Novonesis Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Novonesis H1 2026 Conference Call. I'm Moritz, your Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Tobias Cornelius Bjorklund. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, operator, and welcome, everyone, to Novonesis' Conference Call for the first half of 2026. As mentioned, my name is Tobias Bjorklund. I'm heading up Investor Relations here at Novonesis. In this call, our CEO, Ester Baiget; and our CFO, Rainer Lehmann, will review our performance as well as the outlook for 2026. The conference call will take around 50 minutes, including Q&A. Please change to the next slide.

As usually, I would like to remind you that the information presented during the call is unaudited and that management may forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking statement.

With that, I now have the pleasure to hand you over to our CEO, Ester Baiget. Ester, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Tobias, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. We delivered a strong 8% organic sales growth in the first half of the year. This includes a negative effect of around 1.5 percentage points from exiting certain countries. Price contributed close to 2 percentage points and sales synergies contributed a good 1 percentage point. Growth was broad-based across all sales areas, and we achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.7%. Both developed and emerging markets grew 8% in the first half of the year, with growth across all regions.

We continue to deliver growth through innovation and stronger market presence with tailored solutions. We launched 11 new biosolutions, and we are on track of our full year expectation of more than 30. These launches are responding to increasing needs for healthier products, higher yields, resilient and efficient production as well as replacing chemicals across industries. We've now passed 1 year after closing the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition, and we are delivering well in line with original commitments.

We continue to see increasing traction with customers around the globe through a direct, broader and more integrated offering of enzymes and probiotics, positioning us well to harvest the growth opportunities from the acquisition. Based on the strong results of the first half year and a good trajectory for the rest of the year, we are increasing our full year guidance to 7% to 8%. Growth is expected to be mainly volume driven, supported by a good 1 percentage point from each from pricing and synergies.

The outlook includes a close to 1 percentage point negative effect from exiting certain countries. With a stronger sales outlook, we now also expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to be at the higher end of the 37% to 38% range. We announced earlier this month that we signed an agreement to acquire the remaining shares of MicroBioGen, where we have been a minority shareholder since 2013, strengthening our yeast capabilities. We continuously look at our capital allocation. And with the developments we are currently seeing, we initiate a multiyear share buyback program of a total of EUR 1 billion that we expect to finalize in 2029.

With that, let us look at the divisional performance, starting with Food & Health Biosolutions. Could you please turn to Slide #4? Thank you. Food & Health Biosolutions delivered a strong organic sales growth of 9% in the first half of 2026, including a negative impact from exiting certain countries of around 3 percentage points. Pricing contributed close to 2 percentage points and synergies contributed a good 1 percentage point to growth. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 36.2%, slightly higher than last year.

This was mainly driven by economies of scale and synergies and partially offset by the ramp-up in commercial resources that we did over the course of 2025, product mix effects from HMO growth and currency headwinds. In the second quarter, organic sales growth was strong at 9%, including the negative impact of around 3 percentage points from exiting certain countries. The adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 160 basis points compared to the same quarter of last year, mainly driven by the sales leverage.

During the quarter, we launched 3 new products in Food & Health, including an analytical data platform that enables producers to deliver yogurts with consistent fresh taste over the shelf life, accelerating the use of our bioprotective cultures. For 2026, we expect the division to deliver organic sales growth around the higher end of the group range, driven by Food & Beverages.

Could you please turn to Slide #5? Thank you. Food & Beverages delivered strong growth sales -- sales growth of 11% in both the first half of the year and in the second quarter. Pricing and sales synergies contributed positively, supported by cross-selling and increased commercial scale. Performance was supported by all industries, driven by market penetration and increasing adoption of innovation. Demand continues to be supported by the increasing pull for resilient and cost-efficient food production, clean label and healthy products, all while delivering the right taste, the right texture profiles adapted to the local preferences around the world.

Momentum in dairy continued to be strong, driven by productivity gains, upselling and customer adoption of innovation, including increasing demand for probiotics and high-protein products, all driven by health and GLP-1 trends. This was further supported by solid growth in cheese with good contribution from conversion to our DVS format. Growth was led by North America and emerging markets. The strong growth across baking, beverages, meat and plant-based solutions was mainly driven by penetration and innovation.

Our increased commercial presence and technology toolbox combining cultures and enzymes is positioning us well for an increasing reformulation activity and underpinning the strong growth we see in these segments. For 2026, a strong growth in Food & Beverages is expected to continue to be broad-based, supported by both synergies and pricing.

Human Health delivered sales of a growth of 4%, both in the first half of the year and in the second quarter. Both pricing and synergies contributed positively. Performance was driven by Advanced Health & Nutrition, supported by both Early Life Nutrition and Advanced Protein Solutions. Growth in Early Life Nutrition was led by HMO with a strong growth across the regions, including cross-border trade into China. Advanced Protein Solutions grew alongside our anchor customer.

Dietary supplements was impacted by a softening North American market, while the other markets contributed positively. We continue to see the resilience of the health care practitioner channel, a continued global pull for preventive health and demand for innovation, both in traditional areas such as gut health and women's health as well as in new categories such as weight management and GLP-1 support. For 2026, Human Health is expected to grow only slightly, supported by Advanced Health & Nutrition led by HMO, while dietary supplements is impacted by a temporarily cautious North American market.

Please turn to Slide #6. Planetary Health Biosolutions delivered organic sales growth of 7% in the first half of the year and 9% in the second quarter. Pricing contributed close to 2 percentage points and sales synergies contributed a good 1 percentage point. The adjusted EBITDA margin in the first half of 2026 was 38.8%, up 40 basis points, driven by the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition and cost synergies. Margin improvements were partially offset by the ramp-up in commercial resources we did over the course of 2025 and currency headwinds.

In the second quarter, the adjusted EBITDA margin was 38.2%, an increase of 80 basis points compared to the second quarter of 2025. In the second quarter, we launched 4 new solutions in Planetary Health. In Household Care, we launched a multi-enzyme blend for laundry detergents to provide higher performance and stability in various formulations. In Animal, we introduced a triple strain probiotic solution, improving the health of piglets and feed efficiency. For 2026, we expect the division to deliver organic sales growth around the lower end of the group range, supported by both Household Care and Agriculture, Energy and Tech.

Please turn to Slide #7. Thank you. Household Care delivered organic sales growth of 8% in the first half of the year and 12% in the second quarter. Growth was broad-based and mainly volume-driven, supported by pricing. Performance was driven by increased market penetration with a strong traction among local and regional customers by the adoption of innovation across laundry and dish as well as other categories such as professional cleaning.

In the second quarter, growth was driven by the same factors as those in the first half with particularly strong performance in emerging markets, also keeping in mind a relatively lower comparable. For 2026, we expect solid performance in Household Care, driven by continued innovation, increased penetration in both developed and emerging markets and continued support from pricing.

Agriculture, Energy and Tech delivered organic sales growth of 6% in the first half of the year and 7% in the quarter. Growth in the first half was driven by double-digit growth in energy and supported by agriculture. Both synergies and pricing also contributed to growth. Strong growth in energy was driven by Latin America and Asia Pacific, particularly India, reflecting continued growth in corn ethanol production.

North America also delivered strong growth through increased adoption of innovation and supported by higher ethanol production volumes driven by accelerating exports. This reflects a higher global demand for biofuels, driven by increasing need for energy security and supply stability. Additionally, increased penetration of biodiesel solutions and the ramp-up of second-generation ethanol production contributed to the strong growth.

Growth in Agriculture was driven by animal, partially to an inventory buildup at the key customer in the first quarter as well as solid underlying performance in animal. Plant declined, impacted by weak U.S. farm economics. Tech declined in the first half of the year, driven by order timing in biopharma and a softer grain processing end market.

In the second quarter, the performance was driven by double-digit growth in energy due to the same factors as the one in the first half of the year, but boosted also by increasing global demand in biofuels. In Agriculture, performance in animal was in line with expectations and did not include any inventory buildup, while plant was negatively impacted by weak U.S. farm economics.

Tech was driven by growth in biopharma processing aids, while the soft grain processing end market impacted negatively. For 2026, growth in Agriculture, Energy and Tech is expected across all industries, led by Energy and Agriculture and supported by synergies and pricing.

And now let me hand over to Rainer for a review on the financials and the outlook of 2026. Rainer, please.

Thank you, Ester, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's call from my side as well. Let's turn to Slide 8. In the first half of the year, sales grew by a strong 8% organically and 7% in reported euro. Pricing and synergies contributed close to 2 percentage points and a good 1 percentage point, respectively. Currencies provided 4 percentage point headwind, while M&A contributed positively with 3 percentage points related to the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition.

The organic sales growth included around 1.5 percentage point negative effect from exiting certain countries. In the second quarter, sales grew by 9% organically and by 10% in reported euro. Pricing contributed here around 2 percentage points and synergies contributed a good percentage point. Currencies provided 1 percentage point headwind, while M&A contributed positively with 2 percentage points. The organic sales growth included around 1.5 percentage point effect from exiting certain countries.

The adjusted gross margin was 59.7%, an improvement of 100 basis points compared to H1 of last year. Pricing, productivity improvements, sales leverage and the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition supported the development, partly offset by product mix related to HMO growth. Total operating expenses adjusted for PPA-related depreciation and amortization were 29.1% of sales compared to 28.4% in the first half of last year. The development was mainly driven by the increase of resources over the course of 2025 from both organic expansion and the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition.

The adjusted EBITDA margin in H1 was 37.7% compared to 37.4% last year, mainly driven by the higher gross margin and cost synergies. This was partly offset by higher operating expenses and currency headwinds. The inventory buildup at a key customer in animal in Q1 had a minor positive impact on the margin. Adjusted earnings per share, excluding PPA amortization, increased 9% year-over-year to EUR 1.09. Operating cash flow was EUR 523.3 million in the first half of the year, representing an increase of 23% year-on-year. This was mainly driven by higher net profit despite higher depreciation and amortization.

CapEx in H1 amounted to EUR 216.2 million, equal to 9.7% of sales. Free cash flow before acquisitions was flat year-over-year at EUR 307.6 million. The development was driven by higher operating cash flow, offset by the expected higher investment level. The Board of Directors of Novonesis has approved an interim dividend of DKK 2.35 per share for the first half of 2026. The dividend will be dispersed on August 27, 2026, with August 24, 2026, as the last trading day with dividend.

With this, let us now turn to Slide #9 to talk about the 2026 outlook. Please note that the outlook presented today is based on the current level of global trade tariffs and the prevailing foreign exchange environment. As Ester said earlier, based on the strong results in the first half of the year and the strong momentum and demand we see for our solutions, we are increasing the outlook for organic sales growth to 7% to 8%. This includes a negative effect of close to 1 percentage point from exiting certain countries and a softer second half in Human Health.

Growth is expected to be mainly volume driven, supported by a good 1 percentage point each from both sales synergies and pricing across both divisions. Second half organic sales growth will also be impacted by the reimbursement of U.S. tariffs to customers. This will only have a minor negative effect and is included in the full year outlook. As we previously talked about, the first quarter and therefore, also the first half benefited from an inventory buildup at a key customer in the animal business. For the full year, this effect will be neutral. In addition, please keep in mind that in the third quarter, we will be facing high comparables.

We expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to be at the higher end of the range of 37% to 38% following the increased sales expectations. Compared to last year, the improvement is expected to be driven by a stronger gross margin, the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition and synergies, partly offset by currency headwinds and slightly higher input costs. Net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is expected to be around 1.8x at year-end, supported by strong cash generation and continued deleveraging. Despite the increased CapEx level and the acquisition we announced earlier this month, where we have signed an agreement to acquire the remaining 77% of the shares in MicroBioGen.

We have been a minority shareholder since 2013, and this is a good example of a bolt-on technology acquisition that expands our technology footprint, in this case, building and expanding our yeast capabilities. As previously communicated, our temporary step-up in CapEx means that in 2026, CapEx is expected to be between 12% to 14% of sales. On a different note, starting in 2027, sales trading updates will replace the current format of the interim announcement for Q1 and Q3.

We have delivered strong results in the first half of the year, and we're seeing good momentum and strong demand for our biosolutions. To continue this journey, we're deploying our capital where it creates most value according to our capital allocation principles.

Please turn to the next slide for a quick look at how we see this developing. Our #1 capital allocation priority is to reinvest in organic growth through innovation, people and capacity as this is where we see the greatest return on invested capital. We continue to deploy capital innovation and commercial reach, while at the same time staying disciplined on cost. An example of this is the more than 400 commercial roles we added last year to support future growth.

In addition, and as previously communicated, we're making a temporary step-up in CapEx to build the capacity, flexibility and resilience needed towards 2030 and beyond. By 2030, we expect CapEx as a percentage of sales to normalize to a high single-digit level. These dedicated investments include significant expansions of our U.S. culture capacity, a new large-scale multipurpose enzyme facility in emerging markets, which we expect to initiate soon, expanding the new facility in Thailand for HMO and a new ERP system that allows us to scale and gain efficiencies.

We see an attractive return profile on these growth investments. This is contributing to our target of doubling the adjusted return on invested capital, excluding goodwill, to 16% by 2030. If we exclude the merger-related PPA and goodwill, as mentioned in the strategy update last year, the underlying return on invested capital was around 20% in 2024 with a positive trend towards 2030.

Next, we continue to look for complementary bolt-on M&A. The acquisition of MicroBioGen mentioned earlier is a perfect example of such a bolt-on technology acquisition. As we're entering our target leverage range, we are now also in a position to return excess cash to our shareholders. Therefore, we announced inaugural share buyback program in a total amount of EUR 1 billion, which we expect to be finalized by 2029, while giving us room to continue to deleverage. With this step, we clearly show our commitment to all 3 building blocks of our capital allocation principles.

With that, I will now hand over to Ester for a wrap-up. Ester?

Thank you, Rainer. Could you please turn to Slide #11. Thank you. Let me summarize our message today. We continue to deliver strong results with positive momentum across all sales areas and in both developed and emerging markets, also driving a strong profitability and cash flow. Our sustained performance quarter after quarter underlines the growing need for biosolutions, underlines the strength of our offering and the resilience of our broad market reach. On this basis, we have raised the full year outlook. Overall, we are delivering on our promises of today while also positioning the business for sustainable value creation ahead.

And with that, we are eager and ready to open the call for Q&A. Operator, please?

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Thomas Lind Petersen from Nordea.

Congratulations on the strong results. So 2 questions from my side, please. The first one is regarding the guidance and the second half assumptions. You've delivered a strong 8% organic growth in the first half. You raised the full year range to 7% to 8%. And I'm sorry for being greedy here, but what specifically prevents the second half growth from remaining around the first half level or accelerating? You touched a bit upon the tough comps, but you also have Russia -- the exit of Russia coming out. So just where is the greatest conservatism in your new guidance here? That would be the first question.

And then the second question is regarding energy and E15. And I know you cannot say whether it will go through, but what are the customers currently assuming regarding year-round E15 in the U.S.? And has the probability or timing of approval changed your commercial planning or capacity decisions here? That would be my questions.

Thank you, Thomas, for your questions. Let me start with the first one, pass it to Rainer and then cover the E15 question afterwards. I'll let Rainer bring the specifics of the drivers of -- particularly in the second half. But let me put a little bit of color of how do we see where we stand. We are in a good place, in a very good place. It's been quarter after quarter that we have been delivering solid performance. We had delivered 8% in the first half.

With that strong 8% and the good momentum year-to-date, including the momentum we're seeing in Q3 and including our read of the market and the continuous pull of the underlying demand of the solutions that we bring in, that puts us in a very good place to upgrade our guidance to 7% to 8%. With that also comes aiming to the high end of the profitability and also the strong position on cash flow. And Rainer, I'll pass it to you for...

Yes. So Thomas, let me give you some color on what actually impacts a little bit the H2 growth rate. Well, as I said, really having still strong momentum. First of all, we have that onetime effect on -- in Q1 about the inventory buildup in animal at one of our customer sites. There was a one-off. Of course, we said in the -- for the full year, this is going to be neutral. That means that, of course, this dampens the second half in this regard. Then we also have the tariffs basically that we got partially reimbursed and also partially are giving back to the customers. That, of course, has also an impact on the second half sales growth.

In addition, we also flagged that Human Health will only have a slight growth. That means that we also see here an impact on the second half growth rate. All of that together, you're pretty much there where you said you expected us to be. These are basically the main drivers for that softening, in quotation mark, softening, I would say.

Strong underlying overall and in a really good place, as Rainer mentioned. Then let me build back on your question on E15. It is true that what you mentioned that we don't predict the future. It is true that it passed the House and likely the hearing on the Senate this fall. It's never been that far, but it also -- we've seen it evolving and then going backwards in the past. What I can tell you is that's not part of what we have in our growth projections. It's not included on the long-term financial plan. The drivers of the growth that we're seeing, it's driven by innovation, by penetration and by the intimate relationship with our customers.

The growth in bioenergy is broad-based. Yes, North America is strong, and we see also now an increasing pool of demand in North America for exports into Southeast Asia. But we also see good momentum in other areas like Brazil moved from E15 to E30 in August. Now they're starting a trial of E32 for close to 180 days. We also see India moving in the right direction or increasing the blendates and speaking, even porting a path for E100. We see countries in Southeast Asia talking about increasing blendates, not only for biofuels, but also for bioethanol, also for biodiesel.

Overall, extraordinary pool that we see increasing with countries embracing bolder, the derisking and deleveraging of energy, not only from a climate perspective, but also from a national security, geopolitical stability and to drive local jobs. Wrapping it up, we're not making our long-term projections based on regulation based on what we have today. It's not in the plan, but we are present and sitting at the table, having the right conversations with our customers and ready to capitalize on the momentum when it happens.

The next question comes from Alex Sloane from Barclays.

Two also from my side, please. The first one, just on the Food & Beverage division. Obviously, another exceptional underlying quarter. But what really kind of stood out, I guess, is it's broad-based. So last year, I guess a lot of the conversation centered around dairy. This quarter, you're talking about strength in baking, beverages, meat, plant-based. Many of those end markets are not really growing as quickly as dairy. So could you give a bit more color on maybe what specific Novonesis solutions are gaining traction and driving that outperformance? And is it sustainable into the second half? Please.

And then the second one, just on the buyback. I guess, should investors sort of interpret the announcement to -- on the buyback at this stage is kind of a signal that the current period of elevated capital intensity is temporary and that you have maybe growing confidence that the returns on that CapEx are coming through or will come through? And is it fair to assume that this level of buyback still leaves scope for deleverage and bolt-on M&A? And maybe on that latter point, can you give a bit more context on what the MicroBioGen bolt-on deal that you announced earlier this month actually provides you with full ownership?

Thank you, Alex. I'll answer your first question and then pass it to Rainer on share buyback. You summarized it beautifully on your question. Yes, it is broad-based. Yes, it's here to stay. Yes, it's underlying. Yes, it is the outcome of a lot of self-help. We're collecting the fruits of investments we've made in the past, and we're also collecting the fruits of the combination and having an extraordinary strong portfolio on enzymes, cultures altogether under one roof.

There is -- we could go into many details in one by one, but maybe there is an underlying drive -- 2 underlying drivers of why that pull is very strong. Our solutions, biosolutions, the enabler lower cost, higher productivity, savings, higher yields and differentiated claims, cleaner label, healthier foods, higher protein. The demand and the pull for those ones has never been that strong, and we are the company who is best positioned to make it happen. We have a global market reach. We're investing 10% of our revenue in innovation. We're investing on CapEx. We give a lot of comfort to our customers that we are the partner for growth.

When you put that together, GLP-1 trends, nutritional increasing needs, looking -- seeking for healthier products, increasing productivity in the way that foods are produced and our offering and the deep customer intimacy, that translates into growth. We feel we are in a very good place. We like the 9%. We see the underlying drivers, and we're very comfortable on the future ahead.

Alex, on the share buyback program, basically, yes, I can only agree to what you said, right? It's -- we pointed out or I pointed out several times that the elevated CapEx is temporary, right? That's really the next 2 years. By 2030, we're going to go into high single digit then gradually. You can see that also the share buyback commitment as another confirmation of that step. Yes, you're absolutely right. Of course, we see good returns. These are capacity investments. With our margins, of course, you see also then the high returns on these investments.

It will -- the share buyback program will still leave room to deleverage, right? We expect at the end of the year, I said 1.8x. We're probably going to leverage down to 1.7x. Do we have to reach exactly the 1.5x? We always said around 1.5x. Therefore, that leaves us room in this regard. It still leaves us room for bolt-on M&As, absolutely. That is important because that's our second capital allocation principle and bolt-on here and it's basically in the volume of what, EUR 100 million to EUR 200 million around there. That should give comfort basically that -- into our capital allocation principles and also that we are true to what we said, right?

Once we see that the deleveraging and mentioned that we're coming now into this target corridor that we are then ramping up. Ramping up is also the keyword here for the share buyback program. It will -- how it's -- from today's perspective, definitely more loaded towards the second half than the first half because there we still have the higher CapEx.

And on MicroBioGen, do you want to comment there also, Rainer?

MicroBioGen, so on the financial impact here, basically, it's a vertical integration at the end of the day. On the biofuel, we're acquiring great capabilities in that space, and it's going to be, at the end of the day, slightly accretive to the margin.

Yes, a full ownership.

Yes, of course, full ownership, but we said that, right? We're acquiring 77%. So we have then full ownership. We currently have 23%.

The next question comes from Sebastian Bray from Berenberg.

I have 2, please. The first is on the Household Care. A lot of the arguments for why the sales have grown so nicely are pretty similar to what they were in previous quarters, higher investment, better penetration, but the organic sales growth was not 12%. Could you talk about if -- how -- to the extent to which this could moderate and if your assumption on what Household Care can grow at has changed as we move into '27?

And my second question is on HMOs. Can you give an idea of the size of this business these days? Is it still underneath EUR 100 million sale and where the margin profile currently sits?

Perfect. Thank you, Sebastian. I'll take the first one and Rainer on HMOs. Household Care, yes, 12% growth in second quarter. Bear in mind also soft comparable in that quarter that were a driver of the higher comparable. Underlying continuous steady performance with the drivers that you mentioned, collecting the fruits of the investments in the past, collecting the fruits of innovation, responding to the consumer and customer needs, driving to productivity savings, but also driving to body grime removal, experience of freshness, quick and cold washes and particularly growth in emerging geographies.

If you remember last year, we hired 400 people in commercial organizations, 2/3 of them in emerging geographies. They were not all in Household Care, but Household Care is benefiting also from that trend, where we see that the intimacy with the customers and the tailor-made solutions, we just saw us also launching another Medley, another blend formulated answer. We don't sell individual enzymes. We sell cocktails. We call them cocktails, blends of solutions to our customers fulfilling their needs, dropping solutions to give that excellent performance for the detergents that they produce, and we continue to see penetration in domestic markets and in emerging markets here.

HMO, basically is from the overall share of Human Health is actually 10% around there. To the margin profile, as we pointed out in the past, it is still dilutive to the group margin. We'll see that improving once we really scale up. The nice thing is we see also good growth momentum. Going forward, of course, with economies of scale, we'll get this up to the level of the group margin.

The next question comes from Lars Topholm from DNB Carnegie.

Congrats with an impressive quarter. Two questions for me also. The first one goes to the strong growth in Food & Beverage and the soft growth in Human Health. I just wonder if there's any cannibalization effect in here that maybe if people buy more yogurt containing probiotics, they buy less dietary supplements containing the same. So I wonder if it's something you see? And if it is, is it something you can try to maybe put a number on?

And then the second question for you, Rainer, just goes to the tariff refunds I just wonder, I mean, there's an in and there's an out. Why does it negatively affect organic growth? And how do you account for this from an EBITDA perspective? Is there any effect?

Thank you, Lars, also for your kind words. We continue with the tempo. I take the first one. Rainer, you take the second one. On Food & Health, really good performance, 9% year-to-date, 9% in Q2. Yes, Lars, you pointed to an isolated case we see punctual also in North America dietary supplements. Important to mention, and you hindered that in your question, the trend of health, it's never been that strong. We see that, yes, in more probiotics in dairy, but we, for sure, continue to see that in dietary supplements and holistically in Human Health.

We see growth with the exception of dietary supplements in North America. We see growth across all the areas. Even within North America, we see growth in the practitioner channel value chain, which is more stable and resilient. We continue to see the pool or HMO, where we're growing across the regions, also in China cross-border, but we're growing -- we continue to see the pool of infant formula where the trend of health as a valuable nutrition, it continues to be stronger. We are also very pleased with the quality and the caliber of our innovation pipeline.

We have a product -- a new project we launched it a few months ago with Novo Nordisk, where we're starting to evaluate and doing trials in the second half with patients taking GLP-1 and evaluating the power or the impact of the synbiotic effect of prebiotics and probiotics and hence as a driver of a stronger and better quality life. Trend of Health continues to be strong. We see it across all areas, punctual effect on isolated North America dietary supplements market, but strong pipeline, a strong pull across all the areas and continue to be very comfortable about the long-term growth.

Yes. Lars, regarding the tariff refunds, you're absolutely right. It's an in and out. It's just that the out is in a different position than the in. Therefore, basically, we have the basically credit note affects the sales number. Therefore, we see here an impact on organic sales growth, but the -- on the expense side. To your second question then regarding EBITDA, the impact on the EBITDA is neutral. There's no impact on the absolute number of the EBITDA in this regard.

And it correctly understood that in H2, the impact on organic growth is a drag of around 40 bps.

Up to 40 bps, yes, that's correct.

The next question comes from Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

My first question is a bit weird one, and maybe this is for Ester. When I speak to some investors, some potential investors, the impression I get is Novonesis is doing so well that people are worried that this is not sustainable, that is just too good to be true. And frankly, if you look at your Q2 numbers, 9% organic growth, I mean I don't think anybody can debate that it's not good. I guess the question I have is, how will you address that concern of growth being too good to be true? I mean you mentioned new products. I look at your OpEx, which is up almost high single-digit organic.

Your CapEx is very, very strong. So it feels like underlying there's a huge amount of investment going on and yet people tend to fear that your growth is too good to be true. How do you -- or how -- I mean, I don't know if any -- I don't think it's an easy thing to do, but if you were to maybe give some more fillers to the market in terms of getting comfort around the sustainability of growth, not just for Q3, but maybe in terms of next 3, 4 years, I think that would be quite useful.

And the second question, just I was looking at your cash flow statement, and there is a decent step-up in intangible asset spend. And I'm just curious, is this the ERP spend? Or are you capitalizing more R&D this year?

Chetan, excellent questions. Short answer, it is true. It is good and it is true. Long answer, let me give you the try here. Biosolutions are the building block of how the world will produce and consume in the future. We are changing the way that foods will be produced, the goods that we will consume. We are the best company to -- the company that is best equipped to capitalize on that trend. The pull is absolutely clear. There is -- we do 2 things. We do more with less. We bring productivity, efficiency, cost gains for our customers. We bring differentiated claims, something that makes our customers be able to capitalize a stronger momentum and grow faster.

We bring healthier nutrients. We do clean label. We enable high protein. We enable replacing chemicals. It's a combination of higher productivity, higher yields, high efficiencies and differentiated claims. Responding to a strong pull on the market with a growing population that has the need exactly of what we're talking about. The what is there, the pull is there. Then the other question that you make so nicely is why us? Why are we going to win? Well, because we are the leading player on biosolutions.

We invest 10% of revenue in R&D. We have a global market reach. We have deep customer intimacy. We connect those needs into answers. More importantly, we bring them to scale competitively and reliably for our customers, and we're investing. That's why we're delivering and why it's going to be sustainable is because we continue to invest, to continue to be closer to our customers, to continue to innovate and continue to be able to supply. The best thing I can do, continue to deliver, continue to show you it's true, continue to make that trend and make it obvious for everybody.

And Chetan, regarding your cash flow question, you're spot on. The intangibles there are -- the increase in intangibles are related to our ERP journey, so the S/4 journey that we're having. Keep in mind, we do not capitalize R&D. That is actually -- so it's really driven by the capitalization of the S/4 related expenses.

The next question comes from Soren Samsoe from SEB.

Congrats on the impressive results. So 2 questions. First, on Household Care, very high growth. Just wondered if there's any sort of extraordinary in the growth, i.e., is there a customer doing an inventory build ahead of a new product launch or anything similar to that? And also, if you could comment besides emerging market pulling, is there any impact from maybe private label in the U.S. using more enzymes? Is there any impact from higher oil prices yet? Or is that still too early? That's my first question.

Excellent. We'll answer this question, and then we'll wait for the second one. The main driver of the 12% growth, it was softer comparables in -- or that was a strong driver of the 12%. Then all the drivers that you commented, yes, penetration. Penetration, it's not only in the emerging geographies, it's also in domestic markets where we see continuous pull and the beauty of reaching and bringing a stronger penetration of enzymes across the globe for detergents. Too early to see impact on the trends that we're seeing, not only on oil prices, but it's also on accessibility and reliability of supply of raw materials.

But there, if I would say something, it is we see increased momentum. We see good dialogue with our customers, too early to be translated and to see it reflected in the sales. It takes time to move from those dialogues into answers. The drivers of the growth today are innovation of the past, investments we've made in more boots on the ground, both in domestic markets, but also in U.S., where we continue to see the pool of private label together growing with our customers around the globe.

Okay. Then on the DSM Feed Alliance, it looks like the run rate is getting close to what you said when you made the acquisition. But when I do the backwards calculation, it looks like you're still somewhat behind delivering those 3% of revenue and EBITDA of EUR 70 million, but you are getting closer. But maybe you could just tell us sort of how close you are and how is it going with that acquisition?

We basically said initially when we acquired the Feed Enzyme Alliance, it's close to 3 percentage points contribution, and we are actually there. That is -- I would still consider it as in line. Therefore, the overall animal business is doing really, really well. The EBITDA contribution also that we actually set out, which was important. That one we also fulfilled. You really see that in the accretion in our margin also in the division.

We are overall, and as Ester pointed out also in the beginning opening comments, the commitments that we put out there at the beginning, we fulfilled basically now after 12 years. Of course, we continue to then 12 months -- sorry, not 12 years, feels longer. Therefore, we expect that -- we consider this in expectations.

The pipeline is very strong. If there is only one little thing I would add is that the momentum and the conversations with our customers is really, really strong. We do see the penetration in areas where we were not relevant, starting to crystallizing nicely, but also with a good pipeline in place.

The next question comes from Matthew Yates from Bank of America.

Just had a couple of questions around CapEx, please. Rainer, did I hear earlier in the call, you spoke about potentially initiating a large new build plant somewhere. I think you might have said in emerging markets. Just in terms of calibrating expectations for CapEx next year, is it still another year of CapEx probably above 10% of sales? And then just more shorter term, if I'm not mistaken, you've got a big investment that's been going on in Wisconsin. I think that was supposed to come online mid or late '26.

I guess my question is, clearly, the growth you've been delivering in Food & Beverage is very, very impressive. I'm wondering to what extent you're delivering that growth despite being capacity constrained in any way. So the extent to which you can bring on more capacity over the coming months, does that actually give reason to believe that growth could accelerate? Or do I need to be a bit more prudent on kind of the speed at which you can ramp up new plants?

Regarding the CapEx overall, it's absolutely correct. Actually, I flagged that before, right? We said this year, 12% to 14%. Also said that next year, we expect basically nominal the same kind of value in this regard. Therefore, this is this temporary elevated part before we then go down to the high single digit in 2030. In that, there is, of course, all these expansions that I mentioned included, right, also the basically bigger multipurpose facility in the emerging markets that is, of course, takes several years to build and then to be commissioned. That is basically in line with also the all long-term guidance that we gave.

When it comes to the short-term, absolutely correct. We made the investment in West Allis. It's coming online basically, I would even say, a little bit ahead of time, which is great. That is happening as we speak, the first batches being produced. But I want to make sure we are really not constrained on capacity here, right? We're timing that fortunately nicely and are able to really use the assets around the world in order to satisfy any kind of growth peaks that we have in the different markets. All in line with our expectations. Yes, looking forward to West Allis then fully being commercialized.

One last question, operator, please.

Today's last question comes from Andre Thormann from Danske Bank.

First of all, can you maybe put a bit more color on what you're seeing in the second half for Human Health, which I understand would be weak? And then second of all, if you can also add some color on when you plan to in-source HMO fully in this Thailand factory?

Thank you, Andre. We are, as described it, expecting only a small growth in Human Health. That means that we're not forecasting or not reading the market as the particular situation on North America moving into an improvement. That's punctual. It could change. If it happens, I can guarantee you we will capitalize on that momentum. But at this moment, what we are seeing is we're not forecasting changes on the North America cautiousness of the consumers from a dietary supplements point of view.

What we're seeing in the second half in Human Health is continued pull of our solutions across the globe, continuous good momentum also in the dietary supplements in North America practitioner channel and a continued growth on HMO and on infant formula. Those are the drivers that we see as growth.

Then on HMO, we are producing it today internally, as you well know. Thailand is an acquisition that we make that brings small capabilities to produce HMO. With this, we're setting the foundation for the future. Rainer indicated that it's at the expenses of profitability, but it's also coming with a diligent mindset from a capital allocation. We will invest and build a plan accordingly and put us in a position to continue to support our customers and then expand -- lead to a better place from a profitability point of view.

With that, we're finalizing the call. Thank you very much for your questions. Looking forward with the dialogue with many of you also with the team, the rest of the team in sessions for the rest of the week. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Novonesis Q1 2026 Conference Call. I'm Lorenzo, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Tobias Cornelius Bjorklund. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator, and welcome, everyone, to Novonesis' conference call for the first quarter of 2026. As mentioned, my name is Tobias Bjorklund, and I'm heading up Investor Relations here at Novonesis. In this call, our CEO, Ester Baiget; and our CFO, Rainer Lehmann, will review our performance as well as the outlook for 2026. Also attending today's call, we have Tina Fano, EVP of Planetary Health Biosolutions. We have Henrik Joerck Nielsen, EVP of Human Health Biosolutions; Andrew Taylor, EVP of Food & Beverages Biosolutions; and Claus Crone Fuglsang, Chief Scientific Officer. The conference call will take about 50 minutes, including Q&A.

Let's change to the next slide. As usual, I would like to remind you that the information presented during the call is unaudited and that management may make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking statements.

With that, I will now hand you over to our CEO, Ester Baiget. Ester, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Tobias, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning.

The year started strong with 7% organic sales growth against a high comparable, including around 1.5 percentage point effect from exiting certain countries and a good 1 percentage point from inventory buildup in animal. We delivered growth across all sales areas in both developed and emerging markets while achieving an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.8%. Developed markets grew 8% with solid performance in both Europe and North America. Emerging markets grew 4%.

We continue to drive growth through innovation and a stronger market presence with tailored solutions. We launched 5 new biosolutions in the first quarter, and we are well on track for our full year expectation. These launches are responding to an increasing consumer and societal needs from higher yields in food to replacing fertilizers in agriculture.

Ten months into the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition, we're delivering in line with our initial expectations. And more importantly, we are continuously seeing increased traction with our customers through a broader and integrated offering of enzymes and probiotics. As a complement to our global footprint, we acquired an attractive production facility in Thailand in early April, and it's expected to be operational in 2027. The facility holds optionality to produce different biosolutions, including the scaling of HMO production, which would require additional investments. Such investments are already included in our communicated CapEx plans towards 2030.

We are operating in a world with increasing global uncertainty, with rising pressure on economies in many different ways. Countries are seeking for homegrown solutions to strengthen energy and food security supply. Biosolutions are increasingly becoming central answers to resilience and productivity agendas, reducing exposure to global disruptions while enabling the creation of local jobs. In our dialogues with customers and policymakers, particularly in the energy area in Southeast Asia and in India, we see this momentum accelerating and Novonesis is uniquely positioned to support this shift.

With a strong start to the year, we feel very confident about our full year outlook. Growth is expected to be mainly volume-driven, supported also by pricing. The outlook includes a close to 1 percentage point effect from exiting certain countries. For the adjusted EBITDA margin, we maintain the outlook at 37% to 38% with an expected margin expansion compared to 2025, more than absorbing currency headwinds and increasing raw material costs.

With that, let us now look at the divisional performance in more detail, starting with Food & Health Biosolutions. Please turn to Slide #4. Thank you. Food & Health Biosolutions delivered a strong organic sales growth of 9% in the first quarter. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 35.7%, 130 basis points lower compared to last year, mainly driven by the ramp-up in commercial resources we did over the course of 2025, product mix effects from stronger growth in HMO and strong currency headwinds. These were partially offset by cost synergies and economies of scale.

During the quarter, we launched 3 new products in Food & Health, including a new yogurt culture solution that improves taste and texture while also delivering higher yields and productivity benefits. For 2026, we expect the division to deliver organic sales growth in line with the group, primarily driven by Food and Beverages and supported by growth in Human Health.

Food & Beverages deliver -- please turn to the Slide #5. Thank you. Food & Beverages delivered a strong organic sales growth of 11% in the quarter. Growth was mainly volume-driven, with pricing contributing a good 1 percentage point. Synergies contributed to growth and in line with expectations, supported by cross-selling and increased commercial scale. Growth was well anchored across geographies and industries. Performance was driven by increased market penetration, a strong adoption of innovation and positive market development. Despite muted consumer sentiment, we continue to see high demand for higher protein for clean label products and healthier solutions, supporting an increasing demand for biosolutions.

Momentum in dairy continued to be strong and was led by North America and emerging markets. In fresh dairy, demand for efficiency, higher yields and high protein continues to drive strong demand, including bioprotection and probiotics. In cheese, customer conversion to high-yield solutions remains a key growth driver. Growth across the remaining industries was driven by innovation and increased penetration, led by plant-based solutions and beverages with solid performance from recent launches. Solid growth in baking and meat also contributed to growth.

For 2026, growth in Food & Beverages is expected to be broad-based, supported by both synergies and pricing.

Human Health delivered organic sales growth of 5% in the first quarter. Growth was primarily volume driven, while pricing and synergies contributed positively. Performance was driven by strong growth in Advanced Health & Nutrition, supported by both early life nutrition and advanced protein solutions. Early life nutrition was led by HMO with growth across regions, including cross-border trade into China. Advanced protein solutions grew alongside the anchor customer. Dietary supplements was impacted by a softening North American market, where our sales to women's health category continued to be strong.

For 2026, growth in Human Health is expected to be supported by dietary supplements as well as Advanced Health & Nutrition led by HMO. Pricing is expected to contribute positively and deferred revenue is expected to add around 1 percentage point to growth.

Please turn to Slide #6. Thank you. Planetary Health Biosolutions delivered organic sales growth of 5% in the first quarter against a high comparable. The anticipated inventory buildup at a key customer in Animal contributed a good 2 percentage points to growth. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 39.5%, up 10 basis points year-on-year, driven by the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition and cost synergies, including the ramp-up in commercial resources we did over the course of 2025 as well as currency headwinds.

We launched 2 new products in Planetary Health in the first quarter. In Animal, we introduced the Bovacillus probiotic for cattle, benefiting from a faster route to market following the formation of Novonesis. These solutions enhances digestion and strengthens cattle immune system, resulting in an increase of up to 1 kilo of milk per cow per day, while also improving the feed efficiency.

In plant, we launched the first product based on our new enzyme platform, ActiPhy, that enhances nutrition uptake in soil, improving the yield from agri of corn by around 3%. The solution initially targets corn in North America and is supported by several years of strong field trial data. For 2026, we expect the division to deliver organic sales growth in line with the group with relative stronger contribution from agricultural, energy and tech.

Please turn to Slide #7. Thank you. Household Care delivered organic sales growth of 4% against a high comparable. Growth was mainly volume-driven, supported by positive pricing. Performance was driven by increased market penetration and adoption of new innovations across laundry, dish and other cleaning categories in both developed and emerging markets with particularly strong traction among local and regional customers.

For 2026, we expect solid performance in Household Care in a market that carries some uncertainty related to weaker consumer sentiment. Growth will be driven by continued innovation, increased penetration in both developed and emerging markets and continued support from pricing.

Agriculture, Energy & Tech delivered organic sales growth of 5% in the first quarter, driven by energy and agriculture, while tech declined due to order timing in biopharma, processing aids and high comparable. Strong growth in energy was driven by Latin America and Asia Pacific, particularly India, reflecting continued growth in corn ethanol production. North America also supported growth through increased adoption of innovation and higher ethanol production volumes, supported by growing exports. Additionally, increased penetration of biodiesel solutions and the ramp-up of second-generation ethanol production contributed to the strong growth.

Following the increasing need for energy security and supply as countries are seeking further diversification from fossil fuels, we see an increasing strategic global interest for higher biofuel blending.

Strong growth in agriculture was mainly driven by inventory buildup at a key customer in animal, contributing by around 4% to the organic sales growth for Agriculture, Energy & Tech. As mentioned, integration of the Feed Enzyme acquisition continues to progress in line with expectations with synergy milestones materializing as planned. Our plant business declined during the quarter due to timing and high comparable. For 2026, growth in Agriculture, Energy & Tech is expected across all industries, led by energy and supported by synergies and pricing.

And now let me hand over to Rainer for a review of the financials and the outlook for 2026. Rainer, please?

Thank you, Ester, and also good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's call from my side.

Let's turn to Slide #8. In the first quarter, sales grew a strong 7% organically and 4% in reported euro, including around 1.5 percentage points effect from exiting certain countries. Sales synergies across both divisions and pricing each contributed around 1 percentage point, while the inventory buildup in Animal contributed a good 1 percentage point. Currencies provided 6 percentage point headwind, while M&A contributed positively with 3%, reflecting the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition. The adjusted gross margin improved by 120 basis points to 60.1% versus Q1 of last year. Pricing and productivity improvements as well as the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition supported the development, while currency and product mix had a negative impact.

Total operating expenses adjusted for PPA-related depreciation and amortization were 29.1% of sales compared to 27.3% in Q1 last year. This development mainly reflects the planned increase in commercial resources over the course of 2025, driven by both organic expansion and the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 37.8% compared to 38.3% in Q1 2025. The margin benefited from the higher gross margin, cost synergies and around 50 basis points from the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition, in line with our expectations. This was offset by higher operating expenses and currency headwinds.

Let's keep in mind that -- let's keep in mind also that last year's operating expenses were quite low in the first quarter.

Adjusted earnings per share, excluding PPA amortization, were EUR 0.57, corresponding to an 8% increase compared to last year. Operating cash flow amounted to EUR 167.1 million in the first quarter, an increase of EUR 60.7 million year-on-year. It was mainly driven by improved net profit and a more favorable working capital development compared to Q1 last year. CapEx in the quarter amounted to EUR 93.1 million, equal to 8.3% of sales. Despite higher investment levels, free cash flow before acquisitions increased by 9% to EUR 74 million.

On March 12, we successfully issued EUR 1.7 billion of senior unsecured notes to refinance the existing bridge loan related to the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition. Relating to this, I'm also very happy that S&P Global Ratings issued an A- stable outlook rating for Novonesis.

With this, let us now turn to Slide #9 to talk about the outlook. Please note that the outlook presented today is based on the current level of global trade tariffs and the prevailing foreign exchange environment. As Ester mentioned earlier, we are very confident in the full year outlook and confirm our guidance for both organic sales growth and profitability on the back of a strong start to the year. The outlook for organic sales growth is maintained at 5% to 7% and includes close to 1 percentage point effect from exiting certain countries. Growth is expected to be mainly volume-driven, supported by around 1 percentage point from sales synergies and a good percentage point contribution from pricing across both divisions. The outlook also reflects some uncertainty related to consumer sentiment for the year.

The recent situation in the Middle East and its broader implications to global market dynamics is difficult to fully assess and leads to increased uncertainty. However, based on our diversified end market exposure and flexible regional production footprint, including our pricing capabilities, we currently do not expect a material impact on our adjusted EBITDA margin. We continue to monitor the development closely.

We expect a smaller positive timing impact also in the second quarter from the Animal business related to inventory buildup at a key customer. I want to reiterate, though, that for the full year, this effect is expected to be neutral.

We continue to expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to be in the range of 37% to 38%, reflecting continued margin expansion compared to 2025. This improvement is expected to be driven by a stronger gross margin, the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition and synergies, partly offset by currency headwinds of around 0.5 percentage point and including somewhat higher input costs. As previously communicated, we'll see a temporary step-up in CapEx as part of our strategy to enable growth through 2030 and beyond. This includes continued expansion of our resilient global enzyme production footprint, completion of the doubling of our U.S. dairy culture capacities here in 2026 and investments related to the recently acquired facility in Thailand.

In addition, we continue to invest in the implementation of our new ERP system, which will impact CapEx by around 1 percentage point annually over the next few years. As a result, CapEx is expected to be 12% to 14% of sales for 2026. Finally, Net debt-to-EBITDA is expected to be around 1.7x at year-end, supported by strong cash generation and continued deleveraging despite the increased CapEx level. We had a strong start to the year and remain very confident in the 2026 outlook.

With that, I will hand back to Ester.

Thank you very much, Rainer. Could you please turn to Slide #10? Thank you.

In the current macroeconomic environment, demand for our biosolutions continues to be strong across all fronts, from customer needs for higher yield and efficiency, consumers' increasing demands for healthy nutrition and to growing needs to decouple from fossil fuels as countries seek greater energy diversification and security of supply. Quarter after quarter, we demonstrate the strength and the resilience of our business model, supported by strong innovation, a resilient global footprint and diverse end market reach. As the world continues to evolve, the relevance and the need for biosolution only continues to increase. And even with increasing global uncertainty, we are confident in our 2026 outlook as well as the 2030 targets, including the 6% to 9% organic sales growth CAGR.

And with that, we're now ready to open the call for Q&A. Operator, please?

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Thomas Wrigglesworth from Morgan Stanley.

Two questions, if I may. Could you just elaborate a little deeper as to how you see the Middle Eastern conflict playing out both within your business and within your customers? I guess there's -- the message that we hear is that Southeast Asia will be more impacted by cost inflation. And clearly, that then leads to a question about your emerging market exposure. So anything that you can share in terms of recent order pattern changes or freight rate constraints that are limiting or enabling your business would be very useful?

Secondly, just in light of that, just on the bioenergy side, you've touched on seeing an uptick in interest in obviously, bioenergy solutions. Is that to say that this is going to be something that will happen in a couple of years? Or is there going to be a more immediate impact through 2026 as you see it?

Excellent question, Thomas. And let me start answering to them and then also let Tina build up on each of them. So first, regarding Middle East conflict, important to mention that our direct exposure to Middle East and the sales in Middle East, they are small. So the impact effect of that, it's marginal to none on our overall revenue.

Then building on your comments on what we see these changing dynamics in our -- in the world that we live in. We see from one side increased level of cost from raw materials that we have very good conversations with our customers, also including pricing, and we're confident that it will lead to a marginal neutral non-impact into the EBITDA. And then we see increasing continued interest from our customers around the globe. That was there. But now with this crisis in Middle East, if anything, we see it as a catalyzer of further momentum. We see a catalyzer of further momentum for diversification. And that's true across all segments.

We see it on Food, the eagerness for healthier and cleaner and replacing stabilizers and texturizers and seeking for solutions that will continue to fulfill the consumer dynamics. We see it in Household Care. We see it in Energy. We see an increasing need, particularly in Energy.

And then maybe tipping in your second question, particularly in countries that they had already in the past, taken decisions towards biofuels. We see Brazil, North America, Malaysia, Indonesia, the countries that they had already included biofuels into their diversification, benefiting from those decisions of the past. And then seeing a broader resilience and being able to absorb the constraints on supply and also access to competitive raw materials. And we see that momentum doubling up across the whole globe, but particularly with a strong pull here in Southeast Asia.

These efforts are there. They are reflected -- maybe it's not so much on the sales year-to-date. We see in U.S. an increasing level of exports. But the big impact, it's for the long term, as you mentioned. Do we see the growing direction of increasing pull from mandates that will lead to continuous investment. And in any case, it gives us stronger comfort on the drivers of growth. So long answer, indicating that what we're doing with our customers, what we're doing on price. But then at the same time, the catalyzer of this crisis of momentum that was there for solutions leading to higher yields and high efficiencies and also decoupling from energy.

Yes. And only adding a bit because I think Ester covered most of it. Short term, I would say, yes, you'll see it as a pickup in exports from the U.S. mostly. However, you will also see it elsewhere longer term. I am just coming back from Southeast Asia, in fact, here over the weekend. And there is a significant interest in, for example, biodiesel expansion. We talked about Indonesia going from B30 B40 to even B50.

So I would say that diversification journey we have been on with feedstock diversification, with end market diversification and geographical diversification is serving us well here. But most impact, you should expect in the longer term, given the mandates are ramping up. So it's a good underlying growth driver for the energy segment. Shorter term, it is mostly from exports, but not only from exports. And in the quarter, you hardly see anything. Exports has been growing over the last year. So that is part of our numbers as well.

The next question comes from the line of Thomas Lind Petersen from Nordea.

Two questions also from my side. Both regarding the guidance for this year. So Ester, back in February, you said that you expect a sort of deterioration in the consumer sentiment. And I think perhaps you were alluding to North America. So I was just wondering if you could give us a bit of color on that. Is that still what you expect for the year? Or are you beginning to see a deterioration in the consumer sentiment? And perhaps also if you could comment a bit on the pricing and your ability to raise prices given the higher raw materials. So one question here regarding the revenue for this year.

And then the second one is about the adjusted EBITDA margin. You end up here at 37.8% in the first quarter. And just wondering if how we can extrapolate from -- for the rest of the year. Also given I believe that your FX headwind, at least the large part of the FX headwind that you've seen has sort of been cycled now. So is there anything that speaks for a lower adjusted EBITDA margin going forward? Or how should we think about this?

Excellent. Thank you, Thomas, for your questions. I'll answer the first one, and then I'll pass it to Rainer on EBITDA.

Regarding the comments we made at the beginning of the year, as you so nicely indicated, we included in our guidance some softness on consumer behavior. We could foresee that coming, and that was included in our guidance, and it's already happening. We continue to include it in our guidance for the -- and it's included in our guidance for the full year.

It's true that the strong start of the year gives us comfort, and it reduces the risk from the volatility and uncertainty of the market that we're living in. We continue to see, as I mentioned before, a strong underlying demand from our solutions, but we see some cases of that softening demand. Maybe particularly not reflected in Q1, but in the Q1 figures, but particularly in Human Health, this is a segment where we see consumers and in North America when they are sitting and choosing the -- where they're allocating their pocket money, decreasing the demand of probiotics. And we see some indications there of softer consumer demand in North America in probiotics, which, as I mentioned, included in our guidance and also coupled with a strong start of the year gives us full comfort of deliver of the full year guidance.

And then I'll pass it to Rainer on EBITDA.

Yes. Thomas, you're absolutely right. Of course, the biggest, let's say, spread between the FX side was in Q1, where we actually had last year, even tied to USD 1.06 and now we're running at USD 1.17, USD 1.18. Nevertheless, let's keep in mind that it's a gradual impact. So for the year, we still see the around 0.5 percentage point impact on the EBITDA margin. And then the -- of course, the strong margin in Q1, please look at the sales, right? There's quite some sales leverage in there. That was the highest sales quarter ever. That, of course, will come down a little bit. But therefore, we feel comfortable that this margin is going to be between 37% and 38%.

Thank you, Rainer. And building on also on your comment on pricing, we have really good conversations with our customers, and we feel comfortable on the momentum there on bringing in the prices and then leaving, as Rainer mentioned, of no impact to the EBITDA margin for the year.

The next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

I was just curious on your announcement to buy this facility in Thailand. You are spending a lot of your own CapEx and then on top, you're buying this facility. I'm just curious from a timing perspective, why now? Because there is so much CapEx going on. Is this an indication of you thinking about yourself more capacity constrained? Or is this more a unique opportunity? Because I think this is much more an HMO type facility. So maybe it can speed up your go-to-market on HMO side?

And the second question and maybe this is just a reminder because you are growing very, very strongly in dairy, but I was at DSM-Firmenich Capital Markets Day earlier this year, and they were actually indicating that they are at #1 in dairy enzymes from what I remember. And I was just curious how are you growing in dairy across both your cultures and enzymes? And is there a limitation from the Chr. Hansen merger that you had in place because of regulatory consideration that is probably limiting to some extent, your growth? Or can that be even better at some point once that limitation is taken away?

Thank you, Chetan. I will let Andrew answer the question on dairy and enlight you on why now we are stronger and even more equipped to be the partner of growth for our customers with a bolder portfolio.

But then bringing -- building on your first question on Thailand, we have investment -- we have announced announcement of increased CapEx of 12% to 14% to support growth, aiming also for the high end of our guidance. And this facility in Thailand is a good add to that path. It is bringing optionality for growth, including further investments that they are already included into the 12% to 14% and also comes with some capacity already today to produce HMO that supports the growth trajectory of this business. But then opportunistic acquisition that puts us in a good place in a region that we're growing, well embedded in our overall CapEx, included in our strategy and then with further investments to capture the potential of this optionality embedded already in the 12% to 14%.

Yes. And maybe taking on the second part of the question around dairy. So I'd begin with -- we have very strong customer relationships across the world in dairy, and we're seeing good growth in both cheese and fresh dairy and all its related subcategories. And when you think about cultures and enzymes, we're very strong in both of those and actively innovating.

I think the thing that's probably most interesting for us right now is the combination of those pieces. So post the combination of the 2 companies, we're now able to do things in the combination of cultures and enzymes that help both the production of the cheese as an example, as well as the aging, oftentimes in one bag. And so a lot of what we're trying to do is expand those solutions that are both driving productivity for our customers, which is an ongoing demand, but then also new value, how can you create better tasting cheeses, how can you taste -- quicker ripening cheeses. So we're very comfortable in our position and the growth that we're seeing around the world supports that.

The next question comes from the line of Lars Topholm from DNB Carnegie.

I also have 2 questions. One is actually related. So let me start with that. So in Thailand, there's a lot of focus on production of ethanol from cassava, which requires enzymes. So I just wonder, maybe, Tina, if you can put some words to the significance of this for you guys? And are these enzymes some you can produce on your new Thai assets?

And then my second question goes to Ag, Energy and Tech, which grows 5% organically. There's a 4% contribution from inventory buildup in Animal Health. And I assume bioenergy grows double digits. So it seems to me something is going terribly wrong with plant and with tech. I just wonder if you can put some words and maybe some growth rates on the 4 different components of this division and maybe also the reasons behind, what should we say, the less flamboyant growth in parts of that business.

Thank you, Lars, and I'll pass it to Tina, who will also guide you on the optionality of the plant on Thailand with further investments. And remind us that we now look in our business on a quarterly level here for the long run, and we are confident on the full year guidance.

I know, Ester, but you said the same after Q4. And now we have 2 soft quarters in a row. So the long term starts with a weak quarter. That's how it is.

Every quarter is a quarter. And then I repeat myself, we were confident on the full year guidance, but I'll pass it to Tina, Lars.

Yes, Lars. So let's start with Thailand. And yes, Thailand is one of the places in Southeast Asia where we operate in our bioenergy space as well. The plant which we have there gives us optionality also for producing the enzymes there. So this is good.

In terms of Agriculture, Energy & Tech, and you're right, we saw a strong growth in bioenergy and the math then brings that tech and plant is in decline. I don't -- you said terribly wrong. I don't at all agree to that point. I would say I think sales is progressing according to plan. Yes, it's a declining quarter. And yes, it is a double-digit decline. But we remain confident for the full year.

Agriculture, Energy & Tech is going to grow stronger than Household Care and all of Planetary Health is going to grow in line with group. So I feel quite good about where we are, including in plant and tech. Tech is, as you know, quite lumpy, especially given biopharma processing. And you could say we knew that we wouldn't get any orders here beginning of the year. We expect that to ramp up, and we see that ramping up for the full year. And that's why also tech is going to contribute to the growth of AT. Plant is super small. So -- and you know there is timing on when it's exactly planting. And then you have to remember also the tough comp, which there are in both plant and tech from 2025.

Tina, I would just mention it didn't grow in Q1 '24. So the tough comp from '25 was a very easy comp, I guess, in '24.

But what about '23 then? Lars, let's hold that question for end of the year. Then when we see the growth coming in, then we remind ourselves about the volatility of 2 small segments that they are by intrinsic nature, volatile, and they contribute consistently to growth for the company.

The next question comes from the line of Alex Sloane from Barclays.

Two from me, please. First one, just on household. Obviously, with oil prices much higher and petrochemical-based surfactants under renewed cost pressure, are you seeing any acceleration in demand from your customers for enzyme substitution? And if so, when would you expect that to translate into your volumes?

And the second one was just a follow-up on the food biosolutions. Obviously, the growth rate there, excluding the Russia exit, really strong, I think, close to 15%. Dairy, obviously, the standout. Could you maybe help us just disentangle what is you see as kind of structural growth within that from penetration and new customer capacity opening versus maybe any temporary customer behavior, if there was any maybe pull forward of orders, customer restocking, et cetera. I guess should we be expecting that food growth to slow and normalize in the second half, please?

Excellent. Thank you, Alex. Tina will answer your question regarding the underlying drivers of the growing demand in Household Care and then Andrew, on Food & Beverages.

Yes. So on Household Care, you could say, increased oil prices is increasing the discussions on substitution of surfactants. However, this is not something you do overnight. So this is something which we are going to see as time progresses. So this is an underlying good driver for our Household Care business.

But I would more think of it in a more longer-term perspective, Alex. So we have, over many years, invested in emerging markets because there is a significant growth opportunity for us there. And this is a market where we have low single-digit growth when you look at both emerging as well as developed market when you combine it. So it's not a high-growth area. But we have been able to outgrow that given the investment, given our strong footprint in emerging markets.

And as we also have talked about many times, the inclusion of enzymes in emerging market is less. So there is a significant opportunity for us to go for. Short term, you could say there's increased interest for surfactant replacement, but not only surfactants. It's also other oil-derived components. However, there is also the risk of taking out, for example, enzymes short term given the cost pressure they are under. This is not something we are seeing. We remain, you could say, confident in the full year outlook of solid growth in Household Care.

Yes. And then following up on the question with regards to food and dairy. So first off, the base most structural momentum continues to be very positive. We've talked the last couple of quarters about things such as the drive for productivity, the drive for high-protein yogurts for new texture experiences. So if you look across the world, those underlying structural drivers remain and actually are strengthening in some parts of the world. We do have some benefits from the annualization of some of the larger projects that have been queuing up in dairy, which we've noted before in the past. So the opportunity pipeline looks solid, but we wouldn't expect that to continue at the same rate.

The thing that's also important is we're seeing good growth in food as well, so not just dairy. So if you think about the balanced portfolio, we are continuing to see acceleration. We talked a little bit last quarter, but we continue to see beverages as an example, back in the growth mode through some of the investments we've made. So we think it's very balanced across the 2 pieces.

The next question comes from the line of Matthew Yates from Bank of America.

A couple of follow-ups really from what we've discussed already. The first one for Rainer, just around the operating expenses. It looks like it was up about 13% on a reported basis, I guess, probably closer to 10% at constant scope. You mentioned, I guess, some annualization effect given spending ramped up through the course of last year. Just wondering when you think about the full year guidance for 2026, is the expectation that OpEx grows in line with sales or slightly faster?

And then the second question, sorry to just circle back on Tina. I think it was Lars was asking about the animal performance. I mean it looks to me over the last 3 years, the animal business hasn't grown. I apologize if that's wrong, you're welcome to correct me. So it has been quite some time now. So can we just talk a little bit more about how that business is doing and where the confidence would come from just thinking that growth may pick up over the coming quarters?

Thank you, Matthew. I will let Rainer answer your first question and then Tina build -- and your question was on animal or on plant then?

On animal.

Okay, perfect.

So let me answer first on the OpEx side, absolutely right, we saw a step-up in Q1, exactly what you said, the rolling effect of annualization. But even on top of that, there's always a little bit of timing. So I do not expect actually to increase OpEx for the next quarters relatively to the Q1 number. We are here really going to see more flattish development.

Yes. And on the Animal business, we feel quite comfortable with where we are on the animal side. We have seen growth over the last years. And it is a business where we see in the customer discussions, increased focus on the full biosolutions, which we are offering.

But you can't share anything more specific about market conditions or product launches?

Yes. So one of the things we're also calling it out this quarter is the launch of Bovacillus. Also, we have earlier years launched a number of new enzymes. Hiphorious is, for example, a new launch, which is coming. So it is, as you know, in the animal space, and you need to do trials in order to prove the benefits of it. And we feel, I would say, quite good at where we are.

It is -- when we look at what we have, the combo solutions is something which there is quite some interest in both from enzymes as well as probiotics. We see, you can say, good pickup on our silent solutions.

So overall, I would say we are, in fact, in a good place in the animal space. It is a bit more difficult on the numbers given the acquisition. So you'll have to look at both organic and the acquired and so forth. But overall, we believe we are in a good place there. But let's go into details on the discussion later on, if needed.

The next question comes from the line of Soren Samsoe from SEB.

So I have 2 questions. One is more in dairy in China. Just if you could update us on growth in yogurt and also cheese. I understand, cheese is growing quite well, although from a low level still.

And then my second question is on the human health weakness. I understand, of course, driven a bit by the weak consumer in North America. But are there any other dynamics we should be aware of here or changes to the dynamics? And how is the growth looking in Europe and Asia?

Thank you, Soren. I love it when the question comes implied with the answer on -- particularly in human health on the isolation on North America on the softness, but I'll let Henrik build on that. And first, Andrew, shine you up with the efforts we're doing in China and that we continue to grow in the segment on any degree.

Yes, very good question. So as we all know, the fundamental dairy market in China has been challenged for a few years. What's exciting is we're continuing to see growth. So we saw growth last year. We're seeing growth again this year. That is both in fresh dairy as well as in cheese.

On the drivers of that growth are different. So on the fresh dairy side, a lot of it ends up being around innovation and new products and new solutions that we're driving to help reinvigorate the category. And on cheese, that's where we're helping build that market over a long period of time. So we've been investing in the cheese team in China as a way to actually be the reference point as that market develops. So the drivers are different, but both positive.

Thank you for the question, Soren. So yes, in human health, one theme is for sure, the U.S. market. Long-term underlying drivers are still healthy. Short term, we are seeing some signs of a weakening U.S. consumer. There is, of course, the consumer sentiment out. We see fewer searches on online platforms for probiotics. And we have yet to see that potentially become an effect, but this is something we are definitely keen on watching out for.

Then you asked about Europe and Asia. Overall, the quarter was in line with our expectations. Europe also, it's a growth market, but at a more moderate pace as well as in APAC, where maybe I highlight the -- we're seeing some very nice growth in dietary supplements in China. That's still coming for Novonesis from a small base, but an area where we have high expectations.

The next question comes from the line of Sebastian Bray from Berenberg.

I have 2, please. One is on the Plant Health segment. So I'm trying to work out if the absence of growth here is a deliberate decision on Novonesis part or a result of market share loss that is not wanted. And I look at the Planetary Health segment margin, and I think to myself that maybe there is some removal of lower-margin products here that have either commoditized or were not quite what Novonesis was looking for. What intentions, what program has Novonesis been implementing in this segment? And what is the end goal?

My second question is on the bioenergy segment. If you were to rank in order of importance, increase in ethanol production, change in market share and growth in 2G, what would have been the biggest drivers of the growth in Q1?

Thank you, Sebastian. Regarding the question about Bioenergy, I mean growth in Q1 for 2G...

Okay. So on plant health, yes, we talked about -- we had some restructuring of part of our planned activities last -- end of last year. And that was simply because we have a number of launches we want to get out. So you could say more securing that we get benefit from the things which we have developed. We are happy with the launch we have done just this quarter on ActiPhy. So you could say an example of what it is we want to get out and do some work for us.

Overall, I would say, in plant, remember, plant is a very small part of Agriculture, Energy & Tech. It's 5-ish percent. So it's quite small. So it's not influencing in any significant way the margin. But it is -- Planetary Health is a good -- you could say it's big industries efficient with a nice profitability.

In terms of Bioenergy, I would say, well, when you look at the ranking where you say increased production, change of market share and whether it's 2G growing, well, 2G is still very, very small. It is less than 5% of the energy segment. So although the growth rate is nice, it is still a small part of the growth. So if I were to rank them, the biggest one, which is driving our growth is the increased -- I wouldn't say penetration, but the increased production of ethanol. That is the main driver for our growth.

The next question comes from the line of Nicola Tang from BNP Paribas.

Coming back on Household Care or actually coming back on the comments around cautious consumer behavior that you had flagged earlier in the year. I think today, you're referring to the probiotics business, but I think you've historically mentioned Household Care, particularly risks or the potential risk in North America. I was wondering if you've seen any deterioration at all in Household Care, specific to North America or generally? And conversely, I was wondering if perhaps there could have been any prebuying by some of your -- or safety stock build by some of your customers, either in Household Care or elsewhere, just in light of the kind of Middle East uncertainty.

And then the second question, I was wondering if you could give a little bit more detail on your outlook for inputs. Is it fair to assume that the main potential impact from the Middle East conflict might be more around energy cost, where I know you have hedging. Could you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of raw materials? Because as I understand, it's mainly naturals, where there's less inflation than on the synthetic side. So could you talk about the magnitude of input inflation that you expect for this year? And any commentary around specific inputs or availability of inputs?

Thank you, Nicola. I'll comment on both questions, and then I'll pass it to both Tina and Rainer.

The first one, important to mention that the 7% growth, it's underlying growth across all segments, robust growth, volume growth mainly, also a little bit of growth from pricing. And it is driven by continuous increasing demand of our solutions. We don't see changes on the consumers' buying behavior. This is underlying driving demand growth, where biosolutions continue to be the answer of our customers.

We don't see the softness in North America on Household Care. Tina is going to further comment on that. And we see continued penetration of the -- collecting the fruits of the investment we've made in the past. Last year, we put 400 more people boots on the ground, sellers in the regions. And we see the benefits there. We see the closeness of the customers, the proximity where the growth is and then translating it on what it is the top line growth that also with the strong start of the year gives us full confidence for the year-end guidance.

And then regarding the costs, Rainer will talk about this. But as I mentioned, we bring in pricing and conversations with our customers, and we're aiming and forecasting nonimpact to the EBITDA for the year.

Yes. So as Ester said, I mean, when you look at, a, the Michigan Institute on consumer sentiment in the U.S. That is something which for sure we are watching. Also, if you watch the Nielsen data, then you will see, you could say, flattish/declining volumes in the U.S. in detergent volumes after a good 2025. So this is something we are watching, you could say, in the market. But when we look at our data, we don't see any impact.

And in fact, I also want to highlight that given our broad base with different players in different segments, if people move between, you could say, private label and branded goods -- for example, in Europe, we have a broad exposure. If they move down in tier to less enzyme containing enzymes, then we are not immune to that. But that outlook of our sentiment and how we look at the world is included in our outlook for the full year. And as we have said, we expect solid growth in Household Care.

And Nicola, regarding the input cost of the Middle East, as Ester basically said, this is mainly impacting us on the supply chain side. So meaning our basically transportation and packaging cost is affected by that, which we're basically recovering on the pricing side. So that is really the driver for it, not the other components on the COGS side.

One more question, operator, please, last question.

The next question comes from the line of Charles Eden from UBS.

I'll limit myself to 2 quick ones, if that's okay. Firstly, probably for Tina, can we just come back on the plant and tech? Obviously, you mentioned double-digit decline in tech in the quarter, but I think you obviously mentioned order timing. So is the expectation that reverses in Q2 or at least in the balance of '26? And if possible, could you quantify the magnitude of that order timing headwind in Q1?

And then secondly, just to come back on Food & Beverage. Obviously, a lot of time focused on Ag, Energy & Tech, but Food & Beverage, in particular, sort of 11% organic, but 15% underlying, if you exclude the Russia exit, quite an incredible performance. Can you just sort of help us understand maybe that's well ahead of the end market growth. What is driving that? What's the success in your offering, which is allowing you to grow probably 4, 5x the underlying market?

Thank you, Charles. I love that question. What is the driver of -- that we continue to outgrow the markets that we're present. And it's consistently across all areas, a single pattern, customer proximity and bringing answers that lead to value generation for our customers. And that's true for food. That's true for dairy. That's true for Household Care. That's true for Bioenergy. And in the environment that we live in today, we see that pool continue to grow.

I'm going to tip toe on your first question and then pass it to Andrew. We saw a decline, double-digit decline in Ag and in plant and in tech this quarter mainly from timing. Both are going to contribute to growth through the year. That means implicitly that there's going to be growth on the remaining of the year to overcome the decline that we saw on a segment in AAT that contributed to growth with a strong growth from Bioenergy and also growth in Animal that we see good momentum and conversations with our customers.

And with that, Andrew, I'm passing it to you.

Yes. Thank you. And so if you take a step back and think about what's driving Food & Beverage, I think there's a few things. One, we all see the same data on the underlying market growth. I would say that there are pockets of the underlying market that we are differentially exposed to. We always talk about the high protein trends around the world. That's clearly a piece. But the biggest piece is the increasing use of our biosolutions. It's actually driving penetration around substituting, in particular, for synthetics.

And what's exciting is that is a continuing trend in many of the things that we see, for example, Maha, and other things actually are helping with that. So as an example, a culture can substitute for multiple things in the yogurt that are potentially at risk. So we do see that across Food and Food & Beverage.

The third piece is really around how you share that value. So if we're helping our customers create productivity, if we're helping them get better end consumer and customer demand, we also work to share that value through the pricing. So we are excited about the progress. It's a very choppy market around the world, but we keep investing in that part of the business. And in particular, the capital investments we're making are very important because it signals to our customers, we're willing to grow with them for the long term.

Thank you very much. And with that, we're closing the session of the day. Looking forward to continuing the conversations with all of you during the forthcoming days. Thank you so much. Bye.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Novonesis 2026 Annual General Meeting. My name is Cees de Jong, and I'm the Chair of the Board of Directors of Novonesis. And on behalf of the Board of Directors, I'm pleased to once again welcome all of you to our innovation campus here in Hoersholm, where it's a privilege to receive everyone here where our dedication to biology and science comes to life and brings answers for today and the future. I would also like to welcome everyone joining us via webcast.

Today, we will take you through how we've successfully delivered on our targets for 2025 and how we're using biology to transform the way the world produces and consumes. On the screen behind me, you can see the other directors. The Board includes Heine Dalsgaard as the Vice Chair; Lisa Kaae, Monila Kothari, Kassim Kutay, Kevin Lane, Morten Otto-Alexander Sommer and Kim Stratton. And our employee representatives are Robert Noddeskov Jensen, Lars Bo Koppler, Preben Nielsen and Frederikke Rose Spenner.

Now I would like to present the executive leadership team with Ester Baiget as our President and Chief Executive Officer; Rainer Lehmann as our Chief Financial Officer; Tina Sejersgard Fano, Executive Vice President, Planetary Health Biosolutions; Claus Crone Fuglsang, Chief Scientific Officer; Anders Lund, our Chief Operating Officer; Henrik Jorck Nielsen, Executive Vice President, Human Health Biosolutions & Strategy; Morten Rasmussen, the Executive Vice President, People & Stakeholder Relations; and Andrew Taylor, who is the Executive Vice President, Food & Beverages Biosolutions.

The company's auditors are Ernst & Young, and they audit both our financial and our sustainability reporting. And pursuant to Article 8.1 of the company's Articles of Association, the Board of Directors has again this year appointed Anders Orjan Jensen, Attorney at Law to chair the Annual General Meeting. And I'll now hand over to him.

Thank you, Cees. And I'll start off with a few formalities. First of all, relates to the convening of the meeting. I have reviewed the convening notice and all the material that has been presented on the company's homepage and concluded that they satisfy all the requirements on the articles and the Companies Act. And therefore, I've concluded that the meeting today is lawfully convened.

When it comes to the agenda for the meeting, we have here on the slide behind me all the required items for an Annual General Meeting at Novonesis. There's also 4 proposals from the Board of Directors, 3 of them are customary for Annual General Meetings and then we have one that relates to -- is a technical amendment of the articles that relates to a name change of the region where general meetings are held, a very technical point.

On the agenda, there was also a proposal from Michael [indiscernible], shareholder. However, he has not been able to participate in the meeting today, and he has informed us that he, therefore, withdraws his proposal, and I'll get back to that later.

All proposals here on the agenda can be adopted by a simple majority, except the 2 that requires a change to the articles, which is 10a and 10d. Those proposals require approval by 2/3 majority and also that 2/3 of the total number of votes in the company are present at the meeting today. And I can confirm and that requirement is satisfied and that therefore, the meeting here today can pass final resolution about all the proposals on the agenda.

Before moving on to the agenda, I will just mention a few points regarding the attendance here today. So a total of 278 have asked for admission cards for the meeting. And just before the meeting here today, about 100 or so were present. There might be a few more now and more than half of that are shareholders. In addition to those that are here physically, the company has received a large number of votes via proxy and other voting instructions. And in fact, it's actually 99.9% of all votes represented here today that have been submitted in this fashion. So that means that based on these votes, we can already now conclude that all the proposals carry sufficient support to be approved. But it doesn't mean, of course, that we cannot have a good debate here and there can be questions and comments regarding all of these proposals.

So let's turn to the agenda. As is customary here at Novonesis, we have the first 4 points presented in conjunction. So Cees will start off to give the Board's report. And after that, Ester will take the floor to present the annual report and certain strategic highlights. After that, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. And here -- that happens from up here. And Anna, who is sitting up here, will be able to take down your names, and she will then convey that to me, and I'll pass the word on to you in the right order. You are able to ask questions in both Danish and English, but it will be responded to in English.

So as a last point of order, please check that your mobile phones are off, and then I'll give the floor to Cees.

Thank you, Anders. 2025 was another strong year for Novonesis. We delivered on our promises for the year. And thanks to the strong foundation that we've built in Novonesis, we're well positioned to continue delivering growth and strong margins in 2026. Novonesis is a pure biology player with deep scientific expertise in microbiology. With a single technology of industrial fermentation, we deliver tailored biology-based solutions to more than 30 industries, ranging from food and nutrition to agriculture, household care and energy. We are helping the world transform the way we produce and consume. Every day, our biosolutions reach more than 2 billion people around the world.

Our unique position as a leader in biosolution is built on 3 capabilities: a deep understanding of our customers' needs, biotech innovation leadership and a world-class scale fermentation. This position enables us to navigate ongoing macroeconomic volatility and geopolitical uncertainty while continuing to deliver value to our customers, shareholders, society and the planet. This strength and stability are foundational for the quality of our performance, showing the resilience of our business model.

In 2025, we delivered 7% organic sales growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.1%. Throughout the year, we increased and narrowed our full year organic sales growth guidance twice, and we firmly delivered on that guidance. We also finalized the acquisition of the dsm-firmenich animal feed enzyme business. We launched 33 new innovations, sourced 100% of our electricity from renewable sources. And just after the summer of last year, we shared our 2030 targets, our strategy that focuses on growing our core business and making investments to secure long-term growth. In addition, and just 2 years after the combination of the former Novozymes and Chr. Hansen organization, we already achieved 100% run rate of our cost synergies, and that is one year ahead of time.

Sales synergies contributed around 1 percentage point to the overall group organic growth in 2025. And most importantly, we stand strongly united as one Novonesis with excellent engagement among our employees. All of this was achieved on the backdrop of a global market in constant change. And as volatility has become the new norm, our business model has shown its resilience repeatedly.

Now biosolutions continue to gain relevance. Today, there is a strong pull for our products driven by the expanding markets for more sustainable alternatives to more conventional approaches. According to the recently published Value of Biosolutions report, the industry could globally create close to EUR 900 billion in economic value and more than 5 million jobs by 2035. At the same time, there also is a broader societal impact where our solution enable healthier food, more sustainable farming, build energy resilience and develop local economies. Our solutions, they offer homegrown answers and they build resilience, creating local jobs and boost economic growth. And Novonesis is strongly positioned to capture this potential.

So our solutions help customers increase yields, save energy, reduce chemical usage and get more out of their raw materials. Our products usually represent only a small share of our customers' cost of goods sold, yet they deliver significant value for the end users. Novonesis is leading this green transformation with 3 distinct capabilities: customer centricity, innovation leadership and world-class scale.

We work closely with our customers, both globally and regionally to deeply understand their needs. Building on our biological expertise, we translate those needs into specialized solutions based on biology. And that gives us a clear focus and the right to play in the fastest-growing segments in the strategic markets where we can make the most impact like protein, cleaner label and solutions that decouple from fossil-based inputs.

With a library of now more than 100,000 strains and more than a century worth of expertise in microbiology and industrial fermentation, we continue to innovate our biosolutions. These solutions are protected by more than 10,000 patents and further improved with AI and advanced technology. And we do all of this while also navigating highly regulated markets. This specialized capability puts us ahead in terms of translating specific market and customer needs into innovative biosolutions.

Our production is solely rooted in fermentation. We have a global fermentation footprint that allows us to commercialize and scale across markets and regions. It also provides flexibility, size and built-in supply chain resilience. Novonesis offers affordable value-adding local solutions with the stability of a global company, and that serves as a natural hedge for market volatility. These distinct capabilities fueled by our talented employees uniquely position us to continue expanding the market and to deliver sustainable, profitable growth, both today and in the future. And as we grow, we continuously invest in these capabilities.

In 2025, we increased our CapEx spend to 11.3% relative to sales, building our production capacity. In 2026 to support future growth, we are again significantly stepping up our CapEx investments where we will invest in production capacity. All of this fortifies our strong foundation for growth.

At the end of 2025, Novonesis had approximately 100,000 shareholders and around 70% of our B shares were held by investors outside of Denmark, primarily institutional, and that is reflecting sound global ownership and also continued confidence in our company and strategy. Now global markets were volatile in 2025, and the Danish market index had another difficult year. With that said, our relative performance stood out. We firmly delivered on our financial outlook, even raising our guidance for organic sales growth throughout the year. While our total shareholder return of 1.6% was modest, it was significantly better than our ingredient peer group, which declined 25% over the same period.

The Danish OMXC20 Index experienced a similar decline, and we outperformed our direct peers, specifically, thanks to our strong performance. So while overall market sentiments are not within our control, we continue to focus on execution and delivering on our promises. And we believe that appropriate focus eventually will return to high-quality growth companies such as Novonesis.

Novonesis is committed to paying annual dividends of between 40% to 60% of adjusted net profit. Novonesis paid an interim dividend of DKK 2.25 or EUR 0.30 per share in August of 2025. The share price performance, combined with those dividends payments made during the year, resulted in a total shareholder return of 1.6% for the year. Today, we're seeking shareholder approval for a dividend of DKK 4.25 per share or DKK 0.57 per share. For a total dividend related to the 2025 results of DKK 6.5 or EUR 0.87 per share and that is approximately EUR 405 million in total, and it equals a payout ratio of 58.4% of the 2025 adjusted net profit, which is at the higher end of the targeted payout ratio. Looking ahead, we remain committed to creating long-term value for our shareholders through a steady execution of our strategy and a balanced approach to capital allocation.

Next, I will share the remuneration of the Board of Directors and executive management for 2025 as well as the Board evaluation conducted last year. The Board of Directors' remuneration is based on a fixed fee and is not incentive-based, and that ensures that we will safeguard the company's long-term interest independently of incentive-based consideration. The Board of Directors' fees are set at a market competitive level that reflects the competencies and the efforts required for the role. And last year, the Annual General Meeting in April, the shareholders approved a 3.5% increase in the base fee for Board members up to EUR 75,700.

In 2025, the Board of Directors received a total remuneration of EUR 1.7 million compared to EUR 1.8 million in 2024. And the decrease was the result of a decrease in the number of shareholder elected Board members from 9 to 8 as well as the closing of the Interim Integration Committee. The individual Board members fees and their shareholdings can be found in the Novonesis' remuneration report 2025.

The remuneration of the executive management in 2025 was aligned with the scope of the remuneration policy, and that policy was unchanged from 2024. The total remuneration of the executive management in 2025 amounted to EUR 8.9 million compared to EUR 9.7 million in 2024. And here, the decrease in total remuneration relates to one-off payments made in the previous year that did not recur in 2025 as well as adjustments to the long-term incentives.

The short-term incentive program is based on targets typically set by the Boards of Directors in connection with the review of the business plan. In 2025, the targets for the short-term incentive included organic sales growth, adjusted EBITDA margin, cash conversion, employee engagement scores and individual performance targets.

Now following the strong results in 2025, all targets for the short-term incentive program were either met or exceeded. And this resulted in a payout between 100% for target performance and 150% for maximum payout with targets for sales performance and culture implementation, both achieving maximum payout. And to maintain a strong focus on continuous growth and profitability, the next short-term incentive program for 2026 will use the same target structure as the 2025 program.

The Board of Directors also annually issues long-term incentive grants with overlapping 3-year performance periods. The long-term incentive program covering '23 to '25 was finally allocated in '25. As previously reported, the targets of this long-term incentive program were changed due to the combination. As you will remember, the '24-'25 targets no longer reflected the newly combined business. And as such, the Board of Directors concluded the '23 part of the program completed and set new targets for '24, '25, reflecting the performance ambitions of Novonesis. The performance over the full period has now resulted in 87% of the maximum allocation being awarded.

The long-term performance program for '25, '27 consists of 100% performance shares, the same as the LTA program for 2024-2026. The program has been structured to align with our strategic priorities with organic sales growth making up 50% of the targets and adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted ROIC and sustainability targets making up the remaining 50%. And the Board believes that this remuneration framework ensures Novonesis can attract and retain the right talent while also maintaining a strong link between pay and performance.

Annually, the Board of Directors conducts a Board evaluation facilitated by the Chair. Every 3 years, the evaluation is led by an external third-party facilitator, and that, of course, is in line with the Danish recommendation on corporate governance. In 2025, the evaluation was conducted internally. And the evaluation comprised a 2-step process with the Board members and the executive leadership team completing a structured questionnaire, followed by individual interviews with each of the Board members and each of the executive leadership team conducted by me.

And I'm happy to share that the results of this 2-step process underline a well-functioning Board and good collaboration between the Board and the executive leadership team. To become even better, our key focus areas in 2026 are strengthening our AI and digital competencies, further structured management succession planning and increasing the Board's exposure to customer perspectives and customer interaction.

In just a minute, I'll give the word to our CEO, Ester. But before I do, I'd like to extend a wholehearted thank you on behalf of the Board of Directors. A thank you to our more than 11,000 employees across the globe as you continue to be the driving force of this organization. Your belief in and commitment to our purpose is reflected in our results and the impact Novonesis makes in this world every day.

A thank you to our customers and business partners as it is a privilege to work in close partnership to innovate biosolutions that address some of the world's most present needs. And a thank you to you, our shareholders. You continue to believe not only in the potential of biosolutions today, but more importantly, you see the long-term value and the impact our biosolutions can have in the future.

Now please welcome our CEO, Ester Baiget, who will speak about our performance in 2025 as well as our focus and direction in the years to come.

Thank you very much, Cees, and thank you all for being here today. Novonesis is on a remarkable journey. And it's my pleasure to be here with you and share our achievements in 2025, but more importantly, the untapped potential and opportunities that still await us ahead of us. We live in a pivotal moment. Today, businesses are writing the growth story of the century and biosolutions, tiny microbes and enzymes are important building blocks for that story. Biosolutions are the answers of many of the world's greatest challenges. Biosolutions offer sustainable economic growth and offer care of our planet.

2025 was a strong year for Novonesis. In a year that was marked by significant macroeconomic volatility, we delivered a strong 7% organic sales growth, 6% by volume and 1% from pricing. Our growth was broad-based. It was across all industries, and it was across all markets with emerging markets performing particularly well. We also delivered a strong earnings with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.1%. Free cash flow before acquisitions was EUR 770 million, corresponding to an increase of EUR 103 million compared to 2024. The Feed Enzymes Alliance acquisition impacted the net cash flow negatively by EUR 1.5 billion in 2025. All these results, they add another dot, another point on our streamlined growth trajectory. All these results, they underline our real ability on delivering on our promises.

If we go into the individual businesses, Food & Health Biosolutions delivered 8% organic sales growth. Food & Beverages delivered 8% organic sales growth. Growth was driven by a strong momentum in dairy, stemming from greater penetration, greater conversion on cheese, adoption of innovation and an increasing demand for high-protein solutions, not only from GLP-1 users, but across the whole broad-based market. Our baking, meat and plant-based solutions also saw strong growth due to innovation and also by penetration. Human Health delivered 10% organic sales growth. Our performance was supported by a strong development across the regions and the subcategories in dietary supplements with North America leading the way.

In Advanced Health & Nutrition, growth was driven by Advanced Protein Solutions and human milk oligosaccharide, we also call them HMO. Planetary Health Biosolutions delivered 6% organic sales growth. Household Care delivered 7% organic sales growth, and this strong growth was driven by greater market penetration and by innovation. In addition, emerging markets across laundry and dishwash delivered also a strong growth. Agricultural, Energy and Tech delivered sales growth of 6%. Growth was driven by energy and supported by both agricultural and tech.

In Energy, we saw strong growth in Latin America and India, driven by an increase in capacity. We also saw a strong growth in North America, driven by innovation and increased ethanol exports. Growth in agricultural was driven mostly by plant across regions and in tech, growth came from bioprocessing, including solutions for biopharma production. As Cees so nicely mentioned, we acquired the dsm sales -- firmenich sales and distribution activities in the Feed Enzyme Alliance. This was a significant milestone in our effort to unlock the full potential of Novonesis in animal biosolutions and strengthen with that our leadership position in a growing and attractive global market. And we already see now the positive responses from customers, confirming the strength of the value proposition when combining these solutions in one.

Our biosolutions toolbox and innovation capabilities are key enablers of our growth. In 2025, we launched a total of 33 new innovations. We also opened 2 state-of-the-art application centers, a dairy facility here in Denmark and a baking and beverages facility in South Africa. In collaboration with our customers, these facilities allow us to replicate, allow us to put a real production from product design to scale up. It's where we play with our customers and we bring our solutions to life. Last year, we invested 11% sales -- of our sales in research and in development. And that investment continues to prove valuable growth.

In 2025, 25% of total sales were generated by solutions that they are less than 5 years old. This is well above our ambition of 20%. And at the same time, 85% of our products that we launched in 2025 were protected by intellectual property through 89 new patent filings. So looking ahead, our innovation pipeline has more than 200 projects across industries and markets. And we're also planting the future seeds for growth.

We see positive traction across our portfolio within exploration efforts. For example, in 2025, we saw the first third-party license agreement for PET recycling facility based on our enzymes based on enzymatic technology. We also see positive traction, including the commercial sales of biosolutions processing aids in the biopharma industry, contributing already to growth.

Today, artificial intelligence or what we call AI is an important player. It plays an important role in our day-to-day on how we deliver and how we deliver on our purpose. For Novonesis, AI is a powerful tool. It's a tool that strengthens our relationships, it's a tool that strengthens the leadership that we have in biosolutions. With an extensive proprietary library of more than 100,000 strains, with more than 15 million enzyme structures, with extensive data that we have collected over decades of history behind across applications, across production, across R&D. With all this in place, AI is enabling us to develop new biosolutions and to do that faster and to do that with greater accuracy.

We have spent in our history years embedding machine learning. We have spend and we have the capability and the top-tier data structure. And it is this data, data that only we can access, the ones that gives us a competitive edge relative to others who only have access to public information to public available data. And with our own proprietary data, we work with top partners. We work with Cradle. We work with AlphaFold. We work with [ Uantify ]. We train their models. We use their AI models and with our powerful library of our biosolutions performance, we create powerful models for our own use. That's what makes us unique. This is why AI for us is a tool that puts us even further away from competition.

And we're already seeing the great benefits of these efforts. AI has allowed us to move from idea-led candidates to solutions faster with much less experimental activity, shortening this particular step of the cycle from years to just months. And as a pure logic player, AI is helping us to amplify the impact of our innovation leadership. Today, we are able to create efficiencies, increase what we call goals per shot and open the door to breakthrough developments that they were unimaginable until now.

Strong, sustained financial performance like the one we have, like the one that Novonesis continues to deliver, can only be realized when the organization is totally engaged and rallied around one purpose. At Novonesis, our employees are united around a strong purpose, around a meaningful direction. This last year, we achieved an employee engagement score of 8.6. This is on a scale of 10, placing us on the top 10% of companies using the same measurement framework. We see this number, 8.6, as a clear indicator of the strong integration journey. We see this number as a strong sign of our colleagues' belief in their commitment to Novonesis' purpose with better [indiscernible] with biology. And we aim to leave a positive impact on the people and the planet within everything we do. Our biosolutions, our tiny microbes, our enzymes, our ideas, our cultures, our proteins are today already enabling healthier lives and a healthier world.

I am very proud also to say and to share with you that we have achieved all 6 of our sustainability targets. In 2025, we reached also an important milestone in our decarbonization journey where we now source 100% of renewable electricity for our plants. We enable greenhouse savings equal to 60x the amount we emit. We reduced our absolute greenhouse emissions from Scope 1 and 2 by 67%, while also growing revenue 33% by the same period. Every day, we are proving that planet stewardship and growth, they are just 2 sides of the same coin. There's no conflict. They just go hand-in-hand and actually even stronger when they go together.

We continue our efforts within water and circularity, where we restored more than 20 billion liters of water. We improved our freshwater withdrawal by saving and recycling 8.4% more water and maintaining 100% of circular biomass. I'm also very proud to share that we reached our safety target of a lost time injury achieving 1.4. The safety of our people is paramount, and we continue to build a strong safety culture. Also, in 2025, the gender split across senior management positions was 36% women and 64% men, well in line and moving firmly to our 2030 target.

As Cees mentioned, this summer, right after summer, we shared our growth strategy. Growth strategy focusing on driving a strong growth today, while at the same time, investing for long-term sustainable growth. Our strategy guides us how to prioritize, so increase the value for our shareholders and for the society. With grow, we set ambitions 2030 targets. We aim to deliver 6% to 9% organic sales growth year-on-year.

Let me put this growth target into perspective. It means a 50% revenue higher than today, a $6 billion company in 5 years. 6% to 9% CAGR during the strategic period, becoming a $6 billion company in 5 years. We are building on a position of strength. We outgrow the markets we are present. We are outperforming the underlying end market volume of 1% to 2% that we play in. And because our solutions usually account for 1% to 5% of the cost of goods sold by our customers, but at the same time, they provide significant value for both for our customers and for the consumers and also for the planet.

We also aim to deliver around 39% EBITDA margin and to double adjusted ROIC to 16%, excluding goodwill from a 2024 pro forma baseline. We also reaffirm our long-term sustainability commitments, including reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 75% and achieving a minimum of 40% of the underrepresented gender in senior management by 2030.

So with a good start to 2026, we expect to continue to deliver sustainable growth. Demand for our solutions remains strong. In the 2026, the full year outlook for organic sales growth is expected to be 5% to 7%. This outlook includes a contribution from sales synergies of around 1 percentage point and a positive contribution from pricing of 1 percentage point. In terms of earnings, the outlook of an adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be in the range of 37% to 38%, higher than 2025. This includes headwinds of around 0.5 percentage point from currency. In 2026, we continue to invest in our future with investments in CapEx and operating expenses to support growth in markets and regions, offering customers solutions, service and scale that no other organization can.

Today, our solutions, our biosolutions are already silently touching more than 2 billion people every day. They are already there, making your lives better. They're already there, enabling healthier lives and a healthier planet. They enable sustainable farming practices. They support resilient food systems. They enable the shift to healthier sources of protein. They contribute to cleaner energy. They allow countries to decouple from fossil. They are already touching you every day. But this is not the end. By 2035, the biosolutions industry is expected to create over 5 million new jobs and generate close to EUR 9 billion in economic value growth.

I would like to say a big thank you. A big thank you to our colleagues around the world. Your incredible work and your commitment to our purpose, it's evident. Our results just simply show it. And for that, I'm very thankful. Our purpose is very clear, to better the world with biology. The potential of biosolutions is immense, and we're just getting started.

And with that, I will leave the word to Anders. Thank you very much.

Thank you to Ester, and thank you to Cees. We will now open up for questions and comments regarding the first 4 items on the agenda. I have already received notices from 4 of you who wants to speak. So I mention you in the order that I invite you to the podium here. First, it is Mark Jessen from ATP. Secondly, is [ Jansky ] from Danish Shareholders' Association. Then we have Karen Kang from NorthStar Asset Management. And then fourth, Bjorn Hansen. And if any others wish to speak, please do speak to Anna, who's sitting up here, and she'll take your name down.

So Mark, you will be the first one on the podium. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I'm Mark Jessen. I represent ATP. And as usual, when I'm here, I'll continue in English. So.

[Interpreted] Thank you for the great report on the developments during 2025. I have 3 topics I would like to touch upon: firstly, the performance in 2025 and the new 2030 targets; second, KPIs in the annual bonus scheme; and third, the agriculture business.

Let me start with the 2025 performance. According to a recent analyst report, the organic growth was 3.6% on average in the industry. Novonesis realized the double. The EBITDA margin in the industry was around 20%. Novonesis almost the double. And that even despite significant currency headwinds during the year. In other words, compared to the industry, the 2025 results speak for themselves.

Building on the strong results in recent years, Novonesis announced 2030 targets in August. The organic sales CAGR was raised from 6% to 8% to 6% to 9%, and the EBITDA margin target is now 39%. Both growth and EBITDA margin are way above industry average. With performance and targets outperforming the industry, I've often been asked why we do not see it reflected in the share price. And of course, every shareholder would like to hope for increase in the share price, but the industry has not been in favor the last year as we also saw earlier, several peers have seen share prices drop between 20% or 30% and Novonesis share price has performed much better than that. So the outperformance has resulted in a premium to the peers, justified by the better performance and higher long-term targets.

This brings me to my second topic, the KPIs in the annual bonus scheme. Back in '24, Novonesis renewed the remuneration policy, increasing the annual grants. At ATP, we voted for the new update. But at the AGM, I underlined the need for very ambitious KPIs. This was confirmed, as I recall, by the company. Despite the -- despite outperforming peers in 2025, the performance was within the original guidance for the year.

One of the KPIs in the annual bonus scheme is the EBITDA margin, which was granted above target despite realized in the low end of the guidance. Given the strong performance culture in Novonesis, we would like to -- we would appreciate a bit more clarity on how the EBITDA margin KPI is calibrated with the guidance range. Our intention is simple to ensure that the ambition level remains fully aligned with the targets communicated to the market.

Moving to my last topic for today, the agriculture business. We have several times stated our clear support to the making of Novonesis. This is unchanged. Across divisions, we are seeing scale benefits and are getting more confident in knowledge sharing across the company. We recognize that the agriculture business operates in a landscape with some very large and well-established players. This makes the acquisition of the Feed Alliance last year even more relevant. But despite having more scale, the company is still fighting against some heavyweight champions in the agriculture industry. My last question today is, if the company sees a clear path from here to unlock the huge potential in a very conservative industry.

With that, I wish everyone at Novonesis all the best in '26. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark, and thank you also for your introduction, which is almost like an excellent summary of some of the things we said. On the [indiscernible] targets and EBITDA in there, let me start by saying that transparency is something we take very seriously, and we consider that a core part of how we engage with our shareholders. The decision not to disclose specific [indiscernible] targets, we also reflects a deliberate change in our approach. Disclosing those targets can, in some cases, work against the very objectives that we are trying to achieve, both commercially and operationally and also in the interest of our shareholders. We still set clear goals. We measure performance against them, and we report openly on what was achieved once the year is complete.

And then when we reflect on the organic sales growth, I know you didn't mention it, but I want to go there first. When we look at 7% organic sales growth, as you said, we have to add in all fairness, 1 percentage point because we withdrew from certain countries. But then more specifically on EBITDA, with 37.1%, where we have been absorbing very significant currency headwinds. We're still outperforming our closest peer with 10 percentage points and most of our peers with 15 percentage points. So that has been the background to us awarding a maximum payout. I hope that answers your question.

And then when it comes to fighting heavyweight champions in agriculture, I'll leave that to Ester.

Thank you so much, Cees. And thank you, Mark, for your thoughtful comments. And yes, I agree with you. 2025 results speak by themselves. It was an extraordinary year. And as I said, we're just starting. This is not the last good year. To your question of agricultural and what are we doing here to untap the extraordinary potential in a world of need of more with less. There is an increasing need of protein. Protein demand is going to double, and it's not going to be at the expenses of bringing more arable land. So it's more about getting more of the existing arable land, but also it's about increasing the efficiency through the whole value chain. It is where the beautiful acquisition that we've made in animal makes its imprint by now going to the market with enzymes and microbes together and being a better partner for our customers to unleash more yield, more efficiency, more productivity and translate those precious sugars and corn from the arable land into valuable protein in a more effective way.

So that's one of the areas that we're doubling up on the strategy on capitalizing on the growth synergies with a stronger now with a full biosolutions portfolio of enzymes and microbes and scaling up across the world, bringing and capitalizing on the momentum we see in place with already very good momentum and very good traction from our customers.

We also see a growing demand from our solutions in BioAg, agricultural, as we say, where we bring higher yields, higher efficiencies, higher resilience and also enabling to use -- decrease the use of fertilizers while without compromising the performance of the field. Here, we -- our strategy is also very clear, continue to invest on being closer to the customer, continue to invest on the proximity to being the partner of growth for our customers. And you will see us capitalizing on the momentum, particularly in emerging geographies on the penetration of our solutions. You will see us investing also in innovation, innovation of close proximity to the market. And you will see the animal and agricultural segment being a contributor and a driver of growth for our business. Thank you very much.

So the next speaker will be [indiscernible] and in English. Next speaker, [indiscernible] from Danish Shareholders' Association.

[Interpreted] Well, I'm able to speak only this odd little language called Danish. So you will have to live with that. I know that few and few people understand it. But nevertheless, I'm [indiscernible] and I represent the Association of Danish Shareholders. The Danish Association of Shareholders has about 16,000 members taking care of the interest of small and medium shareholders. We work to develop a healthy investment share holding culture in Denmark.

I'm a shareholder now of Novonesis. Yes, you heard me. And I've been following the company with great interest over the past year. Today, the company is centrally placed worldwide within biosolutions. It has a very important role, but also a difficult role in green transition in the future years. We find the development plans of Novonesis very interesting and very relevant scene from a shareholder perspective. We find as earlier that the description of risk elements in the yearly report is very useful and very detailed, and we find it important that the yearly report also speaks about what the company plans to do about the risks listed.

We have a few questions which are to do with international competition, which today affects a company such as Novonesis very much. So we have chosen a few questions, which -- well, no, I don't really think so, but they may be difficult to reply to.

The first question is about Novonesis and raw materials. How will Novonesis ensure a stable influx of raw materials at stable prices from, for instance, South America? That must be surely an important competitive parameter.

My second question is about the share price. And we have a small problem there because the Chairman and the CEO explained how well things have been going. I bought -- and now this is just as a curiosity, I bought this share because I was asked to do so. And now it's lost 28% of its value since then. The share price has not been what I expected. And I'd like a more in-depth explanation of why things have been going so poorly towards the end of '25 and the beginning of '26? Accounts are important, yes, but how many large companies to they have large investments from foundations, which can affect the share prices and how is that what's the effect on Novonesis? I'm not thinking about the Novo Foundation. I'm thinking about the remaining share capital.

My third question is about the fact that business developments look so positive. And in spite of this, unfortunately, the share price has dropped. But as Ester said, it looks very positive. But there are risks, but what risks are faced by Novonesis? We have seen other companies, which all of a sudden found themselves in a storm of problems in spite of a potentially very exciting development.

And now finally a question which has a bit been overtaken by this book because I don't think that Novonesis is very good at communicated with people like myself who are not experts in biosolutions, small shareholders who don't understand all the difficult words. You don't communicate very much very well with people such as me. Now I've seen this book on the table, and that's a great step forward. But perhaps you could be talked into sending information in Danish to newspapers and to shareholders, and this might lead to interesting articles about how -- well, how interesting your work is in Danish, which might also reflect itself in the share price.

Now to end, I'd like to wish all of you, shareholders, management and all of us a good 2026.

Thank you very much, Mr. [indiscernible], and I'll try to give color to answers and then to your questions and then also my perspective on what are we doing to continue to deliver in this extraordinary company that we are.

To your first question regarding reliability of supply and how do we ensure we keep having access to the precious raw materials that we need in the world of today. We live in the same world that you see. We read the same news, and we are exposed to the same reality that all of us. But at the same time, we're building on a strong foundation. We have an extraordinarily robust global asset footprint. We have historical and remarkable relationships with suppliers through a diversified supply sourcing strategy. We have long-term partnerships. We have also continuous risk assessment across regions, including also Latin America, including Brazil, which is a strong component, not as a market also, but of where we produce. And so we don't depend on one single supplier.

We have a broad range of suppliers and also across a broad range of geographies, which gives us the place of comfort to be in a place that we feel comfortable that we're going to continue to supply with a high level of quality, reliability and performance that our customers deserve. We have seen in the past the strength of our global resilient model. Not long ago, we were all talking about tariffs and the disruptions that it would create in the market. We saw the disruptions when the Canal Suez was blocked. In every single of these events, we've never compromised customer supply quality. We've not compromised it. And this is a really strong point of the resilience of our footprint, about the value of our global asset footprint, about the diversification of the way on the suppliers and the partners that we work with. And this is also a strong proof point of the caliber of the team that we have in. So I can guarantee you our commitment to move towards that direction.

To your second point, which is also as a shareholder that I am very dear to me, I can say that as management, what we do is we focus on executing and on delivering on our promises. This is our job. And that's what we bring all our energy to every month, every quarter, every year, deliver on the promises that we put, that we deserve, you deserve to ask and to seek that we make that promises translate into reality. And that's what we have done in 2025. That's what we did in 2024, and that's what I can commit that we -- when -- you have my commitment that we will continue to bring in.

It is true, as you also indicated, that the share price developments, they reflect not only the performance of the company, which it is strong. It also reflects a wide range of factors including the overall market conditions, the sector sentiment, the interest rates, the broader capital flows and then, yes, the company-specific performance. So I'm very pleased where we are as a company. I'm extremely confident on the future ahead of us. And then I can only ask you for your patience and support to continue to be on our journey from the amazing future ahead of us.

And then your last comment that you mentioned, you just questioned, first, thank you for the appreciation of the book. We put a lot of care and a lot of pride on making it happen. I show you -- I hope you see on the book the amount of excitement and pride from whom we are and also how we see, how we contributed to the world. And that was exactly the intent, connect, bring that connectivity, bring that message to the world of the power of biosolutions. Because it's almost like the most best kept secret on this amazing capability that we have to transform the world, to decouple from fossil, to bring healthier nutrients, to bring better foods, to increase productivity in a way that is in respect with the planet, in a way that it's profitable, in a way that it drives jobs. So we recognize the importance of clear, accessible and ongoing communications with all shareholders and including also, of course, including the retail investors.

We're committed to the transparency. I hope you see this as a proof one more of our journey here. But as always, we appreciate your voice on how we can continue to do better, how we can enhance and bring that dialogue stronger. And I'm also asking you to be an ambassador then of biosolutions, make it contagious. We will do our fair part, but please share it to the wall, share it with your friends, share it with your neighbors, bring the story of biosolutions on what -- whom they are and the terrific impact that we make to the wall and more importantly, the upped potential ahead of us. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ester. The next speaker is [indiscernible] from NorthStar Asset Management.

My name is [indiscernible], and I'm representing long-term shareholders of Novonesis at NorthStar Asset Management in Boston, Massachusetts. Thank you for allowing me to be here today, and we have 2 topics of questions for the company.

Firstly, Novonesis corporate governance disclosures state that the Board has a gender diversity target requiring at least 40% female members. Yet as of December 31, 2024, shareholder-elected Board members were 33% female and 67% male. New targets aim to achieve gender parity of 45% women among senior management at the director level and above.

How does the Board assess the company's current diversity performance? And what specific steps does it plan to take to accelerate progress towards the company's diversity target? And how is the Nomination and Remuneration Committee responsible for the Board and corporate diversity creating steps to achieve these goals?

Secondly, in light of the Novo Nordisk Foundation's position at Novonesis and its recent exercise of influence over Board composition at Novo Nordisk, how does the Board define and manage the foundation's role in shaping Board composition and governance decisions at Novonesis? What safeguards or processes are in place to ensure transparency and alignment with the interests of all shareholders?

[indiscernible], thank you for these questions, and thank you for making it all the way here from Boston. For Novonesis, we have a target of at least 40% women in senior management positions by 2030. And we have a long-term aspiration for gender parity at 45%. Last year, we increased the number of women in senior management from 112 to 123. However, at 36%, we remain below our own target, and we're committing to closing that gap. And we're working towards that in several ways, and we've laid out a clear path to reach the 40% by 2030, and that includes defining the annual improvements needed, strengthening the talent pipeline for promotions, ensuring a shared accountability across the senior management team. And then we also maintain a strong focus to internal awareness campaigns, regional diversity groups, and that is all rooted in our cultural commitments. And diversity is further embedded in Board nominations and succession planning, ensuring accountability at the top. And specifically to your question, the [indiscernible] oversees all those actions on behalf of the Board.

Then to your second question, let me first start by saying that Novonesis and Novo Nordisk are really 2 independent companies. And regarding Novonesis, we are in a strong position, clear focus on delivering sustainable growth and creating long-term value for all shareholders. And I would add that in Novonesis, the relationship between the Board and executive management is excellent as is the relationship between the Board and the Novo Foundation. I hope that addresses your question.

Thank you, Cees. Next speaker is [ Bjorn Hansen ]. And after that, if there are any others, let me know. I don't think we've heard from anyone else. So after the responses to Bjorn's questions, I think we might conclude the comments for the first 4 topics on the agenda.

[Interpreted] My name is Bjorn Hansen. I represent private shareholders. I participated in these shareholders' meetings at Chr. Hansen and Novozymes for about 15 years. One shareholder, lady who was very excited about Novozymes and bought shares through [indiscernible], but she still has a few Novozymes shares, which are now converted to Novonesis or whatever it's called. But unfortunately, she can't buy 1,000 shares at a time. It's a pity, but there's a reason for it. She likes to have it in Danish, although she was born in Chicago, and she's fluent in English and American, but the technical language is beyond it. Now I don't know if there's anybody here who speaks Danish at all apart from the -- what does the payout ratio mean in Danish for the past 3 years?

Now a previous speaker spoke a little about the share price. I think that's very useful. The bank told us that the share price had increased by about 6% over the past 52 weeks, that is through last year and the beginning of this year. I don't know how you're going to tackle that based on what we just saw. But of course, if -- well, on December 31, it may have been slightly higher.

Now my second or maybe third question, who -- where in the report or perhaps in the Articles of Association, the constitution of the company, so to speak, I don't know where it says anything about that in Danish. Now I've been working with import and export for many years. And I did a lot of trade with Spain even during the reign of Franco when he was alive. And there was an agreement between the European Union, the economic space and Spain, meaning that we could get goods in and out of Spain at quite reasonable prices. And I must say that when I visited Spain and participated in auctions and then purchased for [indiscernible] supermarket. Well, I didn't see any text in English. No, it was all in Spanish. So unless you knew the local language, you could not buy the goods, I managed to buy. I know that things have changed quite a lot, but I still have links with Spain.

So now I ask you, is it possible to receive these questions in Danish? Is that possible? I mean, if Novonesis is a Danish company, it been taken over by Novo Nordisk [indiscernible] or somebody else. I don't know. But maybe we can get an explanation on the 26th when we will attend the shareholders' meeting of Novo Nordisk.

And the foundation will -- I hope that even these -- although even if these foundations have been drained I hope that they can survive because 2 great companies have been merged. I mean, 2 really, really good companies. They have all sorts of interesting patents. I still want to know more about that. I've seen an interesting new little dairy down here, and we should taste their projects. And now there's a new book here, and I ask, do we have it in Danish and Swedish? No, it's only in English or an American. I don't know.

So I would like some information in Danish if there are any Danish here. Of course, everybody is American, well, then we should have it in America, of course. Now the number of shares -- now it's a large number being shown, but it does not correspond with banks and artificial intelligence. Now I see -- I see that part of the report, the accounts have been produced by AI. So is there a reason for the negative development of share prices? Is that to do with AI? You see with [indiscernible] or Danske Bank, I mean, the number of their shares, well, it's precise, extremely precise. But if you look at accounts produced by AI, you see a divergence of 1.3 billion shares for Novo Nordisk, not for Novonesis, fortunately. And for a shipping company, I saw discrepancy of DKK 2 billion, not DKK 2, but DKK 2 billion. And the Chairman of the Board spoke a very clear Danish and he telephoned me on Saturday, and it has been corrected.

Now the Articles of Association, I'd like to see those as well. Do we have -- can we print only the old articles of association? They used to be in Danish.

Now my next question, how much maize expressed in Danish kilo is needed to produce 1 liter of bio gasoline? Now it's diesel and diesel or that's an awful thing. It's -- that's what's pushing the whole world forward and making sure that we can get our goods from Asia. Well, it's difficult, of course, these days because the Hormuz Strait has been closed and there's a small island controlling everything. But how many kilos does it take to produce 1 liter of biofuel?

I mean I understand that there's still a large part of the United States being used to grow maize for bioethanol. And has that been done away with or has it been expanded now that energy prices are increasing 20% to 40% rapidly?

And to end, I'd like to know about the market plans for India. What are the plans for India? Because after the free trade agreement with the European Union, what are the plans? And what was resolved in India last year? And have you applied for support for programs, support from the EU? I mean these are big figures, something really useful.

We've also noticed -- and again, [indiscernible] back on the 11th of March, Novo has a loan, bonds. That's a big loan to pay out of the old loan. I don't know what the interest rate was for the old loan, but I'd like to know. But well, it's pretty high interest rate. It may be okay. And especially if the interest rate is fixed, it may be actually useful, especially in these energy times. So we don't find ourselves with a doubling all of a sudden.

Thank you for your many questions, Bjorn. We'll only comment on Novonesis today. There's another meeting on Thursday. You asked about the owners and the Articles of Association. Our ownership structure and governance framework are clearly disclosed in the annual report and the Articles of Association, and that's all available online. The articles are not only fully compliant with Danish law, they're also available in Danish online. The Board and executive management are present at today's AGM and always available for further dialogue with shareholders.

Then I'm going to leave a couple of questions for Ester. She's more of an expert when it comes to how many kilos of biofuel are made from maize.

But the number of shares actually was disclosed in the notice to convene of this meeting. and it's a very large number. I'm not going to try and pronounce it, but you can look in the notice to convene. I think if I read here, we have 936,597,292 shares. It's in the notice to convene. And I can that end, so I apologize for the English.

And we always are transparently disclosing the number of shares, and we reconcile that also in the annual report. In the annual report, you will find it on Page 52, and that is the baseline of the number of shares.

Now Ester, maybe you will take the other questions.

Thank you, Bjorn, for 2 questions that they are dear to my heart and 2 items that they are strong on our minds in the management team. One is bioenergy, particularly in the moment that we're living today, it's clear now more than ever that the need for decoupling from fossil fuels, it is a must. That the need for countries to seek for optionality on how to bring alternatives to only the heritage of the past, which is mainly based on fossil fuels, it needs to expand. And where biology and biosolutions are going to be a stronger answer of the future.

And biosolutions in energy, it's much more beyond biofuels and bioethanol. It is solutions for biodiesel for bringing waste oils into biodiesel that also is a precious feedstock for [indiscernible] solutions for biogas from waste that is fermented with our precious biosolutions and then bringing alternatives to LNG, another item which is very much on everybody's top heads these days.

And then to your question, also the impact that we bring in. You know that we don't produce biofuels ourselves. We produce enzymes, microbes, [indiscernible] and our customers are the ones that make the biofuels, the ethanol and the biodiesels and also the biogas. Typically, our solutions, they are 1% to 5% of the cost of the goods sold of our customers and bioenergy is also, in many cases, within this range. And we're very pleased to contribute on the -- continue to bring in not only alternatives that drive a better planet by enabling CO2 emission reduction by replacing fossil fuels, but also by enabling geopolitical stability, by enabling local jobs and allowing decreasing the amount of imports.

Also another area which is important to mention on biosolutions in bioenergy, it is it's not any longer anymore food versus fuel. We enable food and fuel with our solutions with the high value-added [indiscernible] that they use as a precious feedstock for animal nutrition. So it's much more -- I've answered your question with making it much more complex that it's not any more fuels. It is also precious high-protein solutions that they are used in animal feed, what we bring with our technology in place.

In gasoline also, we do gasoline. Okay, you got more than what you asked then. And then with the other question on India, it's -- and your question on how is it going to look in the future. It's going to continue to grow. Just to put it in perspective, emerging geographies grew 9% last year. They have been a stronger contributor of growth on 9% on double-digit growth, and they're going to continue to be contributing stronger to the growth of the company. Today, emerging geographies where India is in, they represent 1/3 of our company. and they're going to grow -- outgrow their portion in the future because they're going to outgrow the average of the company. And India is going to be a driver of that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have not received any further questions or anyone else asking to speak. So with that, I'll conclude the debate for the first 4 items on the agenda and just quickly run through the 4 items here.

First of all, we had the presentation from the Board. Secondly, we had the presentation of the annual report. There is a statement from the auditors on Page 192 to 199. There's also under Item 3, the proposal to declare a dividend, ordinary dividend of DKK 4.25 adding to the interim dividend from last year. And then number four, approval of the remuneration report, where Cees presented some of the highlights from that during his speech.

If there are no further comments or questions, I'll conclude on these 4 items and conclude that they have been approved. Thank you for that.

That brings us to Item 5 on the agenda, approval of the remuneration for the Board for '26. And here, the proposal is that the base fee is adjusted by 3%, corresponding to the average salary increase for Novonesis' employees here in Denmark from 25 to 26. The other components are effectively unchanged, meaning that the multiples for the Chair and the Vice Chair are unchanged 3x and 2x the base fee. And then for committee chairs, they received an additional compensation of 1x the base fee for the Chair role and other committee members, an additional fee of that half base fee for those assignments. In the remuneration policy, there's also reference to other expenses and certain benefits that the company covers.

Question, are there any further questions or comments to this? If not, I will conclude that this proposal is also adopted. No questions. So that brings us to Item 6, 7 and 8, which regards the reelection to the Board of Directors. In the company's Articles of Association, they provide that here, the general meeting elects both the Chair, the Vice Chair and other shareholder-elected members of the Board.

And I'll give the floor here to Cees to present the proposal from the Board.

And on the screen, you will see the proposed composition of the Board of Directors with the reelection of Lisa Kaae, Monila Kothari, Kasim Kutay, Kevin Lane, Morten Sommer and Kim Stratton for a 1-year term. And our employee representatives, they were elected last year, they will continue, and they include Robert Noddeskov Jensen, Lars Bo Koppler, Preben Nielsen and Frederikke Rose Spenner. Overall, the Board considers that the proposed composition of the Board of Directors in terms of competencies, executive and international experience, nationalities and gender provides for the necessary and relevant skills, experience and diversity to ensure effective Board work and address the challenges of a large company like Novonesis.

Thank you, Cees. So to cover each of the items separately. First of all, the proposal is to reelect Cees as Chair; second, to reelect Heine Dalsgaard as Vice Chair; and third, to reelect Lise Kaae, Monila Kothari, Kasim Kutay, Kevin Lane, Morten Sommer and Kim Stratton for the Board of Directors, and everybody is present here in the room today sitting in front. You can find more information about the candidates' backgrounds and other jobs and management positions in the convening notice.

Any questions or comments for that? If not, I hope you will all join me in congratulating these candidates for their reelection. And just for completeness, I'll just put on the slide behind me here, you see the employee-elected Board members. They're elected by the employees, and they are appointed for a period until 2029.

That brings us to Item 9, which is election of auditor. And here, based on the recommendation from the Audit Committee, the Board proposes reelection of EY as auditor. It covers both the financial reporting and the mandatory sustainability reporting.

Any questions or comments regarding this proposal? If not, I think you can also congratulate EY on their reelection.

All right. That brings us to Item 10, where we have 4 proposals from the Board of Directors. Three of them are customary for Novonesis' Annual General Meetings, and the fourth one is this question about the change of the region where we hold the general meetings. So I'll just quickly run through them because they are familiar to most of you.

The first one, 10a is a renewal of the authorization to issue new share capital. There's a right to issue shares with preemption rights and without preemptive rights, but also a right to issue warrants. There's a cap limit to this authorization of 10% that is unchanged. And so effectively, the only change is that this authorization now applies until 30 April 2027.

Moving on to 10b, that is the renewal of the authorization to acquire treasury shares. And also here, we have just a renewal of what is already in existence and what already applies, which is an authorization to buy a number of shares corresponding to 10% of the share capital. There's a holding limit of 10% and also an ability to deviate from the share price at the time of acquisition up up to 10%. All of that is customary. And that the change here is that it extends until April 30, 2027.

Under 10c, we have the reaffirmation of the Board of Directors' authority to distribute extraordinary dividend.

Under 10d, we have the change that I mentioned where some of the regions here in Denmark are changing their names are being sort of reformatted. So what was before referred to as the capital region of Denmark is merged into the region of Eastern Denmark with effect from 1st of January 2027. And in the articles, there is a reference to the capital region of Denmark. So we need to fix that and get the new name in there. So that is the proposal.

So with all these 4 things, any questions or comments for that? If not, I think we can have them all approved. Thanks for that.

That brings us to Item 11, proposals from shareholders. And as I mentioned in the beginning, there was a proposal there from Michael [indiscernible], and he was not able to be here, and he has informed us that he wants to withdraw the proposal. And he's allowed to do that, and that means that we will have no discussion around the proposal here. But I will have a good order refer to the Board's comments and recommendation in the meeting notice where the Board explains the position regarding the proposal and also that they recommend against the proposal. And I also mention that based on the votes that we have received in advance, 98% of the votes were cast against the proposal.

Moving on to Item 12. That's an authorization to me to register the proposals, the resolutions that were adopted here today. I hope nobody is complaining. Thank you.

And then that brings us to the last point, Item 13, which is in Danish and [indiscernible] India business. And it's not possible to propose something new, but you can ask questions or comments.

If nobody is asking for that, so that means, Cees, we have completed the agenda, and I'll pass the floor on to you.

Thank you, Anders, and thank you, shareholders. Novonesis is built on a strong foundation, claiming a leading position as a pure biology player. With a good start to 2026, we're carrying meaningful momentum into the rest of the year. And with our growth strategy, our path is clear, our confidence is high. And when we grow, so does our impact for customers, shareholders and the planet.

Once again, thank you for your confidence in and support of Novonesis. This completes the 2026 Annual General Meeting. And on behalf of the Board of Directors, thank you all for joining today. Thank you, Anders, for conducting a successful meeting. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Novonesis Full Year Financial Statement for 2025 and Annual Report for 2025. I'm Moritz, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Tobias Cornelius Bjorklund, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

So thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Novonesis conference call for 2025. As mentioned, my name is Tobias Bjorklund, I'm heading up Investor Relations here at Novonesis.

In this call, our CEO, Ester Baiget; and our CFO, Rainer Lehmann, will review our performance for the year as well as the outlook for 2026. Attending today's call, we also have Tina Fano, EVP of Planetary Health Biosolutions; Henrik Joerck Nielsen, EVP of Human Health Biosolutions; Andrew Taylor, EVP of Food & Beverages Biosolutions; and Claus Crone Fuglsang, Chief Scientific Officer.

The conference call will take about 1 hour, including Q&A. Please change to the next slide. As usual, I would like to remind you that the information presented during the call is unaudited and that management may make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking statement.

With that, I am now pleased to hand you over to our CEO, Ester Baiget. Ester, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Tobias, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. Could you please turn to Slide #3? Thank you.

2025 was another strong year, a year where we capitalize once more on the momentum from the increased relevance that our biosolutions bring to customers and consumers around the world. From an original guidance of 5% to 8%, we ended the year delivering a strong 7%, including the negative impact from exiting certain countries of around 1 percentage point.

Sales growth was broad-based and mainly volume-driven with prices and sales synergies each contributing around 1 percentage point. We delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.1%, in line with our initial outlook of 37% to 38% and despite significant negative currency development during the year.

Growth in developed markets reached 6% with solid performance in both Europe and North America. Emerging markets were particularly strong with 9% growth, driven by the increased local presence and tailored solutions. In 2025, we added around 400 people in commercial roles and customer-facing activities with 2/3 of them in emerging markets.

The integration of the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition, which we closed in June last year, is progressing well, and we are starting to see the benefits for being closer to the customer and from the strength of the combined biosolutions portfolio.

We launched 14 new biosolutions in the quarter, bringing the year to 33 in total. In Food & Beverages, we launched innovation that tap into higher consumer demand for healthier and high-protein solutions driven by GLP-1 users, among others.

Another example of innovation tapping into growing consumer demands was the new enzyme solutions for quick and cold wash cycles in Household Care, saving both time and money for consumers while enabling superior wash performance. We continue to focus on driving our people, planet positive ambition. 80% of our sales are aligned with at least one Sustainable Development Goal. I am very pleased that we have delivered on all of the 6 2025 sustainability targets, including reaching 100% of electricity from renewable sources.

Turning to 2026. With already good start to the year, we expect organic sales growth of 5% to 7%, mainly driven by volumes, with pricing and sales synergies each contributing around 1 percentage point. The outlook also includes close to a percentage point negative effect of exiting certain countries. For the adjusted EBITDA margin, we guide for 37% to 38% with an expected margin expansion, including currency headwinds.

And with this, let us look at the divisional performance in more detail, starting with Food & Health Biosolutions. Could you please turn to Slide #4? Thank you. The Food & Health Biosolutions division delivered a strong 8% organic sales growth in the full year, including a negative impact from exiting certain countries of around 3 percentage points. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 35.8%, an increase of 60 basis points, including the impact of currency headwinds.

In the fourth quarter, organic sales growth was strong at 7%, including the negative impact of around 5 percentage points from exiting certain countries and the margin improved as well. For 2026, we expect this division to deliver organic sales growth within the same range as for the group, driven by both Food & Beverages and Human Health. The exit of certain countries will impact in the first half of the year.

Please turn to Slide #5. Thank you. Food & Beverages delivered a strong 8% organic sales growth for the full year and 7% in the quarter, including the impact of exiting certain countries of 3 percentage points for the year and 6% in the quarter. Growth was mainly driven by volume and pricing contributed positively in line with the group level.

Growth for the full year as well as in the quarter was anchored across geographies and most industries with continued strong momentum in Dairy. Performance was mainly driven by market penetration, strong adoption of innovation and positive market development, driven by the increasing demand of cleaner label, high protein and healthier solutions.

In fresh dairy, beyond the increase in demand for efficiency, yield and high protein, we continue to see a strong pull for our bioprotection solutions. In cheese, customer conversion to higher-yield solutions continued to be a strong driver of growth.

Baking, Meat and Plant-based solutions also saw strong growth, mainly driven by innovation and increased penetration. The Beverage segment grew in the fourth quarter, showing the momentum of innovation still with decline for the full year, mainly impacted by lower end market beer volumes.

Synergies contributed to growth in line with expectations, supported by cross-selling and increased commercial scale across both Food & Beverages. In the fourth quarter, we launched 9 new products in Food & Beverages across Dairy, Beverages and Plant-based, making it 19 for the year. One exciting example of our growth synergies is our launch of Galaya Smooth, a solution that combines a texture-enhancing enzyme with cultures, driving smoother, higher protein and cleaner label dairy products.

Another exciting launch is the Javora Enhance for instant coffee. This drop-in solution helps coffee processors unlock up to 10% higher yield with improved quality, cost and sustainability benefits.

For 2026, growth in Food & Beverages is expected to be broad based, including a positive impact from synergies and pricing. The exit from certain countries will impact in the first half of the year.

Please turn to Slide #6. Thank you. Human Health delivered 10% organic sales growth both for the full year and in the fourth quarter. Growth was mainly volume driven and negatively impacted by the exit of certain countries by around 1 percentage point. The release of the full revenue contributed around 1 percentage point to growth both for the full year and for the quarter. The full year development was driven by strong performance in both Dietary Supplements and Advanced Health & Nutrition. Synergies contributed positively and in line with expectations.

Dietary Supplements grew across regions and subcategories, led by solid momentum in North America. Performance in Advanced Health & Nutrition was driven by Advanced Protein Solutions as we continue to scale up supply with our anchor customer and HMO. In the fourth quarter, growth was led by strong performance in Dietary Supplements across all regions and subcategories. And in Advanced Health & Nutrition, growth was driven by Advanced Protein Solutions.

In the fourth quarter, we launched one new product in Human Health, BioFresh Clean. It's a clinically proven liquid enzymatic formula that supports better oral hygiene. It can be applied in toothpaste and mouthwash applications as a natural and effective solution. This is yet another example of a solution where we leverage the impact of our innovation across -- through cross-selling.

For 2026, growth in Human Health will be driven by a continued positive momentum in Dietary Supplements, supported by a positive impact from synergies as well as by Advanced Health & Nutrition led by HMO. Pricing is expected to impact positively and deferred revenue is expected to contribute around 1 percentage point to the growth for the sales area. The exit from certain countries will impact the first half of the year.

And please turn to Slide #7 for a look at Planetary Health. Thank you. Planetary Health Biosolutions delivered a solid 6% organic sales growth for the full year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 38.2%, an increase of 140 basis points including currency headwinds.

In the fourth quarter, organic sales growth was 2%, driven by Household Care. Agricultural, Energy & Tech was flat in the quarter, with double-digit growth in Energy, offset by timing in Agricultural and a tough comparator in Tech. The EBITDA margin was 36.4% in the quarter and down 90 basis points compared to Q4 last year. This decline is primarily due to a one-off expense relating to the realignment of activities in plant, while currencies had a negative impact as well.

The acquisition of the Feed Enzyme Alliance contributed positively and in line with expectations. For 2026, and with a good start of the year, we expect this division to deliver organic sales growth within the same range as for the group with relatively stronger growth in Agricultural, Energy & Tech and supported by pricing.

Please turn to Slide #8. Thank you. Household Care delivered 7% organic sales growth for the full year and 5% in the quarter. Growth was mainly volume driven and with a positive contribution from price and in line with group level. The strong performance was led by increased market penetration and adaptation of new innovation. Increased enzyme penetration in Emerging Markets contributed to growth in both laundry and dish wash, and growth in Developed Markets was mainly from innovation and supported by increased penetration of local and regional customers.

Growth in the fourth quarter benefited mainly from similar factors as the one of the full year as well as strong growth in professional and medical cleaning, easing the impact of end market normalization in developed markets. For 2026, we indicate solid performance in Household Care with key growth drivers continuing to be innovation, increased penetration in both Developed and Emerging Markets as well as continued support from pricing.

Please turn to Slide #9. Thank you. Agricultural, Energy & Tech delivered organic sales growth of 6% for the year while the development in the fourth quarter was flat. The full year growth was driven by a strong performance in Energy, supported by Tech and Agricultural. Group was driven mainly by volume and pricing contributed positively, in line with the group.

Energy was driven by Latin America and Asia Pacific, particularly India, reflecting increased corn ethanol production. Growth in North America was also supportive, driven by greater adoption of innovation and growing ethanol production volumes, supported by increasing exports. Further, a ramp-up in second-generation ethanol and penetration of biodiesel solutions also contributed positively. Performance in Agricultural was driven mainly by plant while the performance in animal was impacted by timing. Tech was driven by increased penetration of our solutions for biopharma processing aids.

For the development of the fourth quarter was driven by double-digit growth in Energy, explained by similar factors as the one as the full year, while Agricultural and Tech declined due to high comparables and timing, especially in Agricultural. In the fourth quarter, we launched 4 new products.

In Energy, we introduced a new yeast, increasing ethanol yield under tough fermentation conditions, driving further value creation for our customers. And in Tech, we launched an enzymatic solution that helps increase yields in vegetable oil production and reduce costs. For 2026, growth in Agricultural, Energy & Tech is expected across all industries led by Energy and supported by synergies and pricing.

Now let me hand over to Rainer for a review on the financials and the outlook. Rainer, please?

Thank you, Ester, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's call also from my side. Let's turn to Slide #10. Please note that for the year-on-year comparison figures presented today, we have used pro forma figures as our baseline comparison for full year numbers. The corresponding IFRS-based figures are available in the statement released this morning. Q4 year-on-year figures are IFRS based and fully comparable.

In 2025, sales grew a strong [ 7% ] organically and 5% in reported euro. The exit from certain countries impacted organic sales growth negatively by around 1 percentage point. Currencies provided a 3% headwind while M&A impacted development positively was a good 1% as expected, following the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition that we finalized in June.

In the fourth quarter, sales grew 4% organically and 2% in euro. The exit from certain countries impacted organic sales growth negatively by around 2 percentage points in the quarter. Currency headwinds continued to be significant and amounted to 4%, partly offset by a good 2% positive contribution from the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition in line with expectations.

Turning to our profitability. The adjusted gross margin was strong at 59.1%, which is an improvement of 240 basis points year-on-year. Lower input costs, including cost of energy as well as economies of scale and productivity improvements, led to the strong development. Pricing and synergies also had a positive impact while currencies impacted negatively.

Total operating expenses adjusted for PPA-related depreciation and amortization were 29.5% of sales. This is 1 percentage point higher than the 2024 level as we are reinvesting and strengthening our commercial presence across geographies, in line with our strategic direction. In addition, Q4 was impacted by one-off expenses related to the realignment of activities in plant as well as a write-down of assets as a result of the closure of one of our smaller sites.

The adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.1%. This was 100 basis points higher than 2024 and driven by the improvement in gross margin and realizing 100% run rate of cost synergies 1 year ahead of time. The Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition contributed 0.25 percentage point in line with our expectations.

Currency headwinds impacted the margin negatively by around 0.5 percentage point year-on-year. Relative to the initial outlook we gave at the beginning of the year, currency headwinds amounted closer to 1 percentage point. Taking this into account, a currency-neutral margin would rather have been at the top of the initial outlook range of 37% to 38%.

The adjusted EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter increased 40 basis points to 36.6%, driven by the same factors as for the full year. As I mentioned before, Q4 was impacted by one-offs, adding up to roughly 0.5 percentage point, mainly related to the realignment of activities in the plant business. Here, we are rightsizing the organization and activities as we continue to prioritize and ensure that there's an appropriate allocation of resources across geographies to support this growing business. The Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition supported the margin by around 0.5 percentage point.

Special items were EUR 66 million and primarily consisted of transaction costs related to the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition. It also included integration expenses related to the combination with Chr. Hansen as well as some initial expenses for the new global ERP system.

The diluted adjusted earnings per share was EUR 1.49, an increase of 16% compared to last year. If we adjust for PPA amortization, the earnings per share was EUR 1.99, representing a 15% increase compared to 2024.

Operating cash flow amounted to a strong EUR 1.22 billion in 2025, which is an increase of EUR 189 million compared to last year. This was mainly driven by the strong improvement in net profit, supported by a positive development of the net working capital.

CapEx amounted to EUR 471 million, equal to 11.3% of sales, which is 2 percentage points up from last year as we increased investments into our production footprint to support our growth journey. Despite this increase, free cash flow before acquisitions increased by 15% to EUR 770 million, equaling 19% of sales. Adjusted return on invested capital, excluding goodwill, was 10.1%, an improvement of more than 20% versus previous year's pro forma return. The improvement was driven by higher profitability and PPA amortization.

With this, let us now turn to Slide #11 to talk about the 2026 outlook. Please note that the outlook presented today is based on last year's levels of global trade tariffs and the current foreign exchange environment. Back in December 2022, we announced the combination and presented targets for the period towards 2025.

We set out to deliver a CAGR of 6% to 8% and an EBIT margin before special items and PPA amortization of 29%, which we translated to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37%. With an organic sales CAGR at the top end of the range and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.1%, including the absorption of currency headwinds, we have clearly delivered on our promises.

We expect 2026 to be another solid year for Novonesis as demand for our biosolutions continues to increase. The outlook for organic sales growth is between 5% to 7%, which includes a negative impact of close to 1% from exiting certain countries. Organic sales growth will be mainly volume driven and include around 1 percentage point from sales synergies. Pricing is expected to contribute a good percentage point across both divisions. The outlook also includes some uncertainty of potential lower consumer sentiment for the year.

We expect a good start to the year. This is mainly attributable to the sales momentum we are experiencing so far. Additionally, we expect a positive timing impact from the animal business in the first half of the year related to an inventory buildup of a key customer. For the year, this effect will be neutral.

We expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to be between 37% to 38%, showing continued margin expansion. The increase is expected to be driven by a stronger gross margin, the full year effect of the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition as well as the benefit from synergies. We have also included currency headwinds of around 0.5 percentage point based on current spot rates compared to 2025.

Novonesis' Board of Directors proposed a dividend of DKK 4.25 per share or EUR 0.57 to be approved at the Annual General Meeting. This will be equal to a total dividend payout for the year of DKK 6.5 or EUR 0.87 per share as we already paid an interim dividend of DKK 2.25 or EUR 0.30 on August 27 last year. This corresponds to a payout ratio of 58.4%, which is in line with our dividend payout policy, which suggests a ratio between 40% to 60% of adjusted net profit.

For modeling purposes for 2026, current FX spot rates suggest euro sales to be negatively impacted by around 2 percentage points. In addition, the inorganic growth contribution from the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition is expected to add a good percentage point. We expect around EUR 40 million in special items in 2026 related to integration activities from the combination in line with expectations, integration activities from the Feed Enzyme Acquisition and continued expenses related to the implementation of the new ERP system.

Net financials are expected between EUR 80 million to EUR 90 million, and an effective tax rate between 22% to 23% is a good assumption for 2026.

As already highlighted at last year's strategy announcement, we will see a temporary step-up in CapEx in order to support our growth for the strategy period and beyond. The increase of the investments are to expand our production capacity, particularly for enzymes and, the finalization of the dairy culture expansion in the U.S. In addition, we'll invest in a setup of a new ERP system over the next years. For 2026, we expect, therefore, CapEx to be in the range of 12% to 14% of sales.

Net debt to EBITDA is expected to be around 1.7 at year-end as our solid cash generation will allow for continued deleveraging despite the step-up in CapEx. We are in a good place and confident in the 2026 outlook. We make dedicated investments to support the short- and long-term growth, building an even stronger and more resilient Novonesis.

With this, I'll hand back to you, Ester.

Thank you, Rainer. Could you please turn to Slide #12? Thank you. Our investments in innovation are driving both near and long-term growth, and we see AI as a powerful tool that further strengthens our leadership in biosolutions. We invest more than EUR 400 million in R&D and they're focused purely on biology. This gives scale and sets our innovation pipeline as a differentiated engine, fueling our ability to outgrow the end markets we present.

With around 10,000 patents, our portfolio is very well protected. 85% of our 2025 product launches are IP protected. This is significant. In 2025, around 25% of our sales came from products launched in the last 5 years, in line with our ambition of 20% or more. We consistently have around 200 innovation projects in the late-stage pipeline status. In 2025, we launched 33 new solutions, and we feel confident in our ambition of launching at least 30 per year going forward, continuing to provide new answer to consumer ask from cleaner label and high-protein foods to lower water and energy bills.

Over the last years, we have increasingly integrated AI in our innovation processes. We have unmatched proprietary libraries of more than 100,000 strains, more than 15 million enzyme structures and extensive data collected over decades from biosolutions across applications, scaling productions and core R&D work. This property data that only we can access is the key reason why AI provides Novonesis a disproportional advantage compared to others, who are mainly able to access publicly available data. And this data is the one, our data, that puts us in a strong position to capitalize on the opportunities that AI offers.

The most material impact so far from using AI has been moving from idea to lead candidates faster with much less experimental activity, shortening this part of the innovation cycle from years to months. The next areas where we're seeing real breakthroughs are on strain design, productivity and production of outcomes in real-world applications.

To summarize, AI is a real differentiator for us as it amplifies the impact of our moat. AI enables us to develop new technologies and solutions faster and with high accuracy, bringing efficiencies that so far were impossible to achieve. The more data we generate, the more we increase the impact from AI, speeding up innovation and solving for increasing higher value generation.

Novonesis is a pure biologics play with unique portfolio of biosolutions, broad market reach and scalable precision fermentation setup. With strong execution and focus on prioritization, we continue to deliver on our commitments. 2026 will further demonstrate our progress to our 2030 targets and beyond.

And with that, we're now ready to open the Q&A. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Matthew Yates from Bank of America.

It relates to your outlook and this sort of concept of the uncertain lower consumer sentiment environment. And I guess if I look at your really amazing Q4 growth rates, it doesn't look like you are overly impacted there. You're talking about a strong start to the year. So when you referenced this consumer sentiment point, is that something you are already seeing in your results? And if so, in what part of the business? Or is that more of a forward-looking statement that it's something that could transpire and manifest itself in due course?

And if I can squeeze in a second question, specifically about your sort of Human Health business. I think it grew 12% ex the currency exits, which again, very, very impressive. Can you just talk a little bit how you are managing to decouple from arguably an end market or an end category that looks a bit more lackluster based on what we've seen some of your sort of peers or customers report. Is this innovation? Is this the merger synergies coming through? Just interested how you're driving such strong growth on the human side.

Thank you, Matthew, for these beautiful questions. Yes, we feel very pleased about how we finished the year, but especially about the momentum and how we're setting us for another good 2026.

Let me answer your first question and then pass it to Henrik, who will enlight us on how we are decoupling through our innovation muscle and the places we play in the market from the dynamics that we see and how we continue to outgrow the market here in Human Health.

Building on your question on our outlook, 5% to 7%, that's what we are aiming for the year within the range, including 1% of exiting certain countries. And as you indicated, Matthew, this is including a potential softness for consumer behavior, mainly in U.S. that we don't see yet. We're starting the year in a strong momentum across all areas. There's a little bit of effect of timing from Q1 -- from Q4 to Q1 on Ag and Tech, as we mentioned. But beyond that, the good start of the year that puts in a very good place of comfort. Then we live in the same world that you do, and we bring that potential scenario in place on quite some softness -- potential softness in the consumer behavior within the outlook of 5% to 7%. Henrik, please?

Thanks, Matthew, for that question. One of the nice questions to get to answer. Indeed, we are growing very well, and we're doing very well in Human Health. 2025 was also a very strong year for Human Health, where both our dietary supplements business and the Advanced Health & Nutrition business really contributed nicely. It is true that there's a lot of talk about lowering consumer sentiment.

In the Human Health business and especially in the supplements business, you do see consumers also switching around and shopping around a lot. So there is growth to capture if you're out there with the right customers. And we are locked in with some very, very successful customers, especially in the U.S., where we are growing very nicely despite others struggling a bit more.

It's also -- it's much more dynamic. And it's also a more fragmented market. It's not unlike many other parts of Novonesis, where position may be more broad. There's much more room for us to grow not only with the market, but also growing with share and growing with our key customer. And that is the secret of the recipe. We actually see that also in the rest of the world, but particularly in the U.S. And then also, as I mentioned, we are just growing nicely across all geographies and across both supplements, B2B and Consumer Health and Advanced Health & Nutrition.

And the next question comes from Thomas Lind from Nordea.

Also 2 questions from my side here. The first one relates to Ester, what you said about the, I think, greater innovation adoption within energy that you see in North America. If you could perhaps elaborate a little bit on that. We've seen the average U.S. ethanol yield get very close to 3 gallons per bushel. So just maybe if you could elaborate a bit on what is required to go above the 3 gallons per bushel, so breaking down the fiber and how you sort of see that breakdown going on over the coming years and then what that means to growth in energy.

And then the second question is on the very, very strong growth that you delivered in food and bev, 7% despite the strong headwind from the exit of Russia. So perhaps if you could just elaborate a little bit on this. I'm assuming that it's dairy, but is it high protein? Is it yogurts? And is it this new Galaya Smooth innovation that you launched last year? So that would be my questions.

Excellent. Thank you. Very good questions also, Alex (sic) [ Thomas ]. I'll pass it to Andrew to share the details of the broad-based growth on Food & Beverages. It is across all areas where we see it and also very diversified from a geography's point of view and continue to outgrow the market that we present. And then Claus will further elaborate on the question of innovation. But let me bring a little bit of color here that it's a beautiful question, the one that you're making, and it shows about the untapped potential of biosolutions. And this is the key formula of success of who we are, being a pure biologic play and continue to bring nuances that show what it was not possible, it is possible.

We've done it in bioenergy by being in the power of combining yeast and enzymes, and we continue to drive and enable a new value generation for our customers. And it is on higher yields, higher productivity, corn oil, value-added side streams that they make our solutions extremely strong. And coupled with a very strong presence in North America, we continue to outgrow the market. But Claus, what is the roof there? How we can continue to untap that?

Yes, Thomas, a very good question. I mean, I guess you're alluding to there must be a mass balance gap or cap somewhere, but that's still not there. There's still potential to convert more fiber. There's still potential to decrease the waste in, let's say, the yeast fermentation of glucose to ethanol. There's still a potential to increase the protein fraction, if you will, of the DDG. So there's still innovation potential in the bioenergy business.

And maybe, Claus, if you speak about not only corn, but also what we're seeing in other areas in bioenergy.

Sure. It was already mentioned in growth due to biodiesel, where continue to innovate for higher yields. And then also on the biomass side, where [ Horizon ] in Brazil continues to build out the capacity or coming online with the plant, and then in India as well.

Thank you, Claus. Andrew?

Thanks, Ester. Yes, we're very pleased with the growth momentum we have in Food & Beverage, both in Q4 and coming into this year. It is truly broad-based. So we are growing in both Dairy as well as Food & Beverage. The Dairy is similar to what we talked about in prior conversations around both the new innovations we're launching in this space, but then also productivity through things like DVS conversions, and we see that continuing to be a growth driver for us coming into this next year.

On Food & Beverage, it is also we're seeing growth, and that is in -- mainly driven by innovation. And we've talked in prior calls about baking and food. So we are really excited about the progress that we're making. The growth is really driven by the expansion of the usage of biosolutions in those industries. And so that's what we're spending a lot of time doing.

When you think about it from a regional perspective, we are seeing growth actually in all of our regions. And clearly, there are some pockets that are higher than lower, and a lot of what we're spending our time trying to do is making sure we have our sales resources deployed at the most attractive pockets for the next 3, 4, 5 years. So a lot of it comes down to making sure we have our people in the right spots.

And the next question comes from Alex Sloane from Barclays.

Two questions from my side, if that's okay. The first one, could I just ask a little bit more around the Agricultural timing impact? If you can maybe quantify how big an impact that had in Q4 on the timing side, what growth maybe in Ag, Energy and Tech would have been without that? And how confident are you that, that fully reverses in Q1 or H1 of this year?

And the second one was actually on innovation again. I mean, thank you, Ester, for the detail on AI, which sounds very exciting, obviously, shortening innovation cycles. You're talking about kind of months from years. How should we expect that to translate in terms of the innovation KPIs that you report over the next 5 years? Will we see more new product launches versus the 33 that you announced in '25? Or is there about launches that are just maybe more powerful, more useful for customers where you can derive more value?

Thank you, Alex, for both of your questions. Regarding the timing, it was meaningful enough to make a change or the imprint that you see in Q4. And what we feel very confident is that we see already a strong momentum in Q1. So it is purely timing, and we see that reflected in as we're starting the year.

Then on innovation, yes, we are bringing AI as a powerful tool. We've been using AI. We used to call it machine learning. Now it's embedded on the 100% on the way that we operate. And mainly it brings higher home runs per shot. It is leading to high efficiencies, but also untapping opportunities that we have not even seen yet the roof. It allows us to reach spaces that we could not dream. Yes, it brings efficiencies and speed. It took before 1 year of lab data to predict the surface of a protein, and now we can do that in 30 seconds or less than a minute. But it is because we have the right data, the relevant data on how we fit those models, on how we can capitalize on the momentum on R&D.

So too early to talk about the new metrics, but for sure, comfort on the quality of the muscle that we have behind and then the capability to continue to be a partner of growth, a value-added enabler for our customers on bringing new solutions in.

Then the next question comes from Lars Topholm from DNB Carnegie.

I have 2. Continuing on Alex's questions to Agriculture. Can you give maybe a little bit of detail on the areas where you saw the timing and the tough comps? Are we talking in animal health? Are we talking plant health? And if it's plant health, are we talking bioyield or biocontrol? If it's animal, can you comment on what species?

And then a second question, Rainer, when you went through the numbers, you mentioned a one-off effect in Q4 from a realignment of activities in plant. I think those were your words. I just wonder if you can put some comments on what that actually means.

Very good. Thank you, Lars. I will pass the word to Rainer and Tina on the drivers of the -- not only timing, but also strong competitor on tech for Q4 and also the drivers of the reorganization behind that we always do. We hired 400 people in commercial roles and customer-facing activities this year. And at the same time, we always streamline on the way that we operate. That's a continuous momentum, and we saw the impact of this in the one-off on Ag to continue to set us more equipped for capitalizing on the growth momentum and the opportunities we see in the market. But Tina, first to you.

Yes. So first of all, when we look at Ag, all 3 sub-elements, so Agriculture, Energy and Tech all grew in 2025 and delivered the 6% for the full year. And we are seeing good momentum here in 2026. We talked to strong growth, double digit in bioenergy also in Q4. And then we talk to some timing in Ag and Tech. I mean, Tech, we have talked about a couple of times, the biopharma processing aids that, that is more lumpy and bumpy starting out from the COVID-19 test kits. And that's also what we are seeing here in Q4. And we see a good start to -- here in '25, and we see a good start to 2026.

If we then go specifically into Agriculture, we see -- if you look back at our 2024 numbers, we had a very strong Q4 in Agriculture, and we do expect a very strong also in Agriculture here in 2026. If you look at it -- if you look even more detailed at it, we had good performance on plant, while animal was a bit more subdued and a lot of it comes from emerging markets. But we do see, as we also call out, a strong also animal performance here in 2026.

Then over to the restructure. Over the years, we have developed many strong solutions in the plant biosolutions space. And as you know, Lars, we have also talked about the need for prioritization and our focus on securing that we prioritize our cash in the best possible way. And now we want to focus on getting full benefit from what it is that we have. We have developed so many solutions, and we want to get them out and secure that we have the right footprint in the right places in order to deliver to that. So that's what it's about. It is about capitalizing on what we already have.

Really nothing to add. I think Tina explained it wonderfully. It's making sure the business has the appropriate resources to grow.

And the next question comes from Soren Samsoe from SEB.

Soren here. So first question is, you talk about a good start to the year. Just what areas are you more specifically referring to? And also, does this mean that we should see the year of '26 to be front-end loaded when it comes to organic growth and margins?

And the second question is on CapEx to sales, which you guide for 12% to 14%, and similar level, I guess, in '27. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on what this relates to? Are you going to build more capacity in other markets besides the expansion you're doing in the U.S.?

Thank you, Soren, for the very good question. The good start of the year is broad-based. It's across all areas. Then there is the onetime effect of inventory that Rainer mentioned in his comments that, that we're pleased. I mean the earlier we have that in place, the better for us. And that's only -- but it's irrelevant for the -- or not impactful the overall year, it's simply a timing effect that we're going to see particularly in Ag for the beginning of the year in Q1. But then the growth that we see, it's across all segments.

And then reading to CapEx, yes, it is built and made for support growth for the broad range of our guidance, including the high end. And I'm here, I'm passing the word to Rainer that can put a little bit more color.

Yes. So of course, it's the continuation of the expansion in the U.S. basically for the food culture business, right? It's going to go online in beginning of Q4 of this year. But then it's also ensuring that for the enzyme business, we have enough capacity to really accompany our growth journey, and that will be outside of the U.S. It will be more in the emerging markets and in India in this regard. So that is, of course, also going to be a multi-journey. Important here is this is really a temporary elevation, this 12% to 14%. And it also includes the roughly basically percentage points of the capitalization of expenses related to the ERP.

Will it be dedicated to any specific segment like Energy or Dairy or whatever?

Facilities, we're building multipurpose facilities. And these are investments not only in capacity but also in resilience overall so that we're able to really use these assets in a broad portfolio, of course, then across the enzyme portfolio.

And the next question comes from Tom Wrigglesworth from Morgan Stanley.

A couple of questions. I wanted to talk a little bit around the margin, both environment and the outlook. So with regards to the environment, where are we on the kind of the cost dynamics in terms of inputs and raw materials? I think sugar prices have been coming down. I wondered if that was supportive.

And secondly, in terms of the bridging elements for that margin midpoint, 37.5. Should we think about that as linear progression through the year? And what are you assuming around the SG&A investments that you're making and how that will trickle through into 2026, noting that, obviously, your ambition was to expand your sales force in emerging markets. So color around the margin would be very helpful.

Thank you, Tom. Rainer, if you please could take this one.

So regarding the timing of the margin, it's pretty much, I would say, fairly stable. It will be over the year. I would assume, as we said, like in 2025, we increased, for example, on the S&D side, 400 new colleagues that will, of course, be there from the beginning in this regard. We also do not expect actually any major growth rates from H1 to H2, right? We highlighted that the animal or in the agriculture space on the animal side, we see this onetime purchase, which for the year is neutral but will affect H1, right? We do not know if it's Q1 or Q2. That's what I'm saying here H1 in this regard.

And so therefore, we do not -- therefore, the ratio should be fairly consistent, right? And for the mid guidance, we also said, keep in mind that while there are clearly positive impacts, as you know, and further increase on the Feed Enzyme Alliance that we're, of course, going to harvest more synergies that add another 20 basis points. But also keep in mind that here, we also continue to face currency headwinds, which is going to be approximately around 0.5 percentage point. So overall, I think it's an ambitious figure but it's going to be basically throughout the year fairly consistent.

And the next question comes from Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

The first question was just on this timing issue that you referred to in your Ag business. I'm just curious, was that a surprise to you in the sense how it developed through the quarter? Because I was a bit puzzled, if this was known, why was this not flagged already in the last call?

The second question related, and Rainer, to some extent, touched on it, you don't expect any major deviation between H1 and H2 organic growth. So is that meaning that in Q1, we should at least see a similar 6% growth, if not higher because of the timing issue, bearing in mind, you also have the impact from exit in Russia and Belarus being bigger?

And third question, I was just looking at the slide, and I think, Ester, you mentioned about the new solution for oral care. Is this a completely new category for Novonesis? Or have you always been in that category? Because I don't seem to recollect having seen any offering for the oral care market. I'm just curious, is this something that is a new category for Novonesis?

Thank you, Chetan. Very good questions regarding oral care, and I'll let Henrik further build on this. But mainly, this is not necessarily new solutions. What is new is the connectivity we can bring now, bringing a broader company with cross-fertilizing solutions that we have in the pipeline and then enhancing them and bringing them, truly meeting needs of the consumers and then enabling new maybe formats or spaces for our customers. So not 100% new, but just new for the customers, enabling new connections as part of bringing also a broader company with more arms and more faces and more legs in the market.

Regarding the timing, no, it's not unexpected. It's mainly in Ag, where we know it's a bumpy market. These things happen. But we didn't see it in Q4, we see it Q1, it's there. And as I mentioned, and apologies, I'm repeating myself, we see a good start of the year across all areas but also here on Ag. With then the timing effect that Rainer mentioned on inventories on animal for the first half of the year that we're also going to see there. Do you want to build up on the timing, Rainer?

Yes, and I can give some more color there. Chetan, basically, I do not expect a difference really between H1 and H2. They're both going to be within the range that we said 5% to 7%. Keep in mind, that specifically 2025, also the first quarter in 2025 really is strong comparable, right? I'm not guiding here any quarters. But for H1, H2, I expect similar growth rates.

Then today's last question comes from Andre Thormann from Danske Bank.

I just have 2. Just coming back to Agriculture, Energy & Tech. I just wanted to make sure here, it's correct that the growth, if you correct for timing is around 3% organic. And if that is true, then it's still a very meaningful deceleration in the growth rates. So what explains that other than timing? That's my first question.

And then the second question is in terms of the tax rate. I just wanted to make sure it's 22% to 23%. Is that the run rate also longer term? Or is there some one-off effect in 2026?

So I'm going to start with the tax rate and make it easy. No, this is basically around the 22% to 23% is a long term. It's basically a normalized rate, probably even to the lower end of this 22% of that range. Keep in mind the tax rate in '24 was really high due to the nontax deductible integration expenses, which were quite significant. So now we're actually in a more normalized way going forward.

And Andre, building on the timing, it's good that we dwell on the quarter, and we don't look at our businesses from a quarter perspective. We delivered 6% growth in Agricultural, Energy & Tech. Particularly in this segment, there is volatility from one quarter to the other. We knew that there was a strong comparator in Tech in Q4, and Tina shared the drivers behind. And we're starting the year in a good place, and we see this segment as a driver of growth. We delivered double-digit growth in Q4 in bioenergy, and we continue to see growth across all areas in Q4 -- in 2026. We will -- it will be the same drivers. It's innovation, it's penetration, and it's continue capitalizing in the momentum and then translated into what you will see growth across the segment in 2026.

Just to be sure, Ester, because I'm not sure I got that. So is it correct that it's around 3% if you correct for timing in Q4? Just to be sure of the numbers.

And I heard you and that's your assumption. And now what we are saying is that there is an impact on timing. It is meaningful. You can make -- I mean, that's a fair assessment. But what's important for us is the 6% growth for the year and the comfort of Planetary Health Biosolutions, Agricultural, Energy & Tech to also be a driver of growth across the segments in 2026.

So no more calls. And we thank you for -- no more questions, and thank you for all calling in today. Looking forward to continuing the conversations. We're pleased of where we are. We're proud of 2025. We have a strong start of 2026. And we're looking for continue the conversations with you and showing you also through the year on how we're delivering on our guidance that we put in place. Thank you so much.

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 Novonesis Interim Report for the First 9 Months of 2025 Conference Call. I'm Lorenzo, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Tobias Cornelius Björklund. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to the Novonesis conference call for the first 9 months of 2025. As mentioned, my name is Tobias Björklund. I'm heading up Investor Relations here at Novonesis.

In this call, our CEO, Ester Baiget, and our CFO, Rainer Lehmann, will review our performance for the first 9 months of the year as well as the outlook for 2025. Attending today's call, we also have Tina Fano, EVP of Planetary Health Biosolutions; Henrik Joerck Nielsen, EVP of Human Health Biosolutions; Andrew Taylor, EVP of Food & Health Biosolutions; and Claus Crone Fuglsang, Chief Scientific Officer.

The conference call will take about 45 minutes, including Q&A. Please change to the next slide.

As usual, I would like to remind you that the information presented during the call is unaudited and that management may make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking statements.

With that, I will now hand you over to our CEO, Ester. Ester, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Tobias, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. Please turn to Slide 3. Thank you. We continue to deliver on our promises, and on the back of a strong first half of 2025, we delivered organic sales growth of 8% in the first 9 months. The third quarter was stronger than expected, including some positive timing effect and grew by 6%. Growth was broad-based and mainly volume-driven as pricing contributed by around 1%, both in the first 9 months and in the quarter.

The exit of certain countries impacted organic sales growth negatively by around 1 percentage point in the first 9 months and by around 2 percentage points in the third quarter. Emerging markets were particularly strong at 12% growth, driven by increased local presence and tailored solutions for different customer needs. We continue to invest in these markets to further drive growth and fulfill our strategic goals.

Since late 2024, we have made significant investments in customer-facing activities with commercial resources in emerging markets growing at more than twice the rate of developed markets. Growth in developed markets reached 6% with solid performance in both Europe and North America. Sales synergies are well on track and contributed close to 1 percentage point with positive impact across the businesses.

The integration of the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition, which closed on June this year, is progressing as planned, and we are already now seeing the benefits from a strong Biosolutions portfolio and being closer to customers. Performance since closing is in line with expectations.

We launched 4 new Biosolutions in the quarter, bringing the year to 19 in total. As an example, in Food & Beverages, we have launched innovation that tapped into higher consumer demand for healthier and more nutritional products, including high-protein solutions. Another example of innovation, tapping into growing consumer demands includes high-performance solutions for quick and cold wash cycles in Household Care.

The adjusted EBITDA margin for the first 9 months of the year was 37.3%, an increase of 1.3 percentage points compared to last year. The margin includes significant currency headwinds, showing the strong underlying operational performance, while also we continue to invest for growth. Central to our growth performance and strong performance is Novonesis' unique ability to deliver solutions that enhance productivity, enhance efficiency, quality, bring health benefits and sustainability for our customers and consumers.

While our Biosolutions typically account for a small portion of our customers' costs of goods sold, they play a significant role in enabling value creation. Additionally, our well-diversified presence across industries and geographies provides resilience and strength to our overall performance.

After strong 9 months performance, including favorable timing in the third quarter, we'll leave the bottom end of the range and now expect organic sales growth to be between 7% to 8%. This includes an indication of mid-single-digit organic sales growth for the fourth quarter. We expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to be at the lower end of the 37% to 38% range, continuing to absorb the significant currency headwind compared to the initial outlook for the year. I'm also pleased that the strong earnings translate into healthy cash generation.

And with that -- with this, let us now look at the divisional performance in more detail. Let's start with Food & Health Biosolutions. If you could please turn to Slide #4. Thank you. The Food & Health BioSolutions division delivered 9% organic sales growth in the first 9 months of the year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 35.6%, an increase of 30 basis points. In the quarter, organic sales growth was 6%, including the negative impact of around 5 percentage points from the exit of certain countries. For 2025, we expect this division to deliver organic sales growth within the same range as for the group with relatively stronger growth in human health.

Please turn to Slide #5. Thank you. Food & Beverages delivered 8% organic sales growth in the first 9 months and 5% in the quarter, including the impact of exiting certain countries. Growth was mainly driven by volume, where pricing contributed positively and in line with group level. Growth in the first 9 months as well as for the third quarter was anchored across most categories with continued strong momentum in Dairy, including positive impact from timing. Performance was mainly driven by upselling and strong customer adoption of innovation.

In Fresh Dairy, we continue to see increasing demand for our tailored solutions in the high protein space and in bioprotection, supported also by healthy underlying global demand for yogurt. Additionally, in Cheese, customer conversion contributed to growth. Baking, Meat and Plant-based solutions also saw strong growth mainly driven by innovation and increased penetration. The Beverage segment declined, impacted mainly by lower end market volumes. Synergies contributed to growth and in line with expectations, supported by cross-selling and increased commercial scale across Food & Beverages.

On the innovation front, we launched 2 new products in the quarter, making it 10 in total for the first 9 months. Growth in 2025 in Food & Beverages is expected to be broad-based, including a positive impact from synergies.

Please turn to Slide #6. Thank you. Human Health delivered 10% organic sales growth in the first 9 months of the year and 8% in the third quarter. Again, growth was mainly volume-driven and negatively impacted from the exit of certain countries. The release of deferred revenue contributed around 1 percentage point to the growth for both periods. In the first 9 months, the development was driven by a strong performance in both Dietary Supplements and Advanced Health & Nutrition.

Synergies contributed positively to growth and in line with expectations. Dietary Supplements grew across regions, led by solid momentum in North America. Performance in Advanced Health & Nutrition was supported by Advanced Protein Solutions, as we continue to ramp up revenue with our anchor customer. Growth in Early Life Nutrition was led by HMO. In the third quarter, growth in Dietary Supplements was driven particularly by strong performance in North America across subcategories with Women's Health and the Healthcare Practitioner Channel as a strong contributors.

In Advanced Health & Nutrition, the drivers for the third quarter were similar to those for the first 9 months. For 2025, growth in Human Health will be driven by a continued positive momentum in dietary supplements, supported by a positive impact from synergies and by Advanced Health & Nutrition, including the continued progress with our anchor customer. Deferred revenue is expected to contribute around 1 percentage point for the growth for the sales area.

Please turn to Slide #7 for -- and let's look at Planetary Health. Thank you. Planetary Health Biosolutions delivered 8% organic sales growth in the first 9 months of the year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 38.7%, an increase of 2 percentage points. In the third quarter, organic sales growth was 6%. For 2025, we expect this division to deliver organic sales growth around the low end of the group with relatively stronger growth in Agricultural, Energy & Tech.

Please turn to Slide #8. Thank you. Household Care delivered 7% organic sales growth in the first 9 months of the year and 6% in the quarter. Growth was mainly volume driven and with positive contribution from price on par with the group level. Emerging markets contributed significantly to the strong performance, both in Laundry and Dish, supported by solid growth in the developed markets.

Performance was driven by increased market penetration as well as innovation. Growth in the third quarter was positively impacted by timing, easing the impact of end market normalization in developed markets.

On the innovation front, we launched 1 new product in the third quarter, Pristine Advance, as part of the Freshness platform. This launch targets consumers seeking energy-efficient, time-saving laundry solutions, as it delivers deep cleaning and fresh results even in quick and cold washing cycles.

Key growth drivers for the year continue to be innovation, increased penetration, pricing as well as industry volume growth, where we see a normalization in developed markets through the second half of the year.

Please turn to Slide #9 for Agriculture, Energy & Tech. Thank you. Agriculture, Energy & Tech delivered organic sales growth of 8% in the first 9 months and 7% in the third quarter. This was driven by a strong growth in energy and supported by tech and agricultural. Growth was driven mainly by volume, and pricing contributed positively, in line with the group.

Growth in energy was led by Latin America and India, driven by increased ethanol production capacity and a strong growth in Europe. Growth in North America was also supportive, driven by greater adoption of innovation and growing ethanol production volumes supported by increasing exports.

Additionally, a ramp-up in second-generation ethanol and penetration of Biodiesel Solutions also contributed positively across geographies. Growth in agricultural was driven by both animal and plant, while performance in Tech was led by increasing demand for solutions for biopharma production.

Growth in the third quarter was driven by similar factors, as those for the first 9 months, including a strong performance in Energy, supported by Agriculture. For 2025, growth in Agriculture, Energy & Tech is expected across all industries, supported by a positive impact from synergies. Growth is expected to be led by Energy.

And now, let me hand over to Rainer for a review on the financials and the outlook for 2025. Rainer, please?

Thank you, Ester, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's call also from my side.

Let's turn to Slide 10. Please note that for the year-on-year comparison figures presented today, we have used pro forma figures as our baseline comparison for year-to-date 9 months numbers. The corresponding IFRS-based figures are available in the statement released this morning. Q3 year-on-year figures are IFRS based and fully comparable.

In the first 9 months, sales grew 8% organically and 7% in reported euro as currency provided a 3 percentage point headwind while M&A impacted development positively by 1 percentage point, driven by the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition we finalized in June. In the third quarter, sales grew by 6% organically and by 4% in euro. Currency headwinds continued to be significant and amount to 5%, but were offset partly by the 3% positive contribution from the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition, which was in line with expectations.

Turning to our profitability. The adjusted gross margin was 58.9%. This is an improvement of 250 basis points year-on-year. Lower input costs, including the cost of energy as well as economies of scale and productivity improvements led to the strong development. Pricing and synergies also had a positive impact, while currencies impacted negatively.

The adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.3%. This was 130 basis points higher than the first 9 months of last year and explained by scale, the improvement in gross margin and synergies, countered by strong negative currency effects as well as expected reinvestments to support growth.

Please note that the divisional adjusted EBITDA margins for the quarter are slightly impacted by minor year-to-date adjustments, reflecting divisional performance. Needless to say, though, that both divisions continue to deliver strong profitability. We continue to invest in our business. And as Ester mentioned, we are further stepping up our commercial presence and customer-facing activities, particularly in emerging markets.

Special items were around EUR 50 million and primarily consists of transaction costs related to the Feed Enzyme Alliance acquisition. It also includes integration expenses as well as some initial expenses for the new global ERP system related to the combination. The diluted adjusted earnings per share was EUR 1.19, an increase of 20% compared to first 9 months of last year. If we adjust for PPA amortization, the earnings per share were EUR 1.54, which also represents an increase of 20% compared to the year before.

Operating cash flow amounted to EUR 193 million in the first 9 months, which is an increase of around EUR 90 million compared to last year. This was driven by the improvement in net profit, partly offset by an increase in net working capital, mainly from higher inventories and increased receivables resulting from a strong sales performance. Due to the still low CapEx activities, which we plan to ramp up in Q4, free cash flow before acquisitions increased by 16% to EUR 668 million for the first 9 months of the year compared to EUR 576 million last year.

With this, let's now turn to Slide #11 to talk about the outlook. Please note that the outlook is also based on current levels of global trade tariffs and current foreign exchange rates. And as Ester mentioned, we're lifting the bottom end of the range of the organic sales growth outlook and now expect 7% to 8% for the full year, with an indication of mid-single-digit organic sales growth in the fourth quarter. This is a result of a strong first 9 months performance, including favorable timing in the third quarter. Growth will continue to be driven mainly by volumes and with a similar positive pricing impact of around 1% across both divisions.

Sales synergies are still expected to contribute around 1 percentage point to the organic sales growth for the year. For the adjusted EBITDA margin, we expect to be at the lower end of the 37% to 38% range. This includes significant currency headwinds of around 1 percentage point compared to our initial expectations as our adjusted EBITDA is fully impacted by currency fluctuations. As a reminder, please note that we show the FX hedging gains and losses as part of the net financial items below the EBIT line, protecting our net profit.

In conclusion, and based on the results from the first 9 months of the year, we're in a strong and confident position in our ability to achieve our full year outlook.

With this, I will hand back to Ester for a wrap-up. Ester?

Thank you. Thank you, Rainer. Could you please turn to Slide #12? Let me summarize our message here today. Novonesis' diverse portfolio of innovative biosolutions, broad market reach and unique scalable production setup continue to drive strong performance. With the results we're presenting here today, we show that we continue to deliver on our promises with the strength and the resilience of our business model. We continue to execute successfully on our strategic priorities, positioning ourselves firmly to deliver on our 2030 targets.

And with that, we're now ready to open for Q&A. Lorenzo, if you could open the Q&A, please?

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Thomas Lind from Nordea.

So 2 questions from my side. The first one is regarding pricing. At the CMD last year, you said that you were aiming for pricing up until 2030 of 1% to 2% annually. This year, it's 1%. But given the tariffs impacting your business, I would assume that you would take price to sort of offset some of the impact here. So maybe going into -- also to '26, is it fair to assume that 2% pricing in '26 is more likely than the 1%?

And then the second question is just regarding your 19 new product launches here in '25, which is impressive. But still, it seems a little bit like a slowdown, at least when comparing obviously to the impressive 45 product launches last year, and then, just 4 here in Q3. I would assume that given the revenue synergies, we would see sort of a ramp-up in product launches or at least that's just my expectations. But yes, if you could put a few words on that, that would be great.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Thomas, for these very good questions. Let me start with the comments and questions on pricing, and then, I'll pass it to also to Claus to bring further color on innovation. It is true. We're very pleased with our 8% growth year-to-date, robust growth, mainly volume growth and also from pricing. And this is a growth -- the quality of that growth year-to-date, it gives us a very high level of comfort. We grow across all geographies, across all segments, also with double-digit growth in emerging geographies. The 1% price, it is an area that we committed to. We see the impact translating down in the bottom line.

And regarding your question on tariffs, it's important to mention that most of what we produce in -- that we sell in North America, it's produced in North America. And then where it's not, then we see also pricing as a driver of ensuring that it's a net neutral effect for the year, which we continue to stay committed to.

Moving forward, we are in a really good place of comfort, mainly particularly on the volume growth, the underlying strength of our business model, where pricing will continue to be a driver of growth. And yes, on the 1% to 2% CAGR for the period on pricing that you indicated to for the strategic period.

Then, regarding innovation, before I pass it to Claus, I would like to remind you that -- and please let's all remind us that the solutions that are less than 5 years old, they continue to contribute to whom we are with more than 25 -- more than 20% of our revenue is for new launches. And the quality that we bring in continues to be the driver of growth. We enable value growth for our customers through innovation, through solutions that they lead to higher yield, higher efficiencies, higher productivity, differentiated claims. And then I would invite you to look, yes, at the 19 year-to-date, but for sure, the continued contribution that innovation puts on the strength and the quality of our growth.

Yes. Thank you, Ester. The 19 launches year-to-date is actually on plan and what we expected. We expect some acceleration here in Q4. It's not about hitting the same number as last year, but the impact, of course, it makes in the market in terms of sales growth and contribution to revenue. So we are pretty happy with the performance. As Ester said, we are well above the 20% of sales from new products. So thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Thomas Wrigglesworth from Morgan Stanley.

Two from me, if I may. Firstly, on Household Care, could you break out the difference in performance between emerging markets and developed markets? Obviously, there's all the data we see in developed markets from your customers is obviously looks very volume negative. So it would be great to know the kind of split of growth between those 2.

And secondly, on the Dairy performance, how much of the growth in Dairy do you think was a function of pull forwards? And associated with that, as you win a customer adoption, is there a kind of a preloading sale that takes place that means that growth becomes harder and harder because as adoption rates and penetration increases, you effectively have a high base, and there's less people to adopt in the future? So I'm just kind of trying to get a sense of where we are in that high protein adoption phase as you see it today.

Thank you very much, Thomas. I will let Tina bring color on your question on Household Care, and then, Andrew on Dairy.

Yes. Thank you so much, Thomas. So the performance in emerging markets is a key growth driver in Household Care. And it is a result of the strategy we have had for a number of years, where we have been investing in order, both on innovation and also on feet on the ground in order to cater for these markets. So Household Care is significantly outgrowing the developed markets in Household Care. In terms of their relative size, I assume you know the split between emerging markets and developed markets for the group, and Household Care is a bit more exposed than group to the emerging markets.

And then thank you. This is Andrew, and thank you. In terms of your questions on Dairy, a couple of things, so we did see some positive timing effects in Q3 as some of the ramp-ups from our customers, especially in North America, came a bit quicker than we had expected. And then, if you kind of take the second piece of the question, because they're clearly related on the loading, I would separate it into 2 types. So there's sort of the new innovations that you're driving across the Dairy value chain. So things, for example, solutions for high-protein yogurt, those tend to have a natural cycle, but there's many of them over time.

With regards to productivity, and then, also DVS conversions, we've talked about before, those do have a bit of a loading, but none of them is big enough to really drive a huge preloading effect overall for the business. And the exciting part is we see a continued pipeline of those opportunities over time.

The next question comes from the line of Georgina Fraser from Goldman Sachs.

One of them is a follow-up, if we could hear a little bit more about Dairy, and strength there is particularly impressive. And I'd love to hear a bit more about what you're seeing in emerging markets and the sustainability of those trends medium term.

And then second question is on Beverages. So I think it's the only market that you're seeing that looks a bit weak. It's declining. Should we expect these trends to continue? Or do you have any product launches or customer wins up your sleeve?

Thank you, Georgina. We feel also very pleased about where we are and particularly on starting to see the fruits of the seeds that we put in the past. We have been investing in emerging markets. We have been investing in innovation, and we see, reflected in the numbers, the translation of those investments into growth.

And now, I'll pass it to Andrew.

Yes. Thank you, Ester. So taking those 2 things in turn. So with regard to emerging markets, the drivers there are a few things. One is just the fundamentally quicker underlying volume growth of emerging markets vis-a-vis domestic markets -- or sorry, developed markets. The second thing that I would call out specifically is we have been investing in emerging markets over the years. We are seeing the benefits of having local presence, being able to go more direct because that actually just leads to a quicker share as well as the overall market growth.

And the third thing I'd highlight, which is a bit different, is there's parts of the Dairy market that are relatively newer in big parts of Asia. So for example, cheese in China. Cheese in China, we're seeing good growth in off a small base. But because we have leadership in that technology, we're able to be that partner of choice in China. So the combination of those 3 things is really what we're seeing.

With regards to Beverages, I think everyone's seen there's challenges in the alcoholic beverage market across the piece. We are not immune to those volume challenges. We're working really hard, though, to actually drive better both penetration of the existing solutions, but launch the next generation of solutions. That, of course, takes time, but we're working really hard to continue to grow in Beverages.

The next question comes from the line of Alex Sloane from Barclays.

The first one, actually, a follow-up on Dairy, in the first half, you talked about sort of new enzyme solutions to help maximize whey byproduct value streams for cheese customers. I mean, clearly, we're seeing we've very strong demand for whey right now given added protein formulation trends in food. So I'm assuming there's quite a lot of customer appetite on this. I appreciate it's pretty quite early days, but maybe, Andrew, you could talk to the traction you're having here and in terms of customer engagement and timing around this commercialization opportunity, it would be great.

And you did flag some cheese conversion tailwinds in the U.S. So it would be great if you could remind me where you are in terms of kind of global conversion to DVS cultures in cheese, which I think has more headroom than yogurt.

And then, if I could squeeze in 1 more for Rainer, just in terms of the cost outlook into '26, how is that looking on energy and sugar, please, based on the sort of hedging you have, assuming the latter, maybe some tailwind? Can that offset residual FX pressures that you might be facing on the margin side in the first half?

Thank you, Alex. Those were 3 questions, the way I count them, but let's move ahead with that. Beautiful that you double-click on Dairy and the impressive results that we continue to outgrow the markets that we are present. And this is a simple formula. We enable value creation, value growth for our customers through yield, through productivity and also through differentiated claims on health, on high protein. And by staying very close with our customers, also in emerging geographies, I mean, we out -- in China, for example, we're growing in a declining market. That's the formula that's driving the growth. But I'll pass it to Andrew and Claus to build up on your first question, and then, Rainer afterwards.

Thank you. I'll take the first part of the question and then turn to Claus. So in terms of the whey solutions, I think the way that Ester put it is exactly how we see it, which is our customers are looking for increasing productivity and increasing valorization of some of the things that historically have been treated more as offtakes. So we have a lot of interest from our customers around the world on this. And this is where being that preferred partner is so important. They're only going to work -- the best customer is only going to work with 1 player on this, and we really have invested heavily over the years to be that 1 player.

Maybe, Claus, you can talk a little bit about the status of the technology.

Sure. It's still early days. While we do have technology that will modify solubility of proteins with this, whey is about protein and protein solubility and functionality, it's still early days. We see the customer pull and interest in collaboration on innovation, but we also expect that we will need to develop new solutions while we'll start, hopefully, getting traction on existing.

And then taking your second question before turning it back to Ester, we do see significant headroom still in the DVS conversions. That conversion rate is about 60% around the world. Obviously, higher in developed markets, lower in emerging markets, and that's where our direct presence in those markets is so important.

So Alex, coming to the -- of course, I can't give you a guidance for 2026, right? We're all aware of that part. But if you think about it right now, we obviously benefited from quite some lower energy. I don't think this is going to go any lower, to be honest. So that gives you an indication there. And actually, we do not hedge raw materials on our normal production. So there, we basically are buying on the normal market, and we have to see how this develops, to be honest. And these are uncertain times. But, of course, also you've mentioned the FX, the U.S. dollar, which came down quite significantly and actually in the last days. Let's see how this -- it's quite a volatile environment, but we will be able with our also scale to actually counteract that.

Maybe a quick comment. We can also -- that's the good thing about our technology, it's versatile, and we can actually change between certain types of raw materials. So it's not necessarily glucose. It can be other input costs in terms of carbon.

The next question comes from the line of Lars Topholm from DNB Carnegie.

Congrats with a very good quarter. Two questions from me, please. I wonder on Household Care, if you can comment on how coming bans on microplastics is affecting your business now? And maybe for now, this is mainly Europe, I guess. But also, how you see this as a potential driver for the U.S.? And then I wonder what the status is on HMO approval in China.

Excellent questions, Lars. Tina and Henrik, please.

Yes. So let me start with the Household Care. So in general, as you also know, Lars, and we've talked about a number of times, the -- one of the strategy in Household Care is, I would say, that 3 elements: differentiation, allowing new claims for our customers, it is a matter of replacing chemicals, and then, it's a matter of the investment in emerging markets. And you are hindering on #2 here with replacement of other ingredients. And a ban on microplastics is exactly talking to that tendency. So with our technology base, we are capable of replacing a number of compounds in the detergent matrix, including things leading to microplastics. And that is also one of the key growth driver we have seen, not only in developed markets, but in fact, also in emerging markets because there is a wish to go for more cleaner formulas, to go for quicker and faster, and at the same time, lower temperature washing.

And Tina, in terms of penetration by those technologies, where are you on the curve? Is this in its infancy? Or are you already there? Or how should we think about this looking maybe 3 or 5 years ahead, please?

It is in the early days. And it keeps evolving also, what it is we can replace. As you know, I have been in the industry for many years. And if you think about what we thought we could replace 20 years ago, this is completely different, so it is in its infancy.

And your question on HMO in China. Good question. It's the largest market in the world on infant, as you know, and the most premiumized. Recently, we have seen now recipes approved, which is what everybody initially was waiting for with HMOs. So now HMOs can actually make their way into infant formula and into the market. We are the only player that has 5 HMOs approved in China. We are not yet in a recipe in the market, but we're working with all the leading players in China to get into products. It's difficult to say now when that will happen. But the good news is that the market is now open.

The next question comes from the line of Nicola Tang from NBP (sic) [ BNP ] Paribas.

First, I was wondering if you would be able to quantify this impact from the pull forward of orders in Q3. I was just trying to have a better understanding of the underlying growth. And how do you actually know, particularly in Household, that it was a pull forward rather than just an indication of better demand? And do you have a view on current inventory levels for your customers across the wider business? I was wondering if there's any areas where customers might have built more safety stock given the tariff uncertainty. But equally, have customers actually reduced inventory too much, and so, we're having to pull forward orders as a result of that?

And the second thing I wanted to ask about, I think now there's about 300 basis points difference in EBITDA margins between the 2 divisions on a year-to-date basis. I was wondering if you see any structural reasons why the Food & Beverages and Human Health profitability will be lower going forward? Or do you expect both divisions to hit your 39% target by 2030?

Thank you very much, Nicola. We're really pleased on the performance that we had year-to-date with 8% growth. And yes, this is including some timing effects in Q3. And with that, we also aim to mid-single-digit growth for Q4. It's important to mention when we -- what we feel very pleased about is that we continue to deliver on our promises and what we said we would do. We said we would have a stronger first half than the second half, and that's where we are in. And also, we said, and we continue to say, we are very close to our customers, and we are there to enable that growth.

We have been investing across the whole globe and particularly in emerging geographies on driving growth. And we see some timing effects from 1 quarter to the other. There has been in Dairy, maybe on some -- in cheese on the transformation being a little bit ahead from one quarter to the other, it's okay, we are very close to our customers and whenever that happen, also in emerging geographies, maybe a little bit faster than 1 quarter to other. We don't look for the quarter. We're here for the full year.

And the lifting of the low end of the guidance and the comfort of how we're going to finish the year strong, including the impact of emerging -- of exiting certain countries, all in that together, leading to your second point of the dynamics in the market. We live in the same world that you live. But at the same time, we continue to see the strength of the drivers that trigger the underlying growth of our business. We enable value growth for our customers, and that's strong. That's today, and we feel very comfortable on -- we're not going to go into the guidance for next year, but we feel very confident on delivering on the strategic targets that we committed on the 6% to 9% growth until -- CAGR until 2030.

Then the profitability of the business, strong and bold across all areas. And I will pass it to Rainer to build on that.

So regarding the differential in the 2 divisions regarding profitability, yes, you basically answered -- your answer was in your question, right? Because it's clearly on the Human Health and HMO side. There we have a dilutive impact, that is known, that, of course, over time. And then with scale, we will improve the profitability. But let me remind you that really both divisions run in a very high profitability, especially compared also what else is out there. So yes, we're going to improve, it's going to improve and it's going to -- the gap is going to narrow, I would say.

The next question comes from the line of Sebastian Bray from Berenberg.

Can I start with the financial items line? And what would be expected for '26, because the consensus seems to only have a modest step up in this? And my understanding is that there are EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million of FX hedging benefits, and you have the annualization of the EUR 1.3 billion of debt that was placed to purchase the DSM Feed Enzyme business stake. What level of financial items cost step-up would be reasonable in 2026? Could it go from, let's say, EUR 75 million all the way up to EUR 105 million, EUR 110 million?

And my second question is on the bioenergy market. This seems to have been fine in Q3. It's not really commented upon in the release, but -- is anything changing there? Is, basically, Novonesis still taking market share of everybody? Is 2G ramp-up proceeding as expected? Any changes incrementally on what's expected as we move into 2026?

Rainer will -- thank you, Sebastian, and Rainer will answer your first question, and then, Tina build on Bioenergy.

So my answer is actually going to be only very limited because I'm not going to give you -- or can give a guidance for a specific 2026 on the financial items. We'll do that once we finish the year, and then, of course, publishing in February and then giving the outlook will, as we do always, give an indication of our finance line items. But generally, your line of thought goes, is in the right direction.

And on Bioenergy, you are right on the market in Q3. And also, if you look in the beginning of the year, there is growth in the North American market. I assume that's the one you're referencing, Sebastian. But overall, in that industry, I think it's important to think about the diversification story we have talked about so many times. So it's the geographical diversification, which is helping us, both in the quarter and year-to-date. You have heard me talk about India as well as Latin America as key growth drivers. We have also talked about the feedstock diversification, where we -- and also both year-to-date and especially in the quarter, we see good growth from biomass or second-generation ethanol as well as biodiesel. So all of that is contributing to the growth.

North America is a more -- it's a big part of our business, but it is a more slow in growing, where we are growing roughly in line with market. If you think about specific market developments, I would say -- the fundamentals remain the same. We do see both India and Brazil talking about higher blend rates for first-generation ethanol. 2G is also continuing to get online. You know we have plans both in Brazil, India and also in Europe. And biodiesel plants is also coming on. So the growth drivers remain intact, and they are all supporting the growth year-to-date.

The next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

I had actually 2, both are related in a way. One of the things -- or one of the trends we've seen over the past year in the broader specialty chemical ingredient market is increasing competition from China, India, and whereas you guys are growing very, very fast in emerging markets, and I'm -- I mean, I'm sure based on what I've seen, there are regional players that you compete with in both India and China. So I'm just curious what sort of regional competitive dynamics do you see across your businesses because it's quite interesting that you're growing so fast in emerging markets where others are actually seeing much more competition.

The second question related is -- we saw IFF announce a collaboration with BASF on the detergent enzymes and solutions side of things. Do you have a view on what that might mean in terms of competition for Novonesis in the Household Care market down the line?

Thank you, Chetan. Very good questions. We're pleased on our growth in emerging geographies, and we see it as an outcome of self-help efforts that we have made in the past. And we also see it as a -- simply the outcome of the strength of our solutions and being close to our customers in a market, which is in demand of new answers. Our solutions enable higher yields and productivity, are also in emerging geographies and also differentiated claims for consumers that they are seeking for new answers. And we have been investing in the last years on more boots on the ground to be able to play and co-create with our customers, particularly in emerging geographies. Powder lab in India for Household Care or in Latin America or baking lab in Turkey or more capability for Dairy in China, these are self-help efforts that we have made that we see them reflected now in growth.

We see -- of course, we live in the same world that you see, and we see other players in the industry. But the formula of success for our customers, it is listen, understand their needs and then provide them with bio-based solutions that enable them growth through high efficiencies, through bringing health claims, through bringing solutions that they would not be able to do without our products. And that's the model that we are investing combined with a robust global asset footprint that we supply reliably, and we are there with our customers to deliver that growth in a resilient and predictable way.

And I'll pass it to Tina on Household Care.

Yes, and I'll be relatively short, Chetan. As we talked about also in the question from Lars Topholm earlier, what we are doing, and let me focus in on that compared to what others are doing. So what we are doing is we invest in innovation. We invest in innovation with our customers, and that includes replacing chemicals. So we go in and replace polymers, we go in and replace brightness, microplastics and so forth. And that is one of our growth drivers in Household Care. That is the winning strategy as we see it.

One last question, please.

Our last question comes from the line of Soren Samsoe from SEB.

Congrats with the result. So first, on Dairy, just if you can indicate a bit more on how your growth is because it must be quite strong double digit given that you have almost 10% growth in Q3 and that brewing is negative. Then, also, given that milk prices are very low than we have historically seen, sometimes cheese manufacturers producing for inventory, is that giving you a temporary boost in Dairy at the moment?

And then secondly, on sales and distribution costs, they're going up quite a lot, but maybe you can give us -- or quantify how much is up if you adjust for DSM? And also what it is that you're investing in commercially, that could be interesting?

Thank you so much, Soren. Andrew, Rainer, please.

Yes. On Dairy, the exciting part is our growth is broad-based. So if you look across both geographies as well as the large applications of cheese or fresh dairy, we are seeing good growth in most places. That's really driven by a couple of things, one of which we talked about earlier, which is penetration essentially and underlying market growth, especially in the emerging markets. The second is some of the trends that we're seeing on things like high protein. And the third is, of course, the continued productivity. So we are -- remain excited about the growth coming in to the remainder part of this year and into the next several years. But, of course, that we're trying to drive that market penetration through new innovations we have with our customers on all those places and really position ourselves as the market leader.

Soren, regarding the increase on the S&D cost sales ratio, of course, there is a part of DSM in there. We're not going to specify it directly. But keep in mind that really -- this is a result out of continuous investing in emerging markets, right? What we said we did in the past, and we are going to continue to do so throughout the strategy period. We give you an indication what the overall inorganic contribution is, and it's accretive to the overall EBITDA. So basically, there you also can back into what you think might be the impact on the operational expenses overall. It's not just S&D.

Excellent. Excellent answer. Thank you very much all for your questions. We're closing the day and looking forward to continue to interact with you within the next days moving forward. Thank you so much.