Symrise Aktie

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our first half 2026 call. Thank you for joining us today. All related documents are available on our website. With me today are our CEO, Jean-Yves Parisot; and our CFO, Olaf Klinger. After the remarks, we will open the line for questions.

And now I hand over the call to Jean-Yves.

Thank you. Thank you, Rene, and thank you all for joining us. Today, I will begin with a performance overview, and Olaf will review our first half [Technical Difficulty] in detail. I will then provide an update on the progress we are making with our ONE Symrise strategy and our ONE SYM transformation journey. Before we will conclude with our full year outlook and take your questions.

Let's start now with the first half on the Slide 4. Before reviewing the results in detail, let me highlight a few takeaways from the first half. Our business gained momentum as the year progressed. After a soft quarter, organic growth accelerated to 4.5% in Q2, driven by stronger volumes, commercial execution and broad-based strength in North America and Asia Pacific. We continue to deliver strong profitability while significantly improving cash generation despite a more challenging cost environment and continued investment behind future growth. We continue to advance our transformation. And during the first half, we validated our key business cases, prioritized the most impactful initiatives and moved the program from planning towards implementation. Overall, we are making very good progress on our journey in our accelerated way.

Turning to the results. First half sales were EUR 2.539 billion with organic growth of 2%. The most important development was the sequential improvement through the half organic growth increased from a slight decline in the first quarter to 4.5% in the second quarter, reflecting stronger customer demand and strong execution across our businesses. This brings H1 results in line with our 2026 outlook of 2% to 4% organic sales growth. Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 553 million with a margin of 21.8%. While the margin was modestly below last year's comparable margin, it remained resilient, primarily due to the reinvestment of efficiencies into the ONE SYM transformation. In addition, higher logistics and certain raw material costs, particularly those related to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East had an impact.

Cash generation was a clear highlight. Adjusted business free cash flow increased to EUR 347 million or 13.7% of sales, up 450 basis points from the prior year. We will also continue to execute our ONE Symrise strategy, further strengthening our portfolio through the contemplated acquisition of Floral Concept. Overall, the first half gives us confidence for our full year outlook, supported by stronger commercial momentum, steady profitability and improved cash conversion.

Let's now look at the Q2 performance in more detail. Turning to Slide 5. In the second quarter, we delivered sales of EUR 1.22 billion. Organic sales increased by 4.5%, with 5.1% volume growth, partially offset by 0.7% negative pricing. Portfolio effects were slightly negative following the exit from Aqua Feed business, while foreign exchange had a little impact. The quarter reflected improving momentum across much of the portfolio, also performance remained mixed by business.

In Taste, Nutrition & Health, we delivered strong organic sales growth of 4.9%, driven by volume growth of 3.9% and positive pricing impact of 1%. In Food & Beverage, we continue to perform particularly well with market-leading mid-single-digit organic growth driven by strong demand across Savory, Naturals and Sweet. Pet Food reported a slight organic sales decline, mainly reflecting continued price normalization in Pet Nutrition.

In the Scent & Care segment, sales were up 3.8% organically, driven by strong volume growth of 6.9%, partially offset by negative pricing of 3.1%. Fragrance delivered mid-single-digit organic sales growth, led by high single-digit growth in Consumer Fragrance, demonstrating sustained demand for consumerized innovative solutions. Fine Fragrance declined mid-single digit against high prior year comparables. Importantly, this reflects timing rather than underlying customer engagement, which remain very strong. Care & Wellness declined low single digits, mainly due to a mid-single-digit decline in UV Filter, but improved sequentially from Q1. Aroma Molecules delivered high single-digit organic sales growth, benefiting from easier comparables. Performance was driven by double-digit organic sales growth in Specialty Fragrance Ingredients and Menthol. Finally, regarding the planned divestment of our Terpene Ingredients business, discussions with interested parties continue to progress constructively.

Let's now turn to the regional highlights on Slide 6. As you can see, growth was led by North America and Asia Pacific, where organic sales increased 9.6% and 12.3%, respectively. Both regions benefited from healthy customer demand, innovation traction and strong commercial execution. Performance in EAME and Latin America remained softer at minus 0.4% and minus 2.1%, respectively, due to a slower demand environment. Overall, we continue to benefit from our diversified geographical footprint, while we focus on improving performance in the regions where demand remains more subdued.

Beyond our strong financial performance in the second quarter, we continued to strengthen our customer relationships and innovation capabilities, as you can see on the Slide 7. Amongst others, we broke ground on the second phase of our logistics center in Holzminden. These investments support future growth by improving service levels, increasing supply chain efficiency and providing additional scalability across our operations. Over time, this will enhance both customer satisfaction and operational productivity.

Another example, we were recognized by Mars as a super cost supplier, reflecting our status as a strategic innovation and supply partner. This high distinction underscore our ability to consistently and reliably deliver innovation and create value for one of the world's most well-known consumer goods companies. Additionally, we were named as Bath & Body Works' 2025 Supplier of the Year. This recognition highlights the quality of our fragrance capabilities, customer service and execution and demonstrates our ability to win and grow with leading customers in attractive end markets. Taken together, these achievements reinforce the progress we are making in executing our strategy while strengthening the long-term competitiveness of the business.

With that, I will hand over to Olaf to review our financial performance in more detail.

Yes. Thank you, Jean-Yves, and a warm welcome also from my side to all of you. Let's turn to Slide 9. Our first half results demonstrate the resilience of the business despite a dynamic cost environment and targeted investments to accelerate our growth. Gross profit was EUR 1.05 billion with a gross margin of 41.3%, essentially in line with last year. Disciplined cost management and operational efficiencies helped offset slightly higher manufacturing costs.

Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 553 million with EBITDA adjustments for extraordinary items of EUR 9.3 million related to M&A activities, legal expenses and ONE SYM transformation costs. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 21.8%. These 30 basis points decline versus the prior year was primarily due to 3 factors: first, higher freight and logistic costs related to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East; second, a timing lag between those cost increases and implementation of our customer surcharges; and third, continued investments behind our strategic priorities and future growth. Important, we do not view these factors as indicative for any structural shift in the earnings profile of the business.

Let's now look at the segment dynamics behind this performance on Slide 10. In Taste, Nutrition & Health, adjusted EBITDA was up 0.6% to EUR 372 million, with margin expanding by 10 basis points to 24.5%, supported by profitable growth and ongoing productivity improvements. In Scent & Care, adjusted EBITDA declined 6.7% to EUR 178 million and margins decreased by 90 basis points to 17.7%. Margins were impacted by portfolio changes and mix effects as well as increased freight and logistic costs related to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Continued pricing actions are taken to compensate for logistics, supply chain and specific raw material price developments. Our efficiency initiatives are progressing and are allowing to moderate these headwinds.

Turning to Slide 11. Cash generation was one of the strongest aspects of our first half performance. Adjusted business free cash flow increased 47% year-on-year to EUR 347 million with a business free cash flow margin of 13.7%, an increase of 450 basis points year-on-year. The improvement reflects disciplined working capital management and optimization initiatives as well as continued control of capital expenditures. The stronger cash conversion increases our financial flexibility while supporting investments into the business, portfolio development and attractive shareholder returns. Although, we are only halfway through the year, our first half performance gives us confidence in achieving our full year objective of an adjusted business free cash flow margin above 14%.

Let's now review how this is reflected in the balance sheet. With that, please turn to Slide 12. Our balance sheet remains strong and capital allocation remains disciplined. Net debt, including pension provisions and lease obligations increased from EUR 2.1 billion at year-end 2025 to EUR 2.3 billion at half year 1, 2026. We have nevertheless strengthened the equity ratio to 49.2% amid our ongoing share buyback program, which at the end of H1 2026 stood at around EUR 192 million invested. At the same time, our net leverage ratio improved to 2.2x adjusted EBITDA compared to the end of 2025, comfortably within our target range of 1.5 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. Our financial discipline enables us to return capital to shareholders while preserving strategic flexibility. Strong cash generation provides the basis to invest in growth and support portfolio development without compromising our investment-grade profile.

And with that, let me hand back things to Jean-Yves for the strategy update.

Thank you very much, Olaf. And let's move now to Slide 14. Our ONE Symrise strategy has not changed. We remain focused on improving portfolio quality, accelerating growth, strengthening profitability and generating sustainable strong cash flow. Our ONE SYM transformation program supports all those objectives. In Phase 1, we focused on design and implementation. And now in Phase 2, we are activating and starting to deliver in a structured way. This translates into clearer priorities, stronger process ownership and more disciplined resource allocation across the whole organization. And over time, our transformation will drive profitable growth and stronger cash conversion. We are building a more focused, more scalable and more competitive Symrise.

Turning now to Slide 15. During the first half, we continued to strengthen the portfolio while investing in attractive long-term opportunities and maintaining balance sheet strength. We completed the Aqua Feed exit and continued the Terpenes divestment process. We expect the structured bidding process to conclude in Q3 2026. We also plan to further strengthen our portfolio by acquiring Foral Concept, a well-known premium natural ingredients house for the fine fragrance industry. We recently submitted a binding offer for the company and expect to sign the purchase agreement in August after we complete consultation with the Works Council. Let's discuss this acquisition in more detail on Slide 16.

Leveraging the success of Diana, a transformational acquisition completed over a decade ago that helped establish our natural capabilities in food and beverage, the planned Foral Concept acquisition will allow us to expand our natural platforms to Fine Fragrance. This expansion will create new opportunities for profitable growth and enable us to create more differentiated solution for our customers. While the broader EUR 16 billion to EUR 18 billion fine fragrance market is expected to grow at approximately 6% to 8% per year, the premium naturals market is expected to grow at approximately 8%. This is supported by structural trends, including premiumization, demand for traceability and demand for differentiated natural ingredients.

Floral Concept will bring sourcing depth and extraction know-how for high-end fragrance customers. Combined with Maison Lautier, our heritage Naturals house in Grasse in France, Floral Concept will become part of a broader and more differentiated platform for premium natural ingredients. This contemplated acquisition will strengthen our naturals range, further expand our presence in Grasse and improve our relevance for premium fragrance customer. And beyond portfolio optimization, our ONE SYM transformation is also making meaningful progress.

Turning now to Slide 17. We continue to target organic sales growth of 5% to 7% CAGR by 2028. Achieving that ambition will require consistent execution across several areas. That includes strengthening innovation, improving commercial excellence, simplifying our operations and increasing the speed and efficiency of how we serve customers. ONE SYM will enable that execution. The next phase of value creation requires both growth and efficiency. The focus is on accelerating that works and executing with greater speed and discipline.

Let me now explain where we stand in terms of implementation. For that, please turn to Slide 18. During the first half of the year, we built the foundation for execution in Phase 2. We established the operating framework, validated the main opportunities and prioritized which measures to implement and how to minimize the risk. We are now progressing to implementing these initiatives, which are expected to improve productivity, reduce complexity and generate additional funds to invest into future growth. The program is, therefore, designed to support both growth and profitability over time.

Turning now to Slide 19. We see clear opportunities to achieve our midterm organic sales growth ambition by focusing on 4 key areas: investing in high-growth segments, commercial excellence, innovation and utilization. Let me illustrate this a little bit. We continue to invest in attractive growth markets where we can leverage existing strengths and differentiated capabilities. For example, in food and beverage, we are expanding our taste solutions across the portfolio, including new citrus application beverages. We are building on our leading natural platform and investing in premium naturals in fragrance.

At the same time, we are investing in care and wellness in innovation-driven application in health, well-being and beauty, where we see attractive opportunities to support our customers with differentiated solutions and strengthen our market position. All these investments reflect our strategy of focusing resources on attractive growth opportunities where we can create differentiated value for customers and support our sustainable growth over time. And we are rolling out digitalization to increase speed and transparency across our organization.

Please turn now to Slide 20. We are continuing to advance a broad set of efficiency initiatives across procurement, global asset management, productivity improvement and portfolio optimization. Having already delivered substantial improvement over the last 2 years, we are now further embedding structural efficiency measures across our operations. To illustrate how we are driving this improvement in practice, let me highlight procurement as one example of where we are creating tangible value.

In procurement, we continue to leverage our global scale and sourcing expertise to improve efficiency, strengthen governance and enhance transparency. In maintenance, repair and operations, we have implemented global policy that standardize supplier usage and purchasing behavior across the group. This helps increase spend visibility, reduce complexity and ensure greater purchasing discipline. Building on this approach, we have also transformed the way we manage logistics procurement.

During the period, we completed our first group-wide pan-European road freight tender, bringing together purchasing volumes that had previously been managed locally. This allows us to better leverage our scale, establish harmonized sourcing standards and create a scalable procurement model that can be replicated across other regions over time. This example demonstrates how we are moving beyond individual cost measures and instead embedding structural improvement that simplify processes, strengthen operational discipline and support sustainable efficiency gains across our organization.

Let's turn now to the Slide 22. Based on our first half performance and current business momentum, we reaffirm our 2026 outlook. We continue to expect organic growth of 2% to 4%, adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.5% to 22.5% and an adjusted business free cash flow margin above 14%. Q2 organic sales growth rate of 4.5% is a run rate needed to support full year guidance after a softer Q1. The current business momentum is expected to support Q3 organic sales growth similar to Q2. The outlook is further supported by the acceleration of Symrise, a strong project vitality with key customers, a healthy innovation pipeline, a resilient core end markets and moderating FX headwinds. From a financial perspective, the guidance reflects our objective to balance growth acceleration, disciplined margin management and cash conversion. Our midterm targets also remain unchanged, supported by the continued execution of our ONE Symrise strategy and the ONE SYM transformation.

With that, we are happy to take questions.

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

Two, if I can. The first one for Olaf. I'm struggling to decipher your cash flow statement for the half. Obviously, the cash conversion looks really strong. But when I dig into what drove that, there's some fairly big swings in what you bucket as other and tax timing. So I wanted to get your take on whether the first half performance is indicative of the structural changes you've been making to cash collection or whether there's some sort of phasing timing effect here?

And then maybe the second question, just on the business and specifically around Pet. Can I get your perspective on this trend towards fresh pet food or frozen pet food? It seems to be gaining traction. I think it's now 10% of the market or so. From a Symrise perspective, what does that mean in terms of content that goes into those sorts of products versus what we might call traditional or conventional types of pet food?

Thank you, Matthew, for your 2 questions. And I will let Olaf answer the first one. I will take the second one.

Yes. Thank you, Matthew, and thank you for the question. As you've seen, we have a very strong cash flow in the first half. I think we have set this as a priority for ourselves to work on the opportunities we have, and it comes along with a very disciplined approach to address our working capital opportunities. Looking at the structure if you dig into, you will see that especially on the supplier side, we have improved substantially. Last year was a very big headwind for half year purposes.

The second half -- sorry, the first half this year, exactly the opposite. And the reason is that we have worked tremendously on supplier payment terms, which is part of the initiatives that we are taking at the moment in our procurement space. These are efficiency opportunities, and we take that very seriously. We were very disciplined when it comes to building up inventories. And what was also a big driver for the good cash flow is the CapEx discipline, which we apply at the moment. It's very strong discipline.

We are building a stronger network in Symrise at the moment to drive CapEx projects in a much more disciplined way. And all this is paying off, and that's what you see in the cash flow statement. There's nothing structural, which I would pinpoint as an exceptional situation for H1, either to tax or others. We drive this further, and we expect that this will help us to deliver the above 14% business free cash flow by the end of the year.

Over to you, Jean-Yves.

Thanks Olaf. So thanks for the question about the pet and the fresh and the wet pet food area. So just to come back on a big picture on pet, the good news that the pet market is very dynamic. We've seen some key customers continuing to invest in production. And by the way, the last big investment in Europe in wet pet food products. So we are historically more in the dry than in the wet because for the dry, for the kibble, you need palatants, and that's where Symrise was very well. And historically, Diana was very well positioned and historically with [ Royal Canin ] now with Royal Canin [indiscernible] for driving this market.

Meanwhile, we were always working with the wet products. But wet products was not needing palatants as much as the dry one. Wet products are wet. And it's, by definition, more palatable than the dry one. That being said, we are strengthening our marketing approach. We are strengthening our offer to this market. And in the dry, we are working mainly palatants. In the wet, we are really -- we are selling more than palatants. We are selling different functions. For sure, the flavors, the palatant, for sure, the proteins, and that's also the reason why we did the acquisition of ADF/IDF, chicken protein, egg protein, but we're also working on some emulsifying effects of the eggs. We are also working on different type of food protections.

So the wet business is for us a new growth driver. We are now moving and investing more in this market, which is growing. Is it growing faster than the dry? It depends on the regions and the type of customers. The dry is very practical. It's really food service, and the wet is more difficult to sell and to -- for the logistics. So that being said, for us, it's a very good opportunity that -- and the wet and the dry markets are growing, and I'm very confident in the market to really recover some colors in the future and in wet and in dry.

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

Two from my side also, please. Firstly, can I just ask on the Scent & Care pricing, I think minus 3.1% in quarter 2. Could you give a bit more color on what's driving that? And maybe like -- are you sort of pursuing a kind of a volume-focused strategy in Aroma and UV filters that's behind that? And how should we think about that pricing evolving in the second half when I guess you might be taking a bit more pricing to offset raw material inflation and the freight costs that you outlined. But maybe on the flip side, you might be giving some tariff refunds back to customers. So that would be the first question, I guess, what's behind that minus 3.1% and what's the outlook?

And then secondly, if I could just follow up on Pet. So I mean it's good to hear you're confident in the market, wet and dry. And in terms of your own performance, obviously, I think slightly negative in Q2. Could you give us a bit more color around the sort of pricing volume trends behind that? And I guess I think it sounds like maybe there's a bit of phasing in palatability that should be supporting the second half. So how should we think about the magnitude of improvement that you're expecting in the second half of the year in Pet, please?

Thank you, Alex. So let's start with Scent & Care and the price and the price decline of around 3%. In Scent & Care, we are playing on price volume. And you see also that the volume effect in Scent & Care is very positive. So the pricing is a tactical pricing for really coming back to some market prices. And we are fighting in the mentor in terms of price. We are fighting in UV filters in terms of price, but it's paying off. And the volumes are growing. So it's really a way to really be in the market and to grow by volume. So we are really very, very happy to see a growth -- a volume-driven growth.

Now it's pricing adjustment. And for the second half of the year, we will offset 2 things. We will offset this price decrease by better operational excellence. So the idea is even if we decrease price, we don't lose in terms of profitability. Procurement, I was taking some example of procurement, centralization, optimization, operational excellence, logistics. So really, we will offset in terms of profitability. Now in terms of growth, now the most important for us is to continue to overperform the market. And the way to overperform the market for us is to continue to take market shares. So this price is really a tactical one. And let's see what will happen in H2, but the growth will continue to be there in terms of volume. Concerning the tariff refund, it will be done customer by customer, case by case. We don't have a policy on that. It will be -- it's a very commercial approach we have to take.

Now concerning the Pet and your question about price and volume and what about next end of the year. The beginning of the year is, okay, it's a year where we don't see growth, but it's mainly driven by still a normalization of the prices in Nutrition. The volumes are there. The market is, by the way, there. We see some key accounts recovering also some growth, which is a very good news, not only the local and regional. But also what we are very confident is to see Q3 and Q4 much better in volume than Q1 and Q2. Even we have some carryover from Q2 to Q3 because we are late in some deliveries. So myself, I'm very confident to see a second year for Pet for Palatability and for Nutrition with much better performance than in Q1 and Q2.

The next question comes from the line of Ed Hockin from JPMorgan.

I've got 2, please. My first question is a little bit on the regional breakdown of the growth. North America and Asia, very, very strong in Q2. I'm wondering if you could help us with a bit more granularity by segments where the strength of that Q2 growth in North America and APAC is coming from. I think the comparatives in these regions also have been a bit easier in Q2. But if you could help to give a little bit more color on the growth drivers there and expectations in the second half?

And then my other question, please, is on Food & Beverages and the improvement to mid-single digit. I think in Q2, you cited Savory, Naturals and Sweet. Do we take from that, that Beverages was a little softer given that this has been quite a strong growth contributor in recent years. If you could just provide a bit of color on how Beverages is performing and the outlook for the Food & Beverage segment overall into the second half?

Thank you, Ed, for these 2 questions about the type of growth. And for the regional explanation and the specific business explanation, I will really refer to the comparables. Concerning the quarterly results in the regions, Q2 last year was very strong in EAME. And Q2, by the way, was very strong in beverage also EAME beverage. And Q2 was very strong in Latin America, and Q2 was very strong in Fine Fragrance. And if you combine these things, you can also understand that on a comparative way, we have -- we appear weaker in Q2 because EAME was very strong and because for Food and Beverage, beverage was very strong also.

Now the question is what happened in North America and in Asia Pacific? The growth drivers are everywhere. The growth is really across the different businesses. So it is also our strategy, which is paying off. We are accelerating innovation. We are reinforcing sales excellence. We are really targeting more specific subsegments. So all that is paying off. And next -- last year, U.S. was not delivering so well as Europe. And this year now, we see the payoff with significant wins with key accounts, very well-known names, and we want to keep it -- for us, but there are also big wins in U.S. for the time being. APAC is the same. We had a very strong strategy exit last year in APAC, and we are also seeing the payoff.

Concerning the Latin American weakness, I will summarize to say that last year, we had a very strong impact of Fine Fragrance, which is not happening for this quarter. And it has an impact in Latin America and in Fine Fragrance results for this specific quarter, but mainly due to comparables. It does not mean anything in terms of business softness. Even the contrary, we have a very dynamic opportunity portfolio in Fine Fragrance, for example. So I hope I have answered more or less your question about the good -- the way why we are going very well, where we are going very well and why we appear not to go so well, mainly due to these comparables.

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

Maybe starting with a shorter-term one. You mentioned that for Q3, you expect trends to be broadly similar to Q2. Within Q2, as you mentioned, there's like variability between different end markets. So I was wondering if you could give a bit more color on what you see in terms of your pipeline and order books as we look into Q3 going across the different end markets? The second question is on margins. You in the prepared remarks, gave quite a lot of detail around sort of the moving parts and some of the headwinds around net pricing, for example. On the ONE SYM transformation side, I was wondering if you were able to quantify either the gross or net savings in H1 and perhaps the outlook for H2. I think in last quarter, you said you provide a bit more quantification with Q2. So I was just looking for a bit more help on the numbers there.

Thank you, Nicola. So I will take the 2 questions, and I will ask Olaf to complete the second one. Concerning the pipe concerning Q3. So yes, we think -- and I think that Q3 growth will be on the same magnitude of Q2, which is good. It should be 4% to 5%. And it's across the businesses. It is also across the regions with also a very dynamic North America and APAC. But we have -- we see a lot of wins, a lot of wins in Food & Beverage, a lot of very good signals in pet food, as I told, and wet is also for us an opportunity.

And also in Scent & Care, we see a very strong acceleration of growth, so beginning of the year in Scent & Care. So we had Care & Wellness where we are building a new division. So we have also to set up the scene. So now people are in place. The offers are really now totally constructed. So the acceleration will be visible in Q2 -- in H2. And concerning the pipe for Aroma, I take the opportunity to say that we do a great job in Aroma Molecules. So now after the divestment of Terpenes, we'll have a very solid portfolio in Aroma Molecule, where we continue to clean the product portfolio without sacrificing the top line to the productivity. So it takes time to squeeze out some old molecule for more modern and profitable one, but we are doing a great job there.

And last but not least, the fragrance is continuing to really grow very nicely, driven by a very strong opportunity pipe. So you see it's over the different businesses. There is no thing -- no one going better than the other one. Definitely, the one who will be making a difference in the second part of the year will be Pet.

Now concerning the margin and what is happening in our profitability, I will start the answer and hand over to Olaf. We delivered during 2 years, EUR 50 million per year. And what we deliver was directly going down to the bottom line. So we gained 280 bps in 2 years, EUR 100 million. As you know, this year, we are reinvesting. We are accelerating this transformation. We are accelerating these efficiencies. So the impact of the efficiencies this year will be higher than the last year.

Now you told -- yes, I told that I will give figures when I will have figures. Today, it's a little too early because as you clearly understand, there are a lot of initiatives, which are really underway to be valorized still, but we are continuing to develop, and we are significantly reinvesting. So it's difficult to give a figure today. What I can give you is one thing which is a fact which is that we delivered 21.8% adjusted EBITDA at the end of June. But apart from that, I will hand over to Olaf to give perhaps more color in the different parts of the organization there.

Yes. Thank you, Jean-Yves. And I think, first of all, it's important, Nicola, we have a lot of self-help measures in place to maneuver in this not easy environment. That's what you see in the profitability. We definitely had very good progress on the efficiencies also from a financial perspective. The difference to the last 2 years is this is reinvested, and we are putting structures in place to really will help us to make these efficiencies come through in a lasting way. Example, procurement, if we have a global procurement ambition, we need a global procurement organization. These are the people who will make the procurement efficiencies happen.

Same thing for global operations. We are steering this now globally. I think Jean-Yves gave a few examples around this earlier. And this is what we need to invest to make efficiency gains in a lasting way. Another example is IT. We are accelerating to invest into digitalization. We are building our data foundation at the moment to leverage what we need across the group to be much more efficient. We are sitting, I'm always saying on a gold mine when it comes to data. We are putting this into a structure at the moment, and that's a lasting investment. And therefore, I think we are doing profitability protection at the moment, while at the same time, preparing the future through our ONE SYM transformation program. So that's behind it. And I think that gives you a good impression.

And as Jean-Yves said, once we are one step further down the road, we will undermine this also with figures and give you a deeper insight in how this will all progress and work out for Symrise. What stays is our ambition on the margin. We guided for the upper end of our corridor, and that is the remaining ambition which we have in place to run this program.

The next question comes from the line of Lisa De Neve from Morgan Stanley.

My first one is a follow-up on the comments you just made. I mean, you stated that you're in the process of cleaning the Aroma portfolio. I mean, should we see this as any sort of select phaseout of specific ingredients? Or should we see this as potentially some further divestitures like you're pursuing with the Terpenes business at the moment? And more broadly, can you sort of share where you're looking to do potentially any sort of incremental M&A as per the announcement and sort of elaboration on today? That's the first one.

And then my second question is, I would like to come back to Pet Nutrition. Can you just confirm whether there's incremental price concessions in the second quarter, and we're still like in an incrementally negative price environment? I appreciate your margins are very much intact, if not expanding. But I just want to understand if there's incremental price concessions and why that's still happening?

Thanks, Lisa. So Aroma Molecule, it's a very good question. So when I say that we are really working on Aroma Molecule, when I say we are cleaning, I'd say we are really optimizing our portfolio. Aroma Molecule is a value driver for Symrise. It is a strength for Symrise. It is really part of our strategy, call it, backward integration or raw material sourcing or integrated margin, it's part of the integrated offer we can do. And we are very well recognized by our customers for having secured solution, sustainable solution, reliable solutions, but also we are recognized by our competitors to have very good raw materials for them.

So it's a strength we want also to keep within Symrise. It's part of our difference. It is part of our uniqueness. So that being said, in this Aroma Molecule, we have different type of businesses. And the Terpene one was not fitting with our guidance in terms of sales, profitability or even cash intensity, CapEx intensity. So we decided to divest. But Terpene is a very strategic, the natural Terpene are strategic for us. That's the reason why we are not only looking for a buyer, but we are looking for a partner.

So now when I say we are optimizing or cleaning the portfolio, I don't mean necessarily cleaning, divesting. I say that what will remain and what is today in our portfolio is very powerful. It's very powerful in terms of potential growth and it's very powerful in potential of margin improvement. Why? Because we are improving through operational excellence, the productivity. And meanwhile, we're also localizing different type of productions where it makes more sense now and not necessarily either in Germany or in U.S. or in Mexico, but now we are starting to invest in India, for example. So really it's really something which is very important to understand that Aroma is a very important business for us. It is a very specific business upstream, but it is also a business where we are representing a key value drivers even for some competitors.

Now concerning -- coming back to the Pet Nutrition, yes, the Pet Nutrition performance for the first semester is impacted still by the incremental price reduction. And I like the fact that you say incremental. Last year, it was dramatic. It was really a strategic repositioning. This year, what I call, you say incremental, let's say, tactical. Now we are in commercial negotiations. So the market is there, the customers are there and the price increase, the price concessions we are doing are really very limited compared to last year, but we still see some effect. So the effect we have seen in H1 will continue in H2 because the price is down for 1 year, but it will not go lower. So the effect will be around across the year, but next year should be really normalized.

And maybe if I can follow up and just add one more broader question. Can you maybe share how -- and I think this is a question a little bit more for Olaf, how we should think about the structural margin outlook for Scent & Care?

Improving. No, I think we have Michael Friede now on the Scent & Care driver. We will work on the different parts. And as indicated by Jean-Yves, I think we have the upsides specifically in Care & Wellness. You've heard around the Aroma Molecules. So I think there are a lot of pieces which speak in favor of also improving margin opportunities in Scent & Care. That's what's driving us, and that's what we are going after.

The next question comes from the line of Ranulf Orr from Citibank.

Two, please. So first, just going back to cash. Obviously, 1H much stronger than normal. So how should we view the seasonality of that? And do you think these changes that you've made will lead to a less first half, second half weighting in cash generation going forward? And related to that, if you have another bumpy year of cash flow, how should we think about your use of that and thinking specifically about further buybacks?

And my second question just comes back to Pet Nutrition pricing. It slightly feels like every time we speak that actually there's more negative pricing and that it's going to go on a little bit longer. So why should we have confidence that actually this is the last year of price decline, and we don't see just sort of continued erosion in 2027 and beyond. That would be my 2.

So Ranulf, thanks for the question. We did a lot of work on cash. That is the outcome what you see in H1, and it's a record high performance, which you have ever seen in H1 for Symrise. It's really driven by what we are doing at the moment in the company with a lot of focus and discipline. Now the second half is normally a stronger one from a cash flow generation perspective, and that's why we are guiding for a higher business free cash flow at the end of the year with above 14%. I'm not at a point that I can be more specific, but I think what I gave you indicates clearly, this is on the right track now, how we approach it.

When it comes to cash allocation and share buyback, I think our current program is well on track. We are aiming for EUR 400 million by the end of October. And then I think we are reevaluating how we invest in the future. Naturally, we want to have our shareholders participating in our good performance, and that will be assessed once we are there, latest beginning of next year.

So you take pricing?

Yes. I will take price, Pet Nutrition. And thanks, Ranulf, for the question. So always, it's difficult to predict by being 100% secure that next year will be black or white. But what happened is the pricing today of the Pet Nutrition, there are 2 things. There are the chicken and there is the egg. The chicken, nobody speak about it, but chicken is a very good and profitable market. In pet and in human, we have the plants making both. Now concerning the Pet Nutrition, I precise because plant nutrition is not only egg. Concerning the egg, which is really something which has been very visible this year and continue to have an impact this year. Last year on impact this year. So last year, we made a strategic decrease. Now we are in an incremental phase.

We are first at the level of the price pre-COVID or pre- raw material increase before we were increasing price, all the industry were increasing price. Now we are back to the price before this raw material increases. The second thing is the egg protein are the best value protein in the market, all the amino acids, by the way, some phospholipid and so on. The third thing is in the egg protein, in the egg, there is not only protein, we have also different other functionalities and emulsifying effect I was mentioning before, very interesting for wet is also something we will price much higher.

So there are a lot of signals. There are a lot of things where we see the customer coming back to this type of protein because we're exiting the market. Even if it's the best type of protein, we exited the market because there could be some substitution. And what happened is that we started to lose some launches. Now we see the volume back because the price are back to the market reality.

So now the arbitration will be the following to answer your question, either we will promote more volumes and still perhaps decrease some prices, but it's not double digit, right? So price volume negotiation, yearly price volume negotiation or we say no, definitely, we want to protect the price, the profitability, the quality of our offer because every customer is recognizing that. And we will keep price at this level, even start to increase price again. That will be a commercial decision. That will be a marketing job we'll do in the next -- in the coming months. That will be more a marketing decision of price volume elasticity than really the market. Today, we are in the market back.

So to answer your question, I will tell you at the end of this year, if we are -- if it's better for us to continue to increase volume and perhaps sacrificing still some pricing, again, without sacrificing profitability or if it's better to start to keep price and with the risk to lose some market share improvement. That will be this arbitration. So it depends on the market, less and less and more and more on the way we position our value proposition. So again, sorry not to tell you a black or white, but I think it's important to understand that we are also working on it every day to make sure we are valorizing the best way with wonderful type of nutrition. That being said, I don't know if there are still questions, but I think we need to stop. It's 4 to 3, even 3 to 3 or 2 to 3.

So 2 minutes for me, let me conclude. And for the conclusion, 3 messages. First, our business gained momentum during the first half with a very clear improvement in organic growth during the second quarter. The second is we continue to deliver strong profitability and cash generation, Olaf explained that, amid an operating environment that remains very challenging. And the third one is we made good progress advancing and accelerating our multiyear program of transformation, the ONE SYM transformation program. And we are now really focused on the implementation, a disciplined implementation. And as that work progresses, and I got the question also from you, Nicolas will provide additional detail.

Backed by the very clear strategy, a very disciplined execution and a very strong investment-grade balance sheet, we are very confident in our ability to deliver the durable earnings growth we are all waiting, strong returns, sustained long-term value for shareholders.

We thank you for your interest in Symrise, and we look forward for speaking to you again in the very near future. Thanks again.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Symrise Q1 2026 Trading Statement Conference Call. I'm Serge, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

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

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our first quarter 2026 call. Thank you for joining us today. All related documents are available in the Financial Results section on our website.

With me today are our CEO, Jean-Yves Parisot; and our CFO, Olaf Klinger. After the remarks, we will open the line for questions. And now I hand over the call to Jean-Yves.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Rene, and thank you all for joining us today. Today, we'll review the first quarter 2026, provide an update on our One Symrise strategy and our ONE SYM Transformation journey, and we will conclude with our full year 2026 outlook.

Let's turn to Slide 4 and our first quarter 2026 highlights. We delivered a solid start to the year with first quarter performance ahead of expectations with a year-on-year organic sales decline of 0.4% compared to our expectation at our full year 2025 call. This reflects the strength of our business despite a continued weak macroeconomic backdrop and challenging prior year comparisons. At the same time, we are taking deliberate actions to position the company for the next phase of growth.

As part of our transformation, we are accelerating significant structural cost savings and efficiency gains to unlock organic growth opportunities through strategic reinvestments. Innovation remains a core strength, and we continue to bring customer-driven solutions to market, including important new product launches within our Care and Wellness division.

From a geopolitical point of view, impacts related to the Middle East conflict have been manageable and do not affect our underlying growth algorithm. While there is some elevated uncertainty around input costs, largely due to freight and logistic inflation, we are implementing pricing actions to offset these headwinds. Based on our performance and outlook, we are today reaffirming our full year guidance.

Let's move to Slide 5 and our first quarter '26 sales performance. Q1 sales came in stronger than anticipated, driven by Food & Beverage, Pet and fragrance with strong momentum towards the end of the quarter. At the group level, organic sales declined 0.4% year-on-year, driven primarily by positive volumes of 0.3% and negative pricing contribution of 0.7%. Foreign exchange remained a headwind, largely due to the stronger U.S. dollar in 2025. Performance across segments was mixed, but consistent with the underlying dynamics we anticipated.

Taste, Nutrition & Health delivered solid organic growth of 1.7%, driven by volume growth of 1% and pricing of 0.7%. This reflects continued strength in our leading Food & Beverage business, where we had a low single-digit organic sales growth against the year comparables. This growth was led by Naturals and Savory, both delivering mid-single-digit growth, while Beverages also grew at a low single-digit rate.

In Pet Food, organic sales grew low single digits. This was driven by low single-digit growth in Pet Palatability and a slight organic decline in Pet Nutrition as volumes were positive, while prices continued to normalize.

Organic sales in the Scent & Care segment declined 3.4%, reflecting negative pricing of 2.7% and lower volumes of 0.7%. Fragrance continued to perform well with low single-digit organic sales growth against a strong year-on-year comparables, supported by mid-single-digit growth in Consumer Fragrance and low single-digit growth in Fine Fragrance.

Care & Wellness organic sales declined low double digits, primarily due to a double-digit decrease in UV-filters against an elevated prior year base. Aroma Molecules organic sales declined mid-single digits on tough comparables, while Special Fragrance Ingredients performed well. As a reminder, concerning Aroma Molecules, we are moving well on our Fragrance Ingredient process. We are in a constructive dialogue with a strong group of bidders, and we will provide you with an update as soon as appropriate. Overall, our results reflect the strength and balance of our portfolio and the durability of our core end markets amidst a dynamic operating environment.

Let's move now to Q1 regional results on Slide 6. Organic sales in North America were up 1.9% year-on-year, with Latin America up 2.8%, reflecting solid customer demand and strong commercial execution. Asia Pacific grew 3.4%, supported by broad-based momentum across key markets. This was offset by EAME, where organic sales declined 4.9%, mainly due to strong comparable, a soft regional macro environment and the impact of the UV-filter business. This overall performance highlights the benefit of our balanced geographic footprint with growth engines in Latin America and Asia Pacific, helping to offset regional headwinds in EAME.

Let's turn now to our execution highlights on Slide 7. This quarter, we made meaningful progress against our strategic priorities with actions that reinforce both our near-term delivery and long-term growth algorithm. In Pet Food, we expanded capacity with the opening of our new facility in Querétaro, Mexico. This investment strengthened our local manufacturing footprint in a high-growth market, enhances service level for regional customers and supports profitable growth over time.

We also took an equity stake in Bond Pet Foods, a U.S.-based biotechnology company, underscoring our confidence in the long-term potential of Pet Food market. This partnership provides early exposure to precision fermentation technology, positioning us to participate in the evolution towards more sustainable protein solutions and positions us as a first mover in a structurally growing innovative segment.

Innovation remains a core driver of value creation in our Care & Wellness division. We continue to advance the pipeline of value-added science-based solutions aligned with key customer needs, including longevity and inner beauty. At the in-cosmetics Global 2026 trade show, we introduced 3 new cosmetic ingredients and early-stage concepts that reinforce our leadership in differentiated applications.

Customer engagement was strong, validating both the commercial relevance and the scalability of our innovation efforts. This is translating into external recognition. Our Best Tasting Nutricosmetic Beverage received the Taste Bar Award at in-cosmetics and our product Mindera was honored with the Silver Fountain Award as PCHi 2026 in the Green and Sustainable ingredient category. These achievements underscore our ability to convert scientific expertise into commercially viable differentiated solutions that resonate with customers.

Overall, these actions demonstrate disciplined execution against our strategy, investing in attractive end markets, scaling innovation platforms and building capabilities that support durable, profitable growth over time.

Now let's move to Slide 9 for a strategy execution update. One SYM transformation Phase 2 is progressing very well, and we are picking up the pace, reinvesting cost savings to unlock organic growth opportunities. Over the past 2 years, we have shown that disciplined execution drives results at Symrise. Since 2023, we have delivered approximately $100 million in cumulative savings and expanded margin by 280 basis points. That gives us a solid foundation to build from. We are now sharpening and accelerating the transformation to unlock the next phase of profitable growth.

Our priorities are very clear: increase speed, focus resources on the highest return opportunities and scale what is working. With these foundations in place, we are now transitioning to growth activation. We are accelerating the delivery, the transformation drive to step change in organic top line improvement and EBITDA margin expansion.

As we continue to execute at pace, we will scale into a true global champion. We are leveraging our strength as a science-driven organization, operating with more agility and increasingly embedding digitalization, including AI to drive productivity and innovation. This puts us on track over time to return to 5% to 7% organic growth. We will provide more detailed targets in H2. The key message today is straightforward. We have built the foundation, and we are now accelerating from a position of strength.

Let's move to Slide 10. Within Phase 2, we have completed the first stage, setting the ambition and direction. This included establishing our operating framework, defining guiding principles and identifying value potential. As a result, we are operating with clarity and alignment. We are now in the second stage. During the first half of 2026, we are validating potential through detailed business cases, prioritizing initiatives and sequencing actions with clear dependencies. And at the same time, we are preparing the organization to move efficiently into implementation.

In the second half of the year, we will focus on driving results across 4 focus areas: innovation, commercial excellence, scale benefits and digitalization, funded by our efficiency gains. Additionally, we will scale new ways of working across businesses, tracking all progress against defined milestones. In summary, the road map is in place, validation is well underway, and we are preparing to execute at pace.

Let's move now to Slide 11 to discuss the 4 focus areas I just mentioned that define how we will win. First, Differentiated Innovation. We are accelerating our pipeline and improving how we translate science into customer-relevant solutions. We are focusing resources on high-impact, scalable innovation bets, prioritizing high-growth markets where we can leverage our differentiated capabilities.

Second, Commercial Excellence. We are driving faster, more consistent go-to-market execution, improving win rates and commercial processes across all divisions. For example, we are progressing a distributor initiative to unlock additional sales channels, and we have launched a go-to-market acceleration program to increase engagement, speed and effectiveness in our sales teams.

Third, Scale Benefits. We are unlocking efficiency through stronger group-wide alignment by centralizing key capabilities and reducing operational complexity. A clear example is procurement. We have streamlined and centralized processes across direct and indirect spend, shifting procurement toward a more strategic value creation role. We are capturing on overall spend. We are now looking as well into tail spend optimization, complexity reduction and supplier consolidation.

And for finishing, the fourth, Digitalization. We are enabling seamless execution through integrated systems and automation, connecting planning, operations and commercial activities to enable faster and better decision-making. Together, this focus area sharpen our go-to-market approach, strengthen execution and improve how we scale across the group. This focus area forms the foundation of our next phase of value creation.

Let me conclude with our outlook on Slide 13. We are reaffirming our full year 2026 outlook and midterm targets. For the full year, we expect organic sales growth between 2% to 4% and an adjusted EBITDA margin between 21.5% and 22.5% and an adjusted business free cash flow margin above 14%.

Looking ahead, we expect the impact from the Middle East conflict to remain manageable with no change to our underlying growth assumptions. We are seeing elevated uncertainty on input costs, particularly related to freight and logistics. This is something we are actively addressing with a strong focus on our customers, reliable supply chain execution and targeted pricing actions to offset incremental cost pressure. At the same time, we expect a sequential improvement in organic growth over the coming quarters.

From a phasing perspective, year-on-year comparables are more challenging in the first part of the year and will moderate as we move into the back half. Growth is supported by accelerated execution of our transformation, solid momentum on key customer projects and a very strong innovation pipeline and resilient end markets.

Beyond 2026, we remain confident in our ability to deliver against our midterm targets and outgrow our reference markets. This confidence is underpinned by structural tailwinds such as evolving regulation, increasing demand for clean-label solutions, reformulations and growth in emerging markets. Accordingly, we reaffirm our 2025 to 2028 targets of 5% to 7% organic sales growth, an EBITDA margin between 21% and 23% and a business free cash flow margin of above 14%.

With that, let's open the floor for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question coming from Alex Sloane from Barclays.

Two from me, please. Firstly, I mean, you guided Q1 organic sales down low single-digit in early March, I guess, around sort of 3 weeks or so to go of the quarter at that point, but delivered obviously a much more modest decline. So were you setting expectations low intentionally? Or were those final 3 weeks much stronger and surprised you? And I guess, if that was the case, what surprised you? And do you think there was any tailwind there from potential prebuying? That would be the first one.

And the second one, just in terms of the reiterated EBITDA margin guidance, good to see that. You obviously do note higher energy and input cost outlook given the Middle East conflict. I appreciate it's a bit of a moving target, but could you quantify the base case you're assuming in terms of incremental input cost inflation for '26 and how much pricing that might require to offset? And indeed, whether you would expect there to be any lag between that cost inflation hitting and pricing with customers landing?

So thanks, Alex, for these 2 questions. The first one, was it intentional that I was anticipating lower single decline? No, I think that when I give this information, it was beginning of March. Beginning of March, we had a soft -- the beginning of the year. We were careful. And the second thing, it was 2 or 3 days after the U.S. invaded in Iran. So there were a lot of reasons to be cautious.

So that being said, it's not a question of surprising us. So we really work hard to really activate our portfolio to really address our customer needs to really deliver the right way at the right time, the right quality. So it's paying off. And March was definitely better than January and February. So it means that we finished better than we anticipated at the beginning of March. And again, it's showing also that Symrise is very well equipped with its customer portfolio, product portfolio and very active teams to deliver whatever is the market circumstance. So that's for Q1.

Concerning the EBITDA, we are facing like everybody, the same input cost. And when the cost of raw materials are increasing, either we are reformulating for avoiding to penalize our customers and to create more resilient and durable solutions and a competitive point of view or we are passing this cost through the price, and that's what we are doing sometimes. So we are offsetting the eventual raw material cost increase by price increase. And we mentioned also some macro -- okay, geopolitical events. For example, Hormuz Strait event is increasing some logistic costs. In that case, we are surcharging. So in any case, we are totally offsetting the costs, which are increased we are eventually facing.

The next question comes from Lisa De Neve from Morgan Stanley.

I have 2. One follow-up from the previous one from Alex. Can you just tell us in terms of the current price actions you're pushing through -- your win rates because last quarter, you mentioned various project wins across Beverages, Consumer Fragrances, Savory and so forth. How should we think about the so-called ramp-up profile for that? I mean what do you expect to see actual sales from that?

Okay. Thanks, Lisa. the first question, exactly complementary to the one from Alex. To give more color on the price action, we are working on 2 different type of price actions, some very basic product price increase. When raw materials are increasing, we are not in a commodity business. There is no automatic price increase when the raw material increase. We are selling compounds, we are selling full solutions, we are selling services.

That being said, we can -- the value we are creating for the customer has a price. And when we increase the price, the customers are accepting the price increase not only because the cost -- the raw material cost was increasing because they recognize there is a value creation. And the characteristic of Symrise, we have a very, very low cost in use and very high usage value. We create a lot of value for a minimum of incorporation of the product, which is facilitating our job really for increasing the prices, which is mainly linked to the service and the value we bring to the customer rather than the raw material. So this is the first lever of the price action.

The second lever is just to compensate some extraordinary conjunctural price increase like logistic cost increase. In that case, we are really putting some surcharge. In any case, I'm still confident and still projecting that the growth of Symrise should be more or less 2/3, 1/3 means 2/3 volume, 1/3 price increase.

Concerning the win rate and how we can ramp up our business and the profitability of our business, the win rate is very important, but what is also super important in our opportunity pipeline are the size of the lead, the size of the opportunities. And today, what is really very important within Symrise, we are increasing not the number of leads, not the number of opportunities, but we are increasing the size of the potential opportunities. So when we win, we win bigger. And that is also the way Symrise will come back to the leading growth company also for going more and more on big bets.

And we won significant business in U.S. in February, big bets. We won significant beverage in U.S., big bets. So today, the win rate is something, but the size of the opportunity is much critical. And concerning the win rate, I just would like also to tell you, it's very important to also focus on the time to market. The question is not only to win, but the question is to be -- the first to provide a good solution. So it's about speed to sampling, speed to deliver the right solution to the customer and speed to deliver on time in full, and it's linked to the supply chain. It's linked to the operational excellence program we started 2 years ago, and it is paying off.

And Lisa, it's Olaf, if I can specify on the timing, which you asked. It's not next year. It's this year. It's something we are working on now with our customers to take these price actions. So that's more a topic for Q2, Q3 without any delay. I think we are in an action mode.

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

I've got, I guess, a short-term and a long-term one. The short-term one, just specifically on the outlook for the Scent division in Q2. Would you be expecting another decline here because the comps don't necessarily get easier, at least on a 1-year view. And I'm curious how the UV business may be impacted from the shortage of jet fuel, which may curtail some summer vacation plans? I don't know if you already see that rippling through retailer order patterns.

And then the second one, midterm one for Jean-Yves. I guess I'd like to ask about this concept of picking up the pace on the transformation. I'm wondering to what extent this was always the plan and the time line for momentum to build or whether it's exceeding your expectations? I ask because from the outside, it's pretty hard to tell when we see a 0.4% sales decline in Q1, it's pretty uninspiring. So is it fair to say you haven't yet seen the benefit of all your actions coming through on the top line? And so just curious, given what you said in late '24 when the strategy was communicated, whether things are on track behind or ahead of what your initial time line was?

Yes. So Matthew, thanks for these 2 questions, which are very linked, by the way. Concerning the short term, I cannot -- I will not give you any idea on Q2. It's too short for me. So I can give you an idea of the full year guidance. Definitely, we'll have a sequential improvement of sales not only on Scent & Care, but globally for Symrise. So we have a sequential improvement because also the comparables will be softer for the second part of the year, but also -- and it's linked to the second question, and it's linked also to what I explained to Lisa. We have a very strong sales pipeline. We have a very strong sales opportunity pipeline. By the way, we have also a very strong innovation pipeline.

And when we say that we will pick up the pace, when we started the transformation based on our new strategy 2 years ago, the growth was there 5% to 7%. And last year was a big surprise for everybody about the softening of the market. We react. We are proactively reacting. We're proactively redefining our portfolio. We're proactively innovating for growing, and we're proactively putting in place this efficiency program. Efficiency delivered EUR 200 million in 2 years. Growth is not so short-term impact. So -- but believe me, you will start to see the impact of this growth acceleration in the coming quarters.

And yes, you are surprised -- you are disappointed by a decline in Q1. We explained why also because of big comparables last year, a softening market, but we are proactively addressing that. We are not only following what is not controllable, the GDP, but we are choosing our reference market. We are choosing our customers. The customer portfolio is shifting. And we are continuing and continuously improving our solutions and innovate in different domains, which are linked to health or natural profiles.

So late 2024, we were confident to deliver the 5% to 7% growth. We delivered lower last year. We are confident to deliver 2% to 4% this year. And with the momentum we are creating now, we are confident to come back to the 5% to 7% CAGR we were anticipating 2 years ago.

The next question comes from Fulvio Cazzol from Berenberg.

Which is really on the guidance for the full year. So you left your guidance at 2% to 4%. But it sounds like now you anticipate more pricing than perhaps when you first issued that guidance, and that is to compensate for the higher freight costs and logistic costs. So I was just wondering, does that kind of imply that your volume growth expectations have kind of moderated a little bit for the rest of the year? And if so, I was just interested in understanding what's driving that.

Okay. So Fulvio, thanks. Very good question. So again, there are some external factors which are forcing us to increase prices like logistic surcharges, like sometimes raw material increase that we are doing and our customers are really accepting because we are really very transparent also with our customers. Does it mean that if there is more pricing, volume will be down, not at all.

And today, our guidance is between 2% and 4%, mainly depending on the underlying market. The markets are for us still growing. Every market we are on is growing. After the question is what will be the speed of growth of the reference market. The pricing we are applying could be an upside and what we had initially forecasted. But at the end of the day, it will not have any impact on the volumes. We are really very keen and focusing and really providing to the customers the volumes they are needing. So the price can only be an upside, which will be certainly helping us to be closer to the high end and the low end of the bracket we gave, i.e., 2% to 4%.

The next question comes from Ed Hockin from JPMorgan.

One question was on regional growth. I just wanted to clarify within EAME region that was down close to 5% in Q1, how the Middle East specifically evolved in the quarter? And going forward, does your guidance include some sensitivity on whether demand in the Middle East should falter and as well, any sensitivity on consumer and customer demand in areas such as Southeast Asia that may see some knock-on effect from the conflict and higher oil prices?

And my second question, please, is on Food & Beverages by segment. The beverages, I mean, for a couple of years now has been high single digit, even double-digit growth contributor, but I think slowed to low single digits in the quarter. I wonder, please, if you could give some color on what we should expect from Food & Beverages going forward, whether this is just a matter of the base of comp for beverages and that we can see a resumption of that higher growth level from Q2 onwards?

So Ed, thanks for these 2 very good questions related to growth. To come back -- starting with EAME. EAME first had a big comparable last year. EAME last year was a very strong region. So first, very strong comparables. The second, we are still suffering in UV-filters. I was giving a reason of strong comparables also last year at the same period, but you have to know that the sales we did in 2024, Q1 were exceptionally high. So we still -- we see the comparables problem the second year.

And concerning the Middle East, Middle East is a small piece of all Symrise sales revenue, which is around 3%. So it is not impact a lot. It is slowing down some deliveries. It is not slowing down the market demand. That's also -- that's something very important. The Middle East events are not slowing down the market demand. It's slowing down the way we can deliver for the reasons you know. There are a lot of [ bottlenecks ] now. So the question today is it doesn't -- Middle East can explain a small piece, but it's mainly comparable on UV-filter for EAME.

Now coming back to -- and by the way, you were asking the question about Southeast Asia. Let's see. Today, we see a very dynamic APAC region, Southeast Asia included. Southeast Asia suffered last year in terms of softening of the market, but this year is really coming back on track, and we are doing very good performance in Asia Pacific in all the subregions.

Concerning Food & Beverages, yes, we have a very strong development in Beverages in the last years. And sometimes you have to slow down a little. So it means that last year, beverages growth was very high. So this year, first, we have a big comparable. And the beverage business will also ramp up in terms of growth in the coming quarters. So you will see an improvement of the beverage activity in the coming year because we have a very active beverage portfolio, a lot of linked to nonalcoholic drinks, linked to nonsugar drinks, linked to buy some new coffee solutions. So we are working on new citrus solutions. So there are a lot of good news and a lot of new innovation in the beverage business.

So it's just a question of phasing and a quarterly event. And altogether, concerning Food & Beverage, Food and Beverage, we are by far the leading company. We are very positive even if strong comparable last year, Savory still delivering a lot with big bets. Naturals, which is our key differentiating factor is also delivering very well. So we are really sitting on key trends, which are paying off also. So the food and beverage performance of Q1 is good and will improve during the year.

The next question comes from Charles Eden from UBS.

Just one really on pet food, please. Obviously, you talked about the group seeing a sequential improvement in organic growth through the year. Does the same hold for your assumption for Pet Food versus the low single-digit organic growth in Q1? And if there's any sort of variance between Palatability and Nutrition, if you could expand on that? And I guess sort of part 2, just on the pricing in Pet Nutrition, have we lapped the negative pricing now and therefore, should Pet Nutrition pricing be broadly neutral from Q2 onwards?

Yes. So thanks, Charles. Concerning Pet Food, so normally, Pet Food is coming very much sooner. So I'm happy to have a Pet Food question. Thanks. Concerning the strategic segment, as you know and everybody knows around the phone, it has been a strategic growth driver, and it will be a strategic growth driver. So the situation we face is temporary.

And concerning Palatability, we have a low single-digit growth, which is driven by volume and price growth. So concerning Pet Food, the business is growing -- really growing very nicely and very good way. In Palatability, we are still the leader. We are still innovating, and we are still overperforming the market growth.

Concerning the Nutrition, the question about the price is still that we are still normalizing the price. The price normalization continue. It's absolutely not the same magnitude as last year, which was a strategic readjustment, which was a sharp price decrease to come back to the price, the market price. Today, we are on the market price, but we are on the what I call the tactical normalization, which are negotiation price volumes. So for sure, the price today is negative, but small, very low single-digit negative and the volumes are up. So we are back on track on Nutrition also, and it should be totally fully normalized if it's not midyear and, for sure, end year.

The last question comes from Nicola Tang from BNP Paribas.

Sorry to start with a short-term question, but I just wanted to come back on the commentary that March was a lot better. I was just trying to understand what gives you confidence that there isn't a bit of prebuying going on. Can you give us any color in terms of your customer inventories or order patterns or anything like that? And any commentary on April would be helpful.

And then the second one, maybe on the Aroma Molecule side. I mean, I know you've been facing headwinds from Asian competition, which is nothing new. But I was wondering if you see or expect to see actually any benefit to any of your Asian competitors might be a bit more constrained due to the conflict in the Middle East, whether it's around availability or cost.

So thanks, Nicola. To answer your first question about March, and 2 things. The beginning of the year was weak, and we were just reacting to the beginning of the year soft. So we were really promoting better and approaching the market the right way, I think, going to the right customer at the right time. So it's -- one part of this good March is totally internally driven. We can control the customer visit. We can control the product we push, and we can control the way we are speeding up the deliveries.

Now that being said, there is also another impact, and you mentioned the prebuying. We announced to our customer very early that we should increase the prices depending on the war effect in terms of raw material and/or logistics. So some customers perhaps certainly anticipated some delivery before having any price increase. But it's something very difficult to measure, but it does not have any impact on our confidence to see a sequential improvement of our sales growth during the year.

Now coming back to the Middle East and coming back to Aroma Molecule question and Chinese and so on. So Aroma Molecule for us is a strategic activity because we are an integrated company. We are backward integrated in naturals, but we're also backward integrated in chemicals. So specialty fragrance ingredients, menthol are the way we integrate our solutions. This is the way we are leveraging our solutions, leveraging the value we are providing to the final customer.

So we have really an entire value chain approach. We have a customer-driven approach. And Aroma Molecule, whether it is a menthol or SFI, even Terpene before divestment, we are very close to customers. We are very close to specific type of offers, which is also linked to the capacity we have to integrate our solutions, either in specialty fragrance or in menthol. So it's very important to understand that Aroma Molecule is not a single business. It's part of our fragrance business and competitive edge.

That being said, we have a lot of competitive advantage. We speak a lot about costs. But for menthol, we are the only one to be in Europe and in U.S. For specialty fragrance, we have a very strong chemical knowledge, which is recognized by our competitors. A lot of competitors are buying from us. So we have -- even if we suffer in Aroma Molecule, even if we have some price adjustment in Aroma Molecule because of Chinese pressure, our debate, our battle is not that. Our battle is really to innovate quicker to get stronger customer relationship, to define and invent better complete solutions, and that's the way we are fighting.

So it has an impact today the Chinese competition or the trade -- Hormuz Strait, it has an impact, conjunctural impact on some prices, but we are very confident that it will normalize and our key competitive edge will come back as definitely key buying factors for customers. So we are confident that on this business, even if Aroma molecules suffer short term, it's a long-term strategic and it will deliver and it's part of the value creation of Symrise.

So I think, Nicola, you were the last question. So I think it's the first time for -- we just stop without having anybody waiting with an answer. So thanks all of you for your very good questions. And I will close very shortly.

We are controlling what's controllable. In all my answers, you see the market, we cannot dictate what the market is doing, but we can proactively execute what is necessary. So we continue to execute our strategy. And clearly, we accelerate the necessary transformation. And this acceleration is to reinvest quicker and stronger in top line growth. That's the story. The idea is to accelerate our transformation to reinvest quicker and stronger in our top line growth to be back to the leadership in top line growth.

All that is backed by a clear strategy, a disciplined execution and a very strong investment-grade balance sheet. We are confident in our ability to deliver this durable earnings growth [indiscernible], expanding returns, sustained long-term value for shareholders. So all of you, thank you for your interest in our company in Symrise, and we are looking forward to speaking with you again in the future. Thank you. Bye-bye, and have a very nice end of your day.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Symrise Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. I am Hilli, 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 Rene Weinberg, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our full year 2025 results call. Thank you for joining us today. All related documents, including the press release and presentation are available in the Financial Results section on our IR website.

With me today are our CEO, Jean-Yves Parisot; and our CFO, Olaf Klinger. After reviewing our financial performance, a strategy update and the outlook for 2026, we will open the line for questions.

With this, I hand over the call to Jean-Yves.

Thank you, Rene, and thank all of you for joining us. Today, we'll review the full year 2025 results and provide an update on our ONE Symrise strategy and our ONE SYM transformation journey and conclude with the full year 2026 outlook.

2025 was a defining year for Symrise. At our Capital Market Day in November 2024, we introduced the One Symrise strategy. Over the past year, we have translated that strategy into concrete actions. And our ambition remains very clear: to deliver sustainable above-market growth while structurally improving profitability. 2025 was marked by soft demand in certain end markets and continued regional volatility. Against this backdrop, we focused on what we control, execution, efficiency, cash discipline and strategic transformation, and we delivered.

First, our core Flavor & Fragrance businesses once again demonstrated our resilience as well as the strength of our portfolio and customer relationships. In Food & Beverages, we continue to outperform in nonalcoholic beverages, particularly in Europe and further expanding our leadership in Naturals and Savory. Our Food & Beverages business remained an industry benchmark for growth and profitability.

At the same time, we strengthened our growth platform. We completed multiyear capacity expansions in Granada and Vizag, enhanced our chemical footprint in Asia and opened our new fragrance development and production site in Grasse, deepening our access to high-growth customers in the Middle East and Africa. Innovation remains a key differentiator for us with captive launches and new technologies enabling our customers to win in their respective markets.

Second, 2025 also marked a step change in our operational performance. Efficiency initiatives delivered EUR 50 million in incremental profit, well above our EUR 40 million target, building on the EUR 50 million already achieved in 2024. These are structural improvements, not onetime gains. We established global procurement and operations organizations to drive scale benefits and asset optimization while preserving customer centricity and the entrepreneurial focus that differentiates our specialized businesses.

We are also systematically strengthening connectivity across our segments and our divisions. And third, all of this is embedded in our ONE SYM transformation, a holistic transformation program designed to structurally enhance our competitiveness.

A comprehensive review of our chemical production footprint identified clear opportunities to strengthen performance. The divestment of the Terpene business and ongoing operational improvements are direct outcomes. The carve-out was executed with speed and precision, underscoring our execution capability.

We also completed the acquisition of Probi, now integrated into our new Care & Wellness division, which I will discuss more in a few slides. We continue to advance our sustainability and circularity initiatives. In 2025, we completed decade work to establish a new [indiscernible] accounting baseline, increasing our measurable impact. We are also implementing a data-driven decarbonization plan step-by-step across our value chain. Equally important is our commitment to the social dimension of sustainability.

We continue to strengthen our impact through targeted initiatives and long-term programs. Across our organization, we have introduced a wide range of measures to support the health, safety, well-being and professional development of our people.

In parallel, we foster global engagement for environmental protection, education and equity through our sustainability ambassadors network.

In summary, 2025 was demanding, but highly productive. Despite challenging demand globally and purchase of softness across our markets, we delivered market-leading organic growth driven by strong performance in our core businesses. Operational improvements translated into the highest profitability in 10 years and a record adjusted business free cash flow, strengthening financial flexibility. This performance enables us to once again increase our dividend, extending our 16-year track record of annual dividend growth.

In addition, we launched our inaugural share buyback program with a EUR 400 million authorization in January 2026, reflecting our belief that investing in Symrise itself currently represents the most attractive use of capital and offers compelling long-term value for our shareholders. We enter 2026 stronger, more focused and structurally more competitive, well positioned to accelerate performance going forward.

Before we turn to segment performance, I want to note that going forward and aligned with our ongoing commitment to transparent financial reporting, we'll be reporting adjusted supplemental non-IFRS performance measures. An adjusted EBITDA is intended to enhance investor understanding of the group's underlying operating performance and improve comparability across reporting periods, in line with the sector practice. Olaf will go into more details on this in this section.

With that, let's turn to Slide 5 to review our full year 2025 sales by segment. Taste, Nutrition & Health grew organically sales by 2.6%, reaching reported sales of EUR 3 billion, led by Food & Beverages with strong performance in Beverages, Savory and Naturals. Scent & Care delivered organic sales growth of 3.2% with reported sales of EUR 1.9 billion. Fragrance remained strong across all major applications in Fine and Consumer Fragrance.

Let's move now to the full year regional results on Slide 6. Organic sales in North America were up slightly, both year-on-year and sequentially compared to the first quarter as macroeconomic uncertainties, persistent inflation and growing political and regulatory unpredictability led to pockets of softness and continued weaker overall consumer sentiment.

Europe, Africa and the Middle East performed well despite global demand softness with organic sales growth of 2.8%. Asia Pacific grew organically by 3.2% due to softer consumer demand. And Latin America delivered 6.6% organic growth with strong broad-based performance.

I will now turn the call over to Olaf to share more details on our financials. Thank you, Olaf.

Yes. Thank you, Jean-Yves, and also a warm welcome to everybody tuning in today. I'll start with our group Q4 sales performance on Slide 8. In the fourth quarter, organic sales growth was 3.6%, led by volume and a flat pricing environment. FX remained a headwind, reducing sales by EUR 61 million or 5.2%. Taste, Nutrition & Health achieved 2.5% organic sales growth, driven by a 1.6% volume increase and positive pricing of 0.8%.

Food & Beverage continues to deliver strong results with market-leading mid-single-digit growth driven by Beverages, Naturals and Savory. Pet Foods was flat year-on-year with Palatability growing at low single digits in line with the market, while Nutrition delivered mid-single-digit volume growth, helped somewhat by strategic pricing actions implemented in early 2025.

Scent & Care achieved 5.5% organic sales growth in the fourth quarter, driven by a 7.5% volume increase and negative pricing of 2%. In Fragrance, we saw continued momentum with high single-digit growth led by Consumer Fragrances, which delivered double-digit growth and supported by Fine Fragrances on strong prior year comparables.

Cosmetic Ingredients delivered low single-digit growth amid tough year-on-year comparables. UV filters continued to normalize following a very strong prior year, while Micro Protection saw strong momentum.

Aroma Molecules achieved mid-single-digit growth on weak comparables, driven by strong demand for fragrance ingredients.

Please turn to Slide 9. For full year 2025, we delivered above-market organic growth and meaningful margin expansion despite a lower volume operating environment as we focus on controlling the controllables. Organic sales grew 2.8%, driven primarily by 2.2% volume growth and pricing contributing of 0.6%. Portfolio changes related to the Aqua Feed divestment earlier in 2025 and also the 51% divestment of our U.K. beverage trading business in March 2024, reduced reported sales by EUR 60 million.

FX was a significant headwind, negatively impacting sales by EUR 194 million, largely due to the depreciation of multiple currencies, most prominent the U.S. dollar. As Jean-Yves mentioned, as part of its ongoing commitment to transparent financial reporting, we will be reporting adjusted supplemental non-IFRS performance measures going forward. It will be an adjusted metric to align reporting more closely with peers and market standards and enhance transparency, comparability and clarity around underlying operating performance.

Our adjustment framework is clearly defined and focused strictly on nonoperational and nonrecurring items, primarily portfolio changes, restructuring and optimization initiatives and other exceptional events. For full year 2025, adjustments included first, the previously announced noncash impairments of EUR 150 million related to Swedencare and EUR 148 million related to the revaluation and reclassification of the Terpene business, with the latter being EBITDA neutral. Second, EUR 11 million tied to portfolio optimization, of which around EUR 1 million is EBITDA neutral. Third, EUR 6 million associated with the ONE SYM transformation program; and fourth, EUR 3 million costs related to the antitrust investigation. These are the onetime.

Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 120 basis points, driven by accelerated execution of the ONE SYM transformation. We realized EUR 50 million in cost savings and efficiency gains, outperforming our own target of EUR 40 million, which is a clear demonstration of operational focus and execution rigor.

Please turn to Slide 10 for a review of our Taste, Nutrition & Health segment performance. For the full year, we delivered solid organic growth of 2.6%, driven by a 1.8% volume increase with pricing contributing 0.8%. Taking into account portfolio and exchange rate effects of EUR 142 million or minus 4.6%, sales were EUR 3.028 billion in reported currency.

Food & Beverage delivered industry-leading mid-single-digit organic sales growth, and this despite strong comparables with high single-digit organic growth in both EAME and North America. Beverages delivered high single-digit organic sales growth with continued strong momentum, while Naturals and Savory continued to grow at mid-single-digit organic growth rate.

Pet Food growth was in line with the market and flat year-on-year, reflecting disciplined strategic pricing actions implemented at the beginning of 2025 to enhance competitiveness in our Pet Nutrition business. Pet Palatability delivered low single-digit organic sales growth. Adjusted EBITDA for the TNH segment increased by 5.2% to EUR 722 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin increased 160 basis points to a market-leading 23.8%, primarily driven by profitable sales growth, portfolio mix effects and efficiency gains related to our ONE SYM transformation.

Please turn to Slide 11 for the performance of our Scent & Care segment. Organic sales growth was 3.2% for the full year, driven by a 3% volume increase and pricing of 0.3%. FX continued to be a headwind of 3.5%. Segment sales were EUR 1.901 billion in reported currency. Fragrance delivered high single-digit organic growth, reflecting continued strong momentum across the portfolio. Fine Fragrance achieved high single-digit organic growth, supported by new wins, particularly in North America and Latin America.

Consumer Fragrances also delivered high single-digit organic growth, driven by a strong business pipeline. Cosmetic Ingredients reported a low single-digit decline, reflecting tough prior year comparables in UV filters, while microprotection continued to grow [Technical Difficulty] low single-digit growth in a dynamic market environment impacted by competition from Asia.

Scent & Care adjusted EBITDA increased 3.5% to EUR 359 million. Segment adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 18.9%, an increase of 70 basis points, primarily driven by profitable sales growth and efficiency gains.

Turning to group profitability on Slide 12. This year, we delivered 120 basis points of improvement to both adjusted gross profit and adjusted EBITDA margin, mainly driven by product mix and efficiency gains through our ONE SYM transformation. Through our ONE SYM transformation, we delivered EUR 50 million in cost savings and efficiency gains, underlining our continued focus on sustainable profitability improvement. This included EUR 35 million from sourcing and procurement scale, driven by a more global approach and evaluation of key raw materials for efficiencies with citrus being a good example.

Productivity and capacity optimization contributed another EUR 10 million. Global asset and logistics management actions such as facility optimization, distribution contract renegotiations and regional logistics tenders contributed EUR 5 million. The decline in adjusted D&A was mainly due to a noncash impairment on plant and machinery in 2024 and FX translation.

Moving to our strong business free cash flow on Slide 13. We delivered absolute cash flow of EUR 780 million and expanded the adjusted business free cash flow margin by 220 basis points to 15.8%, the company record. This performance was driven by a strong EBITDA uplift, lower CapEx intensity and disciplined working capital management through targeted inventory reduction. Net working capital was 32.5% of last 12 month sales, reflecting tight operational control across the organization. The robust performance puts us well into the range of our midterm target of greater than 14% business free cash flow margin, demonstrating our earnings quality, resilient cash generation and execution strength.

Let's quickly move to our balance sheet and net debt on Slide 14. We continue to strengthen our balance sheet throughout the year. Net debt, including pension provisions and leasing obligations stood at EUR 2.1 billion, while net debt to adjusted EBITDA decreased to 1.9x, driven by disciplined debt reduction and strong cash generation.

We were pleased to receive our inaugural investment-grade credit ratings from both S&P Global and Moody's at BBB+ and BAA1, respectively, each with a stable outlook. We have updated our long-term leverage target range to 1.5x to 2.5x. Maintaining a solid investment-grade profile remains a priority and providing financial flexibility, resilience across cycles and a strong foundation for disciplined value creation going forward.

Turning to our disciplined approach of capital allocation on Slide 15. Our capital allocation priorities are clear and consistent, focused on both organic and inorganic investments to drive long-term value creation, return of capital to shareholders while maintaining financial strength and flexibility. First, we continue to invest in organic growth, prioritizing high-return projects that build on our core capability and support profitable, scalable growth.

Our midterm CapEx target remains disciplined at 4% to 5% of sales, enabling strong reinvestments while maximizing cash conversion. Second, we pursue disciplined value-accretive M&A. We focus on opportunities that strengthen our portfolio, expand our footprint and deliver tangible synergies, always within a clear financial framework. Third, return of cash to shareholders remains a key priority. Our dividend policy targets a payout ratio of 30% to 50% of net income, and we are committed to growing the dividend over time. And fourth, we added share buybacks as a new option of our capital allocation policy.

In January this year, we announced our inaugural share buyback program with a EUR 400 million authorization to October 2026, providing further flexibility how to return capital to shareholders. Across all those priorities, we remain committed to maintain a solid investment-grade profile.

Moving to Slide 16. We continue to enhance shareholder value through resilient earnings and disciplined capital allocation, including sustainable dividend growth. Adjusted full year 2025 earnings per share were EUR 3.67, a significant year-on-year increase by 7.2%. Without adjusting for the Swedencare and Terpene business write-downs, earnings per share were EUR 1.78. This year, we are proposing our 16th consecutive dividend increase to EUR 1.25 per share, demonstrating our strong financial position and proven ability to reward shareholders across dynamic market environment.

In addition, we are further strengthening shareholder returns through our share buyback program, reflecting our confidence in the business and our strong financial position. And with this, I will hand the call back to Jean-Yves to discuss further our strategy. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Olaf. Turning now to Slide 18. As a quick reminder, ONE Symrise is our purpose-driven strategy aligned to our financial ambitions and built on 3 pillars: portfolio growth and efficiency. It defines where to play and how to win, ensuring we allocate capital and resources to the highest value opportunities for our customers and our shareholders. To deliver our strategic ambition and execute our road map, we are investing across the organization in 3 key enablers: sustainability, digitalization and people.

Sustainability is an integral part of Symrise purpose, and we are committed to delivering measurable impact. We are combining resilience along our relevant supply chains with science-based innovation and circularity to meet evolving customer expectations. Sustainability is essential for our competitiveness and our ability to sustain strong performance over time. At the same time, we are accelerating digitalization, including AI to sharpen our competitive edge and drive value creation.

And we are investing in our people because ultimately, it is a committed and knowledgeable Symrisers who make our transformation possible. The ONE SYM transformation serves as the execution engine of our strategy. It is a multiyear program focused on improving the quality of sales and delivering sustainable above-market growth while enhancing profitability, increasing returns and strengthening our long-term competitive position.

Please turn to Slide 19. Today, the most visible proof of our transformation is a EUR 100 million in cumulative cost savings and efficiency gains we delivered in '24 and '25, alongside a 280 basis point expansion in adjusted EBITDA margin. This very tangible progress reflects disciplined execution. We streamlined sourcing and procurement, improved capacity utilization across our network and optimize facilities through global asset management. These actions structurally improved our cost base and strengthened operating leverage.

But this is only the most visible part of the story. In parallel, we completed the strategic assessment of our chemicals production footprint and activities. We sharpened the portfolio, divesting Aqua Feed and advancing the divestment of the Terpene business to focus capital on higher return opportunities. Moreover, we laid the groundwork for future growth with strategic investments.

We launched a global data and AI hub in Barcelona to significantly advance our digital capabilities. At the same time, we expanded capacity to meet demand in key markets, including Grasse, Granada, Monterrey and Holzminden, ensuring we remain close to our customers and resilient in supply. In parallel, we initiated the implementation of a company-wide innovation ecosystem designed to accelerate connectivity, speed product development and translate IDs into scalable solutions. We also strengthened our leadership bench by appointing 10 new leaders to key roles across the organization.

Finally, we improved our organizational structure to enhance our competitiveness and better position Symrise to capture the significant opportunities in Care & Wellness. Together, these actions create a stronger Symrise and provide the foundation from which we are accelerating our transformation.

Turning to Slide 20. We are well into Phase 2 of our transformation. Over the past year, we prioritized operational rigor, strengthened accountability and tightened cost management. We sharpened our focus on the most attractive growth platform through deliberate portfolio choices, and we also began optimizing our commercial model. Thanks to this strong foundation, we are now positioned to accelerate this transformation to unlock faster growth, structurally higher profitability and improve earnings quality.

This acceleration is designed to drive above-market growth in our strategic segments, embed efficiency and structural cost reduction across Symrise, enabled by digitalization and advance innovative and sustainable technologies that reinforce our competitive advantage. This acceleration does not mean changing direction. It means scaling what is working and executing with greater speed and focus.

Our objective is crystal clear, strengthen competitiveness today and position Symrise to consistently deliver durable, profitable growth, cash and returns in an increasingly dynamic market environment.

Turning to Slide 21. As we continue to build this foundation for growth, we are further aligning our portfolio with customer needs and opportunities, focusing on differentiated science-based holistic solutions. This reflects how our customers are innovating and how end markets are evolving.

A key step in this journey is the evolution of the ONE CARE project into our new Care & Wellness division. This is much more than a structural change. It is strategic. By bringing together Cosmetic Ingredients, health active solutions and probiotics, we have created an integrated platform designed to meet customer demand for science-based holistic self-care solutions as the convergence of beauty and health. Care & Wellness addresses a large and structurally growing market. While this will not be an intermediate -- immediate growth accelerator, it is a mid- to long-term value driver in an attractive segment where innovation, credibility and scale matter. We are innovating in this category with leverage through our scientific leadership, application expertise and customer intimacy. As of January 1, 2026, Care & Wellness is reported as a division within our Scent & Care segment, underlining its strategic relevance within the group. This platform establishes a differentiated position in a significant market, which is growing more than 5% annually, and we expect Care & Wellness to exceed EUR 500 million in sales in 2026. By leveraging Symrise unique capabilities across attractive segments, product formats, biotech and green chemistry, we are very well positioned to scale this platform and unlock long-term value. At the same time, we continue to actively shape our business. With some key initiatives, we are completing the divestment of the Terpene business and further strengthening the portfolio through ongoing strategic reviews and the evaluation of selective accretive M&A, ensuring continued focus, competitiveness and disciplined capital allocation.

Turning to Slide 22. Looking ahead, our focus is clear, speed and differentiation. As we have discussed today, the foundation is in place. We have strengthened the cost base, improved earnings quality and sharpened the portfolio. Now we are pivoting from the efficiency to the effectiveness. We will provide more details of our plan in the coming quarters, but I can already share with you some details. First, driving commercial excellence by strengthening our go-to-market model. Second, scaling customer-driven and differentiated innovation by converting our R&D strength and customer centricity into higher value growth. Third, extracting greater scale benefits by leveraging our global footprint, procurement capabilities and asset base to continue expanding margin. And fourth, accelerating digitalization and utilizing AI to embed data-driven decision-making, productivity gain and speed-to-market advantages across the organization.

Let me emphasize that our strategy is not about choosing between profitability and growth. It is about delivering both consistently and sustainably. Our disciplined execution on the structural improvements we made over the past 2 years give us control and leverage. The strategic investment we made give us capacity to grow. We are now entering the next phase and accelerating from a position of strength. Our ambition is clear: to become a sharper, faster, more competitive Symrise to deliver superior long-term value.

And let me conclude with our outlook on Slide 24. For the full year 2026, we take a prudent approach to guidance and expect organic sales growth in a range of 2.0% to 4.0% with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.5% to 22.5%, and an adjusted business free cash flow margin of above 14%. This full year 2026 outlook assumes Q1 organic growth to be down low single digits year-on-year, reflecting high year-on-year comparables as pockets of end market demand remains soft and the conflict in the Middle East adds another layer of uncertainty to the macro picture.

From a year-on-year perspective, comparisons will be more challenging in the early part of the year before becoming more favorable as we move through the back half. Our 2026 guidance is not only underpinned by the acceleration of our transformation, but also supported by a very strong project vitality with key customers and a very solid pipeline of new solutions and a key resilience in our core end markets. We believe this will help offset near-term market pressures and position us for growth as demand normalizes.

Looking beyond 2026, we remain very confident in our midterm targets and ability to outgrow our reference market. We see sustained multiyear growth supported by structural tailwinds, including evolving regulation, increasing demand for clean-label and natural solutions, ongoing reformulation and continued expansion in emerging markets. With a focused advantaged portfolio and strong innovation pipeline, we are well positioned to convert this tailwind into long-term profitable growth, supported by the acceleration of our transformation. Accordingly, we reaffirm our 2025 to 2028 targets, annual organic sales growth of 5% to 7%, EBITDA margin of 21% to 23% and a business free cash flow margin of more than 14%.

With that, let's open the floor for questions. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] the first question comes from the line of Charles Eden from UBS.

Limited to 2. Can I start on the 2026 organic sales growth guidance, please? And I guess both of my questions are actually on this. Firstly, for the full year, what are you assuming is the contribution from volume and pricing in the 2% to 4% range, please? And then more specifically on the Q1 guidance for a low single-digit decline in organic sales. I've looked back through my model. And as far as I can see, Symrise has never seen an organic sales decline in a quarter, not during COVID nor when you had the cyber attack in Q4 2020. Now I understand the comment on high prior year comps, but you've had tough comps before, too. So can I ask, how much of this guidance is realism? And how much of it is baking in some conservatism or prudence for current global conflicts and any other impact that this might have in March. I guess maybe a different way of asking this question is, we're 2 months through Q1 already, are you seeing organic sales growth down low single digits across January and February?

Okay. So thank you very much, Charles. Thank you for these 2 questions. And I will answer the 2% to 4%, first. What would be the price volume impact on that? Just let me put that in a context. So we delivered a very strong 2025, and we are very proud on the way we are really acting, very strongly and very diligently when the market is really making everybody suffer. So I think we need a very good end year also, and it's something we need to be aware of. Now concerning the coming year, our organic sales growth guidance reflects what I should say, a realistic and balanced view of the environment. And it is designed to cover both downside and upside scenario we have in mind. So if the market rebounds, second part of the year should be lower end of our guidance. If it rebounds, more should be high end of the guidance. So I am myself confident to delivering this 2% to 4% guidance, taking into account that it will be mainly driven by volumes. I cannot tell you what will be the price volume in advance, but it will be definitely driven by volumes.

Now concerning the Q1 low single-digit information I just gave you, it is the first time. Is it due to tough comparables? Yes. Last year, we had a very high Q1, and it was the most impressive quarter of the last year and the comparables for the end of the year will be less challenging for our growth. That's the first answer to your question.

The second question concerning is it a realism or prudence? I think we have shown that we can act very strongly, but we want to stay prudent. We want to stay prudent. Why? Because not only this high comparable, but the macro economy is not something we can control. The last days events are also participating also to our real prudence. And we remain very confident even if the Q1 slowdown forecast anticipation is there. And I should say, yes, it's a prudent anticipation. I am myself very confident for delivering 2% to 4% because, as I was mentioning also before, we have a very strong pipeline. We have a very strong pipeline, very good customer relationship, and we see that the market is ready to rebound. And when the market will rebound, we will really take a major piece of it by overperforming the market like we did the previous years.

Understood. So just to clarify, if we come in at a midpoint of low single-digit decline in Q1, so minus 2%, you need 4.7% organic for the rest of the year to hit the midpoint of the guidance, you'd need 6% organic for the rest of the year to hit the top end of the guidance. You're confident in that even if Q1 lands at minus 2%. Is that correct?

Yes, exactly, Charles. I remain confident on the full year, but we remain prudent for the Q1 organic sales growth. But yes, I am confident for delivering the guidance.

We now have a question from the line of Lisa De Neve from Morgan Stanley.

I just have one follow-up on the first quarter guidance, if I may. Can I just confirm with you whether there has been no phasing effects that may have benefited fourth quarter and may not be seen in the first quarter? That would be helpful.

And secondly, on that first quarter as well, given the tensions, I mean, are you currently expecting that maybe some orders are being deferred into second quarter or shifted forward and that's what's driving the guidance? And what have you seen year-to-date? I mean, so far in the first few months, has trading been solid? So that's the question on the first quarter.

And then secondly, I would love for you to outline how you see the Pet Food market for this year and whether you can confirm whether any incremental price negative should be expected for this year, especially in Pet Nutrition?

Okay. Thanks a lot, Lisa. So concerning the first question, Q1. Q1, we did a very strong Q4 in 2025. So again, the market is there. Comparatively, by the way, to the Q4 2024, we had an easier comparable. It's also -- I'm sorry to make a lot of comparables, but it's also explaining the quarterly performance in terms of organic sales growth. So the quarter-to-quarter 2024, 2025 was easier. And the quarter-to-quarter Q1 2025 and 2026 is not so easier. So it's really mainly due to the comparable. And again, I am very prudent. So is it something where also some orders are shifting to Q2? We don't know yet. We don't know what will be the impact also, and we are measuring the impact of the last days events, and it's too early for us to really give an idea on a day-to-day basis, what will be the impact between Q1 and Q2. So again, we are following on a day-to-day. And the idea for us is really to deliver the customer when the customer is really needing the product.

Concerning the Pet Food, the Pet Food is a key strategic growth driver for Symrise. So we are really very well positioned for following the rebound of the pet market when the rebound will happen. And this year should see a better market dynamic than last year. And concerning your Pet Nutrition, I just remind that Pet Nutrition represent 1/4 of the Pet Food market. And we took some actions in 2025 to restate and reposition the pricing -- the prices. So the prices in Pet Nutrition begin to normalize with the exception of selective price adjustments. And we really anticipate in 2026, a return to moderate volume net organic growth. So again, we are out of the readjustment of the prices we did strategically in 2025. Now it will be selective price adjustments if necessary. And we will do that because also what I said before, our growth will be mainly driven by volume this year. And then when the price adjustments are needed, we will adjust the price because we're selling added value products, but selling added value product, even unique product doesn't mean that we have also to oversell, and we want really to sell the right price for the right usage value.

I mean, just one small follow-up, if I may. Can I just confirm that you just stated that you've already agreed on selective price adjustments or that you would be open if needed to do that?

No, we already embedded in our organic sales growth, some price adjustments. We did the major part of our contract for 2026. So the picture is much better than 2025. And we still have some price negotiation in front of us. So not everything is done. So that's the reason why I cannot give you the full picture. But if necessary, we'll make. And in any case, the growth is there and the volumes are there. So in any case, the growth in Pet Nutrition will be substantial this year.

We now have a question from the line of Alex Sloane from Barclays.

The first one was actually, again on the organic sales growth. And just in terms of what's driving the acceleration beyond Q1? Is there any particular business line or end market that you would expect greatest step up? And maybe I could sort of just press on the question that's been asked a couple of times. Has the sales in January and February already been down low single-digit? Or is this low single-digit outlook for Q1 really premised on March? That's the first one.

And then secondly, just on profitability, the 21.5% to 22.5% guide. Could you give a bit of context on what you're assuming in terms of energy and input costs within that range? Obviously, I appreciate, it's been quite volatile on that front over the last week.

Thank you very much, Alex. So I will take the first question. I will let the second to Olaf. Concerning organic sales growth, we are very confident for growing in 2026. We are very dynamic, very active. We stay very agile on entrepreneur, and we have a lot of good news in our pipeline. So in Food & Beverage, we signed new type of contracts, which we delivered in 2026. And we had a very nice mid-single-digit growth in 2025, which will continue in 2026, [ normally ], right? Fragrance, we did an extraordinary also year -- last year in Fine and Consumer and the dynamic is there. So we have also very nice new wins in the pipe. So if you add EUR 2 billion Food & Beverage, EUR 1 billion of Fragrance, EUR 3 billion are really representing a nice growth perspective for the year. Pet Food is really rebounding. We see some movements in the market. And as I was explaining also in the past, we're also shifting with the market, moving some big brands for more regional or local brands, and we are really capitalizing on what we started to deliver and to build in the last months. So -- and Care & Wellness to make the full picture is a new baby in the organization, and there are a lot of good news, a lot of customer traction, which are making me also confident for the growth. So it's not one business-driven growth. It's really a growth across the 4 strategic markets of Symrise.

Now coming back to -- before handing over to Olaf, coming back to your question about January, February, March, I will let you know when we'll have the full picture of the quarter about the dynamic inside the month. But what we see today make us feeling prudent about what we promised for the Q1. So I hand over to Olaf for the second question.

Yes. Thank you, Alex, for the question. On the energy side, as you rightly observed, there's a lot going on in this market. Having said that, Symrise is relatively less exposed to energy prices. As a percentage of sales, around 2.5% is energy cost related. And out of that, around 80% is hedged for Symrise at this point in time. So with this short-term noise, which we all experienced, I think we should be well protected against the major impact from energy prices as we see it right now.

The next question comes from the line of Edward Hockin from JPMorgan.

I've got 2, please. One is on Aroma Molecules. I was wondering, it looks like the Q4 was somewhat stronger, growing mid-single digit. Can you give any color on why this was besides the comparatives? And any details you can give on 2025 and also your outlook for 2026 on Menthol terpenes and Fragrance Ingredients?

And then my second question, please, is on Cosmetic Ingredients. Obviously, a softer year with the comparatives. How should we be thinking about the growth trajectory for this business in 2026? Should we be baking in some acceleration, some step-up in the growth there?

Yes. Thank you very much, Edward. So again, Aroma Molecule, Aroma Molecule did a strong Q4 this year also because the comparables of 1 year before was not so high. So Aroma made a good delivery. Concerning what's happening within Aroma Molecule, we are still on the way to divest it in. We are still building very strong position on Menthol, and we have a lot of added value also with our Menthol, specific raw material, innovation, customer relationship. So we are working on it, and we are continuing to develop specific captive and specific molecules, not only for us, specific flavor SFI, specialty flavor ingredients, not only for you -- for us but our competitors. So Aroma Molecule, by the way, we have also a new leadership, and we are refining the strategy. So we will come back, by the way, to you when there will be more to tell.

Concerning Cosmetic Ingredients, Cosmetic Ingredients, I should say, had 2 big different type of products. The first one, sun protection. And you know that sun protection, we suffered a lot last year about comparables. We will not have the same situation today. So it means that in terms of volumes, the comparables will be much better. On some of our products, we have to adjust some prices in sun protection, but also we are on the way to this adjustment.

And concerning the second business unit, I want to address for answering your question, Micro Protection. So Micro Protection, we invested a lot in a key product, Hydrolite. We're only producing in Germany. Now we produce in Germany, in Spain, in U.S., in Mexico. And we are really facing a strong demand. Now we are in a way to qualify the product and the growth will come in the coming months.

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

I'll ask a question about the margin since there's been so much focus on organic growth. You have a relatively wide guidance range for 2026. I was wondering if you could talk about key drivers here. Is it simplistically low end of organic growth means lower end of the margin range? Or are there other factors to think about in terms of your cost efficiencies versus reinvestment?

And then maybe just a sort of small clarification one. You've referenced the Middle East a few times. Could you remind us of your direct exposure and things that we need to bear in mind when thinking about the potential impact of the events over the weekend?

So Nicola, I will start to answer and will let Olaf complete what I will have missed certainly for the second question. I will start with the first question. Even if it looks like flattish profitability, we are still working a lot on profitability improvement. What we started to do, we are still [indiscernible]. So it means that it will not decrease the outcome of what we started. And the annual compounding effect will not decrease. It will improve. Now what you see in the P&L and in our forecast is also including some reinvestment. And as I clearly said, the growth is a story of Symrise. Growth remains the story at Symrise, the profitable way. That's the profitable growth story. And the question to really drive profitable growth is to make the portfolio adjustments, and it costs money also to make some portfolio adjustments and to really invest also in new way of selling new route to market, new innovation, new digitalization tools. And that is the investment we want also to put in our company for really compounding our story. So this is the answer to your question. So the efforts will pay off even more even if it is not totally embedded in the figures we are showing to you.

Now concerning the Middle East, I will hand over to Olaf. Olaf, please?

Yes, Nicolas, naturally, it's also of interest for us at the moment what's going on in the region, and we looked at it. The core region for Symrise is around close to 3% of turnover. So it's not a massive environment, which we have in front of us, around EUR 140 million, EUR 150 million is a good number for the size of this business environment.

We have now a question from the line of Eric Wilmer from Kempen.

I wanted to press a bit on Aroma. Could you perhaps talk a bit about the price and volume dynamics within the Aroma portfolio, perhaps first fitting it between the part that is and that isn't under Chinese pressure?

And secondly, you mentioned EUR 150 million related to Middle East. Is that number perhaps a bit higher when you factor in lower air traffic from other airports into the Middle East?

As Olaf wants to started to answer for Middle East, I will let him answer your second question. Concerning the question about the Chinese competition, we are well equipped for competing. We were anticipating some trends and the terpenes divestment is also some divestment, we anticipate some pressure. The terpenes technology is a very good technology and the business is a very good business, but not corresponding to our future guidance. That's the reason why we [indiscernible]. And concerning the Chinese pressure on Aroma Molecule, we have in front of us some Chinese producer for the menthol solutions. We have not only Chinese, we've also a German competitor. And we are really reinforcing our competitive edge. So we face a structural change in the market. We are very transparent about it. We are very aware about it. We are conscious, and we are putting in place a very strong action plan for compensating. So apart from that, concerning our portfolio of Molecules, we are very well protected by some IP, some intellectual property, some type of property protection. And if there are some fights on the cost of goods so -- we will face also the competition. We are really also for adjusting some prices when necessary for guaranteeing some volume. This is also the way to go through this type of competition. I'm very confident that we really can make the best out of it.

Concerning Middle East, I will hand over to Olaf.

Yes. So Eric, what I gave you was the size of the business. Naturally, things can change by the hour at the moment. And when it comes to logistics and transportation, it's hard to predict what will happen in the coming days. And therefore, I think it's too early to assess where all this is going in the coming days and weeks. Therefore, I think at the moment, the focus is really on our people, make sure that they are safe and then we interact with customers as good as we can in these days.

So I don't know if we are still some questions, but I think we are now at closing the session. And I thank you all for your questions.

And in closing, just some words, we are controlling the controllables. We are executing our strategy and accelerating the transformation. I think we are really [indiscernible] talk. We are backed by a very clear strategy, everybody, all our customers, all our people and a lot of messages from the market are making me very comfortable that it is a very clear strategy. We are very disciplined in our execution, and we have a very strong investment-grade balance sheet. So altogether, we are very confident in our ability to deliver durable earnings growth, expanding returns and sustain long-term value for our shareholders.

Again, I thank you for your interest in Symrise. I thank you for your time, for your questions, and we look forward to speaking with all of you again in the future. Thanks again.

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 you lines.Goodbye.