again, these are all negative influences but as Helmut elaborated before on we didn't sit and wait but did a lot of measures where we were able to influence and contribute to make the best out of the macroeconomic situation, we are not able to change.

When we have a short look also on the EBITDA of the fourth quarter, it shows even more precise or drastically the things I mentioned before because when you see the whole year, we had a first quarter, which wasn't influenced by tariffs and so on. But when you just look at the fourth quarter, you see it even more, namely the effects of the tariffs and the changed product mix in there. And this leads to a different picture than 1 year ago for the fourth quarter.

The net income after tax, just to finalize it up to there is influenced by a much lower depreciation than last year. Just to remind you, last year, we had an impairment loss, we had to balance in. This year, it's quite more or less a normal depreciation. And given the lower investment, also our depreciation is below our investments.

This now brings me up to the -- to our cash flow statement. And when I mentioned before that we did everything and worked very hard on make all the best out of the situation and influence where we can -- are able to do it. You can -- most -- many of these things you see reflected in our cash flow as we have a very -- we have a cash flow out of EUR 168 million from the operating activities. And in there, we have a positive impact out of our working capital measurements where we have a level -- not in value because the value is influenced by the alumina price but in tons, a level that is lower than 2019 on the Metal side and we reduced our inventories.

We did measures on the receivables side to do all things possible to increase our cash flow. And the same is true for the investing activities. You know from AMAG that we are a very modern and well-built facility in Ranshofen had very big investments in the last years. So we are now in a phase where we, at the one side, have lower investments because of our past activities but also very strict on where and how we now do our investments there. So this all sums up to a record level of free cash flow we had in 2025 of EUR 115 million.

So to sum it up, I can -- we can give you a short view on all our key figures for the group. And as I mentioned before, we were able in this difficult environment to keep our revenues. We did everything to achieve an EBITDA of EUR 137 million and had a very attractive influence then on our balance sheet.

This leads me now to the balance sheet. And everything that we mentioned before leads to an effect on the net financial debt as well. So we could significantly reduce our net financial debt with 16% alone this year. And we could reduce our ratio of the EBITDA to net debt as well with 23.5%. So we are now at the level of 2.3%, and this is a very solid and good basis for us for the year to come. And again, we see that the equity and the equity ratio, given all the measurements on balance sheet and working capital and our financial stability, we see that we could increase our equity ratio with 1%.

Also in times where we have to figure on our financial stability, we do not lose that lens on the ESG key figures. And we heard before about flexibility, mix shifts and so on. But still, we were able to have a high or even higher than last year's scrap utilization rate, and that's given to the efforts of our team to source and recycle all the scrap needed to achieve these numbers. And also for the TFR, I also want to point out, we were able to reduce it even more. So we are also proud of that achievement as well.

So now I can hand over to Helmut again, who will give you some information on the dividends and the outlook for 2026.

Yes. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I try to speed up a little now so that we will have some time for Q&A as well. I already mentioned that we will propose EUR 0.75 as a dividend to the Annual General Assembly on 16th of April. And 1 week later, the dividend payment date will happen. I try to be quick here as well. We do expect a general growth continuation in the various global markets as is shown here, and we do see already some positive signals, especially in our Rolling Division.

In more detail, for Metal Division, this year, we expect the full utilization of the installed capacity combined with good prices for aluminum and still positive for us, relatively low prices for alumina. So this is -- lets us expect general positive development for this division. Casting Division still under pressure, as we said, very strongly dependent on the European automotive industry. The availability of scrap and the scrap prices connected to this business are of major importance. So here, of course, there is some fight on the market to be expected.

For the Rolling Division, we expect sales increase. Victor already mentioned some reasons. Aerospace is one where we expect continued growth or ramp-up of the 2 big aircraft producers. Automotive, on the one hand side, remains challenging in Europe, however, there are some short-term market opportunities in the United States. We do expect a positive effect from this. And we, therefore, expect a stronger sales this year. Packaging, architecture, sports remain stable and industrial applications, which is also of global importance for us, remains price sensitive. So this means also that our internal programs to optimize our cost position have to continue.

So of course, it's impossible at the moment to tell you a detailed numbers but the signal that I want to send to you is as positive as we see it from the market, we expect a positive development this year. And very finally, in a little more than a year from now, we celebrate the 15-year anniversary -- what did I say? In a month from now, yes. Sorry, on April 8, we will celebrate 15 years of AMAG being listed at the Vienna Stock Exchange. And I think this was a positive move for us. It secured our long-term future. It was very positive for our investment program at the site in Ranshofen, and it helped us to achieve autonomy and independence and a positive development also for the future. So thank you very much for now. We are now open for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] So we will start with Patrick Speck. So please go ahead with your questions.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes.

First of all, congratulations on the very solid performance in 2025, and thanks a lot for the very detailed presentation. My first question is about the current situation of tariffs in the U.S. After the Supreme Court decision on general tariffs, do you see any chance that the still existing tariffs on aluminum could be lifted too? I mean, are there any lawsuits against those types of tariffs, too? What's your knowledge about that?

As you correctly mentioned, the current U.S. Supreme Court is only relevant for other tariffs but not for the tariffs on the steel and aluminum. And I'm not aware of any lawsuits there. So at the moment, also the sentiment we get from the U.S. Aluminum Association, the Canadians and so on is that people are expecting it to stay.

Okay. But as you mentioned, the premium now covers those tariffs, right?

It's true. The premium covers the tariffs. And at the end, it's reflected then in there -- in the input price for every company, which processes the aluminum because you must take into account the -- when you bought -- let's say, a U.S. producer, you bought aluminum 2024. It was, let's say, a price of $2,200 and $400 premium, so $2,600. And now you have $3,000 aluminum and $2,200 Midwest. So you're now at the double price for the same product 1 year ago. So it's really, really affecting their input costs.

Yes, understood. Secondly, your CapEx spendings came down significantly, I think, as planned, as you mentioned. What should we expect for the current year? Maybe a side step or further reduction? -- what should we type in the models?

So what we -- what our goal is or our plan is to stay below depreciation because we invested a lot the last years. And now it's -- we are in a situation where we could maintain the high level of our high quality of our equipment and to stay there modern, but there is no big investment plan. So therefore, we are below depreciation. That's the plan.

Okay. But could be, I mean, anything below EUR 80 million then maybe that's roughly your depreciation.

Yes. That's roughly.

Okay. And thirdly, maybe I missed it, but I think you did not mention the new CBAM regulation or at least the sharpened CBAM regulation. Could you comment on that, how it's affecting your business? And maybe also what's the financial burden you expect from this regulation in the current year?

I didn't mention it, you're right because it's -- the phase where you have to, let's say, pay for CBAM starts with January 2026, and therefore, we didn't have it in there. And I think the big issue is that even though it's now in the phase where you have to pay for CBAM, the calculation itself and the input numbers are still at the one side, unclear. And at the other side, if you need to use actual numbers, you will be able in 2027 to calculate the real numbers for 2026. So that's, I think, one of the big -- globally, the big issues with CBAM that it's very difficult to figure out what's the real impact on that side. So how do we deal with it? On the one side, we are affected when bringing the aluminum from Canada to Europe because then it's a non-European import.

Therefore, we normally sell it duty uncleared so that it's not on our balance -- not in our duties, let's put it that way. And on the other hand, we are -- when we have to import on the -- for Ranshofen site, we try to import it at least duty cleared or in a way that we can minimize the risk of additional payments, so importing from the EU, for example. But it's an interesting topic, and it will, let's say, evolve over the next years because when the free CO2 allowances we get in Europe will go down until 2034. It will be more and more a cost factor there.

But in one sentence, a lot of things unclear. We have a lot of people working on that on a daily basis to look at it so that we are -- we know which measures we need to do if there is more information on there.

Yes, exactly. I think it's a bit early to tell. But in any way, it's facing the whole industry. So yes, thanks a lot for commenting. That's it from my side so far.

And then we will move on with the question from Michael Marschallinger. Mr. Marschallinger, I can see that you're speaking into your microphone but unfortunately we can't hear you. So maybe you need to switch to another device.

Let's move on, in the meantime, to a person who's dialing with the phone ending 6609. [Operator Instructions] Therefore, we can't hear you as well.

So Mr. Marschallinger, let's try again.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Perfect. So thanks and I have 2 questions left. Firstly, on the pricing pressure you see in rolling. I believe you always face some kind of price pressure on the end market. So how does this pricing pressure in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarters? Is it possible to provide some numbers here? And also, would you expect the same degree of pricing pressure to continue in the following quarters?

Let me take that one, Michael. First of all, it's important that we recognize that for some products that we have in our portfolio, especially those that are more commercial and commodity oriented, there is a very strong overcapacity, not only in Europe, But globally, right, rolling capacity. So when we have any relaxation in demand, this overcapacity really takes its toll on us. And you see this what's happening in the direction of executing our commercial strategy. Q3 and Q4 were the moments where we saw the direct and indirect impacts of the U.S. tariffs, and we saw the impact of capacity in Europe and as well as in the U.S. And we shifted our capacity to -- from this high premium products to products in the industrial areas, where we see -- we saw that we were competing face-to-face with regional and global players where we were able to shift the capacity from aerospace, as I said before, into the industrial, right? So Q3 and Q4 were very difficult because of the order intake we had in Q1 and Q2, which was full of uncertainties.

And we saw now in Q4 in terms of shipments, the impact on the numbers, as we said before. But we expect this trend, especially now as Claudia was mentioning, CBAM has put in a little bit of more pressure on the Rotterdam premium. We see the Rotterdam premiums increasing a little bit more. So this all impacts the whole dynamics in the European landscape. So we expect that demand will be an improvement, as I said in the sentiment indicator. We have more clarity -- more clarity and more understanding how to -- how the players can play in the United States in North America, given the geopolitical conditions. And in the end, we are seeing the recovery of some premium markets that will remove the need to sell into industrial and gives a chance to be more fierce on our commercial execution for industry.

So to your question, I explained Q3 and Q4, and I gave you a little bit of sentiment on what's expected for Q1 and Q2, specifically maybe for the whole year of '26.

Okay. Then it's also fair to assume, I believe that the fourth quarter also marked the bottom really in results for rolling. Is it fair to assume?

That's -- it's not wrong to say that for reasons that are far beyond our capability to define from a market-oriented condition but also from how we could deploy our capacity in the right market. So it was in my view today and the view of our company, the moment of recovery that we're seeing now in the order intake that I mentioned in the end of my slides.

And then in the meantime, Mr. Steiner from the phone dial-in has sent his questions over to us. So on behalf of him, I would read them out. So his first question is, how do you see product mix developing in Rolling and Casting over the year? Any expected changes worth highlighting that could affect margins in the current year?

Okay. Let me take that one. First of all, thank you, Patrick, for the question. Well, in the Casting business, we are navigating the better recovery on the casting products in Europe, right? In Germany, specifically, we see potential improvement. Our order intake is demonstrating that. Still very much challenged on the mix of combustion engine and electric cars, how can we position our products there if we sell ingots or we sell liquid materials. So we're navigating as we see the opportunities. In Rolling, as I said before, we see the short-term -- the shortages in the U.S. for automotive and the improvements in the heat exchanger business. So these are premium products where we are placing confidently that we increase shipments during the year of '26. And needless to say, recovery, given the destocking that is finishing from the aerospace, not only in Europe but also in North America, we see recovery on our shipments in aerospace as well.

So in all sense, we -- despite the uncertainties we see ahead of us with regards mainly to the tariffs and how this affects us in the United States but also in Europe, we see a positive trend in our order book for 2026 given the mix changes that I just mentioned now.

All right. And his second question is primary aluminum production capacity over 2026. Any maintenance or other capacity -- sorry, reducing events expected over the current year?

So at the end of 2025 and beginning this year, we were back to full capacity in the smelter. And this is also the plan for the year 2026. So even though we are doing maintenance, it's a regular way. So we do not expect any losses there at the moment.

And then Mr. Steiner says thanks a lot very helpful. And then we have 2 questions left from Mr. Matejka. So his first one is, could you give some words on the features of AL4 ever and what happened to your cross-alloy developments?

[Foreign Language] Sorry, I have to answer in English. I know Mr. Matejka understand German, sorry. Yes, AL4 ever is a general brand name that applies to all our products where customers request defined upper limits for the connected CO2 level. Actually, we sold such products to various branches, automotive, packaging, sports. And we see that a growing number of customers is asking for this. At the moment, beginning, I would say, with Trump last year, there was a feeling in the market that sustainability questions are now less important but new development is maybe a little more difficult. This has some influence on the development of cast alloy. But we -- so the development is slower than we expected.

Nevertheless, we continue with trials with different customers in, again, various application areas. But I think this is generally true material development and convincing of customers to use alternative materials to their already well-known current use is time-consuming and difficult but this is one of the activities that we are used to and keep doing.

And then the last question is from Mr. Matejka as well. It's a bit longer. You mentioned new energy contract in Canada gives some comfort on future energy price developments. In respect to the actual expanding need for electricity from data centers, is this a competitive advantage against your competitors besides your partner, Alouette?

So for the smelter, it is very relevant to have a secured energy supply. And of course, as it is a monopolist in Canada, so we are talking to the politicians there to negotiate the contract. It's -- they decide -- they have the possibility to decide which strategy they are going on if they want to support it or supply the energy to existing industry that provides work or employment there or to give it to new companies. And I think that that's always something that, that they have to measure out. But I would say we are now in the region for more than 30 years, and we are a very reliable energy consumer there. So we ourselves do not see us at the moment that they are building their data center, and we have some issues there because it's quite regional. We can't buy -- we have to buy from the region, the energy. So it's not something we can buy somewhere else.

But I think globally, there is some issues or pressure on who and where we will distribute the energy. And we saw it in the industry, for example, that there was in Mozambique smelter, which will be closed in 3 months because of exactly this issue that they do not get any further energy contract because of the government decision to transfer or distribute the energy to other areas. So that's definitely an issue and very, very key topic for a smelter to be competitive.

Thank you so much. And in the meantime, we have received no further questions. Therefore, I hand back to Christoph.

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks a lot for your participation to this call. Again, feel free to give me a call or write me an e-mail should there be any questions left. I'm happy to assist. Otherwise, I wish you a great weekend. The weather forecast certainly looks promising. Thanks a lot. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the information on the Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. I'm Valentina, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

The forecasts, plans, forward-looking assessments and statements contained in this presentation were made on the basis of all information available to AMAG up to 17 October, 2025. The economic and trade policy environment has changed several times in recent months. Internal calculations and earnings analysis are based on various assumptions. These include, among other things, the continued validity of global U.S. import duties on aluminum products.

If the assumptions underlying the forecasts do not materialize, targets are not achieved or risks arise, actual earnings may differ from those currently anticipated. We undertake no obligation to update such forecasts in light of new information or future events. This presentation has been prepared with the utmost care and the data has been checked. However, rounding, transmission or printing errors cannot be ruled out. AMAG and its representatives accept no liability for the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this presentation. This presentation is also available in German, whereby the German version shall prevail in case of doubt. This presentation does not constitute a recommendation or invitation to buy or sell AMAG securities.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christoph Gabriel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome again to our conference call for the first 3 quarters of 2025 of AMAG.

Today, Helmut Kaufmann, CEO and COO; as well as Claudia Trampitsch, CFO, will present the developments and results of the first 9 months of this year. After the presentation, you have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session. As usual, both the presentation and the press release have been published this morning on our home page under Investor Relations.

I would now like to hand over to Helmut. Please start the presentation. Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, from my side.

It's a pleasure to present Q3 earnings and the result of the first 9 months for AMAG. I would like to start with Slide #3, the highlights, and point out that we or AMAG showed high resilience in a continuously difficult environment, but rapidly implemented efficiency measures enabled stable earnings development in Q3 and also supported the performance of the first 9 months. The revenues grew by 5.4% to EUR 1,137 million compared to EUR 1,078,000 the year before. And this was mostly due to higher aluminum prices. The EBITDA came to EUR 114.2 million, and this number already exceeds the lower limit of the range that we communicated in the past. And for the full year, where we said the limits would be EUR 110 million to EUR 130 million. So with EUR 114.2 million, the EBITDA is 22.6% lower compared to the same time period last year, where AMAG achieved EUR147.6 million.

Net income after taxes reached EUR 33.8 million compared to EUR 54.3 million, which is a minus of 37.7% Cash flow from operating activities recorded a growth of 23.3% to EUR 134.8 million compared to EUR 109.3 million last year same time period. So with the numbers presented, we can mention the following outlook for the financial year -- full year 2025. Since the EBITDA already exceeded the lower limit, we now say that we expect a result at the upper end of the communicated range, close to the EUR 130 million. Although -- and this is important to point out, our experience shows that valuation effects can have a noticeable impact on these numbers.

Let me continue with Slide #5 and look at the current market sentiment. The so-called Purchasing Managers' Index shows a slight improvement compared to previous period. And the global threshold of 50 is slightly exceeded at this point in time, but we do not see a significant improvement in the sentiment in the Eurozone. And we do not see a significant improvement in Austria, but a slightly stabilizing trend in Germany. Germany is an important market area for AMAG.

Let us continue with Slide #6 and look at the total shipments of the AMAG Group. In Q1 to Q3 of 2025, we sold 320,800 tonnes of various products to our customers, which is 1% down compared to the year before. A look at the 3 divisions indicates that the Metal Division compared to previous year is 4,800 tonnes lower, mostly due to a slightly lower number of active pots in the recent months.

In the Casting Division, where we produced the recycled foundry alloys due to market development, especially in the automotive industry, we are down by 2,800 tonnes compared to last year. And in the Rolling Division in terms of volumes delivered to our customers, we saw an increase compared to last year by 5,100 tonnes, connected, however, to a change in mix. So the transportation sector was in a more -- still is in a more difficult period, while we were able to grow the volumes for industrial applications and packaging products.

Slide #7 gives you details to what I just mentioned. We still benefit from our diversity in products because this stabilizes our sales volume. And as you can see here, especially automotive, aerospace and other transport products are down compared to last year. And we have a significant increase in industrial applications, which is 12,006 tonnes more than last year. Also packaging products, foil stock is up 1,400 tonnes compared to last year.

This brings us to Slide #8, where you can see the development of our order backlog. And there, we have a slight decrease. Still we are above 50,000 tonnes in order backlog. But due to a reduced order intake, especially from the transportation sector that I mentioned before, this is slightly down. And of course, we can see also a negative impact from the U.S. tariffs, and this is reflected in the order backlog.

So, this brings us to business performance information, which Claudia Trampitsch will now present to you. Thank you very much.

Good morning from my side as well.

I will start with an outlook on the market price developments we had in the last quarter. And when we look at Page 10, you can see that the aluminum price increased over the quarter -- over the year 2025 compared to last year. So, we see now a very good aluminum price level in Q3 2025 and also year-to-date. So year-to-date, you see around 7% increase of the aluminum price.

When we move on to the U.S. Midwest premium, you can see here that as we also mentioned already last quarter that the premium moved up significantly due to the U.S. tariffs. And apart from the higher -- from the impact of the U.S. tariffs, you now see every time the LME price of the aluminum goes up, it also is reflected in the development of the U.S. Midwest premium. And you can see also how much it is on the right side where we have up to 163% increase.

Nevertheless, as for our Canadian company, we lost our exemption of the U.S. tariffs. We also lost there our meaningful profits. When we move on to the alumina price, we see that compared to last year, the price development downward, as we had in the first 2 quarters now, really stabilized itself. So, we are still at a very low level. So at the moment, we are around compared to the aluminum price, which is compared higher than last year, we see a really good price level in relation to around 12% at the moment, which is very positive for the Metal Division. And although when we compare the year-to-date comparison to last year, the decrease is not that big because it's a 6%. But when you look at the quarter, you now can see that compared to last year, where the trend went up to really high aluminum prices -- alumina prices, we now see the trend going down, and that will also affect the results of the fourth quarter.

When we move on to the revenues of AMAG Group, we already mentioned that the revenues -- the Q1 to Q3 2025 are 5% higher than for the respective period of last year. And when we look at where does it come from, the main impact comes from the higher aluminum price. So, this is mainly also due to the Metal segment, but you can see the high increase here and also in the Rolling segment. But for the Rolling segment, you see the vice versa effect in the material cost as well. So apart from that, everything was just mentioned before, we have an impact on -- because of volumes, prices and so on. But just to remember, the main impact came out of the high aluminum prices.

When we now look at the EBITDA of AMAG Group, you see that the EBITDA for the first 3 quarters sums up to EUR 114.2 million, which is 23% lower than last year. When we have a deeper look at it, you see that although I mentioned before, we had higher revenues due to the aluminum price, in the EBITDA, you also had an impact of the higher aluminum price. But here, as I mentioned before, it's mainly out of the Metal Division because in the Rolling Division, it's also -- the high aluminum price also affects the production cost.

When we see in the reconciliation, why is the EBITDA lower than last year, there is big impact out of price and premium. And this is what we mentioned before due to the effects in the Rolling Division, as Helmut mentioned before, in the transport sector. But here, we also see lower prices because of the weak economy and also the impact of the U.S. tariff kicks in there. Another effect we can see is that the EBITDA is influenced by raw material costs and energy costs. And at the moment, also in the raw material costs still for the first 3 quarters, there is an effect of higher alumina costs compared to last year and higher energy cost on the metal side because of the high LME prices.

When we look at Page 15, you have another one division -- the EBITDA division-wise, where we have in the Metal Division, lower primary aluminum shipments, as mentioned before, and an impact of the higher aluminum price and already kicking in the attractive alumina market price that we can see here. But as mentioned before, we are also -- we are always influenced compared to 2024 to now being fully displaced to U.S. tariffs compared to last year where we had an exemption.

For the Casting Division, there's nothing else to mention. As we mentioned before, the market environment, which had an effect on the shipments and prices in the Casting Division, but we were able to be flexible and react accordingly. And the same is true for the Rolling Division, where we saw an increase in shipments and revenues, but due to changed product mix affected by tariffs and price dynamics, we saw a pressure here, but we are able to stabilize the impact also if you compare it to the second quarter. So, we're more or less on the same level in the second quarter. There you can see that even due to the impact of the higher U.S. tariffs, we were able to stabilize our results in the Rolling Division. So in general, we can see that we showed our ability to adapt to the actual situation and set measures to stabilize our results.

When you now look at the EBITDA of the third quarter 2025, which is at EUR 33.5 million, which is compared to last third quarter, a minus of 36%. I think it's worth mentioning that, of course, here, you can see that it's lower than last year. But last year, we had -- as we told you before, totally different circumstances we were in. But when we compare it to the second quarter 2025, so last quarter, we see that we are more or less at the same level because there, we had EUR 34.6 million. And this shows us that we set the right measures, showed our flexibility to move to other areas, other product mix and so on to stabilize our results here and to make other measures to the increased price mix we see.

For the net income after taxes, the reduction is due to the low operating profit. There are no special effects in there. So, I can move on to the cash flow statement of AMAG Group for the first 3 quarters. And on that side, we can show -- even though the cash flow, as it is impacted by the lower EBITDA compared to last year, we show an increase in operating cash flow because of our measures we do on the working capital side. We also see that there is a significant lower investment cash flow. These are measures we planned because due to our situation we are in and the circumstances, we decided to reduce our investment volumes and this also affected the cash flow in a positive way so that we can show you that we had for the first 9 months, a free cash flow of EUR 94.2 million, which is an increase of 134%.

When we move on to Slide 20, we show you our net financial debt in million euro. And there, you can see that we reduced our net financial debt with 10% compared to year-end. And the ratio EBITDA to net debt rise from 2.1 to 2.4, but this is due to the lower EBITDA for the last 12 months and still a stable number and a solid number for AMAG.

When we go on to the next balance sheet figures, KPIs, our equity is as well stable. We have 1% less than at the year-end. Yes, there are some effects in it, but perhaps I want to point out that there is also a translation difference out of the U.S. dollar in there, which we had due to the weaker U.S. dollar and our U.S. dollar business in Canada, which had an effect there compared to last year. But apart from that, we are stable at the equity. And we can show you also that on the cash side, we have an increase. This is due to refinancing measures we did the last month.

I mentioned everything for the division. So, I will not tell you anything more on that side. You have all details you -- we can present on the following slides. And so finally, I just want to go on, on the ESG key figures as we always also want to tell you how we are performing on that side and show you that our focus still is as well on being positive and have positive development on our ESG figures. And to point out just one when you see how our scrap utilization rate develops, we are still on high level and even could increase it. This also is -- when you see that we had a shift in product mix and therefore, a good sign that we could increase our utilization rate, we also could increase our utilization rate and we could decrease our specific energy consumption and also all our other numbers here that we show, let's say, the TRIFR or the compliance valuation is everything very positive that we can report.

With that, I now hand over to Helmut again for some closing words and some information on the outlook.

Thank you very much.

What we can clearly say with numerous discussions with our customers, the economic environment remains challenging. So the global economic outlook and the influence of the American or U.S. tariff policy on our business remains subdued. And this has especially negative influence on the development of the industry in the Eurozone. The earnings performance of AMAG's divisions were discussed in detail. We are, of course, influenced by these global developments, but we can see and foresee for the last quarter that Metal Division and our smelter in Canada performs well. And the rolling and casting activities in Ranshofen answer to these demands very flexibly, and cost efficiency is always in the center of our activities at the moment. And the shift in product mix, I think, will continue.

We have to stay flexible because of this. But overall, I can repeat what I mentioned already before. We now expect EBITDA for the full year of 2025 at the upper limit of the communicated range, and this was EUR 130 million. And again, I have to point out that valuation effects now in the last quarter may, of course, have a noticeable impact on this result.

With this, we are open for your questions and try to answer these as good as possible. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group.

I have 2. Firstly, on your guidance. You already said you achieved EUR 140 million for the first 9 months. You are guiding now for EUR 130 million, but this would still imply a rather steep drop in the fourth quarter of some [ EUR 16 ] million. This would be more than 50% in comparison to the third quarter. So, could you maybe walk us through the divisions where you would expect such a big drop?

Well, as we said, still we think, unstable market. There might be, again, some shift in mix, but there are some chances and there are some risks remaining to these numbers. Chances, of course, we are actively looking at all cost positions that we have and continue to improve our cost efficiency. But then there can be other risks, especially I missed the English word now for, but for example, for contract risks for long-term contracts for the future that might not have a full cost positive result. Such things are under development, especially in the last quarter when future contracts are being negotiated with our customers. Changes in tariffs are more in the area of risk and the level of products sold to the customers still under negotiation, and there is some uncertainty connected to the volumes that we can sell and to the mix that we can sell.

Yes, go ahead?

This would be like more risks that could materialize, you mean, but like if the business continues performing well similar to the third quarter, do you see maybe also some upside potential that's above this EUR 130 million?

Generally, you have to understand that the fourth quarter always more or less has 2 months because the December, in our case, is always a low result. This is planned like this because of longer stop of the factory for maintenance purposes. And like -- yes, if you look at last year's or previous years, you will always see that the December is not that strong. And therefore, Q4 is always weaker than the months before.

And perhaps I can add because you compare it with the first quarter that our first quarter this year was not already -- was not...

Sorry, it was the third quarter, sorry. I compared with the first quarter. And in the first quarter, you have already the full effect.

Third, sorry. I did got it wrong. Yes. But we always do and you can see it in our history, we always do a very thorough analysis of how our forecast will look like. And I think we proved that we are very thorough and look good in detail in that. And that's what we forecast therefore. And therefore, we can say, we see ourselves on the upper end of our forecast bandwidth, but taking everything in account in this volatile environment, this is what we see at the moment where our year-end will -- how our year-end result will probably look like.

Okay. And then just lastly, quickly on the Metal Division, the shipments volumes were temporarily impacted. So, would you expect some reversal of this effect in the fourth quarter?

When we say temporarily, that means that we have the pots that are producing the primary aluminum. And there, some pots of them -- when we have the full -- all of them working full setup, then we can produce more aluminum and then some of them are in the relining process or undergoing maintenance. Then there can be a period where there are less pots in production and then we produce less metal, and that was what was the case. But when we look at our forecast, we see on the maintenance in relining process as it is called, we are on track to be up to full capacity by year-end, I would say.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Volker Bosse from Baader Bank.

Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. I would have 3 questions, please. First is on your outlook. You gave a subdued market outlook. However, you also successfully implemented several cost efficiency measures. My question would be what is to come in '26 if the situation remains unchanged? What kind of measures do you have still in the bag or planned already for '26 to also to be more efficient than next year if the top line remains as it is? So to say, perhaps also any one-offs, which you can also indicate for next year potentially? Or maybe just your thoughts on how you will react on the unfavorable situation? Would be the first out of 3 questions.

Well, we do not expect a significantly improved market environment next year. We expect more or less that it will continue the way it is this year, doesn't make sense to be too positive. Therefore, as we mentioned, we look at efficiency measures, which we, of course, also did in the past, but now, so to say, reinforced. And this is what we can say at the moment.

Can you be a little more specific what you have in mind if you speak about general efficiency measures to come in? Which areas, which directions you think what can be done, so to say?

To be very honest, we look at every single cost position.

Okay. Good to go with that. And second question would be on your CapEx plans. Could you remind me perhaps what is the CapEx for the full year? And yes, given the unfavorable situation, what are the CapEx plans for next year, please?

We try. And this was the same this year, to stay below the depreciation level. And this depreciation level is in the range of EUR 82 million.

As you know that, we did a big investment program 10 years ago, so 2024 to 2027 -- 2014 to 2017 since we increased capacity here. We had some big investments in Canada. There are also some modernizations going on there because of not increasing of capacity, but necessary investments. But taking this all into account, we have, as Helmut said, depreciation level, which we will not exceed the next years because of -- we already had the big investments and now we are staying at the state-of-the-art level we have.

Yes. I want to point out that we still have the most modern plant in the Western world. We invested from recycling equipment, casting equipment, all the way to rolling and finishing lines equipment. And the last important or major investment that we did was surface treatment line 1.5 years ago. And so we are now well set, well equipped, and this allows us to do this.

And third question would be perhaps a brief one on current trading. If you can give indications about the volumes, about shipments in the fourth quarter, how does it look year-on-year?

Maybe you can repeat the question, Volker.

Yes. It's a question on current trading. Question is about the volumes, the shipments in Q4, where do you stand? What do you expect in a year-on-year comparison?

You're talking about the Rolling Division, right?

Yes. Volume and shipments.

We think that it will be in a similar range to last year in my understanding.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Christoph Gabriel for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much to all of you for joining this call.

As always, I'm pleased to answer any further questions that may come. And in that case, just give me a call or write an e-mail, I'm always there for you. Thank you very much, and have a great Thursday. Goodbye.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the First Half Year 2025 Results Presentation Conference Call. I am Serge, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

The forecasts, plans, future rates assessments and statements contained in this presentation were made on the basis of all information available to AMAG up to 14th July 2025. The economic and trade policy environment has changed several times in recent weeks. Internal calculations, earnings analysis are based on various assumptions. These include, among other things, the continuous validity of global U.S. import tariffs on aluminum products. If the assumptions underlying the forecast do not materialize, targets are not achieved or risks arise, actual earnings may differ from those currently anticipated. We assume no obligation to update such forecasts in light of new information or future events.

This presentation has been prepared with the greatest possible care and the data has been checked. However, rounding, transmission or printing errors cannot be ruled out. AMAG and its representatives accept no liability for the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this presentation. This presentation is also available in German, whereby the German version shall prevail in case of doubt. This presentation does not constitute a recommendation or invitation to buy or sell securities of AMAG.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christoph Gabriel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our conference call for the first half of 2025. Today, we have Helmut Kaufmann, CEO; Claudia Trampitsch, CFO; as well as Victor Breguncci, CSO, who will present the development and results of the first 6 months of this year. As usual, after the present, you have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session.

I would now like to hand over to Helmut, please start the presentation. Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, from our side. I would like to start with the financial highlights on Slide #3. Once again, we can say that our broad setup, especially our broad product portfolio as well as our regional activities, combined with flexibility helped us to achieve a solid half year result in a difficult environment. The H1 2025 result reflects, and we can say as expected, the negative impact of the trade policy, especially U.S. tariffs. This negative impact was visible, especially in Q2 of this year. Despite that, our revenues grew by 11.1% to EUR 786.2 million as a result, especially of the higher aluminum prices and increased shipment volumes compared to the same period of last year, where we were able to achieve EUR 707.7 million revenues.

EBITDA reached a level of EUR 80.6 million, and this was increasingly affected by U.S. tariffs and higher energy, raw material and personnel costs and is down by 15.4% compared to last year's period where we achieved EUR 95.3 million.

Net income after taxes reached EUR 23.4 million and is 29.9% down to the last year's first half of 2024.

The cash flow from operating activities of EUR 76.2 million was roughly the same as in the previous year, where we achieved EUR 75.7 million.

So a short outlook for the rest of the year. The EBITDA range that we provided last time was slightly adjusted from now EUR 110 million to EUR 130 million as a result of market conditions, especially. Details on financials will be provided by my colleague, Claudia Trampitsch, later on.

So let me move on to Slide #4. We would say from our point of view, the most important positive highlight in this first half year was the MoU agreement for power contract -- for future power contract for our smelter participation at Aloutte in Canada. This is so important because it secures a profitable continuation of this smelter, and we can say for the next 20 years seen from today. As you know, Aloutte has been an integral part of the AMAG Group and AMAG positioning over the past 30 years. And this agreement that was basically signed between the Aloutte company, the government of Québec in Canada as well as the energy supplier, Hydro-Québec is agreed to provide an energy of 1,085 megawatts, covers 100% of today's requirement of electric power and enables slight future growth.

The contract -- today's contract expires end of '29. The new contract starts January 1, 2030, and continues for 15 years to 2045. And as already mentioned, this secures and enables long-term planning and is very essential for future investment in this activity to produce primary metal there. The electricity price depends on aluminum price as well as Midwest premium. It is a risk-sharing contract. And thus, this creates competitive conditions for AMAG and partners at this Aloutte smelter.

Let us move on to Slide #5. We always told you that the aircraft industry is important for us. And so it is important for us how our main customers see us. And we are very proud to say that for the fourth time in a row, AMAG managed to get the top rating at the Airbus SQIP program. This is a supplier quality program. And it is, I think, unique that for 4 times in a row, we received this highest award.

Also, we are happy to say that we were able to get a so-called Win-Win Cooperation Award of the Chinese manufacturer, COMAC, because it is also important for AMAG to spread -- to widen the customer base in the aerospace industry.

And Slide #6, we continue to be active in the area of sustainability. We did commission a new preheating station for the supply of liquid metal for foundries. So we are a producer of recycling foundry alloys in Ranshofen. And what is special about this equipment, this is, so to say, to make AMAG Casting fit for the future. This new equipment is already suitable also for natural gas or hydrogen operation, which might be required in the near future to reduce the CO2 emissions at the location in Austria.

And finally, I would like to announce that we, again, are listed in the VÖNIX Sustainability Index in Austria, and we have been listed since 2014 continuously.

With this short introduction, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Victor Breguncci, who will tell you now about market and shipments in the first half.

Thank you very much, Helmut. Good morning, everyone, from my side. So if we move back to -- move forward to Page 8, we see the traditional sentiment indicator that we always present. And as this is no surprise to all of us, it remains very uncertain where we stand, and there are plenty of reasons in the market today that makes us believe it can remain a little bit longer in that direction. So it remains subdued, the global sentiment, Eurozone to our positive renovation. We see signs of improvement in the -- each economy, especially we see in Spain, a very positive growth. But Europe as a whole has been very much impacted manufacturing-wise by the geopolitical discussions we're having, which will be a topic going further.

But before we go into our shipments, it is important to look on Page 9 that the fundamentals have remained unchanged. So the demand for aluminum according to the Commodity Research Unit that we always use as a reference, remains stable and positive in the future. When we look from 2010 to 2024 and '25, we see a steep increase in demand for primary aluminum, and we see this trend remains unchanged for the next 5 years.

When you go into rolled products, we see a steep increase driven especially by the transport and packaging industry, where aluminization, as we say, has been happening. But we see that the geopolitical and other discussions we are having is impacting on how this product portfolio and how the customer mix has impacted us in the first 6 months.

So in Page 10, we bring also some statistics reconfirming what I just said before, transport and packaging driving the whole demand for aluminum rolled products and the mechanical engineering also being a strong focus on the first 6 months of this year, given the shift into the product mix.

On Page 11, we go -- we have a little bit of more numbers on shipments, and we show compared to 2024, an increase of 3% in our top line, especially driven by the Rolling Division. Metal has -- and casting has remained stable. But Rolling, we see a growth that we normally captured into the industrial segment, which is an area where we saw, based on our product portfolio flexibility, the capability of our staff in Ranshofen to shift from one segment to the other, the adjustments into the demand from our traditional OEMs in automotive and aerospace, given the dilemmas and challenges in the supply chain, we're able to adjust our capacity in a very quick way and capture opportunities in the industrial market. So this is -- I see this with a lot of effort and capabilities in our mill that we're able to, not only capture this very important demand from the industrial, but also keeping the capability to -- for the re-ramp up of the automotive degrading in the aerospace sector when this demand comes back in fruition.

So with a little bit more detail on Page 12, we see what happened in all the segments compared to 2024 first half. So in automotive and aerospace, we see a little bit of a retraction, not driven by demand, but driven by the supply chain dilemmas that we see today in aerospace, but also in automotive, given the uncertainties that we have in our OEM customers. But we see the positive trend in industrial, 10,000 tons more compared to 2024 and also in packaging, where we have almost 2,300 tons more, which is adjusting our capacity to fit the market needs.

We had volume-wise, a very good first 6 months. We have challenging market in realization of our margins because of these mix changes. But as you can see on Page 13, we're navigating the turbulent waters with a stable order intake. So in Q1 and Q2, we had same level of order intake, but still remains a lot of uncertainties what could be the impact in Q3 and 4 depending on what the tariff scenario brings, not only directly business to us in North America, but also indirect with regards to our customers in Europe and Asia, given the whole communication of the market because of that reality.

So I try to end with a positive feeling for the first 6 months. And I transition now to my colleague, Claudia Trampitsch, who is going to bring us to the numbers side of the equation. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Good morning from my side as well. Before I go in detail with our results of the first 6 months 2025, I want to give you some information on the development of market prices. So first of all, the aluminum price, which you see on Page 15, rose around 6% compared to last year. And this has an impact on our sales in the Metal Division.

And when you go to Page 16, this is perhaps the more relevant development we can see now is the development of the U.S. Midwest premium. As you can see on this page, due to the announcement of the U.S. tariff this year, we saw 3 big increases in the U.S. Midwest premium. One was in February, which I talked about last quarter, where we already had the announcement of 25% tariff for aluminum shipped to the U.S. And then the second one was the announcement of the 50% tariff, which we saw in May. And thereof, you see on the one hand that we had an increase in the Midwest premium, but what we also see is that, it doesn't reflect completely the costs we are facing because of these duties.

What we also can see out of this page is that, before March 2025, Canada had an exemption of the actual tariff, which were 10% at these times. And this profit or benefit we had until then now is not there anymore. So we are negatively affected by the U.S. tariffs, and this we will then see later on in our results.

A positive development we can see when you go to Page 17 on the alumina price. Last year, it's skyrocketed in some kind due to shortages on the bauxite and alumina production side. But now it has stable and especially for the Q2 2025 onwards, we will -- we can see this now in our results that our alumina price and the cost we have in our P&L decreased on that side. But in the first half year 2025, it is still -- our costs are still higher on that side than it was last year.

Now let's move on to the revenues of our group. As my colleagues pointed out before, we had a growth tonnage-wise. And at the end, we also had a growth on the price side. So in total, our revenues went up from EUR 707.7 million up to EUR 786.2 million. So the increased with 11%. What are the reasons for that? So the main reason is, as I told you before, the aluminum price went up. So we had there the main increase, you can see the EUR 51 million due to the price increase. The second one, as my colleague said before, that we had an increase in volume and mix on the Rolling side, especially. And therefore, we had also here an increase on our revenues.

So now let me move on to the Page 19, where you see the EBITDA of AMAG Group. And here, you can see that despite the revenue increases, which we could show you before, at the EBITDA level, we could not see this -- we cannot see the same increase because of costs due to personnel costs, energy costs, raw material costs and the effects of the U.S. tariffs affecting our results, to the extent that we, at the end, have a lower EBITDA than last year. So we went down to 15% from EUR 95.3 million to EUR 80.6 million.

When you look at the reconciliation, here are the main reasons we already talked before. So you see the effect of the aluminum price. You see the prices premiums went down. This is, as we already talked before. One hand, effect on the Metal side, but especially on the Rolling side due to the product mix we had in the first half this year.

When we look at the EBITDA changes by division. For the Metal Division, you see the biggest effect at the Metal Division, and this is really due to the higher alumina costs that we had in the first half of 2025 compared to the first half of 2024 because as I said before, the high prices we faced last year -- at the end of last year are now reflected in our costs. And the Casting Division is affected by a weaker market environment in the automotive industry and the high energy costs as well. And you can also see that we had a lower EBITDA on the rolling side for the reason I mentioned below before.

Even more, when we look at the EBITDA of the Q2 2025, which you can find on the next page, it's even more evident that all the market development, Victor talked before and which we saw in the market prices, combined with increased costs and U.S. tariffs lead to a lower EBITDA for the second quarter 2025 compared to 2024, even though we also had a higher revenue in the second quarter. So here, you really can see that due to the U.S. tariffs and the increased price pressure, we had a lower EBITDA than last year. A positive effect you can -- negative effect you also can see here is still the raw materials and energy is affecting the EBITDA. Nevertheless, the alumina prices at the moment going back and will get a better effect in the future.

When we look at our net income after taxes, there's nothing in particular that to say about it. It is also lower than last year, affected by depreciation, financial results and income taxes. But all these things, there's nothing extraordinary in it. It's just the development, normal development.

When we look at the cash flow, we can -- you can see that we had an increase -- in our operating cash flows or it's quite stable at the end. But what we can show you is that, we had an investment -- investing cash flow that is significantly lower than last year. And here, you also can see that we are flexible and we are, at the moment, looking at every position there to go with our investment accordingly to our operating results and activities. But what I also can tell you is that, we are doing that quite thoroughly and so that we have our plant at the best condition needed. And therefore, at the end for the free cash flow, you see an increase, which is -- which benefits from our work we do on the working capital side and also on the investment side.

And then now move on to the Page 25 to give you some information on our balance sheet figures. I can tell you that despite all the negative effects we talked before, we still, at the end, have a stable and solid and good results for the first half of the year. And this is also reflected in our net financial debt and also in our balance sheet equity ratios and so on. And the effects we saw on the financial debt side are mainly due to some repayments of debt, dividend we paid this quarter and some smaller other effects. But at the end, nothing special or extraordinary, and the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is mainly determined by the lower EBITDA we had this half compared to last half of the year. And the same is true for our equity, which is still -- not still, which remains stable and 1% less than at the end of the year.

And also, on the cash and cash equivalent side, we see that we have -- there is a little -- there's a downside on the cash and cash equivalent, but this is due to refinancing activities that were -- where we had our borrowings already last year.

On the following pages, you see the information for each division, but I will not go through all of this. As I already told you, the main reasons for the development of our EBITDA beforehand. And so, let me move on to our last slide I will present you, which is about our ESG key figures. And there, you can see that point out the first one, which is the scrap utilization rate. And even though we had a change in product mix, which always can affect this number, we are still on a high level and have an even higher scrap utilization rate than compared to last year. And I think when you look at everything else, it's -- these are stable numbers. And I finally want to point out our accident rate, which is very low, which is a good sign for us.

So now I want to hand over to Helmut to give us some information about the outlook 2025.

Thank you. I move on to Slide 32. And with all the explanation given by my colleagues, I think it's fair to say that we can expect a difficult, challenging economic environment for this second half of 2025. Volatility will remain. We know that there are lots of political negotiations underway, but this might change daily. So with all our outlook that we did, we assume that it continues the way it is at the moment. And this looks for the Metal Division, as Claudia explained, it's, of course, strongly dependent on the price development for aluminum, the premiums as well as raw materials. The influence of the expired tariff exemption for Canada was already explained. This does have a negative impact on our results. And we have to stay flexible in terms of region of delivery of our products. So more or less on a daily basis, our colleagues judge whether we should deliver into the U.S. or bring the primary metal to Europe.

For the Casting Division, we expect a weak demand from the automotive industry. Casting foundry alloys are a local business, local

[Audio Gap]

difficulties for the automotive industry here in Europe.

And for the Rolling Division, Victor nicely explained the shift in product mix with our usual specialties, automotive, aircraft, sports, brazing materials being under pressure. We were able to shift to other areas, especially industrial application and packaging. But nevertheless, this will remain difficult in the second half and weakened earnings compared to last year are expected.

So in total, this made us reduce our upper limit for the EBITDA range compared to our last announcement. And therefore, we forecast an EBITDA range between EUR 110 million to EUR 130 million as a result of these changed conditions on the market. And we have to say, unfortunately, this high uncertainty concerning the U.S. tariffs remains, and this will have a major impact because the 50% were not really influencing the first half of this year.

So thank you very much, and we are now all ready to answer questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question coming from the line of Christian Obst from Baader Bank.

I have two questions. First, in one of your last sentence, you said that it's more complicated in the second half to shift from auto airlines or aircraft business to other business. Can you give us more detail why the shift is more complicated in the second half? And what has driven this kind of possibility in the first half and what changed then into the second half?

And second one is looking at Airbus, especially, I think the development is not that bad. So why is the current situation that difficult and why it should not improve going forward?

Good. Thank you very much. Let me just go into -- the shift from aero from auto and brazing into industrial is, we can use -- we can flex the team, we can flex the organization to produce. But when we have -- we're talking about specialties, we're talking about things that are unique and very much relevant to specific customers. When you try to bring this capacity into a market that has a depend on markets where I cannot drive this, this is -- in the end, it is a commodity. So we have a 50% tariff on a product that is close to a commodity level, there is no kind of room of negotiation that I can bring this forward. So in the end, when you have a market that has overcapacity globally for flat-rolled products, and you cannot simply bring your product forward in this reality. So I'm trying to tell you in a very native truth as we could say, this is not possible, right?

Second, in the aero, I mean, the supply chain to produce an airplane depends on all the parts that goes into an airplane. Raw material is not a problem. If you look at the whole supply chain for aluminum, steel, titanium today, I think the main OEMs orchestrated that demand. But there are difficulties in the supply chain and inventory that prevents the build rates to go at the steep rate that they wanted to. There is expectations that this will increase starting now in the second half of '25, beginning of '26, but you cannot forget that the demand from the raw material always has a lag you can say, between 10 to 12 months. So there is inventory that can cover for this ramp-up, and we will then for sure, accommodate the growth for that might come early in '26 or mid of '26.

So there are elements that are away from specific demand because demand for airplanes remains stable, backlogs are huge. So it's not a matter of demand. It's a matter of having the supply chain deliver what they need.

Okay. Yes, very good. And I have another question concerning the personnel costs. So having in mind maybe that the overall tariffs, maybe they stick with 15% or whatsoever and volatility remains a little bit further going forward so that the entire framework might not change dramatically over the coming months and quarters. So have you any plan to take some special initiatives on the personnel cost side?

We are not so sure acoustically if we really were able to catch. Can you please repeat the final question?

Yes. Okay. Very easily, have you any plans to maybe reduce the cost base on the personnel cost side because of the ongoing uncertainty and volatility in the market?

Honestly speaking, we are always controlling our cost. We do have an internal program, which we call [ Challenge 25 ], which keeps cost in -- within the limits that we set ourselves. And -- but honestly, we did this in the past. In Germany, we say it [Foreign Language]. So we, of course, do not grow our personnel. We look at adjustment accordingly. But at the same time, especially in operations, flexibility that we need on the market needs that we keep all our equipment running. It's not so easy to just switch off a piece of equipment because then this -- and reduce the staff there, then this automatically means that we would go out of this business area. And so, flexibility is super important in this environment.

[Operator Instructions] We have the next question coming from the line of Steiner Patrick from ODDO BHF.

Patrick Steiner speaking from ODDO BHF. I had some technical issues and missed the beginning of the call. Could you therefore please give us a bit more color on the impact of declining alumina prices on the second half of 2025 in the [indiscernible]?

So we are now at the alumina price level, let's say, of around 14%. If you compare this with the higher range percentage we had at the end of 2024, where we were around 28%, 30%, so almost double. So we will see a decline on this side in the second half of 2025. But on the other hand, the second half will also be the one where we will really see the impact of the 50% tariffs as well. And this has 2 sides at the end. So if the Midwest premiums don't cover the 50% increase tariffs in the -- as an increase in the Midwest premium, then we will see the development in the other direction. But we will see an impact on that on the raw material cost for sure in the second half.

The next question comes from the line of Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group.

Just one question from my side, and it's on Slide 16, the U.S. premium development, a strong increase now from EUR 400 to [ EUR 1,500 ]. This does not really seem really sustainable. So could you maybe give us some color what you're seeing how this premium is impacting the U.S. aluminum market? And if the 50% are going to stay really a sustainable environment, could you maybe comment on that, please?

When you -- you're right. When you see the increase in the premium, you see it's really -- the increase is big. But when you look -- you can also look at the U.S. Midwest premium duty unpaid when you deduct the duties. And there, you would see that it decreases. So putting into account, you have to pay the tariff, it would be lower than before, and that shows that the U.S. market has not so much demand or had already inventories before that they are using now at the moment. And I think it's not -- normally on the commodity side, it's easier to say if there is demand or not. But here, you also have the inventories and you have perhaps also the -- you can see the impact in the lower demand on the end customer side as well and therefore, lower demand for rolling mills and so on in the U.S.

And for -- is it sustainable to have 50% tariffs and what's the effect on that, I can tell you that I would like to know that as well because it's something that has a very big impact on our side. But you can't know because as this is something that comes -- was a political decision, it only can get away with decisions or agreements on the political side. And therefore, it's difficult from an economic point of view as a company to have -- to see how long it will stay or not. So that's nothing we can evaluate to say something about it.

There are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Christoph Gabriel for any closing remarks.

Thanks to all of you for attending this call. As always, I'm pleased and happy to answer any further questions. In that case, I invite you politely to just give me a call or write me an e-mail. Thanks a lot, and have a wonderful Thursday.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Goodbye.

Thank you.

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